Liberal Talk Radio

Matt Yglesias says it’s Ben Nelson’s fault, not Barack Obama’s, that we haven’t gotten the change we’ve been hoping for with the new administration. As the theory goes, it doesn’t matter how much leadership or head-knocking or what have you the administration tries to engage in, the fact is that with unified 39-member GOP block [...]

What does it say about our country that smart policy ideas are routinely shelved out of fear of ill-informed public ridicule? Ahh… democracy.

The Wall Street Journal has a great piece on the decline of the GM brand that tried to be different. The long and short of it is that the union tried to make Saturn more like the rest of GM, while management cut off R&D funding.

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 [...]

“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 [...]

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 [...]

This is a travel week here at BATP, so no podcast. We’ll be back next week! In the meantime, check the archives for any episodes you may have missed.

David Frum trumpets the successes of the last 30 years of conservative politics: In 1975, the federal government set the price of every airline ticket, every ton of rail freight, every cubic foot of natural gas and every barrel of oil. It controlled the interest rates paid on checking accounts and the commission charged by [...]

I have to sympathize with “dudeman” at CHS on the inanity of a plastic bag tax. To be clear, he’s talking about a fee that Madison Market in Seattle charges its customers, but it’s clearly related to the 20 cent fee that the Seattle City Council is proposing for all plastic bags. The sad thing, [...]

This is a couple of weeks old, but it’s nice to see The New Republic call BS on local Seattle curmudgeon (and Crosscut contributor) Ted Van Dyk. Van Dyk uses is bona fides as having been a Democrat 40 years ago to slag on Dems at every opportunity. As TNR points out, it’s a schtick [...]