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What do these have in common?

o The New York police department has for years been visiting services in mosques, all over the north east, taking notes, jotting down license plate numbers

o In Afghanistan we burn objectionable books, even the Koran

o And a sergeant walks down a rural street and murders 9 children and 7 adults probably mostly women

They all show that we hate Muslims.

 

Would Bloomberg and Kelley have staked out St. Patricks? Or a temple in Great Neck? The question answers itself.

 

Do the commanders understand that the democratic values we’re supposed to be demonstrating to the Afghans don’t include burning books?

  [Read more]

We Were Wrong About Obamacare

Many of us.  

It's commonplace to read here that Obamacare is flawed, could have been better, and we might be better off without it.

What Bernard Avishai says, correctly, is:

“If Obamacare is killed it will....cast doubt on whether Americans will ever be able to hold  their fears in check and summon the elementary decency toward the sick that characterizes other democracies.”

He says it in six pages of the Feb 12th  Nation while refuting what  some of the most thoughtful contributors here have said and still say about Obamacare.

What Avishai says is [Read more]

If you don't fix a problem , the problem doesn't get fixed

 

Dean Baker , Beat the Press Tuesday

                   The piece (in the Washington Post-Flavius) also includes a number of assertions that are unsupported by anything. For example, it tells readers: [Read more]

Saving yourself into depression

Here's an excerpt from Brad Delong, yesterday, writing something that stands common sense on its head: that cutting the deficit doesn't .... well cut the deficit :

Indeed, in less than a year, if current forecasts are correct, Britain’s Cameron-Osborne Depression will not merely be the worst depression in Britain since the Great Depression, but probably the worst depression in Britain…ever. [Read more]

That invisible hand's not holding a bandage

Sunday’s Times editorial page for the zillionth time puzzles over  why the US health care system is exceptional: exceptionally expensive without caring for us exceptionally well.

In 1963 the economist Kenneth Arrow said why. He published a paper on the medical care industry in the December issue of The American Economic Review. My google search didn’t turn up much in the way of a refutation. In 2009 an Atlantic interviewer seemed to feel the same way—neither he nor Arrow discussed any particularly trenchant critics. Perhaps because fairly soon after writing it, Arrow became at 51 the youngest winner of the Nobel Prize for economics. [Read more]

No comment needed

September 2006: [Read more]

Back to Obamacare

Some numbers about US medical costs came out this week.

o Last year the total was $2.6 trillion.  That's about $8,000 per person. [Read more]

Welcome to the welfare states of America

In 2007 there were 16.million of us below the poverty line. In 2010 that was 19 million. According to the Nation (the source of everything below), quoting the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities that would have been even  9.9 million higher   except for the Stimulus.

One of those stimulants was continuing the food stamp program which alone saved 4 million from poverty. In 2007 on any given day 26 million of us used them. Now  that’s 46 million.

Won’t be for long. By 2013 $11billion-about 20%- of the funding will disappear.

In 1996 there were about 13 million people receiving “welfare as we know it”. By 2008 that was 4 million.  60% of low income children had been on welfare. Last year, 20% [Read more]

Bruce and Articleman:help

Bruce: What do you think about the appointees to the NLRB?

Articleman: What do you think about the Supreme Court's involvement with respect to both the NLRB and the Consumer Protection Agency? 

As a layman, it seems to me this Senate's combination of the filibuster with its conversion of the consent requirement into a non-legislative block of presidential action is an attempt to fundamentally alter the division of powers. But what do I know?

In case you actually prefer facts

 From Dean Baker to Brad Delong to Flavius to you:

Social Security Is NOT Selling Government Bonds: In an article discussing the implications of the extension of the payroll tax cut, [Jia Lynn Yang of] the Washington Post told readers:

This year, the Social Security system projects that it will pay out $46 billion more in benefits than it will collect in cash. It made up for the shortfall by redeeming Treasury bonds bought in years when there were cash surpluses. [Read more]

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