Must Read

• Andrew Price, Unbiased Streets [See Note 1 below]
• Julie Bosman, Monica Davey and Mitch Smith (NYT), As Water Problems Grew, Officials Belittled Complaints From Flint
• Dean Baker, Paul Krugman, Bernie Sanders and Medicare for All
• Dan Kervick, The Wailing of the Wonks [Ed.: See Note 2 below]

Should Read

• Robert Reich, Six Responses to Bernie’s Skeptics
• Sally Jacobs, As Vermont official, Sanders ‘got things done’
• Chris Dillow, Capitalism vs Markets
• Nathan Proctor, GE And The Rise — And Perils — Of Too Big To Tax [Ed.: background]
• Victor Tan Chen, All Hollowed Out: The lonely poverty of America’s white working class
• Dave Johnson, Government Run Like A Business Led To Lead In Flint’s Water

Environment

• Piers J. Sellers (NYT), Cancer and Climate Change
• Ben Adler, Here’s What a Hillary Clinton Presidency Would Mean for Global Warming

Politics

• NYT Editorial Board, Depraved Indifference Towards Flint
• Lambert Strether, ObamaCare’s Neoliberal Intellectual Foundations Continue to Crumble
• Bianca DiJulio, Jamie Firth, and Mollyann Brodie, Kaiser Poll: 58% of Americans support Medicare for all
• Paul Krugman (NYT), Health Reform is Hard
• Harold Pollack, Here’s why creating single-payer health care in America is so hard
• A. W. Gaffney, Lessons from Vermont
• Amy Davidson, Radical Measures
• Mike Konczal, How Sanders and Clinton Each Approach Shadow Banking
• Ron Chusid, Clinton Campaign Underestimated Sanders–But Also Underestimated Clinton’s Weaknesses
• Robert Borosage, Hillary and Bernie: The Credibility Gap
• Gaius Publius, One More Neoliberal President…
• Gaius Publius, Wall Street Reviews What Sanders Plans for Wall Street
• driftglass, If The Answers Frighten You, David
• Zach Beauchamp, This satirical Chinese account live-tweeted the GOP debate, and it was amazing
• Robert Reich, Who Lost the White Working Class?
• Jess Bidgood (NYT), In Maine, Local Control Is a Luxury Fewer Towns Can Afford

Economics

• Karl Russell (NYT), Why Oil Is Plummeting
• Binyamin Appelbaum (NYT), This Time, Cheaper Oil Does Little for the U.S. Economy
• Robert Shiller (NYT), How Stories Drive the Stock Market
• Jared Bernstein, A quick look at recent wage growth
• Cathy O’Neil, I don’t want more women at Davos
• Cathy O’Neil, Crank up New York real estate taxes

Science

• Alanna Schubach, The Irony of STEM Funding
• Sean Eddy, Our faculty search so far
• Mike McPhate (NYT), Video: SpaceX Rocket Landing Ends in Explosion [Ed.:  Success rate now <100%.]
• NCAR/UCAR, Flying lab to investigate Southern Ocean’s appetite for carbon

Ending on a Positive Note

• Nicholas St. Fleur (NYT), How to View Five Planets Aligning in a Celestial Spectacle
• Kenneth Chang (NYT), Mars Rover Finds Changing Rocks, Surprising Scientists
• Kenneth Chang (NYT), Ninth Planet May Exist Beyond Pluto, Scientists Report

Notes:

1. Price writes, “Roads should not be streets, nor vice versa, or we will fail at both.”  Those of us living in the suburbs need to think more about that than we do.
2. Kervick writes:  “Neoliberals in the Democratic Party love the free flow of capital and talent, and don’t seem to have much interest in the themes of solidarity, sharing, democracy and community that animate the progressive left.”  I agree but I’ll add that solidarity, sharing, democracy, and community don’t just animate the progressive left.  People across the political spectrum believe in those values.   Beliefs differ in the specifics but at a high level I think there’s a fair amount of common ground.  We’ll change things for the better when all those animated by solidarity, sharing, democracy and community are able to set aside differences on social issues and work together on large-scale political ones.