Take a look at this headline: Republicans Set Aside Middle-Income Tax Cuts to Focus on Rich
I
know it sounds like DNC press release, but it's a news story--not an
editorial--from Bloomberg News--not The Nation--Bloomberg News. I point
this out because it helps explain why, for 40 years, right-wingers have
sought to demonize honest, normative reporting as "liberal bias." When
Comrade Colbert notes that "the facts are liberally biased," he is, for
practical purposes, telling the truth. But you needn't bother
addressing it if you can call it "bias." Anyway, see below what the
Commies at Bloomberg have to report:
"Republican lawmakers,
facing the prospect that their power to cut taxes may soon be curbed,
plan to extend breaks that mostly benefit the wealthy and Wall Street
at the expense of reductions for middle-income households.
"Sixmonths before elections that may return a Democratic majority in atleast one house of Congress, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist ofTennessee and House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois are focusing onextending the 15 percent rate on investments and repealing the estatetax. They won't push extensions of lower rates for all taxpayers andexpanded breaks for married couples and families with children, whichexpire after 2010.
"Inpolitics, timing is everything; you do what you can when you can, andthis is what's queued up right now,'' says Arizona Senator Jon Kyl, theNo. 4 Republican in the Senate. Given the federal budget deficit, itwould ``be hard to generate public support overnight'' for makingpermanent the other tax cuts, he says..... Internal Revenue Service datashow taxpayers who earned at least $1 million reaped 43 percent of allsavings from reduced rates on dividends and capital gains. The estatetax will affect only 12,600 families with more than $2 million inassets this year, a number that will decline to 7,200 by 2009,according to a study by the Tax Policy Center.
"Incontrast, households earning less than $75,000 received about 70percent of the benefits from increasing the child credit and 64.4percent of the benefit from creating the 10 percent bracket on thefirst $14,000 of taxable income, the Tax Policy Center says. Inaddition, it says 55.2 percent of the benefit from ending the so-calledmarriage penalty was received by families earning less than $100,000.
"...The
Joint Committee on Taxation, a bipartisan congressional panel,
estimates that renewing the investment tax breaks will cost the
government $50 billion in revenue it otherwise would have received.
Republican tax-cut advocates dispute this, saying that capital gains
tax receipts have increased because investors have sold assets they
would have kept when taxes were higher. Repealing the estate tax would
cost the government as much as $78.8 billion a year by 2016, according
to the committee...."
Man of the Hour. Comrade Tomasky. The piece is here.
Maybe if we invaded 33 more countries, we could lower their birthrate survival statistics and so we would not have to endure the shame we have so richly earned. (Why does AP/MSNBC.com hate America?)
Historian Greg Grandin explores how the Pentagon, which has now largely
superceded the State Department in handling the world, is responding to
Latin America's open revolt against being a U.S. "backyard." Its
strategists are creating a vision of a Latin "Wild West"; melding a
variety of possible problems from drugs, arms trafficking, intellectual
property piracy, and rebellion to money laundering and Islamic
terrorism into a single dangerous doctrinal brew; driving "lilypad"
military bases deep into the continent; and preparing a new generation
of young Latin American military officers to "cooperate" in a
Pentagon-driven future.
This is an eye-opening look into the
underside of the present Latin American drive for regional
independence--or, put another way, a description of how the Bush
administration might mess up a second region of the world, as we are
presently so intent on doing in the Middle East.
But seriously, people, what is with this Jeff Buckley obsession?
Free the Blues says my buddy Marty Scorsese, for cursing.
Big-Think Thought of the Day:"Intertemporal Choice," or "In the future, we want to eat fruit, toquit smoking, and to watch Bergman films." (I can't remember where Ifound this, nor who wrote it, but perhaps someone will tell me.)
"Anational chain of hamburger restaurants takes its name from Wimpy,Popeye's portly friend with a voracious appetite but small exchequer,who made famous the line, "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburgertoday." Wimpy nicely exemplifies the problems of "intertemporal choice"that intrigue behavioral economists like David Laibson. "There's afundamental tension, in humans and other animals, between seizingavailable rewards in the present, and being patient for rewards in thefuture," he says. "It's radically important. People very robustly wantinstant gratification right now, and want to be patient in the future.If you ask people, 'Which do you want right now, fruit or chocolate?'they say, 'Chocolate!' But if you ask, 'Which one a week from now?'they will say, 'Fruit.' Now we want chocolate, cigarettes, and a trashymovie. In the future, we want to eat fruit, to quit smoking, and towatch Bergman films."
I was going to leave Roger Friedman
alone, because he seems like a nice guy, and really, what do I care
what appears in a gossip column, but I see at the end of this column
he's flacking for Ann Coulter and so I feel compelled to point out that
Pat Mitchell has not been head of PBS for quite a long time, and so is
not "maybe the most important woman in broadcasting." (I believe she's
the head of the Museum of Broadcasting), and that Paul Simon song,
"Father and Daughter," which you say is a cinch for the Grammy for
"Best Song at the 2007," came out five years ago.
Still, it's a better average than O'Reilly's.