The good stuff:
A Dean Baker takedown of Niall Ferguson.
Excellent substantive analysis of the farm bill fiasco from Jonathan Chait.
While Greg Sargent talks to Norm Ornstein about that fiasco.
Sarah Binder on the history of the Fed and the structure of the FOMC.
Ornstein, again, on contracting out government.
And I know I had this yesterday, but more detail from Reid Wilson:
Hotline Overlooked: Between 6/3, when Lautenberg died, and 6/22, when Feinstein turns 80, there are no octogenarians in the Senate. Last time the Senate was without an octogenarian: 1/3/81, when Sen. Milton Young retired, and 8/3/81, when John Stennis turned 80.
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The commercials with James Garner for Polaroid (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pt82z_GUCKw). I mean, cmon!
ReplyDeleteDean Baker's "Smackdown" has some serious problems. Just one example. He claims "The economy grew much more in the 1960s, the highpoint of liberal intervention. It was 51.6 percent larger in 1970 than in 1960"
ReplyDeleteThe high growth was real. But it's *easy* to grow when you are the undisputed economic juggernaut of the world, as the USA was for a couple of decades after WWII. The VW Beetle was popular, but there was no serious competition from Japan or China etc. OPEC didn't have much power until 1973.
I'm in favor of most of the environmental regulations, but they were largely inspired by the first Earth Day in 1970. There was a lot less regulation in the 60s than today, so it was definitely NOT a highpoint of liberal economic intervention.
Mariette Hartley rarely got a chance to really act, but when she did she was good, as in Sam Peckinpah's western, Ride the High Country.
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