There has been A LOT of chatter in recent weeks about canceling student debt, a policy I wrote about for The American Prospect a year ago as part of the Day One Agenda. Let me take you back in time… (thread) prospect.org/day-one-agenda…

As corporate Dems line up to preemptively blame progressives for why they wont deliver, keep an eye on what they absolutely *can* do -- even without the senate.

David Dayen explains on today's episode of Bad Faith.

patreon.com/badfaithpodcast

#CancelStudentDebt

I don't think Trump or the GOP truly believe they're going to manage to overturn the election, but peddling these conspiracy theories help them regardless.

But the frightening thing? If it does work and they carry out a coup? They're more than happy to accept that.

13/

People keep asking whether Trump and the Republicans attempt to steal the election is legitimate, if it's a coup, if it's a fundraising scheme, if it's posturing, if it's actually all that dangerous.

The answer is yes. All of these things and so much more.

1/

Yes, I think we need to be united for the literal civil war that's brewing on the right.

The MSM is really underestimating it, but a woman near me just got arrested for planning an armed conservative rebellion.

Let's start recriminations and critical debates after 1/20/21.

4/ Growing inequality lies at the heart of America's vulnerability to political violence, according to the researchers behind the political stress index.
buzzfeednews.com/article/petera…

'...people who rule out the possibility of serious political violence in the US based on “the strength of American institutions” are being “unduly optimistic.”

“The social system that we live in is extremely fragile,” '

buzzfeednews.com/article/petera…

I asked how many whites would have to die of COVID, through all direct and indirect pathways, for white mortality in 2020 to rise to the best level that Black mortality has ever been.

The answer: 400,000.

1/8

pnas.org/content/early/…

“I have to sort out four sources of this record...The police, the jail, the court, and the internet. The internet. That’s the biggest problem.”
-Sarah Esther Lageson on digital punishment at Collateral Consequences Resource Center.

Andrew Gelman created a pretty cool #Bayesian #MachineLearning model for The Economist predicting #Biden has an almost 9 in 10 chance of winning the electoral college as of today.

Really cool, innovative paper using a #Bayesian time series approach to modeling migration age patterns, combining social media and survey data to ' #nowcast ' migration trends.

I sound really weird on this and say “umm” a LOT 🤦🏿‍♀️ - but I do think the discussion of the aesthetics of Black misery in conversations about racism wasn’t terrible. Gets me excited about my new long-term project! This is mostly about policing and segregation, though.

Recently there's been lots of interest in alternatives to law enforcement. Many have also expressed concern about recent increases in violent crime.

So: what non-law enforcement policies/programs have been shown specifically to reduce *violent crime*?

A thread:

New article that connects jail conditions lawsuits in the 1990s to increased #carceralcapacity Theorizing financial extraction: The curious case of telephone profits in the Los Angeles county jails - Armando Lara-Millan, 2020 journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117…

NEW migration paper by Monica Alexander Kivan Polimis & Emilio Zagheni combines social media (Facebook) & survey data (ACS) to gen US state-level ‘nowcasts’ of migrant stocks. Paper makes a strong case for this new frontier in mig research & is a lesson in data reduction & vis (💕fig 4 & 5)

Attn prison researchers, especially those who can't complete previously-planned research projects, check this out. We need more libraries to fund this project. I reached out to mine--you should do the same! Also great for teaching.
#SocTwitter #CrimTwitter
revealdigital.com/diversity/amer…

'The rich are less generous when inequality is extreme ... If the person who needs help doesn’t seem that different from us, we’ll probably help them out. But if they seem too far away (culturally, economically) we’re less likely to lend a hand.'

I just published “Causal Data Science” medium.com/p/causal-data-…