February 2012
1 post
4 tags
Meaningful Long-term Budget Forecasts and Beating...
When someone is talking about debt and deficits, they’re implicitly talking about future spending on health care. That’s the determining factor in forecasted long-run problems. Not trivialities like discretionary spending, not social security. Health care. But Mark Thoma asks whether or not those forecasts are logically sound. The math isn’t wrong, and it makes intuitive sense;...
January 2012
3 posts
2 tags
How Does the Affordable Care Act Work?
Because of socialism and death panels.
EDIT: Posting this makes me reflect on how sad the total disappearance of meaningful policy input from the right really is—an accurate caricature would be a stubborn kid with fingers in both ears shouting la-la’s. Once upon a time, the Affordable Care Act was the archetypal conservative response to socialized health care. Now, with the...
2 tags
The United States of America isn't a business and,...
Atrios, stating the simple truth that being good at something doesn’t axiomatically make you good at something else, points to a Paul Krugman post regarding the ubiquitous sentiment that smart businessmen make good economic policymakers.
Leaving aside all the questions about what Mitt Romney did or didn’t do at Bain — and about his self-aggrandizing double standard — there’s an even...
Make it a gooden!
December 2011
1 post
3 tags
The Following is Laced with Bitterness
Not really, more with annoyance and confusion.
The biggest problem facing my generation is a dysfunctional legislature handicapped by it’s own antiquated rules and procedures that serve no meaningful purpose in the America of 2011. It’s a problem an entire order higher than the rest; it stifles our ability to tackle any other major issue successfully.
That was the question asked by the editors...
October 2011
4 posts
1 tag
Sucker for Signs, cont.
This excessively awesome sign brought to you by courtesy of Matt Yglesias.
3 tags
A Tale of Two Percentages
First, there was the 99%, a site dedicated to the people out there who are struggling with a myriad of problems and are asking/protesting simply for a deal that isn’t so rotten.
Then there was the 53%, created by Erick Erickson of Red State and CNN, signifying the lament of conservatives and the 53% of Americans who, cursed with the absolutely terrible luck of not being poor, fall into an...
1 tag
Sucker for Signs
Homerun! Some serious recruiting needs done, unfortunately.
Paul adds one caveat:
Small quibble: under current conditions, with a large debt overhang, the AD curve should be upward-sloping!
1 tag
Thoughts on Occupy Wall St. and Awesome Protest...
Since the 17th of September, the Occupy Wall St. protests have been on a slow trot from just out of the frame, into the periphery, and finally into full focus of the public eye. Along with the increased publicity has come, naturally, a dose of condescension from the media regarding what exactly these “loony lefties’” complaints are and what they want out of these protests. I don’t want to...
September 2011
2 posts
Life Lessons, Political Economy 101, and Recent...
I’ve tried to adopt a sort of doctrine since I started seriously following politics and policy and econ. and all that good stuff. That being that if the people who read the words I write don’t know things, it’s my fault. Since that’s an incredibly lofty and ridiculous burden to put on oneself and somehow expect anything other than disappointment, I should do the next best...
3 tags
Is There a Hand to Take Hold of the Scene?
In lieu of another addition to the already countless, standard and grim analyses of the recently released BLS report on employment, which are, truth be told, the verbal equivalent of a gut-wrenching sigh, here’s a song by Okkervil River that aptly describes my disposition toward the matter.
I’m almost certain that the past few years have been a scary movie in which...
August 2011
8 posts
2 tags
BREAKING: Social Security Nothing Like Ponzi...
Of course, rudimentary logic will never stop a crank.
[Mother Jones]
WatchA visualization of American expansion from 1700 to 1900 by way of post offices. You can find more neat things by Derek Watkins on his blog.
2 tags
Ad Infinitum: Learn to [Drive]
A new survey asking American drivers to rate their own driving ability as well as others’ confirms that everyone is a special snowflake and that levels of self-awareness have either plummeted or not changed at all throughout human history.
American drivers believe their own driving knowledge, ability and safe driving habits are substantially superior to those of, well, just about all other...
1 tag
Turning Japanese
…, I think we’re turning Japanese, I really think so.
Karl Smith:
The 5 year TIPS rate crossed –1% today.
That means the government can make more money borrowing than the average person can by saving.
2 tags
Earth Can Fit a Lot of People
Trantor, of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, is the seat of government in the Galactic Empire. It’s described as a preposterously dense city-planet home to some 40+ billion people, the pinnacle of human achievement in many ways. The planet is urbanized to such an extent that every inch of it is covered with man-made structure, for it’s necessary to accommodate all of these...
They got him a cake. It said "No" in pretty icing.
The Onion:
WASHINGTON—After months of heated negotiations and failed attempts to achieve any kind of consensus, President Obama turned 50 years old Thursday, drawing strong criticism from Republicans in Congress. “With the host of problems this country is currently facing, the fact that our president is devoting time to the human process of aging is an affront to Americans...
3 tags
Economy Update: Still Bad. Also, Semantics
It’s been a hell of a week, no? Congress overcame its impasse on the debt celing, agreeing to raise it in exchange for a multi-trillion dollar debt reduction package that amounts to nothing more than an incredibly ill-timed austerity plan. Oh, and it hardly puts a dent in our long-term fiscal imbalances, which are almost solely due to rising health care costs. Great job.
The stock market is...
2 tags
If Only It Really Was a Paul Krugman Presidency
Newt Gingrich, incessantly oblivious and painfully wrongheaded:
In fifty years, Paul Krugman’s writing on the Great Recession will be seminal. We would be in a much better place right now if the fiscal and monetary policies he has advocated over the past three years were in effect. Truly a disgusting display of ignorance.
July 2011
3 posts
1 tag
One Graph to Rule Them All
This, from a couple weeks back by YouGov, does a fair job of explaining why policy leans to the right when Republicans are equipped with adequate leverage, and why we’re still staring down the barrel of self-inflicted economic doom. It’s too bad that adequate leverage is so easy to come by in our system.
7 days and counting…
3 tags
“They should make a game where there’s just two rooms and a door connecting...”
– Steve Bell on campers in Call of Duty
4 tags
More Thoughts on American Governance: Why Do We...
I recently had a discussion with a professor of mine on how and why our political system barely functions, as evidenced by the unprecedented phenomenon of refusing to vote for raising the debt ceiling without massive concessions in return. (Also evidenced by everything Congress does, but we’ll keep it at that.) Naturally, the topic of our political system being confined to its current...
June 2011
9 posts
2 tags
I'll Let Reggie Take it From Here
All the people that were rooting on me to fail, at the end of the day they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had before they woke up today,” James said. “They have the same personal problems they had today. I’m going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things that I want to do with me and my family and be happy with that. So they can get a...
4 tags
To be an Environmentalist, You Need to Understand...
I’d been putting this one off for a while now, but I finally finished Triumph of the City by Edward Glaeser and I just wanted to throw down a couple things. Now, book reviews aren’t really my forte so I don’t want to say a whole lot about the book—you should read it instead!—besides that it’s really good and brings to a brighter light a lot of important...
3 tags
A Lot of the Senate's Time is Spent Doing Nothing
As I’ve written previously, the United States Senate doesn’t work anymore [see the most recent post besides this, or the old blog]. This is due in large part to the adoption of the scorched-earth politicking of the minority parties of recent, which includes, but is not limited to, rampant use of the filibuster. As seen in the above graph by Ezra Klein, which shows the number of...
3 tags
The Causes of Political Polarization Seem Pretty...
Peter Orszag, former OMB Director for President Obama, provides his thoughts and a few hypotheses on our increasingly polarized politics, and why that is, in a Bloomberg op-ed published yesterday. He notes, rightfully so, that polarization in our current political context is troublesome:
Our political system is so plagued by polarization, it’s difficult to move any legislation forward. In the...
2 tags
This is the New Breed of Conservatism
From TPM:
Doug Holtz-Eakin is warning that a default arising from failure to raise the debt limit would have serious consequences and should be avoided. That’s a pretty major statement coming from Holtz-Eakin, who has been onboard with Republicans demanding spending cuts before agreeing to raising the debt limit. It also puts him at odds with elected Republicans who have dismissed default...
4 tags
Palin Fans Hit Paul Revere's Wikipedia Entry
There is no rest for Sarah Palin’s fearless crusaders, who must be on constant guard to stomp out liberal bias—also known as “things that disagree with what Sarah Palin says”. The target this time is Wikipedia and the invaluable information therein. I guess it’s really just an attack on information, which makes sense since history and facts and things like that are...
3 tags
Bungie is Bad at Making Video Games
Recently, I’ve come to the realization that Bungie—maker of one of the biggest video game franchises in history, Halo—isn’t actually good at making video games. That might sound like a bold or ignorant statement, but it shouldn’t to anyone who has played any of the latest iterations of the series.
I’ve been a Halo fan since the first entry of the series, Halo:...
Introducing: The Ugly Swallow (v2)
Greetings, jerks. And by jerks I mean friends since it will mainly be people that are already aware of my existence reading the things I write on this space.
Those same people are probably aware that I once regularly wrote another blog by this name—hence the v2—focused primarily on politics and current events. This will be different. There will still be a light mix of that stuff, but...