Liberal Talk Radio

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 [...]

One of the big knocks on increasing the cost of emitting carbon as a solution to global warming is that it’s “regressive,” i.e., it hurts the poor disproportionately. I don’t really buy that argument, for a number of reasons. One, the poor are going to be hit the worst by climate change, which will make [...]

A month ago a tax calculator went around the internets (I talked about it here) showing how much better the typical family would do under an Obama administration. A month later, the calculator has been absorbed into the Obama borg. Nice.

Handy little calculator for figuring out what your tax cut would be under an Obama administration. Clearly designed to remind people that, unless you make over $500k/yr, Obama’s plan means less taxes for you. Of course, I don’t really go for the whole tax cutting argument. Taxes are used to buy government services, and so [...]

… I must find out where they are going so I can lead them! Matt and I talked about leadership on this week’s podcast, as in, we want to see more of it from our politicians. Pols, however, tend to follow polls. They want to do what’s popular. But what if the polls aren’t telling [...]

Read Jon Cohn on why Medicare is awesome and how the only way to make it more awesome would be to cover everyone and have us all pay for it via a payroll tax deduction.

Damon Agnos reminds me of the best chart ever for countering the argument that we’re too heavily taxed in Seattle (Seattle ranks #42 out of 50 and Seattlites pay less in total taxes than residents of Phoenix, AZ or Billings, MT). But his solution seems wrong to me: Our low tax burden is one reason [...]

Goldy has a great take-down of the Seattle Times’ disingenuous efforts to paint Gov. Gregoire as an out-of-control spender. Indeed, as a liberal, my biggest beef with Gregoire is that she hasn’t invested enough in the state. If she was actually the tax-and-spend socialist that the Times portrays her as, I’d be a lot happer [...]

In which my book purchase betrays my campaign bias.

I agree with this Ezra Klein post 100%: But if Obama is going to be the transformational, Reagan-style pol he presents himself as, he’s going to have to grow comfortable speaking positively of the role of government, and selling some of his initiatives as good ideas worth paying for. It’s worth it to have effective [...]