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I subscribe to several financial newsletters, and I got one today that linked to a post that made my blood boil a bit, wherein the author seizes on Time Magazine’s having named Ben Bernanke as “Man of the Year” as evidence that “American culture rewards bad behavior”.

It seems we cannot learn the actual lessons taught by the ongoing economic meltdown. Instead, the money men seem determined to sort the causes of this mess into neat ideological categories, prepackaged to divert blame from the originating causes, and onto their favorite bugaboo “lib’rul Democrat” boogeymen.

Somehow, their narrative goes, loosening credit to poor families on the part of FannieMae and FreddieMac single-handedly caused the Great Recession. Deregulating the financial and insurance industries, somehow, did NOT have anything to do with this. Somehow, the creation of a $600 TRILLION derivatives market –a market entirely consisting of imaginary products backed only in the loosest of senses by tangible goods– didn’t cause this mess, when that market happens to represent TEN TIMES the GDP of the ENTIRE WORLD. Continue reading…

…and ThinkProgress has video.

RNC Chairman Michael Steele recently sent out a fundraising letter saying that President Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress are attempting a “socialist power grab.” Today on NBC’s Meet the Press, host David Gregory pressed House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) on whether such language was appropriate. Boehner tried to dodge the question, insisting that “you can call it whatever you want,” but the fact is that Obama’s the one scaring the American public. Gregory continued to ask whether Boehner believes Obama is a socialist, to which he finally admitted he doesn’t.

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FiveThirtyEight has an interesting piece up that was inspired by a suit recently filed contesting the legality of the present system of allocating Congressional representation in the House.

The suit roughly involves a concept in a “lost amendment” to the Constitution that would’ve capped the size of Congressional districts at just 30,000 people. While that would be absurd now –it’d leave us with a 30 million person House– the overall thinking behind it reveals some surprising inequalities in the present representation of the “several states” in the House.

The most populous district in America right now, according to the latest Census data, is Nevada’s 3rd District, where 960,000 people are represented in the House by just one member. All of Montana’s 958,000 people likewise have just one vote in the House. By contrast, 523,000 in Wyoming get the same voting power, as do the 527,000 in one of Rhode Island’s two districts and the 531,000 in the other.

Continue reading…