Stephanie Kelton

Political Unrest by Nancy OhanianCharlie Cook doesn't go out on a limb with his electoral predictions. Year after year, cycle after cycle, he plays it very, very safe. This year, though, even he can't deny what's headed towards the congressional Republicans.

Monday evening, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren took their probable 2020 campaign out for a test run, calling their 90-minute TV show the Economic Inequality Town Hall, or more formally, "Inequality in America: The Rise of Oligarchy and Collapse of the Middle Class." You can watch the whole thing above. Last night 1.7 million people did.

Compare the two charts above.

The other side of student debt: Salaries of some private college presidents according to the Chronicle of Higher Education (source). These numbers are deceptive.

For families under age 35, growth of student debt outstrips by far the growth of any other debt source, including mortgage and credit card debt (source).by Gaius PubliusIn America today, 44 million people collectively carry $1.4 trillion in student debt.

I was surprised on Monday when Trump's Director of the Office of Management and Budget said that the budget the Trumpanzee Regime presented to Congress is not serious. Putin put a post-literate monstrosity in the White House. Jonathan Bernstein pointed out that Trump didn't read-- let alone write-- the budget; Mulvaney and his staff did.

On Wednesday we talked about a new publication, The Macroeconomic Effects of Student Debt Cancellation, by Stephanie Kelton, Scott Fullwiler, Catherine Ruetschin and Marshall Steinbaum. Three progressive candidates-- Jenny Marshall (Winston-Salem and much of the Piedmont in northwest North Carolina), David Gill (central Illinois) and Antoinette Sedillo Lopez (Albuquerque)-- explained why they back the concept of student debt cancellation.

The Levy Economics Institute-- a nonpartisan public policy think tank at Bard College-- just published The Macroeconomic Effects of Student Debt Cancellation by Stephanie Kelton, Scott Fullwiler, Catherine Ruetschin and Marshall Steinbaum. Sound familiar?

The House Democrats are absolutely geriatric. The leadership is even more geriatric. We need a little-- or more than a little-- balance. I think we have two Blue America candidates in their 20s, both highly accomplished candidates: Austin Frerick (Iowa) and Kaniela Ing (HI). I'm older than both of them combined and yet I feel like I learn every time I talk to either one of them.

Stephanie Kelton has been eager to introduce an acquaintance of hers, Justin Santopietro, who is running for the Democratic nomination for Congress in the rural, Appalachian district of VA-09. She had introduced me to Justin a couple of months ago and, among other things, I asked him how he would handle being smeared by Republicans as a puppet of Nancy Pelosi. At the time he told me that "The right wingers' attempts to smear all Democratic challengers as 'Pelosi Puppets' is even more laughable in rural districts like mine, where the national party has no presence whatsoever.