Ezra Klein

This was written about a month ago, after I was commissioned to write an article on California’s dying Democrats only to find the meme had no truth but the LA Times had no scruples. I wrote this as an op-ed for the Times but they, unsurprisingly, passed. A few days ago, a friend mentioned the […]

As Brad Plumer rightly notes, that whole “the era of big government is over” idea is being quickly supplanted by the era of “I kinda like big government and respectfully ask for more”. The number of Republicans viewing government as “almost always wasteful and inefficient” has fallen from 74% in the early 90’s to fewer […]

Brad Plumer did a nice job of smacking down an errant peer yesterday: On Sunday, the Washington Post got Laura Thomas, a twenty-something writer, to ponder the future of Social Security. The verdict? “People my age are as likely to believe in Social Security as they are in Santa Claus.” Fair enough, but fortunately for […]

Robert Farley asks an interesting question on farm subsidies, namely, if the reason liberals are so quick to line up against them (in violation of our traditional affection for subsidies) because we don’t like the rural farmers who vote against our candidates and perpetuate Republican rule. The question is fair, I think, but the answer […]

Brooks’s latest column is so, ugh, Brooksian. Billed as a short history of Deanism, it tries and fails to connect Howard Dean to the breakdown of fraternal orders. Or something. I’m really not sure, but I do know that PZ Myers did an excellent job gutting it: Ooh, there [Brooks] goes, treating some nice words […]

Sam Rosenfeld has a very persuasive rebuttal to my recent post on Bush’s farm subsidies. You should read it. I should add, by the way, that I agree with him, but my post was less about the President’s conviction in supporting subsidy reform and more about the total lack of conviction that publicly supporting it […]

In context of a post on post-war Japan, Steve Clemons writes: Bush needs to be careful of trumpeting too much about our experience democratizing Japan — as we were frequently on the side of the anti-democrats. To some degree, Japan democratized despite our promotion of a profound model of structural corruption there — and the […]

I probably shouldn’t admit this, but the Linkin Park/Jay-Z mashups are really much better than they have any right to be. Every time I listen to Numb/Encore I either have to write a polemic or punch someone in the face. Fear of jail time is probably going to mean more posting this week.

The iconography of dissent.

WaPo calls bullshit on the President’s budget: The spending plan does not include future expenses of the continuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, nor does it include upfront transition costs of restructuring Social Security as Bush has proposed. The administration will submit a separate supplemental request largely for Afghanistan and Iraq operations in the current […]