tales of copper city

Bank nationalization 101

See Kevin Drum's excellent article in Mother Jones on what bank nationalization is---and why real capitalists should be for it.

Among the media's many sins

See Krugman's post about the Media Matters finding that the network media almost never reported the thesis held by many prominent economists that the stimulus plan is really too small.  

I'm going to speak with graduate students in public health policy in a month or so about my thoughts for a 'new public health.'

My main recommendation will be for a mission for a new public health that explicity acknowledges that our nation's health is dependent on our democracy's health, including our media's health.

Media Matters is one of our best resources for tracking the media's many sins.

Obama's policy for sick banks is clearly wrong

Via Paul Krugman's blog, I found these comments from Thomas Hoening, the president of the Kansas City Federal Reserve, about why the present course of resolving the financial crisis is clearly wrong. It is too timid, too ad hoc, and too generous with huge capital infusions with few strings attached.

The one area where the public will lose confidence in President Obama fast is with a policy for shoveling endless supplies of money to huge financial institutions that got us in this mess, all the while saying that "government isn't good at running banks."

Is there a way around the filibuster supermajority rule?

Apparently, I was wrong about one feature of the filibuster:  it is not easy to actually make senators talk endlessly.  There are a number of ways to avoid being forced to talk continuously (such as asking that the proposed legislation be read out loud, a procedure that takes hours and maybe days, so the thesis of some critics that the opposition party should be forced to talk is probably not practical.

But it may be that the Senate, as a body, can use majority rule to change its super-majority rules, on the theory that each legislature is competent to make and revise its own rules by a simple majority and should not be bound by previous procedural rules or previous legislative bodies.