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Republicans Must Lose the Titans of Glib and Greed: Limbaugh, Drudge, Coulter
Tweet Share on Facebook March 3, 2009 Comment (25)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I have argued in this space that Republican critiques of Barack Obama's economic prescriptions are not, per se, a bad thing.
Opposition parties keep them that's in power honest. They slow things down a bit. Sound minority principles can even save a majority from itself.
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Colleges Shouldn't Replace Military History With Women's Studies, Crocheting
Tweet Share on Facebook March 3, 2009 Comment (7)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
There's a fascinating disconnect between the history that literate people want to read and the history that academics (by no means all of them literate) want to teach. One example is the replacement of scholars of the colonial and founding period by those into more fashionable pursuits. Another is the replacement of military historians—whose subject matter is of such great interest to literate readers—with academics into women's studies, or crocheting or the like.
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Steele, Republicans Bow to Limbaugh—Is There a Rush of the Left?
Tweet Share on Facebook March 3, 2009 Comment (40)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
So Michael Steele predictably has apologized to entertainer Rush Limbaugh for his comments to entertainer D.L. Hughley over the weekend. No word on whether Steele is now willing to concede that Limbaugh is in fact the de facto leader of the party (even if Steele is the de jure leader). The Democrats are loving this and DNC Chairman Tim Kaine weighed in with some shots at Steele and Limbaugh.
Which brought to mind another way of measuring the power of Limbaugh: Is there anyone on the left who could so quickly cow Kaine or other elected Democratic officials in the way that Limbaugh has Steele?
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Corporations Are Already Gaming the Carbon Cap-and-Trade System
Tweet Share on Facebook March 3, 2009 Comment (2)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
This article on the problems in Europe's carbon cap-and-trade system is instructive. Carbon prices have slumped because of decreased economic demand. Obama budget $643 billion in cap-and-trade revenues, but there is no assurance that the money will be coming in. And like progressive taxes, carbon revenues tend to be volatile and ultra-responsive to the economic cycle, which is to say they slump sharply just when government needs revenue for countercyclical spending programs. Note also that Europe's original system was poorly designed. There's a reason for that. It's hard to design a cap-and-trade system that will be fair and work. And potential market participants are going to work very hard to set terms and conditions which will allow them to game the system to maximum advantage. Corporations in this country are already busy doing this.
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President Obama's Wrong Message to Wall Street Reflects Inexperience
Tweet Share on Facebook March 3, 2009 Comment (22)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.
President Obama continues to show his inexperience when discussing the economy in public. Americans need reassurance, not more depressing news from our president. Yet he did it again today:
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The Worst Intersections in the United States Are in New York, Chicago and LA
Tweet Share on Facebook March 3, 2009 Comment (2)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
What are America's 100 worst intersections? Tyler Cowen at www.marginalrevolution.com points me here. Almost all of them—87 out of 100—are in the extended New York, Chicago and Los Angeles metropolitan areas. Exceptions: San Francisco CA (nos. 2, 46, 49, 58, 64), New Haven CT (nos. 22, 51), Honolulu HI (no. 55), Austin TX (nos. 71, 74, 87, 92), Dallas TX (no. 93). After consulting my road atlas and my memory I find, with grim satisfaction, that I have driven through, around, under or over every single one of these 100 intersections. I note with special pleasure no. 100, which is the I-405 exit onto La Tijera Boulevard, a great exit for getting your rental car back to the lot in time for your plane out of LAX. I remember one time leaving the Mondrian Hotel in West Hollywood, on Sunset Boulevard just east of La Cienaga, and barreling down La Cienaga, then to 405 and La Tijera, and getting to the rental car lot in just 23 minutes, in time to make my morning flight out of LAX. How many weeks (months?) of my life did I give up in that adrenalin rush to get to the airport in time?
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Taxing Charity to Fund the Big Government Obama Healthcare Plan
Tweet Share on Facebook March 3, 2009 Comment (8)By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
There's been a huge debate lately about the size and scope of government. The lines between the two sides are most clearly drawn around the Obama administration's proposal to fund about half of the $634 billion reserve fund for health care reform by reducing the itemized deductions that taxpayers in higher brackets can take for things like donations to charity. Dan Politi writes a great analysis of the fund at slate.com.
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Reverse Latino Immigration: 3 Million Mexicans May Be Returning Home
Tweet Share on Facebook March 3, 2009 Comment (39)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Recently I argued in a column and blogposts (here and here) that we may be seeing a reversal of the huge surge of Latino immigration into this country over the past quarter-century. Now here comes an interesting piece in the Foreign Policy blog that projects that 3 million Mexican immigrants may return to Mexico in "the coming months"—far more than I would have thought. Statistics on this subject have a substantial margin of error. We all, whatever our views on immigration issues, need to keep an eye on this.
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Democrats Must Keep Politics in 2010 Census; Gerrymander--and Gender-mander--Away!
Tweet Share on Facebook March 3, 2009 Comment (24)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.
Get a good laugh out of the lead paragraph in an article in today's Washington Post:
House Democrats will unveil a measure today that would separate the U.S. Census Bureau from the Commerce Department and make it an independent government agency similar in design to the National Institutes of Health or NASA.
Depoliticize the Census? Surely they jest! Taking politics out of the Census is like taking milk out of the cow or coal out of Newcastle or diamonds out of Tiffany. Politics is the lifeblood of the Census—without politics, there is no Census.
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Specter v. Toomey, again? Pennsylvania Will Be Tough For a Conservative to Win
Tweet Share on Facebook March 3, 2009 Comment (28)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Jennifer Rubin notes that Pat Toomey, who got 49 percent of the vote in the 2004 Republican primary against incumbent Sen. Arlen Specter, is now saying that he is interested in running against Specter again (after saying for some months that he wanted to run for governor instead). His gripe and that of many conservatives is that Specter voted for the stimulus package.
