government spending

A few of the recent pieces I've liked: L.V. Anderson at Slate: We Should Have a Better Condom by Now. Here’s Why We Don’t Emily Badger and Christopher Ingraham at Wonkblog: The rich get government handouts just like the poor. Here are 10 of them. Mark Binelli in the New York Times: Inside America’s Toughest Federal Prison Ashley Judd at Mic: Forget Your Team: Your Online Violence Toward Girls and Women Is What Can Kiss My Ass Jonathan Cohn at the Huffington Post: Working Parents Should Be Very Happy About This Obscure Senate Vote
In reading various web reactions to news that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act contained nearly 1 million dollars for ant research at Arizona State University and the University of Arizona, it seems there's a lot of confusion about how something like ant behavior winds up getting a stimulus check.  Here's an explanation. Our starting point is the observation that stimulus has to be fast to be effective.  The obvious problem is that we all know how fast goverment usually acts, and if the government were to put out a call for stimulus proposals with a full process of review and…