Ezra Klein: November 29, 2009 - December 5, 2009
Tab dump
1) Bob Kuttner recounts his back-and-forth with Obama. 2) Explaining the persistence of poverty. 3) DC's panda is getting sent back to China. Pretty clear evidence that obama's recent trip was a failure, no? 4) Good post by Dylan Matthews...
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December 4, 2009; 6:45 PM ET |
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Will AIG have its revenge?
Gabe Sherman's look at the tussle over whether AIG's traders should get fat salaries seems to come down to this: The company is scheduled to pay another $198 million in retention payments to some 240 remaining FP employees in...
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Ezra Klein
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December 4, 2009; 6:37 PM ET |
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Financial Crisis
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Imagining the world of inaction
A nice point from Jonathan Cohn: When corralling sixty votes depends on winning over some combination of Senators Susan Collins, Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson and Olympia Snowe, passing truly liberal legislation is going to be difficult, if not possible. The...
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December 4, 2009; 6:31 PM ET |
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Meet the new Senate, not the same as the old Senate
Breaking a filibuster is a bit of a time-suck. You have to call a cloture vote, then wait for 30 hours while that cloture vote "ripens." That's fine if you only have to do it every once in awhile, but...
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Ezra Klein
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December 4, 2009; 6:05 PM ET |
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Senate
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No grand bargains
I was talking with a conservative deficit hawk earlier today, who said that the greatest disappointment in this debate has been that five or 10 Republicans didn't come together and create a voting bloc for a bill with better cost...
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Ezra Klein
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December 4, 2009; 4:05 PM ET |
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Siding with cost control
Wise words from Paul Krugman: [T]here’s another reason failure to pass reform would be devastating — namely, the nature of the opposition. The Republican campaign against health care reform has rested in part on the traditional arguments, arguments that go...
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December 4, 2009; 3:23 PM ET |
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Book TV
A month or two ago, I recorded an episode of C-SPAN 2's Book TV with Stephen Dubner and Steven Leavitt, the authors of Super Freakonomics. The session was well timed, as there was a lot of controversy over the book....
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Ezra Klein
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December 4, 2009; 2:54 PM ET |
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Can Congress cut Medicare costs?
Jim Horney is the director of federal fiscal policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Before that, he worked on the Senate Budget Committee, and before that, he served as chief of the Projections Unit in the Budget...
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Ezra Klein
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December 4, 2009; 1:23 PM ET |
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Budget
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Health Reform
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Interviews
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Obama: 'We've got about as difficult an economic play as is possible'
This bit of the transcript from yesterday's jobs summit is about as clear a description as I've heard Obama give of the economic task he thinks his administration is facing: We have a structural deficit that is real and...
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Ezra Klein
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December 4, 2009; 12:45 PM ET |
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The political impact of slowing job losses
"Today’s unemployment report was good news," writes Paul Krugman. "But in a real sense good news is bad news, because this month’s not-too-bad number deflates the sense of urgency." That seemed a bit churlish to me, but then I read...
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Ezra Klein
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December 4, 2009; 12:22 PM ET |
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Job losses slow enormously
The economy shed 11,000 in November. The number looks eerily like a typo. October, after all, lost 111,000 jobs. Losing a mere 11,000 isn't good news, per se, but the trend is the best news we've heard all year. Steve...
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Ezra Klein
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December 4, 2009; 11:05 AM ET |
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My theory of the public option fight, and of health care
Digby has a great post on the politics of the public option: Ezra believes that if the votes aren't there for a decent public option then the horse trading should be around getting something good in return for giving up...
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Ezra Klein
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December 4, 2009; 11:00 AM ET |
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Health Reform
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Palin is sorry it took her this long to become a birther
Steve Benen responds to Sarah Palin's assertion that the legitimacy of Obama's birth certificate is "a fair question." I'm not surprised Sarah Palin would lend credence to the "birther" nonsense; I'm surprised it took her this long. Interestingly, Palin actually...
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Ezra Klein
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December 4, 2009; 10:00 AM ET |
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Sherrod Brown calls Republican bluff. Republicans pretend not to hear him.
This is good, clean fun: Sens. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and David Vitter (R-La.) are preparing an amendment to force members of Congress into any public option health plan that becomes law, frustrating at least one Senate Democrat who wants to...
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Ezra Klein
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December 4, 2009; 9:09 AM ET |
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Health Reform
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Pelosi: 'I’m not in support of the proposal by Mr. Obey'
"This is as close to a smackdown as you get on Capitol Hill," says Stan Collender. Sadly, he's talking about Nancy Pelosi's harsh dismissal of David Obey's war surtax....
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Ezra Klein
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December 4, 2009; 8:13 AM ET |
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Tab dump
1) Karen Tumulty gives the play-by-play on how the Medicare Commission got watered down. 2) The Office is the most depressing show on television. 3) How Washington Mutual failed. 4) Eric Cantor thinks Ronald Reagan was a squish. Recipe of...
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Ezra Klein
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December 3, 2009; 6:27 PM ET |
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Why health-care reform can't control costs
A reader asks: I heard (somewhere on NPR I think ... maybe This American Life) an argument that in many regions the public option and generally more competition among health insurers would actually drive premiums up. In these regions,...
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Ezra Klein
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December 3, 2009; 5:42 PM ET |
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Health Reform
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Clinton: How better weapons could bring about peace in the Middle East
Speaking of Bill Clinton, here he is with a novel argument on the prospects for peace in the Middle East: I still think there is some chance the Israelis and the Hamas government and the Palestinian government could make...
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Ezra Klein
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December 3, 2009; 5:02 PM ET |
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The talents of Thomas Friedman
"Tom Friedman is our most gifted journalist at actually looking at what is happening in the world and figuring out its relevance to tomorrow and figuring out a clever way to say it that sticks in your mind," says...
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December 3, 2009; 4:51 PM ET |
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The best public option discussion you'll read today
We recognize that taking a strong public option off the table may be necessary to enact reform legislation. But this will mean, at a minimum, higher government subsidy costs by not permitting a payer with substantial market power to bring...
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Ezra Klein
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December 3, 2009; 1:44 PM ET |
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Health Reform
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Chat transcript
Washington, D.C.: Hi Ezra, I've been reading your chats for about the last two months, and I'm not quite sure what to make of you yet -- whether you're a straight shooter, or pushing an agenda. One columnist I do...
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Ezra Klein
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December 3, 2009; 1:32 PM ET |
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Lunch break
Watching this video for Tribe Called Quest's "Can I Kick It" is a bit like seeing a picture of your father sporting bell bottoms and a Jew fro. The sense of permanent, immutable authority and gravitas is lost, but somehow,...
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Ezra Klein
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December 3, 2009; 12:39 PM ET |
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Chat at noon today
You know the drill. Submit questions here. Join in at noon here. I'll post the transcript when it's done....
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Ezra Klein
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December 3, 2009; 11:04 AM ET |
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Bernie Sanders is not threatening the Federal Reserve's 'independence'
With Bernie Sanders's hold on Ben Bernanke in the news today, it's worth repeating that this does not, in any way, threaten the Fed's "independence." The confirmation process is natural, and if Bernanke were to be defeated, that too would...
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Ezra Klein
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December 3, 2009; 11:01 AM ET |
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Save the Medicare Commission!
The independent Medicare Commission is one of the most promising cost-control measures in the Senate bill. But as Joshua Gordon explains, it's been seriously weakened in recent weeks. The big problem is that the commission is now barred from submitting...
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Ezra Klein
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December 3, 2009; 10:35 AM ET |
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Health Reform
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You've really got a hold on him
Bernie Sanders has placed a hold on Ben Bernanke's renomination. “If he’s the smartest guy in the world," Sanders asked, "why didn’t he do anything to prevent us from sinking into this disaster that Wall Street caused and which he...
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December 3, 2009; 10:05 AM ET |
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Federal Reserve
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Deficit-neutral warmaking
Bruce Bartlett: If it takes the threat of a tax increase to get people to think seriously about whether it's worth continuing to fight wars far from home -- wars that have only the most tenuous connection to the national...
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December 3, 2009; 9:34 AM ET |
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The people behind health-care reform
Chris Bowers explains his evolving thinking on health-care reform: In the past, I had previously defined success as increasing the power of the Progressive Block and passing a nationally-available public option tied to Medicare rates. My thinking on the matter...
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December 3, 2009; 7:37 AM ET |
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Tab dump
1) Harold Meyerson is fed up with federalism. 2) Why D.C. has so little good street food. 3) What it's like to eat without sight. 4) James Fallows is skeptical about Obama's Afghanistan policy. Recipe of the day: I made...
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Ezra Klein
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December 2, 2009; 6:19 PM ET |
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Deficit reduction in practice
You frequently hear people talk about deficit reduction. But you don't hear nearly as much about how to reduce the deficit. Harvard economist Jeff Frankel, however, has 10 ideas for putting the budget on a better path. Five of them...
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Ezra Klein
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December 2, 2009; 5:48 PM ET |
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Budget
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Susan Collins's health-care wish list
According to Politico, Susan Collins met with the White House on Monday to offer her list of demands for health-care reform. And they sound, well, pretty good. "The senator said she put several amendment requests on the table: raising the...
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Ezra Klein
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December 2, 2009; 5:43 PM ET |
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Uncivil debate
These are not happy days in the United States Senate. On Monday, Harry Reid began the health-care debate by offering a couple of uncontroversial amendments. Among them was Blanche Lincoln's proposal to ensure that amendments to the bill were...
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Ezra Klein
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December 2, 2009; 5:07 PM ET |
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Health Reform
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Senate
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Why 30,000 troops?
The more I chew over it, the more I think my dissatisfaction with last night's speech was that it was an argument for a strategy in Afghanistan, not this strategy in Afghanistan. Take the 30,000 troops. "The 30,000 additional...
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Ezra Klein
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December 2, 2009; 3:27 PM ET |
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Afghanistan
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Budgeting for TARP
There's been talk lately that the White House is going to use some of the remaining or returning TARP funds to cut the deficit. Amidst double-digit unemployment, this is a bit like a family buried beneath overdue debt deciding to...
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Ezra Klein
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December 2, 2009; 2:56 PM ET |
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Budget
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Deficit hawks for Obey's war surtax
Yesterday, I wondered why I wasn't hearing more from deficit hawks like the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget on Obey's war surtax. Turns out it's because I didn't know they had a blog. (And today, they followed up with...
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December 2, 2009; 1:59 PM ET |
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If you give away the public option, what do you get?
Most of the energy in the Senate right now is being directed into a mad rush for compromise proposals on the public option. This reflects the sense that the right compromise on the public option is a compromised public option....
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Ezra Klein
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December 2, 2009; 1:40 PM ET |
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Health Reform
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Lunch break
Rory Stewart, a British diplomat, author and, now, parliamentary candidate, is the author of “The Places in Between,” a book based on walking the full length of Afghanistan. This is the first part of a lecture he gave on Afghanistan...
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Ezra Klein
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December 2, 2009; 12:30 PM ET |
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Afghanistan
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Bad budget gimmicks in the Senate health-care bill
That graph comes from Donald Marron, and does a nice job showing that the bulk of the Senate bill’s initial price advantage over the House bill is simply due to the Senate bill delaying implementation till 2014. It is,...
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Ezra Klein
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December 2, 2009; 12:17 PM ET |
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Health Reform
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'Decline of the West'
Scott McLemee defenestratesCornel West's new memoir: If sketchy in other regards, Brother West is never anything but expansive on how Cornel West feels about Cornel West. He is deeply committed to his committed-ness, and passionately passionate about being full of...
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Ezra Klein
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December 2, 2009; 12:01 PM ET |
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32 flavors of stimulus, ordered by deliciousness
The table above comes from CBO's most recent report (pdf) on the stimulus, by way of Brad DeLong. What you're seeing -- and click on it to see it larger -- are estimates of the multipliers on various stimulus...
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Ezra Klein
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December 2, 2009; 11:41 AM ET |
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Charts and Graphs
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Stimulus
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Doesn't taxing the Afghanistan war work against stimulus?
Responding to my support for a surtax to fund the war in Afghanistan, Ostap asks, "aren't you one of those people who regularly proclaim that opponents of the so-called stimulus package are nuts, and that in fact we should have...
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Ezra Klein
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December 2, 2009; 10:41 AM ET |
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Afghanistan
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Taxes
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Afghanistan and the Iraq surge
Daniel Drezner has a good post critiquing analogical thinking on wars. Comparing the war in Afghanistan to the war in Vietnam or the surge in Iraq is flawed, he says. The Obama administration has been at pains to signal...
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Ezra Klein
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December 2, 2009; 10:11 AM ET |
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Afghanistan
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Obama's Afghanistan speech
My first thought watching Obama's speech last night was to wonder whether he'd borrowed Bush's speechwriter for the evening. But the mirrored rhetoric is to be expected, I guess. This is a policy that Bush could have announced, too....
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Ezra Klein
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December 2, 2009; 8:47 AM ET |
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Afghanistan
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Tab dump
1) Figuring out how to do comparative effectiveness research is complicated. 2) If you're comparing Code Pink to Glenn Beck, you've lost the equivalence argument. 3) Ta-Nehisi Coates has a nuanced, thoughtful take on Huckabee's clemency problem. 4) Brad Plumer...
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Ezra Klein
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December 1, 2009; 6:43 PM ET |
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How many public option compromises can dance on the head of a pin?
To add a bit of context to the post below, the public option has already gone through two major sets of compromises. They were: Separating the public option from Medicare: The Congressional Budget Office projected that pairing the public option...
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Ezra Klein
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December 1, 2009; 6:39 PM ET |
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Health Reform
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Howard Dean: Health-care reform 'worthless' without the public option
Dylan Matthews beats me to the punch with some well-deserved shots at Howard Dean's contention that absent the public option, "this bill is worthless and should be defeated." No, it isn't, and it shouldn't. Organizer friends have patiently explained to...
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Ezra Klein
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December 1, 2009; 4:56 PM ET |
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Health Reform
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Obey's war surtax would cover 6% of war spending -- but Congress thinks even that's too much
David Obey's effort to fund the expansion of the Afghanistan war with a surtax is running into some opposition. Evan Bayh, who generally presents himself as a paragon of fiscal rectitude, flatly said it's not going to happen. "National security...
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December 1, 2009; 3:39 PM ET |
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Afghanistan
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Seven stories Politico fears
Annoyed by Politico's silly listicle of the "stories" Barack Obama fears, White House staffers leaked a little list of their own: 7 narratives politico is fighting in their efforts to get an interview with the President 1. They are more...
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Ezra Klein
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December 1, 2009; 2:24 PM ET |
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Journalism
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Obama's speech tonight probably won't matter
Joshua Tucker doesn't think Obama's speech on Afghanistan is likely to make much of a difference: According to research by Professor George Edwards of Texas A&M University, recent presidents, no matter how golden-tongued, have had virtually no power to change...
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December 1, 2009; 1:57 PM ET |
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Republicans heart Medicare -- for now
Jonathan Cohn is about the most even-tempered writer I've met. His calm hand and good cheer verge on the comical. So when he loses his patience, as he does today, it's a fair indication that something truly indefensible is...
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Ezra Klein
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December 1, 2009; 1:06 PM ET |
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Health Reform
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Fee-for-punishment policing
The Economist interviews Radley Balko on the problems with the American criminal justice system: At every step in the process, the incentive is toward putting people in jail. And there's almost no penalty at all for state actors who overstep...
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Ezra Klein
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December 1, 2009; 12:48 PM ET |
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Lunch break
Super Emo Friends: Presumably, Cartoon Network has already optioned this. I just hope they're looking at it for Adult Swim rather than daytime programming....
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Ezra Klein
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December 1, 2009; 12:28 PM ET |
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To repeat, the CBO found that premiums go down under health-care reform
Commentary on the Congressional Budget Office report showing that a given health-care insurance policy will become cheaper under reform has gotten a bit confused. Fox News, for instance, summarized the report as saying, ‘CBO: HC Overhaul Likely Won’t Bring Private...
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Ezra Klein
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December 1, 2009; 12:16 PM ET |
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Health Reform
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The age of diminished presidential expectations
From the comments: I am getting supremely annoyed at the argument that Obama made "it" (meaning health reform) happen, unlike his Democratic predecessors. The fact is that while the current reform produces near-universal coverage, it does so by basically...
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Ezra Klein
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December 1, 2009; 11:42 AM ET |
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Health Reform
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How Medicare and Medicaid helped health-care reform
One of the oddities in the funding debate over health-care reform is how reliant Democrats have been on areas of waste and overpayment. Pulling Medicare Advantage back to the funding levels of standard Medicare, for instance, is netting them between...
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December 1, 2009; 9:55 AM ET |
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Why California is such a mess
It's not uncommon to hear people argue that California faces a political crisis more than an economic crisis, but a recent conversation with a smart observer of Golden State politics really drove the point home. California requires a two-thirds...
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December 1, 2009; 8:19 AM ET |
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California
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Obama -- and the Congress's -- impressive first year
I think Jacob Weisberg has this bit of contrarianism mostly right: About one thing, left and right seem to agree these days: Obama hasn't done anything yet. Maureen Dowd and Dick Cheney have found common ground in scoffing at...
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Ezra Klein
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December 1, 2009; 7:05 AM ET |
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Barack Obama
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Tab dump
1) What is living and what is dead in social democracy? 2) The economics of fancy cupcakes. 3) Paul Krugman predicts the (grim) future. 4) Most mutual funds don't outperform the market. And those that do don't outperform their fees....
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Ezra Klein
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November 30, 2009; 6:20 PM ET |
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The teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy health-care bill
The graph above comes from Lori Montgomery's article arguing that health-care reform will not do much to cut the deficit. "While the package would not worsen the nation's record deficits, it would not significantly improve them, either now or...
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Ezra Klein
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November 30, 2009; 4:40 PM ET |
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Health Reform
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Why don't politicians fear unemployment?
Brad DeLong wonders why good macroeconomic policies make for bad politics. That's the wrong question, I think. Insofar as Barack Obama is not operating amidst 20 percent unemployment and riots, the economic interventions have worked pretty well to preserve...
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Ezra Klein
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November 30, 2009; 4:20 PM ET |
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Stimulus
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Smells like polarization
According to the new Washington Post poll, a plurality of Republicans consider Sarah Palin the "one person [who] best reflects the core values of the Republican Party" and a full 76 percent of Republicans do not think Barack Obama "stand[s]...
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Ezra Klein
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November 30, 2009; 3:29 PM ET |
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Polls
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Is Dubai World too big to fail?
How big of a deal is the Dubai default? Not that big a deal, writes Annie Lowrey. "[E]ven if Dubai World went totally belly up, it wouldn't have anything close to systemic effects. Why? It just isn't big enough." She...
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Ezra Klein
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November 30, 2009; 3:01 PM ET |
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Financial Crisis
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Dick Cheney and the purity myth
Like Matthew Yglesias, I think Jon Meacham's desire to see Dick Cheney run for president says a lot more about the incentives of a for-profit media sphere than anything else. But it's worth keying into one argument Meacham makes,...
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Ezra Klein
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November 30, 2009; 2:36 PM ET |
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Willem Buiter joins the rotten curs at Citibank
Willem Buiter, author of one of my favorite economics blogs, hasn't been very nice to Citigroup over the years. As Felix Salmon points out, Buiter has called Citigroup “a conglomeration of worst-practice from across the financial spectrum” and likened the...
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Ezra Klein
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November 30, 2009; 2:00 PM ET |
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Deep thought
Between balloon boy and the White House party crashers, reality TV is getting a lot better at attracting reality's attention....
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Ezra Klein
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November 30, 2009; 1:03 PM ET |
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Congressional Budget Office: Reform will bring down the cost of health-care insurance
The Congressional Budget Office released a report (pdf) today estimating changes to average premiums under the Senate health-care bill. The report is going to prove very important, and is going to confuse a lot of people. So let's be very,...
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Ezra Klein
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November 30, 2009; 12:45 PM ET |
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Health Reform
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What the Treasury can learn from Dubai
Felix Salmon is cheered by the precedent coming out of Dubai: Personally, I’m quite happy about this default, since it sets another very useful precedent of a state-owned company defaulting on its debt. Historically investors in state-owned companies have perceived...
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Ezra Klein
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November 30, 2009; 12:37 PM ET |
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Financial Crisis
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As I walk through the valley of the shadow of Whole Foods
Coolio's new cookbook, by the numbers: Number of items in the "pimptry": 28 Number of items a Kitchen Pimp has in his or her Weaponry, including a FryDaddy: 13 Units of measurement used: a "peench," a dime bag, and a...
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Ezra Klein
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November 30, 2009; 12:02 PM ET |
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Books
,
Food
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Can't follow the action without a program
Jeffrey Young names seven issues to watch as the Senate begins debate on health-care reform....
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Ezra Klein
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November 30, 2009; 10:57 AM ET |
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Few surprises in health-care reform
Today, the Senate begins debate on its health-care reform bill. That may confuse some folks who tuned in last week and saw the Senate debating a health-care reform bill. But that debate, you see, was a debate over whether...
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Ezra Klein
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November 30, 2009; 10:43 AM ET |
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The neglected House
I should have paid better attention in high school civics, as this paragraph, from Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein's "The Broken Branch," came as a surprise to me: The Speaker of the House is the first government official mentioned...
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Ezra Klein
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November 30, 2009; 9:32 AM ET |
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Congress
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CBO estimates that Senate health-care reform will lower costs by 20%
MIT economist Jon Gruber digs into (pdf) the latest numbers from the Congressional Budget Office and finds good news for advocates of reform: In a letter to Senator Reid on November 20, the Congressional Budget Office (the official government scoring...
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Ezra Klein
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November 30, 2009; 9:09 AM ET |
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Health Reform
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What happened to the future?
From Michael Chabon's "Manhood for Amateurs." I don't know what happened to the future. It's as if we have lost our ability or our will to envision anything beyond the next hundred years or so, as if we lack the...
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Ezra Klein
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November 30, 2009; 8:37 AM ET |
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The return of tail risk
With the past few days bringing news that Dubai cannot meets its loan payments and that the market considers Greece more likely to default than Turkey, Gillian Tett considers the world we're left with: Two years ago, global investors...
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Ezra Klein
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November 30, 2009; 8:34 AM ET |
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