Matt Yglesias

40 Responses to “Endgame”

1. hum Says:
   August 5th, 2009 at 6:35 pm

   Newspaper articles are generally poorly written.

   And today’s Lack of Self-Awareness Award goes to …

2. bob mcmanus Says:
   August 5th, 2009 at 6:55 pm

   I’m fascinated by the creative and anarchistic variety of male facial hair in the second half of the 19th century. There were other eras of unshaven fashion, but we name a goatee a “Van Dyke” in part because that was a dominant fashion in the early 17th. Most Amcient Romans, Elizabethans followed a kind of uniform. The 1970s had mostly full beards or moustaches and long straight hair among white males. Not so many goatees or muttonchops.

   But the 19th approved anything that could be done, from shaving everything but the neck and letting the neck hair grow to the middle of your chest to Hercule Poirot
   pencilthin moustaches.

   (Oh and the post that says hippie hair was all and only about misogynist oppression…whatever.)

3. SLC Says:
   August 5th, 2009 at 7:00 pm

   If Mr. Yglesias could take some time out from bashing Israel, he might find it productive to comment on the developing scandal involving Blackwater, which may be more serious then any of the other scandals in the Bush Administration.

   http://michiganmessenger.com/24298/blackwater-accused-of-serious-crimes-by-former-employees

4. Shine Says:
   August 5th, 2009 at 7:16 pm

   Eve 6?

   In that vein, I will spend tonight cleaning my kitchen to the sounds of Better Than Ezra and Dishwalla.

5. Opie Curious Says:
   August 5th, 2009 at 7:21 pm

   You are really selling the video short. It also has Barry Watson and Marisa Coughlan. In other words, it’s a video made for/about/using the cast of the movie Teaching Mrs. Tingle. This, in turn, was just one of a string of stupid high school movies, both good and bad, that came out between 1998 and 2000. (Other titles include Drop Dead Gorgeous, Bring It On, Can’t Hardly Wait, She’s All That, Idle Hands, and Ten Things I Hate About You.)

6. bob mcmanus Says:
   August 5th, 2009 at 7:47 pm

   It’s weird that a movement and culture which was, in point of fact, relatively gender-normative and even at times misogynistic… …Emily

   Relative to what, Billy Graham, Strom Thurmond, the Ku Klux Klan? I know she’s just a kid finding her independence, but forty years of this shit has finally become more than a little tiresome. I ain’t asking for gratitude, but a little kindness and magnanimity might be nice. I wasn’t, and aren’t, your real enemy.

   The smug defensive envy of this generation is becoming boring. Tell ya what, you can save choice, which I helped ya get, without me from now on. The hell with ya. You apparently don’t need allies anyway.

7. Rich in PA Says:
   August 5th, 2009 at 7:51 pm

   Everyone should read that last item, about health care reform in MA. My impression was that it was working, but recently I’ve been subjected to endless verbiage from my side (the left) and the other side about how it doesn’t work. It’s heartening to read something that confirms my initial impression. Even if it isn’t working especially well, the price tag is so trivial when you look at the national rather than a single state’s budget that it’s almost irresistible. Scale it up, and what would it cost? Jeez, maybe $50B if everything went wrong! I don’t know why RomneyCare isn’t on the table.

8. SteveAR Says:
   August 5th, 2009 at 7:56 pm

   — Universal health care is working fine in Massachusetts.

   Goebbels would be proud of Yglesias the leftist perpetuating the lies of the leftists at the Boston Globe. The truth about the costs.

9. Fencedude Says:
   August 5th, 2009 at 8:17 pm

   I’m pretty sure that counts as a Godwin violation.

10. Aqua Regia Says:
    August 5th, 2009 at 8:23 pm

    Did anyone else notice this in the HSR UK link?

    Profitable airlines were already being hit hard by air passenger duty while the rail network received billions of pounds in subsidies, O’Leary said. “On [return] domestic flights from Glasgow to London, passengers are paying £20 in taxes while they continue to subsidise the shit out of the railways. Substituting one form of transport that is heavily taxed for a form of transport that is heavily subsidised is not the answer.”

    In the Guardian! Why can the press not be as awesome over here?

11. Willie Says:
    August 5th, 2009 at 8:30 pm

    From the Cato article linked by Shine:

    That $408 million is just the cost to the state government. According to the foundation’s estimates, the state government’s share amounts to just 20 percent of the law’s total cost of $2.1 billion in 2009. The remaining 80 percent is borne by the federal government (20 percent) and private individuals and employers complying with the law’s individual and employer mandates (60 percent). Since Massachusetts taxpayers also pay federal taxes and must comply with the law’s mandates, state taxpayers pay much more than $88 million to comply with the law. In fact, the total cost of the law is about 24 times what the Globe says it is.

    How does this make sense? The mandate is to buy health insurance not to light your money on fire.

12. Aqua Regia Says:
    August 5th, 2009 at 8:32 pm

    New Rule: You can’t use the word “truth” and then link to a Cato article.

13. wiley Says:
    August 5th, 2009 at 8:34 pm

    Hmmm. This might be a good time to renegotiate my Sally Mae loan. I can pay them off before I graduate, and graduate debt-free, but I wouldn’t mind paying less to the sharks.

14. TRIATHLON Says:
    August 5th, 2009 at 8:41 pm

    INFLATION II

    (Food, Lodging and Transportation Don’t Count)

    Now, an interesting article was written on by (Schandra1@Bloomberg.Net) entitled (U.S. Incomes Fall 1.3%, Biggest Drop in Four Years (Update3)), and if you have a head for figures and all from what it seems to say is don’t look for a Happy Days Are Here Again Time soon. But that is not the thing that caught my eye it was the Federal Reserve excludes staples when figuring INFLATION small things like the cost of food, rent, and gas for the car. So, if you can’t pay your, rent because your landlord had to raise/increase it do to his overhead cost, and you don’t have the money to put gas/petro into your car/automobile, to go to the market/grocery store, to purchase food/staples, like milk, coffee, tea, sugar, bread, butter, meats, and even if you did when you get there have somehow there has been an increase in prices why that is not inflation. Well it may not be INFLATION, but it sure works for STARVATION. When a fella has put all the notches in his belt beyond the one’s it came with, using the ice pick from the kitchen, and his belly button is having a close intimate relations with his back bone, it may not count for those economic boys toward economic recovery, unless it’s a way of getting more grave yard votes.

    (Cheaper-Coupons-Specials)

    Now, once again as we say yesterday, (INFLATION IS HERE) according those none important items at the check out counter of where the necessary staples of Life are sold The cost of Milk, Bread, Butter, Poultry and Meats are all on the rise, the little extra cash that was taken into the markets for that little extra something is now use not to purchase that little extra something but to pay for those necessary staples for the meal table. The bargain hunting has left Wally World and entered into the Grocery Store, is it a steak, pork, or chicken, a gallon of milk or just a quart will do, is it a small or large tub of butter, a large loaf or a small loaf of bread, what about the store brand is it cheaper, are there any coupons, what about specials, unemployment is expected to continue to grow for the next year, the company the bread winner of the family works at is foreign owned and they just wanted to learn just what the bread winners company was doing that was a little better than their home country was doing at making the same product, now they have the answer, will they get rid of their competition, taking everything with them, then what.

    (Inflation, Depression, and Starvation)

    Now, the Global Community will have to make their own determination on what is an what is not something to worry about, or whom to place more trust in the words of, The Nay Sayers, Alarmist, or the Rock Star Media Messiah Imperial, (INFLATION IS HERE), if your belly button is having a close intimate relationship with your back bone, your out of work, you have cleaned out your bank account, your entire family living in your car/automobile, in a shelter or on the streets, you have to steal gas/petro for your car/automobile by using a siphoning tube, with empty pockets as empty as the Hollow Words, meaning less words, coming from the (544/DC) District of Clowns, well maybe its not INFLATION, just a little old RECESSION, but buddy its sure is INFLATION, DEPRESSION, AND STARVATION, according to the STAPLES INDEX.

    RECOMMENDED READING

    (1) (U.S. Incomes Fall 1.3%, Biggest Drop in Four Years (Update3), (Schandra1@Bloomberg.Net) Last Updated: August 4, 2009 10:24 EDT

    (2) (http://www.zerohedge.com/article/money-sidelines-fallacy)

    (3) (www.InfoWar.Com.) This Depression is just beginning, Mike Whitney.

    (4) (www.TheGlobeAndMail.Com.) Let’s hope the U.S. ‘mendicant’s bowl’ strategy saves us all, Jeffrey Simpson, Last updated on Friday, Jul. 17, 2009 09:30AM EDT.

    (5) (http://www.spiegel.de/international) THE MAN NOBODY WANTED TO HEAR, Global Banking Economist Warned of Coming Crisis

    HERCULE TRIATHLON SAVINIEN

15. SteveAR Says:
    August 5th, 2009 at 8:45 pm

    Fencedude:

    I’m pretty sure that counts as a Godwin violation.

    I’m sure it isn’t. But maybe you should report me to the Obama administration. For the record, I’m not in the insurance industry, in the pay of anyone in the insurance industry, or a lobbyist of any kind (unlike a large number of people in the Obama administration).

16. Hector Says:
    August 5th, 2009 at 8:46 pm

    Re: — Way more words than I’ve ever read before about Hair.

    That article seems to have been tailor made to annoy me. They actually use the phrase ’second wave feminist’ as though it’s a positive thing.

17. The Lorax Says:
    August 5th, 2009 at 8:56 pm

    And Shine, FTW!

18. urgs Says:
    August 5th, 2009 at 9:09 pm

    Another rule should be to never link to an article that quotes Ryanair.

19. The Lorax Says:
    August 5th, 2009 at 9:10 pm

    But what’s interesting is how the whole hair issue is inextricably entwined with a gender dynamic—it’s pretty clear that many people objected to the long-hair-for-men trend because it did blur the distinctions between gender roles and create a situation that made it more difficult to gender individuals.

    Typical humanities cultural studies claim. It’s an empirical claim, of course. Is it true? Who knows. With my armchair sociologist hat on, I suspect that probably some people didn’t like way long hair on men made them appear feminine (though have you seen dudes with long hair before? They look like, well, dudes, normally). But *many*? I haven’t a clue, and neither does she. The humanities are rife with this sort of bullshit armchair empirical speculation.

    And the rest of the article isn’t any better. But the issue really is this: When you’re in a field with no rigor (e.g. Cultural Studies), you can say whatever the fuck you want to say and get away with it, so long as you toe the proper political/gender/sexual lines.

20. Firas Says:
    August 5th, 2009 at 9:26 pm

    The Lorax, there’s a worse argued claim, a much more problematic one:

    all this evidences the advances made in the freedom of masculine sexuality seemingly almost at the expense of feminine sexuality.

    Men wearing long hair is an advance in male sexuality only BECAUSE women have been able to cross the gender boundaries far more comfortably and (in the contemporary era) far longer.

21. bdbd Says:
    August 5th, 2009 at 9:32 pm

    This story about Woodstock is also full of amusing 60s details, especially the story of the origins.

22. The Lorax Says:
    August 5th, 2009 at 9:35 pm

    @Firas. Yes, and THEN the claim you reference is supposed to support the dominance of the “virgin-whore dichotomy.”

    Someone call Routledge. We have a great book proposal.

23. ANM Says:
    August 5th, 2009 at 9:57 pm

    Typical humanities cultural studies claim. It’s an empirical claim, of course. Is it true? Who knows. With my armchair sociologist hat on, I suspect that probably some people didn’t like way long hair on men made them appear feminine (though have you seen dudes with long hair before? They look like, well, dudes, normally). But *many*? I haven’t a clue, and neither does she. The humanities are rife with this sort of bullshit armchair empirical speculation.

    While I take your point, this brief article is not really the forum to be presenting reams of evidence to support her thesis. The bulk of the this evidence would probably be in the form of primary source textual material. The writer does mention the “frequent tropes” related to gender ambiguity, so I’m willing to cut her some slack and assume she’s either compiled or is familiar with this evidence.

    (To be honest, I’m hard pressed to think of too many alternatives to her thesis that the greater gender ambiguity that long hair on men generates is the source of the 60’s hostility towards it. For generations and generations before this in America, men and boys uniformly had short hair. For those born prior to 1960, the long hair = female equation must have been pretty well ingrained.)

24. bob mcmanus Says:
    August 5th, 2009 at 11:08 pm

    “…men and boys uniformly had short hair. For those born prior to 1960, the long hair = female equation”

    23:Just cause that is how Merle Haggard saw it, doesn’t mean that’s how it felt. It felt like rebellion. It did not feel like wearing a dress, though some did that too.

    The real context is the draft, and the ubiquitous military haircuts. Those who were born later cannot imagine the degree to which the male gender role was “soldier”:preparing to be a soldier, soldier, veteran, sympathetic to soldiering.
    The one certain thing long hair on a young man indicated was that he wasn’t in the military.

    The insults directed at longhairs involving “girlishness” had the quite overt sense “not violent.” And that was the point and purpose, not any move to androgeny.

25. SteveAR Says:
    August 5th, 2009 at 11:23 pm

    Fencedude:

    I’m pretty sure that counts as a Godwin violation.

    Would you think this is a Godwin violation?

26. pseudonymous in nc Says:
    August 5th, 2009 at 11:59 pm

    OT (if Endgames have a T)– G.A. Cohen died today. A sad loss of a brilliant political philosopher. normblog is collecting tributes and remembrances.

27. Shine Says:
    August 6th, 2009 at 1:31 am

    Any mention of Goebbels, you lose.

    Period. End of arguement.

    Deal with it SteveAR.

28. soullite Says:
    August 6th, 2009 at 7:59 am

    Teaching Mrs. Tingle and Cruel Intentions were the only late 90’s teen movies worth watching. I watched them all when I was a kid, and I’ve seen most of them again as adults. Those are the only two that held up.

29. Hector Says:
    August 6th, 2009 at 8:16 am

    Re: Teaching Mrs. Tingle and Cruel Intentions were the only late 90’s teen movies worth watching. I watched them all when I was a kid, and I’ve seen most of them again as adults. Those are the only two that held up

    Ah, Cruel Intentions. I loved that movie- it brilliantly laid bare the sexual nihilism and heartless manipulation that lies at the heart of much of American elite culture among our chattering classes.

30. Walt Says:
    August 6th, 2009 at 8:19 am

    Dude, you compared Yglesias to Goebbels. What Fencedude is trying to say politely is that this makes you looks like a big fat moron.

31. Hector Says:
    August 6th, 2009 at 8:21 am

    Re: And the rest of the article isn’t any better. But the issue really is this: When you’re in a field with no rigor (e.g. Cultural Studies), you can say whatever the fuck you want to say and get away with it, so long as you toe the proper political/gender/sexual lines

    Precisely, Lorax. Though I’d include Gender Studies, American Literature, and various other fields in that mix, as they have all been contaminated by the postmodernist/nihilist virus.

32. Hector Says:
    August 6th, 2009 at 8:26 am

    Re: OT (if Endgames have a T)– G.A. Cohen died today. A sad loss of a brilliant political philosopher. normblog is collecting tributes and remembrances.

    A brilliant scholar, and one with a deep sense (as any man of wisdom and conscience must have) for the irreparable flaws and vacuity of late-capitalist liberalism.

    “In paradisum deducant te Angeli; in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres, et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Ierusalem. Chorus angelorum te suscipiat, et cum Lazaro quondam paupere æternam habeas requiem.”

33. Njorl Says:
    August 6th, 2009 at 8:40 am

    That article seems to have been tailor made to annoy me. They actually use the phrase ’second wave feminist’ as though it’s a positive thing.

    The history of western civilization in the last 200 years has been tailor made to annoy you.

34. bob h Says:
    August 6th, 2009 at 8:46 am

    Many of the private student loan companies are trying to kill the Obama reform program. But there is nothing in principle to stop them from making private student loans in the future. The problem is that the banks don’t want to provide money for this purpose.

    One more example of a supposedly free, competitive marketplace that really has bee based on parasitic corporate welfare and free government money.

35. SteveAR Says:
    August 6th, 2009 at 8:58 am

    Shine:

    Any mention of Goebbels, you lose.

    Walt:

    Dude, you compared Yglesias to Goebbels. What Fencedude is trying to say politely is that this makes you looks like a big fat moron.

    So the fact that Yglesias is acting like Goebbels in perpetuating a lie doesn’t matter, right? That’s a really weak argument both of you are trying to make.

36. El Cid Says:
    August 6th, 2009 at 8:58 am

    Via Alternet:

    Anti-Government Ideologue Megan McArdle’s Amnesia About Her Privileged, Govt.-Funded Upbringing

    By Mark Ames, AlterNet. Posted August 6, 2009.

    The “libertarian” Atlantic Monthly writer rails against public health care, yet her family trusted government enough to make them rich.

    Last week, McArdle posted an encyclopedia-length article on the Atlantic Monthly’s site, denouncing Obama’s health care plan in a rambling piece that essentially boiled down to this: big government is a bad thing, and free markets are the medicine you need, even if you don’t like it, and even though you can’t afford it. McArdle’s post sparked a series of smackdowns, including Ezra Klein in the Washington Post, and Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake.

    What Megan McArdle doesn’t mention is that her own privileged upbringing was funded by public money. That’s right, Megan McArdle is just a second-generation product of the sleazy NYC construction business, which has been using public money for private gain since the Tammany Hall era. Even more galling is that Megan’s father got his start in the public sector working in taxpayer-funded health care programs. If it weren’t for her father’s employment as a public health care official in the 1970s, Megan McArdle’s life might have turned out completely different from the privileged one she enjoyed.

    Megan McArdle is the daughter of one Francis X. McArdle, who built his career as a public servant in the New York City administration, then moved over to the private side, where he could leverage his contacts with the government — and finally moved back onto the public payroll in 2006, when Mr. McArdle was appointed by then-Sen. Hillary Clinton to advise the federal government how public funds should be spent, and on whom. Earlier this year, Mr. McArdle was reportedly in Albany lobbying the New York state government for a job as the “stimulus czar,” appropriating President Obama’s federal spending money.

    Megan was born in 1973, a few years after Francis got his big fat job on the public payroll in the New York City administration, where he stayed for 11 years. Among the first big jobs Megan’s daddy took while climbing up the public payroll career ladder were jobs as Inspector General for the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, and Director of Program Budget for the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation.

    So Megan McArdle’s entry into this world was literally greased by taxpayer funds. But of course, it wouldn’t stop there.

    Francis McArdle, rose up the Big Government ranks in the New York city. His public-funded career reached its peak in 1978 when then-Mayor Ed Koch named him as Commissioner of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, where he served until 1981. That job put McArdle in control of all sorts of public works: water supply, waste water, sewage infrastructure. It’s kind of fitting that McArdle’s privileged childhood was funded by taxpayer’s shit and urine — a Freudian might say that this is the source of her inexplicable hatred of the same Big Government that pissed dollars and shat gold on the McArdle household.

    Megan’s dad moved from the public sector overseeing public works to a job with real estate developer Olympia & York — just in time to take advantage of the huge Battery Park City project that Olympia & York was developing under contract. The success of the project relied on huge taxpayer subsidies — at least $65 million in 1981 dollars — as well as major public works projects to make the development attractive, including the disastrous Westway road project, which drained at least $85 million of federal subsidies until it was finally mothballed in the mid-80s, due to environmental concerns and public protests — the kinds of protesters whom grown-up Megan McArdle would later attack. No matter, though, because by the time the Westway was canceled and all that public money was wasted, Olympia & York, Megan’s daddy’s company, had catapulted into one of the top real estate moguls in the world, and Megan’s daddy was ready to move on to even bigger things.

    In 1985, F. X. McArdle had moved from the private sector to a position that Megan understands better than any other: a lobbyist who manipulates Big Government on behalf of private companies. Francis X. McArdle was named to head the General Contractor’s Association of New York. He stayed in that lucrative position for the next 20 years.

    In 1987, as the budding libertarian Megan was enjoying an expensive private-school education, McArdle’s business was investigated by a new Organized Crime Task Force set up by the state of New York to combat the mob’s control of the contracting business, which led to enormous waste of taxpayer money. Here’s a New York Times article on that investigation, featuring Megan’s dad representing the scary people:

    Anti-Crime Unit Urged for New York Builders

    by Selwyn Raab — Tuesday, January 6, 1987

    Corruption is so embedded in New York City’s multibillion-dollar construction industry that a permanent investigative agency may be needed specifically to uproot it, a top state investigator said. The investigator, Ronald Goldstock, director of the state’s Organized Crime Task Force, also asserted that construction practices in the city must change. Mr. Goldstock, whose agency is investigating the industry, said the elimination of organized-crime racketeering would not alone solve such problems as payoffs to municipal inspectors, bid-rigging among contractors and bribes to union officials for special contract favors and the hiring of lower-paid nonunion workers. ‘Even if you indict and convict every mobster involved in corruption,” Mr. Goldstock said in an interview, ”under current conditions, someone else will come along, recognize the potential and become the new predators.”

    Commenting on Mr. Goldstock’s findings, the managing director of the General Contractors Association, Francis X. McArdle, said he was ”unaware of any pervasive patterns of corruption” regarding his group. The association represents more than 100 contractors primarily engaged in construction of public buildings and plants.

    Mr. McArdle also disputed the need for a new investigative agency. ”We don’t need more people tripping over each other in search of glory, facts or whatever,” he said.

    What’s frightening is that Mr. McArdle won the day: the new investigative agency was shelved in favor of the kind of self-policing “solution” that Wall Street is pushing for today. Because you know, those big government inspectors with their fact-finding missions only get in the way of innovation!

    Here’s where things get a little scarier: the story about the mob running Megan’s daddy’s area of work shortly afterwards became the subject of a Fortune magazine feature, replete with famous names from New York’s organized crime world, titled: “THE MAFIA’S BIT OF THE BIG APPLE: Byzantine building codes and horrendous logistics help the mob control New York City construction — at a price that the big developers have been all too willing to pay.”…

37. LaFollette Progressive Says:
    August 6th, 2009 at 10:27 am

    SteveAR – “So the fact that Yglesias is acting like Goebbels in perpetuating a lie doesn’t matter, right?”

    So what about all of your friends pushing around chain emails that lie about the “government takeover of health care” and “bureaucrats who will have the power to euthanize your grandmother”? Are they a bunch of Goebbelses too?

    Matt favorably linked to an article in the Boston Globe. The worst thing you can say about this is that he earnestly praised a newspaper article that may have misrepresented the cost of a government program.

    Just like the Nazis did!

    Meanwhile, your Cato link tries to claim that 60% of the program costs are being borne by Massachusetts taxpayers, when in fact these costs are being borne by people who could afford insurance but did not previously pay for it, choosing to be free riders on the system at everyone else’s expense. Getting those people to absorb a majority of the costs was kind of the whole point of the Massachusetts health care reform, and presenting those costs as an extra burden for taxpayers is every bit as dishonest as anything in the Globe article.

    So I guess that means you’re just like Goebbels, too.

38. rabbit Says:
    August 6th, 2009 at 11:10 am

    I prefer the Flys’ video “Got you where I want you” for the perfect confluence of late 90s rock and Katie Holmes.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BM_OWaItNJM

39. Njorl Says:
    August 6th, 2009 at 11:12 am

    So the fact that Yglesias is acting like Goebbels in perpetuating a lie doesn’t matter, right? That’s a really weak argument both of you are trying to make.

    Mall Santas, the people who hire them, and the parents who take their kids to see them are all just like Goebbels.

    Of course, that isn’t even analagous to what Matt’s done. Because you disagree with Matt concerning what rises to the level of “fine”, you call Matt Goebels. It says more about you than it does about Matt.

40. SteveAR Says:
    August 6th, 2009 at 2:14 pm

    LaFollette Progressive:

    So what about all of your friends pushing around chain emails that lie about the “government takeover of health care” and “bureaucrats who will have the power to euthanize your grandmother”?

    First off, these are working people taking time out of work. Like the vast majority of Americans, these people already get their health insurance through their employer, and believe that what you “progressives” want will make their health care worse. Based on what I’ve read, they’re right.

    So these aren’t people “pushing around chain emails” or lying; in fact, it is the left that is doing the lying about what Obama and the Dems are pushing, and lying about what these people are protesting about.

    I think the left believes they have a monopoly on popular outrage and are pissed that this is working. It’s funny how the left is projecting this as “astroturfing”, when the left is doing all the astroturfing.

    Matt favorably linked to an article in the Boston Globe. The worst thing you can say about this is that he earnestly praised a newspaper article that may have misrepresented the cost of a government program.

    You mean lied, right, in order to push the leftist agenda?

    Meanwhile, your Cato link tries to claim that 60% of the program costs are being borne by Massachusetts taxpayers, when in fact these costs are being borne by people who could afford insurance but did not previously pay for it, choosing to be free riders on the system at everyone else’s expense.

    No, it doesn’t. Read it again. 100% of the cost is borne by Massachusetts taxpayers. 20% comes from the state, which everyone in Massachusetts pays into through their state taxes. Another 20% comes from federal funds, which everyone in America pays into, including those who live in Massachusetts. The other 60% comes from those individuals who didn’t have health insurance before but could afford it, and those companies who I’m guessing didn’t offer health coverage.

    Cato isn’t pulling a Goebbels; they aren’t lying.