Chart of the Week
June 6th, 2010 by Jon Taplin
Health care spending as a percentage of GDP. Annual Consultations with Doctors, Per Capita Life Expectancy
Tag Archive for 'Health Care Reform'
Republican Election Mirage
May 15th, 2010 by Jon Taplin
Almost six months ago I suggested that the conventional Washington wisdom of a Republican sweep this November was fatally flawed. Now a new AP-Gfk poll shows that the Democrats are staging a major comeback. People want Democrats to control Congress after this fall’s elections, a shift from April, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll released [...]
Obama’s Patience
March 26th, 2010 by Jon Taplin
We inhabit an age of instant gratification, but governing still takes patience. On the first day of this year, I went out on a limb with two predictions for the new year: that Obama would have a political victory and that China and the U.S. would have a trade war. It looks like both of [...]
Real Fascism
March 24th, 2010 by Jon Taplin
Perhaps the violent threats against Democratic legislators in the past 48 hours will put an end to the absurd Liberal Fascism trope floated by Jonah Goldberg a year ago to try to deflect attention from the Brownshirt plague that was about to consume his right wing Republican Party. It’s now clear that Beck and Limbaugh [...]
Rupert’s Folly
March 23rd, 2010 by Jon Taplin
Spurred on by Fox News’ Repeal Health Care blather, a bunch of Republican Attorneys General are going to sue the Federal Government, arguing that the government can never compel you to buy a product like insurance? But I can’t drive a car in California legally unless I have insurance. WTF-These Republicans are so lame. They [...]
Where We Go From Here
March 22nd, 2010 by Jon Taplin
Here are a bunch of Republican Congressmen yesterday egging on their Teabagger supporters from the House Balcony. These guys have as much class as a convention of Used Car salesmen. The day’s debate on the House floor was in its early moments when two men, one smelling strongly of alcohol, stood up in the public [...]
LBJ Politics
March 18th, 2010 by Jon Taplin
For me, the next three days are going to be like jumping in a time machine and returning to 1957 as Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson muscles through the first civil rights bill since Reconstruction. In book Three of Robert Caro’s masterful biography of LBJ, entitled Master of the Senate, we find Johnson ruling over [...]
Center-Left America
March 12th, 2010 by Jon Taplin
Ever since Barack Obama’s election in 2008 there has been an ongoing discussion of where the political center is in America. Conservatives and Republican leaders have made the contention that this is a Center-Right country and that the Reagan Revolution of the 1980′s permanently shifted the political center of gravity to the right. I think [...]
Duopoly & Reform
March 7th, 2010 by Jon Taplin
I’ve been writing for the last two years on the stranglehold of Monopoly Capitalism on Washington’s policy agenda. But in reality it is more like “Duopoly Capitalism” because we make sure that there are always two potential providers like Boeing and Northrup Grumman to feed at the troth. Duopolies are easy to manage because price [...]
America’s Anti-Tax Obsession
February 28th, 2010 by Jon Taplin
In 1985, Grover Norquist formed a group called Americans for Tax Reform. His goal was simple: “”I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” So the fear of new taxes has prevented us as [...]