And behind Door #2
Posted by Richard Mayhew at 1:44 pm
Mar
03
2014

Wall Street Cheat Sheet has a very good summary of all Republican ‘proposals’ to replace Obamacare with something:


http://wallstcheatsheet.com/politics/healthcare/for-house-republicans-finding-obamacare-replacement-is-no-easy-task.html/?ref=YF

Oh boy, that sounds soooooo poopular!!!

Status quo bias now works in our favor.

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2014/03/03/and-behind-door-2/

http://www.newyorker.com/sandbox/sketchbook/chast-parents/

More Evidence

JOSH MARSHALL – MARCH 3, 2014, 11:39 AM EST238

It may be true that Russia is using 19th century statecraft. But this press photo from ITAR-TASS news service strongly suggests Russians are using 1970/80s phones and office technology.



http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/more-evidence--3

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/03/1281745/-Forbes-The-Invasion-Of-Crimea-Is-Crushing-Russia-s-Stock-And-Currency-Markets

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/03/1280730/-Cartoon-A-job-for-IHOTFM-Man

More:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/02/1281534/-Breaking-Anti-KXL-March-to-White-House

LIVESTREAM:
http://www.livestream.com/activistworldnewsnow

A man came home from work and found his 5 children outside, still in their pajamas, playing in the mud, with empty food boxes and wrappers strewn around garden, The door of his wife's car was open, as was the front door to the house and no sign of the dog, walking in the door, he found ...an even bigger mess. A lamp had been knocked over, the throw rug was against one wall, In the front room the TV was on loudly with the cartoon channel, the family room was strewn with toys and various items of clothing. In the kitchen, dishes filled the sink, breakfast food was spilled on the counter, the fridge door was open wide, dog food was spilled on the floor, a broken glass lay under the table, and a small pile of sand was spread by the back door. He quickly headed up the stairs, stepping over toys and more piles of clothes, looking for his wife. He was worried she might be ill, or that something serious had happened. He was met with a small trickle of water as it made its way out the bathroom door. As he peered inside he found wet towels, scummy soap and more toys strewn over the floor. Miles of toilet paper lay in a heap and toothpaste had been smeared over the mirror and walls. As he rushed to the bedroom, he found his wife still curled up in the bed in her pajamas, reading a novel... She looked up at him, smiled and asked how his day went. He looked at her bewildered and asked, 'What happened here today?' She again smiled and answered, 'You know every day when you come home from work and you ask me what in the world do I do all day?...

''Yes," was his incredulous reply..

She answered, 'Well, today I didn't do it.

oldie but goodie sent to me on FB:
http://kellymom.com/fun/wisdom/what-did-you-do-all-day/

The thing is, a former Port Authority official told The Star-Ledger, “It was all bullshit.”

From the start, the fix was in, said that former official and five others who occupied key Port Authority posts when the toll hike was rolled out and eventually approved.

The whole process, the authority officials said, was orchestrated from the outset to make the governors look good even as they reached deeper, through the long arm of the authority, into the public’s pockets.

...

But it was all Hollywood on the Hudson, the six sources said, scripted all the way through.

“They knew what the toll increase would be,” said one former official. “They set the governors up to look like heroes. It was all a farce.”

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2014/03/port_authority_officials_battle_over_toll_hikes_was_all_for_show.html#incart_river

Rich donors press Democrats on climate change
By Juliet Eilperin

Senate majority leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, six other senators, and a 2014 Senate candidate took in views of the Golden Gate Bridge with former vice president Al Gore and some of the nation's richest environmentalist donors.

The $400,000 fund-raiser, held for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, included remarks from Gore, who said the party needs to make global warming a central issue during the midterms, participants said. And Gore called Steyer, who has vowed to raise at least $100 million, Mr. Tipping Point.

˜How do you inject this into the debate in a meaningful way? Steyer said in an interview during a visit to Washington, where he lobbied a gathering of Democratic governors. That changes what can happen in Washington, D.C.

With the end of President Obama's tenure now in sight, wealthy environmentalists are pushing Democrats to take bolder positions on climate change vowing to emphasize the issue in swing-state contests and threatening to withhold money from candidates who support the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

........................

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2014/03/02/rich-donors-press-democrats-climate-change/hzqwCqUh4CPz5Voz3abiSL/story.html

Growth and Interest Rates: I Appear To Be Wrong

In my last post I followed Floyd Norris in criticizing the CBO, which has marked down its estimates of future economic growth without marking down its estimates of future interest rates. I still think that’s a fair criticism. But I also offered a hypothesis: that interest rates fall more than one-for-one with slower growth, so that the crucial difference r-g — interest rate minus growth rate — actually falls, making debt easier, not harder, to handle.

So I’ve taken a quick and dirty look at US history, and it doesn’t seem to bear my hypothesis out. Here’s actual r-g — strictly speaking, interest rates minus the rate of growth of GDP over the previous year — since 1952:




Postwar US history broadly breaks into two eras: a fast-growth generation after World War II, and generally slower growth thereafter. If my hypothesis had been right, r-g should have been lower in the second era than the first. Well, it looks as if the opposite was generally true, even if you ignore the spikes around big recessions.

Now that I think about it, the case of Japan — although complicated by the zero lower bound — also counts in this direction: interest rates have been low, but GDP growth even lower.



http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/02/growth-and-interest-rates-i-appear-to-be-wrong/