Let’s Make Sure We Get the Green New Deal Right

Covid-19 will force us to rethink many of the assumptions underlying existing GND proposals

Advocates of the Green New Deal (GND) are looking to change the way we handle a range of problems facing society, especially in the wake of environmental challenges occasioned by climate change. In response, policymakers have suggested a variety of programs designed to deal with these challenges. Should any of ...
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Let’s Make Sure We Get the Green New Deal Right

Can Bernie Do It?

An economist takes a hard look at the Sanders platform

But is he a plausible president? By that, I don't mean in comparison to Donald Trump, as implausible a president as there ever was. Sanders is a lifetime political figure with forty years of elected experience and intimate knowledge of Capitol Hill and of the federal government. But he is ...
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Letter Two to Germany: Visiting Boston Under Trump

In March 2019, Berlin-based author Esther Dischereit observes the Academy Awards from Boston

This article was originally published in German in Deutschlandfunk Kultur on March 20, 2019. It is reprinted with the kind permission of Deutschlandfunk Kultur. --- Today I was awakened by the sound of a snow shovel. A path had been cleared below on Harvard Street, which goes past the famous Harvard Campus. Whoever ...
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What Criminal Justice Reformers Can Learn from the Green New Deal

The political inequalities reinforced by American criminal law require a transformative approach

The decline of America’s democratic institutions has emerged as a central issue in contemporary American politics. In response to voter suppression, manipulation through campaign finance, and foreign interference in elections, Democrats have proposed sweeping reforms to improve electoral integrity and accountability. With the For the People Act, for example, legislators proposed to improve ballot access, ...
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What Criminal Justice Reformers Can Learn from the Green New Deal

National Identities, Popular Histories

Nations are built on both ideals and ugly contradictions – historians have an obligation to both

This essay was originally published on May 8 2019. I want to begin with a confession, since it’s always better to admit the embarrassing thing that everybody knows: twentieth century United States historians like me are raised with minimal expectations that become glaringly apparent when we read a book that begins ...
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For the Green New Deal / Against Ideology

Ideology looms as a threat to human decency, justice and survival

Ideology doesn’t only undermine democracy, as I tried to demonstrate in my last post. It looms as a threat to human decency, justice and survival. I thought about this reading Jake Davis’s “Why I Want Nothing to do with the Green New Deal. Davis’s essay attracted a great deal of attention, with ...
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For the Green New Deal / Against Ideology

Why I Want Nothing to do with the Green New Deal 

Conservatism, Environmentalism and Socialism

I was frequently humbled living in the small, oil-rich kingdom. Humbled by the clash between two of nature’s most inhospitable terrains: a great sandy desert meeting a great salty ocean. At the boundary where these two titans collide sits a different kind of marvel: a Starbucks. I would frequent the ...
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Why I Want Nothing to do with the Green New Deal 

We Must Stop Using Hyperbole that Foments Needless Anger and Division Among Progressives

Defeating Trump Politically Part 7

The tag line on Facebook poses the question: “Is Diane Feinstein a Bigger Climate Threat Than Trump?” The headline of the actual article in The New Republic is less curious: “Diane Feinstein is a Bigger Climate Threat Than Trump.” The actual article, and the author who wrote it, is done a great injustice ...
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We Must Stop Using Hyperbole that Foments Needless Anger and Division Among Progressives

Why AOC is Such a Terrific Member of Congress

Defeating Trump Politically, Part 5

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has taken Washington, D.C by storm. She successfully ran an insurgent, grass-roots Congressional campaign. She is exceptionally bright. She is incredibly media savvy. She is hugely charismatic, because she is telegenic and photogenic, but also because she consistently seems to be a sincere, authentic, and truly nice and caring ...
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Why AOC is Such a Terrific Member of Congress

Why a Green New Deal is a Great Idea

It links public responsibility, ecological sanity, and economic justice at a moment of manifest political irresponsibility

We are now entering the fourth week of Donald Trump’s most recent historic achievement in the ongoing horror show that is his presidency: the federal government has for all intents and purposes ceased to function. Damon Linker summarized it well in a recent column: In a little under three weeks, the shutdown has ...
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Why a Green New Deal is a Great Idea