I. My aunt runs a nail salon.  It seems to do very well. The Yelp reviews are great (5 stars from over 3/4 of the reviewers).  I’m not all that surprised. My aunt is legitimately one of the most authentically positive people around. She’s never toxic about it or trying to perform positivity; she simply…

Don’t forget, on this MLK day, that Andrew Yang is not the first to propose a UBI-style reform, nor is his proposal for implementation anywhere near as ambitious as what Martin Luther King was proposing over 50 years ago. Indeed, Richard Nixon of all people actually proposed, and the House actually passed, a Yang-style reform…

Now that Joe Biden likely has 50 votes to confirm judges, we need to talk about the Supreme Court. Biden is very likely to replace at least Stephen Breyer over the course of this upcoming term. During the campaign season, he committed to placing a Black woman on the Supreme Court. Given the consistent and…

I was blindsided, like many, by the news that Marcia Fudge, the high-powered member of the House who has been pushing the Democratic Party in important and meaningful ways over the last few years, would be nominated to be Joe Biden’s Secretary for Housing and Urban Development. (If you’re not familiar with Marcia Fudge or…

The message was obvious to me as soon as Trump said half a sentence. There’s too much personal introspection there for a public post, but let’s just say that all of the thinking I’ve done regarding my own mortality in the last few years helped me absorb the initial blow in stride. And yes, mortality,…

There’s a lot of hand-wringing this month (and always) about “big-tent” politics in the Democratic Party and whether that means expanding leftward or rightward. But the RNC lineup this week showcases one way in which they are lightyears ahead of the Democratic Party in terms of how they handle this question. This administration is on…

Okay. We all knew the Kamala Harris VP pick was coming. But I think that her record is not actually the reason I’m disheartened by this pick at this point. This takes her out of the running for Attorney General, after all, where she has clearer power to do damage. I think I’m more disheartened…

Let’s talk about state supreme courts for a bit. Elected judges are bad for basically every reason, but news in Ohio about the 2020 races has led me to recognize yet another problem with them. Ohio’s state supreme court, like many other state supreme courts, has a bar admission requirement for the office. Specifically, someone…

Presidential fundraising is none of our concern. That’s a slight overstatement, but once we reach the general election, it’s largely true: the amount of money that we’re generally able to donate or direct is peanuts compared to the outlandish sums being raised by candidates these days. Hillary Clinton, even before accounting for outside spending, raised…