WonkPM: Your afternoon update from Wonkblog for August 12, 2013

Catch up on Wonkblog's latest posts. A supplement to your Wonkbook subscription.

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Monday, August 12, 2013

WonkPM: Your afternoon update from Wonkblog

WonkPM is your afternoon update of the latest posts on Wonkblog. WonkPM is a supplement to your morning Wonkbook newsletter. If you'd like to opt-out from receiving WonkPM, please click here.

The war on drugs is breaking the Justice Department's budget

Some big policy news today: The Justice Department will no longer pursue steep mandatory-minimum prison sentences for many low-level, nonviolent drug offenders who aren’t affiliated with gangs or larger organizations. Why the shift? In his press conference Monday, Attorney General … Continue reading →

Eric Holder is cutting federal drug sentences. That will make a small dent in the U.S. prison population.

Attorney General Eric Holder will announce Monday that the Justice Department will no longer charge nonviolent drug offenders with serious crimes that subject them to long, mandatory minimum sentences in the federal prison system. As my colleague Sari Horwitz explains, … Continue reading →

Smoke pot and test well as a kid? You're more likely to be an entrepreneur.

For years now, economists have struggled with a confusing piece of data: Salaried workers tend to make more than those who are self-employed, which doesn’t square with our perception of entrepreneurs as risk-takers who put everything on the line for … Continue reading →

Liberals and 'libertarian populists' are wrong: politics isn't a zero-sum fight between corporations and the poor

In the course of reviewing Mark Liebovich’s ‘This Town’ and George Packer’s ‘The Great Unwinding,’ Frank Rich writes that for all the do-gooders working in Washington to make policy friendlier to the poor, “the country's actual poor…might question just how … Continue reading →

China will spend roughly the GDP of Hong Kong to fight air pollution

This is just a staggering amount of money: China will spend $275 billion over the next five years improving air quality — roughly the same as the GDP of Hong Kong, and twice the size of the annual defence budget. There’s … Continue reading →

Americans are having babies early to save on their taxes

Thanks to medical advances like Caesarian sections and induced labor, women finally have a small degree of control over when they give birth. And where there are humans making choices, there are public finance economists asking how tax incentives influence … Continue reading →

Why do Californians use less electricity than everyone else?

The average Californian uses about 33 percent less electricity at home than the average American in the rest of the country. That shouldn’t be overly surprising, given the state’s mild weather. What is surprising, though, is that California’s electricity use … Continue reading →

Larry Summers is not the wind beneath Bette Midler's wings

We’ve heard from economists and lawmakers of the left and right, and before too long we’ll hear who President Obama thinks should be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve. But what does Bette Midler think? On Monday, the world … Continue reading →

Trade with developing countries just got more expensive, thanks to Tom Coburn

The United States has a few ways to help out poor countries. It can just give them money, in the form of direct aid. It can give them stuff — such as food, technology and weapons. Or it can simply … Continue reading →

Wonkbook: Is there a doom loop between economic and political inequality?

Welcome to Wonkbook, Ezra Klein and Evan Soltas’s morning policy news primer. To subscribe by e-mail, click here. Send comments, criticism, or ideas to Wonkbook at Gmail dot com. To read more by Ezra and his team, go to Wonkblog. Wonkbook’s Number … Continue reading →

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