links for 2009-11-08

• Jonathan Bernstein: Did Reagan Really Make Only Four Pictures a Year Because His Marginal Tax Rates Were too High?
• Economist: Seven questions for Dan Froomkin
• Susie Madrak: Imagine that! Blue Cross tells stockholders one thing and insurance regulators another, which leads you to wonder: Who did they lie to?
• Matthew Yglesias: GOP Members Shout Down Women Members of Congress
• Steve Benen: Can We Please Replace the Republican Party?
  listening to the debate on the House floor, it's striking how misguided opponents' arguments really are. Instead of pointing to the bill's actual flaws, and highlighting the legislation's real shortcomings, the vast majority of the complaints deal with imaginary failings that seem to have been crafted by pollsters and campaign strategists, not policy experts or wonks (or really anyone who understands the policy at the most basic level). The political world has been at this for most 2009, and people who should have some clue as to what they're talking about continue to make patently ridiculous claims. The two most common phrases from the lips of conservative lawmakers today are "government takeover" and "socialism." Neither makes a lick of sense. Anyone who repeats them is, without exception, either charlatan or a fool.
• Dean Baker: Robert Samuelson Asks Whether Creatures from Neptune Will Storm the Planet
  Yes, with the unemployment rate about to hit 10 percent, Robert Samuelson yet again expresses concern over the country's biggest problem: the prospect of defaulting on its debt. Never mind that investors are prepared to hold U.S. government bonds for an interest rate of just 3.5 percent -- the lowest rate (except for earlier in this crisis) in almost 60 years. There is still nothing more important for Post readers to hear about than the risk that the U.S. government will default on its debt
• Robert Reich: How Obama Can Convince Congress to Enact a Larger Stimulus, and Why He Must
  Everything else on the table -- a new jobs tax credit, more loans to small businesses, more help to troubled homeowners, another extension of unemployment insurance, another round of subsidies to first-time home buyers -- are small potatoes relative to the importance and likely effect of a larger stimulus. Some of these initiatives may do some good, but even combined they'll barely make a dent in the growing numbers of jobless Americans.
• Ari Kelman Recommends "Life on Mars"
  Anyway, the thing I’m enjoying most is the show’s relentless critique of nostalgia. The main character, a contemporary British detective who finds himself transported back in time to Manchester in 1973, can’t seem to decide if he misses his friends or his cell phone more. When he’s at his most despairing, in the early episodes at least, he focuses on the dearth of creature comforts available to him. Even if you weren’t trained as an environmental historian, the emphasis on material conditions — a lack of central heat, spotty electricity, a studio apartment appointed with a twin bed — is pretty obvious. It’s a healthy reminder that the past, even the recent past — forget the damp and drafty castles of the Middle Ages — was pretty grim. The point may be that our current age is wondrous, filled with innovations straight out of science fiction, especially in the realm of policing and medicine. Regardless, though I suspect historians are especially cranky about the emptiness of nostalgia,
• David Leonhardt: Broader Measure of Unemployment (U-6) Stands at 17.5%
• Paul Krugman: Reagan! Reagan! Reagan!
  ha. I see that some commenters insist that I was unfair or, some insist, intellectually dishonest in my post on the fact that advanced economies actually grew faster in the era before modern finance took hold. There have been assertions that it was all about rebuilding from the war, or that the picture looks very different if you look at per capita real GDP, with some flat assertions that if you look at the numbers right growth has been better since 1980s. Um, no.
• Steve Benen: The Republican Chocolate Ration Is Always Being Raised in Weekly Standard Land!
• Reed College Public Policy Lecture: Today's Financial Crisis in a Historical Mirror (November 7, 2009)
  Download now or preview on posterous Reed College Public Policy.doc (3307 KB) ...