Archive
Browse all 9 articles across governance, urban systems, ecologies, and latitudes.
Upstairs Subsidies: Bailouts, Class, and the American Idea of Capitalism
In U.S. crises, public money moves fastest through pipes that already exist for capital. Banks receive oxygen in hours; households receive forms. The result is a recovery that tilts upward. This essay maps the architecture of those upstairs subsidies, the class and political consequences, and a.
Viewpoint Laws: When Balance Becomes State Preference
Laws that command balance in classrooms do not rescue neutrality—they legislate a preferred perspective. This essay dissects viewpoint-based schooling statutes and shows why they collide with free-expression norms.
The Vanishing Rungs: How U.S. Taxes Tilted, Why Inequality Grew, and What to Fix (1970s → 2025)
A good tax code is a ladder you can climb and a floor you can stand on. Since the 1970s, we've quietly shaved rungs off the ladder at the top—capital income taxed more gently, corporate rates falling—and replaced them with tacks on the floor. This essay maps that drift with numbers, not slogans,.
The Shadow Budget: Donor-Advised Funds, Dark Money, and the Administrative Map of Power
The shadow budget is not crime; it is design—a way of cooling taxes while heating influence, upgrading donor optionality into campaign durability. From DAFs to c(4)s to administrative calendars, this is the atlas of a gradient most cities cannot see but all cities feel.
The Textbook Wars
Texas HB 900 was struck down, but the machinery it set in motion—vendor pre-screening, procurement pressure, and quiet book removal—did not stop. This essay maps how procurement has become a side door for censorship and offers a counter-architecture to defend pedagogical choice.
When Utilities Choose Governors
How physical systems—pipelines, grids, cables—shape political realities in American cities and define the geography of governance.
Teaching Heat: How to Run a Classroom Where Disagreement Is the Point
Disagreement is not a failure of learning but its engine. This essay offers a complete protocol for teaching contested material without quotas or theater—steps that make argument safe, evidence visible, and change measurable.
The Debate-Stopper: How Labels Kill Conversation
Labels can act like trapdoors—say a word and the floor drops. This essay explains how debate-stoppers work psychologically, rhetorically, and institutionally, then offers tools to disarm them in classrooms, newsrooms, and public forums.
Administrative Censorship: How Chilling Effects Spread
Censorship today arrives not in jackboots but in memos, forms, and pauses 'pending review.' This essay maps how administrative routines—procurement rules, complaint pathways, ambiguous guidance—convert discomfort into policy and policy into habit.