I’m stoked John brought Freddie on board. I think the pity-charity liberalism / redistributive liberalism discussion is fascinating. I don’t think you can over-estimate how badly the cause of the social welfare project has been harmed by the erosion of organized labor in this country. For a long time I believed that you could basically …
Recapturing the narrative
Yes, I was worried that Democrats were losing the narrative-arms-race. If the president’s speech is any indication, I was wrong. Sometimes it feels good to be wrong, especially in light of the president’s all-out assault on the Ryan plan. The president provided a clear – realistic – alternative to the Tea Party plan for America, …
Actual seriousness about the deficit
David Leonhardt has an excellent column on the deficit. In it, he suggests that if Congress simply did nothing we would be on a firmer fiscal footing than if we adopted the Ryan budget. With an economic recovery underway, he argues, Obama should refuse to extend the Bush tax cuts when they expire at the …
Free Market as Forest Redux
There is a very kind commenter in my last thread really furiously pimping out a post I wrote a couple weeks back at The League called “Free Market as Forest” (though the commenter keeps calling it “Free Market as Beautiful Forest” for some reason…). Anyways, since there seems to be some question about markets and …
The Ryan Budget
Over at American Times I have an alternative to the Paul Ryan ‘path to prosperity’ budget (and mine is shorter so that’s better – really all laws should be written as blog posts because long laws are inherently Evil). Basically, I find the whole notion of privatizing Medicare absurd – especially given how completely screwed …
Is the education reform tide turning?
I find that many of my posts at American Times are pretty cynical – what with the apparently coordinated assault on teachers form one state to the next – but there has been one piece of good news lately: president Obama has come out agains the current standardized-testing regime. This is good news for public …
No country for old dictators
As far as I’m concerned there are no good arguments for intervention in Libya. Reports that we’ve saved 100,000 lives there strike me as no better than propaganda. After all, 100,000 was the number of those killed in the firebombing of Tokyo during World War II – the deadliest day of that war. I have a hard time believing …