Like many “flyover” cities, St. Louis’s decline is not mainly a story of deindustrialization, but of decisions in Washington that opened the door to predatory monopoly.
March/April/May 2016
Posted inMagazine, March/April/May 2016, Politics
Message to Millennials: Bernie Sanders Is Intellectually Consistent, Not Intellectually Honest
Millennials, we get why you like Bernie, but…
Posted inMagazine, March/April/May 2016
Tilting at Windmills
Not a yooge difference As a Bronx native I’ve spent the campaign quietly weighing Donald Trump’s New York accent against that of Bernie Sanders. I can declare a split decision. Trump has the better vowels: His yooge obliterates Sanders’s yooge, the perfect measure of dismissiveness without dwelling on itself. But Sanders has the better consonants: […]
Posted inEconomy, Magazine, March/April/May 2016
God Save the Scene
D.C. punk has thrived for decades with the help of churches, activists, and even the library. Can it survive the city’s rapid redevelopment?
Posted inEconomy, Magazine, March/April/May 2016
Why Is Marriage Thriving Among (and Only Among) the Affluent?
Experts struggle to explain one of the biggest drivers of inequality.
Posted inEducation, K-12, Magazine, March/April/May 2016, Politics
How Obama Got Schooled
Under pressure from right and left, the president signed away hard-won federal power over K-12 education and gutted his own reforms, even as they were working.
Posted inMagazine, March/April/May 2016, Politics
Talk of the Toons
A selection of political cartoons from the past few weeks.
Posted inHealth Care, Magazine, March/April/May 2016
The VA Isn’t Broken, Yet
Inside the Koch brothers’ campaign to invent a scandal and dismantle the country’s most successful health care system.
Posted inGovernment, Magazine, March/April/May 2016
Mend, Don’t End, Fannie and Freddie
Conservatives blame the mortgage giants (wrongly) for the financial crisis, and both parties want them dead. But to finish the job of financial reform without destroying the housing market and costing taxpayers billions, we need to let them live.
Posted inEconomy, Magazine, March/April/May 2016, The Monopolized Economy
Redlining from Afar: How Consolidation Killed Off St. Louis’s Exemplary Minority Lender
Just after Thanksgiving in 1996, a group of 146 St. Louisans, mainly from the black business community, boarded a chartered TWA jetliner and flew to New York City. Their goal? To block the takeover of their hometown Boatmen’s Bank by shutting down the New York Stock Exchange. Led by the St. Louis lawyer Eric Vickers, […]
