So I open up The New York Times this morning to find heartening news from op-ed columnist Timothy Egan:
There is a very simple way to make Medicare whole through the end of this century, far less complicated, and more of a bargain in the long run than the bizarre Ryan plan.
That’s a relief!
In his post today, Mike Grunwald bravely admits that “regulation is tricky” and “I’m not entirely sure what I think about these problems.”
Here’s one way to think about: As a general rule, regulations that require large numbers of fallible human government employees to ferret out wrongdoing are destined not to work very well.
Revolving-door scandals like this one are a reminder that the housing and financial meltdowns of 2008 — not to mention the BP gulf oil spill and West Virginia’s Massey mine disaster — should have launched a great debate over how to regulate. Unfortunately, because one of our great political parties is having an intellectual meltdown, …
As Washington debates Medicare, taxes, deficits and the future of the budget, it’s become a cliché to say that Americans like big government but don’t like to pay for it. Most clichés are true. And as the swollen Mississippi River barrels south toward New Orleans, you can see a stark example of that in the city’s flood protection.
President Obama’s high-speed rail program has taken a lot of abuse because it isn’t just funding true high-speed rail; it’s also accelerating and improving service on moderate-speed trains. OK, guilty as charged. The program’s actual name is “High-Speed and Intercity Passenger Rail.” And now that Obama has redistributed the …
David Streitfeld of The New York Times is a terrific reporter (just ask Joe Klein). For several years now, he has done terrific work on the slow and painful collapse of the housing bubble. This piece, which leads the Times today, strikes me as good news—even though it is going to cause some heartache for folks trying to buy and sell in …
I agree with Les Gelb’s assessment that we can be out of most combat operations in Afghanistan by the beginning of 2013. (In fact, I made a similar proposal last January.) Here’s how it would work:
If you think that Snooki has relationship problems because of overly strict drinking laws, or that the Bernie Madoff story is a cautionary tale about overly intrusive financial regulation, you’re probably a Florida politician. Because the geniuses who run the state have decided that its economic distress is the result of overly strict …
On Monday, I temporarily suspended my longstanding jihad against the Army Corps of Engineers to defend the agency’s controversial decision to blow up a Mississippi River levee and flood 130,000 acres of Missouri farmland. The …
I’m torn between basic human curiosity, journalistic voyeurism…and my better angels, which tell me that any death photos of Osama bin Laden will make life more dangerous for the thousands of American soldiers and diplomats, as well as untold numbers of private citizens, both businesspeople and tourists, who spend time in iffy places overseas.
I imagine most writers have made the mistake of falling in love with an analogy and stretching it way past the breaking point. A sportswriter I knew long ago went on for several paragraphs comparing a man’s face to the map of Florida. I know I’ve committed this felony plenty of times. In fact, Mickey Kaus once did me the bracing …
I am sitting here watching Congressman Peter King lie through his teeth on CNN about the role of torture in the capture and death of Osama bin Laden. King is insisting that the initial information about the Bin Laden couriers …
