Ezra Klein

Someone at SNL deserves a raise.

Over at Tapped, Mark Schmitt makes the partisan case against earmarks: For the moment, Republicans are far more dependent than Democrats on their ability to take some credit for federally funded projects. In the world with earmarks, Lindsay Graham is able to stand against the president on stimulus, on the budget, on Iraq, on health […]

Ron Brownstein moderated a discussion between SEIUs Andy Stern and AHIP’s Karen Ignani — so, between unions and the insurance industry — last week and came back enthused over the possibility of reform. The basics of the deal they sketched out are familiar to readers of this blog. AHIP is willing offer everyone insurance, no […]

Marty Peretz, along with a handful of associated investors, will be buying The New Republic back from the now-bankrupt CanWest. I think I’m supposed to lay down some snark here, but eh: Marty will be Marty, and I’m glad that TNR will survive. Peretz and his young familiar don’t nearly outweigh the good work that […]

My heart actually went out to David Axelrod after this bit from Jeff Zeleny’s profile: Mr. Axelrod took a seat in his living room, with the Washington Monument visible in the distance, and asked how the president’s proposals were being received in the country. He went around the room, calling on a cluster of strategists […]

A smart reader sent in this e-mail sketching out the practical difficulties that nationalization would entail. I should say that I don’t really have a firm opinion on whether we should nationalize: The specifics of the process are a bit beyond where I feel comfortable drawing conclusions. The experts who’ve been most prescient seem generally […]

Obama’s budget contains, among other things, a pretty simple trade off. Higher taxes on the rich get you guaranteed access to affordable health care among the poor. The objection to this has been pretty simple: Raising taxes on the rich will retard job creation. Why, Mr. Obama, do you hate jobs? But it’s pretty well […]

So long as we’re discussing Chas Freeman, it’s worth clearing up this dispute between Andrew Sullivan and Jamie Kirchick. Sullivan links to a speech Freeman gave in October of 2006 and quotes Freeman saying, “Tragically, despite all the advantages and opportunities Israel has had over the fifty-nine years of its existence, it has failed to […]

Brookings’ Thomas Mann is tired of the diversionary fracas surrounding earmarks: Earmarks constitute less than 1 percent of the federal budget. In most cases, they don’t add to federal expenditures but merely allow Congress to direct a small fraction of program funding that would otherwise be allocated by formula or grant competition. Abolishing all earmarks […]

This, from Kevin Drum, seems fundamentally correct: As for the cost of all this, we might as well suck it up. We’re way beyond the point of thinking we’ll get out of this mess without spending a trainload of taxpayer dough one way or another. This debacle is going to cost us hundreds of billions […]