Uncategorized
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DeSoto doesn’t work?
The verdict from John Gravois in Slate is that the ideas of Hernando DeSoto, the massively hyped Peruvian economist, have not worked well anywhere they’ve been implemented. In some cases, they’ve even made things worse. I’m not a development economist and I haven’t read DeSoto, but the idea of legally titling squatter land to provide
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Good news for media watchers
Very cool:
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How to destroy the American health care system, part 1
Grim news from the health care front: Pointing to rising health costs and the oversized proportion of insurance claims attributed to smokers, some employers in California and around the country are refusing to hire applicants who smoke and, sometimes, firing employees who refuse to quit. “Employers are realizing the majority of health costs are spent
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Bob Scheer, Senate candidate
In the course of doing some political science research, I discovered a disturbing fact: Robert Scheer, hack LA Times columnist, once ran for the US Senate in California. Way back in 1970, when he was waaaay out there on the left (far more so than now), he was the candidate for the Peace and Freedom
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The war over “private accounts”
Welcome to the spin politics of the 21st century. The debate over Social Security has already devolved into a battle over whether President Bush is advocating “private accounts” or not. Mike Allen’s story from Sunday’s Washington Post sets the scene: As the two parties brace for the coming debate over restructuring Social Security, polls and
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Deficit-cutting plan allegedly on track
Rhetoric versus fiscal reality once again – from the Washington Post: A senior administration official told reporters that Bush’s budget — to be announced Feb. 7 — will show the government on track to cut the deficit in half from the White House’s initial deficit projection for 2004. But the CBO projections cast significant doubt
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Safire as ombudsman?
This is almost beyond belief (link via Atrios): Times insiders say [former columnist William] Safire turned down Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.’s offer to succeed Daniel Okrent as the newspaper’s ombudsman. Whatever you think about Safire or the Times, this is insane. He is (was) an opinion writer with a highly checkered past as both a
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What is Tom McMahon talking about?
Tom McMahon, the executive director of Howard Dean’s Democracy for America group, sent out this bizarre email to supporters yesterday (53K PDF): Listen to this one: “Dean had the oranges,” said one of the other candidates for DNC Chair recently, “but he couldn’t make orange juice.” It might take a second to figure out, but
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A response to Waight and Luskin
My post on The Note’s criticism of Paul Krugman has generated a couple of responses that I should address — one from Ken Waight of Lying in Ponds and one from obsessive Krugman critic Don Luskin. First, let me deal with Waight. He’s a good guy who was always extremely supportive of Spinsanity (including this
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Why do conservatives pretend Republicans aren’t tough?
There’s a bizarre conceit in conservative commentary that Republicans are weak-kneed wimps who are continually taken advantage of by Democrats. Given how ruthless the Congressional GOP has been since Newt Gingrich first took control of the caucus, it’s laughable, but it still persists. Here’s the Wall Street Journal repeating the trope in an editorial arguing