I’ve been on leave writing a book about the stimulus, so I’ve let others judge the Pants-on-Fire ads and Four-Pinocchio attacks and Solyndra-related nonsense that Republicans have been peddling about the stimulus. It’s …
I’m on leave writing a book about my beloved stimulus, but when I heard about Rick Santorum’s big finish in Iowa, it reminded me: Didn’t someone advise Swampland readers to invest in Santorum back in May when Intrade was giving him a 0.5% chance to win the nomination, because “that’s going to rise as the campaign starts heating up in …
Monetary policy is dull, so the Republican Party’s bizarre advocacy of job-killing tight-money policies during a jobs crisis hasn’t gotten much attention. But political food fights are exciting, so today’s letter from GOP leaders pressuring Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke not to approve more monetary stimulus is likely to get a lot …
Washington “scandals” have a predictable rhythm, and the Solyndra solar loan “scandal” has entered the phase where critics start exploiting the controversy to push their ideological agenda.
It will not surprise my loyal fans—Hey, Dad!—that I like President Obama’s jobs bill. It’s a second stimulus, and when I haven’t been flacking the first, I’ve been kvetching for more. When unemployment is 9% and federal borrowing is practically free, it’s time to pay construction workers who need jobs to fix schools that …
I doubt the facts are going to matter much now that Republicans have latched onto the Solyndra solar “scandal,” and even if they did matter, I’d be the wrong guy to defend the Obama administration (and some of the world’s top venture capitalists) for making the same honest mistake I made. After a few dozen Solyndra hearings like …
Governor Rick “Galileo” Perry declared at the Reagan Library last night that President Obama and his 2009 stimulus have “proven once and for all that government spending will not create one job.” Actually, in the last …
Nobody’s going to notice this, because nobody’s going bankrupt, but the Obama administration just approved a conditional commitment for the largest residential solar project in history, an effort to install photovoltaic panels on up to 160,000 rooftops at 124 military bases in 33 states. With its $344 million federal loan guarantee, …
My lefty friends have been asking me: If I think President Obama has been so great for the earth, and I think his enviro critics are ungrateful whiners, then how do I defend his capitulation to industry on new smog regulations? And the answer is…I don’t. He ignored the science, threw the EPA under the bus, and double-crossed green …
Republicans are already dancing on the grave of Solyndra, the solar panel manufacturer that received a $535 million federal loan in 2009 and collapsed on Wednesday. Here’s more music they can dance to: Sources tell me the Obama …
Well, I guess the reports of the solar manufacturer Solyndra’s death weren’t so exaggerated after all. Just a few months premature.
Solyndra declared bankruptcy on Wednesday and laid off its 1,100 employees. I’ll have more to say about this after I chat with the smooth-talkers who got me to report in June that Solyndra “no longer …
Texas governor and GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry still knows about as much about monetary policy as Sarah Palin knows about American history—or, for that matter, about monetary policy—but maybe there was a glimmer of …
There’s a tired fight raging in Washington between anti-government people who want spending cuts and pro-government people who don’t. Here’s a crazy thought: Maybe we should spend more on good things and less on dumb things. I’m in the pro-government camp, but I’d be thrilled to eliminate almost all of the $380 billion worth of …
