Ezra Klein: November 21, 2010 - November 27, 2010
Reconciliation
Rather than a bunch of reconciliation links today, here's Mark Bittman demonstrating a smarter way to cook a Thanksgiving turkey: And here's what to do if you need to cook a turkey and you only have an hour. Then, of...
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Ezra Klein
| November 24, 2010; 5:38 PM ET |
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Three ways Democrats are going back on the offense over health-care reform
In the past two days, there have been three stories suggesting ways Democrats might go back on the offensive in health-care reform. The first was the McClatchy poll showing that the majority of voters want the bill left alone or...
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Ezra Klein
| November 24, 2010; 3:17 PM ET |
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Health Reform
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The real story on corporate profits, cont'd
Kevin Drum doesn't buy Justin Fox's argument that multinationals and financial companies are driving corporate profits, and he's got a graph that makes his point: It's strictly domestic profits (i.e., it doesn't include overseas profits from multinationals), and although it...
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Ezra Klein
| November 24, 2010; 2:46 PM ET |
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How polarized are we?
It's common enough to say our political system is polarized. But is our world polarized, too? I've been reading Farhad Manjoo's “True Enough,” and early in the book, he references an interesting Pew study suggesting that political polarization is leaking...
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Ezra Klein
| November 24, 2010; 2:09 PM ET |
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Categories:
Political Science, Polls
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Lunch Break
There will be blood -- in 60 seconds, and 16 bits: Super There Will Be Blood from Tomfoolery Pictures on Vimeo....
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Ezra Klein
| November 24, 2010; 12:31 PM ET |
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Got to admit it's getting better
Peter Duffy has a convincing piece arguing that whatever Glenn Beck's faults, he's no Father Coughlin. But the point I'd make off of it is that for all the hand-wringing about today's polarized age with its awful talk radio...
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Ezra Klein
| November 24, 2010; 11:14 AM ET |
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The real story on corporate profits -- plus a chart
As mentioned in Wonkbook today, the news stories saying that corporate profits have set a new record use nominal dollars -- that is to say, they don't adjust for inflation. So as the Harvard Business Review's Justin Fox says, using...
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Ezra Klein
| November 24, 2010; 10:58 AM ET |
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Americans favor universal health care -- until anyone tries to pass it
Between 2001 and 2008, the public overwhelmingly believed that it was the federal government's "responsibility" to guarantee all Americans health-care insurance. Then, in 2009 and 2010, President Obama and the Democrats tried to make it the federal government's responsibility. You...
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Ezra Klein
| November 24, 2010; 9:30 AM ET |
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Health Reform, Polls
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Was the GM bailout a success?
I've seen a lot of commentary arguing over whether GM's IPO shows the auto rescue was "really" a success or a failure. Perhaps predictably, opinions tend to split on partisan lines. Part of the problem here is that "success"...
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Ezra Klein
| November 24, 2010; 9:00 AM ET |
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Wonkbook: The best predictor for 2012, the corporate profits puzzle, and who'll be the next Larry Summers?
If you were watching cable news yesterday, you probably caught wind of a poll showing President Obama running a point behind Mitt Romney in early-2012 match-ups. Ignore it. The forecast that matters -- both political and substantively -- is...
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Ezra Klein
| November 24, 2010; 2:24 AM ET |
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Wonkbook
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Reconciliation
Recap: Rapiscan may yet help air travel; Rick Perry wants more uninsured Texans; and your health care costs too much -- in charts. Elsewhere: 1) South Park takes on foodies. 2) Are Android phones really more open than iPhones? 3)...
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Ezra Klein
| November 23, 2010; 6:07 PM ET |
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Americans pay too much for health care -- in charts
There are a lot of complicated explanations for why American health-care costs so much, but there are also some simple ones. Chief among them is "we pay too much." And I don't mean in general. I mean specifically. Mountains of...
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Ezra Klein
| November 23, 2010; 4:13 PM ET |
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Categories:
Charts and Graphs, Health Economics
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Being president seems unpleasant
My strong hunch is that the post-9/11 security apparatus surrounding the president of the United States of America and his family is vastly more annoying and disruptive than anything that happens when I go to an airport.
By
Ezra Klein
| November 23, 2010; 2:42 PM ET |
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Categories:
Barack Obama, President
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Why does Gov. Rick Perry want more uninsured Texans?
One of the weirder stories in the health-care sphere right now is that a handful of conservative states are threatening to pull out of Medicaid and instead free ride on the Affordable Care Act. I don't think there's much chance...
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Ezra Klein
| November 23, 2010; 1:41 PM ET |
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Health Reform
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Lunch Break
If you've not downloaded the new album from mash-up wizard Girl Talk, you really should. It's free, and it's awesome. And for added fun, head here to listen to the album while seeing the component songs visualized on your screen....
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Ezra Klein
| November 23, 2010; 12:27 PM ET |
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The difficult politics of repeal
McClatchy's new poll testing attitudes toward health-care repeal is just more evidence that repeal, like reform itself, is going to get a lot harder when its advocates are forced to get more specific: For now, Republicans have been talking about...
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Ezra Klein
| November 23, 2010; 11:51 AM ET |
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Ireland links
I don't know enough about the situation in Ireland to offer any particularly smart thoughts. But these folks do. First up, the Economist's Charlemagne argues that Ireland tipped over the edge when Europe suggested that bondholders should lose money during...
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Ezra Klein
| November 23, 2010; 11:00 AM ET |
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Sad but true
Chris Beam describes the coming "debate" over lifting the debt ceiling: The looming "debate" over whether to raise the debt ceiling beyond $14.3 trillion is not a debate in the typical sense, in which one side argues for the wisdom...
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Ezra Klein
| November 23, 2010; 10:30 AM ET |
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The future of Social Security in one graph
This comes from the Strengthen Social Security Campaign, and it lists the impact of all of the various deficit-reduction plans on a medium-income Social Security beneficiary (click for a larger version): It's worth noting that the "current law" line is...
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Ezra Klein
| November 23, 2010; 10:00 AM ET |
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Categories:
Charts and Graphs, Social Security
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Two sentences about Ireland that scare me
Philip Stephens: At first, the vigour with which Dublin wielded the spending axe won plaudits from bond markets. But the deflationary impact of the cuts has since seen the deficit widen....
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Ezra Klein
| November 23, 2010; 9:30 AM ET |
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Can Rapiscan save air travel?
Kevin Drum has an anti-anti-TSA rant, of which I think this is the most persuasive paragraph: Maybe you think that even if TSA's procedures are slightly useful, they aren't useful enough to justify all the intrusion. Instead, we should...
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Ezra Klein
| November 23, 2010; 9:00 AM ET |
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Wonkbook: Regulators, mount up; Farrell and Barr out; Fed gets strategic
One of the less-noticed -- but more popular -- parts of health-care reform was the promise to force insurers to spend 80 percent every premium dollar on actual health-care services. Yesterday, that promise became policy, as the administration issued...
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Ezra Klein
| November 23, 2010; 1:15 AM ET |
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Wonkbook
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Unreconciled
Sorry for the slow blogging today. Bunch of other projects and meetings all piled up. More normal schedule will resume tomorrow....
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Ezra Klein
| November 22, 2010; 5:56 PM ET |
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The terrorists have won
Ta-Nehisi Coates sums up the underlying reality behind the TSA hubbub in a single sentence: It's worth remembering that the goal of the terrorist is to terrorize, and from that perspective, they've been really successful....
By
Ezra Klein
| November 22, 2010; 1:00 PM ET |
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Lunch Break
Google chats with Rainn Wilson, better know as the Office's Dwight Schrute:...
By
Ezra Klein
| November 22, 2010; 12:33 PM ET |
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The fuzzy difference between spending and taxes
Greg Mankiw's column arguing that "the distinction between spending and taxation is often murky and sometimes meaningless" is worth a read. One of the cruder measures that both liberals and conservatives have been using to assess the deficit-reduction plans is...
By
Ezra Klein
| November 22, 2010; 12:18 PM ET |
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Beware celebutantes bearing prepaid debit cards
The financial crisis gave credit cards a bad name, and the ensuing regulations made it harder for banks to profit using the hidden fees and opaque pricing that once powered their profits. But in crisis, there's opportunity: Enter the Kardashian...
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Ezra Klein
| November 22, 2010; 11:00 AM ET |
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Weekend column
Some heterodox thoughts on charity....
By
Ezra Klein
| November 22, 2010; 10:48 AM ET |
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Should states set their own immigration quotas?
The Kauffman Foundation has a report out ranking the "new economy" states. Their methodology "measures the extent to which state economies are knowledge-based, globalized, entrepreneurial, IT-driven and innovation-based – in other words, to what degree state economies’ structures and operations...
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Ezra Klein
| November 22, 2010; 10:12 AM ET |
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Categories:
Immigration
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The life and times of Charo
Charo's Wikipedia page is sort of amazing. For instance, did you know her real name was María Rosario Pilar Martínez Molina Gutiérrez de los Perales Santa Ana Romanguera y de la Hinojosa Rasten?...
By
Ezra Klein
| November 22, 2010; 9:53 AM ET |
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Your Amazon.com purchases should be taxed
Good column by Farhad Manjoo on the way Amazon.com -- and other online retailers -- have a tax advantage against brick-and-mortar stores that have to pay sales tax, and also on the way Amazon and others try not to tell...
By
Ezra Klein
| November 22, 2010; 9:25 AM ET |
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Categories:
Taxes
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Why China has so many fake divorces
China is facing a large real-estate bubble driven in part by newly affluent Chinese buying properties as investments. The Chinese government knows this, so they've imposed a one-house-per-family rule. But as Patrick Chovanec explains, it isn't working out as they...
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Ezra Klein
| November 22, 2010; 9:00 AM ET |
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China
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Wonkbook: A deficit rorschach test; Ireland gets a bailout; QE2 vs. its skeptics
Here's a Wonkbook rorschach test: Do today's top two stories make you optimistic about our ability to deal with the deficit, or pessimistic? The case for optimism: The recommendations of the various deficit commissions aren't perfectly aligned, but they're...
By
Ezra Klein
| November 22, 2010; 1:46 AM ET |
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Wonkbook
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