Month: June 2010

Use The EPA

Chait argues that because Congress has repeatedly failed to move on climate change, the EPA should step in:

[W]hile EPA regulation would distance the issue from democratic accountability, it would not remove it entirely. If the public objected strongly enough, it could vote for a Congress to overturn the EPA regulation. In practice, we accept this kind of rule-by-expert routinely. Monetary policy, once the most political of issues—i.e., William Jennings Bryan denouncing the “cross of gold”—is now formulated with little regard for public opinion. Congress could overrule a decision by the Fed, but it never does. Likewise, few of us would like Congress to seize control of setting food and drug standards from the FDA.

But a real bill would be far preferable. It's funny how the essentially pro-market concept of cap-and-trade has, because of largely conservative opposition, made old school environmental regulation more likely.

As The Fourth Estate Crumbles, Ctd

A reader writes:

I live in Seattle, in the area known as West Seattle.  My local news and information is far better provided by westseattleblog than it ever was by the Seattle papers the Seattle Times and Seattle PI.

The papers duplicated national and international coverage I can find elsewhere, and provide almost no truly local news. Now the west seattle blog does not provide coverage of state level issues – I haven't found a blog for that yet, but I bet I will.

Darkhorse Betting

Ariel Levy places all his her chips on Huckabee for 2012:

Steve Schmidt told me, “Really, there’s three primaries within the Republican primary. There’s the primary that’s the evangelical wing of the Party, there’s the establishment primary, and there’s usually a maverick of an insurgent category. Whoever occupies two out of the three is the nominee.” It would not take a packaging genius to put Huckabee out as an evangelical insurgent. The next election will cost billions of dollars, and Huckabee is not much of a traditional fund-raiser. But raising money for the primaries in 2012 could have as much to do with getting people to click a button on their BlackBerry to contribute ten dollars as it does with working the corporate Washington cocktail circuit.

But doesn't Palin qualify on all three counts?

Who Is Sharron Angle?

She worries Chait:

Angle did not quite advocate armed rebellion, but she did clearly egg it on it in a way that melds prediction with encouragement…The alarming thing is not so much what Angle said but how relatively little a ripple it has made. It's just one more gaffe, something that has not prevented her from being embraced by Senate Republicans. It is not even considered sufficiently outrageous to force her to disavow the clear implication of what she said. It really seems like a dangerous milestone is the darkening mood of the American right.

Yglesias examines Angle's ties to Scientology. National Review's encomium is here. She's got the Palin schtick down:

“At that point, I realized that the government had interfered with my family. It was kind of like a mother bear and her cubs: Don’t get between me and my cubs, or you’ve got trouble.”

The Coalition Government On Gays

British lgbt policy

You can't really appreciate the gulf between the Cameron Tories and the Palinite Republicans until you have read this document. What's striking is the lack of apology for an aggressive pro-gay agenda from the Tory Home Secretary, Theresa May:

“We’re working to make Britain a place where everyone is treated fairly and everyone has an equal chance in life, whatever their sexual orientation or gender identity. This ambitious programme of work is the first step on that journey.”

There was a reception at 10, Downing Street, for the gay community last Wednesday. This is what happens when real conservatives are in power – and not religious fanatics.