Simple ideas: Flat or Fair Taxes

It’s funny that while the ‘right’ claims to believe in a “Flat Tax” or a “Fair Tax” … they don’t fully participate in the existing flat and fair tax. Once their income reaches some ceiling ($110,000 ?) they’re exempted. How fair is that? I’m feeling more and more ambivalent about the issue of a general [...]

Thursday: Großartig!

Brooke is competing for a summer exchange trip to Germany and I am running around today signing papers and delivering applications and transcripts so we don’t miss the deadline. Wish her luck! I’m just taking a break for lunch. The kid is running me ragged. In the meantime, check out the post by Brad DeLong [...]

Precariat- Learn this word

No, precariat is not a misspelling of a group of single celled organisms.  It’s a very disturbing word, an ominous word, a word that has already arrived here in the United States and is slowly moving up the food chain: Precariat- a social group consisting of people whose lives are difficult because they have little or [...]

Is the 401K a Ponzi Scheme? Discuss

As of this writing, the Dow has slipped -111 points.  As Atrios would say: “Weeeeeeeeee!”  Update:  It’s back up again, “whhooooAAA!”  Update: Annnd back down again.  ”Weeeeee!”  Isn’t this fun? I was amused and irritated to see the question “Is Social Security a Ponzi Scheme?” at Room for Debate in the NYTimes recently.  (Fortunately, no [...]

Sunday: Verdict in. Obama and his droogs watch too much Fox News

It turns out that he is neither naive or evil.  He is merely as uninformed as the rest of the Fox News audience.  Or that’s what I’m picking up from Paul Krugman’s latest post. President Pushover, where he quotes an upcoming article from Elizabeth Drew: Even more alarming, however, is her window on what the [...]

Wednesday: Americans pay too little in taxes?

I’ve heard this from Paul Krugman and Fareed Zakaria recently and now some new dude is claiming that Americans pay too little in taxes. From David Leonardt’s article this morning at the New York Times titled, “Why Taxes Will Rise” (NYTimes, limited free access), we get this: Polls show that most Americans are opposed to [...]

Monday: Blink!

huh, did the Republicans blink yesterday over the debt ceiling?  I was forced to watch a lot of talking heads shows on Sunday.  Well, it was better than another Casey Anthony rant fest with Nancy Grace and her vorpal bangs.  The big news yesterday is that Boehner took $2 trillion of the $4 trillion spending [...]

wednesday: sugar, antibiotics and chemotherapy

So, the other day, there was a story from another insider about the nature of the discussions between Christine Romer and Tim Geithner on the size of the stimulus package. Romer made the case that size does matter (she’s one of the few women who will say that out loud). Geithner compared money spent by [...]

Saturday: Republicans have ALWAYS Hated Medicare

So, the Republicans have voted to end Medicare as we know it and throw our parents and ourselves to the mercy of the insurance market with vouchers.  The new budget bill the House Republicans passed yesterday cuts trillions of dollars of support for poor and working families while enriching the already rich even more.  It’s [...]

In the wake

From last night’s state of the union address, it sounds like Barry got a personal coach.  Remember that meeting he had with the Big Dawg after the thumping the Democrats took last November?  The one where he had to figure out how he was going to eek out another stimulus package and extend the Bush [...]