Steven Rattner, the lead adviser on the Obama administration’s auto task force in 2009, has an op-ed titled “Delusions About the Detroit Bailout” in today’s New York Times. Some highlights: As a presidential aspirant, Mr. Romney evidently hasn’t felt a need to be consistent or specific as to what should have been done to address […]
By Linda Beale Romney’s association with corporate tax shelter schemes Bloomberg’s Jesse Drucker has been doing some research into presidential candidate Mitt Romney and come up with some interesting information–at least for those of us who find corporate involvement in aggressive tax shelter phantom loss generating schemes a worrisome problem. See Drucker, Romney as Audit […]
In private communication, Roger Chittum got me thinking about the vehicle component of gasoline consumption. I’m going focus on the gross vehicle numbers, and not get too deeply into the car/truck/SUV product mix detail. Data is from the Department of Energy TRANSPORTATION ENERGY DATA BOOK: EDITION 30—2011. (Warning: 414 page pdf.) According to Table 3-5 […]
Not to borrow a page from Brad DeLong, but three days before the singer’s would-have-been-80th birthday and 67 years to the day after the events that made his subject famous…
Greg Sargent, whose Gatekeeper Job at Kaplan Prep Daily makes him somewhat important in determining the results of elections, cast a pale over my good mood about my dinner bet with Lance Mannion this morning:* Having trouble getting outraged with Romney campaign sending out only good parts of Det[roit] News endorsement. Seems like par for […]
Today’s Page 1, above-the-fold, biggest type headlines for the FT: US PDF edition: “Obama proposes corporate tax rate cut: System ‘outdated, unfair, and inefficient’ US Print edition: “Obama and Romney unveil rival tax plans: Proposals show strong support for reforms” The latter piece waits until the 7th graf to Tell the Truth and Shame the […]
You don’t have to be a conservative who’s helped coopt the American flag as a rightwing Republican political symbol—replacing the Elephant, which no one under the age of 50 even recognizes anymore as the GOP’s official emblem—to be offended by someone’s false claim of having received a military honor, especially one awarded for extraordinary valor. […]
Peter Beinart in The Daily Beast points us to the crazy nature of our current attitude regarding attacking Iran in The Crazy Rush to Attack Iran. He lists and quotes an impressive series of experts familiar with the the last decades wars, and finally asks: Can you find former military and intelligence officials who are […]
by Linda Beale Politicians’ wealth and the tax policies they support A story in the Boston Globe by Britt Peterson on Feb. 19, 2012 explored “Why it matters that our politicians are rich” (available here on Boston.com). A key point–the four remaining GOP presidential candidates all are millionaires, with most making more than a million […]