TIGERHAWK: THE AUDACITY OF TAX:
The short version is that President Obama is pushing absolutely staggering increases through the corporate and business tax systems. Direct taxes on business are, in general, inefficient and economically disruptive, but they are also peerless in their complexity, which means that few voters and essentially no reporters will make the effort to understand what is being done to them.
Trust me on this: something awful is being done to you.
Read the whole thing.
QUOTE OF THE DAY: “The first 10% off public spending could be painless for the public and popular.” I guess that’s why the politicians always try to cut spending first in places that will be painful and unpopular . . .
A TAXPROF ROUNDUP: Details of the Obama Tax Proposals.
JAY COST: It’s time for Michael Steele to resign.
RATINGS DISASTER: Anderson Cooper loses out to Keith Olbermann reruns.
UPDATE: Reader James Wink writes: “Of course Anderson Cooper is losing: he was known as a hard hitting reporter willing to go to any warzone in a dignified manner. His reporting in 2006 on Hizballah set high standards. Watching him make fun of the tea parties (or tea baggers as he called them) turned him into another journalistic hack.”
MCCLATCHY: Deficits soar even with rosy assumptions in new Obama budget. “Even using their . . . economic assumptions — which now appear to be out of date and overly optimistic — the administration never puts us on a stable path.”
MEGAN MCARDLE: Obama’s Magical Mystery Tour of Health Care Savings.
This weekend, I was on a panel where the other economics journalist and I spent a great deal of time belaboring the obvious: Obama’s health care plans are very, very expensive, and they mean higher taxes for everyone, not just that elusive klatch of greedy fools who are not in the 95% of working families now allegedly slated for stable or lower taxes. Otherwise, how could Obama hope to pay for it?
I think we found out today: magic!
Try to understand: He’s a magic man, mama. Or maybe not: “This is all very well as political theater; politicians convene never-never working groups all the time. But, being perhaps too cynical, I suspect that the announced plan to save $2 trillion is going to be used to sell Obama’s healthcare plan as if we’d already found it. Then when oh, darn, the SEIU doesn’t agree to hold down wages or eliminate jobs, and pharma ratchets up the average price it charges the private sector to make sure it doesn’t lose too much on its mandatory Medicaid discounts, etc, well, we’ll all just have to dig into our pockets to pay for it, won’t we?” Or run ’em out of town on a rail, whatever.
BOOBIE HYPOCRISY ALERT: Miss USA — Not All Topless Photos Are Equal. “There’s another reigning beauty queen who took some very topless photos before she won her pageant — but unlike Carrie Prejean, Miss Rhode Island USA’s crown was never ever in jeopardy.” Personally, I think the more topless photos, the better. But as a straight male, what do I know about beauty pageants?
MICHAEL YON on leadership changes in Afghanistan. Plus, a roundup from The Captain’s Journal.
A LIST OF RECOMMENDED survival supplies. I hadn’t realized that Amazon had a “survival community.”
UPDATE: Hey, there’s also a libertarian community.
JAMES TARANTO: What makes Wanda Sykes’s witless vulgarity amusing to the president? “In Obama’s wide grin as Sykes was telling her joke, we saw the smug look of a man who enjoys seeing his critics dehumanized. The president of the United States should be better than this.”
UPDATE: Christopher Hitchens: “‘The president should be squirming in his seat. Not smiling,’ he said. ‘The black dyke got it wrong. No one told her the rules.'”
TENNESSEE accidentally marries two dudes. It was the low light, and the booze — it could happen to anybody!
POLITICS: SEIU may be linked to ultimatum on withholding stimulus funds. “California officials say the union may have influenced a federal requirement that a pay cut be reversed for home healthcare workers.” So with the U.A.W. running the auto industry, and the SEIU running healthcare, what could go wrong?
HUGH HEWITT: Here comes California’s May 19 Rebellion. “Arnold is doing his best to summon up the old magic but his appeal long ago hit Gray Davis-levels. Arnold was elected to slash taxes and spending, and somehow he confused that mandate with orders to throw in with the public employee unions. Too bad. He could have been a contender.”
A HOLOCAUST OF GAY IRAQIS? “But now the m.o. is to basically keep a shut mouth about the atrocities faced by LGBT people in Iraq. Except for a damn straight GOP loud-mouth, stirring up the pot.” Where’s the gay-friendly Obama Administration on this?
UPDATE: Moe Lane emails: “Where’s the Obama Administration? Reading exit polls.”
HOW TO FIX common heating and cooling problems.
HEY, WAIT, I THOUGHT THE STORY WAS OVER: Warm Weather May Not Halt Swine Flu.
TOM MAGUIRE: “They told me that if I voted for McCain we’d have a buffoon for a Vice President. And they were right!”
PREDICTIONS TESTED: Unemployment numbers and the “recovery plan.” Apparently, we’re right where Obama’s economists said we’d be without the recovery plan. Except, you know, that we’re a lot deeper in debt.
NOW THERE’S A “Going John Galt” website.
CHEAPER LASERS AND BETTER LIGHTING, with nanocrystals!
KEITH HENNESSEY: The President’s Silly Health-Care Announcement. “The President is attempting to claim credit for savings that (a) do not yet exist, (b) are not backed up by any specific changes in industry practices or government policies, and (c) are related to him only in that the groups announced they were adopting his quantitative goal. For all three of these reasons, the President’s claim that these savings will materialize is wildly unrealistic, and it is absurd to attach a per-family savings number to it.”
UPDATE: Where’s The Beef? “No one at the White House event or in a subsequent briefing with reporters by Sec. Kathleen Sebelius was able to offer details.”
MORE ON THE OBAMA DEFICIT:
The White House raised the 2009 budget deficit projection to a staggering $1.8 trillion today. For context, it took President Bush more than seven years to accumulate $1.8 trillion in debt. It also means that 45 cents of every dollar Washington spends this year will be borrowed.
President Obama continues to distance himself from this “inherited” budget deficit. But the day he was inaugurated, the 2009 deficit was forecast at $1.2 trillion — meaning $600 billion has already been added during his four-month presidency (an amount that, by itself, would exceed all 2001-07 annual budget deficits). And should the president really be allowed to distance himself from the $1.2 trillion “inherited” portion of the deficit, given that as a senator he supported nearly all policies and bailouts that created it?
No, he shouldn’t be. But the press will try to help him out . . . .
THE POPE WALKS OUT. Hey, you can’t have meaningful dialogue with some people. So why pretend?
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