Tag: broken-two-party-system

  • What’s Wrong With the Democrats. What’s Wrong With the Republicans. It Doesn’t Matter.

    ,

    Neither One Will Deliver for You. Let me start with something that should be obvious but somehow never gets said out loud. Neither party won the last election. The other party just lost it more. That distinction sounds like splitting hairs until you realize it explains almost everything broken about American politics for the last…

    Written by

    Even that’s Odd

  • How an Angry Old MacDonald Became a Protest Song

    ,

    It started with a question: What is actually wrong with this country, and why do we seem so far apart? The division felt real. The anger felt real. But when you actually looked at the polling data, something didn’t add up. Americans agree on almost everything that matters. Healthcare. Wages. Campaign finance reform. Taxing the…

    Written by

    Even that’s Odd

  • Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make Less Part 9: Death, Taxes, and Everything In Between

    ,

    Part 9 of Passing the Buck, a 15-part series on why we make less but pay more. This installment is about all the other fees: the ones below the line on the bills I have already written about, the surcharges and convenience charges and service fees and resort fees and processing fees that have become…

    Written by

    Even that’s Odd

  • Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make Less Part 8: Insurance

    ,

    Part 8 of Passing the Buck, a 15-part series on why we make less but pay more. On the morning of December 4, 2024, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, was shot and killed on a sidewalk in Midtown Manhattan on his way to his company’s annual investor day. The bullet casings recovered at the…

    Written by

    Even that’s Odd

  • Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make Less Part 6: Food Monopolies

    ,

    Part 6 of Passing the Buck, a 15-part series on why we make less but pay more. This series has been working its way through the categories of household spending where the cost has been quietly shifted away from corporate balance sheets and onto households. Food is one of the larger ones, and one of…

    Written by

    Even that’s Odd

  • Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make LessPart 5: The Auto Trap

    ,

    Part 5 of Passing the Buck, a 15-part series on why we make less but pay more. The first four installments traced cost shifts inside relatively well-defined transactions — wages versus productivity, employer-to-worker benefit transfers, overdraft fees, credit card interest. This one is harder, because the cost being passed to households is built into the…

    Written by

    Even that’s Odd

  • Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make Less. Part 4: Credit Cards

    ,

    Part 4 of Passing the Buck, a 15-part series on why we make less but pay more. Part 3 looked at the overdraft side of consumer banking. This one looks at the other side of the same relationship — the credit card. Most of the largest credit card issuers in the United States are also…

    Written by

    Even that’s Odd

  • Passing the Buck: Why We Make Less But Pay More. Part 3: Banking Fees

    ,

    Part 3 of Passing the Buck, a 15-part series on why we make less but pay more. In Parts 1 and 2 I walked through the picture: the math on a typical American household has tightened over fifty years even as productivity has climbed, and several specific costs — housing, healthcare, higher education, transportation, retirement…

    Written by

    Even that’s Odd

  • Passing the Buck: Why We Make Less But Pay More. Part 2: The Baseline Shift

    ,

    Part 2 of Passing the Buck, a 15-part series on why we make less but pay more. In Part 1 I walked through the math on one specific case — a nurse making $77,000 a year, doing everything right, with $625 a month left after mandatory expenses. The argument was that the math has gotten…

    Written by

    Even that’s Odd

  • Passing the Buck: Why We Make Less But Pay More. Part 1: The Impossible Math

    ,

    Part 1 of Passing the Buck, a 15-part series on why we make less but pay more. A few years ago I started keeping a list. It began with a conversation at the field after one of Henry’s games. A guy I have known for a decade — coaches another team, runs a small landscaping…

    Written by

    Even that’s Odd

  • Americans Agree on Almost Everything—We Just Don’t Realize It

    , ,

    I scroll Instagram mostly because I have to. Crooked Number lives there and you can’t sell baseball mom shirts to an empty room, so I spend more time on it than I’d choose. Which means most of what I see is algorithm-served noise I didn’t ask for. One of those infographics floated past the other…

    Written by

    Even that’s Odd

  • Do Unto Others Part 5: What This Means for Democracy

    ,

    Part 5 of Do Unto Others, a 5-part series. Read the complete series → This is the last installment of the series, and I want to do something I have been putting off for the previous four pieces — actually try to land the question of what all of it means. Quick recap of what…

    Written by

    Even that’s Odd

  • Do Unto Others Part 4: Flooding the Zone

    ,

    Part 4 of Do Unto Others, a 5-part series. Read the complete series → In 2018, Steve Bannon gave an interview to Michael Lewis. It was during Trump’s first State of the Union, and Lewis was writing for Bloomberg. Asked about the Trump media strategy, the line that came out — and that has been…

    Written by

    Even that’s Odd

  • Do Unto Others Part 3: Both Sides Are Hypocrites

    ,

    Part 3 of Do Unto Others, a 5-part series. Read the complete series → Last installment I said I’d take up the question you hear at every Little League snack bar and every Thanksgiving table the second you start documenting things one party has actually done. But Democrats do this too. The asymmetry isn’t real,…

    Written by

    Even that’s Odd

  • Do Unto Others Part 2: “My Own Morality”

    ,

    Part 2 of Do Unto Others, a 5-part series. Read the complete series → In the New York Times interview published January 8, 2026, Trump was asked whether anything constrained his power on the global stage. He answered: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can…

    Written by

    Even that’s Odd

  • Divided We Fall Part 10: When Freedom Means Control

    ,

    I was raised on a fairly standard American small-government instinct. Don’t tread on me. The government that governs least governs best. Local control. Keep Washington out of your business. I grew up with that as background music, and a lot of it I still mostly agree with. I prefer that decisions about my kid’s school…

    Written by

    Even that’s Odd

  • The Argument Over Alex Pretti Is Bait. Don’t Take It.

    , ,

    By the time I started writing this, the videos of Alex Pretti’s last few minutes had been on my phone for three days and the argument about what they showed had hardened along the exact lines you’d predict. Half my feed saw a peaceful citizen being murdered by federal agents in his own neighborhood. The…

    Written by

    Even that’s Odd

  • Mamdani Madness

    , ,

    So Zohran Mamdani was sworn in on January 1st as New York City’s first Muslim mayor and first democratic socialist mayor, and the outrage machine on both sides has been in full swing. Michael Rapaport, less than a week into Mamdani’s tenure, posted an Instagram announcement that he’s running for mayor in 2029 to save…

    Written by

    Even that’s Odd

  • BrokeCon by Design Part 20: Corporate Socialism

    ,

    On a Friday in March 2023, the California banking regulator closed Silicon Valley Bank and handed it to the FDIC. By then most of the money was already moving out the door, pulled by the kind of customers the bank had: startups, venture funds, companies that kept all of payroll in one account. The accounts…

    Written by

    Even that’s Odd