ThinkFast: August 23, 2010
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on August 24th, 2010 4:38 am by HL
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman notes in his New York Times column today that extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans would be the equivalent of writing checks “averaging $3 million each to the richest 120,000 people in the country.” Krugman also notes that making all the tax cuts permanent would “cost the federal government $680 billion in revenue over the next 10 years.”
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the country’s largest business lobby, has pledged to spend a record amount of $75 million in the 2010 elections. On top of the $190 million spent on lobbying since President Obama’s election, the numbers “give the group clout as a virtual third party and a powerful voice in what laws are made and who’s elected to write them.”
Although interest rates for the U.S. Treasury, home buyers, and companies continue to decline, they are rising quickly in one area: consumer credit cards. Yesterday, new rules went into effect that restricts banks’ abilities to assess penalty charges, and the Wall Street Journal reports that the banks “responded by pushing card rates to their highest level in nine years.”
Mother Jones reports that members of the taxpayer-funded U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom have joined the “vociferous opposition” to the Islamic center in lower Manhattan. Commission members, who are charged with promoting “freedom of thought, conscience, and religion,” are now advocating that a place of worship for moderate Muslims cannot be tolerated.
“Daisy Khan, one of the leading organizers behind the mosque and Islamic community center near ground zero in New York City, said Sunday that moving the project to another location is not currently on the table.” Khan also told ABC’s This Week that she believes the project will be built, despite fierce opposition driven by what she described as “beyond Islamophobia — it’s hate of Muslims.”
Almost half of the “1.3 million homeowners who enrolled in the Obama administration’s flagship mortgage-relief program have fallen out.” The data, which comes from a new report by the Treasury Department, suggests that “the $75 billion government effort is failing to slow the tide of foreclosures in the United States.”
According to Army Gen. Ray Odierno, the U.S. may keep troops in Iraq past the Obama administration’s 2011 withdrawal target date. If the Iraqi Army requests American assistance with weapons systems to defend against insurgency, “we could be there (in Iraq) beyond 2011,” Odierno said on CNN’s State of the Union yesterday.
Vice President Joe Biden will address the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Indianapolis today, and will convey a positive message about progress in Iraq. Biden will tell the crowd that ongoing Iraqi political problems related to the March 7 elections will be resolved “in the near future,” according to administration officials, but he will not predict a date for a final agreement.
And finally: Nevada Assemblyman Harry Mortenson (D) is proposing a resolution to make the “Ne-VAH-da” pronunciation of his state’s name “equally acceptable to the one with the short ‘a.’” Nevadans “have long bristled” over the pronunciation, but “Mortenson says he’s not asking Nevadans to change. He just wants the Spanish pronunciation recognized.”
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