Remember when our Administration claimed that the corporate tax cut alone would give families $4,000 more annually? Get your surprised face ready: wages actually went down from 2018's first quarter to its second quarter, and when you account for inflation, the drop becomes steeper. Wages had been inching up slowly over the Obama years, keeping close to inflation only because inflation was so low, but now wages are dropping back, and stock buybacks are shooting through the roof. You may be old enough to remember when the SEC banned corporate executives from buying back stocks! Anyway: something's trickling down, but it sure ain't wealth.
After the spectacularly unsuccessful effort to prosecute over 200 J20 protestors on felony rioting charges, some of those defendants are preparing to file formal complaints against the Assistant U.S. Attorney who led the prosecution. Well, if you use the legal system to oppress people, as Ms. Kerkhoff did by (among other things!) withholding evidence that hurt her case, you'd better win a lot more than that, since the people you fail to prosecute can use that very same legal system to come after you. But proving prosecutorial misconduct is a high bar -- the judge who sanctioned Ms. Kerkhoff for withholding evidence called her actions "intentional," but wouldn't call them "malevolent." You could argue she was greedy for a successful prosecution, but then you'd have to explain why she overcharged the defendants.
A Yahoo Finance report says that Wall Street "management" of public pensions has cost those pensions at least $600 billion over the last 10 years. That is to say that investing public pensions in index funds -- which merely follow the market -- would have netted $60 billion more annually than banksters investing in hedge funds and the like. And by the way, $60 billion annually is the low end of their estimate! But this story will have a happy ending: in the next round of right-wing hysteria over ZOMG TEH PUBLIC PENSIONZ WILLZ BANKRUPTZ USZ ALLZ!!!!!!!, the role of banksters in losing some $60 billion annually will go unmentioned. (As an aside, I kinda never want to hear banksters talk about the "secret sauce" in their investments again.)
Mike Lux asserts that "left-wing politics can win anywhere in the country," which is true, but blunts that assessment somewhat by suggesting that Democrats should hew close to the wishes of "grassroots leaders," as Republicans do. I mean, yes, Democratic "leadership" is incompetent if not malicious, and the party would benefit from adhering to grassroots leadership in the short term, but it'll become a trap in the long-term if grassroots leaders (versus, you know, grassroots Americans) get all the say about everything. I mean, that's what's happened to Republicans, particularly as their grassroots leaders have become mainstream politicos. (As an aside, I think Mr. Lux really brings home the weight of the Democratic failures of 2009 and 2010 in paragraph 4.)
Finally, Lornet Turnbull at Yes! describes how Buffalo residents are trying to fight gentrification in historically-black neighborhoods: by creating a community land trust, the first of its kind in the city. Land trusts rebuild neighborhoods and keep them affordable for future generations, i.e., keep land out of the hands of developers who only care about money, and who raise rents such that folks who've lived there for generations have to leave. Right-wingers would no doubt call this "socialism" (though there's actually very little government involvement), but I suspect a real conservative would applaud the land trust mechanism because it keeps rapid developmental change from uprooting traditional neighborhoods. In any case, I wish these good Buffalo residents luck.
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