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Psst: wanna buy a Grand Bargain?

By Flavius on Thu, 11/24/2011 - 12:46am |

On NPR tonight, commentators were saying the $40 billion cut back in the Department of Defense's 2013 budget would require the planning to start soon. Wrong. It will  require immediate actions. Like cancelling contracts next month.

To save $40 billion in 2013 the DOD has got to not buy things. Those not-bought things will be things that were supposed to have been built either under contracts already signed or ones in the late stages of procurement

Thank you, Patti Murray

By Flavius on Tue, 11/22/2011 - 1:00am |

And maybe the whole Supercommittee was a clever TeamObama plan.

That's contrary to Occam's razor but hey who says Occam's so great?

The outcome of the whole affair is that Obama holds a slightly better hand today because the Republicans can't abide the idea of a $400Bn DOD cut. 

Not because of patriotism, forget that. But because DOD cuts means a loss of jobs. And you can believe there'll be jobs in every  key district. Because as presumably nearly every one here  knows, that's how Govt procurement works.

Three important early electoral wins

By Flavius on Tue, 11/08/2011 - 11:33pm |

Ohio repealed the anti union law by a margin of more than 20 points

Mississippi defeated the "personhood" law which would have banned abortions

Maine defeated the law attempting to prevent same day registration

How many economists can dance on the head of a......

By Flavius on Tue, 11/08/2011 - 9:43am |

 

Brad Delong leads today with a piece in which he says that Felix Salmon says, the David Leonhardt says Timothy Geithner says  that ......you get the idea.Here's an excerpt

DELONG STARTS HERE

Felix Salmon writes:

Oh well who needs Opera on NPR?

By Flavius on Mon, 11/07/2011 - 3:48pm |

 Eric Alterman the Nov 14th Nation

 

" Lisa Simeone was..the host of Soundprint, ....produced  independently ...and World of Opera,produced by SDAV, a classical-music ...station-both of which aired nationally  on NPR stations. Simeone is not a network employee but when NPR....discovered ..Simeone ...was part of the steering comittee for a protest group similar to Occupy ,,,,,,Simeone [was] fired.  ....World of Opera-who...refused to fire her got booted off NPR's schedule." .............................Mara Liaason is a paid pundit for Fox's news channel

A realistic trade policy: none

By Flavius on Fri, 11/04/2011 - 5:08am |

I spent some time tonight being educated in the cruel changes being planned in New York's care for the developmentally disabled.

While thinking of two apparently unrelated things: Greece and 1992 Democratic primaries.

Trade policy was an issue in 92. In particular, NAFTA ... Paul Tsongas, I think—but whoever said it was voicing the consensus—said essentially that whatever we might have wished  the rest of the world is forming trade blocs, and if we don't join Nafta, we'll be left out.

That was then. 2011 marks the unforming of one those trade blocs as 'the rest of the world' is learning that Greece doesn't belong in the Eurozone. And is there any reason to believe that it's the only country of which that's true?

They were for it before they were against it

By Flavius on Fri, 10/28/2011 - 9:00am |

When it suited their purposes  the Koch Bros  touted the benefits of social security. 

As described in the Oct 17th Nation , in 1973 Charles Koch wanted to hire Friedrich Hayek (Road to Serfdom).  He ,sensibly, afraid of giving up the benefits of Austria's health and retirement programs, turned Koch down. Koch's operatives responded  by trying to convince Hayek of the virtues of  social security  and Medicare.

Duncan Black to Brad Delong to you

By Flavius on Mon, 10/10/2011 - 10:00am |

Brad Delong tries to answer Black's question of why Obama has been maundering on about the long run deficit when that is not only not the problem but when pretending it is the problem makes it less likely that we'll fix the problem.

 

Delong's best effort was to try and guess at what team Obama thought and it looked like this.

Coulda,shoulda , woulda

By Flavius on Sat, 10/08/2011 - 10:02pm |

 

Ezra Klein thinks Obama could have handled the financial crisis better.

He says so in many thousands of words

If Romer, Summers et al had read their R& R (Reinhart and Rogoff),starved all other initiatives and rifle shot at a go-for- broke stimulus maybe unemployment would be 7% today instead of 9% (my words , not Klein's or RR's)

And pigs could fly.

Red Planet to the rescue

By Flavius on Fri, 10/07/2011 - 3:56pm |

of my understandably unread blog on marginal tax rates. (Yawn)

1952: tax table  Adjusted for Inflation

 

Marginal Tax Rate: 

22.2% up to $16.9K

24.6% up to $33.9K

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