Matt Yglesias

21 Responses to “Endgame”

1. CJColucci Says:
   June 30th, 2009 at 6:18 pm

   I’m all in favor of quality marriages. I hope I have one.

2. LaFollette Progressive Says:
   June 30th, 2009 at 6:18 pm

   It’s true. Marriage quality is very important.

3. live Says:
   June 30th, 2009 at 6:19 pm

   Martha Nussbaum’s brilliant and comprehensive brief for marriage quality

   Dude …

4. AssForAHeadDotCom Says:
   June 30th, 2009 at 6:31 pm

   It’s not a birth certificate, it’s a picture of a birth certificate.

   When Obama appears on television, he is not in your television.

   But when I say that Mexicans are really shapeshifting alien brain-suckers from the planet Vorg, those are not just the words of a demented person.

5. fostert Says:
   June 30th, 2009 at 6:35 pm

   I liked Bradford Plummer’s article except for one thing. The mistakes Europe made early on are exactly the mistakes we want to write into law. His belief that we will learn from Europe’s mistakes is nothing but wishful thinking.

6. Petey Says:
   June 30th, 2009 at 7:14 pm

   Good Felix Salmon post this afternoon.

   If anyone is curious why GE has built an arm of their business that owns the media coverage of Washington, perhaps it’s because the US taxpayer potentially donating the cost of almost half of the entire Iraq war to GE…

7. Ed Says:
   June 30th, 2009 at 7:27 pm

   In fairness to Congress, the House is doing OK. Not great, but the House is producing legislation and what they have produced is pretty defensible.

   Its a good advertisement for disciplined parliamentary parties, and legislatures elected for short terms on a one man, one vote basis.

   One of the positions of the progressive political party in Canada is to abolish their Senate and the American left should be taking up the same refrain.

8. Petey Says:
   June 30th, 2009 at 7:38 pm

   From the WaPo piece Salmon links to:

   General Electric, the world’s largest industrial company, has quietly become the biggest beneficiary of one of the government’s key rescue programs for banks.

   At the same time, GE has avoided many of the restrictions facing other financial giants getting help from the government.

   The company did not initially qualify for the program, under which the government sought to unfreeze credit markets by guaranteeing debt sold by banking firms. But regulators soon loosened the eligibility requirements, in part because of behind-the-scenes appeals from GE.

   (my bolding)

   GE’s finance arm is not classified as a bank. Rather, it worked its way into the rescue program by owning two relatively small Utah banking institutions, illustrating how the loopholes in the U.S. regulatory system are manifest in the government’s historic intervention in the financial crisis.

   The Obama administration now wants to close such loopholes as it works to overhaul the financial system. The plan would reaffirm and strengthen the wall between banking and commerce, forcing companies like GE to essentially choose one or the other.

   “We’d like to regulate companies according to what they do, rather than what they call themselves or how they charter themselves,” said Andrew Williams, a Treasury spokesman.

   GE’s ability to live in the best of both worlds — capitalizing on the federal safety net while avoiding more rigorous regulation — existed well before last year’s crisis, because of its unusual corporate structure.

   The US taxpayer stands to lose $340 billion because GE dominates Washington media coverage. Think about that when Obama agrees to neuter the healthcare bill in order to lower its pricetag by $500 billion over ten years.

9. DTM Says:
   June 30th, 2009 at 8:02 pm

   His belief that we will learn from Europe’s mistakes is nothing but wishful thinking.

   Perhaps so, but once we get started, like the Europeans we might be able to tweak the system down the road until we are getting what we need.

10. anon Says:
    June 30th, 2009 at 8:05 pm

    I understand the skepticism of the coalition in a box, and I have some of the same concerns…but…

    The reality is that no one is going to care on a day-to-day basis about regulating the banks as much as the banks care about not being regulated. They’ll be in there every day trying not to be regulated, they’ll be donating regularly, etc.

    The left, on the other hand, just has the resources that public pressure can bring to bear. That means they can really can hit these issues mostly when they either a)convince legislators to agree with their ideology or b)when the public is paying enough attention to the issue that they push on it.

    So, I would expect the tactics of the left to look different from those on the right. The campaign in a box model is suited pretty well for the challenge of moving policy on an issue that a lot of people would like to see resolved, but who can’t make a living out of resolving the issue the way the other side can make a living out of it NOT being resolved.

    That said, we really do need a network. Fox News was fucking brilliant.

11. linus Says:
    June 30th, 2009 at 8:12 pm

    an unusually good you tube of Mr. Billy Bragg’s “A13 Trunk Road to the Sea” live in that German place, 1985.

    complete with explanation.

12. pollian Says:
    June 30th, 2009 at 9:12 pm

    Ah poor, uncertain Clov. If only he could find his heap. Is this the sign of a deep engagement with Beckett? Or a casual allusion?

13. Mike Says:
    June 30th, 2009 at 10:21 pm

    I’m pretty sure St. Vincent was in the elementary school talented and gifted program that I was. Should’ve made a move.

14. Mattyoung Says:
    June 30th, 2009 at 10:37 pm

    Goldman Sachs | Government Sachs | Government Sucks

    Regarding Congress, I am ready to say ACES will be a good experience, even if it needs major modification.

    States and Localities will appeal and get the right to sell emission slips for operating cash, as they do with transit. Hence, local government fleets will operate much farther off of equilibrium as they have old style transport fleets, subsidized by global warming dollars. However, the push on the private sector to adopt modern transport technology will be greater, and they will win the battle of economies of scale. Local government transport costs will jump much higher than the private sector, and begin sucking dollars from beloved government employee benefits.

    So, as in San Jose, CA; you get a county transport fleet dragging itself into the past while airport and transport hubs are forced into rapid modernization, moving transport technology fairly fast. In the squeeze, government employee reduction, local, and state as government is late to the technology bandwagon.

    Charter schools will become standard fair, aided by technology, as traditional high schools become concentration camps for the parentless. Smart kid continue their exodus from old style education, poor kids dragged down by the school unions. The new education for high schools is the seminar room, the office building, the vacant strip mall. Classes are less frequent, more focused, and have very small student size. More quality, less quantity. The change being through the modern Wikipedia. High schools downsized to community event centers, lab work, and arts; when they are not barb wire enclosures for young, parentless males.

    Medicare will get squeezed and expanded down a few years.

    Local governments become supreme because they are right there, johnny on the spot when it comes to transport efficiency, the leading issue of our time. So, city leaders have to take the lead, applying technology to the roads, and they will. The key is to minimize infrastructure costs and maximize variability of transport modes.

    The street bots have come for the current oil spike. They will be taxed heavily at first, but local government will love them as great labor savers, and government is overburdened with labor. The Gubinater will be the first to break, and San Jose looks to be a big winner, possibly regaining its crown as high tech central.

    Finally the whole resolution will involve a great sideshow, the run and hide from Uncle Sam’s and European debt. When not avoiding the debt problem, firms will be constantly inflated the cost of government programs, timing the cycles such that each new programs stalls as the government cartel shifts costs around, sort of a constant, and useless whirlwind in Congress. We will see regional communities rise up as a independent voice against the continued federalization of transport, as they deploy low cost, but very high return investments in the bots. Cities will be loathe to send their tax payer dollars back to an archaic Washington.

15. bbartlog Says:
    July 1st, 2009 at 12:19 am

    Marriage quality. For, you know, Uranians.

16. Maynard Handley Says:
    July 1st, 2009 at 12:59 am

    Plumer’s article on the supposed wonders of CO2 emissions trading is, basically, bullshit; the sort of obfuscation of numbers that one expects from AEI and Heritage, not from someone supposedly trying to inform the public.

    Look at the actual CO2 numbers for the various EU-15 countries. It’s not hard — get them through Wolfram Alpha.
    The major reduction, 12% or so, is in Germany, and we all know why that happened — shutting down obsolete plant in East Germany. Look at the other major countries: France has been basically flat for the last twenty years, and is up slightly from 1990. Italy is up substantially. Spain, in spite of its windmills, is up more than 30%.
    The ONLY EU country I can find that actually seems to have made a minor reduction that isn’t obvious is Sweden.

    So let’s review. Plumer tells us “But on closer inspection, the ETS seems to be working pretty well” and “found that the cap-and-trade system was driving real changes in business behavior”.
    This is PRECISELY the sort of nebulous bullshit that South Park justifiably skewers whenever it brings up the subject of hippies and environmentalists. Let’s review. The goal here is NOT to have a “working cap and trade system”. The goal is not even to have “real changes in business behavior”. The GOAL, the ONLY GOAL, is to reduce CO2 emissions enough to severely reduce upcoming climate change. This is not a fscking religious issue, where what we have to do is get people to spend more time thinking worthy thoughts about Gaia, yet, like the standard “raising awareness” stupidity we hear all the time, that is Plumer’s metric for success. Even Plumer’s own guessed at future dots for EU emissions show basically business as usual for the indefinite future.

    And the article makes no sense, even by Plumer’s metrics — if cap-and-trade has such strong effects EU-wide, then why such dramatic variations in the behavior of different countries? How come cap-and-trade isn’t persuading Ireland (emissions up 23% since 1990), or Greece (up 27%), or Portugal (up 41%) to do anything to reduce emissions? After all, it’s not like Greece had some sort of uber-sophisticated infrastructure in 1990 that is so difficult to improve. Gee, could it be that, in fact, cap-and-trade remains, in 2009, crap-and-talk, a moronic scheme that has done fsckall to change the world, and will continue to do fsckall?

17. Dan Says:
    July 1st, 2009 at 1:44 am

    Actor out work is an awesome song

18. Max424 Says:
    July 1st, 2009 at 2:28 am

    Katy Kay and Claire Shipman are a couple of nitwits. I saw them interviewed on Morning Hos and couldn’t believe they were citizens of the same country as me.

    They should both be forced to work in a coal mine for 6 weeks, to get their heads on straight. This is America, not Norway. Employees have one function in our great Nation, to do as they are told and like it.

19. Max424 Says:
    July 1st, 2009 at 2:43 am

    As for Ezra, the jury is still out. Obama has a perfect storm working for him. A crisis, an idiotic opposition, Al Franken, a fawning Congress, left-wing blogs (I’m serious), and the bully pulpit, tailor made for his oratorical skills. If Obama can’t jam through meaningful progressive legislation now, it will never happen, and Ezra’s thesis will prove correct: the system is irrevocably broken.

20. pseudonymous in nc Says:
    July 1st, 2009 at 2:58 am

    Katty Kay is really a sign that the days of Charles Wheeler are long gone.

    I mean, it’s not as if the fact that she was retained by the BBC as a freelancer when her husband was on staff as Washington correspondent contributed to her emergence on the punditry circuit.

21. ed_finnerty Says:
    July 1st, 2009 at 8:10 am

    so EU 15 is down about 200 MT from 1990 – Germany is down about 250 MT – so EU15 excluding Germany is up 50 MT – Germany is a bookeeping fiction due to unification.

    This is a good example of the type of reporting we can look forward to in the GHG fantasy world. Meanwhile, in the reality based community it keeps going up, up, up.