A Breather

I’m taking next week off for a vacation. Don’t get pissy. I haven’t had one since August. And the good news is that my guest-bloggers are among the best the web has to offer: Hillary Bok, Hilzoy from Obsidian Wings; Jim Manzi and Peter Suderman from The American Scene; Reihan Salam of the Atlantic and a Dish vet; and Patrick Appel, my assistant for the past two months. See you next Sunday.

Huckabee Preaches On

And why the fuck not? He is asking for money to campaign in Texas. The pitch:

A few weeks ago, I stood at Chuck Norris’ ranch before a crowd of people and said that Texas would be the place where the dynamics of this race changed dramatically in our favor.

Since then, after winning West Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas and Louisiana and fighting close races in Washington, Oklahoma, Missouri and Virginia we have positioned ourselves to do just that.

Remember the Republican nominee must have 1,191 votes to claim the nomination or else there will be a brokered convention where the Party’s top candidates will have an opportunity to make an impassioned plea as to why they are the best choice to represent the Republican Party in the fall against the Democrat candidate.

Before we get to a brokered convention however we will need to win Texas and seize the momentum.

A Woman Only Tax-Cut?

Alberto Alesina et al have proposed taxing women less than men. Greg Mankiw has a different solution:

Under the current regime in the United States, a typical woman married to a high-income man pays a high marginal tax rate from the first dollar she earns. Indeed, because she faces the payroll tax plus the top marginal income tax rate, she faces a higher marginal tax rate than her husband. (Recall that there is a cap on the payroll tax.) The situation is symmetric, of course: a typical man married to a high-income woman faces the same high tax rates.

If, however, income taxes were paid by individuals rather than by families, the secondary earner would face lower marginal tax rates on his or her initial earnings. This change might well induce an increase in labor supply and enhance efficiency.

Obama’s Substance

A reader points me toward this post by Hilzoy from October 2006 about some of Obama’s wonkier endeavors:

…my little data point is: while Obama has not proposed his Cosmic Plan for World Peace, he has proposed a lot of interesting legislation on important but undercovered topics. I can’t remember another freshman Senator who so routinely pops up when I’m doing research on some non-sexy but important topic, and pops up because he has proposed something genuinely good. Since I think that American politics doesn’t do nearly enough to reward people who take a patient, craftsmanlike attitude towards legislation, caring as much about fixing the parts that no one will notice until they go wrong as about the flashy parts, I wanted to say this.

She lists some of the legislation. Hilzoy is also currently sifting through Obama’s and Clinton’s legislative records to see what they have actually accomplished while in the Senate. As far as his speechmaking goes, here is a post of mine from early January listing some of his more substantive policy speeches.

On this note, Ezra Klein has a novel idea:

…presumably, the way to figure out if [Obama] was talking about policy was not to evaluate whether his speech was longer and more boring than his other speeches, but to examine the actual statements he offered and ask some experts how the proffered solutions might fare.

When all else fails.

Face Of The Day

Sstudentscottolsongetty

Students gather for a prayer service on the campus of Northern Illinois University to pray for those killed and wounded in Thursday’s shooting at Cole Hall February 15, 2008 in DeKalb, Illinois. Six people are reported dead including the gunman and 16 other people were left wounded after a young man pulled out a shotgun and began firing inside a lecture hall. This is the fourth shooting at a U.S. school within a week. By Scott Olson/Getty Images.