×
- Doug Elmendorf doesn't have to face voters, so he has the freedom to point out that it's contradictory for Americans to demand government services that they aren't willing to pay for. But I often wonder what the reaction would be to a politician who honestly made the pitch for higher taxes to pay for these services. Instead we live in a world where revenue is detached from spending, the Defense Department uses Monopoly money, and cutting taxes for the super-wealthy is the highest moral imperative.
- Liberals are often accused of having a bias against business or being insufficiently pro-free market. I think it would be fair to say that liberals are skeptical about the business community's commitment to anything beyond the bottom line, and to that end have tended to side with labor over business elites. A good example of why this is is captured in this Think Progress which quotes the Inside U.S. Trade business newsletter: "Business groups are worried by the potential effects of provisions banning the import of all goods made with convict labor, forced labor, or forced or indentured child labor that were included in a customs bill sponsored by Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) and Ranking Member Charles Grassley (R-IA)."
- The tea party movement thinks dissolution of the American republic is imminent. Matt Compton responds: "When a movement, which claims to fight socialist fascism in the name of freedom, promotes the ideas of a former KGB agent as a way to offer some intellectual heft to its arguments, it becomes increasingly difficult to lend that movement any credibility whatsoever."
- Remainders: Barack Obama "now carries the heavy burden of command"; why does Jon Klein want to hurt America?; a side effect of anti-Muslim bigotry is the inability to comprehend proportional arithmetic; the GOP's $3,000 lie simply will not die; and more apostasy from Joseph Cao.
--Mori Dinauer
