Transcript Wanted So Al Franken, Molly Ivins, and Bill O’Reilly walk into a bar appeared together on CSPAN2 over the weekend. Yes, it does sound like the start of a good joke, but it really happened–and by all accounts it was amusing to watch O’Reilly without his mute button handy. Unfortunately, I missed it, and […]

Whither WMD? Since I’m citing Orwell of late, here’s this from Josh Marshall: My God, when they say down the memory hole, they ain’t kiddin! There now seems to be a secret competition — perhaps it was announced and I just didn’t hear it — for the Iraq-hawk who can come up with the most […]

Liberalism and Growth Recently, I said I would try to make the case that liberalism causes growth. Certainly, correlations suggest that this is the case. For instance, income is substantially higher in Blue states than Red states. The inability of the Soviet Union to match the productive output of the United States is another example. […]

More on Priorities Earlier, in reference to the exclusion of some lower-middle class familes from the increased child tax credit, I said that “I’m sure we’ll hear that this was an inadvertent slip (right now, the House is blaming the Senate’s $350b “limit”), but inadvertent slips tell a lot about the priorities of those making […]

What he Said Former president Bill Clinton, speaking at the John F. Kennedy Library, said he “can’t find anybody with a straight face” to defend the tax package, whose advocates “compromise the future of our country.” Of the Republicans, Clinton said: “When ideological people find themselves in a hole, they ask for a bigger shovel.” […]

Moderately Positive Outlook? CNN has a story, “Mañana economics: Economists keep saying the sun will come out tomorrow … and tomorrow … and tomorrow.” Here’s the outlook: GDP actually grew just 2.4 percent in 2002. When surveyed at the start of 2002, forecasters predicted 3.5 percent growth in 2003. Lately, they’ve cut their forecast for […]

Another Red vs. Blue Post: Does Blueness Cause High Income? Earlier I showed that, on balance, the Blue states (Gore) subsidize the Red states (Bush). For every dollar that a Red state pays in taxes, they get back an average of $1.12; on the other had, for every dollar a Blue state pays in taxes, […]

Ingenious Republicans My last post made me think about how clever the Republicans are. That 5% tax rate on dividend and capital gains income for lower income families is tactically brilliant. First, it makes a great sound byte: Intrepid Reporter: Senator X, isn’t the new tax bill you just voted for a big give away […]

Clarification In reference to my posts here and then here, a few people emailed to make the point that seniors with income of $41,000 could very plausibly have dividend and capital gains income totaling $1,000 per year. I comletely agree. However, the numbers in the right panel of the NYT’s figure, titled “Married, two children […]

I’m a Little Worried… …about Kevin Drum, aka CalPundit, who seems uncharacteristically out of sorts today. What’s bringing him down? A laundry list of things gone bad, and he doesn’t even mention “massive deficits as far as the eye can see” or inane new abortion restrictions. Things would probably not seem so grim to him […]