PROFESSOR JACOBSON: “Looks like I’m onto something if J. Bradford DeLong is on the case.”
Archive for September, 2012
September 30, 2012
COMPETENCE: The Hill: McCain calls Obama ‘inept’ and ‘ignorant’ in reaction to Libya attack. He might have added “dishonest,” but I suppose he was trying to show a modicum of courtesy.
PHARMACEUTICALS IN GREECE: “Greece’s state-administered healthcare system operates only 10 pharmacies that dispense pre-paid mood stabilizers and other medications. The country’s approximately 9,000 privately owned pharmacies demand cash that customers can recoup from the government insurance fund. Neither scheme works. The reason, of course, is money. There is none.”
GWEN IFILL PREEMPTS THE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE:
Sure sign that President Obama’s media cheerleaders are worried about his upcoming debate performance? Four days before the first debate, Gwen Ifill of PBS has an op-ed in The Washington Post downplaying the importance of . . . debates. Or, as she puts it, “debunk[ing] five myths about presidential debates.”
Myth Number One: “Voters use debates to decide.”
As Ms. Ifill explains, “Gallup polls going back decades show precious little shift in established voter trends before and after debates.”
And yet Ifill was certainly eager to moderate one in 2008, despite having a pro-Obama book already scheduled for publication early the next year.
DON DRAPER HAS LEFT THE BUILDING: “Meet Ukrainian model Stav Strashko, the new face of Toyota’s Auris in Japan. You’re thinking, ‘….what did I just see?’”
I’m not sure what message Toyota is trying to send about their new car, but…dude. (No really.)
(Via Michael Malone.)
JERRY BROWN SIGNS CALIFORNIA TV, FILM TAX CREDIT EXTENSION:
California Gov. Jerry Brown on Sunday signed legislation extending the state’s $100 million tax-credit fund for two more years.
The measure allows California producers a 20 percent or 25 percent credit against income and sales and use taxes.
Two nearly identical measures, AB 2026 from Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes and SB 1197 from state Sen. Ron Calderon, were sent to the governor’s desk on the final day of the legislative session. With their passage, the California Film Commission can continue to allocate tax credits through and including the 2016-17 fiscal year.
Two observations: 1. Jerry Brown finally discovers the Laffer Curve! (And then promptly forgets it for the rest of California.)
2. Repeal the Hollywood Tax Cuts! (To coin a phrase.)
WE ARE GIVING DRONES TO THE PEOPLE IN CHARGE OF YEMEN: What could possibly go wrong?
GLOBAL DIAPER SHORTAGE: At least according to the Telegraph. Rare metals, medicines, bacon… now diapers? It’s the end of civilization.
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: WaPo Attacks: BenghaziGate? “Evidence is growing that the death of four American officials in Benghazi, including a charismatic and talented ambassador, came at a time when appropriate security procedures and precautions were not being taken. That at least is the burden of this story in the Washington Post, a story that few in the White House will enjoy reading. . . . There was a failure to connect the dots: the deterioration of the security situation in eastern Libya was marked and ongoing, and the liaison office in Benghazi was exactly the kind of soft, prominent target that would draw the wrong kind of attention. And while all the facts aren’t in, one gets a persistent sense that the bad guys knew entirely too much about what was going on there. The press has started digging now, and it won’t stop until it reaches bottom. The problem for the administration is that the hole keeps getting deeper, and we don’t seem to have touched bottom yet.”
This won’t help Hillary’s chances in 2016. Or Obama’s in 2012.
“LEAVE THE KIDS ALONE.” Justice Scalia not on board with my revolving-door tax on government officials. But I’m sticking to my guns on this one.
WHY IS JOE SCARBOROUGH IGNORING OBAMA’S LIBYA SCANDAL? That’s the question John Nolte asks at Big Journalism.
Love the photo illustrating the article.
LOWER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: “We get almost no return for our education ‘investment.’”
FAST AND FURIOUS BACK IN THE HEADLINES: Univision reportedly finds more victims.
CHANGE: When it costs more to be poor – Fed and government shifting inflation onto rent, medical care, and food. QE3 to widen the gap between the poor and the wealthy. “Inflation has been picking up since the recession ended in 2009. The problem with the CPI increasing year over year with no rise in household incomes is that the standard of living for most Americans erodes every year that incomes do not keep up. Household incomes are back to levels last seen in the mid-1990s while the cost of necessities has gone up. . . . Even a one percent rate of inflation is troubling if incomes are stagnant or falling. Since the recession has ended inflation has occurred even as measured by the CPI. Over this same timeframe, household incomes have remained stagnant and household net worth has fallen close to 40 percent. Yet there is something more troubling in the actual data. The inflation rate is actually being understated because Americans have shifted consumption from non-essential goods to actually seeing inflation in things that they actually need.”
21ST CENTURY WORKPLACES: The Problem of Raunchy Lesbian Co-Workers.
TODAY IS GOLD STAR FAMILY DAY. Notably, it’s also the day our Afghanistan troop death toll has reached 2000.
HOW WOMEN made porn fashionable.
JOE SCARBOROUGH’S STOCKHOLM SYNDROME: Scott Johnson of Power Line on Scarborough and the company he keeps at MSNBC, clearly setting the stage for the long-awaited Scarborough/Reynolds 2016 showdown:
Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough hangs around with a bad crowd at MSNBC, and it has had the predictable Stockholm Syndrome effect, as David Brooks’s tenure at the New York Time has had on him. In the infamous video below, Scarborough histrionically condemns Mitt Romney based on a misleading account of the Romney/Ryan campaign appearance outside Dayton last week. The Blaze picked it up here.
“I think Joe Scarborough is less a perpetrator than a victim in this matter,” Johnson adds. “He is a victim of MSNBC’s own shoddy partisanship and propaganda. He hangs around with a bad crowd. He wants to be liked.”
Joe may want to be liked by more than just the immediate gang at MSNBC. Knowing the Obama White House is watching your show — and ready to pounce with an email or two helpfully suggesting “corrections” while a segment is on the air also has a way of focusing the mind…
MICHAEL BARONE: When It Comes To Polls, Readers Beware.
Scott Rasmussen: Yes, Dems likely have 2-4 point advantage in November.
PROF. JACOBSON: How did Elizabeth Warren go from “not eligible” to “inactive” in Texas? (Update – As of 9/21/2012, Warren’s Texas license was on Administrative Suspension?) “Sometime by or on Monday, September 24, Warren’s status was changed to ‘inactive’ and other information was removed from Warren’s Texas Bar page. On Monday I’ll try to find out how and why.”
Pinterest: cupcake recipes, nail art, tips on weddings, motivational posters and… a tool of law enforcement.
FISTS OF FURY! Great moments in Drudge juxtapositions. (Story links here, incidentally.)
IN THE MAIL: From Rudy Rucker, Jim and the Flims.
A REFLECTION ON PUNCH SULZBERGER, who died yesterday, from my Wisconsin Law School colleague Nina Camic, who was “an au pair to his little girl” in the 1960s: “I came [from Warsaw] with barely a flight bag full of clothes and possessions and joined a household that had a staff of helpers and an extended family of cousins, aunts, nephews — all intensely close, bonded in ways that history sometimes bonds people because of unusual circumstances.”