Month: July 2010

A recent USDA study found that a "tax-induced 20-percent price increase on caloric sweetened beverages could cause an average reduction of 37 calories per day, or 3.8 pounds of body weight over a year, for adults and an average of 43 calories per day, or 4.5 pounds over a year, for children." Reihan's response:

I tend to think that some kind of soda tax is inevitable. As Alan Viard suggests, it is very tempting to tax seemingly frivolous goods, like tanning and “luxury” vehicles. I would much prefer having a simple, transparent revenue source. But stealth taxes like the soda tax are a way of keeping the headline numbers on income taxes and flat consumption taxes low. And if the soda tax really does lead to a significant public health improvement, well, who can strenuously complain? Cigarette taxes seem to have turned out reasonably well when we consider reduced levels of cigarette consumption on the part of teenagers and young adults.

I'm with Reihan on this. Sin taxes are not the same as prohibition; they just help to finance the social costs of the sin. Although I'd much rather have a small but slowly increasing tax on carbon than on soda.

Free Exchange tries to explain why some of the largest countries fare so poorly in international sporting events:

People…need a certain level of wealth before they are able to take the kinds of risks necessary for what must be one of the highest-risk, highest-return kinds of careers. Take music: it is very easy to ask, why don't more (pick your developing country) people make a career in music or art? Well, because it's risky; risk appetite is low at very low levels of income. It also takes a lot of resources to train a world-class athlete in any sport.

Palin's hairdo is all the rage among Hasidic women:

In Brooklyn’s Borough Park … stylist Gail Rosenzweig said half of her Orthodox Jewish clients want Palin’s style. “It’s a fashion statement,” said Rosenzweig as she worked on a Palin wig. Even though Palin is a Christian from Alaska, where Jews make up less than 1 percent of the state’s 670,000 population, Rosenzweig said her clients “like her classic look. It can be worn up or down.” Shlomo Klein, an Orthodox Jew and vice president of wig maker Georgie Wigs, said he sold more than 50 of the “Sarah P” wigs across America in recent weeks to women wanting wigs either for medical or religious reasons.

Bobby Jindal goes there. Churches too, of course. Because, as Jesus put it,

You have heard that it was said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth". But I say to you, do not resist an evildoer. If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.

Do these people actually believe they are Christians?

Ambers:

Romney is signaling that he'd take American foreign policy in a radical old direction, back to the days of confrontation and brinksmanship.

Fred Kaplan:

In 35 years of following debates over nuclear arms control, I have never seen anything quite as shabby, misleading and—let's not mince words—thoroughly ignorant as Mitt Romney's attack on the New START treaty in the July 6 Washington Post.

Milbank gets tough:

A blue-and-white Israeli flag hung from Blair House. Across Pennsylvania Avenue, the Stars and Stripes was in its usual place atop the White House. But to capture the real significance of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's visit with President Obama, White House officials might have instead flown the white flag of surrender.

And the Cairo promise is aborted by the pro-Israel lobby:

A Pew Research Center poll last month found that the percentage of Muslims expressing confidence in Obama fell from 41 percent to 31 percent in Egypt and from 33 percent to 23 percent in Turkey.

And that is just what Netanyahu wants.

Dana McCourt is tired of the debate. So am I. But only one person can end it, and it isn't me.

Salon interviews Stan Cox. Joyner is as unimpressed as I am:

It’s hard to tell if Cox and others like him hate air-conditioning because of its impact on the environment, because it caused people to move south, or because it allegedly led to the resurgence of the Republican Party as a Southern-SouthWestern party. Whatever the reason, it hardly qualifies as serious scholarship. If Cox wants to spend the next week without air-conditioning, that’s is choice. I, on the other hand, will be keeping him at a tolerable temperature completely guilt-free.

The worst thing about the Cape is that they pride themselves on not needing much air-conditioning. And then this current heat wave happens, and you end up hotter out here than in the oven that is Washington DC. I regard air-conditioning as one of the greatest contributions to human well-being in the last century.