If you’ve been following the news AT ALL these past several months, you should be aware that the Democratic Socialists of America are the new Most Dangerous And Evil Threat To Ever Exist.™

They’re the new Antifa. The new Muslim sleeper cells. The new immigrant caravan. The new CRT and DEI and groomers all rolled into one.

They’re…SOCIALISTS! It’s right there in the name! And everyone knows that socialism is the same thing as communism! And communism means Transgender surgery for everyone! And abortion up to six months after a baby is born! And men enslaved by women! Cats and dogs living together and then being eaten by Those People! Or…something. It’s not really clear what the right thinks socialism actually is, but they’re scared of it, goshdarnit!

Out in Los Angeles, the local DSA chapter decided to lean into this mass hysteria and have some fun at the expense of the pearl-clutching MAGA nitwits. They cut what has to be one of the most brilliant ads I’ve ever seen for Angela Gonzales-Torres, the DSA candidate running for California’s 34th congressional district. The ad features comedian Anna Garcia and, well, you just have to see it for yourself. Take special note of the books on the bookshelf (and the book our hapless victim is reading in bed). Chef’s kiss for attention to detail. 😆😆😆

If that sent a spooooky tingle down your spine, or you’re too busy giggling to be terrified of the dreaded socialism, now is probably a good time to interrupt this article and tell you about my month-long 50% off Spooky Season Sale! For just $50 $25, you can support this newsletter and the work I put into it for an entire year!

If subscriptions aren’t your thing, you can leave a one-time PayPal or Venmo tip instead! Now, back to the unceasing terror of the article. BOO!

Gonzales-Torres is, unfortunately, not running against a Republican in California. They have what is known as a “jungle primary,” meaning the top two vote-getters square off, even if they’re from the same party. That means Gonzales-Torres is running against incumbent Jimmy Gomez. It’s a tight race, with AGT (I can’t keep typing that out, sorry 😉) ahead by about three points as of this writing. So…good luck? Whoever wins, it won’t be a Republican, so it’s a net positive for California.

Aside from being entertaining, what really grabbed my attention about this ad is how spot-on it is. The fearmongering by the right and the legacy press has been impressive. And by “impressive” I mean “completely over-the-top batshit insane.” Seriously, look at this shit from Newsweek:

This is not a rational reaction to people asking for affordable housing and healthcare. School breakfast and lunches so kids don’t go hungry. A living wage in the richest nation in the world. Safe food and water and medicine. Taxing billionaires. Let me know when I get to the radical extreme stuff here.

Literally nothing I’ve listed is outside of the mainstream. Even a majority of Republicans support this stuff if you present it in any way that doesn’t connect it to Democrats. Republicans love the Affordable Care Act. They HATE HATE HATE Obamacare.1

I am not exaggerating in the slightest when I say the right has been trying to fearmonger on wild, crazy, extreme positions like, “people shouldn’t be homeless.” There is a thing among the more warped Republicans where they talk about how empathy is a sickness to be eliminated. So much for the party of Jesus, right?

Let me drive this point home. This is an actual graphic they showed and insisted the agenda on display was pure lunacy:

My god…the horror…the horror! What would people do if solar power lowered their energy bill? What would they do if the rich paid the same tax rates they paid in the 1950s? How will America survive if we worked eight hours less every week but were still paid the same salary by companies posting record profits every year?! It would be the end of life as we know it!

Which, of course, is the point AND the problem.

It would end life as we know it. A life where a single accident or illness can leave you bankrupt and homeless. Where the rich accumulate an ever-increasing amount of our wealth while telling us we have to work longer hours to feed their endless greed. Where our utilities get more expensive by the month so Silicon Valley can power the data centers they promise will either take our jobs or simply end all human life.

All of these are policy choices, and no one has to live like this. We can choose not to. It would be very easy to change it all, and that is what terrifies Republicans and their billionaire masters and their media puppets more than anything else. It’s why they went to war against Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist who made simple but far-reaching changes in NYC that have vastly improved lives for millions of average New Yorkers. Why they burned Joe Biden to the ground after his economic policies pulled us out of the Covid recession and built the strongest economy in the world, expanded unions, and threatened to return power to the workers.

It’s why they view Democratic Socialism with exactly the kind of mind-numbing fear the ad pokes fun at. Not because it will lead to COMMUNISM!!!,2 but because it can and will lead to the future Republicans are afraid of. A future where the rich are not special. Where white men have no special privileges. Not because they are oppressed, but because no one else is. No one is crushed under poverty or systemic racism or deprived of opportunity. A future where everyone can thrive regardless of what zip code they were born in. A future where even the least of us can be safe because life is not a zero-sum contest, requiring my success to come at the expense of yours.

Imagine seeing that kind of future and being so afraid of it that you would rather burn the entire country to ashes. That says a lot about who you are as a person, and all of it is bad. But for the rest of us? Sounds pretty fucking good.

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Global population is expected to keep rising for the next 50-60 years, because it will take awhile for the demographic force of declining birthrates to overcome the life expectancies. In addition, the world still has lots of very poor people: for example, about 800 million people around the world live below the World Bank extreme poverty line of $3/day, and of course hundreds of millions more are not far above that line. With a rising world population, and one where we hope the standard of living for the poorest will be rising, more food production will be needed. So how is the world doing in this area?

The Global Agricultural Productivity initiative at Virgina Tech University,tackles the big questions of global agricultural productivity in the 2026 GAP Report, Restarting Growth: The Role of Regenerative Agriculture in Productivity Growth and Profitability, with a team effort led by Chellie Maples. Here’s a picture to set the stage:

Growth in total agricultural output can come from several sources: more land, more irrigation, more intensive use of inputs (labor, materials, and capital), and increased productivity given the same amounts of land, irrigation, and inputs (say, from improved farming practices, better weather information, improved seeds, and so on). To do these calculations, gains in agricultural output that cannot be attributed to measurable factors like land, irrigation, and inputs are then ascribed to productivity gains.

In the 1960s, most growth of agriculture came from more intensive use of inputs. By the 1990s and early 2000s, most of the growth of agricultural output was coming from producitvity gains, with very little coming from land expansion or additional inputs. But since about 2011, growth of agricultural output has slumped. Productivity gains are way down, although expansion of land and inputs have made up some of the difference. In a nutshell, this is global challenge of finding ecologically-sound ways of increasing agricultural output.

Of course, these factors vary by region. But even in the areas with relatively rapid growth in agricultural output, that growth is being driven by additional inputs (like South Asia) or by additional land (sub-Saharan Africa).

Part of the answer here is to improve productivity growth in agriculture, especially in the regions where economic and population growth are creating stresses on the food supply. I’ve argued in the past for a rise in global R&D spending in agriculture, especially focused on lower-income areas of the world. (Also, here’s a look at the long-term prospects for agricultural productivity growth from about 25 years back by Vernon Ruttan, a preeminent agricultural economist.)

The particular focus of this year’s GAP report is on “regenerative agriculture,” defined as “a set of contextually appropriate farming and management practices and tools oriented toward improving soil and ecosystem health as a primary goal, with enhanced biodiversity, watershed function, and resilience as downstream benefits. Which practices qualify depends on local soil, climate, and production system conditions. This definition aligns practices, principles, and outcomes, centering ecosystem health as the mechanism through which broader gains are achieved.” In my own mind, this focus starts from the hard fact that additional inputs and land are driving growth of total agricultural output, recognizes that expanding agriculture to marginal and heavily fertilized land will have environmental tradeoffs, and then uses this lens to think about productivity gains that could minimize these environmental consequences. The possibilities in this area seem real, but the report is forthright in noting:

Regenerative agriculture (RA) has drawn growing attention, in part because its practices target the input use and natural capital depletion that the current output growth model largely depends on. Yet the potential contribution of RA practices to TFP [total factor productivity] growth has, thus far, only been a conceptual claim rather than an empirical finding. No study in the current literature directly measures changes in TFP growth attributable to RA. attention, in part because its practices target the input use and natural capital depletion that the current output growth model largely depends on. Yet the potential contribution of RA practices to TFP growth has, thus far, only been a conceptual claim rather than an empirical finding. No study in the current literature directly measures changes in TFP growth attributable to RA.

The post How to Keep Global Agricultural Output Rising first appeared on Conversable Economist.

It is absolutely mandatory: The new Democratic Party controlled Congress, as it first order of business, must vote to rid the United States government of Pete Hegseth. It is a crime against the honor of the uniformed members of the U.S. military to have a man leading the Pentagon who paid a woman $50,000 to silence her and ensure he was not charged with rape either criminally or civilly. He shares with Donald Trump the dishonor of committing sexual abuse. That Hegseth must be impeached is a question of the honor of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and women and Marines who are compelled to serve under him.

Have the papers on the desk ready to go. Hold the vote to impeach. Then hold a second vote to issue subpoenas that will put his dry-drunk ass in the witness seat for every committee the House can come up with a reason to investigate him. Load him up with so many appearances before Congressional committees, he won’t have the time to walk from one hearing room to another. If he is late to a committee hearing, vote to hold him in contempt.

Congressional staffers should be tasked with writing articles of impeachment right now. Get him for discriminating against Black and female officers on promotion lists for general. Get him for firing the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other generals without providing a reason. Get him for even making the proposal that a condemned prisoner should be executed in public. It brings discredit on our military and on our country to even propose such a thing, so impeach him for that – for discrediting his office and the military he is charged with overseeing.

Impeach him for not ensuring that U.S. troops were adequately defended before the order was given to attack Iran with missiles and bombs. The deaths of six soldiers stationed at an undefended base in Kuwait on the first night of the war is on his head. Impeach him for it. Put him before a congressional committee and make him answer detailed questions about the planning that went on prior to February 28 of this year.

Impeach him for requiring all the general officers in the U.S. military to attend a speech in a lecture hall in Virginia, creating an opportunity for any enemy of the United States to target the grouping of top commanders in a single place at a specific time known publicly to terrorists all over the world. Delivering a lecture on grooming while endangering the entirety of our military command structure is military malpractice of the highest order and an impeachable offense.

Impeach him for holding religious services during duty hours in a government facility, the Pentagon, and for putting pressure on officers and enlisted personnel to attend such services. It is an impeachable offense to violate the First Amendment of the Constitution in a manner by which the government, in the person of the Secretary of Defense, establishes one religion, Christianity, over others.

Impeach him for rank stupidity in that he requires male members of the uniformed military to get their testosterone tested. Impeach him for misuse of government funds and personnel for that purpose.

Impeach him for mixing politics and the performance of his duty by removing the photographs of previous Secretaries of Defense and the other services from the walls of the Pentagon on the basis that they were appointed by presidents who were Democrats. The former secretaries served their country. Honor none of them or honor them all without political favor.

Impeach him for having had his wife in official meetings in the Pentagon where classified information was discussed when she does not have a security clearance of any kind. It is a violation of national security to share classified information with persons who are not cleared to receive it.

Impeach him for holding a physical training exercise outside the Pentagon that required soldiers to meet certain appearance standards so that they, and Hegseth himself, would look good in media coverage. There is an ongoing naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which is an act of war. It is an impeachable offense to misuse government funds and personnel during wartime.

Impeach him for wasting government funds by unilaterally renaming the Department of Defense as the Department of War without Congressional authorization. Every dollar spent on re-signage is a dollar stolen from the Treasury of the United States.

Impeach Hegseth. It should be the first order of business in the new Congress. Make him squirm. Show the world that we will not countenance the dishonor his presence brings on the U.S. military.

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Sometimes you see a figure that makes you uncertain whether to laugh or cry, so you do a little of both. The Global Linkages Lab at Brown University–specifically, Şebnem Kalemli-Özcan, Can Soylu, and Muhammed A. Yildirim–have sought to track down “every occasion on which the President attached a number to a US tariff, whatever the channel: speeches, interviews and press gaggles, Truth Social posts, executive orders and proclamations, and White House fact sheets and statements.” Some announcements were made more than once in different formats, so their list from January 21, 2025 up to the present includes 749 total such statements, covering 341 separate tariff changes. They call it TiRADE, for “Tariff Rates in Announcements, Declarations, and Events.” Blue dots show threatened or announced tariffs, green dots show implemented tariffs.

Details behind the figure and sources for the statements are all available at the TiRADE website. Here, I just want to emphasize the uncertainty and instability of it all. I would probably disagree with an overall plan to raise tariffs in broad ways, and I would have to think through the implication of raising tariffs in narrow and targeted ways on a case-by-case basis. But this figure makes it transparent that the Trump-dictated US tariff policy since early 2025 has not been a coherent plan, but rather a sputtering and erratic seat-of-the-pants shambles.

The post The Incoherence of the Trump Tariff Announcements first appeared on Conversable Economist.

Well, yes, there is Donald Trump, but his on-again-off-again buddy Musk is giving him a run for his money. Wednesday saw two heavy blows hit Ukraine. Russia launched a massive ballistic missile and drone attack on civilian targets in the beleaguered country, while Ukraine’s access to Starshield, the military version of Starlink technology, was either halted or crippled.

Musk almost immediately claimed on X that the Starshield satellite system is controlled by the Pentagon, which buys access to Musk’s huge network of satellites from his Starlink company. While Musk’s statement may be technically true, he retains control over the Starlink satellites themselves, which are used by the military-oriented Starshield system. The one obviously doesn’t work without the other. Musk could probably push a button and reverse whatever was done to the Starshield system by the Pentagon, if that is in fact what happened.

The cut in access to the Starshield system has hobbled Ukraine’s ability to fight the war on the front lines, and to continue its drone and missile attacks on supply routes and Russian infrastructure far behind front lines. It is clear that Putin whined to Trump on the phone that his refineries were getting hit by the increasing accuracy of Ukraine’s drones and its new medium range ballistic missiles. Whatever handle Putin has on Trump, he is twisting it hard. Cutting Ukraine’s access to satellite communications without a doubt will result in combat losses on the battlefield as well as a reduction in Ukraine’s ability to hit Russian stocks of fuel and ammunition.

The details don’t really matter, whether it’s Trump or Musk or some combination of the two behind the decision to hobble Ukraine’s use of Starshield. The result is the same: Trump has now fully taken the side of Russia in its war on Ukraine. It’s as if in the middle of World War II, President Roosevelt started saying nice things about Adolph Hitler and cut back the shipment of arms and food to our troops on the front lines and reduced support for our allies in the war. That is exactly what Trump is doing by calling for Zelenskyy’s ouster as president of Ukraine. It is a betrayal of everything we have ever stood for as Americans.

Trump’s recent statements that Ukraine’s strikes on Russian refineries are behind the increases in gas and diesel prices are pure, unadulterated bullshit. He’s making these claims even as a tanker was damaged in the Strait of Hormuz by an Iranian mine. Fuel prices are up because of Trump’s war, not Ukraine’s defensive reaction to Russia’s nightly attacks on its cities and energy production facilities.

Trump’s lies are par for the course. He is living up to every horrid expectation we could ever imagine. It’s almost as if that’s his job, to do bad and damaging shit until the day he finally takes his last breath. Musk is the same sociopathic monster he ever was. Because of the politics of a large portion of this country’s population, and Musk’s nearly inhuman ability to accumulate money, we’re stuck with them, at least for now.

All we can do is fight these two monsters and fight for what is right. The effort we must make can at times seem soaked in futility. But it’s not. This fight is our duty as citizens and as decent human beings.

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In a better world, the gang rape of Jane Doe at Cornell would not have happened, and this column would not need to be written. Ours is not a better world.

To stand over a sleeping baby as a parent and observe the sweetness of an innocent face is heartbreaking, because you know what awaits outside that room, away from the ministrations of your control. You can protect your child right up until you can’t. A teenage daughter will be in her room getting ready for her first date and there will be a knock on the door, and she will leave in a car with a teenage boy, still arguing about what time she must be home. There will be a day when you help a son who is still a little boy into his football uniform for the first time, figuring out the shoulder pads and adjusting the belts and snapping the chin strap on his helmet, and he will go out onto a field and get hit by other boys.

It’s your job to get kids ready for the world outside the door. It is a very hard job, because there is no handbook. There is only the life you have lived and the way you have lived it.

A lot of the duty of being a parent can be summed up as stating the obvious. Don’t run out in the street. Brush your teeth. Wash between your toes. Listen in class. Do your homework.

It gets ever more complicated, not less, as they move further away from your supervision. The only thing you can do is prepare them for the time when you don’t know what they are doing in their lives. This is the time when hoping for the best is not enough.

You have to make up your mind how far to go when you warn them about what’s out there. I determined that a daughter needs to be told that men are not to be trusted, that their motives are nearly always suspect. A son must be told that women are to be cherished and under no circumstances are they to be abused physically or mentally.

The dos and don’ts do not end at the margins of the genders. There are larger matters which govern. Try to be understanding of differences. Do not be swayed by prejudice of any sort. Do not be hurtful. Be kind.

I passed along these rules of how to live your life almost exactly as they had been passed down to me by my parents. I had no way of knowing how lucky I had been until I got out in the world and was introduced to those who had not been so lucky. I remember in the Army that one of my assignments was to teach a class to the entire company called “personal hygiene.” It seemed like stating the obvious until I learned that there were guys who had grown up in homes without hot water, for whom bathing was as unusual as woolen blankets, who had never been given or used a toothbrush.

It shouldn’t take a story about a fraternity gang rape of an unconscious young woman for us to realize that there are not a few men who need to be taught a course in moral hygiene. They grew up in homes where behavioral lines were not drawn, even fuzzy ones. Laws are inadequate as restraint, especially when alcohol and drugs are involved. By the time the courts and the police are involved, it is always too late. Damage has been done, and when it comes to sexual damage, it is nearly always girls and women who suffer.

I am probably no different from many, many others who have asked themselves how such as thing as the crimes at Cornell happened at all after all the years of being educated by feminism, witnessing the me-too movement, and just living in this imperfect world where sexual crimes are as common, even more common, than murder and mass shootings. Every time a sex crime becomes public, you hope that the shame and consequences attached to it will make the same thing less likely in the future. But the same kind of hope is dashed again and again as they are by school killings that keep recurring despite the recitation of the horrors of the last one.

We live now in a country where the role model in chief is a rapist. Moniker-makers have come up with “manosphere” to describe online male misbehavior that has become its own political movement. I despair when I see words like “manosphere” because I have learned that it stands in for the worst instincts and crimes of men such as sexual assault and rape. The young men who serve in our military have a leader who paid $50,000 to shut up a woman he sexually assaulted at a conference in a hotel where he was a featured speaker. One sexual abuser was elected president. The other was confirmed by the Senate. Yet these men and their crimes cannot serve as excuses for the crimes of other men.

There is so much that should not need to be said, and yet here we are all over again. Male sexual assault is not a hormonal explosion or participation in the groupthink of a club or a fraternity. It is a choice. Everyone knows this or should know it by now.

The president of Cornell announced today that he is banning parties at fraternities and said he will address the “culture” of alcohol and drug abuse that he has found on the campus. I would say that he should have gone all the way and outlawed fraternities and sororities, but that is paper over the problem. He may as well ban alcohol and drug use by students, which is already the case under New York State law and in other states where the drinking age is 21 and drugs are illegal.

It is obvious that students in fraternities have for decades been left alone to behave any way they want when they are gathered together. Misbehavior at fraternities is celebrated everywhere they exist. The phrase “party school” is a compliment, not a condemnation.

There is no solution, easy or otherwise, for the crimes committed most recently at Cornell. The prisons are filled with rapists and even more of them walk free among us. Yet we cannot sit back and hope that another school shooting doesn’t happen or that another young woman is not sexually assaulted or raped on or off a college campus.

How were these young men at Cornell brought up as children that they would come to think gang-raping an unconscious woman was an acceptable thing to do? Bad behavior isn’t born, it’s raised. We must believe that correction can happen and not just from application of felony laws. That means leadership by example that did not occur at Cornell and is not happening enough in our politics and culture. It’s a big problem, but it is not insurmountable. To believe otherwise is to give up on our children and our future. We cannot. We will not. We are human beings, not animals, and we should act that way.

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