Federal dollars to fund rail study

Federal dollars to fund rail study

"India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across her border."

The relationship of China and India seems to be the topic du jour again for The Economist. Earlier this week I blogged about the historical presence of China and India in the global economy. Now The Economist has not one but two articles on the relationship (or perhaps lack thereof) between China and India.

For some reason though, what comes to my mind after reading both of these is the humility expressed in this quote by Hu Shih, former Ambassador of China to USA: "India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across her border."

For all of the two countries’ posturing over the last five decades, Hu Shih’s quote makes me feel like there is a begrudging mutual respect based on over 2,000 years of history that is not going to go away in light of or in spite of current events.

The truth is out there (somewhere in the middle)

I think it's safe to say that Michael Gerson and Eugene Robinson reflect the right and left extreme points of view on President Obama's record thus far. My personal take is he hasn't been as wonderful as Robinson claims and he hasn't been as lousy as Gerson claims.

Everyone has their own opinions and I encourage everyone to come to their own conclusions. However, all I ask is that you read both columns before you make up your minds.

You would need Spock and Yoda to pull this off...

Simon Johnson and James Kwak, co-authors of "13 Bankers" came up with some suggestions to restore the fiscal health of the United States that would probably be as popular as wearing a wet T-shirt at the North Pole on December 21st. However, if you really think about it, there is some merit to their suggestions. The writers think the United States should:

1. Introduce a Value-Added Tax (VAT) and eliminate the tax deduction for mortgage interest
2. Introduce Carbon Pricing
3. Introduce a Financial Activities Tax
4. Phase out the tax exclusion for employer sponsored health plans

Now Republicans would be against all four of these ideas because they are all tax increases in some way, shape, or form. Democrats would be against these because the tax deduction for mortgage interest is a sacred cow and many would also be against a financial activities tax and phasing out the tax exclusion on health plans.

However, if you put partisan politics aside and think about it, it does make sense, especially if you reduce or, if possible, can eliminate income taxes altogether and can generate enough revenues through these proposals alone. I even blogged recently, where I mentioned a column by Fareed Zakaria in the Washington Post where he says, "I don't like our current tax system. It's unwieldy, it taxes the wrong things (income instead of consumption) and its loopholes are legalized corruption." However, any radical change is met with skepticism from the side opposing the one that proposes it. If a Republican proposes these, Democrats will scream tax cuts for the rich on the backs of the poor. If Democrats propose the exact same proposals, Republicans will scream socialism for the exact same proposals.

As I said, to get people on board with these, you would need Spock from Star Trek to use his Vulcan Mind-Meld with some combination of the Star Wars Jedi Mind Trick by Yoda, Mace Windu, or Obi-wan Kenobi (but not Ki-Adi-Mundi, who in spite of being the 3rd ranking Master on the Jedi Council still didn't have enough knowledge of the Force to foresee his own clone troopers shoot him in the back.)

Why aren’t more people talking about this article?

Why haven't more people talked about William Dalrymple's op-ed that appeared in Monday’s New York Times? Seeing as how he's a British historian well versed on topics relating to the Middle East and South Asia, he provides a perspective worth reading about the Sufis that are building the community center. A key passage in the piece:

"[The people against the community center] show a dangerously inadequate understanding of the many divisions, complexities and nuances within the Islamic world - a failure that hugely hampers Western efforts to fight violent Islamic extremism and to reconcile Americans with peaceful adherents of the world's second-largest religion.
Most of us are perfectly capable of making distinctions within the Christian world. The fact that someone is a Boston Roman Catholic doesn't mean he's in league with Irish Republican Army bomb makers, just as not all Orthodox Christians have ties to Serbian war criminals or Southern Baptists to the murderers of abortion doctors."

The sad part is most people don't realize that the animosity against the community center in lower Manhattan is identical to radical fundamentalists Muslims decrying the “Descendants of Crusaders occupying their sacred lands” in Saudi Arabia. In fact, History Channel had a great documentary a few years ago about the Crusades. One of the first acts of the Muslim rulers that retook Jerusalem from the Crusaders was to reopen not just the mosques but also the synagogues and Orthodox churches that were shut down or destroyed by the Crusaders. (Oh, and they left the Catholic churches open too.)

It just goes to show that when a tolerant society bends to the whims of intolerance, nothing good can or will come of it. That’s why conservative columnist Kathleen Parker also supports its construction. As Parker states in her column today, “The mosque should be built precisely because we don't like the idea very much.”

"...China and India were the biggest economies in the world for almost all of the past 2000 years."

Go to the post on economist.com to see the graph. It shows that over the past 2,000 years, China and India were the dominant economies for the first 1,700 of those years. Thomas L. Friedman once said that the emergence of China and India is not a new world order but rather the restoration of the old world order. This graph proves that to be true.

A surprise tax cut for the (almost) rich

A surprise tax cut for the (almost) rich

If a picture is worth a thousand words...

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words do you think you can come up with for this one?

WSJ.com: A Nation That Won't Be Fooled Again

In today’s Wall Street Journal, David Weidner criticizes the criticism surrounding the recent report by two highly reputable economists, Alan Blinder of Princeton University and Mark Zandi of Moody’s. My suggestion: read the report and decide for yourself rather than reading panicked analysts overreacting to its premises based on their own personal biases.

IALI Condemns Bigoted Attack Against Raj Goyle

I just received the following e-mail from the IALI that I wanted to pass along to everyone:


From: Indian American Leadership Initiative
Subject: IALI Condemns Bigoted Attack Against Raj Goyle
Sent: Aug 12, 2010 1:16 PM

Dear IALI Friends:

Yesterday, Raj Goyle's opponent in his race for U.S. Congress, Mike Pompeo, used Twitter to direct his followers to a blog posting which he said would be "a good read" about the campaign. Pompeo's suggested reading (http://bit.ly/cF05mp) includes, in part, the following:

"Just like his evil muslim communist USURPER comrad [sic], barrack hussein obama, This goyle character is just another 'turban topper' we don't need in congress or any political office that deals with the U.S. Constitution, Christianity and the United States of America!!!"

IALI President, Kathy Kulkarni, commented that "It is stunning that a candidate for federal office would support such a hateful and bigoted tirade. There are always people on the fringe who will use ethnic smears to attack Indian Americans, but we are outraged that a candidate for Congress would encourage his supporters to use such tactics. It is un-American and certainly contrary to the values of the people of Kansas. It is unfortunate that, even in 2010, we see campaigns tactics employed to generate fear, prejudice and hatred."

Four years ago yesterday, Senator George Allen of Virginia made reference to an Indian American as "Macaca" and the voters decided that he was not fit for elected office. Let's make sure Raj Goyle's opponent for Congress sees the same fate. To support Raj Goyle and for more information, please go to www.GoyleforCongress.com.

To keep up with activity related to all Indian American Democratic political events, please go to www.iali.com and Sign Up for our e-mail list.

Analysis Looks at Effect of Letting Tax Cuts Lapse for Rich - NYTimes.com

Three key points from this article in today's New York Times:

1. "Given the progressive nature of the federal income tax system, in which tax rates increase with income, even the richest households would continue to pay the four lower rates on up to the first $250,000 of their income, under the approach being pushed by Mr. Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress."
2. "Filers with taxable income of $500,000 to $1 million would still get on average a tax cut of $6,700 compared with pre-2001 rates, according to the data from the tax analysts. But that compares with roughly $17,500 if the top Bush tax rates were maintained."
3. "Extending them for the next 10 years would add about $3.8 trillion to a growing national debt that is already the largest since World War II. About $700 billion of that reflects the projected costs of tax cuts for those in the top 2 percent of income-earners."

So just to recap, giving a tax cut of $17,500 instead of a paltry $6,700 to filers with taxable incomes of $500,000 to $1,000,000 would add $3.8 trillion to the national debt. Again, $3.8 trillion so people earning over a half million dollars can get an extra $10,800 in their pockets.

NYT: The Horror Show

From Bob Herbert's column in today's New York Times:

"...there are now 3.4 million fewer private-sector jobs in the U.S. than there were a decade ago. In the last 10 years, we've seen the worst job creation record since 1928 to 1938."

Couple this with the short term memory of most people and what you have are the conditions for a Republican landslide in November. Yes those Republicans, the same ones that caused this mess and have remarkably tacked even further to the right of their very conservative standard-bearer that held the presidency from 2001-2009.

Gimpy Beltran in center of Mets' collapse - NYPOST.com

Ouch.

Some Monday Evening Light Reading

Some articles I came across today that were interesting to read for a variety of reasons:

• David Callahan writes about the “greening” of the wealthy, where more and more of the affluent are environmentally conscious. It seems like a very optimistic approach to the failure of the Senate to take up climate change legislation.
• Ross Douthat writes a very confusing column about the overturning Prop 8 in California. He lays out solid arguments in favor of gay marriage based on cultural and historical factors but says there is something about straight marriage that is different and must be honored. However, he never quite says what that something is.
• Paul Krugman continues to anchor himself firmly on the left of the political divide. Much like Ross Douthat’s opinions on gay marriage, I agree with Paul Krugman most of the time but still feel as though that elusive reason for disagreeing with him is out there somewhere.
• Matt Bai writes a great piece about the xenophobia on the right these days and how this is not a new phenomenon. On a side note, I always thought the deciding factor of the 2006 election was the fact that George W. Bush could not pass comprehensive immigration reform in spite of his popularity with his own party. In much the same way Bill Clinton passed NAFTA and Welfare Reform, going against his own party’s entrenched positions, the failure of immigration reform seemed like the canary in the coal mine for the Republicans as they approached the 2006 mid-term elections.

Social Security: The myth of the Social Security system's financial shortfall - latimes.com

This column from yesterday's Los Angeles Times evaluates the annual report of Social Security Trustees and details the actual situation of the Social Security Trust Fund. One passage in the column that stood out reads:

"...money from the taxpayers at the lower end of the income scale has been spent to help out those at the higher end. That transfer — that loan, to characterize it accurately — is represented by the Treasury bonds held by the trust fund.

The interest on those bonds, and the eventual redemption of the principal, should have to be paid for by income taxpayers, who reaped the direct benefits from borrowing the money.

So all the whining you hear about how redeeming the trust fund will require a tax hike we can't afford is simply the sound of wealthy taxpayers trying to skip out on a bill about to come due. The next time someone tells you the trust fund is full of worthless IOUs, try to guess what tax bracket he's in."

Wyclef Jean Officially Running For President of Haiti

As I mentioned here last Tuesday, Wyclef Jean has filed the paperwork to become a presidential candidate in Haiti. In an open letter to the people of Haiti, he explains how he came to his decision and has his family's support. Wyclef also discussed how he explained his decision to his four-year old daughter. As the father of a four-year old daughter myself, I can understand and appreciate the manner in which he did it and his hope that "[his] baby girl will understand that...to live for yourself is to live selfishly, but to live for others is the best sacrifice that we can make as human beings." For this sentiment alone, I wish him best of luck in his campaign.

Laura Ingraham on last night's Colbert Report

It's always fun to watch Stephen Colbert outcrazy the crazies and leave them speechless. ENJOY!

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Laura Ingraham
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election Fox News

Five myths about the Bush tax cuts

A thought-provoking piece on the Bush Tax Cuts. The five myths, according to the writer are:

1. Extending the tax cuts would be a good way to stimulate the economy.
2. Allowing the high-income tax cuts to expire would hurt small businesses.
3. Making the tax cuts permanent will lead to long-term growth.
4. The Bush tax cuts are the main cause of the budget deficit.
5. Continuing the tax cuts won't doom the long-term fiscal picture; entitlements are the real problem.

While we’re on the topic of the Bush tax cuts, Ezra Klein posted on his Washington Post blog earlier today the general sentiment regarding whether the tax cuts should be extended, partially extended, or be allowed to expire entirely.

Update: Fareed Zakaria also offers a very pragmatic piece about the expiration of the tax cuts and a general argument about how low our taxes are in this country compared to other countries around the world today and to the historical rates in the United States.