Joementum Apparently Joementum is exactly like momentum, but without any forward progress: South Carolina: Edwards 44, Kerry 30, Sharpton 10 Oklahoma: Edwards 31, Kerry 29, Clark 28 Missouri: Kerry 52, Edwards 23, Dean 10 Delaware: Kerry 47, Dean 14, Lieberman 11, Edwards 11 Arizona: Kerry 46, Clark 24, Dean 13 AB

John Kerry Getting the Kid Gloves Treatment? I’ve seen a few posts here and there claiming that John Kerry’s been treated with kid gloves the last few weeks, both by the press and by the rival democrats. One theory is that Dean and Gephardt were both badly damaged by their mutual fierce attacks in Iowa, […]

Costs and Benefits Sound policy decisions require analysis of both the costs and benefits of a given proposal. Most proposals have some positive benefit, which allows supporters to make arguments along the lines of “Don’t you agree that achieving X is a good thing?” Then opponents have to make a slightly more complex counter-argument along […]

Personal Income Growing, Barely This morning the BEA released its estimate of personal income and spending in December. Income was up by 0.2% in December, while spending grew by 0.4%, in nominal terms. In real (inflation-adjusted) terms, income showed virtually no growth, while spending grew a little. This has continued a trend over the past […]

Statement and Refutation In Dana Milbank’s latest Washington Post piece, Mr. Milbank actually presents White House statements about Iraqi WMD, and then follows them up with direct refutations. This is a very welcome departure from the more typical but less informative style in which a journalist first writes “Democrats allege X” and then adds “Republicans […]

Trouble By Summer? It looks like that renowned leftist rag, BusinessWeek, agrees with Kash: Yet the market fiesta could be fizzling — and not only because of negative reaction to the Fed’s post-meeting statement, say some Wall Streeters. The central bank had made a nuanced shift in expressing how soon it may be considering a […]

What are We Getting for Our $535 billion? As Kash noted earlier, the projected price tag for the Republican Medicare reform has shot up by a third, from $400b to $535 billion. Now is as good a time as any to remind everyone that the coverage seniors get under this plan is fairly meager. For […]

What’s New It’s Friday, which means that Bob Park’s newsletter, What’s New, is out. One item this week is the deficit: BUDGET: HOW TO BRING DOWN AN OUT-OF-CONTROL BUDGET SURPLUS. When George W. Bush took office he was confronted with a looming $5.6 trillion surplus over the next decade (WN 9 Mar 01). OMB turned […]

Is the Recovery Fading Already? The BEA just released their first estimate of economic activity in the fourth quarter of 2003 (October through December). The overall number for GDP growth is a solid 4.0% annual rate. However, that is below what many economists had been expecting. One part of the report that’s discouraging is that […]

By the Way, When We Said “$400 Billion” We Really Meant… Shocking, just shocking. I am shocked and surprised. Really. CNN: President Bush’s new budget will project that the just-enacted prescription drug program and Medicare overhaul will cost one-third more than previously estimated… Instead of a $400 billion 10-year price tag, Bush’s 2005 budget will […]