Must Read/Listen
- Mike Konczal, The Silicon Valley Labor Scandals Prove Minimum Wage Hikes Don’t Cost Jobs
- Radio Open Source, A Flailing State: Daron Acemoglu and Matt Taibbi on Economic Inequality
- ACASignups.net, Tracking Enrollments for the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare)
Should Read
- Michael Maiello, Barack Obama’s Conservative Utopia in 7 Charts
- Rich Barlow, The Added Benefits of Infrastructure Spending
- Blain Roberts and Ethan Kytle, The Dust Bowl Returns
- Michael Northrop, Beyond Keystone XL: Eight Reasons for Optimism on Climate Change
Education
- Monica Potts, Stress, Poverty, and the Childhood Reading Gap
- Valerie Strauss, A very scary headline about kindergarteners
- Ana Marie Cox, The Real Problem with US Common Core: It Further Outsources Education
- Noam Chomsky, The Purpose of Education
Economics
- Paul Krugman, Monoposony Begets Monopoly, And Vice Versa
Politics
- Charlie Pierce, Bad Advice For Hillary Clinton
- Matt Taibbi, Matt Bai’s Post-Partisanship
- Victor Davis Hanson, The Value of Putin
- Belle Waring, Wow, That is Kind of Appealing. Are the Attackers Regular Zombies or Fast-running Zombies?
- John & Belle Have A Blog, Dead Right (See Note 1 below)
Energy and Environment
- NY Times, California Seeing Brown Where Green Used to Be
- Jon Queally, Kentucky Gas Explosion Keeps Fossil Fuel Disaster Streak Alive
- IEEE’s The Institute, Testing Facilities Replicate Conditions at Sea
- SFGate.com, California has a third of the nation’s solar power jobs
Climate Change
- RealClimate.org, Exploring CRUTEM4 with Google Earth
Health Care
Oops
The Continuing Saga of Big Chicken
- Jason Horowitz, Democrats Have Christie ‘Buyer’s Remorse,’ Buono Says
- Scott Raab, Chris Christie’s Smoking Gun
- Alec MacGillis, Chris Christie’s Entire Career Reeks (It’s Not Just the Bridge)
Human Interest
- Boston.com, Spring Training Today: Camp officially opens as pitchers and catchers report
- The Bedford Citizen, Marissa Masek’s Quest to Capture a ‘Perfect’ Snowflake
- This American Life, Episode 195: War Stories
- Simon Waxman, Pete Seeger’s Radical Simplicity
Notes
- It’s a very long post. If you’re not up for reading all of it then here’s the takehome paragraph:
The thing that makes capitalism good, apparently, is not that it generates wealth more efficiently than other known economic engines. No, the thing that makes capitalism good is that, by forcing people to live precarious lives, it causes them to live in fear of losing everything and therefore to adopt – as fearful people will – a cowed and subservient posture: in a word, they behave ‘conservatively’. Of course, crouching to protect themselves and their loved ones from the eternal lash of risk precisely won’t preserve these workers from risk. But the point isn’t to induce a society-wide conformist crouch by way of making the workers safe and happy. The point is to induce a society-wide conformist crouch. Period. A solid foundaton is hereby laid for a desirable social order.