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Recent Articles from Ezra Klein
The push for judicial retention elections
A bipartisan effort led by the Coalition for Impartial Justice is proposing a system of judicial review and retention elections to avoid the highly charged, politically explosive contests common in Wisconsin, Texas and other states.
Ezra Klein: AOL’s Armstrong needs Obamacare
Let’s get the obvious out of the way: As chief executive officer of AOL Inc., Tim Armstrong shouldn’t have stood up and blamed proposed changes to the company’s 401(k) plan on two discrete and, to many AOLers, recognizable medical catastrophes. Armstrong’s specificity — he blamed high medical costs stemming from two “distressed babies” of employees — was unnecessary, cruel and dum[...]
Ezra Klein: Pining for LBJ, we got Christie
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s recent scandals won’t impress anyone who has read Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon Baines Johnson. In the fourth volume of Caro’s biography, he tells the story of Margaret Mayer, a Dallas Times Herald reporter who was investigating the television station LBJ owned. Johnson had his aides call Mayer’s bosses and let slip that if Mayer kept investigatin[...]
Ezra Klein: To fight poverty, conservatives will have to spend
There’s a simple way to tell whether the Republican Party’s newfound commitment to fighting poverty is more than rhetoric: Follow the money. Follow the trail in the party’s recent budgets and what you find are deep cuts to programs for the poor.
Ezra Klein: What liberals don’t understand about a single-payer system
Documentarian Michael Moore greeted the introduction of Obamacare with an admission many liberals will cheer. “Obamacare is awful,” he wrote.
Ezra Klein: Let’s celebrate Medicaid’s success
As of Jan. 1, more than 2 million people had signed up for insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s insurance marketplaces — the vast majority of them in December. That’s less than the 3.3 million the administration had projected would sign up by the new year.
Ezra Klein: Obama needs to fire some people
When the Barack Obama administration realized that its HealthCare.gov website was fundamentally broken rather than merely glitchy, aides called former management consultant Jeff Zients to fix it.
Ezra Klein: 23andme challenges a creaky regulatory state
Let’s agree that 23andMe Inc., the Google-backed company marketing a $99 genetics test that assesses your risk for more than 240 health conditions, didn’t manage its relationship with the Food and Drug Administration well.
Ezra Klein: Obamacare’s failings undermine Republican goals
On May 20, 2009, four Republicans — Reps. Paul Ryan and Devin Nunes and Sens. Richard Burr and Tom Coburn — unveiled their alternative to the health care plans then being considered by congressional Democrats. “We have introduced a comprehensive health care reform bill, the Patients’ Choice Act that, we believe, will bring us far closer to the goal of universal coverage than the Obama plan[...]
Ezra Klein: Obama’s presidency depends on ‘just a website’
The flip side of the conservative desire to believe Obamacare’s problems are much worse than they actually are is the liberal desire to believe they’re much less severe than they actually are. One refrain that’s become particularly popular, perhaps because President Barack Obama uses it, is “Obamacare is more than just a website.”
Ezra Klein: Democrats should surrender on taxes
The deal that resolved the U.S. government shutdown includes a new bicameral budget commission. This will be the eighth major budget commission since 2010. Until now, every single one of them has failed for the same reason: taxes. And if nothing changes, this one will fail too.
Ezra Klein: Summers battle was a front in war over Wall Street
Larry Summers’s campaign to replace Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke wasn’t doomed by any of the typical doubts about a potential Fed chief. Senate Democrats weren’t worried that Summers was too tolerant of inflation or insufficiently committed to quantitative easing. In fact, they weren’t worried about his opinions on monetary policy at all.
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