Liberal Talk Radio

The podcast is going to be 24 hours behind schedule this week, folks. A painting project at my house got out of hand and suddenly the day was over.
It was sort of like the Iraq war, really. I went in all optimistic, assuming that the walls would greet my wife and I as [...]

The Mayor’s office announces:
SEATTLE – Today Mayor Mike McGinn announced that outgoing Office of Sustainability and Environment Director Michael Mann will work with the McGinn administration to craft a plan for a public-private partnership to lead the economic recovery through a retrofit agenda in Seattle.
Word is that Mann’s first effort will be to commission a [...]

Following up on my own post from yesterday, here’re my quick thoughts on the President’s State of the Union address last night.

In general, I thought the speech was solid — rhetorically, not a masterpiece, but it accomplished what it needed to.  I was most impressed by the President’s solid instinct to generally avoid the rhetorical [...]

Before I dive headfirst into the myriad pre-game coverage of tonight’s State of the Union, I want to take a moment to talk about a few things that I’d like to see … admittedly, the POTUS seems to have lost my cell phone number in the last few months, but I’m told he still reads [...]

America’s House of Lords continues to brag about its own disfunction:
The measure isn’t quite finished yet, but sources said the current version would cost just over $80 billion. Though that number may change as the process moves forward, it is clear Senate Democrats have no intention of moving a jobs package as large as the [...]

News today that Congressional Dems have decided to put health care on the back burner.
Who wants the over/under on when they get back to this? I’m setting it at 2016. Email me if you want in on the action.

Those of you who listen to the show somewhat regularly will know that, while I’m a big fan of markets, I’m also highly critical of one of the central tenets of neoclassical economics – the “rationality assumption”. In short, in order for its predictive models to work, neoclassical econ requires that all of the [...]

Nate Silver puts Martha Coakley’s chances at winning today at about 25%.
We’re well past the point where we can deny that access to basic health care is a basic human right in an industrialized country. Further, the failure to pass health care reform will demonstrate the extent to which our country is [...]

Links Mentioned: David Brooks on Haiti