The Congressional Budget Office estimates that tax revenues will rise from 14.9% of GDP in 2010 to 20.7% in 2020 and 23.3% in 2035 if current law remains in place…
That rapid growth reflects six factors. First, the economy will recover, lifting revenues from currently depressed levels. Second, the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts will expire, as will tax cuts enacted in the 2009 stimulus. Third, the Alternative Minimum Tax, which is not indexed for inflation, will boost taxes for millions more taxpayers. Fourth, the new taxes that helped pay for the recent health legislation will go into effect. Fifth, retiring baby boomers will make more taxable withdrawals from tax-deferred retirement accounts. Finally, in a phenomenon known as bracket creep, growing incomes will push taxpayers into higher brackets and reduce their eligibility for various credits. Together, those six factors will increase tax revenues by 8.4 percentage points of GDP over the next 25 years, according to CBO.
And then the deadly kicker:
Our long-run fiscal dilemma exists because the scheduled growth in future spending is even larger than the scheduled growth in future revenues.
One of Andrew Zuckerman's astonishing bird photographs, featured in the Daily Telegraph today. They are all photographed with high definition cameras against a white background, sharpening the portraiture and elevating the beauty. More background on his technique here. You can buy his book here.
I'm not entirely sure how comfortable I am with this, but Ann Coulter and I are on the same page:
At this point, Afghanistan is every bit as much Obama's war as Vietnam was Lyndon Johnson's war. True, President Kennedy was the first to send troops to Vietnam. We had 16,000 troops in Vietnam when JFK was assassinated. Within four years, LBJ had sent 400,000 troops there.
In the entire seven-year course of the Afghanistan war under Bush, from October 2001 to January 2009, 625 American soldiers were killed. In 18 short months, Obama has nearly doubled that number to 1,124 Americans killed.
Republicans used to think seriously about deploying the military. President Eisenhower sent aid to South Vietnam, but said he could not "conceive of a greater tragedy" for America than getting heavily involved there. As Michael Steele correctly noted, every great power that's tried to stage an all-out war in Afghanistan has gotten its ass handed to it. Everyone knows it's not worth the trouble and resources to take a nation of rocks and brigands…
But now I hear it is the official policy of the Republican Party to be for all wars, irrespective of our national interest…
I thought the irreducible requirements of Republicanism were being for life, small government and a strong national defense, but I guess permanent war is on the platter now, too.
Maybe conservatism can make a comeback in the GOP after all – against Obama's insane notion of committing 100,000 troops to fight 500 terrorists (many of whom were recruited to fight the invaders). And, of course, in a fight between Palin and Coulter, only one can make an actual argument.
John Dickerson assesses the all-vent-no-solutions campaign gearing up for the fall:
Both sides are focusing on highlighting just how bad the other party is in part because they can't satisfy voter anger by talking about solutions. People aren't in a mood to believe in promises from Washington. And, for different reasons, neither party has much to say. Democrats can't excite people with the programs they've passed. Only 33 percent of those asked in a recent Pew poll think the stimulus bill has helped create jobs. Health care reform is getting more popular, but even in the most optimistic polls, less than 50 percent of respondents view it favorably. Republicans aren't offering detailed solutions because they have made a tactical decision to stay vague about what they would actually do if they took control. They don't want to offend anyone, and they'd prefer this election be a referendum on unpopular Democratic programs.
Glenn Greenwald compiles a long list of journalists fired because they violated neoconservative orthodoxy. Even if you think these purges are a good thing (which I don't), one might suspect that the p.c. police would occasionally work both ways, especially given how liberal the MSM allegedly is. Greenwald asks:
Does anyone ever suffer career-impeding injuries of this type — the way Nasr and Thomas also just have — for expressing anti-Muslim or anti-Arab views?
I can't think of any off the top of my head. Maybe you can. What I do know is that if you tweet that Supreme Court Justice David Souter is a "goat-fucking child molester" or that "Linda Douglass really is the Joseph Goebbels of the White House Health Care shop," you don't get fired by CNN. You get hired. But if you express qualified support for some of the positions of a cleric whose funeral Nouri al-Maliki just attended, you have no future in American journalism – even after twenty years of non-controversial work at CNN.
Our discourse is being chilled by those who are supposed to protect it.
Michael Moynihan reads and watches some of the curriculum in the "pro-Mormon and pro-McCarthy" online college that makes the John Birch Society seem mainstream.
I apologize upfront for this long note, as I know you are busy, but frankly the "Saint Sarah, advocate for those with special needs" BS is something I find so offensive that I feel the need to set the record straight.
As the parent of a special needs child, I know "Mama Grizzlies." Sarah Palin is not a Mama Grizzly. She actually represents the sort of ignorance of the special needs community that makes the job of real Mama Grizzlies much more difficult. For instance, I was appalled that her one and only policy speech during the campaign demonstrated her ignorance on a crucial aspect of special needs advocacy: fruit fly research. Not only did she misunderstand the purpose of using fruit flies (as a predicate for humans – we share 60% genetic material), she failed to do basic research on who was funding the study in question (it was not the US government; it was the government of France collaborating with the NIH). Like other politicians who have tried to score political points by ridiculing research they are too scientifically illiterate to understand, Palin’s potshot succeeded only in highlighting her ignorance about a crucial area of special needs advocacy.
As real Mama Grizzlies know, our children’s needs have no party affiliation. They exist and deserve to be addressed outside of petty political pandering.
I wrote her a letter in response to her speech, pleading with her to learn more about the need for research into rare and chronically debilitating disorders. I pointed out that for every person in the United States, our government spends between $2200 and $3400 (depending on what you include in the budget) and only $103 per citizen to support NIH research. If you drill down to rare and "special needs" disorders, that number drops to a measly $.06 per American (based on the annual budget of the Office of Rare Diseases Research). And yet she ridiculed even that paltry investment in special needs research.
I told her about my daughter, who has a very rare genetic disorder, and my 20+ years of pushing researchers to unravel the complex genetics associated with it. When we started in the late '80s, there were not even enough diagnosed patients worldwide to provide the volume of genetic material required to do solid studies. However, there was a human predicate: a plentiful and cheaply available algae called Chlamydomonas that could be grown in abundance. By studying the genetic makeup of Chlamy, researchers have been able to identify multiple human genes associated with disease. It is not an exaggeration to say that the majority of what we know about certain complex human diseases is based on research done, quite literally, on pond scum.
On one hand, I am thankful for Sarah Palin’s sloppy approach to policy research. Because she doesn’t know about this research, it was not subject to the same hurtful and ignorant sarcasm she directed at the families who are relying on research in fruit flies to provide some badly needed answers about their loved ones' conditions. On the other hand, there is no excuse for someone who wants to wear the mantle of Holy Mother to those with special needs to be so ignorant of this area of advocacy.
This is why Trig matters. Unwarranted ridicule and mean-spirited sarcasm directed at others with special needs, even if it is based on profound ignorance and not malicious intent, is not the behavior of a true Mama Grizzly. Palin’s behavior actually proves that simply giving birth (if she indeed did), does not make you a Mama Grizzly. Working hard to understand the needs of your child and others like him, and working even harder to make sure he and his cohort get the care they need, does.
I’ve been at this for 20+ years and am rendered speechless by colleagues who buy into her special needs self-promotion. In fact, the evidence shows that she has used her position and public prominence to make the job of real Mama Grizzlies – those of us out there daily pounding the pavement and petitioning our representatives for better research and services – that much harder.
From this standpoint, I am less concerned than others about whether or not she gave birth to Trig, because the end result is the same. Whether she is his biological mother or not, it appears she is willing to use him as a stepping stone to achieve her personal political agenda. The focus of her "advocacy" is on her, not him. She seems not to know or particularly care what special needs advocacy really looks like. It is insulting to those of us who have made tremendous sacrifices to help those with special needs that she is assigned status as an advocate merely for giving birth (supposedly) to a child with special needs. I hope she makes an effort to start living up to her hype.
"Israelis, rightly, look at the past and have skepticism about what’s possible. They see the enmity of neighbors that surround them in a very tough neighborhood. They see a track record of attempts at peace where, even when concessions were made, a deal could not be consummated. They see rockets fired from Gaza or from areas in Lebanon, and say to themselves that the hatreds or history are so deep-seated that change is not possible.
And yet, if you think back to the founding of Israel, there were a lot of people who thought that that wasn’t possible either. And if Herzl or Ben-Gurion were looking at Israel today, they would be astonished at what they saw — a country that’s vibrant, that is growing economically at a extraordinary pace, that has overcome not just security challenges but also has been able to overcome challenges related to geography. And so that should be a great source of hope," – president Obama.
The Dish 