1. Indifference to human suffering a. Conservatives are indifferent, which takes two forms: The soft version – Life is unfair. Get over it. The hard version – If people are suffering, it’s their own damn fault. b. Liberals are not indifferent to human suffering Yes, life is unfair. That’s why we should do something to […]
If I were to look for any kind of bright spot to come out of the recent economic turmoil, it would be that just about every economic assumption of the past century has been questioned, debated, and defended in just the last few months. It’s been quite something to read and watch libertarians all the […]
So David Brooks puts our recent economic history this way: A few years ago, the global economic culture began swaying. The government enabled people to buy homes they couldn’t afford. The Fed provided easy money. The Chinese sloshed in oceans of capital. The giddy upward sway produced a crushing ride down. Basically it’s the standard […]
Has it really been since November since I last posted? Well, time to fix that. I’ve spent a lot of time in the last months getting up to speed on the economic crisis. You’ll see a lot of that come out over time.
I’ve written before that one of the defining characteristics of liberals is that they take the role of luck in our lives seriously. Even with hard work, some people experience bad luck or bad timing. With an equivalent amount of hard work, some people just catch some breaks. Check out this post in which three […]
John Podesta is a co-chairman of Barack Obama’s transition team and the president and chief executive officer of the Center for American Progress, one of liberalism’s most effective organizations. He also has written a great book outlining liberalism/progressivism itself – The Power of Progress. I’m about half way through it. I’ve read a lot of […]
Dean Baker has a great piece over at TPMCafe connecting the (so far nonexistent) auto industry bailout to the economies of the Great Lakes States. He only mentions Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana, but Illinois, Wisconsin, etc. are not immune.
And I don’t mean the famous political strategy of Kevin Phillips. No, I’m talking about overseas automakers. One reason Detroit’s automakers have had such trouble with their bailout is they have an opposing constituency among southern politicians. It’s something the Wall Street Journal wrote about today. Overseas automakers have mostly invested in southern states, largely […]
Just a quick note about the election, now that Missouri’s vote has come in, and we have the entire electoral map in place… I’m a much bigger fan of maps that show the true purpleness of the country (scroll down to the bottom). But at the electoral college level, it’s still great to see what […]
Yesterday, I said: By the way, I’d also like to see us fold all of the money we spend on the military protecting our Middle East “interests” – that is, oil supplies – into the gas tax. That’s pure rational accounting, baby. But that’s a different post. Well, this post still isn’t about what the […]
Bill Poorman 