December 2011
1 post
“Brian Moynihan is here tonight. He’s the C.E.O. of Bank of America. As many of...”
– Steve Schwarzan (via amaeryllis)
September 2011
2 posts
4 tags
Terror Won? Not Quite
It’s 9/11 again. Like the nine anniversaries that came before, it’s a time for reflection not only on the unique horror of that day, but also on the aftermath. Though the victim’s families finally have a permanent place to mourn and find some measure of cathartic resolution, the personal and national search for meaning will continue.
The question of whether we’ve responded...
3 tags
“It’s also hard to fathom what Mr. Perry means when he calls for the Fed to “open...”
– Vitriol for Bernanke, Despite the Facts in The New York Times
August 2011
1 post
3 tags
“A long, long period of halting and slow growth was baked in the cake when he...”
– How Much Is Obama Really to Blame for the Economy? - The Atlantic
July 2011
1 post
2 tags
“Few things have been more productive of controversy over the ages than the...”
– -John Galbraith, writing in The Affluent Society
It’s hard to understate the irony of belief in “the American dream” inhibiting its actual accomplishment. It’s also important not to understate it.
June 2011
6 posts
2 tags
“Democratic critics of the plan suggest that enacting it would be akin to pushing...”
– This ridiculous quote can be found in Greg Mankiw’s puzzling column, “Seriously, Some Consensus on Health-Care”, today in the New York Times.
I suppose the answer goes something like this: It’s not the competitive exchange model that Democrats hate. It just might (IMHO) be...
2 tags
“More recently, I’ve been seeing claims that Vouchercare would be just like the...”
– Paul Krugman’s column today is so good it warrants a second quote.
3 tags
“So let me make two points. First, Obamacare was very much a second-best plan,...”
– Paul Krugman, cutting through conservative’s attempts to pass off their Medicare plan as something less than radical.
2 tags
“In 2009 a similar bill, also introduced by O’Donnell, passed out of...”
– TPM reports on a Quinnipiac Poll showing support for legalized gay marriage at 58% in New York state. The State Senate is again the largest impediment standing in the way of our best shot yet at real marriage equality in New York.
May 2011
5 posts
1 tag
“Libertarianism:
The belief that pursuing one’s own self-interest, while...”
– Urban Dictionary (via ryking)
4 tags
What Condorcet and Debt Ceiling Polls Say About...
There’s always been an inherent tension between our society’s want to acknowledge the central role of the individual - as a voter - in democracy, and the need to have a somewhat competent government. That’s why Senators were originally elected by state legislators and it’s why we have a voting age of 18.
The debate over whether or not to raise the federal debt ceiling is...
1 tag
“The two compliment each other: the city center, in its higher urban forms, and...”
– SmartPlanet’s interview with Peter Calthorpe, author of Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change
1 tag
“But that may not be what’s important here. Even if nothing changes in the...”
– Me, at NYU Local this morning.
1 tag
“Bridging the line between clothing and architecture, the spacesuit is a portable...”
– Spacesuit: An Interview with Nicholas de Monchaux, at BLDG BLOG.
1 tag
April 2011
4 posts
1 tag
Is High-Speed Rail Worth It? →
March 2011
13 posts
1 tag
“The National Police Agency said Friday that the official death toll from the...”
– NY Times today on the ever-worsening tragedy in Japan
2 tags
Japan May Lose Control of Nuclear Reactor →
2 tags
“If workers are unable to get cooling water into the reactor vessel, as...”
– -Natasha Tiku at New York Magazine is scaring the shit out of me.
She has a really superb roundup of what we can expect if things turn for the worse in Japan.
1 tag
“He maintains that the biggest disincentive to building more nuclear power plants...”
– - An interesting piece - from BBC News on the future of nuclear power in the developed world
For a specific focus on Europe - where nuclear power is more prevalent than in North America - check out this piece in WSJ.
“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an...”
– John Steinbeck (via miketodd07, thirdworldgirl- )
So true. Too many people suffer from the delusion that one day they’re going to be wealthy and thus oppose taxing the wealthy even though they would benefit from the increase in social services these taxes could provide.
(via curiousaleta)
2 tags
Want to Understand the Fukushima Nuclear Crisis?...
If you want a comprehensive overview of what is happening - and what could happen - in Japan, these two pieces from Scientific American will cover it.
What Happens During a Nuclear Meltdown?
Nuclear Experts Explain Worst-Case Scenario at Fukushima Power Plant
“He even reflects that Johnson “probably would have been better off if he had...”
– - Max Boot’s review of Known and Unknown: A Memoir, by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
I get the feeling this would be an infuriating read.
2 tags
Health Insurance and Zombies →
2 tags
“Further, in 1972, the California Supreme Court handed the state’s environmental...”
– - From a great E.L. Glaeser column in City Journal from Winter 2009
This is a great point about urban density. People who choose to live in cities choose not to live in other areas. And absent a few log cabins with wood stoves, that will mean large houses supplied by large amounts of heating fuel...
“When Stuxnet moves into a computer, it attempts to spread to every machine on...”
– Everyone should read Vanity Fair’s fantastic piece on the Stuxnet computer virus.
1 tag
“The Netherlands is blanketed with intercity rail, high-speed rail, trams, and a...”
– -From The Economist, Democracy in America’s response to George Will’s truly bizarre assertion that “the real reason for progressives’ passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism.”
The simple...
3 tags
What's The Budget Debate All About? →
This is my round-up of the basics of the budget debate. It comes with awkward comments too!
2 tags
“Gone is the civilized era when ‘you had liberals and conservatives instead...”
– -From Charles Ommanney’s profile of New York Times columnist David Brooks, in the “redesigned” Newseek
It’s pretty obvious that American politics have grown increasingly polarized, but I don’t think Brooks is right here. Both Democrats and Republicans are dealing with...
January 2011
2 posts
3 tags
Who's Laughing?
Charles Krauthammer on that silly health care reform law passed last year:
Suppose someone - say, the president of the United States - proposed the following: We are drowning in debt. More than $14 trillion right now. I’ve got a great idea for deficit reduction. It will yield a savings of $230 billion over the next 10 years: We increase spending by $540 billion while we increase taxes by...
December 2010
3 posts
1 tag
Don't Underestimate the Difficulty of Stopping...
A version of this column was first published November 28, 2010 at Washington Square News, as “The government can’t and shouldn’t stop WikiLeaks”.
Yesterday The New York Times, along with Der Spiegel and The Guardian, published the latest trove of U.S. government documents obtained by WikiLeaks. The organization’s previous work includes, but is certainly not limited...
3 tags
“The package would cost about $900 billion over the next two years, to be...”
– From today’s New York Times: Obama will cut a deal with Senate Republicans to extend all the Bush tax cuts for two years, in exchange for a unemployment benefits extension and payroll tax cut.
1 tag
Things to consider re: WikiLeaks
If either of these are true, then WikiLeaks deserves a lot less derision from politicans:
No evidence that WikiLeaks releases have hurt anyone (link)
If WikiLeaks Broke the Espionage Act, So Did The New York Times (link)
November 2010
12 posts
“The real problem is the future. On current policies the Congressional Budget...”
– From “Confronting the Monster,” new in this week’s issue of The Economist
I’m not an advocate of taking serious austerity steps right now. It would seriously endanger our fragile economic recovery, which if anything requires increased deficit-funded spending. But I am...
1 tag
“Twenty-five years ago, the slice taken by financial firms was about a seventh of...”
– From John Cassidy’s fantastic new piece in The New Yorker, “What Good Is Wall Street?”
2 tags
Gawker and Lists
CQ Press’ crime rankings are out, and St. Louis came out on top (in the bad way). Just as an aside, New York came in at 269. So everyone, stop thinking New York is big and bad and dangerous!
But Max Read at Gawker thinks this is a bad way to think about cities:
And honestly? A lot of the top 25 are pretty okay places! (Except for Washington, D.C., which is a horrible, horrible city.)...
6 tags
Can Tea Party ideology balance the budget?
The New York Times has a fantastic budget interactive where you can test the effects of different combinations of tax increases, budget cuts, or both. After putting together my own plan for balancing the budget, I started wondering whether the Tea Party’s basic plan (tax decreases and even greater spending decreases) is at all realistic.
What would be the basic rules for a Tea Party...
5 tags
“We didn’t lose the election because of me. In any circumstance when you...”
– Nancy Pelosi on her controversial choice to seek the minority leader position in the House, in Friday’s Wall Street Journal.
She’s right on the mark here. Republicans simply were going to make significant gains this November. Pelosi’s House was extremely effective at passing major...
7 tags
“For one thing, Bowles and Simpson have taken a smart line on tax deductions and...”
– From “In Defense of the Deficit Commission” at The New Republic.
I think these two paragraphs really get at the heart of the problem with our budget, which isn’t that we spend too much subsidizing the poor through welfare programs. It’s that we spend trillions through tax...
4 tags
5 tags
Why do academics overwhelmingly reject the Tea...
This column was first published on October 18, 2010 at Washington Square News.
Tea Partiers are crazy. That’s been a pretty common element of liberal dogma over the last 18 months as the Tea Party has grown to have significant influence on the American right. It’s also an easy way to explain the apparent lack of Tea Party support among highly educated people, particularly those in...
4 tags
Rigging the game
This column was first published on October 26, 2010 at Washington Square News.
The popular notion that President Obama is a socialist was likely born on Shrewsbury Street in Holland, Ohio, on Oct. 12, 2008. Then-Democratic nominee Obama was confronted by a local plumber named Joe Wurzelbacher (well-known as “Joe the Plumber”) who was unhappy with Obama’s plan to raise taxes...
4 tags
Nowhere to go but down for Tea Party supporters
This column was first published on November 3, 2010 at Washington Square News.
Winning elections is fairly easy. Governing is hard. Tea Party supporters will come to realize this in the coming two years, just as progressives have over the previous two. The electoral numbers have been in the Conservatives’ favor since President Barack Obama’s inauguration. The president has had to...
4 tags
A world with Hillary, a world without health care...
This column was first published on November 10, 2010 at Washington Square News.
The president’s recent political troubles have revived a constant, if closeted, thought among liberals. With the economy still largely in the shitter (as far as the average American is concerned), the public still souring on the administration’s economic policy, and the rise of a Tea Party fueled by the...