Open Thread

Sunday Open Thread [1.19.14]

If the Bridgegate scandal has damaged Chris Christie enough that either he 1) does not run for President or 2) is no longer the frontrunner for the GOP, apparently the GOP Establishment really has no back up plan. I say the GOP Establishment just needs to embrace the suck, for one election cycle. Go all Goldwater. Put up a Ted Cruz-Rand Paul ticket. Lose 45 states and the popular vote by 10, and the House of Representatives in the process. That way you can tell your crazy base that you know better.

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Sunday Open Thread [1.12.14]

The News Journal this Sunday morning prints a long piece that purports to look at the “pay for play” culture in Delaware politics. It is interesting, since they don’t really get much into real instances of pay for play, with the exception of the possibility of the Stolz project. Also interesting since one of the people who has been convicted for improper political donations was frustrated enough by the process to scream at his judge that he never got anything for his contributions (Zimmerman). Most of this looks at the charges being thrown at Veasey that he was too light on the people he looked at — pretty much coming down on the side that there wasn’t much there for Veasey to work with. This seems to be the place that any reform effort needs to point towards:

The problem Veasey faced is that the state’s election law is a “Mickey Mouse statute,” Hurley said. “It’s poorly drafted and full of holes.”

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Wednesday Open Thread [1.8.14]

Dana Milbank wants to know where the outrage is from Democrats over the cuts to unemployment benefits. He notes that this kind of thing used to be real red meat for OG Democrats to beat up the GOP over. And I agree with him — you can’t effectively launch an effort to critique income inequality in the US without starting to wrap the problem around the GOP’s neck. Even though there is plenty of Democratic policy that has been complicit in this. But the GOP has been wringing its hands over paying for these extended benefits, so where are the Dems offering to eliminate the subsidies to oil companies as a way to pay for this?

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Monday Open Thread [1.6.14]

Harry Reid was on Face the Nation yesterday and he is not ruling out eliminating filibusters:

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, let me just ask you this: I mean listening to you this morning if the Republicans continue to throw up the kind of opposition you’ve been receiving, you say you’ve been receiving, do you have plans to extend this ban on filibusters? Right now you’ve– you’ve worked out this rule which they vehemently oppose that– so they– it’s very difficult for him to filibuster nominations. Would you be willing to just go to a Senate where just majority rules and that’s it?

SENATOR HARRY REID: Well, Bob, I think it’s something that we have to understand.

BOB SCHIEFFER: So you’re thinking about that?

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Saturday Open Thread [1.4.14]

Pope Francis has been in the business of afflicting the comfortable recently and one of the comfortable has issues — noting that the Pope doesn’t understand American rich people and that donations by rich American Catholics might now be at risk:

At issue is an effort to raise $180 million for the restoration of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York being spearheaded by billionaire Ken Langone, the investor known for founding Home Depot, among other things.

Langone told CNBC that one potential seven-figure donor is concerned about statements from the pope criticizing market economies as “exclusionary,” urging the rich to give more to the poor and criticizing a “culture of prosperity” that leads some to become “incapable of feeling compassion for the poor.”

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New Years Day Open Thread [1.1.14]

Happy New Year to all. A new year, new hopes, new opportunities. But right now, we have the same old politics, which are hopefully changing for the better. Paul Krugman on whether our fiscal politics are changing:

The intransigence of the right wasn’t the only disease troubling America’s body politic in 2012. We were also suffering from fiscal fever: the insistence by virtually the entire political and media establishment that budget deficits were our most important and urgent economic problem, even though the federal government could borrow at incredibly low interest rates. Instead of talking about mass unemployment and soaring inequality, Washington was almost exclusively focused on the alleged need to slash spending (which would worsen the jobs crisis) and hack away at the social safety net (which would worsen inequality).

So the good news is that this fever, unlike the fever of the Tea Party, has finally broken.

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Friday Open Thread [12.27.13]

How to Legalize Cannibis — Please. Get this done soon — Mark Kleinman is looking for some good discussion in how to do it well:

The initiative process may be the only way of accomplishing legalization in some states, but the ordinary process of legislation, where feasible, is likely to yield better outcomes.

The bulk of the revenue of a legal cannabis industry, like the bulk of the revenue of the beer industry, will come from people with substance abuse disorder. Thus the commercial interest will be opposed to the public interest in minimizing the growth of the clinically impaired population.

In the face of the lobbying power of the cannabis industry, it will be difficult to maintain high taxes or tight regulation. A state-monopoly system at retail might be preferable. The doctrine of “commercial free speech” makes the regulatory problem harder; one advantage of a state monopoly would be better consumer information. But the state lotteries demonstrate that a revenue-driven state monopoly can be just as ruthless as any private enterprise.

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