It’s been amusing to see the Republican base recognize that they’ve been had in this election, their money stolen by big-talking operatives. I think Rick Perlstein put it best in his story in The Baffler that conservatism has become an elaborate mail-order scam, directed at the target demographic for such scams, gullible seniors. When the [...]

I touched on this yesterday, but let’s take a closer look at John Boehner’s opening offer on revenue, designed to avoid the fiscal slope (it’s not a cliff). I think it will become familiar to you if you look at the exact language. For the purposes of forging a bipartisan agreement that begins to solve [...]

To those of us who follow policy on a daily basis rather than following POLITICS when peer pressure demands it of us, watching the spectacle of the last week before an election has become like the period where frat boys started coming to Nirvana concerts. It’s the same, but also completely corrupted and sad. And those of us with that awareness know that the major result of this election will be maneuvering on fiscal policy, the content of which was virtually non-existent in the campaign.

Implicit in Mitt Romney’s closing argument for the election is the idea that only he can stop House Republicans from destroying the economy: “Unless we change course, we may well be looking at another recession,” Romney told a crowd in West Allis, Wisconsin. Romney said that Obama “promised to be a post-partisan president, but he [...]

Mitt Romney’s latest play for Ohio – which remains the touchstone of the entire election, desperate plays for Minnesota and Pennsylvania aside – apparently involves straight-up lying about the intentions of Chrysler to “build Jeeps in China,” to the extent that Jeep factory employees are calling their managers wondering if they still have a job. [...]

Whatever the failings of political leadership on both sides of the aisle, there’s still a residual belief in the validity of government on the Democratic side that simply does not exist on the Republican side. In times like this, where the effects of FIRE sector lobbying doesn’t come into play, you see that difference in the proper role of government shine through. In order for this to become definitive, however, all government programs have to show the same diligence and dedication. One program like HAMP can wipe out years of proper actions in organizations like FEMA.

Just as a reminder of how captured our government has become, President Obama has embarrassingly floated the prospect of a Secretary of Business for his second term. First of all, we already have a Secretary of Commerce, which is pretty much an irrelevant federal agency. So much so, in fact, that the President has proposed [...]

There’s an election to win, particularly in wind-rich states like Iowa and Colorado, and so now the Republican standard-bearer has changed his position on allowing the wind energy production tax credit to phase out. The tax break subsidizes wind power by 2.2 cents a kilowatt hour to bring its cost closer to that of conventional [...]

Emergency management is a critical federal program, if for no other reason than because of budget constraints. If states were expected to assume the full costs of emergency management, because they are bound by balanced budget rules, the money would have to come out of education or health care or some other public service. But [...]

Medicaid spending slowed down in 2012 and similar slowing is expected for 2013. However, it’s being accomplished through precisely the same program that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan endorse for the program – by effectively taking beneficiaries off the rolls. The data comes from the respected Kaiser Family Foundation, and their annual survey of all [...]

The United Nations special rapporteur for counterterrorism will lead an inquiry into civilian deaths from US drone strikes around the world, to determine whether the strikes violate international human rights and humanitarian laws. The announcement was made by Ben Emmerson QC, a UN special rapporteur, in a speech to Harvard law school in which he [...]