As you see, the Great Walkaway, the Big Mulligan, and the Do Nothing ideas all lead more or less to the same place. As a society, we have sustained a huge decline in asset values as the housing bubble popped. And we’re going to spread out the impact of the decline and suffer it in a socialized way. Several more years of economic weakness are ahead, no matter what happens here.

More important and more dangerous than Dr. Wakefield’s strife is that he convinced many parents to stop vaccinating their children: the result is at least a ten-fold increase in measles in UK alone. And today, steadily weakening vaccination coverage in Britain and four other countries is undermining efforts to eradicate measles across Europe and increasing the threat to the United States.

Public deficit spending isn’t going to stimulate private credit formation and consumption-growth until consumers get their balance sheets healed. People who want you to think that a much bigger stimulus last year would have magically fixed the economy are deeply deluded. Or deeply mendacious.

Bernanke’s back, the State of the Union is one long chiding of the country, and the markets continue their turmoil on the latest edition of Coffee and Markets, your weekly podcast on politics and the economy with Francis Cianfrocca.

It is, of course, the job of the historian to examine the acts of the deceased; and some consider it an equal part of their profession to pass judgement upon them. In the case of Howard Zinn, however, he passed judgment with such slothful ease, and such obvious sadistic pleasure in issuing his condemnations, that one cannot muster up much sympathy at the prospect of the man’s memory dying by his own sword.

This was, in many ways, Obama’s malaise speech — chiding a displeased nation for setting their expectations too high, and telling us we would need to do a lot of this “change” ourselves; blasting a Supreme Court for their recent decisions on campaign restrictions Obama glided past in his own multi-million dollar campaign for the White House; wagging his finger at Republicans who, now that they have a paper-thin one vote margin to block some of the president’s plans, are apparently expected to govern as equals.

A President calling for bipartisanship and an end to the permanent campaign gave a speech that was–in tone and in substance–a campaign speech. A President calling for unity gave a speech that practically cried out “all the bad stuff that happened was George W. Bush’s fault!”. A President calling for a renewal of national purpose spent large amounts of time playing class warfare games, and seeking to turn Americans against Wall Street. That latter activity is an easy one to engage in. But just because something is easy, does not make it right.

Does Barack Obama really mean what he says? Is he willing to give us a real solution to our structural deficit problem and then leave office after four years? Well, he probably does. Can he execute? That’s always been the problem with Barack Obama. He’s a heartbreaker. His actions have never lived up to his words.

Overall, this proposal makes extensive consumption of higher education a no-brain decision. I agree that the middle class is harmed by the skyrocketing cost of higher education. But to repeat the parallel with healthcare, people will automatically use too much of anything they don’t have to pay for. The right way to solve the problem of rampant education cost-inflation is not to shift the costs to taxpayers, but to make colleges and universities more efficient.

As the State of the Union approaches, it’s time to ask: Mr. Obama, what are you waiting for? If you’re serious about attacking the deficit problem, do something about it yourself. Appoint an executive commission, without a commitment for a Congressional vote. You can do that tonight while you’re checking to see what Keith Olbermann has to say about you.