links for 2009-12-06

• Wunder Blog : The Manufactured Doubt industry and the hacked email controversy
  There's a long history of PR battling incontrovertible science.
  (tags: environment science pr)

links for 2009-12-03

• Capital Times: Democrats want to reduce state’s ballooning prison population
  It's about time. Lock-'em-up policies from the Thompson years have given us a hypertrophied corrections sector that starves value-creating government expenditures like education.
  (tags: wisconsin budget)

links for 2009-12-01

• Nathan Newman: Progressives (and Obama) are Doing Better Than We Think — and We Won't Know What We've Got 'Til It's Gone
  To some extent, progressive dissatisfaction with Obama's performance mirrors stuff I heard back when about how Clintonism was selling us all down the river. The experience of Bushism suggests that it is actually much better to be sold down the river than flushed down the toilet. Now the victories to date are not at all insubstantial, though they're bound to be overshadowed by issues of the economy and the wars. Anger w/r/t the former is a lagging indicator, but for the latter, I'm trying to remain optimistic (Tuesday afternoon) that an exit strategy will have been articulated by the time this is posted.
  (tags: obama progressivism policy politics)

links for 2009-11-26

• Frontline’s The Card Game « Rortybomb
  The credit card industry is in part a reverse-Robin Hood play, where just about everyone (especially credit card interest-payers) pays extra at retail so that well-to-do non-revolvers can get frequent-flyer miles off their purchases.
  (tags: economics consumerism)
• Creative Destruction: November Employment Situation
  An optimistic employment forecast based on the (now) rapidly falling unemployment claims data; from Maynard's VAR package to God's ears…
  (tags: economics employment econometrics)

links for 2009-11-24

• Dean Baker: Confusion About the Fed and Bank Debt at the NYT
  Baker: "The collapse of [the housing] bubble has given the economy the worst downturn since the Great Depression. The downturn caused by the collapse of the bubble, not Congress, is also directly responsible for the huge deficits the country now faces. It is remarkable that anyone involved in policy debates does not realize this fact." But Judd Gregg doesn't, or at least doesn't show it in public.
  (tags: economy budget)

links for 2009-11-20

• Dean Baker: The People Who Couldn't See an $8 Trillion Housing Bubble and Thought Iceland Was Thriving Oppose Auditing the Fed
  Academic and financial industry opposition to Paul-Grayson vs. evidence of excessive Fed tightness.
  (tags: economics monetary-policy)

links for 2009-11-19

• Ezra Klein: What happens before 2014?
  Klein lists not inconsiderable provisions to go into effect immediately in the Senate health care bill. Having heard Holy Joe on NPR asking whether it's worth throwing the baby out with the (in his view) bathwater of the 'public option,' he has a point (though not a great one, and it's sharper the more the public option is watered down). An eleven-dimensional chess move may be to pass a bunch of useful reforms w/o Republican support, declare victory in the battle though not the war, use Republican obstructionism as a bludgeon to shift Congress (leftward) towards the center, and then watch as the Liebermans can no longer obstruct more meaningful reforms. OK, a boy can dream…
  (tags: health insurance reform)
• GigaOM: Why Every ISP Needs a Fiber-to-the-Home Network
  Unfortunately, "policy" is to let telcos' executives and investors decide whether to deploy fiber or try to milk the copper network for a little longer. Meanwhile, most users get expensive connections at second-rate speeds.
  (tags: telecom technology infrastructure)
• Ian Welsh: JPMorgan Illustrates What Banks Do When They Have Money
  Welsh observes that buying competitors on the cheap is a better play with free money than the more socially valuable retail lending.
  (tags: bank finance gilded-age bailout)

links for 2009-11-18

• Wicked Anomie: Barbie, Eat a Sandwich
  We would all be better off if everyone just chilled out in regard to what sizes other people are.
  (tags: sociology feminism)
• Felix Salmon: Ben Stein’s sleazy paymasters, cont.
  The Senate Commerce Committee opens up on the sleazy world of 'post-transaction marketing.' Whether some combination of Congress and the FTC can get together the gumption to ban the enabling sales tactics is a good test of whether we're smart enough to survive as a society.
  (tags: fraud consumerism technology)

links for 2009-11-16

• New York Times: Universities Turn to Consultants to Trim Budgets
  UC-Berkeley chancellor: "I’m a physicist, not an expert on organizational structures. But I believe we can be more efficient." Remind me why university presidents are (increasingly over-)paid like business executives?
  (tags: education compensation)
• The Overhead Wire: A Madison Strain of Crazy
  TOW picks up the Isthmus story on the talk-radio-centered opposition to Madison-area commuter rail and explains why it's moronic on its own terms: transit and walkability are fiscally responsible.
  (tags: madison infrastructure transit)

links for 2009-11-11

• Steve Kyle @Americablog: The politics of stimulus
  Amen: "So count this as one more scream out to the Administration that they had better get off their asses and stimulate the economy. As I have said before, they get lots of credit for avoiding the disaster that loomed last Fall. But I can't help but think that merely avoiding disaster isnt going to do the trick when campaigning for reelection next year. 'Things could be much worse' lacks a certain something as a campaign slogan."
  (tags: stimulus economics politics)
• Paul Krugman: Depression multipliers
  Eichengreen and O'Rourke show that fiscal policy is expansionary under "liquidity trap" conditions (such as now).
  (tags: economics macro stimulus)
• Naked Capitalism: AIG’s Benmosche Can’t Push Uncle Sam Around, So Threatens to Quit
  The words that come to mind are "don't let the door hit you on the way out."
  (tags: executive compensation bailout)