Month: April 2011

David Frum reads Romney's mind:

This budget proposal will end in tears, especially if there is a government shutdown tomorrow. The Democrats know that few Americans understand the difference between the 2011 Continuing Resolution and the 2012 budget. The Democrats will pound home the message that Republicans shut down the government so that they can cancel Medicare for everyone under 55, gut Medicaid, and cut taxes for the rich. Ryan is the hero of the party today. Six weeks from now, Republicans will feel about him the way the Confederacy felt about George Pickett six weeks after Gettysburg. Battered and chastened, Republicans will be less resistant to the safe choice demanded by big party donors: i.e., [Romney].

I suspect David is engaging in wishful thinking about Romney. But he's almost certainly right about the public conflating the current budget skirmish for the bigger budget war to come. Which could be fatal for the GOP.

It's only marginally more sensible than John Cole's unhinged rants against the rich. But it's honest enough:

The People's Budget would rescind last year's tax deal to raise rates on higher income levels, boost taxes on capital gains and dividends, increase the estate tax, institute three "millionaire tax rates," with the highest reaching 47 percent, tax corporate foreign income, impose a "financial crisis responsibility fee," and institute a "financial speculation tax." Overall, taxes would rise to 22.3 percent of the economy, compared with 18.3 percent under the Ryan proposal.

The plan would also build on Obama's most notable initiatives. It includes an additional $1.45 trillion in economic stimulus spending. On health care, the plan would add a government-run plan, or "public option," to Obamacare and have the government negotiate drug prices.

Yet while other parts of government would grow, the defense budget would be gutted.

Kudos to the Progressive Caucus. But even with this splurge of tax-and-spend-and-gut-defense, they only manage to get revenues 3 percent higher as a percentage of GDP than Ryan's, as Megan notes. Somewhere between them and Ryan, the answer lies.

Jason Kuznicki's husband works for NASA, which will close if the government shuts down:

[M]y husband likely (1) keeps his job, but not his pay, because of (2) empty posturing over trivial budget cuts and he (3) can’t legally work anywhere in the private aerospace sector. Meanwhile the government is (4) spending a whole lot more money on some very odious things, like an illegal war.

Oh yeah, and my husband can’t even volunteer at NASA, which he almost certainly would do, because he’d really like to get some research to the publisher before a deadline. That, too, is against the law.

A reader writes:

About making a Dish app: please don't!  The Dish is a weblog, not an avian-vs-porcine video game. Weblogs are all about the links – every day I click through a couple of the Dish's links to learn more about a topic, and return to the Dish with the Back button. An app will destroy this by forcing readers to jump back and forth between the app and their web browser.

Rather then an app, make the Dish site use a "Responsive Design" that can handle any screen size. This will keep the Dish on the web, where it belongs. Zeldman says it's "The New Black".

Another writes:

At least on the iPhone, "Reeder" is an app that syncs with Google Reader and does a very slick job. It's my favourite iPhone app and, amongst a wealth of other feeds, it brings me my daily Dish requirement even when on the can.

Another:

Regarding the Dish app, I just wanted to point out a tool called TapLynx that makes it very easy to turn out a custom app to consume RSS feeds.

A reader writes:

Please, please, please can you help raise awareness of this very important feature of our tax code: We all are subjected to the same tax rates for the first increments of taxable income. We have to pay higher tax rates only on the increment. Bill Gates pays the same taxes on the first $10K that he makes as does the Safeway clerk on the first $10K that she makes. As explained clearly in the Wikipedia entry:

An individual's marginal income tax bracket depends upon his or her income and tax-filing classification. As of 2008, there are six tax brackets for ordinary income (ranging from 10% to 35%) and four classifications: single, married filing jointly (or qualified widow or widower), married filing separately, and head of household.

An individual pays tax at a given bracket only for each dollar within that bracket's range. For example, a single taxpayer who earned $10,000 in 2009 would be taxed 10% of each dollar earned from the 1st dollar to the 8,350th dollar (10% × $8,350 = $835.00), then 15% of each dollar earned from the 8,351st dollar to the 10,000th dollar (15% × $1,650 = $247.50), for a total of $1,082.50. Notice this amount ($1,082.50) is lower than if the individual had been taxed at 15% on the full $10,000 (for a tax of $1,500). This is because the individual's marginal rate (the percentage tax on the last dollar earned, here 15%) has no effect on the income taxed at a lower bracket (here the first $8,350 of income taxed at 10%). This ensures that every rise in a person's pre-tax salary results in an increase of his after-tax salary.

I have found that a surprisingly small percentage of Americans know this. And they don't even believe me when I tell them. Not surprisingly, I have also found that most people with income topping out in the lower rate brackets would gladly pay a higher percentage of taxes if they were to make another $100K, and would pay more yet on the next $1M.

David Leonhardt interviews Bryan Caplan about his new book, Selfish Reasons To Have More Kids. Caplan:

Happiness researchers consistently find that people with kids are less happy than otherwise identical people without. The result holds up, but there’s a lot more to the story. First of all, the “depressing” effect of kids, while consistent, is small. Married-with-kids is far happier than single-without-kids, but happiness researchers rarely bemoan the plight of childless singles. Second, kids do extremely well by another plausible standard: customer satisfaction. Over 90 percent of parents say they’d make the same decision if they had a “do over,” and over two-thirds of childless adults over 40 say they wish they had kids when they had their chance.

Another setback for the anti-Qaddafi forces:

Groups of Libyan rebels and civilians have fled from the eastern town of Ajdabiya after a rebel armoured unit was hit by apparent NATO air strikes, allowing government troops to advance. … General Abdel Fattah Younes, the rebel military commander, said in Benghazi that four people – two fighters and two medics – were killed in the attack, while 14 were wounded and another six people were missing.

However:

Al Jazeera’s Laurence Lee, in Benghazi, says reports are emerging that it might not have been NATO that hit a rebel armoured unit outside Brega. He says it might instead have been a light plane used by Gaddafi forces, suggesting that they are getting arms from outside.

From EA:

Little overnight news from Libya, but there is this small nugget — "Abdel Fattah Younes, the defected head of the rebel military, confirmed for the first time that the opposition forces have received foreign weapons: anti-tank guns from Qatar". … The significance here is that Younes, with statements like this, is trying to show that the opposition military is now under control (his) and beginning to organise. That is a response to stories, such as the feature in EA on Thursday, of an ill-prepared, uncoordinated army with no clear direction.

(Photo: Rebel fighters react after delivering dead and wounded comrades at a hospital in Ajdabiya on April 7, 2011. Libyan insurgents and civilians stampeded out of Ajdabiya on rumours that loyalist forces were at the gates of the eastern town, hours after an air strike tore into the rebels' defences. By Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty Images)

Today on the Dish, a government shutdown clouded the horizon, troops could be cut off from their pay, and both parties wanted to play the victim. Blumenthal thought a shutdown could wake Americans up to the budget story, Andrew agreed the Ryan plan is heavy on tax cuts for the rich, but relished having a real conversation about balancing the budget. Douthat yearned for an Obamacare alternative in Ryan's plan, John Cole couldn't grasp that ending tax breaks wouldn't do it, and Nick Clegg cried regularly to music. Obama tried to be candid about gas prices, and we pondered why deficits get more press than the looming climate crisis. Wasserman Schultz disapproved of her own death trap comment, and Maggie Koerth-Bakerexplained two sides to polygamy in the Muslim world.

We caught up with a rebel rebound, Exum imagined a post-Qaddafi Libya, and Andrew grew dismayed by our continuing humanitarian imperialism. Trump pulled ahead on the virtue of his insane far right rhetoric, we still sucked up to the Saudis despite the Bahrain crackdown, and China prepared for a freedom chill. Rob Tisani argued for gay marriage on the grounds of children come first, Mississippi turned back the clocks on interracial marriage, readers debated suicide depictions on screen, and Christopher Pramuk sought faith after a miscarriage. College replaced religion for our sense of community, our calories climbed, and France feared agricultural extortion. Bristol made pregnancy cool and lucrative, Tarantino made us consider grace in violence, and YouTube sought a piece of the TV programming pie. NPR whooped PBS in coolness, we couldn't resist more airplane window views, and readers advised readers on how to poop with the Dish. Quote for the day here, VFYW here, MHB here, and FOTD here and here.

–Z.P.

Drum roll, please:

Here is my plan- I AM NOT CUTTING TAXES BY TRILLIONS FOR RICH PEOPLE, AND THE TAX CUTS WE JUST EXTENDED WILL EXPIRE. Voila!

And he seems to believe this will actually end our looming fiscal crisis (while accusing me of being a "complete innumerate clown"). He also seems to think that the lower tax rates are unfunded additions to the debt, as Bush's were. But they are paid for by eliminating tax loopholes, shelters and gimmicks. My proposal for more revenue would be to lower the tax rates less and use the extra money from getting rid of tax expenditures for the deficit. The removal of the myriad shelters and loopholes in the budget, moreover, would actually take these boondoggles away from the rich, making the tax environment fairer.

But when Cole is this angry, it's hard to argue with him. And yes, the bold caps are his.