Interestingly, John Tierney, in today's New York Times (behind the magic curtain) asks the same question.

In short, he thinks it's because the actual threat is very small, terrorism acts are very hard to do, and that there are relatively few people willing to do the sacrifice necessary to make them happen. The 9/11 tragedy did not change the world as much as we are sold.

For this once (and this one time only), I agree with John.

Posted at September 9, 2006 9:03 AM in response to The Wrong Question to Ask

It's seems time to embrace this program...

And start saying that when the Dems take over in 2008, we'll use these records to find out what is really was going on with the right wing conspiracy.

Can you imagine the content of the calls between some of the super-wingnuts? There must be some juicy way to get a terrorist charge out of it -- maybe even send them to an undisclosed Eastern European prison.

Posted at May 11, 2006 8:39 PM in response to What do We Call This?

Actually, Matt, if you've been watching the Sopranos this season, you would know that the good times are coming to Newark already. Why else would the Starbucks and Jamba Juices be setting up shop in its quaint neighborhoods? And, without the hoodlums hanging around getting their take.

No need for vouchers now, cause the richies will come as soon as they see they can get that double lactose free frapachino right at the end of the block.

Posted at May 10, 2006 8:02 AM in response to Vouchers in Newark

Gettysburg --

I'm afraid that's just ridiculous.  I have never heard any republican anywhere say that they supported more taxes at the state level.  Can you show us some public statements to demonstrate what you are suggesting?

The anti-tax mantra in republicans both at the state and federal level is unrelenting.  The problem, of course, is that anti-tax is not a policy.  Everyone wants taxes to be minimum.  Policy is what rules you pass, and where you choose to spend money.  The anti-tax movement has found a cheap trick -- separate the choices of spending (people generally like that) and the raising of revenue (people don't like that) and let the chips fall to the future.  It's an effective,  but incredibly selfish, tactic.

And, it's used at the federal level, and in every state as well.

Peter Schmitz 

Posted at March 23, 2006 7:43 AM in response to Discrediting "Fiscal Conservatism"

I agree very much with Matt.

During the big debate on the drug benefit bill, it became clear early on that the bill was going to be, at the detailed level, a truly awful piece of legislation.  (In fact, it came out even worse than I could imagine).

 Nonetheless, I felt at the time, that ANY bill providing a drug benefit was a good thing, as it would be almost impossible to take away something like that in the future.  And, in the end, new reforms would almost have to make it better, if only to save money.  After all, the overall goals of a drug benefit plan are pretty simple -- subsidize medical drugs to some segment of the population.

 So, I think we should keep this in mind, and always climb on board incremental approaches to providing benefits in things such as health care.

Posted at March 4, 2006 12:04 PM in response to The Case for Cowardice

One issue in HSAs that I haven't seen mentioned is how it plays with liability and malpractice.

So, I go into the doctor and he says things look fine, but there's another $200  test that I might want to take just to be sure.

Frugal consumer that I am, I pass -- but later it turns out that the test would have shown me that little growth in my pancreas that later killed me.

I'm sure the republicans would say it was a frivolous lawsuit my widow filed against the doctor because he didn't push me to get the test, but something tells me that it's going to be lot more complicated than that.

The idea that consumers have the wherewithall to effectively evaluate the costs/benefits of their own health care choices at anything more than a very general level is simply ludicrous.

 Peter Schmitz

Posted at February 3, 2006 7:39 AM in response to What's Up, Docs?

One small historical note.

When the Republican party was being formed in the 1850's, one of the primary platform issues was a stand in strong support of government funding of public works, such as roads and canals.

In fact, for many early Republicans, this was the most important portion of the platform for the party.  Leland Stanford won the governership of California as an early Republican largely on the platform of government support for funding a transcontinental railroad.  Lincoln, too, strongly supported this platform and probably spoke more on it than the issue of controlling the spread of slavery.  They knew at that time, as we do today, that without government building infrastructure, it will not happen through private means.

So when modern Republicans bandy about the "party of Lincoln" line, it might be useful to remind them of this heritage. 

Posted at July 23, 2005 10:24 AM in response to (How) Can Government Add Value?