The idea of democracy is to give the people what they want, right? Ezra Klein points us to a great study by Ray LaRaja and Brian Schnaffer examining policy preferences by political donors (5% of the population) vs. non-donors (95%). Here’s my rendition of the results: Whose preferences would you say are embodied in our current government? […]
You know we have talked about this at the state legislature before, nullification. But, bottom line is, as U.S. Senator why should we be passing laws that the states are considering nullifying? Bottom line: our legislators at the federal level should not be passing those laws. We’re right…we’ve gone 200-plus years of federal legislators going […]
After taking a nearly-month-long hiatus from blogging here about legal issues, and blogging only very lightly about other things, I posted this controversial post last Friday and participated in a lengthy comments thread. The final comment of mine, in reference to some of the preceding comments of others and of mine, reads: A final point on this […]
A a year or so back I highlighted David Beckworth’s great post on Helicopter Drops. And the world’s best econoblogger, Steve Randy Waldman, did as well. (A “fantastic post,” he said.) I’ve been pinging ever since to see a response to that post from Market Monetarist opinion-leader Scott Sumner. (AS SRW said, what we’d gotten from him […]
by Maggie Mahar Despite extensive media coverage, there is probably much that you don’t know about the history of the border crisis—and what we can or should do in response. Too often the headlines are designed to stir passions, rather than inform. At the end of next week, Congress will leave for its five-week August […]
Update appended. —- You may have seen this photo before. It was taken last August at the scene of a dog fighting raid, and it has been used in ASPCA advertisements all around the Internet and on TV. It can be hard to look at—a small, vulnerable puppy tied to a heavy chain, alone and […]
by Maggie Mahar If you think fertilized eggs are people but refugee kids aren’t, you’re going to have to stop pretending your concerns are religious– Syd’s SoapBox News reports have been filled with conflicting theories explaining why tens of thousands of unaccompanied children from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, have been streaming into the U.S. […]
By Dean Baker (2011) Progressives need a fundamentally new approach to politics. They have been losing not just because conservatives have so much more money and power, but also because they have accepted the conservatives’ framing of political debates. They have accepted a framing where conservatives want market outcomes whereas liberals want the government to […]
Hat Tip Digsby and Kos Cartoons “Supreme Court Chooses Religion Over Science” In a footnote, Justice Alito concedes that Hobby Lobby’s religious-based assertions are contradicted by science-based federal regulations: “The owners of the companies involved in these cases and others who believe that life begins at conception regard these four methods as causing abortions, but […]