CT Blue

Monthly Archives: June 2012

Obama’s gambit

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

According to Ed Kilgore at Political Animal, there’s a conservative number cruncher who doesn’t see Obama’s move on immigration as being all that much of a game changer, given that Hispanic voters are only truly significant in two tossup states, Nevada and Arizona: Sean Trende of Real Clear Politics (a conservative numbers-cruncher whom I […]

Filed in Politics | | Comments (0)

Art mystery

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Yesterday my wife, son, and I went to the MFA in Boston, which has been renovated and expanded recently. I don’t claim to be an art expert, but I do know that in portraiture prior to the twentieth century, the objects around the subject usually were symbolic in some sense. A scholar might hold a […]

Filed in Pictures | | Comments (0)

How to solve the “debt crisis”

Sunday, June 17, 2012

This morning, Dean Baker responds to yet another know-nothing right wing rant about the deficit, by suggesting we can solve the deficit problem by hiring unemployed college grads to write equally ignorant pieces about the deficit. But this piece suggests an easy route for dealing with the deficit. Clearly there is a big market […]

Filed in Economics, Hypocrisy | | Comments (0)

Friday Night Music

Friday, June 15, 2012

Somewhat topical; Arlo Guthrie, Emmy Lou Harris and others singing Woody Guthrie’s Deportee. Just goes to show some things never change. Obama’s announcement today was no doubt politically motivated, but unlike some politically motivated gestures I could mention, it was the right thing to do. By the way, it looks like I can pick them. […]

Filed in Music | | Comments (0)

At least he picked the right victims

Friday, June 15, 2012

It is an interesting fact that the two people who have actually been prosecuted, since the great meltdown, as a result of financial scams, were men who specialized in relieving the already rich of their money, while the folks who simply gambled with everyone’s money have gone not only scot-free, but have been the recipients […]

Filed in Corporate Crime | | Comments (0)

Corporate veto power; the coming thing

Thursday, June 14, 2012

There are folks out there who insist that there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties, so one should either cast a Naderesque protest vote, or not vote at all. I’ve always felt that there is too much truth in that position to totally reject it, but that on the whole, […]

Filed in Corporate Crime, Issues | | Comments (0)

Bad Moon Rising

Thursday, June 14, 2012

I’ve argued a couple of times (e.g, here) that European austerity may pave the way for a return of authoritarian regimes. Krugman makes the same point here.

Filed in Creeping Totalitarianism, Economics | | Comments (0)

Only in America

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

This is a country in which fairly basic human rights are being treated in a rather cavalier fashion, without much outcry from anyone. People are being removed from voting rolls upon mere suspicion, and even that is giving too much credit to the perpetrators. Congress just passed a law allowing the government to imprison without […]

Filed in American Life, Crazies | | Comments (0)

Everyone else must fail

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Today’s Boston Globe reports that young people are not buying homes, and that their failure to do so will have negative impacts on the economy. The article comes complete with the required profile of an atypical exemplar of the affected class of people, a young woman who, at least implicitly, actually has the ability […]

Filed in Corporate Crime, Economics | | Comments (0)

Friday Night Music: The Krugman Blues

Friday, June 8, 2012

If any of my readers happen to read Paul Krugman’s blog, they are probably aware that there is an infinitesimally small, yet not non-existent, chance that he stole his Friday Night Music feature from me. I have managed to contain my outrage. Our tastes do not appear to coincide that much in music, though both […]