Новости за 22.11.2021

President Joe Biden’s decision to reappoint Jerome Powell to another four-year term as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board reflects sound political judgment, and sound economic judgment, too.

Ruben Gallego’s path to the House of Representatives has been an unusual one. He grew up working class on the South Side of Chicago. He got into Harvard. He got kicked out of Harvard. In 2000, he joined the Marine Corps. Peacetime soon enough became wartime, and he got shipped off to Iraq.

Assuming the Democratic Party–controlled Senate passes some version of the Build Back Better Act this year, as Chuck Schumer has vowed it will, the new year will dawn with Democrats fanning out across the country to sell the Biden agenda (which House Democrats have already started doing with the version of the president’s social provision bill they passed last week, along with the bipartisan infrastructure bill).

In October, California’s secretary of state signaled that proponents of a new anti-union initiative could start soliciting signatures to place it on the ballot in 2022. Were it to succeed, the measure would functionally dismantle public-sector unions in California. Taking the form of an amendment to the state constitution, the initiative “eliminates collective bargaining for teachers, police officers, nurses, firefighters, and other public employees,” according to the attorney general’s summary. Читать дальше...

The prices of everyday goods are going up, and everyone from members of Congress to talking heads on cable news have their own diagnoses as to why it’s happening. But they’re all missing the biggest piece of the puzzle about what is to blame—namely, corporate profiteering.

In September, as images of Border Patrol agents on horseback roping Haitian migrants blanketed cable news, Patrick Gaspard reacted quickly. Gaspard, the recently installed president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, the Democratic Party’s mainstay think tank, would fly down to Texas to protest the new Democratic administration’s border policies. “I’m in route this morning to the Texas border in active solidarity with Haitians who have been hunted and whipped like animals,” Gaspard tweeted. Читать дальше...

There’s been no shortage of hand-wringing in recent weeks about President Joe Biden, the Democratic Party, and their electoral prospects. The president faces increasing concerns about the economy, an ongoing pandemic, and dwindling time to tackle the climate crisis—all amid intransigence from his own party’s centrists and a damaging loss in the Virginia gubernatorial race. Many well-compensated pundits and political consultants have begun either preemptively writing obituaries for the party or... Читать дальше...