Sloppy Reporting from the New York Times   The New York Times is having difficulty correctly reporting the results of their own poll today.  The headline of the article reads “No Poll Boost from Edwards.”  Yet the poll results show the Kerry/Bush numbers (including Nader as an option) changing from 42/ 43 to 45/42 between […]

Kerry’s Cabinet Bruce Bartlett, a conservative columnist for The National Review, ponders who should comprise the economic team in a Kerry cabinet. Typically, I disregard or at least heavily discount advice from conservatives on what Democrats should do. For example, conservative NYT columnist David Brooks often waxes on about what Democrats should do to appeal […]

New Inflation Data   Yesterday’s PPI release and today’s CPI release from the BLS suggest that the growth in inflation (excluding the effects of oil prices) may already be tapering off in the economy.  Prices of producer fell in June thanks to lower energy prices, while consumers continued seeing higher prices for both energy and […]

Rick Santorum (R-PA) is a Jackass Regular readers know that I mostly try to avoid invective and ad hominem at this blog. But occasionally the complete and utter imbecility of a public figure leaves me with no choice. This time, and not for the first time, it’s Senator Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum. To be […]

Anti-Bush Protester Sent to Guantanamo Not really — they’re only ticketed and released. But if (and only if) this does happen, then I’ll start to consider seriously the idea that the Bush administration is planning to cancel the November election. In the meantime, I’ll just view the planning as something the government actually should be […]

Another Conservative Endorses Kerry If I were more cynical, I’d read this post by Dan Drezner (rational conservative, free trader, Bush-Cheney 2000 advisor) as an indication that he’ll eventually endorse Kerry but hopes in the meantime to create more suspense and interest (and traffic?) by maintaining his perch atop the fence for a while longer. […]

Six Honorable Republicans I heard a lot about the Gay Marriage Ban Amendment failing in the Senate. I also heard a few times that six Republican senators joined the Democrats in voting to kill the amendment. But what I didn’t hear was which senators, other than John McCain, turned down base-appeasing opportunism in favor of […]

More Signs of Slowing Growth New data from Commerce indicates that retail sales fell in June. Sales are still considerably higher than a year ago, but they’ve now fallen for two of the past three months. This may be another tidbit of evidence suggesting that the end of Bush’s big(*) economic boom may indeed be […]

Longer Hours, Less Pay Last spring, the Bush administration tried to change the rules governing overtime pay in such a way that would prevent millions of workers from receiving overtime pay for overtime work. A public outcry resulted, and the Bush administration backed down and said that they would change their proposed changes to be […]

Research Makes Economists Happy From “The Labor Market for New Ph.D. Economists,” AER Papers and Proceedings, v. 94, n.2 (May 2004): … In response to the questions “How do you feel about your job?” 55% said they like it very much, 39 percent said they like it fairly well, and 6 percent sad they dislike […]