Kathleen Geier

This past week saw the release of a new report by the Brookings Institution about the long-term unemployed. It was authored by economist Alan Krueger and two of his Princeton colleagues. Truth be told, it is the most thoroughly depressing policy document I’ve read in quite some time. The two most important takeaway points are […]

Over at RH Reality Check, Emily Crockett has a nice piece on the Obamacare birth control benefit. It grew out of a Twitter exchange she had with Timothy B. Lee, the latest libertarian dudebro to join Ezra Klein’s new Vox journalism outfit. Crockett had tweeted that she thought it was “creepy” for an employer to […]

When Ta-Nehisi Coates is at his best, he’s on fire. And his response to Jonathan Chait’s warmed over 90s neoliberalism about African-Americans’ alleged “culture of pathology” is Coates at the top of his game. The whole thing is terrif, but these grafs were key: And the president of the United States is not just an […]

The financial sector is often at the heart of much of the dysfunction and rotten excess in the American economy. For example, there is mounting evidence that economic inequality is driven by the pay of CEOs at the major investment banks, which has a spillover effect throughout other sectors and occupations. And as we know, […]

The grand old man of the Broadway musical, composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, was born 84 years ago today. His catalog ranks as one of the towering achievements in the history of American musical theater. This morning, I’m going to post two videos that give a small taste of the man’s genius — and range. […]

Before I go, I wanted to be sure to alert you to my review of Thomas Piketty’s important new book about economic inequality, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. The book covers many fascinating topics that I didn’t have space for in my review, but that I will definitely be returning to in my blogging and […]

Robert Bork was the target of much well-deserved animus during his lifetime. His reactionary judicial views made him anathema to liberals, who saw to it that his nomination to the Supreme Court was defeated. The guy didn’t exactly mellow with age, either, becoming even more cranky and dyspeptic after his defeat than he’d been before […]

2014 marks the 50-year anniversary of one of the most infamous murders in New York City history: that of Kitty Genovese. Genovese was a young woman from Queens, New York who was raped and stabbed to death on March 13, 1964. The incident became notorious because, even though 37 of her neighbors heard her screams, […]

Could the 2014 elections shaping up to be a bigger loss for Democrats than we thought? There’s been speculation to that effect, but I’m not so sure. No one ever thought the 2014 elections would be easy. During midterm elections, the party that holds the White House almost always loses seats. Moreover, as Ed Kilgore […]

All great things must come to end, and last week saw the demise of one of the best bands of the past decade: the Vivian Girls. The Vivian Girls (their cool name refers to this) were a Brooklyn-based female trio who integrated punk, garage rock, and classic girl group influences to forge a unique and […]