Reflections on Medicare and the Democratic Party Take a look at this bit of fascinating analysis of the Medicare fight by the Washington Post: For Democrats, A Wake-Up Call Democrats have owned the Medicare issue for nearly 40 years. But this week, the Republicans climbed into the driver’s seat and mashed the gas pedal. In […]

Medicare and The House Rake I like Slacktivist’s take, here. AB

Corporate Responsibility Nice move by Boeing: Michael Sears, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Boeing Co., had the required pedigree and background to become the next chairman and chief executive of the Chicago-based company. But on Monday, Sears, 56, a resident of Lake Forest, was fired from his $1.2 million-per-year job. His wife […]

Era of Big Government, Continued While the energy bill is down, Pork remains at an all time high. Via Calpundit, see the “Grand Old Porkers: Special Favor ‘Earmarks’ contained in Annual Labor-HHS-Education Appropriation Bills” report by the minority staff of the House Appropriations Committee. (Needless to say, Pork is up since Republicans took over. Way […]

Nice Job Except for you, Tom Ethanol Daschle: Washington — The White House and Republican leaders Monday abandoned a vigorous effort to try to revive a sweeping energy bill this year after a liability waiver for the makers of a gasoline additive stalled the measure last week. AB

Why does Kurtz Have a Job? Here’s Kurtz on Gephardt’s criticism of Dean’s willingness as governor to cut spending, including spending on social services, to balance Vermont’s budget: Does Gephardt really want to argue that balancing the budget (which states, by the way, are constitutionally required to do) is bad? In case it’s unclear, the […]

The Era of Big Government, Continued Yes, it was on hiatus for a bit in the 1990s, but it’s back with a vengance. First, the energy bill. Now the Republicans are using the same pork belly tactics on all of their bills (DeLay to recalcitrant Republican Congressperson: “how many millions of taxpayer money would it […]

At Least we’re Popular in Northern Iraq…? I thought that anti-American feelings in Iraq are confined to the Sunni triangle, as Bush and Co. tell us? Mosul is in northern Iraq, on the edge of Kurdistan… where the US is supposed to be popular. MOSUL, Iraq – Gunmen killed two American soldiers driving through this […]

The FTAA is Dead Two developments this week lead me to that conclusion. First, as this story describes, the framework agreed to in Miami this week was a shadow of the original intent, since it allows individual countries to pick and choose which parts of the FTAA they want to sign on to. So, for […]

Borrowing and the Business Cycle Since I’m in a data groove today, I thought I’d put up a picture showing why I worry about whether the current economic recovery is sustainable. You can read about some of the details of my concerns in this earlier post, but here’s a graph to go with it. The […]