Blogdundancy

I sometimes get deja vu reading Matt Yglesias' blog, and then I remember it's because I also read Ezra Klein. For example, Klein posts:

Asked about the gas tax holiday and the universal opposition from economists, Hillary Clinton said, "Well, I'll tell you what, I'm not going to put my lot in with economists." Regular readers know I have my own moments of econo-skepticism, but I really wouldn't advise folks to throw in with political hacks instead.

Incidentally, the gas tax stuff shouldn't be thought of as economists versus everyone else. It's economists, environmentalists, energy experts, budget types, and anyone who has spent a couple minutes thinking through the implications of the policy. It's simply a bad idea, albeit one that polls well, so Clinton is running with it. That's experience you can count on, or something.

Six hours later, Yglesias posts:

I had no idea that the economic interests of oil companies were identical with those of the vast majority of Americans. Good thing we've got Hillary Clinton, Populist Extraordinaire around to tell us otherwise:

She did not. “I’m not going to put in my lot with economists,” she said on ABC’s “This Week” program. A few moments later, she added, “Elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantages the vast majority of Americans.”

Economists, environmentalists, everyone who's thought about the issue for ten minutes, etc. I'm not going to say that our public policy should blindly conform to the consensus among the economics profession, but the gas tax holiday is an illiteracy on a much deeper level -- there's simply no support for this idea among people who've looked at it in a serious way. That's not elitism, that's reality, and what Clinton's selling is Bush-style misgovernment.

He's even got a couple of the same lines in there!

I've noticed that the Yglesias posts always appear after the Klein posts, and rarely contain a link to the Klein posts.