I leaned more than usual from this better than usual Ezra Klein post.  I knew that Romneycare was largely financed by the Federal Government, but I didn’t know how. The key question for any health-care plan is how are you going to pay for it? The Massachusetts plan used three funding sources. The first — and, […]

Slate’s William Saletan has a terrific article there today, with a terrific title: Tax Evasion: Romney’s preposterous arguments for not telling you which tax breaks he’d abolish.  And, yes, elsewhere, too, mainstream-media folks are showing some morning-after queasiness about their debate verdict, by getting into the “um … huh?” stuff now. But in pointing out that […]

Jim Lehrer parody… Lehrer has defended his approach today. Of course, the debate format incentivizes particular behaviors for both men and their teams. Eyewitnesses tell their stories all over the web.  What is yours?

The employment situation was mixed with the headline number, payroll employment adding 114,000 and the household report showing a gain of 873,000. To a great extent the very large increase in the household survey appears to be just a make up for earlier weakness when the payroll report was showing larger gains than the household […]

It is generally agreed that it was generally perceived that Mitt Romney won the first 2012 Presidential Debate.  One datum (two data ?) stood out however.  The CNN/ORC instant poll (pdf warning) in which respondents judged Romney the winner 67% to 25%.  This contrasts with a CBS instant poll (warning video) which offered the option […]

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Friday said that President Barack Obama’s call to hire more police, firefighters and teachers proved that he didn’t “get the message” from Republican wins in the recent Wisconsin recall elections. During a press conference earlier on Friday, Obama had called on Congress to pass a jobs proposal that would prevent layoffs and […]

Here’s an exchange between Tim Worstall and me in the comments to my post below titled “Spain. Please,Mr. Obama, talk about Spain. Please.”: WORSTALL: If you’re going to comment on the Spanish economy might help if you knew something about it. The big three banks, the equivalent of the Wall Street ones? They’re just fine.  […]

ROMNEY: Look, the revenue I get is by more people working, getting higher pay, paying more taxes. That’s how we get growth and how we balance the budget. But the idea of taxing people more, putting more people out of work, you’ll never get there. You’ll never balance the budget by raising taxes. Spain — […]

by Kenneth Thomas Romney Tax Plan as Budget Busting as Ever Seriously, I could just re-post my February 27th post word for word tonight and it would be just as true as it was then. The Romney tax plan blows a $5 trillion hole in the budget via tax reductions and he still hasn’t told […]

Yup. All those farmers in Iowa and Nebraska who’ve been waiting for the Farm Bill to pass are as nervous tonight as Richard Nixo … er … Mitt Romney was this evening during the debate, but their problem is different than his was.  Instead of babbling incoherently while wearing a frozen, glassy-eyed smile, the farmers […]