• Least surprising headline, ever.
• Again, call me when Vitter quits.
• Great plan, guys.
• The Bernank says the economy looks bleak.
• Why doesn’t Paul Broun get a real job?

• Jared Bernstein, on resetting the economic debate. The problem is that we’re still reeling from the original sin of pivoting to the deficit even when it was clear that the stimulus was not big enough or sustained enough to dig us out of the deep hole of the previous Administration. The White House was simply in too much of a hurry for that pivot.

In this era of tight public funds afflicting virtually every state in the nation, there is one revenue source that has been all but neglected in the public debate: the subsidy of “not for profit” private hospitals by exemption from sales and property taxes being the typical form. This has been reexamined by the remarkable Illinois supreme court decision in the Provena Covenant case: the Court ruled that the Provena hospital group failed to meet the charitable health care provision required to enjoy the property ands sales tax freedom they had enjoyed.

Our nation’s usual military policy of overkill, once again seems to reach the point of tragic farce.

Patty Loveless and Vince Gill — On Down The Line.

We’ve got some winners weiners for tonight’s topics: First off, naturally, is Weiner himself. Dude, what were you thinking?

Bruce Bartlett is the latest to point out that all the conservative demagoguery about America’s crushing, business-destroying tax burden is completely devoid of any context in time or space. Our actual tax revenues are very low both chronologically and geographically.

No matter how high up in the stratosphere support for enacting workplace non-discrimination laws is, if almost all Americans think those protections already exist, then there will be no pressure — at all! — on legislators to enact such provisions.

The latest steaming pile of garbage from the right to justify continued inaction on the economy is that Obama giving a speech on April 13 sank corporate confidence and ruined everything. Aren’t these the same people who grudgingly admit that Obama gives a good speech, but that actions mean more than mere words? Apparently accurately describing Paul Ryan’s budget was an action all by itself.

I’m a little confused by Erza Klein’s mostly helpful post showing, once again, the US paying much higher public and private costs than the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries for health care. Congress and the Administration should be reminded of that every day.

Klein is surely correct in noting that other developed nations rely much more on government-sponsored plans than purely private systems. As a result, they achieve not only lower total health care costs, as a percentage of GDP, but more universal coverage (and equal or better care) than does the US. The lesson to draw is fairly obvious: we need to move towards Medicare for all or some variation of a government-sponsored single-buyer model.