Matt Will
Matt Will
book writing two
When I heard the book (Thomas Friedman's latest) was actually coming out, I started to worry. Among other things, I knew I would be asked to write the review. The usual ratio of Friedman criticism is 2:1, i.e., two human words to make sense of each single word of Friedmanese. Friedman is such a genius of literary incompetence that even his most innocent passages invite feature-length essays.
nfl environmental problem
The NFL, sadly, has a fatal environmental problem: It kills its workers.
blue creating letters
Creating legislation is a tough process. But watering down legislation? Strangling it with lawsuits and comment letters and blue-ribbon committees? Not so tough, it turns out.
reading rome worry
If you look back in history, as the barbarians were invading the gates of Rome, people were consulting fortunetellers and worrying about the end of the world and all sorts of other apocalyptic notions. When the tsars were finally overthrown, they were all reading tarot cards even as the revolutionaries were banging at the gates.
airplane two apollo
Comparing your family budget to the sovereign debt of the United States is a little like comparing two kindergartners tossing a paper airplane to the Apollo 11 mission.
jobs class people
Candidates don't want to be associated with poor people, people who have jobs or are ugly; they want to be associated with a certain middle class demographic, so as a result they leave those others out completely.
wall player helping
By incentivizing Wall Street players to sniff out inefficient or corrupt companies and bet against them, short-selling acts as a sort of policing system; legal short-sellers have been instrumental in helping expose firms like Enron and WorldCom.
russia unions empires
Having lived in a collapsed empire before - I lived in Russia right after the Soviet Union collapsed - you can see a lot of the classic signs of an empire that's on its way out.
wall creating people
By creating an urgent crisis that can only be solved by those fluent in a language too complex for ordinary people to understand, the Wall Street crowd has turned the vast majority of Americans into non-participants in their own political future.
minorities bills lawmakers
Amendments occupy a great deal of most legislators' time, particularly those lawmakers in the minority. Members of Congress do author major bills, but more commonly they make minor adjustments to the bigger bill.
names government safety
2008 was to the American economy what 9/11 was to national security. Yet while 9/11 prompted the U.S. government to tear up half the Constitution in the name of public safety, after 2008, authorities went in the other direction.
men self skills
John Boehner is the ultimate Beltway hack, a man whose unmatched and self-serving skill at political survival has made him, after two decades in Washington, the hairy blue mold on the American congressional sandwich.
jobs sick credit
In the old days, when you took out a mortgage, it was probably through a local bank or a credit union, and whoever gave you your loan held on to it for life. If you lost your job or got too sick to work and suddenly had trouble making your payments, you could call a human being and work things out.
people complicated subjects
The one thing that I do is take really complicated systems and subjects and make them accessible to regular people.