Must Reads
- Neil Irwin, The Great Recession may have crushed America’s economic potential
- Paul Krugman, The Mutilated Economy
- FRONTLINE, Sick Around The World (“Can the U.S. learn anything from the rest of the world about how to run a health care system?” The show is 5+ years old but still very relevant.)
Politics
- Ryan Crocker, Talk to Iran, It Works
- Charlie Pierce had the pulse of things last week:
- Please Explain Democracy To Me
- How is Washington Still Not Talking About Poverty?
- Organized Labor Was The Real Winner This Election (Cincinnati pension “overhaul” voted down.)
- Big Chicken In Excelsis (Chris Christie re-election)
- Paul Krugman, Ideological Ratings (S&P’s recent downgrade of France’s credit rating appears more ideologically motivated than based on substance.)
- Democracy Now!, “We Are Living in the World Occupy Made”: New York City Voters Elect Mayor Who Vows to Tax the Rich
- Harold Meyerson, What Divides Democrats
- Kevin Drum, Ron Paul Basically Called for Armed Revolution This Week
Health Care and the Politics Thereof
- Consumer Reports, Florida Woman’s Canceled Blue Cross Policy? It’s Junk Insurance. She can get a real plan for $165 per month.
- NY Times, When Insurers Drop Policies
- Dean Baker, Did People Think That President Obama Had Pledged to Nationalize the Insurance Industry?
- NY Times, Con Men Prey on Confusion Over Health Care Act
- Health Reform Watch
Economics
- Jared Bernstein and Dean Baker, Taking Aim at the Wrong Deficit
- Jim Tankersley, The brutal economies of hard-line Republican districts, in one chart
Culture
- Andrew Reiner, Looking for Intimacy in the Age of Facebook
- WBUR, Boston’s ‘Interrupters’ Work To Prevent Violence
- Jim Sollisch, I Want to Be a Millennial When I Retire
Environment
- Damien Ma and William Adams, If You Think China’s Air Is Bad …
- Dallas Observer, Mike Bishop, Hellbent on Stopping the Keystone Pipeline, Sues the Corps of Engineers
- Bloomberg, Texas Farmer Wins Entry of Default in Keystone Lawsuit
Miscellany
- Roland Deschane, War on [Thomas] Kinkade (art criticism)
- NY Times, F.D.A. Finds 12% of U.S. Spice Imports Contaminated
- Chad Finn, Six predictions for the Red Sox offseason