Shady Dealings Brought Dodd Down
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on December 6th, 2010 5:31 am by HL
Shady Dealings Brought Dodd Down
Kevin Rennie, Hartford Courant
Sen. Christopher Dodd leaves office disappointed and bewildered. The people don't trust their government. Even our leaders seem not to like each other much. The U.S. Senate is not nearly as cozy as it was when Dodd joined it 30 years ago. Oh dear, this is troubling.The ceaseless news cycle dismays Dodd, allowing the public to keep a more searching eye on the governing class. The new media age caused Dodd to come to grief in his final years in office. Forget the speech the five-term incumbent delivered Tuesday if you want to learn the essentials of Dodd's notion of good…
A Battle to Stop the EPA’s Overreach
The Stimulus Has Performed as Projected
Dean Baker, Politico
The stimulus has performed pretty much as projected. It created 2-3 million jobs and lowered the unemployment rate by between 1-2 percentage points. It also is coming to an end. I'm not sure why anyone would have expected it to offset a downturn of this magnitude. The collapse of the housing bubble and the bubble in non-residential real estate cost us about $600 billion in annual construction demand. The loss of more than $6 trillion in housing wealth and an equal amount of stock wealth led to a drop in annual consumption of around $600 billion.
Long Run Debt is Creating Uncertainty
Christina Romer, New York Times
UNCERTAINTY is frequently blamed for the sorry state of the economy — for why businesses are not investing strongly in new equipment or hiring more workers, and for why consumers are not spending freely. On Wall Street, it’s even said that government meddling is the main culprit and that political gridlock is the cure.This is a serious misreading of the situation. Uncertainty is likely holding back the recovery. But its sources are far more fundamental than the tax and environmental issues that typically top the list of complaints. And the solution is certainly not for the…
High Court, Health Law & Judicial Review
George Will, Washington Post
The powers of the legislature are defined and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the Constitution is written.”- Marbury v. Madison (1803) Debates about judicial review concern the propriety and scope of judicial supervision of democracy and involve the countermajoritarian dilemma: How to square the principle of popular sovereignty with the practice of allowing appointed judges, accountable to no contemporary constituency, to overturn laws enacted by elected legislators?
