Hi folks: I am starting a Substack
(waits for groans to subside)
It will be about the relationship between politics and governing, and ways to reduce administrative burdens. If you are interested in what I do on twitter, you might enjoy it.
Couple of reasons I am doing this. One is that I often write long threads here, which might be better structured as a blog. I write op-eds occasionally, but often want to respond more quickly and informally to policy discussions.
I have been doing an informal listserv on administrative burdens, and wanted to make it a bit more professional and extend it beyond other academics and policy wonks, so this is a way of doing so.
Doing Substack s definitely an experiment. When I got on twitter first, would not have predicted I would have gotten so engaged with it. So maybe this will work really well or it won't. In other words: I don't advise signing up for the paid subscription at this point!
Expect to post something in the coming days so stay tuned. Once you start seeing me promote my Substack by claiming that I am being censored, then you will know I am starting to take it more seriously as a business. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/coming-soon?…
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Save the Child Tax Credit from administrative burdens!
Joe Manchin is pushing to add work requirements to the CTC. Here is why that is a terrible idea.
In our piece in The Hill we provide a series of data points about the effectiveness of the CTC at reducing poverty.
It will, for example, halve child poverty in Manchin's West Virginia. But not if we condition it on work or educational requirements. thehill.com/blogs/congress…
Yes, you could berate APSA for giving the guy who designed Trump's blueprint to overturn the 2020 elections a stage, but honestly, how often do political scientists get to hear directly from the coup organizers?
APSA organizers hearing that Idi Amin might be available
I honestly would welcome a robust back and forth where Eastman is challenged about what he did. But it's more likely that a couple of grad students will shout him down, and that they guy who tried to end US democracy will go on Tucker to complain how he has been canceled.
This is a thoughtful piece in many respects. I'd add to it: the singular focus on cancellation misrepresents how political power and ideology shape personal autonomy on campuses.
An example: I was back in Madison a couple of weeks back and spoke to a dozen faculty. Not one mentioned the topics of the two McWhorter essays in the NY Times in the last month. All were concerned they were being forced to work in unsafe conditions.
A couple of faculty I had talked to had been personally subject to a College Fix/YAF attack, part of a well-funded anti-speech ecosystem that has no equivalent on the left. In general FIRE does not count these in their databases even though they are a routine campus risk now.
The claim here is that a school superintendent was forced to resign because he promoted critical race theory. The anti-CRT people are claiming it as a victory for parents. Whats most striking is just how little evidence there is his claimed wrongdoing. 1/
From different reports it is clear that some parents were really angry about a mask mandate in school, and some previous school board meetings turned into massless melees. 2/
The Superintendent had also delayed and then stopped an anti-racism presentation that explained BLM. Some students were angry about this. But this hardly seems like the action of someone avidly pushing racial theories about race in his schools. 3/ lohud.com/story/news/edu…
Sally Rooney, wildly successful author, is facing a backlash. Maybe I don't understand literary review format, but I understand a little about argumentation, and the basic claims involved seem pretty weak.
A thread of some examples (and welcome others, both pro and con). 1/
First a lot of the reviews are less about her book, then about Rooney as a literary phenomena, and what that represents. Which seems like a fine topic, but maybe better to separate from the actual book review. 2/
So for example, this Sally Rooney sounds like a complete narcissist. Complaining about winning awards! Oh wait, this isn't actually a quote from Sally Rooney, from from a fictional protagonist in her new book. That, uh, might be worthy clarifying. 3/ lithub.com/winning-the-ga…
A very Trumpian legacy is that well-run elections are treated as inherently corrupt. Think of all those 2020 election fraud videos that fell apart with minimal scrutiny. But we now have activists chasing clicks by claiming election fraud, and influencers happy to give it to them.
False claims of election fraud are a cancer on our democracy. Most GOP voters still believe the 2020 election was stolen from them, showing how such claims are resistant to debunking.
Most worrying is that this has gone from being a Trump to a GOP tactic: nbcnews.com/think/opinion/…