Matthew Yglesias

Via Plumer and Beaudrot along comes Chris Dodd with the first carbon tax proposal of the presidential campaign.

Every once in a while I wonder why you don't see a constant, dogmatic drumbeat of enthusiasm for carbon taxes from conservative pundits. You'd say, "we should have a carbon tax and offset it with reductions in income taxes" and split yuppie liberal types who worry about global warming from more traditional populist types. What's more, since to be effective a carbon tax would need to succeed in reducing carbon emissions you'd also set the federal government on a glide path to reduced revenues. It's great. But you almost never see people beating this drum.

I can imagine a few explanations. One is that most conservative pundits have allowed that portion of the brain that one uses to analyze a substantive question of national policy to atrophy to the extent that they don't understand why this is something that conservatives should like. Another is corruption; this proposal would be bad interest group politics and the energy companies are major financiers of the right. A third is hackishness; this proposal would put you in disagreement with George W. Bush and other Republican Party politicians. Last is the politics of resentment; conservative pundits just hate environmentalists too much to see the forest for the trees. Some combination of factors may be at work. And it's worth saying that several of your better conservative pundits -- Andrew Sullivan and David Brooks come to mind -- are on the bandwagon.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias at 09:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (64) | TrackBacks (0)

Innovative research into applying ideological mapping techniques that work well for congress to state legislatures lets us finally answer the question: Do ideological patterns in state legislatures resemble those in congress? The answer: It depends! California and Michigan display Beltway-esque polarization patterns. Florida, however, looks very different and Pennsylvania is pretty different as well. So far, those are the only states this has been done for.

If you want the full explanation, see this PDF of Boris Shor, Christopher Berry, and Nolan McCarty "A Bridge to Somewhere: Mapping State and Congressional Ideology on a Cross-Institutional Common Space."

Posted by Matthew Yglesias at 08:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (22) | TrackBacks (0)

What a game, and what a matchup. My instincts are anti-Chicago, but the contrast between the loathesomeness of Pat Riley's Home for Aging Veterans and the vivacity of Chicago's squad of non-stars has brought me around. The decision not to include Luol Deng in a deal for Pau Gasol is looking perfectly reasonable to me. The rest of the Eastern Conference had better just hope nothing crazy happens in the draft lottery.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias at 05:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (42) | TrackBacks (0)

Via Brian Beutler, Reuel Marc Gerecht wonders: "Do thoughtful Democrats really believe that the Middle East, America's long fight against Sunni jihadism, and our standing in the world against potential aggressors and bullies will be improved by a precipitous and mandated departure from Mesopotamia?" I was tempted initially to give this a defiant yes, I do! but the truth is that I don't, of course, think a "precipitous" departure from Mesopotamia is a good idea. Were the country run by reasonable people, I would think something like this would happen:

• President informs Pentagon that we need to withdraw our troops from Iraq, and they need to study the question of what's the best way to do this quickly but safely.

• Based on the feedback POTUS gets about what's feasible to do in a safe manner, he picks a target date.

• With a provisional date chosen, POTUS shares his thinking with key partners in the British and Iraqi governments, and concedes to minor alterations in the schedule if said partners have strong feelings about the desirability of small changes.

• The plan is announced at some public gathering with representatives of the Iraq, American, British, and other coalition governments.

The trouble is that the country isn't being run by sensible people so the sensible thing can't happen. Instead, since we have some sensible people in congress, they're trying to do what congress can do. Congressional Iraq plans, meanwhile, have an air of arbitrariness about them since congress isn't staffed properly to assess the relevant operational issues. And the administration won't let the military do any planning for withdrawal. So, naturally, Democrats are left with non-optimal proposals to put forward. And this is then used as a reason to support the very administration whose terrible policy are forcing us into this corner in the first place.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias at 05:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (36) | TrackBacks (0)

I guess playoff experience, veteran savvy, etc. really all do count for something. I still think Toronto's the better team, though obviously losing home court doesn't help the cause very much. The idea of Canadians being mean and booing Vince Carter so viciously is kind of comical. As a Canada-file and opponent of things like whining your way off teams, I'm rooting for the Raptors, who also have the best center court logo in the league.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias at 02:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBacks (0)

Everyone's already piling on Maureen Dowd's horrible column today, but to me what makes this sort of crap doubly aggravating is her refusal to even take responsibility for what she's doing. Dowd doesn't want to wake up and say, "I'm using my New York Times column to argue that John Edwards would be a bad president because he got some expensive haircuts." She won't come out and write: "John Edwards' expensive haircuts indicate to me that he would be a bad president." If she wrote that, after all, it would be obvious that she was being idiotic. Why, after all, would you think that the price of Edwards' haircuts is an important indicator of what kind of job he'd do as president.

So, instead, she writes a column which is nominally about how other people will find his haircuts objectionable. The voters -- not Dowd, Dowd is serious -- will find this very damaging. But, of course, it wouldn't be damaging at all if media haters didn't talk about it. It's either relevant or it's not. If you think it's relevant, you have a responsibility to explain how and why and expose yourself as a fool. If you don't think it's relevant, you have a responsibility to write your columns about something else.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias at 02:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (75) | TrackBacks (0)

Bean at LGF [UPDATE: Er, that's LGM] discusses the prospects of an equality rationale for abortions rights rather than a privacy one, jumping off Cass Sunstein's discussion in The Los Angeles Times. One problem, says, Bean:

But, as I have noted before, the Court's pregnancy jurisprudence stands between us and an equality rationale for protecting abortion rights. The Court, in a now-infamous 1970s case, Geduldig v. Aiello, held that pregnancy discrimination is not sex discrimination because the comparison is not between men and women but between pregnant people and non pregnant people (a group that includes men and women). It's a legal fiction and a farce of logic, but it stands. And stands in the way of forward movement on equality jurisprudence.

That seriously happened? This is one reason why I tend to think there's nothing wrong with "tokenism" or "identity politics" in Supreme Court appointments as I find it very difficult to imagine you could have found a panel of nine women prepared to make a ruling like that.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias at 01:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBacks (0)

This memo on Iraq funding strategy from John Podesta, Larry Korb, Scott Lilly, and Brian Katulis seems smart to me; about the right combination of politics and substance. It's extremely frustrating that there doesn't appear to be a viable way for anti-war congressfolk to simply use their authority to mandate both a beginning point for withdrawal and an endpoint but, well, there just isn't one. This fight is going to need to keep happening -- less in Washington than in members' districts -- over and over again for months until there's more pressure and more votes.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (34) | TrackBacks (0)

New Republic editor in chief Martin Peretz speaks up in defense of Paul Wolfowitz and the general principle of appointing unqualified, slightly corrupt people to important positions after they screw up their job at the Defense Department. Even the avowed conservative magazines don't seem especially interested in flacking for Wolfowitz at this point.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)