Black families pay significantly higher property taxes than white families

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/07/02/black-property-tax/ To expose the structural and historical factors behind these discriminatory property tax assessments, the economists analyzed more than a decade of tax assessment and sales data for 118 million homes throughout the country. In almost every state, property tax assessments were higher in areas with more black and Hispanic residents. In city after city, […]

“It could have been my son”

When asked why they had come, most people spoke about the need for police accountability, before inevitably turning to remembering Floyd’s unheeded final pleas. “It could have been my son. It could have been me. It shouldn’t be,” said a protester carrying a sign saying “Lock them up”. Hundreds demand justice in Minneapolis after police […]

Federal Deficits and Government Spending

Stephanie Kelton with an NYT editorial on why the deficit doesn’t matter, but the economy does: The trick is to adjust the budget to make efficient use of the people, factories and raw materials we have…. But all of this goes unrecognized on Capitol Hill, where the very words “debt” and “deficit” have been weaponized […]

Partisan Gerrymandering Case before the Supreme Court

NPR: “Partisan Gerrymandering– How Much is Too Much?“ With the court apparently split 4-4 along liberal-conservative lines, the man in the middle is Justice Anthony Kennedy, who in a 2004 court opinion left the door open to declaring extreme partisan gerrymandering unconstitutional if “manageable standards” could be developed for identifying which ones are extreme. Justice […]

Implementations on Antitrust

Matt Yglesias, 5 different things people mean when they say we need to revive anti-trust: Democrats are both united in their newfound interest in antitrust measures and also divided on exactly what a reinvigoration entails. That’s in part because at least five different ideas are floating around that often get mushed together under the same […]

Unemployment Rates for Black Residents in Washington DC

Linnea Lassiter at DCFPI wrote a paper on the growing unemployment rates for Black D.C. residents, and the Washington City Paper has done a recap. One hypothesis is that the culprit is a booming D.C. economy that has drawn an influx of jobs and labor that typically go to white, college-educated applicants, combined with the […]