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Via Kevin Drum, this is really the most amazing graphic I’ve ever seen: At any given time, significantly more than half of Americans think the government’s primary outlays are coming from food stamps and foreign aid. Meanwhile, back in reality-land, Americans spend $32 billion on food stamps and $7.4 billion on foreign aid, all this […]

From the WaPo’s recent poll: We’ve done an excellent job explaining that private accounts aren’t a solution to Social Security’s economic problems, now we need to broadcast how they’d worsen them. But while we have a task, Bush has a dilemma. His whole spiel on private accounts rests on convincing Americans of a crisis. But […]

I know this question is becoming trite, but what the hell is Friedman talking about? There will be a lot of trial and error in the months ahead. But this is a hugely important horizontal dialogue because if Iraqis can’t forge a social contract, it would suggest that no other Arab country can – since […]

Well this is nice to hear: Rep. Paul Ryan (R.-Wis.) was asked at a CATO conference in Washington yesterday whether he had persuaded any Democrats to back his plan to rescue Social Security from its financial troubles…A questioner from the audience, stressing his own Democratic credentials, said he believed Ryan’s plan should attract members of […]

It got basically no coverage yesterday (North Korea has nukes! Charles marrying Camilla! Not necessarily in that order!), but the Senate passed a significant class-action lawsuit bill. The legislation forces many class-action suits out of states and into federal courts, where judges (many, many, many of them appointed by Republicans, simply because they’ve held the […]

I am all about Kriston’s proposal for Pundit Kombat. Suggest appropriate match-ups in the comments.

I’ve not been particularly interested in the Cole/Goldberg slapfest (the only surprising thing was Cole wasting time on him, which seemed to me a defeat at the outset), but the argument over advocating war without fighting it is certainly worth engaging. Unfogged started it (read the comments too) and Yglesias picked it up, and now […]

As Brad notes, moving from wage-indexing to price-indexing would result in a huge benefits cut. Had someone retiring in 2005 chosen a price-indexing system, his benefits would be 60% less than his fellow retirees, and his gas bill would go unpaid. So we should certainly oppose it on those grounds. But one thing that I […]