Pietro

How did the ‘political’ get removed from political economy?

In this post I continue to use historical research to challenge present political rhetoric. Matt Groening paints a vivid picture of a businessman from the 1980s in Futurama. It is satirical, but satire is only so funny because of that disturbing ring of truth in the description of homo economicus and his contemptuous disregard for

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A little economic history: Adam Smith advocated competitive markets, not “free” markets

This is the second post in a series about political economy. I begin with an intriguing historical observation that pertains to present electoral politics: the guy who convinced Franklin D. Roosevelt to engage in public spending was a wealthy Mormon businessman. His name was Marriner Eccles, and he chaired the Federal Reserve Board from 1934

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Making sustainability awesome

Ananda Lee Tan referred me to current critique of environmental discourse: Bill McKibben sounding the Rational-Protestant alarm of Doom & Gloom, and three rebuttals to his argument–not refutations of threat of climate change, but of the finger-wagging rhetoric of McKibben which is so unlikely to motivate the broad spectrum of Americans into adjusting our lives

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Baker-Landis wedding

On Saturday, July 7, Amy and Gary had their fantastic barbecue picnic. On Sunday they got married at St. Gregory’s. Here I am posting pictures I took during the service, for all to enjoy but especially for Amy and Gary to download:

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Foreclosures in Oakland

On Sunday, March 25, one of the Occupy activists asked whether it would be possible to map out foreclosure hotspots in Oakland. The maps below are preliminary results of my findings. I got public data from the City of Oakland (light brown parcels), public data from Alameda County (light gray parcels), and foreclosure data from

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