"I disagree with you, but I'm pretty sure you're not Hitler." – Jon Stewart
Posted in Blog Post on Jul 30th, 2011
Imagine we’re in a boat with a slow leak. One passenger is trying to bail out water. The other passenger complains that it’s not being done fast enough. Rather than help bail, the 2nd passenger decides the best way to motivate faster work is to punch a larger hole in the boat. Expenditures, as a [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Jul 5th, 2011
Corporate Cash Con – NYTimes.com. As Krugman says we’ve ready seen this movie. Let corporations avoid taxes on foreign revenue and they’ll do what they did before, which does not include creating jobs here. I know why politicians believe it, they”re paid to. The puzzling part is is why voters still believe it.
Posted in Blog Post on Apr 19th, 2011
S.&P. Lowers Outlook for U.S., Sending Stocks Down So what? The bond markets sneezed and got over it by closing bell. Stocks are back up today. This really is more about people and corporations sitting on large piles of cash trying to protect their assets and if that means they have to screw over [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Apr 8th, 2011
I think this misses the point, it’s not about actual reality of US tax policy, it about the optics of the political situation for the Tea Party right. The GOP already got what it asked for, John Boehner started by asking for about 30 billion in cuts and we’ve already exceeded that. Now the Tea [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Jan 7th, 2011
The results are in on the “miracle” of conservative smoke and mirrors budgetary policy in Texas: For Texas is where the modern conservative theory of budgeting — the belief that you should never raise taxes under any circumstances, that you can always balance the budget by cutting wasteful spending — has been implemented most completely. [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Dec 10th, 2010
The price tag comes in at $858 billion, larger than the original Obama stimulus plan. It’s been framed as a tax deal, but I think it’s a stealth stimulus. This is basically the only (badly needed) stimulus that was anything near viable, allowing Congressional Conservatives and the Club for Growth to achieve simultaneous orgasm over [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Sep 20th, 2010
One way or the other the rich will get a tax cut, unless the GOP goes overboard with the obstructionism. All we’re really discussing is how big a tax cut they get. It’s not Obama’s fault the Bush administration resorted to some fiscal slight of hand to make it appear affordable by sun-setting the tax [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Aug 24th, 2010
So what’s the choice now? The Obama administration wants to preserve those parts of the original tax cuts that mainly benefit the middle class — which is an expensive proposition in its own right — but to let those provisions benefiting only people with very high incomes expire on schedule. Republicans, with support from some [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Aug 4th, 2010
They’re Not Embarrassed | Video Cafe. Rachel Maddow points out that the GOP is in strident, table pounding opposition to themselves on cap and trade, the health insurance individual mandate, aid to small businesses, a deficit commission and disclosure of corporate campaign donations. The really astounding part is they seem to get a pass on [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Jun 15th, 2010
This should annoy most everyone: Since June 1, when federal unemployment benefits began to expire, an estimated 325,000 jobless workers have been cut off. That number will swell to 1.25 million by the end of the month unless Congress extends the benefits. The Senate, so far, has failed to act. Some senators, including Democrats, have [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Apr 15th, 2010
When talking about the Tea Party movement, the largest number of respondents said that the movement’s goal should be reducing the size of government, more than cutting the budget deficit or lowering taxes. And nearly three-quarters of those who favor smaller government said they would prefer it even if it meant spending on domestic programs [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Apr 7th, 2010
Tom Schaller makes a cogent follow-up to the piece I was talking about below: 1. Dollar for dollar, America offers the most effective and efficient government on the planet, doing so for about 20 cents on the dollar nationally, 28 cents if you include state and local taxes. If you ask a conservative to name [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Apr 7th, 2010
Jonah Goldberg, Quarter Slave (Conceptually). Fivethirtyeight.com posts a reply to Jonah Goldberg’s latest attempt to establish false equivalence between taxes and slavery from the op-ed pages of USA Today. Goldberg wants to tell us we’re slaves to teh gubbermint until “Tax Freedom Day”, which is sometime this week. Overblown rhetoric aside, the real question is: [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Mar 12th, 2010
Private equity : The New Yorker. Maybe not. Hedge fund managers get a massive tax break worth billions because of a tax loophole that allows them to pay only 15% on the great majority of their income. I know I pay a helluva lot higher rate, but then again I’m not a downtrodden hedge fund [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Aug 28th, 2009
As Gleckman says it’s as much an ethical choice as an economic one. It says a lot about us as a country and what are values are. So, what do you think Jesus would do? It is interesting, and perhaps worth noting, that while political opposition seems to be hardening against the $1 trillion, ten-year [...]
Posted in Blog Post on May 4th, 2009
So they want to prevent companies and wealthy individuals from sheltering assets offshore? Let the GOP wailing begin! We are sure to see, any moment now, complaints that this is a tax increase. No kidding, huh? They’re not paying taxes on income now so if they do in the future, of course it will increase [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Apr 30th, 2008
Why this is a bad idea: Gas tax follies – Paul Krugman – Op-Ed Columnist – New York Times Blog Why doesn’t cutting the gas tax this summer make sense? It’s Econ 101 tax incidencke theory: if the supply of a good is more or less unresponsive to the price, the price to consumers will [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Apr 28th, 2008
It’s based on lying to the public about the true costs by ignoring the mendacity of the way Bush sold them in the first place. Bush Made Permanent – New York Times But here’s the thing: the reason the Bush tax cuts are set to expire is that the Bush administration engaged in a game [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Mar 6th, 2008
Can we muster the political will to do away with this kind of narrowly focused tax subsidy that benefits a narrow strata of the nation while hurting those who can least afford it? Oils End – Outposts – Op-Extra Columnist – Opinion – – New York Times Blog And then on Wednesday of this week, [...]
Date: 03/12/2007