By now, you’ve probably seen somewhere that Dennis Hastert is floating the idea of abolishing the IRS and replacing income taxes with a consumption tax (or, alternatively, a VAT). Kevin Drum’s already given this idea the treatment it deserves. But since this issue is resurfacing now, it seems like a good time to point out […]

From the NYT: WASHINGTON, Aug. 2 -Much of the information that led the authorities to raise the terror alert at several large financial institutions in the New York City and Washington areas was three or four years old, intelligence and law enforcement officials said on Monday. They reported that they had not yet found concrete […]

Sadly, there are no transcripts of The Daily Show (if there are, please tell me where), so the following is a loose account, and quotations are only approximate (brought to you by the magic of Tivo.) Tonight’s guest was Rep. Henry Bonilla (R-TX) and member of the GOP’s “rapid response team” convened during the Democratic […]

A bit of trivia: yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the first of two attacks on US ships in the Gulf of Tonkin that quickly lead to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave LBJ broad powers to escalate the American role in Vietnam from an advisory role to active participation. More when, or if, […]

Apparently when John Edwards said this in his acceptance speech on Wednesday: “And we, John and I, we will have one clear unmistakable message for al Qaeda and these terrorists: You cannot run. You cannot hide. We will destroy you,” George Bush wasn’t listening. Or perhpas in place of “destroy”, he heard “negotiate and hope […]

OK, I make a comment over at Dan Drezner’s blog in line with my Sunday blog here and the “crowd” goes nuts. You see – they think I don’t realize that the dollar has devalued. a of the real exchange rate does have our real exchange rate down to 92.22 (1973 = 100) from 116.77 […]

The 9/11 Commission’s report was issued on July 23. As CBS MarketWatch reports, it took less than ten days for Bush to reverse his early skeptical position and, bowing before the polls, embrace the panel’s principal recommendations: WASHINGTON (CBS.MW) — President Bush said Monday he wants to overhaul the structure of the U.S. intelligence community […]

In Daniel Drezner’s latest discussion (Doha is Back on Track) on of international trade issues, he notes this Kerry press release, which states: Exports Are Down Under President Bush-The First President Since Herbert Hoover. Exports have fallen in inflation-adjusted terms under President Bush-the first drop under any President since Herbert Hoover. In contrast, most post-World […]

Brad DeLong explains the incentives of the press: When Joshua Bolten, George W. Bush’s budget director, tells New York Times reporter David Rosenbaum that: The New York Times: “the improved budget outlook [from last January’s forecast] is the direct result of the strong economic growth the president’s tax relief has fueled.” The natural follow-up question […]

I’ve made a few changes that will, hopefully, slightly improve your reading experience: The archives are fixed (weeks after 5/14 had mysteriously stopped displaying). I’ve replaced the FreeFind search engine with Google’s search engine. However, due to the failure of the archives, search engines were not finding entries from after 5/14. As soon as Google […]