Aaron Sojourner

For Bluesky-Curious Econ Lovers, a Quick Start guide to plugging into the economics community here. It aims to lower the costs & boost the benefits for folks to engage here. If it seems useful, please share it here & especially on X. 📉📈 #️⃣#️⃣ aaronsojourner.org/for-bluesky-...

"Agency leaders’ reluctance to punish Citation reflects a longstanding pattern of Oklahoma regulators letting oil companies contaminate drinking water, farmland and people’s homes with scant consequences"

"The woman, identified only as Maria, is a home care worker who had been on her way to pay rent and pick up a cake for her grandson’s birthday, SEIU said" We're reading about it because she belongs to a union & they're fighting alongside her. #KavanaughStop

apnews.com/article/serb...

"the report calculates the “total costs to day 1” as $514m, and “post day 1” over five years at $145m. The total cost of those two payments is $659m but the report wrote $399m – a $260m discrepancy"

A 2025 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, Omar Yaghi is the son of Palestinian refugees who grew up in Jordan. He just left the US to move to China after raising concerns about rising anti-immigrant sentiment, like the kind shown here. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/china-than...

For the fabulously wealthy, paying taxes is pretty much optional. They can borrow against their vast wealth, which is mostly an untaxed capital gain, without paying taxes. When they die, the capital gain goes to zero. And loopholes exist to bypass the estate tax too.

"My thoughts have often turned to the Middle East, an area which has contributed so much to the religious and cultural heritage of the world today, and whose potential for further rich contributions to civilization is great."= John F Kennedy

Well played

Attention snow globalists! The periodic MinnBid government auction of confiscated snow globes is back for another round. mnbid.mn.gov/productView/16662

Constrained optimization is my business and business is maxxing.

Beyond disgusted by even more rape allegations against the President of the United States. "In total, more than 25 different women...have independently accused Donald Trump of rape, sexual assault, or other sexual misconduct." Report w/ new details: democrats-judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-su...

My pal Danielle Koenig shared that her father Walter Koenig passed away last night at age 90. A performer whose kindness and warmth shone through the screen. He will be well remembered.

Great reporting @brycecovert.bsky.social on New Mexico's move to universal childcare, including lots of parent, provider, and policy maker voice and some analysis @chrismherbst.bsky.social & me. www.thenation.com/article/soci...

The big problem with AI, who is going to pay trillions for this stuff? deanbaker22.substack.com/p/the-big-pr...

"Incarceration reduces crime, but its returns diminish sharply as it scales, and its costs do not." @briefingbook.bsky.social www.briefingbook.info/p/the-cheape...

The Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit Falls Short—But It Could Do Better www.briefingbook.info/p/the-child-...

Wanted: New Voices, New Ideas www.briefingbook.info/p/wanted-new...

I asked every person I met in Port Neches and Groves Tx., a next-door community, if they knew that Indorama had asked for and received a Trump exemption, removing the requirement at least for now that Indorama take steps to curb cancer-causing emissions. No one had been told. Many were angry.

The deadline for the first upgrades was coming fast. The chemical industry was getting nervous. As Trump did not move instantly to grant the exemptions. So the chemical industry bosses wrote Trump. Move it, they said. Three days later--Trump complied. Presidential exemptions granted.

The industry lobbyists and lawyers were very explict in their requests. They gave the agency a detailed list of parts of the chemical plant HON rule they wanted gone. Here are those documents. static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics...

I found no records of similar meetings with enviornmental or public health groups during Trump's second term. No documents to share on that. Sorry folks. Let me know if you find them.

We pulled EPA entry logs. Every chemical industry meeting, we put into a spreadsheet. We counted up how many times chemical industry executives and lobbyists came to meet with EPA officials. DOZENS of times. As they worked together to re-write the rules. Here is small piece of our spreadsheet

New @nberpubsb "The Value of (Sub) Specialization: Evidence from Oncology" www.nber.org/papers/w3594... "Access to a relevant subspecialist reduces three-year mortality by 4.5 percentage points (10 percent)"

New @nberpubs: "College Success: Understanding the Roles of Financial Aid, Loans, Preparation, and Incentives' www.nber.org/papers/w3593... " Overall, it appears infeasible to design a financial aid policy that is simultaneously effective in raising attainment and fiscally progressive."

Liran Einav & Amy Finkelstein explore how improvements in elderly health and life expectancy have affected the relative finances of Social Security and Medicare. Medicare spending per elderly individual has grown much slower than expected lifetime Social Security spending. cepr.org/voxeu/column...

Once Upon a Time in Harlem is a film that every New Yorker should see — and this weekend you can, at no cost. We partnered with the filmmakers to offer free screenings this Saturday and Sunday at the Lincoln Center, Film Forum, and Magic AMC in Harlem. Go to on.nyc.gov/seeharlem to reserve a seat.

Hungarian PM Péter Magyar: "I have just spoken by phone with the leaders of the Students List, who won the elections in Serbia, to congratulate them... I assured them of Hungary’s support. I was delighted to hear how much strength our victory in April had given them during this difficult struggle."

The long-serving strongman leader of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, has conceded defeat in an election that pitted him and his right-wing party against a diverse student-led opposition movement that spent two years protesting his government.

Lula is a giant of the last half century, facing down Brazil's military dictatorship as a union leader, bringing it a modicum of social democracy as President, and facing down rise of the fascist right multiple times in last decade- including going to jail for it. www.yacnews.com/lula-wins-br...

Incredible what Brazil did tonight, a lesson to many supposedly mature democracies. When confronted with the possibility of having back in power those who had already shown their authoritarian colors, the Brazilian people, surprisingly and beautifully, said no.

No rizz Ick

#CorruptAF

Lula’s win is the first good news for the planet in a while! I bet it shaves a tenth of a degree off how hot our earth eventually gets, which will save millions of lives Thank you Brazil!

Lula Goes HARD