Curtis Bowman

Rob Hotakainen on Obesity and Federal Farm Subsidies

Rob Hotakainen of McClatchy Newspapers looks at the link between obesity and and federal farm subsidies.

Here's a link to a large graphic (92 KB) that illustrates how most farm subsidies are allotted for producing meat, grains, and dairy products, and how virtually nothing is spent on subsidies for fruit and vegetables.

Samuel Fuller's "The Dark Page" is Back in Print

This article by Geoffrey Macnab of The Independent alerted me to the recent re-publication of film director Samuel Fuller's novel The Dark Page.

I've seen many of Fuller's films — the Criterion Collection is an especially fruitful source of excellent DVD transfers of six of his films — but I have to admit that I've never read this novel of his. Yet another book to add to my to-read list.

Peter Bergen on President Bush's War on Terror

Peter Bergen chronicles President Bush's major missteps in the war on terror, beginning with Osama bin Laden's escape from Tora Bora and continuing up to Al Qaeda's recent resurgence.

James Surowiecki on Supply-Side Economics

James Surowiecki of The New Yorker looks at the Republican party's hallucinatory faith in supply-side economics.

Jonathan Chait on the Death of Bipartisanship

Jonathan Chait explains why we ought not to expect bipartisan politics in Washington, D.C.

Robert Samuelson Looks at Entitlement Spending for the Umpteenth Time

Here is an eye-opening excerpt from Robert Samuelson's latest attempt to draw attention to the entitlement spending crisis in our future:

From 2000 to 2030, the 65-and-over population will roughly double, from 35 million to 72 million, or from about 12 percent of the population to nearly 20 percent. Spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- three big programs that serve the elderly -- already represents more than 40 percent of the federal budget. In 2006, these three programs cost $1.1 trillion, more than twice defense spending. Left on automatic pilot, these programs are plausibly projected to grow to about 75 percent of the present budget by 2030.

Stalemate results because all the ways of dealing with these pressures are controversial. There are only four: (a) massive tax increases -- on the order of 30 to 50 percent by 2030; (b) draconian cuts in other government programs (note that the projected increases in Social Security and Medicare, as a share of national income, are more than all of today's domestic discretionary programs); (c) cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- higher eligibility ages or lower benefits for wealthier retirees; or (d) undesirably large budget deficits.

If you look at my posts devoted to entitlement spending, you'll see that I've already linked to Samuelson's work on several occasions.