You all know how I feel about the filibuster, but the parliamentarian was right to rule that minimum wage changes don't fit budget reconciliation rules. That's not what budget reconciliation is for. The answer here is to end the filibuster, not abuse other rules.
Not to get all Coen Brothers on this, but the coin has no say here, and nor does the parliamentarian. This is all a distraction. Every Senate rule can be changed with 51 votes. The issue isn't what the parliamentarian wants to do, but what Manchin, Sinema, etc, want to do.
As I wrote here, this weird dance around the rules is just cowardice, and it comes with real costs. nytimes.com/2021/02/04/opi…
Honestly, just take a step back for a minute. If the unelected parliamentarian agreed that a minimum wage increase fit the byzantine strictures of a 1974 act meant to expedite budget bills, Manchin and Sinema would agree to pass it with 51 votes rather than 60?
When you just say what is going on here aloud you sound like you've lost it. But you haven't. The Senate has.
This is where this nonsense gets you. What Wyden is considering can probably pass through budget reconciliation. The best legislative minds of my generation are thinking about how to game Senate rules, not write the best policies.
I'm not criticizing Wyden and Sanders for trying to do their best to help workers given the constraints of the Senate. I'm criticizing those who would keep these constraints, and continue forcing policymakers into these bizarre, inefficient workarounds.
It's easy not to click the link on these threads, but I really tried, in this piece, to lay out how insane the current equilibrium in the Senate is. Most people don't realize just how weird it's all gotten. nytimes.com/2021/02/04/opi…

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More from @ezraklein

24 Feb
If you haven't read @CitizenCohn's interview with president Obama on the lessons of Obamacare yet, you should. huffpost.com/entry/obama-in…
"If you ask me what has contributed to the cynicism ― of government, and to some degree what contributed to the cynicism around the health care initiative ― it’s the fact that a small minority of people can put a halt to everything," says Obama.
One important, but less sexy, theme in there is that the mixture of endless partisan opposition and paralyzed institutions make it really hard to do iterative legislating. But we need to do that! There's got to be a feedback loop between implementation and tweaking.
Read 4 tweets
24 Feb
I subscribe to — and enjoy! — @DavidAFrench's Dispatch newsletter. But I think he gets something consequential wrong in yesterday's edition, "Doubling down on the yeehaw."
The phrase refers to politicians distracting from governance failures by leaning into the culture war. The first example is the entire Republican leadership in Texas. It's a great example.
David's second example, though, is the San Francisco school renaming debacle, and it's built around my recent column on California. And here I think David errs. There's a huge difference between these examples.
Read 15 tweets
22 Feb
I still kinda can’t believe Marvel actually made Wandavision and, even more so, that they pulled it off so well. What were those pitch meetings even like?
One thing Marvel does way better than the other nostalgic IP entertainment plays out there is treat the familiarity of their characters as capital they can spend down on more experimental and ambitious stories and aesthetics.
It’s hard to imagine you’d get Thor Ragnarok or Wandavision greenlit without familiar characters at the core. The scripts would just be too alienating and weird for studios to take the chance.
Read 5 tweets
19 Feb
"Imagine if somebody saw in all the wrong colors and all the shapes that he saw were incorrect. And all of his understandings were messed up. That person would be wise to be a little humble, because the data’s coming in, and he’s messing it up."
"And essentially, I think that’s what human beings are doing in our little, sweet, pathetic way."
"So then, if you are in that kind of flawed thinking machine, and you see another flawed thinking machine, it would seem almost crazy and irrational to start judging and fighting that person."

"You might more reasonably say, oh, wow, you too."
Read 4 tweets
18 Feb
This is a piece I've been thinking about for a long time. One of the most dominant policy ideas in Washington is that policy should, always and everywhere, move parents into paid labor. But what if that's wrong? nytimes.com/2021/02/18/opi…
My reporting here convinced me that there's no large effect in either direction on labor force participation from child allowances. Canada has a bigger one than either Romney or Biden are considering, and more labor force participation among women.

But what if that wasn't true?
Forcing parents into low-wage, often exploitative, jobs by threatening them and their children with poverty may be counted as a success by some policymakers, but it’s a sign of a society that doesn’t value the most essential forms of labor.
Read 11 tweets
11 Feb
So I'd recommend reading this thread from Dave, but I thought about some of these policies, and how they fit into the whole, a lot, and want to offer a different interpretation.
I think California is world leading on progressivism that doesn't ask anyone to give anything up, or accept any major change, right now.

That's what I mean by symbolically progressive, operationally conservative.
Take the 100% renewable energy standard. As @leahstokes has written, these policies often fail in practice. I note our leadership on renewable energy in the piece, but the kind of politics we see on housing and transportation are going foil that if they don't change.
Read 13 tweets

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