Random, occasionally rambling thoughts with links to interesting, scandalous, or partisan news of the day.

Fair and Balanced

Dead Heroes
• Thomas Paine
• Thomas Jefferson
• Benjamin Franklin
  

Living Heroes
We owe the liberty and freedom we take for granted to the enlisted men and women in the armed forces. They sacrifice family, ease, and even life laboring in service to all of us. The least we can do for them is honor their devotion with dignified pay scales, decent education for themselves and their children, and reasonable compensation for service away from their families and death on the battlefield. Flag waving politicians who praise the troops on one hand and cut their pay and benefits with the other should be deeply ashamed of themselves.

Blogs I Read Often
• Talking Points Memo
• Atrios
• FireDogLake
• Brad DeLong
• The Daily Howler
• Daily Kos
• Glenn Greenwald
• MyDD
• The News Blog
• Oliver Willis
• Political Wire
• The Volokh Conspiracy
  

The President's Tax Proposal: First Impressions Too good not to quote in its entirety below:

President Bush's new tax plan is an answer in search of a question. It would provide little short-term stimulus. It seems unlikely to provide much of a long-term boost to growth or jobs. It is an incomplete way to reform corporate taxes. It would not boost investor confidence. It would provide windfall gains for previous actions, rather than encouraging new activity. It would make taxes more complex. It does not fix the alternative minimum tax. It does not resolve uncertainty regarding the repeal of EGTRRA at the end of 2010. It is fiscally irresponsible and unduly weighted toward high-income households.

The plan has two main features: elimination of individual taxes on dividends and acceleration of the many features of the 2001 tax cut. The repeal of dividend taxes is essentially a price support program for investors, which is consistent with earlier Administration advocacy of price supports for farmers and the steel industry. Accelerating the 2001 tax cut—which was designed during boom times in 1999 to stave off a conservative political attack from Steve Forbes but has never been altered to address any changing economic circumstance since then—is also consistent with earlier Administration positions. A consistent political agenda, however, does not always make good economics.
posted by Dave on 1:23 AM | 0 comments link

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