An intriguing development:
Under [Senator Bob Clegg’s] bill, two adults could go to a Justice of the Peace and affirm their decision to enter into a contract. The contract would be filed with the Secretary of State as are marriage licenses. Dissolving the unions would be similar to a divorce with the parties responsible financially for dependent children.
Clegg is a former Majority Leader in the state senate, and a Republican.
A reader tackles both Brian Riedl and the Economist. Since I linked to them, I’m happy to air the contrary view. The key difference is that the revenue numbers before 1986 don’t include the social security surplus. Over to my reader:
From CBO numbers going back to 1962 (45 years) Bush’s overall revenue numbers rank 25/44/45/34/16. That we can merely approach slightly above average is nothing to be proud of.
But the real error of Riedl and The Economist is that they don’t look at why the numbers are what they are. Pre-1986 numbers don’t include the social security surplus (because it didn’t exist). So one would expect every year after that to be above average simply because of the extra money earmarked for future retirees.
The 10/20/30/40/45 year averages of overall revenues as % of GDP are 18.7/18.4/18.3/18.3/18.2. Government revenues have been increasing steadily since the early 60s. Looking at the revenue from 1962-2006 in discrete 10-year increments (with one five-year increment covering Bush’s five years) we have percentages (in reverse chronological order) of 17.3/19.1/18.0/18.2/17.9. The increase is almost solely from Clinton’s years in office.
But why did that increase occur? Stripping out "Social Insurance" revenues (FICA, Medicare, etc.) the 10/20/30/40/45 averages are 12.1/11.8/12.0/12.4/12.6. Using discrete 10-year increments (five years for Bush) we have (again, in reverse chronological order) 10.8/12.4/11.8/12.8/14.2. Revenues are decreasing, not increasing. Revenues are higher in recent years because of increased FICA and Medicare taxes. Bush again comes up well short.
Using 10 year increments (five for Bush) we have (reverse chronological order) revenues excluding the Social Security Surplus of 15.9/18.0/17.5/18.2/17.8. Bush’s numbers are awful. Bush’s ranks are 42/44/45/43/35. The FOUR WORST in the last 45 years. Houston, we have a revenue problem.
This is not my area of expertise but it seems plausible to me.
Pomfret, Connecticut, 11 am.
Glenn Reynolds has posted a short piece that grapples with climate change and what to do about it. I agree with most of it, although the man-made impact in global change is surely, at this point, more than "far from certain." It’s "very likely." Glenn is right that carbon-based energy is dumb and dirty anyway, even without the climate change drawback. And I second the notion that we need to make green reform innovative and entrepreneurial rather than of the take-your-medicine variety. I’m also intrigued by the idea of making a new and hefty carbon tax revenue-neutral. It might help sell it to the right: cut income tax and tax carbon instead. But there’s no need to ban private jets. Just tax the bejeesus out of them. A little sugar for the left as well.
A reader who covers tennis emailed to say that
"this is the single most amazing point I’ve seen in tennis, and I don’t think there’s a single other player, ever, who could have pulled this shot off. Roddick’s reaction says it all."
Check it out:
The full text can be read here. I see nothing wrong with it.
It’s now in America. Money quote:
"The Shiites were very happy that they killed Saddam, but the Sunnis were in tears," Aqeel Al-Tamimi, 34, an immigrant Iraqi truck driver and a Shiite, said as he ate roasted chicken and flatbread at Al-Akashi restaurant, one of the establishments damaged over the city line in Detroit. "These people look at us like we sold our country to America."
The response to this should not be to throw out hands up in despair but to figure out how we can exploit these rifts in the Middle East to protect and defend the interests of the West and of secular-minded Arabs.
Stimson resigns.
A helpful and sane analysis:
Contrarians will no doubt be disappointed here. The conclusions have been significantly strengthened relative to what was in the TAR, something that of course should have been expected given the numerous additional studies that have since been done that all point in the same direction. The conclusion that large-scale recent warmth likely exceeds the range seen in past centuries has been extended from the past 1000 years in the TAR, to the past 1300 years in the current report, and the confidence in this conclusion has been upped from "likely" in the TAR to "very likely" in the current report for the past half millennium. This is just one of the many independent lines of evidence now pointing towards a clear anthropogenic influence on climate, but given all of the others, the paleoclimate reconstructions are now even less the central pillar of evidence for the human influence on climate than they have been incorrectly portrayed to be.
The uncertainties in the science mainly involve the precise nature of the changes to be expected, particularly with respect to sea level rise, El Niño changes and regional hydrological change – drought frequency and snow pack melt, mid-latitude storms, and of course, hurricanes. It can be fun parsing the discussions on these topics (and we expect there will be substantial press comment on them), but that shouldn’t distract from the main and far more solid conclusions above.
I’ve long been an advocate of empirically-based, market-friendly policies that ensure we do not damage the sacred inheritance of our planet. I wrote one of the first pamphlets arguing that conservatism and environmentalism are not just compatible but intertwined. It was for Margaret Thatcher in 1985 – and she promptly ignored all of it. I have long had an open mind on climate change, but an open mind now means, it seems to me, a clear, empirical conclusion. Climate change is happening, it is almost certainly man-made, although some doubt persists as to quite how deep and swift the change will be. I write this not as a statement of dogma but as a statement of the best inference from the data we now have. This is not – or should not be – a right-vs-left issue. It’s a fact vs fantasy issue. Right now, the fantasists are those saying we have nothing to worry about. We do. The question is merely how best to adapt. A big increase in taxes on carbon is the obvious starting point. Once government sets incentives, the amazing ingenuity of the American marketplace will do the rest.
The latest spat. Has he been lying?
The Dish 