Lots of great events coming up at the Debt Collective. Including one tomorrow (Thursday) with Marshall Steinbaum about the need for FREE COLLEGE -- and a detailed plan of how to do it and do it right. I'll be there. Not to be missed. 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm EDT debtcollective.org/event/colleg...

NEW YORK!!!!! I’ll be there this Friday May 22nd — come through to the Francis Kite Club from 2-5pm and hang with me! RSVP here: secure.actblue.com/donate/alexi... Many thanks to @astra.bsky.social @benmckenzie.bsky.social @lilygreenbergcall.bsky.social and @thegoodai.bsky.social for hosting!

Unfortunately, you can only trust socialists to be responsible executives

For both parties

Oh, CAP is still around?

Together with the terrific @azohra.bsky.social, we curated this symposium on IL and the current moment: lpeproject.org/blog/somethi.... Features wise contributions by @wanshucong.bsky.social @jbentonheath.bsky.social @shaabiranks.bsky.social @richardjoyce.bsky.social & Sarah Sherman-Stokes

This Emmylou Harris song sounds like it’s a Christian rock band trying to imitate Arcade Fire or War on Drugs, but it’s from 1995. Visionary open.spotify.com/track/4KqZE4...

I’m so serious rooseveltinstitute.org/publications...

Replace university boards with faculty senates

The Delaware "Billionaire's Bill" SB21 is one of the more outrageous pro-oligarchy things that have happened in recent years and more people should know about it!

Ummmm These people are such losers. It’s like exercising power in the shadow of Trump’s license makes allows them to project their self loathing outward temporarily.

State-mandated intellectual diversity enforced by conservatives will mean more of this bsky.app/profile/anth...

"the progressive movement lawyer theory of the voting rights act" THE PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT LAWYER THEORY OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT

When the Great Defunding started in 2025, the European Union introduced a "bold" program to attract top scientists from the US, funded at the tune of about ~$500 million spread over 3-5 years. In 2024, the NIH allocated almost twice as that per week.

Wonderful 🧵

If you're looking for a book review on this topic, hit me up.

but what the current admin is doing isn’t just destroying public research but also cultivating its replacement—in part by private enterprise. this is an important aspect of the AI push: massive public and private investment in firms that run their own private labs and produce research

Today, we’re launching our first paper from the Green Planning Commission — Economic Coordination and the Limits of Markets — as an analytical foundation for why the next progressive agenda must be built around public coordination. 🧵 www.common-wealth.org/publications...

one thing that I am really excited about with the Green Planning Commission is how "never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes" the approach can get: "the public sector could just coordinate production instead of establishing a complex series of nudges for private producers"

Ahhh! To burn your eyes, @lawprofblawg.bsky.social. This is from 2019

I don't understand--didn't he read the JP Morgan report? EU doesn't need to get involved--price effects will induce the necessary behavior from the Trump administration.

So excited to see the Journal of Stratification Economics launch with an inaugural conference this month!

I'm sorry but it's just wild that economists hold forth so confidently on the effects of price discrimination, especially of the sort that Amazon is doing across multiple sectors, based on analysis of toy models of single markets with one product and no income effects (quasilinear prefs). Like....??

Bizmuth Zeppelin

Sunstein trying to win these debates via filibuster

Breaking news: Indiana University plant microbiologist Roger Innes has been locked out of his laboratory by the school in response to a request by one of his federal funders. The move comes after Innes complained about the government’s prosecution of Chinese postdocs. https://scim.ag/4tsDqRr

We need a field of asshole studies. The social determinants of dickishness. We need some data-driven policy here

Good news: two of these CIDs--against the Endocrine Society and against WPATH--have now been enjoined (h/t @kredburn.bsky.social), relying heavily on Media Matters's case as precedent. Q now is whether FTC will develop a theory of legal wrondoing or continue to vaguely say "deception" & harass

Thanks for highlighting this development in “consumer financial protection”

I actually think the bigger problem is that the overwhelming majority of academics just want to keep their head down and hope that the attacks don't come for them.

Who up creating highly leveraged positions to produce long-term capital assets, hoping that speculative units won't tip into Ponzi units

The fundamental issue is that we have such anemic left-wing power building organizations that put sustained pressure on established institutions so that they, in spite of themselves, they are forced to adopt some of the left-wing framing about what the problems are. That's what the right has done.

Little 🧵. Something to poke around on for any enterprising journalists

No.

Katie Crutchfield has an insane gift for melody

And a significant reason for this is that to do otherwise would require inferring several other conclusions that would warrant a form of politics that a lot of very powerful and comfortable do not want to see nor think about.

On my reading queue!

5) My half-baked guess is that Vought is trying to push out a report that purports to show that the CFPB is not needed. He worked Zywicki and donors to set up a new institute to do it. He instructed the FTC that this is happening and they'd better get on board. And the FTC is doing so here

FTC is co-hosting an event on the state of consumer finance at George Mason's law school. There are layers here. 1) This is ostensibly announcing a CFPB rpt. But I guess now that CFPB is basically shut down, the FTC is...taking over consumer finance? ... www.ftc.gov/news-events/...

Just finished @jwmason.bsky.social and Jayadev's great book. Well worth your time if you want to understand the basic Post-Keynesian framework and its relevance to a whole number of current policy debates in addition to left/anti-captialist politics press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Wasted opportunity for a Seinfeld plot circa Season 4

Ag secretary confirming 1 in 4 US farmers has no fertilizer secured, American Farm Bureau survey says up to 70% can’t afford enough fertilizer for the season under the spiked costs Honestly shocked this isn’t bigger news. 25% of farms are just not planting at all this season. Farm bankruptcy up 46%

LITERALLY, I HAVE TALKED WITH THE HEAVY CONSTRUCTION LOCAL’S LEADERSHIP AND ALL OF THE MAJOR EXPANSIONS ARE BEING RUSHED THROUGH BY MUNICIPALITIES WHO DONT EVEN FIGHT FOR LOCAL LABOR. THEY ARE IMPORTING TEXAN CONTRACTORS THAT WORK AT ****40%**** OF PREVAILING WAGES.

Surprise in this one! A rebuttal to @ksabeelrahman.bsky.social's account of the rent guidelines board--on which (I hadn't realized) he served!

I think the truth is that he just doesn’t have any meaningful, substantive thing to say about producing electoral change and this is just what he comes up with when asked

Default rates are rising for private-credit loans for rental properties in Baltimore. This is great work by @thebaltimorebanner.com with some disturbing implications. Brief 🧵 www.thebanner.com/economy/dscr...

My hypothesis is that this reflects 2 things: 1) accelerated Republican attacks on higher ed (chart on the left is of Republican platforms) 2) increased salience of high cost and of student debt (in part because of increased politicization, mostly from the left)

I'll add that Media Matters's victory here has set a precedent that could be helpful to the professional organizations who support trans healthcare who are currently the subject of FTC CIDs. www.wired.com/story/the-fe...

I found myself cringing for this entire story. It’s so obviously predatory and yet people feel like they’re getting their moneys worth because it makes them feel secure, artificially www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...