January 2010
7 posts
The truth can't be messaged.
Ezra Klein on why the deficit freeze means we (wonks) lost the battle over the price of health insurance reform:
[Y]ou can’t look at this as anything less than a tremendous defeat for the Obama administration. It’s not the policy itself. The freeze locks in a post-stimulus, and potentially post-jobs-bill, level of spending. It’s not terribly onerous. But it’s also the...
California has ceased to make sense.
Acting Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency Thursday in five California counties, including San Francisco, where the week’s storms battered away the shoreline so badly officials had to close the Great Highway. The declaration clears the way for state assistance in hard-hit areas.
Okay, wait— what? Hold on a second: acting Governor Jerry Brown?
Brown is filling in for...
“Well, everybody can’t be average,” Taylor said. “This...”
– I f*&$ing love Mac Taylor, Legislative Analyst Extraordinaire.
Don’t count on windfall from U.S., California legislative analyst says - Sacramento Politics - California Politics | Sacramento Bee
Questions worth investigating: budget scoring and...
Paul Krugman has me thinking about the efficiency and equity of the proposed excise tax on insurance. But his call to vary the “Cadillac plan” tax-deductible ceiling by region and age got me pondering a more abstract question: are complex tax structures (even when more efficient and equitable) more politically challenging in the Upton Sinclairesque* factory floor we call the...
“[The] motives [of graduate applicants in the humanities] are usually some...”
– I find this article rather compelling:
Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don’t Go - Advice - The Chronicle of Higher Education
“Barack Obama ran as a post-partisan African-American technocrat. His campaign...”
– Ten Things on Which Matt Taibbi Really Does Not Know What He Is Talking About - Grasping Reality with Opposable Thumbs