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J. Goodrich

J. Goodrich is a recovering economist and the sole proprietor of the political blog Echidne of the Snakes. She also blogs for TAPPED.

Recent Articles

SAT SCORES DOWN!

J. GoodrichAug 28, 2007

SAT SCORES DOWN! The horror! I woke up to the news that the SAT scores this year are the lowest since 1999! What is happening here?

ON RIGHTS AND MARKETS.

J. GoodrichAug 27, 2007

ON RIGHTS AND MARKETS. Paul Krugman in today's New York Times gives us the conservative case against expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP): to let the markets reign, and then strikes it down in a very clever way:

Suppose, for a moment, that the Heritage Foundation were to put out a press release attacking the liberal view that even children whose parents could afford to send them to private school should be entitled to free government-run education.

PEOPLE ARE MORE EXPENSIVE THAN CARS

J. GoodrichAug 27, 2007

PEOPLE ARE MORE EXPENSIVE THAN CARS. Guess who made that profound comment and when?

It was Mitt Romney last year, explaining the new Massachusetts health insurance policy which included an individual mandate. The policy was modeled on car insurance, and Romney explained the individual mandate in the policy with these words:

"We insist that everybody who drives a car has insurance," Romney said in an interview. "And cars are a lot less expensive than people."

MORE ON COLLEGE RANKINGS.

J. GoodrichAug 21, 2007

MORE ON COLLEGE RANKINGS. A recent New York Times article discussed the shadow side of the U.S. News & World Reports annual college rankings: It is in the interest of the colleges to game them by, say, evaluating other colleges negatively or by inflating their own apparent applicant pool so as to allow the college seem more selective:

MEANWHILE, IN IRAQ.

J. GoodrichAug 16, 2007

MEANWHILE, IN IRAQ. The emergency political summit called by president Jalal Talabani has failed. The Sunnis are still outside the government. As Kevin Drum points out:

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