I am trying to understand what, if anything, was agreed by Greece and the rest of the EU yesterday. I’m not sure they even agreed to kick the can down the road. update 11:00 AM EST Tuesday 2/24/2015: It’s a deal. Greece has four more months without promising a 4.5% of GDP primary surplus. I […]
@sandymaxey points me to a new report from the North Carolina Justice Center that is making my head spin. Picking Losers shows that the state’s flagship development program, the Job Development Investment Grant (JDIG), has seen 62 of its 102 projects fail in the period from its inception in 2002 until 2013. That is, 60% […]
I am not going to say nobody ever thought of this pairing, but a quick trip around the Google-sphere got me a paucity of results. So I am going to stake my claim here. Why Becerra? (Or for some Becerra who?) Chicano. California. Ambitious. Young. CPC (Congressional Progressive Caucus). The guy ticks off so many […]
Ed Kilgore, who is not a hypocrite, still advocates limited use of the filibuster even now that Republicans have a Senate majority. He wrote The filibuster has always been a monstrous but mitigated abuse—monstrous in its antidemocratic pretensions but mitigated by rare use. I see little reason for its use right now when the president […]
Some people around Clinton assume that any skepticism about her candidacy has to do with latent sexism, but I’m pretty sure that’s not my issue, either. Last week, my 6-year-old daughter informed me that she couldn’t be president because she’s a girl. So believe me, if Hillary Clinton takes the oath of office on the […]
To be sure, after distancing himself from Romney’s formulation, Bush launched into a speech that was loaded up with the usual anti-government boilerplate. Bush did say that “only a small portion” of Americans are “riding the economy’s up escalator,” in keeping with his apparent goal — which is shared by other GOP presidential candidates — […]
After Republican 2016 hopefuls spent a day struggling to finesse the vaccination debate, the 67-year-old Clinton weighed in roughly an hour before midnight: “The science is clear,” she tweeted late Monday. “The earth is round, the sky is blue, and #vaccineswork. Let’s protect all our kids. #GrandmothersKnowBest.” — Hillary Clinton, grandma-in-chief, Gabriel Debenedetti, Politico, yesterday […]
Jonathan (FBD) Weisman hands the mike to Paul Ryan who denounces Obama’s trickledown envy economics Mr Ryan [skip] also opposed “envy economics,” a hit on Mr. Obama’s proposals to curb tax breaks on huge individual retirement accounts, to raise the capital gains tax and to tax inheritances based on the value of assets when they […]
Tbe Italian parliament has elected Sergio Mattarella president of the republic. For US readers, the Italian President is like the constitutional monarch of the parliamentary republic. Actual controversial decisions are made by the prime minister (now Matteo Renzi). The president has great power in theory on the understanding that it is used only of the […]
This article via Yahoo news caught my attention: Five years into recovery, Dow Companies squeeze workers as investors thrive I think this picture spells it out rather well. “As the chart shows, the 30 huge companies that comprise the Dow Jones Industrial Average have barely nudged their employee ranks higher…” But this is even […]