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The Big Bailout

Sep 19th, 2008 | By | Category: Economics, Featured Articles, Lead Article

Want to distill down the New Deal-era financial reforms? If you want our money to bail you out, you have to play honestly and by our rules.

Today’s “solution” to the present crisis is all bailout, no regulation–the mirror image of FDR’s. It’s going to fail.



McCain’s Record on Financial Regulation

Sep 8th, 2008 | By | Category: 2008, Featured Articles, Lead Article

If you aren’t concerned about the massive bailout of Freddy Mac and Fannie Mae by the US taxpayers, you should be.

The next president, who in turn will set the regulatory environment, really matters.

McCain’s record is terrible.



Genetic Test for Maternity

Aug 31st, 2008 | By | Category: Featured Articles, Genetics, Lead Article

If I were a woman accused of claiming my daughter’s child was my own, and I knew such accusations were false, I’d use science to prove myself right.



Gustav

Aug 31st, 2008 | By | Category: Environmental, Featured Articles, Lead Article

The second “storm of the century” is about to hit New Orleans, less than five years after the first “storm of the century.”

That should make you wonder.



The Fed Abstracting Away Banking Pain

Aug 1st, 2008 | By | Category: Economics, Lead Article

The Fed has lent nearly $200 billion. Should you worry?



Wind Power

Jul 23rd, 2008 | By | Category: Energy, Featured Articles, Lead Article

For wind power, consistency is everything. The rub is, all of the pollutants we’ve added to the atmosphere are changing how the atmosphere interacts with sunlight in difficult to predict ways. Our continued belching out of greenhouse gasses makes building a wind farm increasingly risky (and therefore less attractive) than building a fossil fuel plant.



Carbon-Free Energy

Jul 18th, 2008 | By | Category: Energy, Featured Articles, Lead Article

If we’re going to replace fossil fuels, we should understand why they’ve become such a central part of human life and civilization. Because, fossil fuels are pretty damn amazing.



Congratulations, Taxpayer, On Eating That Shit Sandwich For Us.

Jul 16th, 2008 | By | Category: Economics, Featured Articles, Lead Article

The bailout of Bear Stearns was a mere appetizer to the cliff we’re falling over now.

Market theory would tell us the government should not intervene–these institutions should be allowed to fail, the unwise investments allowed to collapse and the money to be lost. At the last height of Laissez-faire economic policy, in the 1920’s, that was the plan. The institutions were allowed to collapse one-by-one, causing the Great Depression.

That didn’t work out so well. In the 1930’s, sifting through the rubble of the US economy, the next plan was regulation.

We’re now left in the worst situation: Propping up failing deregulated markets with taxpayer dollars.



Wait, Why Are There Gay Men?

Jun 25th, 2008 | By | Category: Lead Article, Lit Round-up

If being a gay man is an inborn, inherent trait with some genetic basis–as the massive, overwhelming, credible, sound, tenable, probable, corroborating, confirming, affirmative collection of scientific evidence states–why are there gay men at all? It’s a trait that strongly discourages procreative sex. Less sex with women means less babies and therefore less spreading of […]