Uncategorized
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How to actually build an ownership society
The New America Foundation’s Ray Boshara makes a strong case for promoting asset ownership through social policy in the Washington Post today, including establishing “a privately owned ‘KIDS Account’ at birth for each of the 4 million children born in this country every year and fund those accounts progressively — thus creating a lifetime platform
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Redistricting reform fever!
The grassroots (and Gov. Arnold) are calling for an end to incumbent protection rackets from coast to coast. The New York Times
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Reality check in the White House?
In the Times today, Edmund Andrews
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Clarke on democracy promotion
Richard Clarke kicks off his New York Times Magazine column with
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An honest anti-privatizer
Private account opponents are becoming annoyingly glib about the real financing issues that Social Security faces, which is only going to make it harder to muster the political will that we’re going to need to alleviate the shortfall (either now or down the road). So I was happy to see Jeff Madrick offer an intellectually
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Farm subsidies on the chopping block
If only Nixon could go to China, maybe only George W. Bush
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Bush’s assertions about investment returns
During a visit to Nebraska yesterday, President Bush made the following set of claims: [A] personal retirement account will earn a greater rate of return than that which your money earns in the Social Security trust. That’s an important point for people to understand. If you invest your money in conservative stocks and bonds, you’re
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Dean’s “Hillary Rules”
The American Prospect’s Garance Franke-Ruta passes along an astute observation on Tapped: One of the smartest centrists I know recently noted that Dean will be operating, in Washington, under “Hillary Rules.” This is certainly true; anything Dean says will be subjected to tremendous scrutiny, and he will be operating with no room for error. And
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The White House beats down the press
Lori Robertson has a long article in American Journalism Review about the relationship between the White House and the press. It covers most of the same ground as chapter 2 of All the President’s Spin, but Robertson’s piece is noteworthy for demonstrating how far the press and DC establishment have come toward acquiesing to the
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Political reasoning for five-year-olds
I’ll have a lot more to say about the Republican Social Security memo (PDF), but I have to start by joining Matthew Yglesias in ridiculing this passage from a suggested speech, which might be the dumbest thing I’ve ever read: Let me leave you with a question: Why should young people who will retire around