• The unemployment rate drops to 8.6%
• The payroll tax cut – well played, Mr. President
• In praise of ObamaCare
• The brutal logic of climate change
• #GOPMuppetHearings in response to this guy

Republican lawmakers said, for example, that they would propose limiting the money and personnel available to theInternal Revenue Service, so the agency could not aggressively enforce provisions that require people to obtainhealth insurance and employers to help pay for it. Under the law, individuals and employers who flout the requirements will face tax penalties.

Moreover, Republican leaders said, they plan to use spending bills to block federal insurance regulations to which they object. And they will try to limit access to government-subsidized private health plans that include coverage ofabortion — one of the most contentious issues in Congressional debate over the legislation.

On the first issue, defunding the IRS, the truth is that the fines were always symbolic: “the penalties are low and enforcement is nonexistent.”  One the second issue, the Republicans plan to carry water for the insurance industry, well, good luck with that!  Even the most incompetent Democrat should be able to come up with an attack ad against any Republican who tries something like that.  Finally, the abortion thing is truly messy, but abortion politics are always messy.  If the Republicans want to re-start the Abortion debate, then that’s going to play out as abortion debates usually do, whether they’re debates over late-term abortion or federal funding in general, the contours of that debate are pretty clear, and the Democrats, in the long run, tend to do pretty well.

So, if this is all Boehner’s got, then, at the risk of sounding hubristic, bring it on.

Still, I figured that the plan was to make sure than any expanded drilling came with enough bureaucratic costs that it would surely get so bogged down in process that no oil company in its right mind would ever even conceive of a serious attempt to drill for the pathetic amount of oil actually available. And so I supported the President’s announcement – very savvy, especially following the passage of the health care legislation.

And now we have an epic disaster on our hands. The benighted Gulf coast, still recovering from Katrina, now faces an ecological disaster that will capture imaginations for a generation, the Cuyahoga fire or Valdez wreck for the Twitter set. Will it change minds? Can Palin ever again utter her drilling mantra without irony, shame, or – at least – qualification? I doubt it, or at least I hope not.

The bigger question to me now is, how does this change the debate around energy policy? If Rahm Emanuel were Karl Rove, I’d almost say he’d blown up the oil rig himself, given the timing. I’m looking forward to the debate between the Red State fisherman and shrimpers along with the Red State property developers and the Red State governors and legislators versus the Red State oil interests. Talk about a wedge issue!

I’d say it would be fun to watch, but it’s a shame that it takes a tangible disaster like this for people to reconsider misguided opinion.

Still, the checked bag fee is having the unintended consequence you’d expect:

In the United States, the most visible consequence of baggage fees has been the increase in more, and heavier, items in the passenger cabin, the very behavior that prompted Spirit’s new fee for carry-on policy. A survey by the Association of Flight Attendants found “excess amounts of oversized carry-on items” were causing flight attendants to be injured. Eighty percent of the flight attendants reported muscle pulls and sprains. Thirty-five percent said they were hit by falling bags.

…

One thing baggage fees were expected to do but have not done is to reduce the turnaround time at the gate. With so many passengers trying to bring everything they need for a trip into the passenger cabin, departures are often delayed to deal with the problem of trying to squeeze too many bags into too little space.

Also, the article doesn’t mention it, but I would imagine that this results in delays at the security checkpoint. If you’re checking bags, you’re probably checking your toiletries and causing as many plastic-bag-related delays with the TSA folk.

Me? Not so much. “Three strikes” laws are turning our prison system into an overpriced geriatric ward. Taxpayers will now have to feed, clothe and shelter this woman for the rest of her life, even though she’s likely at the end of her career as a strong-arm robber.

We’ve received a few comments from listeners, mostly accusing me of being a bit hysterical about the whole thing. And while I generally understand that criticism, I do think that the country’s taking an ugly turn.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks so:

No one knows what history will make of the present — least of all journalists, who can at best write history’s sloppy first draft. But if I were to place an incautious bet on which political event will prove the most significant of February 2010, I wouldn’t choose the kabuki health care summit that generated all the ink and 24/7 cable chatter in Washington. I’d put my money instead on the murder-suicide of Andrew Joseph Stack III, the tax protester who flew a plane into an office building housing Internal Revenue Service employees in Austin, Tex., on Feb. 18. It was a flare with the dark afterlife of an omen.

Rich — somewhat unusually — has quite a bit of fact packed into his piece. Anyone who isn’t worried about the dark turn America has taken would do well to give it a read.

To put that in context, the total discretionary budget for every other department of government combined — that’s education, HHS, agriculture, commerce, the VA, everything — totals $437B.

Eisenhower is rolling over in his grave.

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 liberators. But not too long after the primer was applied the schedule went to hell, and, well… we didn’t really have a contingency plan. I’m hoping to draw down gradually and leave a small peacekeeping force (my dog) in charge on Monday, at which point the Prof and I will be able to sit down and tell you what we thought about the SOTU and America’s answer to Prime Minister’s Questions.

Update: Podcast is now live.

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 3-hour epic documentary about global warming called “Heat 2″.

1. Spending, not tax cuts — as pretty much any economist who’s ever bothered to, you know, read the history of the Great Depression will tell you, FDR nearly killed his own recovery by pulling in spending too soon. Had it not been for the massive Keynesian opportunity presented by WWII, the US would likely have been mired in recession – or worse – through most of the ’40s. Unfortunately, most of the money spent on recovery to date has gone to financial institutions. It’s debatable whether or not that was the best, or most necessary, use of taxpayer money, but what’s NOT debatable is that much of that money went to shore up the balance sheets of banks, and not into the kind of direct investments that both create jobs and long-term economic strength — the trains, roads, ports, and sewers that we so desperately need to rebuild in America. Don’t let the budget hawks fool you — America needs MORE spending, not less.
2. Restraint, not populism — It’s a strong temptation, no doubt, for an embattled President to turn to populism in this crisis. The President needs to resist this urge. Stoking the gathering fires of classism and populist anger isn’t a way to win in the long term. It’s anti-elitist fervor which has been the Democrats undoing for most of the last 20 years. Playing to the hairy knuckles crowd just re-orders the line at the guillotine; better to lead.
3. Renewed commitment to health care — The President’s big problem on health care is that he’s failed to outline a solid vision for what, exactly, health care reform is going to accomplish. Is it to reduce costs? Provide universal coverage? Improve quality of care? The GoP has succeeded in scuttling reform because, without a clear vision for what health care reform IS, they’ve been able to find something in it for everyone to hate.

I’m pretty much expecting the President to take the opposite approach on all of these points, but a guy can hope, right?

* I suppose I should use a song title from US band (not the UK’s Stone Roses) to preface my preview of the SotU.

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 $154 billion measure the House passed in December on a narrow, party-line vote. The House measure included money to extend unemployment benefits and COBRA health insurance coverage, items that aren’t in the draft Senate bill but may move in the chamber separately.

“There is ‘big bill fatigue’ in the Senate right now,” said a Senate Democratic aide.

Oy. Cry me a river. There’s unemployment fatigue in America.

We don’t need an $80B tax cut bill. We need a $400B, multi-year job-creation bill. We need infrastructure. Sewer repair. Aid to state and local governments. Wind energy.

But the crybabies in the Senate with their six-figure salaries are just too darn tired, I guess. Holy crap.