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MINT-AND-CORN COUNTRY, INDIANA — When cutting the deficit is a low enough priority that extending tax cuts for the wealthy is acceptable even as you have no interest in cutting imperialistic expenditures, what makes more sense than extending the tax cuts and renewing jobless benefits — plus, just in case we haven’t already removed enough [...]
Filed under: Economics
MINT-AND-CORN COUNTRY, INDIANA — “[The House Democrats’ proposal for extending the Bush tax cuts for “the middle class”, whoever exactly they are,] was simply intended to send a message to the Democratic base: Democrats are for the middle class and Republicans are for millionaires,” claims Daniel Clifton of Strategas Research Partners. True or not, it [...]
MINT-AND-CORN COUNTRY, INDIANA — One of the more trivial effects of my grandfather’s passing this summer is that I have the opportunity to peruse copies of TIME and Newsweek as his subscriptions follow him toward earthly cessation. (Presumably, he’s able to read them still, for surely Purgatory is the final and ultimate postmortem destination of [...]
People often mistake being named Time‘s “Person of the Year” as an honor, but that men as sinister as Adolph Hitler, Josef Stalin and Rudy Giuliani have all been given the title suggests otherwise. According to Time, the award is primarily a recognition of influence and by that measure the 2009 selection of Federal Reserve [...]
MINT-AND-CORN COUNTRY, INDIANA — Call my Tuesday-morning mind boggled. Eugene Robinson has just flipped the world upside down with a startlingly bizarre piece of disinformative agitprop. Glass one, not yet overly sweetened: It’s been a year since a healthy majority of American voters elected Barack Obama to change the world. Which is precisely what he’s [...]
MINT-AND-CORN COUNTRY, INDIANA — Politico reports that the public option “consumer option” premiums will be higher than those for most private plans. From the CBO’s report: That estimate of enrollment reflects CBO’s assessment that a public plan paying negotiated rates would attract a broad network of providers but would typically have premiums that are somewhat [...]
Filed under: Economics
MINT-AND-CORN COUNTRY, INDIANA — I must confess something: I am a fraud. For all the paeans I offer to the idea of “community”, I have never read Nisbet’s The Quest for Community. Downright shameful, I know. (Other than a short essay or two, I’ve read nothing of Kirk other than The Conservative Mind, either; I [...]
MINT-AND-CORN COUNTRY, INDIANA — Because Cash for Clunkers proved to be such a great vehicle for saving “the Economy”, not to mention an unnatural instigator of a climb in used-car pricing, (and which has the further insalubrious effect of reinforcing the throwaway mindset that dominates today), now this: Starting this fall, you could get a [...]
Filed under: Economics
MINT-AND-CORN COUNTRY, INDIANA — Contributing to Post Right over the last two months and revealing my “misapprehensions … regarding capitalism” (disdain for, really) and my purported “misunderstandings” thereof, amongst other, more personal (but hardly more offensive) epithets, I’ve frequently been dubbed a Marxist (and been educated), generally by agitator extraordinaire William P.; most recently, had [...]
Despite all of its problems, it appears “cash for clunkers” is here to stay. As long as we’re trying to save the economy and the environment by destroying perfectly-good property, I see no reason why the same logic cannot be applied to the housing market. Let’s call the next program, “Dollars for Dilapidated Dwellings.” The [...]
Filed under: Economics