Liberal Talk Radio

Bruno and I devoted part of our show this week to a discussion of Bush’s latest “build it and then figure out how to pay for it” initiative — the plan to build a permanent moon base by 2024.
The ever-eloquent Gregg Easterbrook makes the same points I did about the moon base — namely:
So, what [...]

One of the through-lines of the current White House Administration has been to gut oversight and audit funding. The party that claims to care about fiscal responsibility has shown surprisingly little interest in making sure that the tax dollars they claim to preciously value are actually being collected and spent effectively.
Reaching into the wayback [...]

Washingtonians, you can’t be thanked enough for knocking down I-933 at the polls this year. Via Sightline, take a look at what’s happening in Oregon because of Measure 37, the Beaver State’s answer to 933. It’s nothing less than legalized extortion.
What a mess.

Jacob Weisberg says that “free trade has definitely left the building” with the election of what he calls “economic nationalists” (or, more colloquially, “Lou Dobbs Democrats”) like Sherrod Brown who argue against free trade to protect American jobs.
However, as David Sirota and Nathan Newman constantly remind us, the free trade consensus in D.C. is nearly [...]

As some of you will know, one of my bete noirs is poor personal hygiene, especially of the kind that leads to spreading illness. I sort of understand why hourly wage workers are reluctant to miss time from work, but it bothers me tremendously to see salaried employees — all of whom have laptops [...]

An insider’s account of why Spencer Ackerman was fired from the New Republic:
In what [TNR editor Franklin] Foer called the “proximate cause,” Mr. Ackerman had been using that personal blog — titled “Too Hot for TNR” — to disparage the magazine.
Again with the Web logs: On Sept. 1, senior editor Lee Siegel was suspended and [...]

Omigod.  A state actually making public policy based on evidence.

From Michigan:
The state says it’s increasing speed limits to make freeways safer through realistic speed limits that encourage more uniform traffic flow.
One of my public policy bugbears is the insistence on enforcement of too-low speed limits.  In WA state, for example, we’re subject to ads noting [...]

I have to admit that I’ve passed by Citgo stations on the few times recently when we’ve either rented or borrowed cars**. Apparently 7-Eleven has noticed:
Convenience store operator 7-Eleven Inc. is dropping Venezuela-backed Citgo as its gasoline supplier at more than 2,100 locations and switching to its own brand of fuel.
The retailer said Wednesday it [...]

Now that the academic world is supremely conscious of fair-labor practices, universities are having trouble finding enough suppliers to churn out that endless stock of sweatshirts, t-shirts and shot glasses bearing the logo of dear old State U.:
Five months after Columbia joined a national effort to enforce labor standards in the factories that produce its [...]

In a pre-taping discussion this Sunday, the Prof and I talked a bit about the supreme court races in Washington State. they’ve garnered a lot of attention because the BIAW (among others) has dumped tons of cash into the elections as a way of (I believe) pre-empting the pro-developer I-933 initiative. 933 is going [...]