A Movement Is Born

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, Freddie DeBoer, and Conor Friedersdorf are lobbying for the NYT to give Ross a blog in addition to the column. Freddie:

As I said before, I think Ross is in an almost untenable position: as he is going to be seen as  the New York Times pet conservative, he has to be sufficiently conservative Rossthat he is not tuned out entirely, without sacrificing the open-mindedness and heterodoxy that made him such an appealing figure in the first place. It’s a narrow path he has to walk, and at worst it could result in the kind of “one for this side/one for the other side” dance that ideologically promiscuous pundits sometimes have to do. But this is exacerbated by the weekly publishing schedule.

When you write one statement of your beliefs a week, each one needs to send just the right collection of signals. A blog, meanwhile, can ruminate on so many different issues over the course of a week that you don’t need to worry about treading any particular ideological paths. Your perception can merely be the aggregate impression of everything you’ve had to say…

The point is this: give Douthat a goddamn blog, New York Times. He can keep writing his column. You can ask that he talk about stuff in his column that doesn’t appear in the blog. You can insist that he operate in a different voice in the column than he does on the blog. You could even have the proviso that it be a blog about policy, or culture, or whatever. But give the man a blog on your website. Let him post about things that are a little less consequential. Let him stretch his feet out a bit. You hired this guy because you think he’s talented. Why not given him broader ranger to show it?

The Hate Crimes Signing

The spin is that this is the first ever federal legislation that actually recognizes rather than attacks gay people. That's the position of Hildebrand and Birch and Democratic party official (and head of the 6 million members of HRC), Joe Solmonese. The president didn't quite get the message, alas. There's nothing on the White House blog, and no release yet of the president's remarks. In front of a largely military audience (the Dems went out on a limb for this piece of symbolism by attaching it to a defense bill), the president couldn't say the word "gay":

“After more than a decade of opposition and delay, we’ve passed inclusive hate-crimes legislation that protects people based on what they look like, who they love, how they pray, or who they are. I promised Judy Shepard when she saw me in the Oval Office that this day would come.”

The gay establishment will have its own reception with Obama later today. Their agenda for the gays is pretty much the Democratic party's: Separate, quiet and just as much a victim special interest group as all the others. Better than the GOP's ("You're all going to hell, pervs."). But no equality yet; and no candor. We really do have a president for the Human Rights Campaign, don't we?

He's for gay rights, but not yet and shhhh!

Taxes As Stimulus?

Bruce Bartlett has been arguing that at VAT could be stimulative:

Suppose you had a 10 percent VAT and we said we weren't going to collect it for the next 10 months. People would buy like crazy. They'd buy toilet paper, they'd buy anything they could get their hands on that they knew they'd need in the future.

Free Exchange isn't so sure:

Would the imminent imposition of a tax on consumption produce a wave of buying now? I'm not sure. On the one hand, we have seen that the introduction of a temporary subsidy can boost spending; Cash for Clunkers and the housing tax credit appear to have demonstrated that. On the other hand, those subisidies represented a temporary boost to income, while permanent income stayed the same as it was before the subsidies were available. But a VAT would (presumably) be around for ever, and would mean a forever reduction in disposable income. This would lead consumers to reduce spending as soon as they learned about the increase; it would have a contractionary effect, rather than a stimulative effect.

Quote For The Day

"Fewer than 4 in 10 political independents have much faith in either political party in Congress on healthcare reform; however, the majority of independents do trust Obama," – Gallup's analysis of the latest polling.

But even on the trust in political parties question, the Congressional GOP scores lower than Reid and Pelosi. And that's quite an achievement. The poll also suggests that Obama could make a difference on the public option. If he wanted to …