Backbencher Returns!
Catching you up on what I wrote since I sounded the alarm about endangered New Deal art.
My more alert readers will notice I let eleven days go by without posting here. It isn’t because I have writer’s block or the flu. I’m not sure what the reason was, actually. Maybe I just didn’t want to crowd my recent scoop about the endangered Ben Shahn and other New Deal murals inside Washington’s Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, which the Trump administration is racing to sell off for likely demolition. I spent much of the past week nagging various news organizations to follow that story, and I’m pleased to report two favorable results:
1.) The Washington Monthly, where I’m a contributing editor, interviewed me about all this on its podcast (vodcast?), hosted by Anne Kim and Garrett Epps:
2.) Heather Cox Richardson wrote about the Cohen in her Substack newsletter, “Letters From An American.”
If you haven’t read my Save the Cohen story, it’s what the New York Times would call “The Great Read” and what The Washington Post used to call, in its daily front page meeting,“‘Nuthin but readers.” Part one is here and part two is here. If you like it, please share, because Trump’s trying to unload the Cohen before January 1.
In other news: Yes, I have written five New Republic pieces since you heard from me last, none of which requires any interest in art preservation.
1.) Click here to read about how the Trump administration’s refusal to put out a Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report during the shutdown probably means job creation is weaker than other sources are telling us.
2.) Click here to read about how Trump is trying to exploit a (small) rise in left wing violence that he’s been egging on since 2015.
3.) Click here to read why it’s bad news that the price of gold is rising faster than since the 1970s (with a brief detour into why I think the Federal Trade Commission should shut down Fox News).
4.) Click here to read about how even as poor-mouthing demagogues keep Congress from giving itself a raise, nobody noticed when Congress gave its wealthier members a much bigger raise by cutting their taxes.
5.) And click here to read my latest, about why the economics Nobel (and not the Peace Prize) is the real slap in Trump’s face (one that’s much deserved).