csua.org/u/dsc -> plumer.blogspot.com/2005_10_01_plumer_archive.html#112950845034870389
proposal s for, uh, tax reform won't actually go anywhere, and they're mostly jus t ideas for "discussion" rather than things the Bush administration will actually end up backing.
has argued that it doesn't actually benefit home-buyers, since sellers just bid up the price of houses until they exactly offset the cost of the deduction, so in essence, it just acts as a taxpayer subsidy to the construction and real estate industries. Any phase-out would lower home values, though, so this step makes for thorny politics, but that's why you 2 Simplify and expand the family tax credit.
proposed a simplified, refundable tax credit available to all working taxpayers with children that would replace the EITC, Child Credit, Additional Child Credit, and Child and Dependent Care Creditcutting away about 200 pages of the tax code.
reported on a paper by two tax experts noting that a number of investors overstate the price of stocks, businesses, and real estate, because they're allowed to report their capital gains and losses on the honor system, unlike wage-earners. Actual verification and enforcement of these reports could recoup at least $250 billion over the next decade.
suggested, both the various college subsidies into one single College Tax Credit, and the various tax savings vehiclesIRAs or 401sinto a single and transferable universal pension account.
have argued that college isn't for everyone, but might as well try to raise the numbers. Weinstein lists a bunch of corporate loopholes and tax deductions we could close to pay for these parts. Those aren't earth-shaking steps, but they're all goo d, liberal things to do, and they do simplify the tax code quite a bit, especially for working families. I don't really see the point in repeali ng the alternative-minimum tax (AMT), which is there to ensure that the very wealthy won't exploit loopholes and dodge taxesl; if the AMT is fal ling on too many middle-class families then just raise the threshold and reform, rather than eliminate, it. I also don't really know how one wou ld simplify capital gains taxation, which is obviously at the heart of a ny reform, but I'm sure there are decent ways to go about it. Oh yeah, a nd most of the Bush tax cuts are going to have to be repealed (for a sta rt) to avoid fiscal disaster in the long run, but that's another story..
article arguing that t he war in Iraqor at least the "liberal hawk" idea that Iraq could be ma de into a democracy at the barrel of a gunwas always doomed to fail, an d it wasn't just because Bush utterly botched it. They say that even if the war had been sold and fought exactly as the liberal hawks wantedas a way to turn Iraq into a liberal democracywith a different, more compe tent administration, it still would have failed.
noted earlier in the week, our nation-building adventures abroad have usually succeede d or failed due to internal factors in the occupied country, rather than the competence of our plans. That was as true in the American South in 1865 as it was in Kosovo in 1999. And sad to say, but the mere existence of a profit-seeking military-industrial complex made problems like the looting of the Iraqi treasury pretty much inevitable. There's no reason to think an invasion run by George Packer or Peter Beinart could have "r emade" Iraq better than Bush did. That said, I think this part of the TA P piece sells the idea of liberal interventionism somewhat short: Intervening requires us to take sides and to live with the empowerment o f the side we took. Tensions between Kosovar and Serb, Muslim and Croat , Sunni and Shiite are not immutable hatreds, and its hardly the case that such conflicts can never be resolved. Outside parties can succeed in smoothing the path for agreement, halting an ongoing genocide, or preventing an imminent one by securing autonomy for a given area. But only the actual parties to a conflict c an bring it to an end. No simple application of more outside force can make conflicting parties agree in any meaningful way or conjure up soci al forces of liberalism, compromise, and tolerance where they dont exi st or are too weak to prevail. That's obviously true of the United States' military, which has classical ly been good primarily at smashing things, although our twenty-year-old soldiers have adapted to "mission creep" unbelievably well in Iraq.
"Jacksonian tradition" in American foreign policy has neve r had much interest in anything more than overwhelming bloodletting in t he defense of the national interest. We're a nation ruled by speculators and powered by Southern nationalists; as such, idealistic projects abro ad just aren't in the cards, except in very rare circumstances. But the United Nations complicates the tale somewhat, since their peaceke eping forces actually have succeeded in reconciling a large number of po st-conflict nations. Post-WWII UN operations in Congo, and post-Cold War peacekeeping forces in Namibia, El Salvador, Mozambique, Eastern Slavon ia, Sierra Leone, and East Timor should all count as successesthe UN di sarmed the parties, demobilized militias, held relatively free and fair elections, and put the countries on a path towards sustained civil peace .
meaningful way," and if those UN missions didn't conjure up, as TAP puts it, "social forces of liberalism, compromise, and tolerance," they at least pointed the way down that path. Those countries, save for the Congo, are all peaceful democracies today. On the other hand, even the UN can't seem to stop a country on the brink of disintegration from doing so, but it's hard to tell how much of that failure has come from the sheer difficulty of the task and how much from poor implementation. The original UN peacekeeping mission in Somalia ob viously flopped, but it was also severely undermanned. So I don't think I'm quite as ready to say "it's impossible", although a good deal of modesty and skepticism is ab solutely crucial here. I think the United States is inherently awful at nation-building right now, yes. But that says as much about the United S tates and its military as it does about the inherent impossibility in pe acekeeping and nation-building, and it's worth, I think, trying to disen tangle the two.
interview with "Abu Qaqa al-Tamimi," an Iraq i insurgent trainer, that among other things sheds light on why so many suicide bombers in the country have been foreign fighters rather than Ir aqis: Most of the more than 30 bombers he says have passed through his hands w ere foreigners, or "Arabs," to use al-Tamimi's blanket term for all non -Iraqi mujahedin. Although he says more and more Iraqis are volunteerin g for suicide operations, insurgent groups prefer to use the foreigners . "Iraqis are fighting for their country's future, so they have somethi ng to live for," he explains. He says foreign fighters "come a long way from their countries, spending a lot of money and with high hopes. The y don't want to gradually earn their entry to paradise by participating in operations against the Americans. That's a valued quality sought by a handler like al-Tamimi, says count erterrorism expert Hoffman: "It's one less thing for the handler to wor ry about--whether the guy is going to change his mind and bolt. Meanwhile, al-Tamimia pseudonym, obviouslyclaims that he w as radicalized after being tortured in Abu Ghraib by occupation forces; which could be true or not, though he does seem to have used prison time productively to become more religious and develop further terrorist con tacts.
noted, one would think that capt uring people like al-Tamimi would probably be much more effective for pu rposes of counterinsurgency than worrying about all those "high-ranking lieutenants," since the trainers and former military men seem to have al l the semi-irreplaceable skills. But then, the Republican Guard alone nu mbered some 175,000 before the war, and that doesn't include Mukhabarat (100,000) and Fedayeen Saddam (40,000), so it's not like people like al -Tamimi are at all in short supply...
primer on evolutionary developmen t (or as the cool kids apparently say, "evo devo") I've been waiting for , courtesy of H Allen Orr in the New Yorker: Why,...
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