Democrats & the Tax Cliff
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on July 9th, 2012 11:08 pm by HL
Obama Poised for Fight With GOP Over Taxes
Mark Landler, NY Times
WASHINGTON — With a torpid job market and a fragile economy threatening his re-election chances, President Obama is changing the subject to tax fairness, calling for a one-year extension of the Bush-era tax cuts for people making less than $250,000.Mr. Obama plans to make his announcement in the Rose Garden on Monday, senior administration officials said. The ceremony comes as Congress returns from its Independence Day recess, and as both parties and their presidential candidates head into the rest of the summer trying to seize the upper hand in a campaign that has been closely…
The Economic Blunder of the Sixties
Robert Samuelson, Newsweek
WASHINGTON — Wondering why government can't restart the sluggish economy? Well, one reason is that we are still paying the price for the greatest blunder in domestic policy since World War II. This occurred a half-century ago and helps explain today's policy paralysis. The story — largely unrecognized — is worth understanding.Until the 1960s, Americans generally believed in low inflation and balanced budgets. President John Kennedy shared the consensus but was persuaded to change his mind. His economic advisers argued that, through deficit spending and modest increases in…
Another Reminder That Banks Are Busted
Nicole Gelinas, City Journal
The West’s financial industry remains broken, and Western politicians continue to flail about in their halfhearted attempts to pretend that they’re confronting the problem. This week’s titan-turned-villain is Bob Diamond, until Tuesday the head of Britain’s Barclays Bank. The American-born Diamond ran the investment arm of the bank half a decade ago, when it consistently manipulated the London Interbank Offered Rate, better known as Libor—the interest rate that big banks report having to pay to borrow funds from global markets. If Libor is…
Sliming Romney Won’t Reelect Obama
Jonathan Tobin, Commentary
A USA Today/Gallup poll of 12 swing states doesn't tell us much we didn't already know about the presidential race. It's very tight, with President Obama holding a slim 47-45 percentage point lead over Mitt Romney in the 12 states (Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin) that are likely to decide the election. However, the significant figure Democrats will be crowing about is not that two-point edge that is well within the poll's four-point margin of error.Rather, it is the fact that…
