All Life Is Problem Solving

Congratulations to Professor Stephanie Kelton at UMKC for giving us a new addition to the deficit aviary. Until now the media only had mind space for “deficit hawks” and “deficit doves.” Deficit hawks include folks like Mike Pence, and Judd Gregg, who insist that the Government run deficits only for wars, and tax cuts for […]

[Read more →]

In my previous three posts analyzing the June 26th AmericaSpeaks Community Conversation event I attended in Falls Church, VA, I presented the steps in the decision process used for the event, and discussed the pre-conference phase and the first four steps. These reflect a strong and consistent bias toward socializing participants into the idea that […]

[Read more →]

This one is a deconstruction of a piece in the Detroit Free Press by a gentleman in the MSM who’s decided to join the Peter G. Peterson/Catfood Commission echo chamber. (My thanks to Sisterkenney for calling it to my attention.)

[Read more →]

We’ll see many policy analyses and evaluations of Nancy Pelosi’s compromise health care reform bill as it gets closer to a final vote. This one won’t be thorough, since the bill is one of daunting length (1990 pages) and complexity, and I haven’t had the time to do a really detailed analysis. But I’ll do […]

[Read more →]

Chris Matthews asks: “What happened to the Obama message machine.” And Dee Dee Myers and Tony Blankley dutiful provide various off the mark answers about fear and insecurity. But, also, it’s clear to all three that Obama’s message on health care doesn’t have the same clarity as his message during the campaign, and they attribute […]

[Read more →]

This post is a comment on an exchange with Jason Rosenbaum appearing as replies to ralphbon’s blog post entitled “Seniors Already Have A Public Option. Does It Keep Private Insurers Honest?” Here is the exchange: LetsGetItDone: “ralphbon, Thanks for a very good analysis. Jason, in view of Paul Krugman’s recent analysis of the health insurance […]

[Read more →]

Last night, it occurred to me that the public option idea is a disingenuous approach to health care reform. Here’s the argument. Talking to other progressives, I’ve noticed that they all freely say that single payer will work better than a public option, and that it is the best alternative they know. And then they […]

[Read more →]

WaPo op eds are getting increasingly irritating with the passage of time. Yesterday, this formerly great American newspaper in free fall ran an article by Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie called “What’s Next Mr. President – Cardigans?”  Welch and Gillespie think that Obama’s less than stellar results thus far suggest that he may be reviewing […]

[Read more →]

For a long time now, progressives have been looking for lines in the sand. They’ve been trying to get progressive members of Congress to commit to vote no on any health care reform bill that doesn’t include a robust public option, and they’ve also been after the President to clearly state his unwillingness to sign […]

[Read more →]

I’ve written in the past on the counter-productiveness of bipartisanship for the President and the Democratic Party. Today, Nancy Cohen offered a nice analytical Huffington Post piece on bipartisanship that adds to the argument. She says: ”The supposed superiority of “bipartisanship” to “partisanship” is premised on three myths about the relationship between the people and […]

[Read more →]