Bond king Bill Gross takes a shot at deficit hawks and calls for immediate economic stimulus.
Fixin’ to jump into the presidential race, Texas Gov. Rick Perry tells conservatives they should start following him on “Tweeter.”
Advance excerpts for fmr. Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman’s (R) announcement speech are out. And he’s painting a stark picture. “We must make hard decisions that are necessary to avert disaster,” he’ll say. See more here.
Huntsman’s announcement will come just across the river from TPM HQ here in Manhattan, at New Jersey’s Liberty State Park. Our Eric Kleefeld will be there.
Guy robs bank to get arrested so he can get free medical care in prison. Unfortunately, the one dollar he demanded for isn’t enough to count as ‘bank robbery’ in North Carolina. So he’s out of luck.
Colbert assures FEC he pocketed handshake fees himself rather than giving them to his proposed SuperPAC.
As we gear up for our 2012 election season coverage and the redesigned TPM website, due later this year, I wanted to let you know that we’re going to have a special section on what I believe is one of the most important — though still pretty undercovered — stories of this election cycle: the crackdown on voting. Read More
I’m not sure where this will go. But one of the core issues in the debate over ‘vote fraud’ is that there’s virtually no recent evidence of voter impersonation fraud in the United States. People who get paid to register people do sometimes fill out registration cards for “Mickey Mouse” and “Mary Poppins.” But no one ever shows up to vote as “Mickey Mouse.” So even though that’s registration fraud, it’s not something that actually ends up affecting real elections. And remember, these claims of ‘fraud’ are what is behind efforts to make it a lot harder for people to vote.
One of the biggest peddlers of vote fraud tales is someone long-time TPMers will know well: Hans von Spakovsky. He’s the one who’s come up with what appear to be the most recent instances of actual impersonation, back in 1982.
But now it gets interesting. One of the most conscientious and knowledgable people to write about this subject is another person we’ve referenced many times: Rick Hasen, a professor at UC-Irvine who writes a blog on election law. He’s being trying to find a copy of the 1984 grand jury report that Spakovsky based his report on — the one about voter impersonation back in 1982. But he can’t find any copies. Anywhere. And von Spakovsky hasn’t replied to Hasen’s request to review the documents. Here’s the rest of the story.
Local paper says Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) will announce her retirement from Congress next Monday.
Was the McKinsey report just a marketing exercise that was never supposed to see the light of day?
A Reader writes in …
A quick review of the McKinsey survey makes me pretty sure it was created as an internal market research tool — to assess the need for healthcare consulting services and help the firm design and sell those services. Someone got the bright idea of publicizing some of the results and, since the survey wasn’t designed to predict or even describe the effect of reform on the healthcare system, the published report was highly misleading. I can see why they didn’t want to release the tool or the raw data — the stuff looks very valuable from a market research point of view. I’m sure the other large consulting companies have assigned analysts to this data and are all writing reports to guide their healthcare practices — while giggling at their good fortune and McKinsey’s gaffe.
Google and the British Library today announced an agreement for the search giant to digitize 170 years with a history in 250,000 out-of-copyright books.