Liberal Talk Radio

Links Mentioned: the electric trolleys … Diplomacy and Iran … torture in the regime … McChrystal’s leaked memo

Dick Cheney has gone through great lengths over the past few years to de-classify CIA documents in an effort to prove that torture and general CIA law-breaking were the best (nay, only!) way to stop terrorists. And yet while Cheney has come up basically empty-handed, proof-wise, the FBI seems to be racking up the arrests [...]

Detroit Free Press has an interesting analysis of Cash for Clunkers.  Unlike the government’s own analyisis, which did not aggregate sales data across 2x and 4x models, the Freep totalled the sales numbers for all types of vehicles together. Among the findings: * Trucks, including that paragon of fuel efficiency, the Chevy Silverado (14 mpg [...]

Links Mentioned: the Baucus Bill and exchanges … tariffs and unions … the USITC … Green Revolution.

“MontyWanker” wants to see historical unemployment rates by education level, noting, “the anecdotal evidence suggests that this recession was a lot tougher on white collar college-educated workers.” S/he’s right. It is useless without context. Fortunately, the BLS can provide! Below is a sampling of the unemployment rate in August of each year, going back to [...]

If you don’t want to give illegal immigrants subsidies to buy health insurance, fine. But if they come with their own money, why not let them? They’ll keep the costs down for the rest of us (they tend to be younger and healthier than the population as a whole), and it’ll make it less attractive [...]

Central District News has an update on the Drug Market Initiative that we discussed on a recent podcast: Overall, eleven participants are still in the program and have avoided further issues with law enforcement. Here’s how they break out: Two are currently in drug treatment to work on addiction issues that they previously supported through [...]

Links Mentioned: Nocera on Lehman Brothers WaPo on the new finance industry proposals Details on the Geithner Plan

I was having a conversation sometime ago about the merits of implementing an old-school, WPA-style jobs program for the current recession. There was some concern that such a program might not work in 2009 because, unlike 1933, the population is much more educated and can’t be put to as productive use doing manual-labor-type work. Matt [...]

I have to admit, as a founding member of the reality-based community, I’ve been a little burned out on right-wing nut jobs lately.  What with the Birthers, the Obama-as-Joker posters (what the h*** is up with those?), and a certain gubernatorial abdication*, there’s not a lot more my shattered hope for the American polity can [...]