Less is Mohrer

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I’m one of the speakers this Thursday at the Financial Services Social Communication Leadership Forum. I’m in a bit over my head, but it should be good.

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Am I bad for business…?

IAC Stock is up 21.12% since I left IAC owned CollegeHumor/BustedTees 3 months ago.

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“Reagan, Greenspan, Wanniski, and Laffer took the federal budget deficit from under a trillion dollars in 1980 to almost three trillion by 1988, and back then a dollar could buy far more than it buys today. They and George HW Bush ran up more debt in eight years than every president in history, from George Washington to Jimmy Carter, combined. Surely this would both starve the beast and force the Democrats to make the politically suicidal move of becoming deficit hawks. And that’s just how it turned out. Bill Clinton, who had run on an FDR-like platform of a “new covenant” with the American people that would strengthen the institutions of the New Deal, strengthen labor, and institute a national health care system, found himself in a box. A few weeks before his inauguration, Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin sat him down and told him the facts of life: he was going to have to raise taxes and cut the size of government. Clinton took their advice to heart, raised taxes, balanced the budget, and cut numerous programs, declaring an “end to welfare as we know it” and, in his second inaugural address, an “end to the era of big government.” He was the anti-Santa Claus, and the result was an explosion of Republican wins across the country as Republican politicians campaigned on a platform of supply-side tax cuts and pork-rich spending increases.

— Thom Hartmann (via azspot) (via soupsoup)

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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Snow - Informer

From their hit album 12 Inches of Snow

Edit: It is a complete and total coincidence that Justin posted this exact song at exactly the same time as I did. It’s the world telling us we need to hang out more!

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“There’s a difference between the statements ‘America has the best health-care system in the world’ and ‘With enough money, you can purchase the best health care in the world in America.’ … People should ask themselves a very simple question: Do they think they are likelier to lose their job and fall into the health-care situation of the uninsured? Or are they likelier to become an influential politician and enjoy the health-care options available to the most powerful people in the world?

If you’re a United States senator, America may have the best health-care in the world. But if you’re an ordinary person with the same vulnerability to bad luck that we all have, you’re better off being in Canada, or France, or Japan, or somewhere that doesn’t take your insurance away when Wall Street causes the economy to crash.

— Ezra Klein (via savingpaper) (via brooklynmutt) (via newsweek)

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