¶ The Paragraph

During the presidency of Ronald Reagan, Republicans latched onto three theories that allowed them to hand out tax cuts and pile up debt. One theory is “Starve the Beast“, which says to cut taxes now, so to bring on a budget crisis that would force cuts in social spending later. As one Republican consultant put […]

Rep. Roskam (R-IL) shakes his Etch-A-Sketch as Pres. Obama looks on. from C-SPAN “[The American people] … have rendered a judgment about what we have attempted to do so far,” said Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) at the president’s big health care meeting last week.30+31 “[P]ut that on the shelf and … start over with a […]

From Climbing Mountains to Building Schools K2 from air, West Face (Guilhem Vellut) Greg Mortenson is an American, who grew up near Mount Kilimanjaro, where his father started a teaching hospital and his mother started a school.20+21 From that background, Mortenson became a nurse, and an avid mountain climber — but later switched to become […]

“[I]t’s quite extraordinary to grant government agents the statutory authority to secretly break into Americans homes,” said Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) last month at a Judiciary Committee hearing on the PATRIOT Act.80 A month after 9-11, with half its members shut out of their offices due to anthrax-powdered letters, the Senate passed the PATRIOT Act […]

(Analysis.) Since the Democratic leadership has ignored the “Medicare for All” bill and has instead opted to keep for-profit companies in the basic medical insurance business, though in competition with a non-profit public option, those companies have focused on scuttling that public option.3031 The companies complain that, as a recent ad put it, “tens of […]