Here’s an exchange between Tim Worstall and me in the comments to my post below titled “Spain. Please,Mr. Obama, talk about Spain. Please.”: WORSTALL: If you’re going to comment on the Spanish economy might help if you knew something about it. The big three banks, the equivalent of the Wall Street ones? They’re just fine.  […]

ROMNEY: Look, the revenue I get is by more people working, getting higher pay, paying more taxes. That’s how we get growth and how we balance the budget. But the idea of taxing people more, putting more people out of work, you’ll never get there. You’ll never balance the budget by raising taxes. Spain — […]

Yup. All those farmers in Iowa and Nebraska who’ve been waiting for the Farm Bill to pass are as nervous tonight as Richard Nixo … er … Mitt Romney was this evening during the debate, but their problem is different than his was.  Instead of babbling incoherently while wearing a frozen, glassy-eyed smile, the farmers […]

First, Justice Anthony Kennedy wants to know what possible connection there is between Esther Kiobel, the wrongs she says unfolded in Nigeria, and the United States. The answer the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Paul Hoffman, gives is that his clients live here because the U.S. government gave them asylum. Also, Royal Dutch Petroleum does plenty of business […]

In the comments to my post of yesterday titled, “Welcome Back, Supreme Court Justices! (Well, for the next two weeks, anyway.),” Angry Bear colleague Dan Becker wrote: Hi Bev,  I have read about this case. Still unclear even after reading your piece as to what the law was for, to do and how the new […]

Well, it’s that time of year again—when the Supreme Court justices interrupt their primary careers of flitting around the world (some of them), or at least around the country (the remainder of them), to teach a law school course or two, to instruct high court justices in other countries on how to feign working full-time, […]

Romney’s plan to find a cure for cancer: A bullet point saying “I’ll find a cure for cancer.” Voila!  Elect Romney. 

Rachel Zubay, 32, works as a waitress at Abdalla’s Steak House, in the shadow of a recently idled coal-fired power plant. She’s got two kids, is in the middle of a divorce, has no medical insurance and is paying $50 a month on a $15,000 surgical bill after she injured her ankle and foot in […]

I don’t pay more than are legally due and frankly if I had paid more than are legally due I don’t think I’d be qualified to become president. I’d think people would want me to follow the law and pay only what the tax code requires. — Mitt Romney, speaking to ABC’s David Muir, July […]

Between 1990 and 2009, the Romneys’ average annual effective federal tax rate was 20.2 percent, according to [notarized tax return summaries by Romney trustee Brad] Malt. The lowest effective federal personal tax rate they paid in that period was 13.66 percent, he said. Over the same 20-year period, the couple gave an average of 13.45 […]