Policy analyst @nyccouncil, write about policy and economics when I can. formerly @patriotact and @teamtrace.
Dec 30, 2021 • 13 tweets • 5 min read
I'm not above it: my year end writing thread.
After faking my way into becoming an "economy guy" and specifically an "austerity sucks/money's made up" polemicist late last year, I continued mining that vein through 2021.
Really 2020, but published that New Years Eve: I profiled the @moneyontheleft gang trying to build MMT into more than a theory of why deficits don't matter newrepublic.com/article/160738…
Nov 2, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Eric Adams is walking into my polling site right behind me
Sep 4, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Catholics - what’s going on there?
As a normal person (New York Jew) I have a hard time deciding whether Catholics or Protestants have more weird shit going on
Amidst excruciating negotiations over "paying for" infrastructure and climate legislation that falls far short of what's needed, I look at proposals to cut the Gordian Knot by having the Fed backstop muni bonds for green projects nytimes.com/2021/07/16/opi…@nytimes That sounds a bit wonky, so I'll explain: the federal government's ability to spend dollars is unconstrained: we guarantee our own debt with the Fed's money printer. But for political reasons we are all familiar with, centrist Democrats and the GOP refuse to acknowledge this fact
Jun 28, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
"He's going to continue saying a ton of really weird shit"
If I had to predict the most likely continuity between a de Blasio-Adams mayoralty, it would probably be the city's executive murdering large rodents, either by blunt trauma or by poisoning them in large buckets
May 9, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
New from me: Biden wants to pay for a climate plan with taxes, not the deficit, to calm the eldritch demons of finance: bond vigilantes. This limits the scope of his package.
But in the 21st century, markets will punish failure to spend ENOUGH on climate businessinsider.com/biden-reshape-…
Bond vigilantes, so the old scary story goes, will demand higher interest rates as the government does more deficit spending, which is believed to increase the risk of default. Higher rates will eat up the budget, making deficit spending counterproductive.
expecting it to be struck down by the originalists citing Scalia's terrible Heller decision, nevermind the fact that local bans on concealed carry are as "longstanding" (the Heller standard) any other kind of gun restriction smithsonianmag.com/history/gun-co…
Aug 6, 2020 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
You can draw a straight line from @mikespiesnyc' reporting on the NRA's self-dealing thetrace.org/features/nra-f… to Tish James' announcement today
Read my story from last year on how the NRA's bylaws and senior officers' personal fealty to Wayne LaPierre made it impossible for the group to reckon with its own corruption thetrace.org/2019/07/nra-re…
Aug 4, 2020 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
a story: once in chicago's humboldt park nabe, i was walking to a friends house w some beers. i passed two teenagers with their girlfriends who made a joke about me giving them a couple. half a block later, they ran up behind me and tried to grab the beer out of my hands...
it was their bad luck that they happened to do this in front of an alley where a CPD cruiser ambled towards us. the cops saw chased the kids and caught them. afterward i told the cops i was fine, that they hadn't even managed to get the beer out of my hand.
Jul 9, 2019 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
In a new piece @VickyPJWard reports that New York Magazine was going to run a profile on Epstein by Michael Wolff that was killed out of fact checking concerns. Fun fact: I was the checker who killed it! One of my weirdest fact-checking experiences. thedailybeast.com/jeffrey-epstei…
Wolff let Epstein dictate the the piece. He made some agreement that all fact questions would go through Epstein and only Epstein. In the piece, Wolff reported various powerful men still hung out with Epstein - but gave me no proof. I was not allowed to call them for comment.
Aug 14, 2018 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
SCOOP from me: the NRA's lawyer in its case against its insurance business partners failed to disclose a "serious" ethics violation thetrace.org/2018/08/nra-la…
William A. Brewer III is a successful corporate lawyer with practices in Dallas and New York. The @NRA hired him to take on New York regulators who cracked down on its Carry Guard self-defense insurance, and the insurance brokers who backed out of the program under pressure.
