National

Longtime readers will know my frustration with Delaware and its revenues. We have what is essentially a flat tax rate system for the middle and higher brackets of income. If one person has $60,000 in taxable income and another has $600,000 and another has $6 million, they all pay exactly the same tax rate. But we can never... NEVER!!!!!! ... raise taxes on those at the higher levels, because, you know, they are job creators and it will hurt their fees fees. So we have to scrounge around every year, waiting desperately for every DEFAC forecast to come out with good news. We have to talk about raising regressive fees and taxes, like the gas taxes, which fall disproportionately on those who least can afford to pay more. We have to talk about deeper and deeper spending cuts. And we have to resort to a Task Force to tell us what is wrong with our "revenue structure." And that task force will come back with proposals for a gas tax and a sales tax, both regressive taxes, and both unpopular, which will "force" the Governor to look to spending cuts to education and Medicaid. That's the Delaware Way.

Paul Krugman on Wall Street’s Revenge:

“Most interest groups have stable political loyalties. For example, the coal industry always gives the vast bulk of its political contributions to Republicans, while teachers’ unions do the same for Democrats. You might have expected Wall Street to favor the G.O.P., which is always eager to cut taxes on the rich. In fact, however, the securities and investment industry — perhaps affected by New York’s social liberalism, perhaps recognizing the tendency of stocks to do much better when Democrats hold the White House — has historically split its support more or less equally between the two parties.” “But that all changed with the onset of Obama rage. Wall Street overwhelmingly backed Mitt Romney in 2012, and invested heavily in Republicans once again this year. And the first payoff to that investment has already been realized. Last week Congress passed a bill to maintain funding for the U.S. government into next year, and included in that bill was a rollback of one provision of the 2010 financial reform.”

No, Cleveland cops, you are not owed an apology. You owe us one.

Senator Thomas Carper realized the most significant achievement in his long congressional career on Saturday night: when the Cromnibus Bill passed, the <a href="http://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/local/2014/12/12/delaware-national-park-expansion-clears-congress/20325941/#.">long sought after Delaware National Park</a> was finally established. For years, Delaware was saddled with the indignity of being the only state in the union not to have a national park. This was the most important and damaging problem facing Delaware for decades, second only to the lack of bipartisanship, so of course our brave and tireless Senator fought to solve the problem. <blockquote>U.S. Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., who has steadfastly sought a park designation for Delaware, released a statement after the vote on Friday. "Now, Delaware can have a national park that preserves and teaches the lessons of our state's heritage and our country's history," he said. U.S. Rep. John Carney, D-Del., called the historical park a "tremendous achievement," in a written statement, saying "I look forward to taking my family and visitors from out of state to visit the natural and historic sites in our park."</blockquote> Now, I don't know about you, but when I think of a "national park," I think of a contiguous natural place that we have preserved in its wild state. I also think of a park.

This appears to be what is left for us, to die. With no apparent representation in the halls of power, our choice is to die - literally or symbolically. We are wild about calling ourselves and our country "free." Have you been to a football or baseball game lately? They have become nauseating exercises in self-congratulations over our great freedoms. But what are we really free from? Are we free from debt? Probably not. Are we free from being beaten or killed by cops? Are we free from anxiety? Hardly. Free from the indignity of institutionalized injustices? We have never been less free then we are today. When the majority of Americans are not represented by a political party, inch by inch, drop by drop freedom wanes.

Michael Hanlon claims that the “true age of innovation – I’ll call it the Golden Quarter – ran from approximately 1945 to 1971,” during which time just about everything that “defines the modern world either came about, or had its seeds sown,” from the pill to computers to civil rights. One reason he believes we’ve stagnated? Our increasing risk aversion...

Andrew Sullivan calls bullshit on something that we have heard from coward Wall Street Democrats like Chuck Schumer:

I’ve heard this a million times now and I simply don’t understand it. In terms of chronology, Obama did put the economy first. With TARP and the stimulus and the auto-bailout, the key measures to shore up a flat-lining economy were taken in short order. You could plausibly argue, I think, that in retrospect, Obama should have gone bigger, and produced a much more ambitious stimulus. But, as someone who observed this close-up and in real time, the odds of that actually happening were close to zero. And if it had happened, the stimulus would have been even less popular – and more easily demagogued – than it actually was. The problem was not the timing or the seriousness of the response; it was the seriousness of the problem. When an economy has a near-death experience, on top of huge public and private debt, the recovery will tend to be exactly what this recovery was: long, sad at first, and later … well, we don’t know yet, do we?