Author Archive
April 30, 2013 by Rachel
Is Austerity a Mistake?
A new paper from researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogo ff, has set the wonk world ablaze by debunking a 2010 study from Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, Growth In a Time of Debt. Reinhart and Rogoff claimed to have found a […]
April 14, 2013 by Rachel
Tokenism 101
Last week, whether you parked at the 50 Yard Line or rolled on the Informative Avenue, the GOP’s much-vaunted new Latino outreach efforts did not appear to be going well. Even Senator Don Young’s non-apology apology for casually tossing out a racial slur – “in my day, the word meant something different,” which, no it […]
April 10, 2013 by Rachel
Six Ages of the World: the Role of Faith in the Development of the Calculus
Would you like to read a paper I wrote for an advanced math class? I dropped it, because what kind of cruel professor makes you do math and also makes you write a research paper? Plus, he was a horrible old misogynist. Also, he was convinced that I am a religious fundamentalist, which I was […]
April 7, 2013 by Rachel
Lifestyles of the Rich and Shady
Video: In this animation, see how investors can create companies and trusts in offshore jurisdictions, where an estimated one-third of the world’s worth resides. The Washington Post, April 6, 2013. Oligarchs, politicians, and one-percenters around the world went into panic mode today as the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) released details from a multi-year […]
March 24, 2013 by Rachel
Representative sample
Recall the 2009 hullabaloo about how the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, required “four reams of paper” to print, because its length clocked in at “thousands of pages”? While some of this hysteria was deliberately engineered to symbolize the physical embodiment of Big Government, those who actually read the Senate versions of legislation understood something […]
March 17, 2013 by Rachel
The Divine Comedy: Habemus Papam edition
Italy’s recent elections featured the return of legendarily corrupt, thrice-indicted bunga-bunga enthusiast Silvio Berlusconi in a three-way tie with a comedian and a career politician – only a few days before his conviction and sentencing on a corruption charge. The juries are still out on his other pending charges of sex with an underage prostitute […]
March 2, 2013 by Rachel
We’re all being trolled
Much has been made over the past few weeks of two of the younger, more attractive members of the Phelps clan publicly splitting with their mother and grandfather, Fred Phelps, and deciding that maybe God doesn’t hate dead soldiers and gay people so much after all. Per Westboro Baptist Church spokesman Steve Drain: “‘We can’t […]
February 24, 2013 by Rachel
The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things: the Unconscious Roots of Conservative Ideology
The ideal of democracy – a well-informed public engaged in good faith in a passionate, yet reasoned debate – has never truly existed. Still, if one removes the qualifiers from the previous statement, it is relatively close to the actual American practice of self-governance. Yet, the gulf between almost-universally endorsed political abstracts and specific policies […]
February 22, 2013 by Rachel
Senator Rape
Dear Arkansas State Senator Jason Rapert (R-Conway): when people were talking about “the rape caucus,” it was not actually supposed to be an official thing. I mean…
February 18, 2013 by Rachel