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Idiotic Governance: How Our Political Discourse Hurts Our Economy (2012x27)

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In which John discusses Canada's heroic elimination of the penny and how divisive political discourse--on both sides of the aisle--hurts both the American people and the American economy. Examples of poor policy making include congress's failure to secure long-term funding for the FAA (which should be easy, since it's paid for entirely by a tax that most travelers are more than content to pay), Congressional Republicans' refusal to pass a long-term highways bill (which makes road work more expensive than it needs to be), and by congressional Democrats refusal to consider sensible medicare reform that might bring better health care outcomes to more older Americans while bringing cost savings to Medicare. (To be fair: Some congressional democrats want to reform medicare; a few congressional republicans thought the whole FAA debacle was an embarrassment; and one noted Democrat, President Barack Obama, has consistently expressed support for smart reform of Medicare, despite huge blowback from his party.) All this while biking a 30-mile loop around the great city of Indianapolis.