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By Gore Vidal
$16.95
By Stanley Kutler
$13.57
$22
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AP / Andy Manis
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By Stanley Kutler — Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, less than two weeks into his term, pushed through $117 million in tax breaks for business allies of the GOP. There is your crisis.
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Martha Soukup (CC-BY)
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According to The Associated Press, “for the third straight year, American families and businesses will pay less in federal taxes than they did under former President George W. Bush. ...” In fact, as a share of gross domestic product, Americans haven’t paid this little in taxes since Harry Truman called the shots.
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By Eugene Robinson — As we mark the centennial of Ronald Reagan’s birth, one of our major political parties has become imbued with the Gipper’s political philosophy and governing style. I mean the Democrats, of course.
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By Ruth Marcus — The man once known as Governor Moonbeam sounded more like Governor Laser Beam when it came to addressing California’s fiscal crisis.
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Flickr / John D. Carnessiotis (CC-BY)
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According to The New York Times, “What’s Broken in Greece” is that the cost of labor in Greece from 2005 to 2010 has been, on average, 25 percent higher than in Germany. (more)
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Be ready for the paradoxical phase of Barack Obama’s presidency. Many things will not be exactly as they appear.
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AP / Charles Dharapak
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By Bill Boyarsky — The selfish negativity expressed by Republicans in the House health care debate last week showed why we should fight hard for President Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012.
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Truthdig / Peter Scheer
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A Swiss judge fined the former banker who gave confidential files to WikiLeaks roughly $6,250, but spared the whistle-blower a prison sentence. Rudolf Elmer was found guilty of violating Switzerland’s confidential banking laws, which have protected such people as tax-dodging Americans and the Nazis.
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AP / Cliff Owen
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By Bill Boyarsky — Republicans have their biggest statehouse majority in more than 80 years, and they’re taking orders from a man who wants to take government and “drown it in the bathtub.”
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AP / Rich Pedroncelli
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By Bill Boyarsky — Covering the statehouse or city hall is regarded as the minor leagues of political journalism. But this year, these too-often-unappreciated scriveners are in the middle of one of the most important domestic stories in decades.
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By David Sirota — In a Washington circus that features as many morons as oxymorons, we have self-described deficit hawks who promote tax cuts, alleged war opponents who back war escalations and supposed anti-government conservatives who press to expand the National Security State.
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By David Sirota — “Welcome to the New Normal.” Those words should be displayed at New York’s airports as a welcome to bedraggled travelers during the Northeast’s latest “snowpocalypse.”
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AP / David J. Phillip
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Former President Bill Clinton, the Democrat who brought you such miracles as welfare reform, NAFTA and “don’t ask, don’t tell,” has jumped into the fray over the tax cut deal, adding his support to the compromise worked out by President Obama with the Republicans. “I don’t believe there is a better deal out there,” Clinton said.
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AP / Senate Television
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By Moshe Adler — The only way to reduce the uncertainty in our economy right now is to increase taxes. During the Eisenhower years the top tax rate was 91 percent, and there is every reason to return to this rate now.
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Maybe he heard that the president called liberals like him “sanctimonious,” but Keith Olbermann is pretty worked up. Watch to the end if you want to see the claws come out.
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White House / Pete Souza
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Based on what The New York Times describes as President Obama’s “substantial concessions to Republicans,” Democrats in Congress have reason to fret. Not only did Obama agree to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, but he caved in to Republican demands to neuter the estate tax. ... (more)
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AP
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Republicans stood fast in the Senate to shoot down two attempts by Democrats to extend tax cuts for the middle class and let rates rise for wealthier taxpayers. Said one Democrat after the votes: “This is the ultimate game of chicken.”
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Flickr / Hector Lopez-Berges
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Awash in debt and 20 percent unemployment, the Spanish government on Friday approved an austerity package aimed at reviving its moribund economy.
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AP / Chitose Suzuki
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By Moshe Adler — Taxes are the best weapon against the kind of self-perpetuating Ivy League elitism so despised by the tea party.
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Richard Ellis
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Like a chubby kid doing a chin-up, a group of finance ministers and heads of state has declared that it is “challenging but feasible” to generate $100 billion a year by 2020 to fund a program allowing developing countries to adapt to the effects of climate change and reduce domestic emissions.
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Adam Zyglis, Cagle Cartoons, The Buffalo News —
Posted on Nov 1, 2010
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By David Sirota — What could cause the intensifying politics of free-market fundamentalism at the very historical moment that proves the failure of such an ideology? Two new academic studies suggest all roads lead to ignorance.
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By Joe Conason — The best recent estimates by civil engineers and government experts indicate that we would have to spend well over $2 trillion during the next five years on roads, bridges, airports, railways, transit, sewers, waterways, ports, dams, parks and schools simply to maintain them in decent condition.
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msnbc
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Last week a Tennessee family lost its home, worldly possessions, three dogs and a cat when firefighters refused to put out a blaze. In that corner of America, they don’t believe in taxing and spending on things like firefighting. Rather, it’s a service for which one pays—or, in this case, forgets to pay—a $75 annual fee.
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This week on “Left, Right & Center,” the gang chats about the shakeup in Obama’s economic team, the GOP’s alleged new ideas, the Democrats’ spine on taxes, and the ever important but little-discussed issue of schools. Tune in to find out more.
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Flickr / Michael Mulvey (CC-BY)
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After much fuss, congressional Democrats managed to push through a modest jobs bill that will have to do in the place of anything grander with which to campaign. The package of tax breaks and cash is directed toward small businesses, with the hope of creating employment.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — It’s remarkable how timidity leads Democrats to fight this year’s campaign on Republican terms. Nowhere is this more obvious than on taxes.
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Flickr / TheArches (CC-BY)
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Anti-tax organizers in the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe are getting advice and assistance from the same well-funded astroturf groups that helped launch and control the tea party movement on this side of the Atlantic.
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By Ruth Marcus — The president’s position that the tax cuts for those making less than $250,000 a year should be extended permanently is fiscally reckless.
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By Ruth Marcus — We need to do something about tax expenditures, those spending programs disguised as tax breaks that cost us close to $1.2 trillion a year.
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Wikimedia Commons / Prolineserver
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New York Times econo-whiz Paul Krugman marked the 75th anniversary of America’s Social Security program with a warning note on Sunday, declaring that Social Security is under siege from “nearly all Republicans” as well as “some Democrats.”
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Flickr / fictures
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In case you hadn’t heard, the Golden State ain’t so golden these days, and Gov. Schwarzenegger is having a tough time finding a way to yank California out of a yawning financial hole. This is where gambling comes in.
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Photo illustration based on an image by Flickr user cometstarmoon (CC-BY)
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Can a nation remain a superpower if its internal politics are incorrigibly stupid? While we’re at it, does any other democracy have a powerful legislative branch as undemocratic as the U.S. Senate?
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By Ruth Marcus — The modern Republican argument about taxes seems to boil down to two principles, both misguided: Taxes can be reduced, but they can never be allowed to go up. And whatever level taxes are at, they are too high.
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By Ruth Marcus — George Steinbrenner’s well-timed death—though I suspect he may not have seen it that way—points up the insanity of the current estate tax situation.
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Photo illustration
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Scott Brown of Massachusetts has decided to support the anemic financial reform bill because, as The Washington Post reports, “he got nearly everything he wanted.” The bill is now expected to pass with the support of at least two other Republicans, including Maine’s Olympia Snowe.
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By David Sirota — Though the Reagan zeitgeist created the illusion that taxes stunt economic growth, the numbers prove that higher marginal tax rates generate more resources for the job-creating, public investments that sustain an economy and create incentives for businesses to grow.
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By Joe Conason — We could easily slip into another Great Depression if our leaders continue to heed the chattering class on the deficit. But cutting spending is not just bad economics; it’s bad politics, too.
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By Ruth Marcus — Rich Trumka—the AFL-CIO president intercepts any attempted honorific with an easy “Call me Rich”—comes armed with charts. His first one is, literally, in shades of gray. Its message is anything but.
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By Ruth Marcus — This is no time for retrenchment, but the deficit projections coming out of the Congressional Budget Office are alarming and will only get worse if we dawdle.
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By Ruth Marcus — To hijack the horrors of the Holocaust and slavery in the service of a political campaign demeans the candidate and, worse, dishonors the victims. Decency demands that some comparisons be off-limits.
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youtube.com
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Thousands of angry Greeks took to the streets on May Day, protesting a wave of wage cuts, tax increases and pension reductions implemented to deal with the country’s growing debt crisis.
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Flickr / alancleaver_2000 (CC-BY)
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By Moshe Adler — The notion that taxes are bad for the middle class is akin to the notion that cigarette smoking is harmless, and it should be dealt with by similar means.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Every April the Web and the commentary pages overflow with sweeping falsehoods that libel the work of committed federal employees, such as Vernon Hunter, the Vietnam veteran who was recently murdered by an anti-tax terrorist.
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On today’s list: Behind the Vatican’s blame-the-gays strategy, how much you owe for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the most corporate band and nine myths about socialism in the U.S.
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By David Sirota — Amazon has sent a message to states buckling under budget deficits: If you make us play by the same tax rules as other businesses, we’ll punish you.
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AP / Pat Sullivan
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By Yasha Levine and Mark Ames —
Ron Paul proté gé Debra Medina is shaking up the Texas gubernatorial race, but scratch the surface of this rising tea party star and you’ll find a Bush-style big-government hypocrite.
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Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune —
Posted on Feb 23, 2010
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