Hiltzik: How Herbert Hoover’s blunder got FDR elected
“Well, Felix, this elects me.”The speaker was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was at home in Albany with his friend and advisor Felix Frankfurter, monitoring radio…
Hiltzik: Are women and babies the property of the state? Red states say ‘yes!’
The arguments made by antiabortion states to sugarcoat their manifestly misogynistic policies have always borne the acrid odor of cynicism and hypocrisy. You know what…
With more gambling cases likely, Ohtani debacle is a lesson to MLB
Shohei Ohtani’s former interpreter has pleaded guilty to stealing millions from him to feed a sports gambling habit. The man who took Ippei Mizuhara’s bets…
Hiltzik: Draftkings’ heads-I-win, tails-you-lose NFT scheme
It’s always amusing to see a business suffer from the turnabout-is-fair-play principle, so we owe props to the National Football League Players Assn., which has…
Hiltzik: Decoding Trump’s rant on child care
An incoherent rant Donald Trump delivered at an appearance Thursday in answering a question about child care policy has gone viral, mostly because it reached…
Hiltzik: Harris lays out a policy for the middle- and working classes
Up to now, Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign has been careful about rolling out its policy initiatives, and — at least in political terms — for…
Hiltzik: Time to retire our aging Supreme Court justices
If it’s true that as Mark Twain supposedly said, history doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes, then we are about to embark on a…
Hiltzik: Rasmussen Reports promotes vaccine resistance
Rasmussen Reports used to be a fairly creditable and credible political polling organization, good enough to be included among the pollsters relied on by services…
Hiltzik: The debate over student debt relief reemerges
You may have noticed over the last few days that the political world is in an uproar over President Biden’s dispensing of student debt relief.…
Hiltzik: Antiabortionists attack a federal emergency medical mandate
Here’s how the legal departments of two hospitals, legislators in two states and even the Supreme Court turned a pregnancy emergency for Mylissa Farmer into…
Hiltzik: Legalized gambling is already ruining sports
Question for Major League Baseball: How do you like your sports betting partnerships now? The question arises at this moment because the league faces what…
Hiltzik: How to save Social Security without killing it
A hoary old chestnut in government circles describes all budgets as mostly political documents. But what can you say about a budget that’s nothing but…
Hiltzik: Would you invest in Trump’s Truth Social?
The headline Trump news on Friday was that investors in Truth Social, his money-losing social media platform, voted to take it public at a valuation…
Hiltzik: Ron DeSantis, loser – Los Angeles Times
Sunday was a tough day for those, like me, who get their entertainment jollies by watching losers try to redeem themselves. I’m not talking only…
Hiltzik: Another landmark misfire at Davos
Those of us who diligently follow financial forecasts know that the go-to place for mapping out the course of the economy over the coming 12…
Hiltzik: The GOP war on children’s health
Question: Is there anything more absurd than red state governors rejecting federal programs that directly benefit their constituents? Easy answer: Yes. It’s the explanations they…
Hiltzik: Republicans hate Obamacare because they hate healthcare
Here’s a pair of handy rules of thumb to know we’re heading into a major election cycle: (1) Republican candidates start talking about the need…
Hiltzik: The hangman comes for the NCAA’s business model
There can be few American public institutions more widely destested than the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. The NCAA spent decades promoting the ideal of the…
Hiltzik: What’s wrong with ‘Bidenomics’?
Let’s take a snapshot of the U.S. economy. Gross domestic product rose at an annualized rate of 4.9% in the third quarter of this year,…
Hiltzik: Here’s how a budget cut turns into a budget deficit
Scarcely a week into the tenure of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), and his view of American voters and the press as dimwits to be…