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By Mike Farrell
$11.53
By Marc Schabracq
$37.95
$13
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For all their talk of deficits, conservatives don’t ever want to pay for them. Rush Limbaugh says people making more than $250,000 a year—who may just have to brace for a tax hike to keep our budget shortfalls somewhere in this galaxy—do not qualify as wealthy.
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AP / Rich Pedroncelli
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By Arthur Blaustein — California now struggles with fiscal and social disaster because of a 32-year-old initiative that makes raising revenues and passing budgets nearly impossible.
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White House / Pete Souza
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — If you held a contest to pick the worst thing a politician could be called at this moment, my nominee would be Wall Street Liberal—which is why President Obama’s new fees on the biggest banks comes just in time.
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Flickr / TenSafeFrogs
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The nation’s biggest and richest state has been called ungovernable because, among other reasons, budgets and taxes have to be approved by a two-thirds majority of the Legislature. George Lakoff, the guy who gave us framing, is out to change things. (continued)
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By Ruth Marcus — Law students may debate whether Congress has the right to mandate health insurance, but in the real world, it’s not a big worry.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Here’s a story you may have missed because it flies in the face of the dreary conventional wisdom: When advocates of public programs take on the right-wing anti-government crowd directly, the government-haters lose.
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While America’s super rich are coping with bailouts and bonus envy, a group of well-to-do Germans, led by a brewery heir, has delivered a petition demanding a 5 percent wealth tax—on themselves. Imagine if Pete Coors demanded that the government spend more of his money on “ecology, education and social justice.”
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — If the uninsured can’t count on the do-gooders to help them, where else can they turn?
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By Marie Cocco — Sen. Max Baucus’ health care plan would shift massive amounts of tax money away from traditionally blue states.
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By Marie Cocco — Finally, a health care proposal George W. Bush could love. Sen. Max Baucus’ idea to tax “Cadillac” insurance plans has been pushed by Republicans for years.
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David Fitzsimmons, The Arizona Star —
Posted on Aug 24, 2009
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bloomberg.com
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Swiss bank accounts aren’t what they used to be. Switzerland recently agreed to fork over information on 4,450 UBS AG bank accounts to the IRS as an investigation into suspected tax evasion threatens the good name that Swiss banking has provided to money launderers and tax evaders for centuries.
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By David Sirota — Thanks to the Khaki Pants Offensive in the Great American Health Care and Tax War, finally, there’s no pretense. Finally, the Me-First, Screw-Everyone-Else Crowd’s ugliest traits are there for all to behold.
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By Ruth Marcus — Does President Obama care about passing health care reform that truly gets costs under control and getting the nation’s fiscal house in order or does he care more about getting re-elected?
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speaker.gov
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Nancy Pelosi and her fellow progressive Democrats in the House have opened a can of health care whoop-ass that’s sure to drive Republicans and conservative Democrats nuts. The House bill, unveiled Tuesday, would tax the rich and businesses that skimp on health care coverage, provide a public option and require everybody to be covered.
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Flickr / denn
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Unable to agree whether to raise taxes or cut spending, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state’s lawmakers will instead rely on time travel. Sacramento hopes to “save” somewhere around $10 billion by shifting costs to next year’s budget and resorting to other accounting tricks.
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gov.ca.gov
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As if delivering the tagline of his latest movie, California’s governor announced to the state Legislature Tuesday that the “day of reckoning is here.” But Democrats are fighting Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan to cut funding for schools, the poor and sick children while refusing to raise taxes.
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Flickr / dave_mcmt
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By Paul Cummins — So, with the economy in the proverbial toilet and the D word (depression) hovering on the periphery, what is the Obama administration supposed to do about education? What can it do? Will additional and new funding be necessary to address his main concerns?
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syracuse.com
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By David Sirota — As counsel for the Warren Commission, Arlen Specter described a “magic bullet” that changed America. Four decades later as a U.S. senator, Specter is providing another history-altering magic bullet—one Democrats will either fire off in a starting gun, or use in their suicide.
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Yes, Keith Olbermann and other pundits (paging Anderson Cooper) had a field day with the right wing’s adoption of “tea bagging” as the driving metaphor behind their Tax Day protests. But no, the double entendres didn’t start “on the blogs,” as Bill O’Reilly’s “nice lady” guest Amanda Carpenter suggested on his show.
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By Marie Cocco — There is little anyone can do about the tax-protest rants except worry they will be believed by a wider public. So, on the theory that the truth will set us free, it is worth examining exactly what we’re all paying, and what for.
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By Ellen Goodman — Melba Abreu and Beatrice Hernandez file state taxes as what they are—a legally married Massachusetts couple. But under federal law, they have to file federal taxes as what they aren’t—two single women.
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By Joe Conason — At the apex of the tea party movement is FreedomWorks, headed by former Rep. Dick Armey. His past career should be instructive to any starry-eyed citizens who believe that they have at last found the true right-wing revolutionary path.
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Associated Press
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As “tea parties” tepidly brew in cities across the country to protest government spending and budget deficits, President Obama is on the offensive, maintaining that the tax relief of his administration’s nascent months is helping resurrect our fallen economy.
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AP photo / Susan Walsh
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This has gone from coincidence to self-parody to alarming. Another of Barack Obama’s nominees has had to apologize for not paying her full taxes. Kathleen Sebelius, the president’s pick to lead the Health and Human Services Department, has now paid off $7,918, a paltry debt compared with Tom Daschle’s $140,000.
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Matt Miller, a host of KCRW’s “Left, Right & Center,” has written a book full of necessary honesty and courage—a welcome effort to rid us of the nostrums and shopworn notions that cloud our thinking and constrain our politics.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The most significant moment of Obama’s news conference concerned taxes: his defense of proposed limits on the benefits that the well-off get for their charitable contributions and mortgage payments.
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By Joe Conason — Listening to the president’s critics, it would be easy to believe that Obama is responsible for the deficits, bailouts, bonuses, nationalized institutions and careening markets. It would be easy to believe but it’s entirely false.
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By Amy Goodman — Twenty years ago, the Exxon Valdez supertanker spilled at least 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska’s pristine Prince William Sound. The consequences of the spill were epic and continue to this day, impacting the environment and the economy.
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By Marie Cocco — Obama needs to stop straddling and to threaten to veto any cockamamie tax scheme that emerges from Congress as retribution for the repulsive bonuses handed out at American International Group.
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visitbulgaria.info
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Having succeeded in dispensing tens of millions of dollars to company executives last week as the country—and Congress—cried foul, the insurance titan is now suing the government to reclaim millions in taxes. Apparently AIG officials believe they paid the IRS too much and now are demanding a huge tax rebate.
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By Eugene Robinson — The treasury secretary may indeed be the hardest-working man in Washington. But in order to survive, let alone succeed, he’s going to have to make a more convincing case that he’s part of the solution and not part of the problem.
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By Amy Goodman — Taxpayers’ bailout money for AIG bonuses has rightfully provoked a massive backlash against AIG, Wall Street, President Barack Obama and his economic advisers, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers.
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By Marie Cocco — An idea that has been around for years now has reached that rarest of moments: There is a political environment that should, if reason prevails, produce legislation to require the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco products.
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By Eugene Robinson — The last thing the surgeon said to me before they rolled me into the operating room was, “You know, if you and Obama had your way with health care, it wouldn’t be me doing this operation. It would just be some guy.”
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The House this week is expected to vote to expand civilian service, and the Senate will soon take up a similar bill. This issue holds the promise of producing that much prized but elusive Washington commodity: a large bipartisan majority.
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By Joe Conason — Things are bad, and very likely to get worse—but the Republicans seem determined to plunge us into a real depression, gambling that catastrophe would return them to power.
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By Eugene Robinson — Advice to solve the financial crisis before even thinking about health care, energy or education is either misguided or disingenuous. Fortunately, Obama seems to be ignoring all the chatter.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Obama speaks disdainfully of “ideology,” but there comes a time when first principles need to be articulated. Conservatives have entered this fight with guns blazing while progressives have hidden behind a Maginot Line armed only with the word pragmatism.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — While conservatives cry socialism, the president is trying to steer a moderate course. Moderation, however, may be the wrong recipe. There is something deeply disturbing about the drip, drip, drip of billions into the banking system with no apparent impact.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — If President Obama’s primary task is to restore economic growth, he has also been waging a quiet, long-term campaign to ease the nation’s divisions around religious and moral questions.
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White House / Pete Souza
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By Eugene Robinson — Just six weeks into his term, Obama has opened his bid to redraw the boundaries of our politics and expand the realm of the possible.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The well-off will pay more in taxes. And before the howling on the right gets too loud, consider that we have just gone through a long era involving a far less frank form of redistribution—upward.
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By Marie Cocco — For someone who spent much of the Democratic primary season running against the Clinton era, Obama sounds an awful lot like President Clinton.
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White House
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In his first speech to a joint session of Congress, President Obama acknowledged the dire state of the economy, but struck a hopeful tone as he expanded on his vision for recovery. Investments in energy, education and health care will be key, he said, as will an expanded bailout of the financial sector. (Summary, video and full text after the jump)
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Flickr/dsb nola
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Perhaps keeping an eye on the 2012 election, Louisiana’s Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal has gone public with his critique of President Barack Obama’s proposed solutions to the country’s economic woes. ThreatDown!
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Flickr / geerlingguy
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While just about every state in the Union is starving for funds, a small band of Republican governors is debating whether or not to reject the stimulus bill’s cash infusion, citing concerns over future taxes. This California editor says good. Give their stimulus money to my state. It’s broke.
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