This is from a Census Bureau visualization of child poverty in the US, sent in by reader BGinCHI. Brown means poor, son, numbers add up to nothing. No matter how much richsplaining Paul Ryan does about how it’s all the young bucks fault, what’s been done to these children is fucking awful.
Costs and value
Ezra Klein is pushing back against the Healthcare Reform 2.0 talk with an interesting and I think wrong post at Vox. both parties agree that the biggest problem in American health care is cost. The closest thing Republicans have to a health-care plan — Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget — is focused on cutting costs. Now …
Both are true depending on the view
Ezra Klein at Vox: Put aside the political and religious fights for a moment. There’s a simple fact about contraception that gets lost in much of the coverage: it saves money. Lots of money…. Contraception costs $100-$600 annually and cuts the risk of unplanned pregnancies to nearly nothing. Liebman finds various estimates of the savings: …
The left brain knows that all love is fleeting
I understand that Nate Silver’s business model involves punching hippies and, probably, laundering think tank propaganda (same for Ezra Klein’s). Even so, Roger Pielke looks like a bad hire: “Once again, I am formally asking you for a public correction and apology,” Pielke wrote in the email that was sent to both Trenberth and his …
The left brain knows that all love is fleetingPost + Comments (68)
Personal vs Systemic
Ezra Golberstein put up an excellent tweet last night that I want to deconstruct a bit as he makes an amazingly good point. He pulled data from the National Health Expenditure Analysis tables to make two pie charts. Chart #1 is where all the money goes systemically. As we eyeball the chart, hospital spending …
The glib replies, the same defeats
I’ve been on the fence about so-called data journalism for some time. Two of my favorite commentators — Jim Newell and Elias Isquith — have eviscerated the idea, with Newell putting it best: The only thing separating Ezra Klein from David Broder at this point is six feet of dirt. On the other hand, even …
There’ll Never Be Days Like That Again
Ezra Klein thinks Grover Norquist won: Norquist and his pledge changed more than the conversation. They changed American politics. The question isn’t how we’ll increase taxes and by how much. It’s whether we’ll increase taxes. For a Republican to simply consider a tax increase is considered a massive concession. That helps them ultimately agree to …