My only request to Santa this year was for us to see an intelligent discussion of the Social Security issue on Meet the Press. When Tom Brokaw and Ted Koppel decided to grace the show yesterday morning, I had thought for a moment that Santa had granted my wish: MR. RUSSERT: Is there a story […]
A recent Washington Monthly profile of Kos stirred a debate over the merits of, well, the bulk of what we do here at Angry Bear. Atrios writes that facts, charts, and the like are to some extent pointless in the current environment: I’ve said this before, but there’s just little point in detail-oriented grand policy […]
I am happy to report that the National Review is not shying away from saying Merry Christmas as they tout what they call the “Best of NRO Financial 2005”. Of course, we have had some real fun with a few of their silly op-eds such as John Tamny lecturing Paul Volcker about trade deficits. Then […]
The IRS Quarterly Statistics of Income Report has hundreds of pages of new numbers, but one well respected tax publication provides this summary: The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts shrunk individual income tax revenues in 2003 despite a rise in taxable income and forced over 400,000 new taxpayers onto the rolls of the alternative minimum […]
Yesterday’s budget-cutting action by the Senate highlights the major problem faced by those who want to cut government spending: it is deeply unpopular to do so. The ‘starve the beast’ notion that cutting taxes leads to large deficits, which in turn forces spending cuts, has already been completely and repeatedly debunked. But the difficulty with […]
The Carpetbagger, Kevin Drum, and Brad DeLong are hammering Snow for this statement: President Bill Clinton left office in 2001 with a federal budget surplus of $127 billion. President George Bush ran a deficit of $319 billion in 2005. So who deserves more credit for fighting red ink? No question, says Treasury Secretary John Snow: […]
The need for speed is one of the specious arguments put forth by President Bush for the end-run around the FISA Courts. Never mind the fact that the FISA Courts act quickly and have approved over 99% of the requests made over the years. Never mind the fact that the government can wiretap even before […]
From Bush’s press conference yesterday, justifying his violation of US laws: “[I]t was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in a time of war.”“We’re at war, and we must protect America’s secrets.”“[T]his is a different — a different era, a different war.” Given how centrally Bush is relying on the […]
So claims the headline of this story: Republican House and Senate leaders finalized agreements yesterday on a $41.6 billion budget-cutting plan that includes tough medicine for Medicaid recipients and on a massive defense spending bill that would open the Alaskan wilderness to oil drilling. That’s just over $8 billion per year – and as the […]
Consider the latest from Lawrence Kudlow on monetary policy: I still can’t forgive the central bank for decimating and deflating the bullish stock market economy five years ago, a move that temporarily ended the great productivity surge of the Internet revolution. After all, the fact that the employment-to-population ratio was over 64% was no indication […]