STATE AND LOCAL TAXES….Reader Bill Nazzaro pointed me to this report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. As the chart below shows, state and local taxes, when taken as a whole, are highly regressive. Among the non-elderly, the poorest pay about 11% of their income in total state and local taxes while the […]
RACE AND RACISM….I’ve mentioned on
RACE AND RACISM….I’ve mentioned on a couple of occasions that I have very little use for John Derbyshire ? even if he does write about mathematics sometimes ? but in a soul-wrenching, bend-over-backwards effort to be fair, I want to excerpt the full quote of his that’s been making the rounds of the blogosphere lately: […]
SOUNDBITE MARKETING….Jay Caruso thinks it’s
SOUNDBITE MARKETING….Jay Caruso thinks it’s the Democrats who are better at phrasemaking, not the Republicans. Ah, if only it were so, Jay….
THE DEATH PENALTY….USA Today reports
THE DEATH PENALTY….USA Today reports on a loose group of law professors and likeminded academics who are pro death penalty. As near as I can tell, their argument is that it’s not true that 100 innocent people have been put on death row and later released. In fact, they say, most of them were released […]
THE MARKETING OF THE OPPOSITION….As
THE MARKETING OF THE OPPOSITION….As a corollary to the post below, I watched James Carville trying desperately (and failing) to land a blow on Crossfire yesterday when his guest made the point that the dividend tax cut went mostly to seniors. I imagine the right response would be something like this: You mean seniors like […]
THE MARKETING OF THE PRESIDENT….I’ve
THE MARKETING OF THE PRESIDENT….I’ve been thinking about the presentation of Bush’s economic plan yesterday, and the more I think about it the more I admire it. Mind you, this is strictly from the point of view of a competitor admiring another competitor’s marketing coup. Think about what Bush had to work with: he’s proposing […]
NORTH KOREA UPDATE….Via OxBlog, I
NORTH KOREA UPDATE….Via OxBlog, I learn that the Bushies have apparently changed their tune about their refusal to negotiate with North Korea: In a key policy shift, the United States said on Tuesday it was willing to talk to North Korea before Pyongyang ends its nuclear programs but stuck to its refusal to give the […]
IT’S A FEATURE, NOT A
IT’S A FEATURE, NOT A BUG….A friend of my mother’s decided to get a cat the other day, so she went down to our local shelter and picked one out. This was the first time she had owned a cat, and the next day she called my mother and told her worriedly that she thought […]
WORDS MATTER….The LA Times ran
WORDS MATTER….The LA Times ran a story today about David Frum’s new book. Here’s an excerpt about Bush advisor Karen Hughes: It was Hughes who laid down various rules for speech writers, Frum says: Parents would be referred to as “moms and dads”; “tax cuts” would be called “tax relief,” to come across as “a […]
MORE ON BUSH-ONOMICS….There’s a PR
MORE ON BUSH-ONOMICS….There’s a PR problem with the Bush plan too. A PR problem for the Democrats, that is. Here is RealClear Politics’ take on the issue: “THEY’VE TAKEN STEROIDS”: That’s how one GOP aide described the White House’s $674 billion economic stimulus plan…. By contrast, the Dems $136 billion proposal looks positively paltry….If the […]