February 2012
64 posts
Amazon.com: The Rent Is Too Damn High eBook:... →
yfiles:
YOU WANT TO BUY THIS BOOK!!
Study: Rich more likely to take candy from babies
The “upper class,” as defined by the study, were more likely to break the law while driving, take candy from children, lie in negotiation, cheat to increase their odds of winning a prize and endorse unethical behavior at work, researchers reported today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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“This is the first rule of Republican politics: If you are in trouble, promise to...”
– Rational Irrationality: Romney’s New Tax Plan: Big, Bold, and Desperate : The New Yorker
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“Last year, the prestige movies were crowdpleasing enough to reach a...”
– “The Artist” and the Oscars - NYTimes.com
The problem with Tom and Ann
The problem with the Tom and Ann subplot in this season of Parks & Recreation is that it’s forcing viewers to confront the unpleasant fact that if they actually knew Tom Haverford in real life, they would hate him so, so, so much.
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Most patent cases are not about copying
The researchers studied 193 patent cases and found only 21 of them—that’s 10.9 percent—that contained even an allegation of any copying, whether that’s copying from a patent or from a patent-holder’s commercial product.
And here’s the kicker: more than half of the copying allegations they did find were from pharmaceutical and chemical cases. Remember that a big chunk of...
“Step one, the American people send me up there, the day after election,...”
– Ross Perot on how to fix America’s problems. Via: A plain blog about politics: Perot Myths
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Things Mitt Romney won't tell you: Romneycare is...
In 2010, John F. Cogan, R. Glenn Hubbard, and Daniel P. Kessler published in Forum for Health Economics & Policy a report (“The Effect of Massachusetts’ Health Reform on Employer-Sponsored Insurance Premiums”) on the effects of Governor Mitt Romney’s 2006 health-care reform in Massachusetts. This report suggested that, up until 2008, these reforms (hereafter referred to as...
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Mitt Romney's budget in less than 150 words
Money comes into the federal government through taxes and bonds. The vast majority of it is then spent on old-people programs, poor-people programs, and defense.
Mitt Romney is promising that taxes will go down, defense spending will go up, and old-people programs won’t change for this generation of retirees. So three of his four options for deficit reduction — taxes, old-people programs, and...
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“I think the European countries are different when you compare to the United...”
– Danish PM: ‘In the last two months, we have undertaken more far-reaching decisions than perhaps in the last 50 years’ - The Washington Post
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Romney is using the programs the poor depend on...
Cutting subsidies from Amtrak and Planned Parenthood is the equivalent of President Obama promising to close loopholes for corporate jet owners. It’s red meat for the base, but a rounding error in context of the budget.
Romney’s real savings come in the next section. He’ll “send Medicaid back to the states and cap that program’s rate of growth,” and then “do the same for other programs, like...
“When you hear of failed nations, you may immediately think of Somalia or...”
– Home - Why Nations Fail
“Worries remain Europe and gas prices, but note that collapse in Europe tends to...”
– Initial Claims Flat at 351,000
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Why the welfare state looks like a free lunch →
To read:
The econometric consensus on the effects of social spending confirms a puzzle we confront in the raw data: There is no clear net GDP cost of high tax-based social spending on GDP, despite a tradition of assuming that such costs are large. The paper offers five keys to this free lunch puzzle. First, the costly forms of transfers usually imagined have not been practiced by real-world...
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President Obama as an alien
They say that President Obama is a Muslim, but if he isn’t, he’s a secularist who is waging war on religion. On some days he’s a Nazi, but on most others he’s merely a socialist. His especially creative opponents see him as having a “Kenyan anti-colonial worldview,” while the less adventurous say that he’s an elitist who spent too much time in Cambridge, Hyde Park and other excessively academic...
The stock market loves Democrats
While Republicans promote themselves as the friendliest party for Wall Street, stock investors do better when Democrats occupy the White House. From a dollars- and-cents standpoint, it’s not even close.
The BGOV Barometer shows that, over the five decades since John F. Kennedy was inaugurated, $1,000 invested in a hypothetical fund that tracks the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPX) only...
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'A narrative of...life under a Romney presidency'
On a call with reporters, Glenn Hubbard, the Columbia economist who is one of Mitt Romney’s top economic advisers, described the Romney campaign’s latest tax proposal in unusually evocative terms. “If you take the spending and tax pieces together, it’s a narrative of the policy agenda and life under a Romney presidency,” Hubbard said. And so it is. But if you really follow the numbers, and the...
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What pro-choice advocates learned from the...
Many saw 2011 as a perfect storm for a wave of abortion restrictions to sweep through the states. A heated battle during health reform over federal funding of abortion raised the issue nationally. When Republicans gained control of many more state houses in 2010, they were ready to act. States passed 92 abortion restrictions in 2011, more than double any other year in the past three decades.
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Experts judge Obama's corporate tax proposal
Earlier Wednesday, the White House released its proposed principles for overhauling the corporate tax code — bringing the rate down to 28 percent, establishing a minimum tax, and expanding credits for R&D and manufacturing. It’s not a plan so much as a framework. But we asked a variety of experts what they think of the idea. Here are their e-mailed responses:
...
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Abortion isn't under attack everwhere
Washington State has tended to be ahead of the rest of the country when it comes to abortion rights. Prior to Roe v. Wade, it was one of four states with sweeping legal protections to terminate a pregnancy. Now, the state is looking to set new precedent: It could soon become the first state to require all health plans to cover abortion.
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Sheldon Adelson: A man at war with himself
“I’m against very wealthy people attempting to or influencing elections,” casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who is funding a pro- Gingrich super PAC, said in an interview published this week in Forbes magazine. “But as long as it’s doable, I’m going to do it.”
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Tax reform is really, really, really hard
In a sense, this [White House’s corporate tax reform framework] is making two, somewhat contradictory, points simultaneously: Yes, we should reform the corporate tax code. That piece of conventional wisdom is true. But no, it’s not obvious how we should to do it, and it won’t be easy. The mantra “broaden the base and lower the rates” is nice, but a mantra is not...
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Worst. Sale. Ever.
Via Julian Sanchez.
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“It is not only Israeli leaders who have doubted Obama’s commitment to stop...”
– Memo to Republicans: Obama is Tougher on Iran Than George W. Bush - Jeffrey Goldberg
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What do budgets deficits do? →
File under “To read”
Paul Krugman will graciously accept your defeat
PS: Karl first quotes Lincoln’s words about malice towards none, charity for all. Lovely words indeed. But the Second Inaugural was delivered after Sherman had laid waste to Georgia and South Carolina, ripping out the heart of the Confederate economy; Grant was about to be joined by Sheridan, who had just done the same to the Shenandoah Valley, giving him overwhelming superiority over Lee. If...
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Matt Labash's favorite interview technique
I generally lead off with “Why do you hate the Jews?” Most of the time they don’t hate the Jews (though once, when I asked it, a country singer’s wife surprised me by saying: “Do you want just one reason?”) But most find the question so disturbing that they’ll often gratefully answer whatever I ask next. Which is why my follow-up question is usually, “What are you running from?”
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Am I allowed to quote my blog on my Tumblr? Yes?...
Policy wonks like comprehensive solutions. They look at the problem, look at the solution, and see if the two will fit. If not, they reject the solution as insufficient. And this solution, as most any wonk, myself included, will tell you, is not sufficient.
What policy wonks don’t like to do is muddle along. But muddling along is, for the most part, how problems get solved. Particularly...
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“The notion of a political podcast from an online thought magazine may sound a bit nerdy and, to the tech-savvy, maybe a little antiquated. But since launching in 2007 2005, Slate’s Political Gabfest has grown an audience of 75,000 weekly listeners, including a dedicated community of active listeners who do things like post long, thoughtful, meaty comments or attend $25 happy hours or...
What could go wrong?
A “strictly confidential” report on Greece’s debt projections prepared for eurozone finance ministers reveals Athens’ rescue programme is way off track and suggests the Greek government may need another bail-out once a second rescue – set to be agreed on Monday night – runs out.
The 10-page debt sustainability analysis, distributed to eurozone officials last week but obtained by the Financial...
“TOQUELAND: But those changes probably aren’t that apparent to guests of the...”
– The French Laundry’s Timothy Hollingsworth: The Toqueland Interview | Toqueland
“Stop reading this article and ask the next person you meet to name a superhero....”
– The Revenge of the Second-Tier Superhero Film - Scott Meslow - Entertainment - The Atlantic
“Every Sunday, the New York Times publishes the wedding announcements of the most...”
– Katie Baker on the New York Times wedding section - Grantland
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“There is a widespread belief that we have beat a lot of problems by “getting...”
– Why doesn’t the right-wing favor looser monetary policy? — Marginal Revolution
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“It seemed to him that in Annawadi, fortunes derived not just from what people...”
– Amazon.com: Behind the Beautiful Forevers (Enhanced Edition) eBook: Katherine Boo: Kindle Store
here’s Bob Sutton writing about some evidence that you comprehend / retain information better when reading off the printed page versus the screen.
The point of reading e-books isn’t that you retain the information better than when you read it in print. It’s that the cloud retains the information better than you do, and it allows you to search that information, and access it...
WatchBrian Goldman: Doctors make mistakes. Can we talk about that? | Video on TED.com
