Bryce Covert and Josh Israel report Last year, 11,717 low-income residents of Mississippi applied to get a meager government benefit to help them make ends meet. The state’s welfare program, part of federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), gives a maximum of just $170 a month to a family of three. These applicants had […]
and I’m not afraid to admit it. I have read more than 700 words of tweets about it. I have two thoughts on the meta discussion. First Jonathan FBD Weisman is a remarkably unpleasant person. In this twitter comment thread he repeatedly typed “you didn’t read the column” in response to criticisms of his criticism […]
The US Federal Government isn’t shutting down. Also it seems that Republicans almost totally caved to Democrats in the deal Kelsey Snell at the Washington Post Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) boasted that they were able to force Republicans to withdraw more than 160 unrelated policy measures, known as riders, including those […]
I am generally very very impressed by Paul Waldman at the Plum line blog (for one thing I admire the lack of Ego he demonstrates by writing for a blog subtitled “Greg Sargent’s take from a liberal perspective). Waldman is reliably brilliant (so is Sargent). Now finally I find something he wrote with which I […]
Jeff Sessions said “I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the President of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and constitutional power,” There has been considerable discussion of the phrase “an island in the Pacific”. With that […]
I recently saw a rather alarming poster advertizing a blood drive The title is “donate blood and follow your artistic inclinations” which, given the image, I interpreted as “donate blood and faint, so that you are inclined head down just like the recently crucified Christ. You will be resurrected too (by some fluids not the […]
Various people have argued that Republicans decided to repeal and (very partially) replace Obamacare before moving on to tax reform, because Obamacare repeal (aka the American Health Care Act aka AHCA) would make it easier to permanently cut tax rates. To me this makes less than zero sense. The argument is that, since AHCA includes […]
Kung Fu Monkey has a sad. Paul Ryan has totally crushed his crazification factor h/t Kerry Eleveld This issue has made Paul Ryan into the most unpopular politician in the country. At the start of the Trump administration he had a 33% approval rating, with 43% of voters disapproving of him. Now his approval has […]
Patrick Ruffini tweeted a graph showing a break in the trend of health care cost inflation with the ironic comment “The “Affordable” Care Act sure has bent the cost curve.” In the graph he posted, it is broken not bent. h/t @ChrisDeLong_ The trick is that the graph starts in 1996 & includes college tuition […]
Unlearning Economics is a person somewhere on planet earth. He or she has been debating with Simon Wren-Lewis and Nick Rowe (on twitter). Brad DeLong joined the discussion. But what about me. Elisabetta Addis (we’re married) just returned from Palermo. I was eager to talk with a physically present human being having not done so […]