robertreich:

One of the most pernicious falsehoods you’ll hear during the next seven months of political campaigning is there’s a necessary tradeoff between fairness and economic growth. By this view, if we raise taxes on the wealthy the economy can’t grow as fast.

Wrong. Taxes were far higher on top…

(Source: eamcintyre)

kohenari:

The New York Times is pretty clear in its opposition to the death penalty.

Here’s the conclusion from the editorial the paper printed after Connecticut’s legislature voted to repeal the death penalty:

Any careful evaluation leads to what the American Law Institute concluded after a review of decades of executions: the system cannot be fixed. It is practically impossible to rid the legal process of biases driven by race, class and politics. The growing number of states reconsidering this barbaric system is a welcome sign. Capital punishment, by overwhelming evidence, should be abolished throughout the United States.

I’m always curious what people who support the death penalty think when they read paragraphs like this one. When faced with the evidence of obvious bias (which the editorical cites), how does one ignore it? Is it possible to tell oneself — and believe it too — that the mountain of evidence must be false?

It reminds me of children — fingers in their ears, trying to drown out parents or siblings — repeating “I’m not listening, I’m not listening, I’m not listing …” in a voice that gets increasingly shrill.