Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that “tax relief” is now NPR’s — at least, Morning Edition’s — official phrase? I’ve heard them use “tax relief” many times over the last week, but I can’t recall any instances of “tax cuts” or “tax reductions,” much less “tax shifts.” AB

Pandagon’s Don’t Pay Attention To Your Wallet…It’s Being Silly takes on this Bruce Bartlett oped by noting: The gist of it is that the middle class is only shrinking because it’s getting richer. Bartlett presents a variety of statistics, which might be persuasive but for one niggling problem. Real income is going down. Everything Bartlett […]

I spent about 8 hours in the airport today, reading the Sunday NY Times from cover to cover, and I can report that the best article in it is John Tierney’s “The Autonomist Manifesto.” It’s a wide-ranging article making the case for sprawl and cars. Particularly interesting was his description of “HOT lanes,” high-occupancy toll […]

My welcome to Chef Ragout extends on his excellent post One Reason Why Houses are So Expensive, which notes: The U.S. imports about a third of its lumber from Canada and imposes a 27% tariff, arguing that Canada subsidizes its lumber industry by selling trees from government owned land too cheaply. The tariffs were imposed […]

As you may recall, the Chef from Ragout did a great job filling in here a while back. So I invited him to be a regular contributor here, and he agreed. He’ll be posting regularly on Sunday night/Monday morning, and perhaps other times as the mood strikes him. For those keeping track, that’s me, Kash, […]

Can you guess the interviewee? DOES IT WEIRD YOU OUT THAT PEOPLE TAKE YOU SERIOUSLY AS A POLITICAL PUNDIT? Well, I don’t know that that’s the case. But I will tell you this: I don’t put any stock in political commentating. Political commentators at this point are mostly rewarded by the extremity of their viewpoint. […]

OK, I borrowed the title from Josh Marshall who covered the Iraq’s Prime Minister’s visit to Washington with several posts yesterday including his interview with Jim Lehrer where Allawi suggested the continuation of a Saddam regime would have meant more 9/11’s. Allawi told Congress they had 100,000 trained troops as if being in training is […]

The press may finally be catching on to the fact that the Bush campaign’s characterization of Kerry’s position on Iraq is untrue. The Bush campaign says “John Kerry has taken at least eight positions on the Iraq War, and there are still seven weeks left in the campaign.” But in the last couple of days, […]

Postcards from Old Europe – Al Quo Vadis? The recent FOMC statement reiterated the Fed’s view that economic weakness is mostly attributable to higher energy prices and the high measure of geopolitical risk. As soon as these brakes on economic growth are gone everything will be just fine and the economy will continue to zoom […]

There were three things that embarrassed me as an American about Bush’s trip to the UN. His speech to the General Assembly was bad enough, but Fred Kaplan’s Sweet Nothings covers the speech quite well. That Bush told reporters the NIE report was only a guess and then lied about what it said was well […]