Reconciliation
— The Mormon welfare state.
— Not a typo: Advertising by outside groups is up 1,600 percent in this election cycle.
— Josh Barro’s case against the Buffett rule.
— New York City agencies still use typewriters.
— CBS just bought a recession-themed sitcom pilot from Louis C.K.
— 998,001 is a wildly underrated number.
— Residential segregation in the U.S. is on the wane.
CBO: Federal workers make more than their private-sector counterparts
The Congressional Budget Office has found that the federal government pays slightly more in average wages and significantly more in benefits than the private sector. But the advantages mostly accrue to less-educated workers, while compensation for federal employees with professional and doctoral degrees lag significantly behind their private-sector counterparts.
Americans don’t know much about Romneycare — except that it’s very similar to Obamacare
Mitt Romney’s opponents in the Republican primary campaign haven’t gotten tired of reminding voters how similar the former governor’s health reforms in Massachusetts are to President Obama’s federal law (the White House is also fond of such reminders). A new Harris Interactive poll sheds some light on whether that message is getting through.
Study: U.S. recovering faster than its peers
Two years ago, the McKinsey Global Institute looked at the recoveries of 32 countries that had undergone a financial crisis. Their analysis was grim. It was also correct. Contrary to the hopes some held for a quick recovery, MGI warned that financial crises tended to lead to long, slow recoveries as households, businesses and governments dug their way out of debt. But in a report released last week, MGI delivered some sunnier news — at least for the United States. If you look at the 10 largest developed economies in the world, the United States is the furthest along the path to recovery.
Will the Eurodeal work? ‘Negative,’ says economist
The European Union is getting closer to signing a new treaty that would make members pledge to keep deficits lower in the future or face sanctions. But two outside analysts--one an economist and the other a political scientist--are skeptical that the latest developments will be more than half-measures to keep the EU afloat. They predict that a real, lasting resolution of the Euromess is still a long way off.
The 2012 election will not solve Washington’s problems
(Vote View)
Politico poobahs John Harris and Jonathan Allen say the era of bipartisan compromise is over, or at least both sides believe it to be. That seems right. But they also quote Kevin McCarthy, the third-in-command for the House Republicans, predicting that the issues paralyzing Washington will get decided in the election. “2012 is going to be the argument for the size and scope of what they want America to be,” he says. He’s wrong.
If this was the United Kingdom or France or some other country with a parliamentary system, McCarthy would, for the purposes of wielding power, be correct. There would be an election, one side or the other side would win, and the winners would implement their agenda. But we don’t have a parliamentary system.
FAQ: The treaty that could save Europe. Or not.
It’s been awhile since we looked at the mess in Europe, but this is a big week. European leaders are meeting in Brussels to adopt a new deficit treaty. And depending on whom you ask, talks over Greek debt restructuring are either progressing nicely — or threatening the continent. Here’s a rundown:
What will the new EU treaty do? The details are still getting thrashed out, but at a basic level, the new treaty will force euro zone governments to keep their overall debt burdens below 60 percent of gross domestic product and their yearly deficits under 3 percent. (Ideally, they’re supposed to keep their annual “structural deficits”—what’s left over when you discount the effects of recessions and booms—at 0.5 percent.) If countries break these rules, they’ll get hit with big sanctions. You can see a draft of the treaty here .
Why we love Chinatown buses
Intercity bus travel has boomed during the past few years, with curbside bus lines seeing record growth. In just the past year, departures grew by 32 percent. A new paper from Rutgers University researchers Nicholas Klein and Andrew Zitcer probes why.
Their study in Urban Geography, “Everything but the Chicken: Cultural Authenticity Onboard the Chinatown Bus” finds that it’s not just the cheap fares that draw customers. “Participants routinely framed the Chinatown bus as an authentic urban experience,” they found, “a thrilling and danger-enhanced departure from daily life, and as an engagement with the multicultural city.”
Lunch break: Dog park from a dog’s eye view
A visit to a dog park, from Rover’s perspective. (Sorry we couldn’t kepp the full video up; we’ll figure out how to deactive the autoplay version next time.)
Bill Clinton: One of the least polarizing presidents ever. But why?
As Barack Obama becomes the most polarizing president in recent American history, Bill Clinton is becoming one of the least polarizing. Fox News host Sean Hannity calls him “good old Bill.” Rep. Paul Ryan admits, “I enjoy Bill Clinton.” Sen. Orrin Hatch says “he will go down in history as a better president” than Obama. More than 60 percent of Americans have a positive view of Clinton — more, even, than approve of Ronald Reagan. This month, Esquire interviewed Clinton under the headline: “Bill Clinton: Someone we can all agree on.” Which just goes to show that how polarizing a president is has very little to do with how ideological they were, or are.
Being a couch potato won’t kill you
Good news, television fans! Aaron Carroll at the Incidental Economist flags new Center for Disease Control research that finds increased screen time does not, in fact, correlate with a higher risk of dying. The study looked at 7,530 adults, who had all participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination survey and reported their average, weekly screen time. After parsing through all the data, CDC research Earl Ford concludes, “In the present study, screen time did not significantly predict mortality from all-causes and diseases of the circulatory system.”
Freddie Mac’s big bet against homeowners
ProPublica’s Jesse Eisinger and NPR’s Chris Arnold have discovered that Freddie Mac has used a complex derivative transaction to place large bets that rely on millions of American homeowners remaining in overpriced mortgages to pay off. The bets in Freddie’s investment portfolio — which totaled $3.4 billion in 2010 and 2011 — directly contradict the housing giant’s stated mission to provide affordable mortgages to Americans.
No, we’re not about to enter another ice age
The Daily Mail in Britain tends to be terrific for news of the weird — who can forget its exposé on the girl who ate nothing but chicken McNuggets for 15 years? — and terrible for science reporting. Case in point: Their latest story on how the world is about to enter a mini-ice age.
The piece cites recent research from the UK Met Office on how solar activity is set to decrease in the coming years — which, in turn, will cool the planet. That’s technically true, but the decrease in solar activity won’t be enough to counteract the warming effects of all the greenhouse-gas pollution we’re putting into the air. How do we know? Just ask the UK Met Office. In a post refuting the Daily Mail, the climate research center notes that greenhouse gases are on pace to warm the planet 2.5°C over the next 90 years. At most, the decrease in solar activity is expected to cool the planet by about 0.13°C. The math here is simple: 2.5°C minus 0.13°C equals 2.37°C. That’s not an ice age. That’s the Earth getting hotter.
The birth control blowback
The White House is taking some blowback on the health reform law’s new requirement that insurance companies cover contraceptives without co-pay — even from some of his allies. At issue isn’t the birth control mandate, which we’ve known has been coming for months now. Instead, it’s the conscience clause that allows employers that have a religious objection to opt out of contraceptive coverage.
Wonkbook: Robert Kagan, Obama's favorite Romney adviser
Robert Kagan is a prominent neoconservative who advised John McCain in the 2008 race and is advising Mitt Romney in 2012. But after publishing a cover story in the New Republic arguing against "the myth of American decline," he has found himself a new fan: President Obama.
Josh Rogin reports that Obama has been talking Kagan's article up both in public and in private. In a recent, off-the-record meeting with news anchors, Obama spent more than 10 minutes "going over its arguments paragraph by paragraph." National Security Advisor Tom Donilon went on Charlie Rose and discussed, among other issues, "Kagan's essay and Obama's love of it."
Comparing Obama and Reagan’s economic records
James Pethokoukis and Joe Weisenthal have been arguing over who presided over the more impressive recovery: Barack Obama or Ronald Reagan?
This is, I think, a mostly useless exercise. Obama and Reagan presided over different kinds of recessions that began at different times and ended in different ways. Imagine you had two doctors, one who had treated a patient for a drug overdose, and another who was treating a patient who recently suffered a heart attack. Would flatly comparing the speed of the two patients’ recoveries tell you anything about the doctors? Of course not. So too with Obama and Reagan. But if you do want to compare the two presidents, here are some things to keep in mind:
When health plans go high deductible
As health costs rise, employers are increasingly turning to high-deductible health plans: Insurance coverage that usually pairs catastrophic coverage with a health savings account, leaving consumers to decide what to spend that account on. The goal is to give consumers more incentives to not spend on the care they don’t need, but these plans often raise concerns that subscribers will cut back on the care that they do need, too. A new study from a team of Harvard researchers explores how health insurance plans with high deductible effect the care that families do, and don’t, seek.
How rich is Mitt Romney?
The AP runs the numbers:
Add up the wealth of the last eight presidents, from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama. Then double that number. Now you’re in Romney territory.
But he’s no George Washington. More here.
Study: Class size doesn’t matter
Two Harvard researchers looked at the factors that actually improve student achievement and those that don’t. In a new paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, Will Dobbie and Roland Freyer analyzed 35 charter schools, which generally have greater flexibility in terms of school structure and strategy. They found that traditionally emphasized factors such as class size made little difference, compared with some new criteria:
What Sweden can teach us about nuclear waste
In 2010, the Energy Department set up a commission to figure out what to do with the country’s nuclear waste, after a planned repository at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain was nixed. This week, the commission came back and advised a “consent-based approach” to choosing a new site. How would this work?
To understand why the United States still has no long-term plan to store it’s nuclear waste, it’s worth looking back at what happened with the controversial Yucca Mountain waste repository, which was finally squelched by President Obama in 2009. The problem, as it turned out, wasn’t so much technical — most scientists agree that it’s feasible to design a storage facility that can last thousands of years — as political. Yucca was unpopular because many Nevadans felt the waste site had been unfairly foisted on them by Congress. Back in 1987, the two other proposals for long-term repositories in Washington and Texas were vetoed by powerful politicians. That left Yucca, out in the Nevada desert. The fact that Nevadans never felt they had a choice in the matter made all the difference.
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