I generally agree with Paul Krugman, so it is exiting that I am outraged by something he wrote (I’ve calmed down now). Paul Krugman says that scratchpads are useful. They are sloppy easy models which are not taken seriously. Or maybe which shouldn’t be taken seriously, but it’s not a big problem that many powerful […]

Nothing really new here, for some reason I ended up wandering back to this old post of mine, and — partially because the video at the end so kicks ass — can’t resist re-posting it over here for those who haven’t seen it. Red States Sucking the Federal Teat Just a reminder for all those […]

I hesitate to excerpt from this because it says it all so well and so briefly. But: …the more taxes the US government collects, the more money it loses. When the US government declines to sell a 10 year Treasury bill at a real rate interest rate of –0.57 percent it is agreeing to pay, […]

I noticed that the notion of income inequality and consequences was described outside the box in this article in the NYT. Several ideas struck me about the article.  How people can work side by side with such little connection in their lives is instructive.  The sense of ‘commons’ is missing from the article could be […]

by Jon Hammond Guest post: The Romney job record in Massachusetts For the period January 2003 – January 2007, the Romney record on state government job growth is compared against the national state employment aggregate. Likewise, private sector job growth in Massachusetts is compared against the national private sector aggregate, thus, benchmarking the Romney record […]

Via NYT Toward a Supreme Court Showdown Six federal courts have ruled on the Defense of Marriage Act and reached the same conclusion: the 1996 law violates the Constitution by denying same-sex couples, who are legally married under state law, federal benefits afforded to heterosexual couples for no good reason. The issue has now officially […]

Jonathan Chait argues both that the debate about Romney and Bain is idiotic and he participates in it. His contribution is definitely idiotic if he is right that the debate is stupid. It is also idiotic if it isn’t stupid, because he ignored what is true and what is false when writing about what is […]

by Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt Health care thoughts: Bundling Medical Payments The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is chocked full of pilot programs, mandates, guarantees, prohibitions, penalties, taxes and experiments. One of those experiments may define the future of Medicare funding for surgeons, and then may define the future of most of the […]

Via alternet comes this bit of news: …John Allison, a former bank CEO and a leader of the Rand movement, has just become president of the Cato Institute, the oldest and most influential libertarian think tank. This received only a modest amount of attention when it surfaced late last month, and you had to be […]