Stories to Watch: 9/3/11
Pretty dead around here, actually. Nothing much happening. Rained all day. The boredom is palpable. Now here’s the news…
With the Obama White House relatively scandal-free going into 2012, House Republicans are trying their damnedest to cook up a scandal in time.
Meanwhile, President Obama draws back from new regulatory standards for smog — standards that have sound science behind them — in an obvious attempt to win over anti-regulation voters. It’s a fool’s errand; they’re GOP and they’ll hate him no matter what. Worse, he backs up the argument that regulations are bad for business and environment has to take a back seat to polluters. A terrible, terrible decision that I hope will haunt this White House for a very long time.
Supply-side economics fails again: Austerity-minded Europe sinks, while spendthrift Argentina soars.
Meanwhile here at home, the hopeless mush of contradictory economic policies that are the result of compromise does about as well as you’d expect.
How did one Florida sheriff save taxpayers $1 million? By de-privatizing the jail. That’s right, non-profit government can do things cheaper than for-profit corporations. In other words, despite Republicans’ best efforts, math still works.
Paul Krugman seems very irate with Eric Cantor. We should all be very irate with Eric Cantor.
Here’s how employment works; when the numbers head in the right direction, Republicans claim responsibility. When the numbers head in the wrong direction, it’s Obama’s fault.
Finally, S&P is back to giving AAA ratings to subprime mortgages securities. Because that worked out so well the last time.
