Must Read

• Zadie Smith, Elegy for a Country’s Seasons
• WBUR, A $173 Tax Bill Is Behind A Big Court Case On Mass. Forests [1]

Should Read

• Jeff Spross, Why Elizabeth Warren Left The GOP
• LA Times, Verizon Wireless sells out customers with creepy new tactic
• Dave Epstein, When should you plant tomatoes, peppers and other warm weather crops?

Obamacare

• Jackie Chalmes, In Poorest States, Political Stigma Is Depressing Participation in Health Law
• Brian Beutler, Obamacare Leaves Millions Uninsured — Conservatives Pretend To Care
• Brad DeLong, Governor Beshear: 413,000 sign up for health care in Kentucky

Economics

• Bloomberg, Obama Asks for $302 Billion to Fix Bridges and Potholes
• Amy Chozick, Bill Clinton Defends His Economic Legacy
• Dean Baker, Bill Clinton Gave Us a Hugely Over-Valued Dollar and an Exploding Trade Deficit
• Jared Bernstein, Re Wage Growth: Move Along FOMC, Not Much to See Here

Business

• John Grossman interview with Drew Greenblatt, From Making Bagel Baskets to Thinking Much Bigger
• Project on Government Oversight, DoD Commits to American-Made Shoes

Defense

• Loren Thompson, Air Force Drone Plan Leaves Troops Without Vital Recon

Politics

• Hunter, Warlord consolidates power; local officials seek American help
• Ana Marie Cox, The NRA has declared war on America
• Matea Gold, Tea Party PACs reap money for midterms, but spend little on candidates
• Reuters,  ‘Left Behind’ Workers Desert EU Socialists for Populists
• Paul Krugman, Why We’re in a New Gilded Age

Will Conservative Rural Areas Leave the Rest of America Behind?

• Thomas Edsall, Will Liberal Cities Leave the Rest of America Behind?
• Harold Meyerson, The Revolt of the Cities
• Paul Krugman, Density:

…although America is a vast, thinly populated country, with fewer than 90 people per square mile, the average American lives in a quite densely populated neighborhood, with more than 5000 people per square mile. The next time someone talks about small towns as the “real America”, bear in mind that the real real America — the America in which most Americans live — looks more or less like metropolitan Baltimore.

• In 2010, a total of 80.7 percent of Americans lived in urban areas, up from 79 percent in 2000.
• WBUR, Should I Stay Or Should I Go? 41 Percent Of Mass. Residents Would Leave, Poll Finds

Environment

• Joan McCarter, An Idahoan shows Bundy what a real Western rancher is
• Justin Gillis, What Does Today Owe Tomorrow?
• Ari Phillips, This Island Is The First In The World To Be Powered Fully By Wind and Water

Science

• Andrew Gelman, Discovering general multidimensional associations
• Igor Carron, Multiple Regularizers:  Multi-View Learning and Hyperspectral Imagery

Baseball

• SoxProspects.com, Rankings Report: Debating the new number one [Red Sox] prospect

Donald Sterling and Similarly-Minded Individuals

• Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Welcome to the Finger-Wagging Olympics:

I used to work for him, back in 2000 when I coached for the Clippers for three months. He was congenial, even inviting me to his daughter’s wedding. Nothing happened or was said to indicate he suffered from IPMS (Irritable Plantation Master Syndrome). Since then, a lot has been revealed about Sterling’s business practices:

• 2006: U.S. Dept. of Justice sued Sterling for housing discrimination. Allegedly, he said, “Black tenants smell and attract vermin.”
• 2009: He reportedly paid $2.73 million in a Justice Dept. suit alleging he discriminated against blacks, Hispanics, and families with children in his rentals. (He also had to pay an additional nearly $5 million in attorneys fees and costs due to his counsel’s “sometimes outrageous conduct.”)
• 2009: Clippers executive (and one of the greatest NBA players in history) sued for employment discrimination based on age and race.

… What bothers me about this whole Donald Sterling affair isn’t just his racism. I’m bothered that everyone acts as if it’s a huge surprise. Now there’s all this dramatic and very public rending of clothing about whether they should keep their expensive Clippers season tickets. Really? All this other stuff I listed above has been going on for years and this ridiculous conversation with his girlfriend is what puts you over the edge? That’s the smoking gun?

He was discriminating against black and Hispanic families for years, preventing them from getting housing. It was public record. We did nothing. Suddenly he says he doesn’t want his girlfriend posing with Magic Johnson on Instagram and we bring out the torches and rope. Shouldn’t we have all called for his resignation back then?

• Tanzina Vega, Honor for Tarnished Clippers Owner Turns Spotlight on N.A.A.C.P. Branch
• Jerard Fagerberg, Boston’s Shame: Racist Tweets About [Montreal Canadiens Defenseman] P.K. Subban a Disgrace
• Ta-Nehisi Coates, This Town Needs a Better Class of Racist

 

Notes:

1. Ha!  I did remember right.  When I took the Dreamtown Finder quiz on boston.com Hawley came up as my #3 desirable town in MA behind New Ashford and Savoy.   FWIW, I strongly favor tax breaks for leaving land undeveloped.   If you value undeveloped space then creating an incentive for owners not to sell it off to a developer only makes sense.   Looking at it from a different angle, if you tax undeveloped land then you’re creating a disincentive for the owner to leave it undeveloped.