Rethink.

Megan McArdle, “The People’s Budget” – from the article: …if you want to get the budget under control without meaningfully cutting into entitlements, you’re going to need to hike taxes substantially on the middle class.  I’m waiting for the first politician to say this out loud. Jay Cost, “The Donald Attacks!” – a comparison between …

Megan McArdle, “First Thoughts on the Ryan Plan” – from the article: The wildly disproportionate fury and outrage which greeted both Bowles-Simpson and the Ryan plan from the left indicate that progressives have so far failed to come to grips with the fact that they are going to have to compromise: that while some of …

Megan McArdle, “Did GE Really Pay No U.S. Taxes in 2010?” – complicated discussion, not unlike our tax code. A highlight: I don’t like the fact that GE lobbies aggressively on tax rules, and I certainly wish that Congress would not oblige them by passing bad laws that benefit GE.  On the other hand, the …

“Equation: How Much Money Do Spammers Rake In?” (Wired; h/t Josh) – from the article: Then the researchers calculated an estimate of how much money the spammer grossed per day: about $7,000 Jay Cost, “Tim Pawlenty’s Path to the Republican Nomination” – from the article: After the 1968 convention debacle in Chicago, the McGovern-Fraser Commission …

I’m pretty much online just to look for news about Libya. A few other things that caught my attention: Megan McArdle, “ObamaCare, One Year In” – from the article: The budgeting problems are even worse than I thought[:] I argued at the time that the spending cuts were not sustainably structured, but I didn’t predict …

Megan McArdle, “Failure to Represent” – from the article: The way things are set up now, unions effectively have a legal duty to represent their members as zealously as possible. Jay Cost, “The Glorified Clerkship” – not sure about the overall argument, but the brief mention of Neustadt’s Presidential Power got my attention: His [Neustadt's] …

Megan McArdle, “Showdown in Wisconsin” – from the article: State governments are where some of the hardest choices about taxes and spending have to be made.  And thanks to a confluence of factors–ObamaCare rules that keep states from cutting Medicaid spending, poorly thought-out pension obligations that are now coming due, crashing revenue thanks to the …

Megan McArdle, “What Does Bias Look Like?” – long post on ideological bias in academia. Jay Cost, “The Fred Thompson Experience” – one part of the perpetual campaign seems to have been nixed: declaring one’s candidacy early. Wish the rest of it would go away. Daniel Mendelsohn, “The Mad Men Account” (h/t aldaily) – from …

“Afghanistan’s Hidden Taliban Government” (nytimes. h/t Josh) – from the article: Similarly, last fall, when the Taliban ordered residents not to vote in the parliamentary elections, the officers said, the order had its intended effect. “There are 110,000 people in Andar,” said Sgt. First Class Jason S. Werts, the battalion’s senior intelligence sergeant. “Three people …

Mark Edmundson, “Narcissus Regards a Book” (h/t aldaily) – from the article: Narcissus looks into the book review and finds it good. Narcissus peers into Amazon’s top 100 and, lo, he feels the love. Nothing insults him; nothing pulls him away from that gorgeous smooth watery image below. The editor sells it to him cheap; …