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Vol. 30 No. 3Summer 2019
Columns
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The Anti-Entrenchment Agenda
Entrenched power is the problem. What can be done about it? -
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Notebook
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Can Europe Come Together?
The elections to the European Parliament halted the rise of the far right but produced more fragmentation—and that’s not good enough. -
Countering Biden's Status Quo Politics
Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders offer the most direct challenge yet to the front-runner in the 2020 Democratic primary. -
Does the Civil Rights Act Protect Gay Employees? The Court Will Decide.
And the conservative justices will have to choose between their self-proclaimed allegiance to what a law says and their social biases. -
Benefits on the Line
The Trump administration has proposed to adjust how we measure poverty, in an ill-disguised attempt to cut benefit levels.
Culture
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Hobsbawm, Unrepentant
A new biography connects the life and work of the great radical historian of capitalism. -
Money Against Democracy
How neoliberals captured the machinery of the state to keep citizens from regulating markets -
The General Store of the U.S.A.
Do Walmart and Amazon's logistics triumphs reveal a path forward for a centrally planned economy?
Features
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Neoliberalism: Political Success, Economic Failure
The invisible hand is more like a thumb on the scale for the world’s elites. That’s why market fundamentalism has been unmasked as bogus economics but keeps winning politically. -
Special Report: Monopoly Nation
In the Land of the Giants
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Special Report: Monopoly Nation
How Digital Advertising Markets Really Work
They’re shaping our market, our democracy—our entire reality. If we’re going to fix them, we need to understand them. -
Special Report: Monopoly Nation
The Insulin Racket
Insulin is a 100-year-old drug whose wholesale price has tripled in ten years. The reasons why explain everything wrong with America’s broken prescription drug market. -
Special Report: Monopoly Nation
Big Finance's Stealth Deregulatory Maneuver
Teaching students how to manage their money has become mandatory in many K-12 classrooms. But can it substitute for real enforcement of financial fraud? -
Special Report: Monopoly Nation
The Double Standard of Antitrust Law
How today’s antitrust law strengthens top-down corporate control and weakens democratic cooperation -
Special Report: Monopoly Nation
Monopolist’s Worst Nightmare: The Elizabeth Warren Interview
"The problem is a government that won't get in the fight on the side of the people." -
The Voter Suppression Chronicles
When the Roberts Court all but nullified the Voting Rights Act, it said the pre-1965 practices were long gone. New hearings by the House make clear: They’re back. -
Climate Change and the Democrats
If they have the smarts, Democrats can prevent a schism in the progressive coalition, and turn the Green New Deal into a jobs machine for workers displaced from the carbon economy. -
The Reluctant Majority
Today's teens are likely to be even more progressive than the millennials who voted in 2018, but will they show up? -
Maine Exhales
Democrats are ascendant in the Pine Tree State. Attorney General Janet Mills became Maine’s first woman governor, and the party took control of the state Senate and increased its House majority. As Mainers breathe easier and state officials begin to clean up the mess left behind by former governor Paul LePage and his cabal, can Maine provide a beacon for the rest of America?
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Vol. 30 No. 2Spring 2019
Columns
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2020 and the Democrats’ Theory of Change
The Democrats can and must think big, but they have to frame their ideas around the realities of a coalition party that includes suburban moderates. -
A Groundbreaking New Enterprise: Buybax!
Want to make a killing in the stock market without actually creating anything of value? Try Buybax!
Notebook
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Getting Serious About Power
Can we learn something about the right’s strategic coherence without emulating either their ideas or their contempt for democracy? -
Richie Neal and Trump’s Taxes
The costs of having a corporate Democrat chair the House Ways and Means Committee -
Will Immigrants Find Themselves in the Driver’s Seat?
Trump’s ICE crackdown is increasing support for access to driver’s licenses. -
Could California End Childhood Poverty?
America’s most liberal state government has a far-reaching plan to do just that. But does it have the will to enact it?
Culture
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Is There Such a Thing as Progressive Nationalism?
In his most recent books, John Judis makes the case that there is—and that by indiscriminately embracing globalism, many liberals helped create nationalism’s virulent Trumpian version. -
The Courage to Defy Brutality
The case of a black Army veteran that spurred a South Carolina federal judge to defy his state's white supremacist power structure -
The Road to Ending Mass Incarceration Goes Through the DA's Office
Reform is under way at the nerve center of the penal state, but it won’t be enough. -
The Crisis Last Time
The 2008 financial collapse should have brought the repudiation of neoliberalism. What happened? -
The Trouble with Tech
Once you understand the tech giants are capturing unguarded human experience, their business makes sense. -
The Unkept Promises of Higher Education
Colleges need to focus on their original mission—undergraduate teaching—for a new wave of low-income and minority students.
Features
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Trump and China: The Art of the Desperate Deal
Will Robert Lighthizer restrain Donald Trump’s impulse to take a headline-grabbing and self-defeating China deal? -
Congress’s New Progressives Take On the Banks
The House Financial Services Committee—long a landing place for pro-bank Democrats—now includes AOC and a flock of leftists. And Maxine Waters is its new chair. -
Beto Versus The Barrio
The rock-star Democrat Beto O’Rourke, a candidate for president, once supported the bulldozing of a low-income neighborhood in his hometown of El Paso—a project spearheaded by his father-in-law. -
Needed: A U.S. Policy on Saudi Arabia
The next administration would do well to revise the long-standing U.S. partnership with Saudi Arabia, and America has substantial leverage to produce change in the kingdom’s behavior. -
The Migration Crisis and the Future of Europe
The identity crisis imperiling the continent isn’t one of race and religion. It’s one of Europe’s willingness to preserve and expand its liberal values. -
Not So Supreme?
Congress actually has a lot of mostly unused power to rein in the Roberts Court by clarifying the intent of the law. -
Do All Roads Lead to Congestion Pricing?
Portland, Oregon, and New York are taking different routes to charging drivers who need to get downtown during the rush hour. They’ll also have to think hard about the impacts on low-income residents. -
AMLO’s Gamble
Mexico’s decidedly leftist new president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is taking on the business-political-criminal elite that has dominated his nation, and drenched it in bloodshed, for the past 40 years. -
How to Rebuild the Labor Movement, State by State
What progressives can learn from conservative anti-union advocacy
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Vol. 30 No. 1Winter 2019
Columns
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As Trump Comes Apart, Can Democrats Come Together?
It’s understandable that the Democratic infighting has already begun. But given the stakes, can’t we have some kind of arms-control pact?
Notebook
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Europe’s Winter of Discontent
Domestic political turmoil in the European Union’s four largest economies spells trouble ahead. -
Can the House Stop Trump’s Gross Immigration Abuse?
An overdue reform agenda awaits investigations and hearings.
Culture
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Getting Angry at the Right Targets in the Right Way
Catharsis is good, but effectiveness matters more. -
Value Beyond Price
It isn't only the marketplace that determines worth. -
The New Economic Concentration
The competition that justifies capitalism is being destroyed—by capitalists. -
Whose Recovery Was It?
How the government rescued finance while retaining most of the abuses that caused the collapse -
The Digital Destruction of Democracy
Social media is the best friend disinformation ever had, and the cure is far from obvious.
Features
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Beyond 2018
Imperatives for Democrats
For all their differences, House Democrats need to unite around a pro-worker agenda. The party also needs a smart way to winnow its immense field of presidential prospects. -
Beyond 2018
A New Playing Field for Democracy Reform
To win substantive reforms, our system is overdue for structural reforms. 2018 creates an opening. -
Beyond 2018
Winning the Gender Wars
Feminism and misogyny have assumed larger roles in Americans’ electoral identities. This worked to the Democrats’ advantage in the midterms, but may not in the presidential race two years hence. -
Beyond 2018
How Democrats Should Reform Elections in the States
Some reforms will be easy. The harder steps will be the real test. -
Beyond 2018
States of Change
The election win wasn’t just about Congress. Many of the openings for democratic reform will be in the states. -
Beyond 2018
Was Beto the Texas Democrats’ Lone Star?
O’Rourke’s near-victory has them seeing purple—but can they keep turning out more voters and moving Texas leftward when he’s not on the ballot? -
Beyond 2018
A New South Rising: This Time for Real
The midterms made clear that progressive candidates can retake the region with young and minority voters. -
Unlearning the Lessons of Hillbilly Elegy
America’s beleaguered poor and working class have a host of problems, but the culture of irresponsibility that J.D. Vance says they’re prey to isn’t one of them. -
EPA Rollbacks: Hurting Americans Where They Live
A look inside the agency’s Midwest office -
Reproductive Rights at Risk With or Without Roe
In much of the country, access to abortion has already been blocked by state governments, especially for women in poverty. And if Roe goes, access will be scarcer still. -
The Return of the Strike
This year, thousands of teachers, hotel workers, Google employees, and others walked off the job and won major gains. Which raises two questions: Why now? And will this continue? -
British Labour’s Self-Inflicted Marginalization
Why Her Majesty’s Opposition is failing to demolish the feeble Theresa May -
The First Priority: Making America a Democracy
How Americans can move their country closer to majority rule
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Vol. 29 No. 4Fall 2018
Columns
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Can a Blue Wave Save America?
An ordinary wave in November won't be enough. Democrats need a big majority of votes to get even a small majority of seats. And failure could unleash Trump.
Notebook
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Locking Up the Children
The Trump administration's treatment of migrant children as potential criminals has meant lengthy incarcerations for thousands—and an unwelcome shift in mission for the government's children welfare specialists. -
How to Regulate Tech Platforms
Their sheer market power destroys rivals and abuses data of users. -
Who Gets to Tell Stories About Poverty?
The Economic Hardship Reporting Project is redefining how we cover inequality.
Culture
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What Would Jesus Do?
The radical social justice of the early Christian Gospel and its good news for our own day. -
Walmartism and Its Discontents
Most employees loathe their managers, but haven't found a way to go union. -
Tax Evasion Exposed
Senator Carl Levin was the Senate's exemplary investigator of corporate tax scams. -
The 2016 Election Was Ultimately About One Big Thing
A new book argues it was a struggle over identity.
Features
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The Resistance Goes to the Polls
A Very, Very, Very Fine House
If the Democrats do take back the House in November, how should they pursue strategic goals looking forward to 2020? -
The Resistance Goes to the Polls
The Good News from the Voting Wars
How hard-won expansion of voting possibilities could raise turnout, boost the wave—and help our democracy -
The Resistance Goes to the Polls
How Gerrymandering Reform Can Win in the States
Through local action, Democrats this November have a chance to untilt the playing field in every state that now has an extreme partisan gerrymander. -
The Resistance Goes to the Polls
Can a Blue Wave in a Blue State Make Ben Jealous Maryland’s First African American Governor?
He’s running to unseat one of the last remaining moderate Republicans—and he’s running on the left. -
The Resistance Goes to the Polls
Fighting the Republicans’ Voter Purges in Ohio
If you miss voting in an election in Ohio, Republicans make you ineligible to vote in the next one. This year, Democrats are working hard to get Ohioans back on the rolls. -
The Resistance Goes to the Polls
Florida Wrestles with Election Cybersecurity
This purple state remains a plum target for hackers foreign and domestic, and its history of suppressive voting measures complicates efforts at reform. -
Puffins: Harbingers of Climate Change
These small ocean birds are the proverbial canary in the coal mine as the ecology of their habitat worsens. -
Science Under Siege
The Trump administration is undermining research in key areas, but the scientific enterprise continues within the government largely as it was—at least so far. -
Making American Democracy Representative
A bold three-part proposal to introduce ranked-choice voting and proportional representation—and to abolish primaries -
Taking Back North Carolina
In control of the gerrymandered legislature, Republicans are trying to strip power from the courts and the governor. The Democrats are fighting them at the polls. -
Mass Transit in the Sun Belt
If you build it, they will come—but not if the system is skimpy and unreliable. -
The Return of American Socialism
A largely millennial movement, with a surprisingly broad base of support, has staked its claim on the nation’s political discourse and direction. -
Mexico’s Hopeful New President
López Obrador’s victory ousted Mexico’s establishment. If U.S. and Canadian progressives work with him, they just might create a more democratic continent. -
The Trade Strategy We Need
Trump isn’t wrong to criticize the trading system. But his policies won’t fix it. -
Private Equity Pillage: Grocery Stores and Workers At Risk
The private equity business model is to strip assets from companies that they acquire. The latest victims: retail grocery chains
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Vol. 29 No. 3Summer 2018
Notebook
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The Emblem of This Era
The Tax Act sums it all up—grotesque favoritism for the rich and a corrupt legislative process. And it’s already backfiring.
Features
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Part I: What's in the Tax Act, and How It Got TherePart I: What's in the Tax Act, and How It Got There
The Top Ten Fallacies About the New Trump-GOP Tax Act
Like most of Donald Trump’s policy agenda (and the rest of his career and life), the GOP tax cut has been sold on bluster, exaggeration, and outright lies. Here are ten of the biggest myths associated with the 2017 Republican Tax Act. -
Part I: What's in the Tax Act, and How It Got There
The Two Biggest Lies in Donald Trump's Tax Plan
The tax plan was always going to be a huge giveaway to corporations. And the individual tax cuts were always heavily tilted to the top. -
Part I: What's in the Tax Act, and How It Got There
How the Tax Act Embodies the Republican Culture of Corruption
The Tax Act is a Christmas tree of special-interest tax breaks. The only thing more corrupt than the substance was the way it was enacted. -
Part I: What's in the Tax Act, and How It Got There
The Tax Act That Lost Its Name
The Senate parliamentarian scotched the Republicans’ plan for a simple bill title. -
Part I: What's in the Tax Act, and How It Got There
The Koch Brothers' Best Investment
How a $40 million political outlay yields a $500 million tax cut. -
Part II: Language and Message: Making It ToxicPart II: Language and Message: Making It Toxic
Talking Taxes with the Voters
The more people learn about the Tax Act, the less they like it. -
Part II: Language and Message: Making It Toxic
The Broad Support for Taxing the Wealthy
Why Democrats should run on rolling back the tax cut and raising taxes on the rich -
Part I: What's in the Tax Act, and How It Got There
The Democrats' Response
Far from giving Republicans bragging rights, the Tax Act presents Democrats with a potent line of attack. But can they stay united when they put forth their own alternatives? -
Part II: Language and Message: Making It Toxic
Party Animals
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Part III: The Fake Claims, Debunking the MythsPart III: The Fake Claims, Debunking the Myths
Why the Tax Act Will Not Boost Investment
Will lower corporate taxes generate an investment boom? The evidence suggests not. -
Part III: The Fake Claims, Debunking the Myths
The Curse of Stock Buybacks
For the past three decades, the overriding priority of American corporations has been paying their shareholders. That’s just what they’ve done with their tax cut. -
Part III: The Fake Claims, Debunking the Myths
Raises and Bonuses: The PR Fraud
Republicans and corporations tried to convince Americans that their employees would be rewarded. But only 4 percent of workers have gotten bonuses or raises. -
Part III: The Fake Claims, Debunking the Myths
A Lost Opportunity to Help Small Business
For Main Street small businesses, the benefits of the Tax Act are peanuts. Nearly half of all the savings go to people making over $1 million a year. -
Part III: The Fake Claims, Debunking the Myths
Gutting the AMT
Just to be sure that no wealthy taxpayer is left behind, the Tax Act destroys the Alternative Minimum Tax. -
Part IV: The ConsequencesPart IV: The Consequences
Demonizing the IRS to Protect Tax Evaders
Weakening tax enforcement combined with new complexity invites evasion and massive illicit tax savings for the rich. -
Part IV: The Consequences
Massive Spending Cuts: The Tax Act's Hidden Costs
Republicans rediscovered the peril of the enlarged deficit—as a pretext for gutting social spending. -
Part IV: The Consequences
How the Tax Act Undercuts Health-Care Reform
Ending the individual mandate will inflate premiums in the Obamacare marketplaces—especially for the middle class. -
Part IV: The Consequences
Accelerating the Death of Real Jobs
The Tax Act adds insidious new incentives to turn more jobs into casual contract work. -
Part IV: The Consequences
The Tax Act Actually Promotes Off-Shore Tax Tricks
The Tax Act creates additional incentives to shift income offshore for purposes of tax avoidance, and what is worse, it creates incentives to shift actual jobs. -
Part IV: The Consequences
Worsening Inequality
The Tax Act worsens inequality both in the tax changes and in the program cuts used to address the resulting deficit. -
Part IV: The Consequences
The Harm to Affordable Housing
By cutting rates for the wealthy, the Tax Act slashes the value of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit. -
Part IV: The Consequences
Penalizing Marriage for the Poor
Incredibly, the Tax Act actually punishes low-income people for getting married. -
Part IV: The Consequences
How the Tax Cut Sacks Puerto Rico
For the Puerto Rican economy, already bleeding jobs and citizens after a decade-long recession compounded by Hurricane Maria, the Republican tax overhaul was one more blow. -
Part IV: The Consequences
Denying the Child Tax Credit to Undocumented Children
A little-noticed provision in the Republican tax reform will strip billions in tax benefits from an estimated one million mostly low-income undocumented children residing in the United States. -
Part V: The FuturePart V: The Future
What Else Could We Do with $1.9 Trillion?
If we spent that money on infrastructure rather than tax cuts for the rich, we would get better economic performance and more good jobs. -
Part V: The Future
Want to Expand the Economy? Tax the Rich!
If Democrats want to win big in November, they must do more than just renounce trickle-down economics. They need to replace it. -
Part V: The Future
The Long Game on Taxes
It’s not too soon to start thinking about the tax reforms we need and the strategy for getting there. -
Part V: The Future
How to Restore Taxes on Inheritances
With the estate tax further weakened, is it time to pivot to an inheritance tax? -
Part V: The Future
Principles for Tax Reform
The 2017 Tax Act not only harmed most Americans, but upstaged true, overdue reforms. Here are some key elements, as themes for both politics and policy.
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