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