Did you know that the federal government spends more money on welfare than it does on Social Security, or Medicare, or the military? Me neither, perhaps because it isn’t true. It’s the kind of hooey that the crankier, less-informed sort of conservative is all too ready to believe. Yet the highest-ranking Republican on the Senate budget committee has lately been spreading this meme, and a variation is included in Representative Paul Ryan’s proposed budget. READ MORE >>
Political Science in the Crosshairs
Republicans defund academic studies whose lessons they don't want to learn
On March 20 the Senate de-funded political science grants from the National Science Foundation “except for research projects that the Director of the National Science Foundation certifies as promoting national security or the economic interests of the United States.” Since political science research, like most scientific research, is seldom undertaken to promote national security or the economic interests of the U.S., it seems doubtful there will be many such exceptions. READ MORE >>
Harry Reid Reaps What He Sowed
The failure to reform the filibuster is already taking a toll
In January, at the start of the current Senate session, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid reached a compromise with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on filibusters. I won’t even bother explaining how it worked because it was so obviously worthless, just as the compromise the two reached two years earlier was worthless. How do I know it was worthless? READ MORE >>
“There is a statue outside the Department of Labor,” David Brooks writes today in his New York Times column, "of a powerful, rambunctious horse being reined in by an extremely muscular man. This used to be a metaphor for liberalism. The horse was capitalism. The man was government, which was needed sometimes to restrain capitalism’s excesses." READ MORE >>
Every now and then conservatives play against type. George Will, Peggy Noonan, and Senator David Vitter want to break up the big banks. So does Sandy Weill, the former chairman of Citigroup. READ MORE >>
The World According To Dick Cheney, a documentary that airs March 15 on Showtime, includes so fine an acoustical solo performance by its subject that it could be titled Dick Cheney Unplugged. Listening to Cheney’s quiet, calm voice, Nicholas Lemann observed a dozen years ago in the New Yorker, was like READ MORE >>
Facing the Facts Doesn't Always Change Minds
A new study on inequality shows that knowledge doesn't move the needle—with one exception
If Americans weren’t such ignoramuses, what would they think about income redistribution? I’m putting it a bit more rudely, but that’s basically the question addressed in a new study (“How Elastic Are Preferences For Redistribution? Evidence From Randomized Survey Experiments”) by Ilyana Kuziemko of Columbia's graduate school of business; Michael I. READ MORE >>
This is a weird moment in American politics. The sequester has just chopped $43 billion out of this year's defense budget and Republicans are pretending not to care. READ MORE >>
You can be president of the United States and have the best, most bipartisan-seeming idea in the world. But if it doesn’t have a constituency, you might as well be town clerk of Toad Suck, Arkansas. This is the sad lesson of President Barack Obama’s boldest attempt to control the cost of college education, which has been rising inexorably for a decade. READ MORE >>
John Boehner's Kiss of Death
Why the House Republicans are so efficient at cleaning up their scandals
Tom Hagen: The Roman Empire … when a plot against the Emperor failed, the plotters were always given a chance to let their families keep their fortunes.Frankie Pentangeli: Yeah, but only the rich guys. The little guys got knocked off. If they got arrested and executed, all their estate went to the Emperor. If they just went home and killed themselves, up front, nothing happened.Hagen: Yeah, that was a good break. A nice deal. READ MORE >>
