It’s worth taking a moment to appreciate the fact that in a unicameral United States of America, we would now have passed both a comprehensive health care reform bill and also the most important piece of environmental legislation in the history of the world. Now that’s not the world we live in. Instead we live in a world where neither of those things have passed and where their prospects aren’t clear. But think back on this point the next time you hear someone say Obama is struggling with his agenda because he’s not centrist enough, or else that Obama is struggling with his agenda because he’s not left-wing enough.

The reality is that he’s struggling with his agenda because of the way our political institutions are structured.

Incidentally, if you want to read live-ish coverage of the health reform debate, you should check out my public twitter feed which is a better medium for this sort of thing.

A lot of absurd things have been said during today’s health care debate, but I think obscure Representative Vernon J. Ehlers of Michigan took the cake for sheer nonsense just now. He accused the Democrats “ignoring the Republicans” and said that instead of producing a “Democrat bill” the parties should have worked together “like we did on Medicare.” That’s right, Medicare. As if Ehlers and other Republicans would have voted for the bill if only Nancy Pelosi had moved a single-payer to the floor. Come on.

I was walking north on 5th street the other day looking at the state of the neighborhood and it occurred to me that maybe it would make sense to tax land values rather than policy values. That would encourage people to put their parcels to use, rather than endlessly sitting on vacant properties hoping for a better deal tomorrow. Ryan Avent happens to have found a relevant paper, Junge, Jason and David Levinson, “Financing transportation with land value taxes: Effects on development intensity.”

A significant portion of local transportation funding comes from the property tax. The tax is conventionally assessed on both land and buildings, but transportation increases only the value of the land. A more direct, efficient way to fund transportation projects is to tax land at a higher rate than buildings. The lower tax on buildings would allow owners to retain more of the profits of their investment in construction, and have the expected side effect of increased development intensity. A partial equilibrium simulation is created for three sample cities to determine the magnitude of the intensity increase for both residential and nonresidential development if various levels of split rate property taxes were enacted.

It’s important, as a matter of governance, for progressives to spend more time thinking harder about the efficiency of different tax regimes. Tax issues are politically sensitive, obviously, but even in political terms the proof to a large extent is in the pudding. “Big government,” schemes, no matter how controversial, tend to become accepted when they work. But part of making them work is financing them intelligently. This seems like a better way to finance upgrades in our public infrastructure.

I spent the day at the zoo rather than watching C-SPAN. And obviously the action is still happening. But this is pretty remarkable. The Democratic Women’s Caucus had a series of speakers lined up to talk in favor of the health care bill, and Republicans decided to shut them up by talking over them, endlessly interrupting with spurious parliamentary inquiries:

It’s bizarre behavior. I’m not one to put a ton of stock in the idea that civility is the be-all and end-all of politics, but this kind of thing is really nuts and I think only serves to underscore how hollow complains of insufficient bipartisanship are.

John Hollinger swats down Doug Collins for suggesting that it’s a mistake for Richard Jefferson to take a third of his shots from beyond the three point line:

Setting aside for a moment the ridiculously small sample (24 shots over three games), or the fact that Jefferson shot a career-high 39.7 percent on 3s last season and ranked among the league’s top practitioners of the corner 3, there’s the simple matter that for a wing to take one-third of his shots from distance is completely unremarkable in this day and age. Last season, of the 63 small forwards to play at least 500 minutes, 30 took a third or more of their shots from beyond the arc. With Jefferson transitioning from a leading role in Milwaukee to a secondary one in San Antonio — a switch that, for perimeter players, usually leads to a spike in the portion of shots that are 3s — I’d expect his portion of triples to stay around this level all season.

I would go further: In general, there’s not enough three point shooting happening in the NBA. In the 2008-2009 NBA season the average possession resulted in 1.083 points. The league average on three point shooting, meanwhile, was .367 meaning that the expected value of a three point attempt was 1.101 points. Better than average. Indeed, last year only four teams scored at a more efficient rate than 1.101 points per possession. If you consider that 26.7 percent of missed shots become offensive rebounds, the long ball looks even better. The break even point for three point shooting, on average, is something a bit lower than 36.1 percent.

In general, two point jump shots are kind of a sucker play: dunks, free throws, and three pointers are where it’s at.