Tag Archives: politics

Another Personal Observation On Privatized Highways Last month I posted a personal observation on Trump’s plan to privatize infrastructure, noting especially how in the long run privately owned turnpikes in Virginia ended up in government ownership.  In the comments on that post there was discussion of the Indiana Toll Road, privatized a few years ago.  I have just ridden on it (yesterday), and I shall recount as an anecdote datum my less than pleasant...

(Dan here…lifted and reposted) by Mike Kimel How Keynesian Policy Led Economic Growth In the New Deal Era: Three Simple Graphs November 22, 2011 In this post, I will show that during the New Deal era, changes in the real economic growth rate can be explained almost entirely by the earlier changes in federal government’s non-defense spending. There are going to be a lot of words at first – but if you’re the impatient type, feel free to jump ahead to the...

Steve Roth writes What is the secret to joining the rich country club at Evonomics: By Steve Roth There’s a curious fact about the wealth and growth of nations that you rarely see mentioned: No country has ever joined the modern, high-productivity, rich-country club without massive doses of redistribution, and universal government programs for social support and financial security. Not one. Ever. You can get a rough feel for the scale of those programs here...

by Dale Coberly DID MAYA MACGUINEAS of CRFB LIE on TIME magazine website OR WAS SHE JUST FOOLIN’ AND DID ANYONE NOTICE Maya MacGuineas is president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) which reliably confuses the Federal Budget with the Social Security program.   CRFB claims to want to cut government spending to balance the Budget,  but it spends most of its time arguing for the need to cut Social Security. Social Security is not funded...

The biggest lie coming out of the Senate today: “’One of the major problems with Obamacare was that it was written on a strict party-line basis and driven through Congress without a single Republican vote,’ McCain said. He added that Congress must now ‘hold hearings, receive input from members of both parties, and heed the recommendations of our nation’s governors.’” An African-American comes to be President and Republicans vow from day one to obstruct....

I stumbled on a recent paper in the Police Quarterly entitled “Quick on the Draw: Assessing the Relationship Between Low Self-Control and Officer-Involved Police Shootings.” The authors are Christopher M. Donner, Jon Maskaly, Alex R. Piquero, and Wesley G. Jennings from Loyola, U of Texas at Dallas, U of Texas at Dallas and U of South Florida, respectively. Quoting from the paper: While the extant literature on police use of deadly force is voluminous, it is...

PByrnes, The New Yorker, Wednesday, March 29 This appeared to fit what is going on today.

I’m not sure if this is worth posting here, but I have some thoughts on health care reform reform. The Republican arguments have become absurd in interesting ways. HHS secretary Price said something which makes no sense: “the Senate health care bill strengthens and secures Medicaid for the neediest in our society,” putting the program, which serves more than 70 million low-income people, on “a path to long-term sustainability.” Republicans regularly describe...

Trump: the endgame There was some economic news last week which is important for the long term, and I’ll try to post about it later today or tomorrow, but in the meantime … I’m as interested in the latest Trump-Russia tidbit as the next person, but really, don’t we all already know the endgame? Remember during the campaign, no matter what devastating gaffes Trump made, he always rebounded into the low 40%’s? Well, about the same thing has been true for the...

At least 40 Republican Senators and possibly the critical 50 have decided to stand up to the lobbyists, the interest groups and big business. They are willing to vote for the Cruz amended BCRA which would not just repeal Obamacare, but also destroy US individual market health insurance. If they do so, they stand up to many of the most powerful lobbies including the AMA and the AARP (but not the NRA or AIPAC). Most importantly, they reject the very firm...