OK, I never met Ida May Fuller but the fellow who wrote this WSJ oped in July 2000 claims to be a friend of hers. I metion this in light of the latest from James Glassman (see the comment from Brad DeLong). It would seem that Glassman continues in a long line of those who […]

After weeks of lean-to-the-right panels and rather worthless discussions, Russert invites Al Hunt, Katty Kay, Andrea Mitchell, and Byron York to discuss various issues. OK, Atrios is right that the Social Security discussion was awful. But the Iraq discussion was of interest: MR. HUNT: You also see, Tim, I think there is the beginnings of […]

Brad DeLong ridicules the latest cheerleading from Lawrence Kudlow. It was this paragraph that caught my attention: A recent study by the Atlanta Federal Reserve estimates that only 98,000 new jobs per month are required to keep unemployment under control. The reason? Labor-force participation has declined somewhat as more students remain in school, more workers […]

When I err, I err. I was so frustrated yesterday with the excuse mongering re the White House bribing Armstrong Williams and with the focus on the secondary issue – that being Williams’s unethical behavior, I went after Jonah Goldberg (and misspelled his name to boot). Readers of the Angrybear let me off too easy […]

It seems AP and CNN have finally decided to run the story: The Bush administration paid a prominent commentator to promote the No Child Left Behind schools law to fellow blacks and to give the education secretary media time, records show…The GAO has twice ruled that the Bush administration’s use of prepackaged videos – to […]

The latest employment report shows payroll employment rose last month by 157 thousand to close 2004 at 132,266,000. This figure is slightly less than the 132,441,000 reported for December 2000. The report also shows the unemployment rate staying at 5.4%. It seems that noisy household survey show a 137,000 decline in reported employment but the […]

Conservative pundit Armstrong Williams: Seeking to build support among black families for its education reform law, the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same. The campaign, part of an effort to promote No Child […]

Since replacing Gray Davis as governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger has adopted the George W. Bush approach to balancing budgets: keep tax rates from rising, talk about spending cuts but do nothing, and use a lot of misleading rhetoric to keep the press at bay. So he gives a speech yesterday and here is how […]

Peter Wehner’s memo on Social Security can be found here. There are two substantive points as far as I can see. The first: Second, we’re going to take a very close look at changing the way benefits are calculated. As you probably know, under current law benefits are calculated by a “wage index” — but […]

Joshua Marshall criticizes the memo from Karl Rove’s aid. Wehner’s suggestion that the Social Security Trust Fund is heading for an iceberg is simply absurd. But this line is correct: We need to establish in the public mind a key fiscal fact: right now we are on an unsustainable course. The GENERAL FUND is on […]