Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Barack Obama’s carefully crafted economic populism carries the day…and then the next three months?

Three writers point to the need to maintain energy and attention to the Obama Grand Bargain. Mark Weisbrot at The Guardian writes on Barack Obama’s carefully crafted economic populism carries the day: The media are a huge factor in most elections in the US, and outside of Fox News and the rightwing press, most of the […]

Three-Card Monte (Spring 2004)

Angry Bear archives reminds us of the longstanding strategies embedded in the current political debate, and trial balloons of possible current Super Committee proposals November 22, 2011. The Social Security surplus as a significant amount of money is recent, in the last fifteen years or so: Tuesday, March 02, 2004 Three-Card Monte Following up on […]

SOCIAL SECURITY: IT’S JUST MATH

Update: By Dale Coberly (was inadvertently omitted as author, although regulars know and the label names him) SOCIAL SECURITY: IT’S JUST MATH or how to lie with numbers “Math doesn’t lie” seems to be the new focus group tested mantra  about Social Security that Congressmen and their journalists are so proud to repeat.  What it […]

ARITHMETIC MATTERS

by Dale Coberly ARITHMETIC MATTERS I was thinking that someone could fault my essay the other day about the “Intelligence Squared” debate. I said that Howard Dean’s side did not really help anyone understand why, or what, or how to “save the program.” I hope I helped explain the why and what, but I probably […]

INTELLIGENCE SQUARED DEBATE OFFERS LITTLE IN THE WAY OF ACTUAL INTELLIGENCE2

by Dale Coberly INTELLIGENCE SQUARED DEBATE OFFERS LITTLE IN THE WAY OF ACTUAL INTELLIGENCE I am reading a short article on the Intelligence Squared debate I previously referred to in Social Security For the Young. It turns out they were more concerned with “insurance” than with Social Security. But they don’t seem to understand the […]