Clear summation of the problems besetting journalism and the newspaper business, very much recommended for anyone not already familiar with these. But, per the headline, who do you mean by "we," bunkie? And why is no evidence marshaled in support of this thesis? The lazy fatalism claiming that if something IS happening then it therefore must happen, or is good or needed, is as toxic as the -isms that blighted the 20th century.

In his unsubtle suggestions of collusion, racism and explicit condemnation of America and its mainstream media, J.A. Myerson exemplifies the less serious-minded Left's semantics fetish while pretending to examine the "Arab Spring" label. Proposing that the phrase is "counterrevolutionary, perhaps deliberately so," Myerson informs us that Dominique Moisi (a man of the French Left) actually coined the term. One can easily envision the scene, as the editors of the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, and producers from CNN, Fox and the other American TV networks, decided over cocktails one snowy evening to crush the nascent "revolution" by so naming it. "Here here," Moisi no doubt replied, raising his glass while accepting ... More »

Great story about a barely-hidden scam. This sort of gaming the system is the way things are done in D.C. and throughout business.

This is a great idea for a story that doesn't come through with the goods.

Jarvis often falls into this trap--he's either under-thinking things in order to keep posting or because he's just not a very deep thinker.

New info about an old problem. Amazing how stuff like this gets out of hand while nobody's looking.

He doesn't mention tax rates for the rich, only for the middle class. The rich today are so rich it's unbelievable--and they got that way in large part because of incredibly low marginal tax rates--on the order of 15 percent on their declared income, with zero on the deferred wealth. If you believe that the average American Plutocrat pulling down $1 million per day earned it, and in doing so created "jobs," then you might think like Douthat. But if you look at what those folks actually do for their money, and the effect it has on the rest of us, you might think that reinstituting Nixon era tax rates for them would have some benefit over and above the revenue (about $120 billion per year, conservatively) it would raise. Make ... More »

great story, reads like the movie it will probably be. only problem is the near complete absence of parental influence. Diveroli took over a shell company set up by his father. he used (presumably) his family's Swiss middleman to broker his deals. His financing came from the family's Utah-based gun-maker/financer. Even had his uncle's wife come in and keep the office straight. One can concede that these stoners were not total puppets and still write some about the obvious boost they must have got from Diveroli's elders. One could even argue that but for those elders, their contacts and experience, these young dudes would still be providing massages and/or flipping burgers, like normal slackers.

It's OK, but it's of a piece with prevailing pro "green" nuke thinking. Wm Saletan was first out the gate with this on Sunday with this Slate bit: http://www.slate.com/id/2288212/ The argument goes like this: anti-nukes are panicky luddites; oil and gas production and burning kill more people; therefore, nukes are good and everyone needs to calm down. It's not entirely wrong, as far as it goes, but if we're going to be rethinking our energy choices we might want to consider why we're content with all these deaths--from all these industries--and why we are unable to fathom serious energy conservation.

Nice telling of Gary Aguirre's frustrating saga trying to interview John Mack. Taibbi could've used any of dozens of other examples of the past decade, from the "deferred prosecution" arrangements designed by Bush's "Corporate Crime Task Force,' headed by former Providian director Larry Thompson, to the curious malleability of the FASB's accounting standards. But Aguirre v. Mack is just about the perfect summation of our system as it stands. The quotes from the SEC-prosecutor/defense bar confab at the end are just icing.

The main point--that the biotech part of the project has been "abandoned"--is unsupported in the story. There's a lot of detail about financing but not so much about why the biotech dream is gone. The financing detail is underwhelming. Two master plans? Well, yeah, one for each phase. An expensive plan that wasn't used--but the building was "stripped by vandals," and there's no explanation of that...even though in Baltimore city employees have been caught stripping copper out of buildings. EBDI has long seemed to be a place for politicians to stash political/management types. And it's obviously a money sink. This kickoff piece throws some dots out but doesn't connect them. I hope the rest of the series does.