"I disagree with you, but I'm pretty sure you're not Hitler." – Jon Stewart
Posted in Blog Post on Sep 4th, 2010
In defense of Alan Simpson – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com. Glenn posits that Chairman Simpson’s belligerence helps pull down a veil of secrecy around the deficit reduction commission : That’s why Commission co-chair Alan Simpson — with his blunt contempt for Social Security and and other benefit programs (such as aid to disabled veterans) and [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Feb 23rd, 2010
Krugman, on the shear incoherence and cowardice of the GOP’s so-called small government activists: …ever since Reagan, the G.O.P. has been run by people who want a much smaller government. In the famous words of the activist Grover Norquist, conservatives want to get the government “down to the size where we can drown it in [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Feb 19th, 2010
Posted in Blog Post on Feb 18th, 2010
Here’s a very cogent observation from the comments at Tyler Cowen’s Marginal Revolution econoblog: It seems to me that the American political system is simply broken. Canada could reduce the size of government and keep health care spending in check because in a parliamentary system with strong party loyalty, individual politicans are given “cover” by [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Feb 1st, 2010
Matthew Yglesias » Judd Gregg, When Left to His Own Devices, Is an Orthodox Conservative Who Doesn’t Care About the Deficit. h/t to Ezra Klein who points out that no one who voted for the programs that drive the deficit (Bush Era tax cuts, Medicare Part D, two unfunded wars, financial bail out and the [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Jan 27th, 2010
Obama pivots to the right and adopts a faux spending freeze. Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money comments: …Democrats continue to play the sucker, believing that they have to “fiscally responsible” so that Republicans can take a better fiscal picture and piss it all away on upper-class cuts. The most charitable construction, reflected in [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Feb 29th, 2008
McClatchy Washington Bureau | 02/27/2008 | Nobel laureate estimates wars’ cost at more than $3 trillion The questions are: Are we better off for this huge cost in blood and treasure? Did we buy better security? What were the opportunity costs of going into Iraq? I’d argue that we are less secure, and less able [...]
Date: 03/24/2006