S&P Says Microsoft More Creditworthy than US Government

Date: 12 Aug 2011 | posted in: From the Desk of David Morris, The Public Good | 1 Facebooktwitterredditmail

Two days after Standard and Poor’s downgraded US government bonds, David Llewellyn-Smith, writing in The Sydney Morning Herald noted, “We now face the ludicrous circumstance in which the United States government holds … a lower (credit) rating than Microsoft, despite issuing its own currency (the world’s reserve), being able to raise taxes when it chooses, owning … Read More

We Will Grow the Economy By Shrinking It

Date: 5 Aug 2011 | posted in: From the Desk of David Morris, The Public Good | 0 Facebooktwitterredditmail

Throughout human history societies have been informed and instructed by the superstitions of their age. For thousands of years we believed a single person–a king, a pharaoh, a high priest– should have life and death power over us. Any other social structure was unthinkable. We believed the gods that brought drought could be appeased only by animal and, sometimes, human sacrifice. Today these superstitions seem ridiculous. How could thinking people ever have believed such preposterous notions?… Read More

Why is the Most Wasteful Government Agency Not Part of the Deficit Discussion?

In all the talk about the federal deficit, why is the single largest culprit left out of the conversation?  Why is the one part of government that best epitomizes everything conservatives say they hate about government— waste, incompetence, and corruption—all but exempt from conservative criticism? Of course, I’m talking about the Pentagon.  Any serious battle plan … Read More