🚨 My latest: Decommodifying housing, lowering rents, and building a financially secure post-speculative housing system.
The paper covers:
Social housing
Tax system reforms to curb speculation and fund public development
Fighting gentrification and homelessness
The sort of group psychosis we see from bluesky users is really interesting, from an ontological perspective.
The case for these models to be open source and not in the control of massive corporations is imo, a strong one.
Absolutely. It was good to see the community come together to make their voice heard. Sometimes these things act as catalysts and wake people into action.
Like you said, the tough part is maintaining that energy and engagement long enough to bring change. It's always easier to bring people together to oppose a thing than it is to support a thing.
Jalen retweeted
Economics is fundamentally political. We cannot escape this fact.
The so-called “free market” is constructed by laws, maintained by institutions, and enforced by states.
The choice between austerity and stimulus reflects deeper beliefs about responsibility, fairness, and social obligation.
The mandates of central banks are products of political decisions. The emphasis placed on price stability in Western central banks rather than, say, regulating private finance reflects value judgments as well as political lobbying.
One of the biggest differences between mainstream economics and heterodox economics is that the former often disguises political choices as technical ones.
Economics has never been, and never will be, a value-free science, no matter how much today's mainstream economics tries to present it that way.
At its core, economics is shaped by ideologies, human morality, competing interests, social norms, and political priorities. Pretending otherwise does not make economics more rigorous. It just makes it more dangerous.
I expected blowback against this because Member Miller targeted a community that is heavily organized.
When she put a NIMBY on the CPC and appointed a watchdog to the District 5 CAC, there was no blowback because those actions were more under the radar.
This is a lesson in organization and solidarity 😁
any chance you're one of the (many) Detroiters who's worried about District 5 Councilmember Renata Miller's memo re: local bars on the east side? i've got an update for you.
check out my latest with @BridgeDet313 bridgedetroit.com/eastside-b…
Jalen retweeted
In January 2025 my mom’s lung cancer spread to her brain. The drug with the best chance of helping her was approved in China but not here.
A doctor told me, almost as an aside, that if she were Chinese she could buy it at a pharmacy.
So I flew to Shanghai and came home with 26 boxes in my luggage. That was 19 months ago. My mom is still here, still working, and in her words has had an amazing three years.
The drug was approved in China in 2023. The FDA approved it in July 2025. It still is not for sale here. I know of at least 30 Americans who have made the same trip.
I have been scared to tell this story because I worried it could cost my mom access to the medicine keeping her alive. But the problem matters more than my silence. These drugs need to be developed and available here, and that means FDA reform.
Art Allen at KFF Health News told our story this week. It also ran in The Washington Post.
kffhealthnews.org/health-ind…
Jalen retweeted
Datos del @Latinobarometro: en 2018, 88% de los mexicanos creía que el país se gobernaba para unos cuantos poderosos.
En 2024, solo 50%. En veinte años de medición, ningún gobierno había movido así esa convicción. La 4T sí.
Aquí la gráfica:
Strange to go to BSEED on this and not CPC. Member Miller claimed this is a zoning issue, not a code issue.
Jalen retweeted
When I moved to Chicago for grad school, I lived on a ~ $25k/year stipend for my doctoral program.
I rented a glorious 1BD in a Rogers Park courtyard apartment for $900/mo.
I had a bike and a transit pass. No car.
Apartment had ZERO on site parking —which is why I could afford it and why the neighborhood is so great (more space for people and businesses, less for cars)
Jalen retweeted
The contradictions are sharpening.
James Carville says he'd rather have Republicans keep control of the House than Democrats winning the chamber by 5 seats.
"I would rather the Republicans keep the House by five than the Democrats win by five, because if that happens, they’re hostage to the DSA. Like, Hakeem cannot move. There’s no place for him to go."
Obama normalized relations with Iran a decade ago but for some reason today’s Democrats want us to believe that it’s unconscionable 🤔
Jalen retweeted
UPDATE: @DropSiteNews has received a letter from attorneys representing Mike and Kristi Rogers, demanding a retraction of the below article and threatening litigation.
We have updated it to include comment from their counsel. We stand by our reporting and will defend it if necessary.
Mike Rogers second wife worked for Paul Bremer in Iraq.
Rogers divorced his wife in 2007 and married Kristi Clemens in 2010.
After her Iraq job, Kristi launched the U.S. branch of Aegis, a security contractor, which got a billion dollar contract after Mike Rogers became chair of the Intel Committee. Kristi Rogers took credit for it in a now-deleted bio.
Then in 2014, Rogers faced criticism from the right for slow-walking the Benghazi investigation in order to protect his wife and her firm, which was doing work in Libya.
After his divorce, Rogers broke, his disclosures show. His wealth surged as his wife’s company raked in taxpayer money.
Details here:
Jalen retweeted
$4.2 million. Fourteen homes on a 60x100 lot. One main stair plus an exterior spiral stair to the courtyard.
5 1BDs, 6 2BDs, 2 3BDs, 1 4BD.
7 of the 14 homes have 2BD+ with kitchen windows looking directly onto a sandbox in the backyard.
This is what family-friendly density looks like.
~
$298k per home.
$155k per bedroom.
$351 per residential square foot, at $290/sf hard cost.
Six stories: a shop and garage at the sidewalk, an accessible 1BD, a 4BD simplex across all of floor 2, two family floors with a 3BD and a 2BD each, and two floors of smaller homes on top.
FAR 2.4. About 100 homes an acre. Garden, trees, balconies.
Michigan’s new single-stair law gets you four of these floors. The other two are waiting on the state.