Tag Archives: politics

AARP notes a planned reduction in Medicare funding.  I have not hear much from them as in times past. If you read through the umpteen pages of the Senate tax bill, you won’t find a clause that says it dramatically cuts Medicare spending. But the effect of the legislation being debated this week would be to slash up to $25 billion from the health program in 2018 and possibly more in the future. That’s because the tax measure would prompt the...

Tolerance And Terrorism In Saudi Arabia On the one hand this past week, Thomas Friedman at the New York Times has written a praising column about Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman (MbS). He is going to bring a new “wave of tolerance” into Saudi Arabia, along with more generally modernizing it. This claim is not totally without substance given his setting up for women to drive starting next June as well as letting them go to sports events with men and also...

A Race To Suppress Academic Freedom? The race is between the two nations competing for global dominance, the US and China.  This post is triggered by an unnamed editorial in today’s Washington Post (probably authored by Fred Hiatt) criticizing China for imposing ideological limits on Chinese universities.  Since the recent party congress, 40 universities have set up centers for studyiing Xi Jinping Thought.  14 universities have come under attack for...

The more people think about the Republican proposal to cut corporate taxes the worse it looks. Most people dismiss the argument that the benefits will trickle down to workers. Supporters’ argument is that reduced taxes on profits will cause increased investment which causes higher production and wages. There are strong arguments that the tax cut won’t cause firms to invest more. But aside from that, increased investment wouln’t cause (all) of the...

Proposing A Judicial Coup Via A Tax Bill On today’s Washington Post editorial page in a column entitled “Packing the courts like a turducken” (a deboned duck within a deboned chicken within a deboned turkey, or something like that, all for Thanksgiving, thank you), Ronald A. Klain not only reports on the actual push to pack courts with lots of young, incompetent extremists that is going on after Congress sat on judicial nominees by Obama in recent years,...

Two Powerful Women Losing Power That would be respective Angela Merkel and Janet Yellen, both reported to have lost a lot of power in today’s Washington Post.  During at least the last year, if not the last four, they have been probably the two most powerful women on the planet. In the case of Merkel, what has happened is that she has failed to form a coalition government after last month’s election, which put her and her party in the lead, but not...

Lifted from comments reader Denis Drew: Donald Trump’s Response to Disaster Aid for California: Nothing Kevin DrumNov. 20, 2017http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/11/donald-trumps-response-to-disaster-aid-for-california-nothing/ “A few weeks ago, California requested $7.4 billion in disaster aid following the massive series of wildfires in the northern part of the state that killed 43 people and destroyed nearly 9,000 structures. Actually, let’s...

(Dan here…Lifted from Robert’s StochasticThoughts) Do Android Phones Dream of Electoral Sheeple in 1984 Signs of the times A photo tweeted by the Russian Ministry of Defense Tuesday as “irrefutable” proof that the United States has allied with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria turned out to be from a video game. @umpire43 a bot who claimed to have joined the nave at age 5, then claimed to have served 22 years from 1970 to 1972 has deleted all its...

Ernie Tedeschi writes: As a followup to my post earlier this morning, I’ve created a table below detailing how each policy in the TCJA affects the number of parental families in 2027 seeing a tax hike. Using refined policy parameters that have been added to the OSPC model since yesterday, I find that under the TCJA as written, 22 million families with children would see a tax hike in 2027 versus current law. This includes the indirect effects of the...

by Hale Stewart (originally published at Bonddad blog) John Hinderaker Renews His “Tax Cuts Pay For Themselves With Growth” Nonsense It’s been awhile since John “Everything I wrote about economics for an entire year was wrong” Hinderaker has written about economics.  The respite has been glorious.  But now that Republicans in the House have passed a tax bill, ol’ John has to tell us that they will lead to glorious growth. I have one word for him:...