Real or Parody? I really can’t tell. Read No More Mr. Nice Blog’s for an (alleged) exchange between Tim Russert and Hillary Clinton on the subject of her being the nominee and see if you can tell whether it’s a parody or if Russert is that much of a moron. AB P.S. Sure, I could […]

Thoughts on Campaign Finance I used to be a huge supporter of campaign finance reform. I love the ideal of reducing the influence of money in politics, and the unseemly quid pro quos that it engenders. But I’m starting to wonder. So far, the efforts to temper the importance of money in the political process […]

Be Famous! Not really, but you can be famous for fifteen minutes, or more accurately, famous for fifteen people. For various vacation and job-related reasons, Kash will be posting rarely from around 12/25 to 1/8 and I won’t be able to post much during the first week in January. But you can. My first guest-blogging […]

If You Thought Ari Fleischer Was Good Susan, in her run-down of the candidates, has an idea for an even better press secretary, though I’d replace “Dean” with “any Democratic President”: Al Sharpton. Rev, I like your style. I really do. But I wish you’d answer questions directly, it’s really annoying. However, my fondest wish […]

A New Transfer from US Taxpayers to Corporate America This newly announced transfer is more subtle than some of the Bush administration’s many, many actions that have transferred wealth from US taxpayers to a few select corporations – and thus to those few individuals who own and run them – but it’s a transfer nonetheless. […]

Campaign Finance Reform Upheld The Supreme Court just issued a ruling upholding the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law that was passed in 2002. So now it’s official: the ban on soft money stands. Who is celebrating more today, Democrats or Republicans? I think it’s an open question — but it may well be Republicans. Democrats have […]

Playing Hardball with Bush Hardball is the only game that the Bush administration is interested in playing, both domestically and internationally. It played it again yesterday, with the news that countries that didn’t support the Iraq invasion will be punished by being declared ineligible to bid on reconstruction contracts. The Europeans are catching on, though. […]

Food For Thought Take a quick look at the graph in the previous post and ask yourself what happens when healthy seniors who are reasonably sure that their drug costs will be under $800 decide to opt out of the coverage program. Hint: total revenue from drug premiums goes down and the average drug cost […]

Medicare Drug Benefit Update Reading Today’s Daily Howler, I see that the NYT has a new story on the Medicare drug benefit. The Problem? The NYT’s figures and analysis exclude the $420 annual premium, grossly overstating the true benefits provided under the plan. To illustrate the distortion, I took the data from an earlier post […]

The Dean Endorsement, con’t Wondering if Gore’s endorsement of Dean matters? Take a look at this graph to see the effect it has had on Dean shares in the Iowa Electronic Market. The price of Dean shares is represented by the green line. Apparently, at least among the individuals trading shares on the IEM, this […]