Here are five things that caught my attention!
Affordable Housing: This week, I had the great pleasure to help Father Joe’s Village open Saint Teresa of Calcutta Villa, which has over 400 new affordable housing units for those experiencing homeless and units reserved for veterans. Later in the week, we broke ground on an affordable housing project on MTS land. We need more housing–both to get people off the street and housing that working class folks can afford. And we are doing both. And will do more.
Book review: High recommendation for The Four Winds by Krisin Hannah. After a few years that felt incredibly hard, I thought it made sense to read a book about the great depression. We have been through difficult times before and we survived. I drew strength and needed perspective from this fictional account of a time that really happened.
Inflation: Here’s something every Democrat running this cycle should read and sit with -- a Times focus group on inflation. Democratic and Independent voters are economically anxious. They’re angry that billionaires are spending millions blasting themselves into space for fun, and they’re watching the costs of groceries, electric bills, rent, gas, and everything else eat through their paychecks. There are competing views among Democrats on inflation, but polling suggests “insource our supply chains” resonates as an answer. But whether it's fiscal policy or monetary policy (or “just wait it out”), all the inflation solutions take time to enact -- time that working families don’t have.
Russian Aggression in Ukraine: If you haven’t followed it all that closely this short video from Senator Chris Murphy is a great summary and recap of the situation. Bottom line, it certainly feels like Russia will invade Ukraine any moment now–troop build ups, Russian field hospitals and armored vehicles popping up along the Ukraine border --all signs pointing in a bad direction. And we have a pretty limited toolbox to stop it all. President Biden is doing his best to hold a coalition together and express a real downside to Russian aggression. Things are not looking good and you can tell the markets are thinking the same thing.
Tweet of the week: Hot take on the superbowl halftime show. Yes it is mine:) If you somehow missed the Super Bowl halftime show please check it out here!
