Hilary Escajeda

It took dozens of special agents the best part of a decade to bring Juan Orlando Hernández to justice for flooding US cities with cocaine. Then, in a single social media post last week, Donald Trump set the former Honduran president free. on.ft.com/4oxBJ2v

Trading Acres with Shoemaker and Tierney Podcast Episode · The Legal-Economic Nexus · 11/26/2025 · 38m

New from @jessicashoemaker.bsky.social and me on the Legal-Economic Nexus podcast: talking about our forthcoming Yale Law Journal article Trading Acres on how law promotes the financialization of farmland.

May I have the citation? Thank you!

Levi’s Heir in Congress Pushes End to Tax Loophole for Ultrarich One of the wealthiest House Democrats will propose a bill Thursday that would edit the tax code to make it harder for ultrarich Americans to avoid paying taxes.

Musk paid an effective tax rate of 3.3%. Bezos paid 1%.

How? Taking out tax-free loans against their stock.

I'm introducing the ROBINHOOD Act to tax these loans and generate $276B for universal childcare and programs to restore access to the American Dream.

Billionaires must pay their fair share.

1970s red Chevy Suburban with wood panels

While I learned to parallel park in a 1970s red Suburban with wood paneling, I hope the fake wood panel style never returns

One of the often ignored areas of Nazi Germany 1931 - 1944 was just how well the German equity market did under Hitler.

And how terrible a metric stock markets are for assessing anything other than greed backed by a blind belief in a future that may never happen.

'The Precedent Is Flint': How Oregon's Data Center Boom Is Supercharging a Water Crisis Amazon data centers constructed in eastern Oregon's farmland have worsened a water pollution problem that’s been linked to cancer and miscarriages.

Rolling Stone: clearly documents a 30+ year long con job. A rural county's own leadership lined their pockets by helping ag interests destroy the water supply.

Everyone who read the article apparently??: Amazon data centers did this in 2011

www.rollingstone.com/culture/cult...

“The decision was made to exclude me from the filmed production of Swan Lake because I was told my brown skin would disrupt the aesthetic.” ~ Misty Copeland

When folks gripe about DEI, remind them who benefited from shutting out dancers like Copeland. That pattern runs through our whole history.

Let's see how people are reacting to a call for holiday unity and community connection over on X!

How hype becomes a tool of authoritarian governance In 2012, Peter Thiel stated that “when technology's unregulated you can change the world without getting approval from other people. At its best, it's not subject to democratic control, and not subject to the majority, which I think is often hostile to change."

A well-functioning democracy would prevent extraction by hype. So, the hype men take the logical approach:

Why Tech Hype Is Rising and What Venture Capital Has to Do with It | TechPolicy.Press Andreu Belsunces Gonçalves examines how hype operates and explains why it has become such a powerful political instrument today.

Introducing a new series on Tech Policy Press, Andreu Belsunces Gonçalves examines how hype operates within venture capital and private equity and why it has become such a powerful political instrument. The orientation provided by AI hype is guiding us towards an oligarchic future, he writes..

The richest "capitalists" today don't really invest in capital, the means of production. They invest in hype cycles. 🧵

Opinion | Trump’s Pardon for Cocaine Juan A jury found Honduras’s former President guilty. Why set him free?

The WSJ Editorial Board

“Those 400 tons of cocaine, transshipped via Honduras, were worth $10 billion in the U.S. . . “‘he knew and understood the violence that accompanies drug trafficking, and in facilitating trafficking, he knowingly facilitated the violence.’”

www.wsj.com/opinion/juan...

"Captain Gains" on Capitol Hill Shang-Jin Wei & Yifan Zhou WORKING PAPER 34524 DOI 10.3386/w34524 ISSUE DATE November 2025 Using transaction-level data on US congressional stock trades, we find that lawmakers who later ascend to leadership positions perform similarly to matched peers beforehand but outperform them by 47 percentage points annually after ascension. Leaders' superior performance arises through two mechanisms. The political influence channel is reflected in higher returns when their party controls the chamber, sales of stocks preceding regulatory actions, and purchase of stocks whose firms receiving more government contracts and favorable party support on bills. The corporate access channel is reflected in stock trades that predict subsequent corporate news and greater returns on donor-owned or home-state firms.

令 1 1 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 1 2 3 4 5 7 8 9 Year Figure 2: Estimated dynamic quasi-difference-in-differences coefficient, di, of equation(3), with vertical dashed lines representing 90 percent confidence intervals. The point estimate of the year in which the lawmaker became a congressional leader (Year 0) is normalized to zero. BHAR over the 250 days following each trade is the dependent variable and calculated using the Fama-French five-factor plus momentum as the benchmark model.

After becoming a congressional leader, a politician’s stock portfolio beats out those of peers by 47 (!!!) percentage points a year through trades timed around bills and firms that later get government contracts

www.nber.org/papers/w34524

via @florianederer.bsky.social

Since I haven’t seen anyone mention this: When the U.S. commits war crimes it puts our troops in danger also, as it gives a green light to other countries that they can do the same to us

A quick thread on the academic freedom angle to the OU situation:

First, grading is part of academic freedom b/c it involves instructors applying their disciplinary expertise - both when they set assignments, and when they grade student work

The Epstein story gets a something that is tearing at the heart of the electorate: elite impunity. The idea that wealthy and powerful people can do terrible things *at scale* and face no consequences for them. Whatever political party actually stops it could rule the country for a generation.

i personally would read a multipart series on how each victim was impacted

It has been three years since ChatGPT launched.

GenAI is the fastest adoption of an economically consequential technology in human history. And the speed & breadth of that adoption (as well as its continued exponential improvement) is why we have no handle on what it all means.

Five-byline alert: 🚨

David Sacks “has 708 tech investments .. that could be aided directly or indirectly by his policies, according to a New York Times analysis

“The tech bros are out of control,” said Steve Bannon.

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/30/t...

👀⚖️🌊💦

Car repossessions surge to highest level since 2009 Car repossessions are sharply on the rise. According to WLWT, repossession rates are hitting their highest level since the 2009 recession. Michael Jones, associate professor of economics in UC’s Lind...

In lieu of, you know, government econ statistics, this may be of interest

www.uc.edu/news/article...

Brian Goldstone appears on a PBS News Weekend, speaking from a room lined with bookshelves. A lower-third caption reads: “BRIAN GOLDSTONE — Journalist and Author, ‘There Is No Place for Us.’”

"Homelessness today isn't just the person sleeping outside a Walmart. It's often the cashier or worker stocking the shelves inside."

I joined @pbsnews.org to talk about There Is No Place for Us and the staggering rise of the "working homeless":
www.pbs.org/newshour/sho...

Graphic that reads: "The average hourly wage necessary to afford a one-bedroom apartment in the United States is $28.17. The federal minimum wage is currently $7.25." -- National Low Income Housing Coalition

I really appreciate that @pbsnews.org ended the interview with this graphic.

It captures, in the simplest and starkest terms, the brutal arithmetic driving this country's homelessness catastrophe.

Is language the same as intelligence? The AI industry desperately needs it to be The AI boom is based on a fundamental mistake.

Shot:

Large language mistake
Cutting-edge research shows language is not the same as intelligence. The entire AI bubble is built on ignoring it.

www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...

I hate to say it but if you go to war and engage in peace based upon what oligarchs want, you’re probably an oligarchy

MAGA is divided over the promise and perils of AI A user’s guide to the battle between techno-optimists and neo-Luddites

Donald Trump’s AI Action Plan, issued in the summer, called for deregulation to unleash “global AI dominance,” delighting MAGA accelerationists. But others on the American right are concerned

Is the decline of reading making politics dumber? As people read less they think less clearly, scholars fear

We seem to be getting stupider when we could really use our wits. The antidote? Reading more. Also a good antidote against the evils of social media, from distraction to misinformation. And did I mention the pleasure of it? Don't miss out on the pleasure... #books
www.economist.com/culture/2025...

Number of SNAP recipients Amazon 2,456 Walmart 2,318 Uber 1,799 DoorDash 1,462 Tempus Unlimited 1,425 Stop & Shop 989 Mass General Brigham 956 Dollar Tree 952 Albertsons Companies, Inc. 896 Bayada Home Health 887

The Boston Globe identified the companies in Massachusetts that employ the most SNAP recipients. A key stat: "In Massachusetts, 74% of working-age recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program are employed, half of them full-time."

Full article: www.bostonglobe.com/2025/11/28/m...

Demolishing the East Wing of the White House before finalizing plans for what will be built above its ruins is a near-perfect metaphor for Trump's approach to economic policy. The only difference is the wrecking crew doesn’t claim the rubble is evidence of unprecedented growth.