Tag Archives: politics

Bloomberg’s Plan for Addressing Economic Inequality: not a wealth tax A bit ago (Jan 8, 2020), the New York Times described Michael Bloomberg’s plan1 for addressing the income and wealth inequality in the United States that has been a constant topic of discussion by Democratic candidates.  Briefly, as with the robber barons of Teddy Roosevelt’s age, the wealth of the global commerce titans and particularly the private equity fund buyers and sellers of...

Seriously, I would not fit there; but, I am smart enough to keep my mouth shut, listen, and learn. Apparently Trump is not. Trump Commenting on Elon Musk: “I was worried about him, because he’s one of our great geniuses, and we have to protect our genius,” Trump said of Musk. “You know, we have to protect Thomas Edison, and we have to protect all of these people that came up with, originally, the lightbulb, and the wheel and all of these things.” The...

The Democratic Debate in Des Moines: progressive candidates on means testing versus universality Dana Chasin at 2020 Vision does a good job of encapsulating key issuesthat surface in the Democratic debates. Let’s get this out first:  most listeners will admit that the debates seem both too long and too short, as mentioned on Stephen Henderson’s Detroit Today program this Wednesday 1/15 morning.  They are too short, because candidates are interrupted at...

EMichael: I don’t understand why people have such a hard time believing that there is no such thing as an “independent” voter. Sure, a lot of people register as an independent, but that certainly does not mean they vote for one party or the other depending on the candidates and/or circumstances. Plenty of studies have shown that independent voters are even more loyal to one party or the other than party registered voters. In other words, when they vote,...

The standard rule that reporters cover both sides of a debate and find some source to contest lies rather than doing it in their own name (and the name of the newspaper) has not survived Mitch McConnell’s office. In the New York Times, Nicholas Fandos notes that “A senior Republican aide in the Senate” lied on a very simple fact which is in the public record. The aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity to detail internal strategy, argued that in...

(Dan here…reposted due to discussion in a previous thread) CRS: Social Security: What Would Happen If the Trust Funds Ran Out? Bruce Webb | July 21, 2015 Very interesting paper that I missed in real time. Social Security: What Would Happen If the Trust Funds Ran Out? Almost everyone who addresses this question assumes that the answer is pretty simple: if either of the Social Security Trust Funds goes to zero than benefits will automatically drop from...

I have exchanged emails with Kip Sullivan several times and believe he has the clearest explanation on Single Payer. I have found him to be a good source for the two Single Payer bills in Congress today. Unfortunately, it is a long explanation and it can not be summed up on one page or in the amount of time you would spend watching the news at 10 PM. To compensate for the length of the presentation, I have broken it down into two parts. I hope you take...

“Teacher of the Year‘ kneels during college football championship attended by Trump,”ABC News, January 16, 2020 During a ceremony honoring the 2019 “Teachers of the Year,” one in particular stood out. The honoree from Minnesota, Kelly Holstine, chose to kneel during the national anthem at the NCAA football championship game on Monday, where the ceremony took place, “to stand up for marginalized and oppressed people,” according to a tweet she wrote, which...

Dan Shaviro (NYU) and Tim Smeeding (WISC) on NPR’s Detroit Today Show For those of you who may not have the opportunity to tune into Stephen Henderson’s radio program Detroit Today on NPR, it might be useful to have a short summary of the January 9 discussion of the “wealth gap” from that program. Background Tax lawyers have traditionally talked of the “tax gap”1  and frequently mentioned the growing “income gap” between the top 1% of the income...

Further Followup On The Soleimani Assassination I wish to bring out some matters not getting a lot of attention in the US media. An important one of those was reported two days ago by Juan Cole. It is that apparently it has not been determined for certain that the initial attack that set off this current round of deaths when a militia in Iraq attacked an Iraqi military base in Kirkuk in which an American contractor was killed, almost certainly a matter...