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

Poverty Levels and Health care reform

By divorced one like Bush It seems to go without saying, that if there is reform, there will be some type of assistance for those who need it. Some numbers are bandied about as to the cutoff points. The Mass Connector has it’s formula up that you can play with by punching in your own […]

Small Business topic

rdan H/T Naked Capitalism for this New York Times article concerning the loan program established in May to help small businesses as part of the stimulus program. With $255 million, the program is prepared to make about 10,000 loans of up to $35,000 each. As of Monday, the agency reported that only 1,127 loans, totaling […]

Watch out! We have been tweetered on Health Care

by Bruce Webb No not ‘tweeted’, this is a whole new verb. In a post yesterday Ken directed us to a debunking by Milt Shook of a list of talking points by Alan Caruba. Milt’s piece at his blog Please… Cut the Crap is here: Deconstructing Right Wing Lies. Important stuff and I’ll get back […]

Excellent Article in the Washington Post

Robert Waldmann This is an extraordinarily good article by Washington Post standards.OK I’m biased. The topic is how great my dad Thomas Waldmann MD is, but it is really a good article. In particular, when explaining what is so extraordinary about my dad it addresses an important issue of general interest. “Carrying out clinical studies […]

Co-ops. Workable?

by Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt Co-ops. Workable? The compromise to the “public plan,” as Robert points out in an earlier post, is the creation of co-ops (Robert wants to set up one giant co-op, which of course is his way of saying we should set up the “public option” whatever we call it). But suppose […]

Innovation

a cross post by Susan of Texas Innovation Like many other pundits with good employer-provided health insurance, Megan McArdle has decided the rest of the country cannot have any type of national health care or insurance. She has given many reasons: rationing will kill your granny, drug companies need to charge the US more to […]

Mark Cuban Makes the Key Point

Ken Houghton remembers that Warren Buffett famously groused that he pays a lower percentage of his income in taxes than his secretary. Or the person who will come up with an actual cure for a cancer. Mark Cuban takes this one step further, pointing out the obvious: if we want to promote investment, “we should […]

A/l/a/n/ C/a/r/u/b/a/ Milt Shook Explains It All

Ken Houghton notes the obvious corollary to Bruce Webb’s post on the 1st: if you don’t “read the bill,” the obstructionists will lie about it. UPDATE: And now corrects his misreading (see Bruce’s update below, following on Mitt Shook’s comment). Milt Shook demonstrates in detail that, even if you do, people such as Alan Caruba […]

Public Option, Cooperatives or a Cooperative

Robert Waldmann can’t resist writing about health care reform. The actual debate seems very focused on the public option — will the minority of Americans who have access to the new insurance exchanges have the opportunity to buy health insurance from the US government. Notably this is the aspect of reform opposed by the health […]

The case of Troy Davis

by cactus Holy wow. Here’s something in the NY Times: The Supreme Court on Monday ordered a federal trial court in Georgia to consider the case of Troy Davis, who is on death row in state prison there for the 1989 murder of an off-duty police officer.…Seven of the witnesses against Mr. Davis have recanted, […]