Archive for January, 2011
More on Property Taxes; More on Bill Black
(1) More from Polly Cleveland on Property Taxes: A couple of posts ago I complained about the New York Times’ coverage of deficits and taxes. The one that really steamed me reported on a NYT/CBS News poll in which a majority of people allegedly preferred cutting spending to raising taxes as a way of dealing ...Read more.
Restore the Original Wealth Tax (Polly Cleveland)
To Save Essential Public Services, Restore the Original Wealth Tax! By Polly Cleveland, on January 17th, 2011 State and local officials propose drastic cuts in public services. There’s an alternative: restore the property tax. It’s the oldest wealth tax of all, the tax that financed Chinese civilization over 2000 years ago, the tax that until ...Read more.
Regulatory Review; EconoFAQs on QE2
(1) Bill Black on Obama’s Regulatory Review: I had to chuckle at the Times’ headline about Obama’s regulatory review a couple of days ago: Obama Asks for Review of Rules Stifling Jobs. As I mentioned in my last post, the new post-Tucson civility has rendered the Republican’s phrase “job-killing” into “job-destroying”; now it has morphed ...Read more.
Still Banking on Fraud (William K. Black)
Bill Black Is Everywhere: We just posted the feature article by Bill Black (aka William K. Black, professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri at Kansas City), from our January/February issue, Still Banking on Fraud. It’s a great read, though depressing. Here’s what one subscriber wrote in to say: Date: Thu, Jan ...Read more.
The Revolutionary MLK
Making King Bland: Every year on MLK Day, a bland liberal version of Martin Luther King is celebrated, and leftists take time to point out how radical King was, toward the end of his life, at any rate. Two contributions of note: From the Real News Network, Paul Jay plays some great clips of MLK’s ...Read more.
ASSA; NYT: Socialism = enemy
I was not going to do another blog post until I’d returned from my trip out west for the Allied Social Sciences Association meetings in Denver, but after a couple of extra days out here visiting friends in Boulder, my return flight to Boston was canceled. I hope to return later today, but I needed ...Read more.
Trouble for BofA; Cash for Gaza?
(1) More bad news for Bank of America: Earlier this week Bloomberg and other outlets reported on the settlement that has BofA paying Fannie/Freddie $2.8 billion, “after the U.S.-owned firms demanded the company buy back mortgages they said were based on faulty data.” This kind of news, along with WikiLeaks’ claim (which we’ve reported here ...Read more.
The Depression, Brave New World, 1984
(1) Comparisons with the Great Depression: The cover story for our Jan/Feb Issue, which is just going to the printers (but will be available in full color to e-subscribers by Wednesday, possibly earlier), is about unemployment–in particular the claim, rampant in the media these days, that today’s unemployment is “structural,” and has to do with ...Read more.
