David Brooks. Cronyism. Paul Krugman. Tom Friedman. Ross Douthat. Victor Davis Hanson. Soak the Rich or Soak the Super Rich? For Democrats, millionaires are the new Gypsies—a minority whom it is perfectly acceptable to persecute because its wealth is ill-gotten, not the product of hard work.
There is no better evidence of this than the “millionaire surcharge” that Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid of Nevada proposed to pay for President Obama’s jobs bill. His version of the bill was defeated last week on a cloture vote, but that in no way suggests Democrats will abandon this rhetoric as the presidential campaign ramps up. Obama’s original funding plan was bad enough. It sought to specifically eliminate tax breaks for disfavored businesses like oil companies and hike taxes on families making over $250,000 a year. But Democratic senators from oil-rich states (such as Louisiana) and from those with lots of sub-millionaires (such as New York) nixed that idea. So Reid changed Obama’s soak-the-rich scheme into a soak-the-super-rich scheme.
To think the super-rich would passively accept such fleecing is absurd. Humberto Leal Garcia Execution and International Law. The Lasting Effects of Humberto Leal Garcia's Execution - Global. When the State of Texas executed Humberto Leal Garcia Jr. last night, it entered the United States into an international incident.
The United Nations' top human rights official has said the execution broke international law, and within the United States the lethal injection created a sharp controversy that ended in the Supreme Court approving the move over the objection of the president. Leal was a Mexican citizen, and the International Court of Justice in 2004 found that he, along with 50 other inmates, hadn't been treated according to the Vienna Convention of Treaties because officials arresting them hadn't informed them of their right to contact their consulates.
It's a stern truth about Texas that the state executes more inmates most years than any other in the nation, but this was its most closely watched in years. A tangling of jurisdictions: This case has states' rights rubbing up against federal oversight, with an international body chiming in. A setback in U.S.
Public Views Congress as Top Culprit in Debt Debate, Poll Finds. Tuning Out the Democrats. End the Debt Limit. None of that, however, has stopped Republican leaders, who announced this week that they intend to repeat this explosive episode over and over, in perpetuity. With the bad memory still fresh, President Obama should quickly seize the opportunity to make clear that he will not allow it even once more, never mind permanently. Instead of raising the debt ceiling every few years, it’s time to eliminate this dangerous game once and for all. As this page said in 1961 — not remotely for the first time or the last — the “debt limit does not limit the debt.”
It’s an illusion of a law, instituted in World War I, to persuade gullible taxpayers that Congress is exercising responsible oversight over borrowing. Congress already controls spending and taxation, and if it wants a smaller debt it can cut spending or raise taxes at will. But being irresponsible worked for Republicans this time. Mr. The debt limit should ideally be dispensed with, but, at a minimum, it can no longer be held for ransom.
The Magazine - The Trinity Sisters. July/August 2011The Trinity Sisters Many of America’s most powerful women went to a college you’ve never heard of.
By Kevin Carey Official White House Photo by Pete Souza Sister Ann Gormly is almost ninety, but she still skips the elevator and climbs the steep wooden staircase in the main hall of Trinity College, her alma mater and former employer of many years. I met her there one cold afternoon in early December, on the college’s small hillside campus in northeast Washington, D.C. Trinity was founded by Sister Gormly’s religious order, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, in 1897. But like any educator, Sister Claydon finds some joy in keeping track of her former students. The student was Cathie Black, who graduated from Trinity in 1966 and then went into the cutthroat, male-dominated publishing industry, becoming one of the nation’s most powerful media executives.
Black wasn’t the only one on Sister Claydon’s radar. Billiart and Bourdon did not make life easy for themselves. Noonan: They've Lost That Lovin' Feeling. Newsmax, a Compass for Conservative Politics.