by Linda beale The ‘ignorance is bliss’/’ride’em cowboy’ mentality of today’s GOP Today’s GOP is dominated by the Tea Party types that are a cross between an ostrich with its head stuck in the sand– the “ignorance is bliss” philosophy– and a 1860s cowboy as depicted in the 1960s western-mania TV shows– the “hell bent […]
Update: Link at Scotus blog http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/06/wednesday-round-up-187/. As prosecutors, police agencies and civil libertarians consider the ruling’s implications, Justice Scalia’s stark dissent — and the fact that President Obama’s two appointees to the court so far agreed with it — makes it worthy of scrutiny, even if he was on the losing side. His argument is […]
Via the Washington Post comes this idea of economic incentive: But research by noted economists Karl Case, John Quigley and Robert Shiller found the households were more powerful affected by declines in wealth than increases. An unexpected 1 percent drop in housing prices caused a permanent 0.1 percent decrease in spending, that study found. But […]
by Linda Beale Tax breaks for wealthy; corporate tax shouldn’t be reformed away; seed patents are a real scandal No time for lengthy commentary today, but worth calling attention to some noteworthy items. (1) The CBO released a new report detailing the income groups that benefit most from the various tax expenditures in the internal […]
From Barry Ritholz and The Big Picture via Investingchannel is this piece on a Proposal for New Hedge Fund Fee Structure: One of my pet peeves is the way that insiders — whether corporate CEOs, hedge fund managers, or elected politicos — capture compensation (or credit) for normal cyclical gains they had little or nothing […]
Jon Perr at Crooks and Liars does a nice review on defining who benefits the most from tax breaks: CBO Study Shows Tax Breaks Favor the Rich “Every year, tax expenditures–Uncle Sam’s myriad credits, exclusion, loopholes and breaks–cost the U.S. Treasury over $1 trillion a year. To put that in perspective, that figure is greater than […]
by Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt Health Care Thoughts: Carrot and Stick The Obama administration has issued regulations allowing employers to use both incentives and penalties in wellness programs. There is some controversy here, such as: employer plans setting and enforcing blood pressure and cholesterol standards punishing smokers (less controversial perhaps) – is this punishing addicts? there […]
Reader rjs sends us several links: Washington ‘Spends’ More on Tax Breaks Than on Medicare, Defense, or Social Security – Tax expenditures are funny, They’re not taxes, exactly, because they save us money. They’re not spending, exactly, because the dollars are never actually spent. They’re somewhere in between. So think of it as tax spending. […]
by Linda Beale Another False Media-Generated IRS “Scandal” Fox News and similar outlets (and even some of our esteemed Congresspeople, like Jim Jordan) have been fuming that Doug Shulman, the former IRS Commissioner, had more visits to the White House than any other cabinet officer. See, e.g., Evan McMurray, Bill O’Reilly Rails: IRS Commish’s 157 […]