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N.J. Union Should Know Better Than to Publicly Wish for Gov. Chris Christie's Death
Tweet Share on Facebook April 9, 2010 Comment (17)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
It's one thing when an individual idiot shouts bad words or issues threats against political figures. It's something else entirely when those threats, even by implication, come from an organization that should know better. And it's far more serious, especially when there is no dispute about what occurred. The CBS affiliate in New York City reports the Bergen County, N.J. Education Association recently sent out a memo that included a hint it would like to see Republican Gov. Chris Christie--who is trying to get the union to agree to wage and benefit concessions that may keep the state from bankruptcy--dead. From the memo:
"Dear Lord this year you have taken away my favorite actor, Patrick Swayze, my favorite actress, Farrah Fawcett, my favorite singer, Michael Jackson, and my favorite salesman, Billy Mays. I just wanted to let you know that Chris Christie is my favorite governor."
To her credit, the president of the New Jersey Education Association, Barbara Keshishian, denounced the memo in strong terms, saying "Language such as that has no place in civil discourse," and apologized to Christie for both the message's content and for "the lack of respect it demonstrated."
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Is the Government Out to Get Toyota?
Tweet Share on Facebook April 8, 2010 Comment (18)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
It may just be that U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood forgets to engage his brain before he puts his mouth in gear. Either that or he is deliberately trying to make it harder for Toyota to maintain its share of the American automobile market.
Right now, thanks to the way the media has hyped the story, it would be hard to blame a consumer who questioned the overall safety of Toyota's passenger car fleet. LaHood has not helped matters, missing wherever he can the opportunity to calm the fears of the American public.
Back in February, he raised more than a few eyebrows when he suggested the proper response for anyone concerned about the safety of Toyotas was to "stop driving" them, a comment he was later to retract as an embarrassing misstatement. Now LaHood, who has just announced the Japanese automaker faces a record $16.4 million fine, is accusing the company of being "safety deaf" and says he would not be surprised if further reviews of internal company documents find additional problems with the vehicle fleet.
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Tax Hikes Hurt Republicans--Just Ask Utah Governor Gary Herbert
Tweet Share on Facebook April 6, 2010 Comment (15)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
It is nearly axiomatic that a Republican who backs a tax increase is headed for a rough ride. Everyone remembers how President George Herbert Walker Bush, who won the White House in 1988 by making a strong anti-tax pledge to the American electorate, lost the confidence of the voters—and his bid for re-election—when he went back on his word. Nevertheless, the temptation to raise taxes, especially when political advisers come up with a way to spin them as "necessary," is sometimes too much to resist. Even in the current political environment.
The Obama recession left a lot of economic holes the stimulus package could not fill. This put more than a few governors of both parties in the position of finding ways to at least make them smaller—either by cutting spending or by drumming up new revenues. Some, like New Jersey's new Republican Gov. Chris Christie, chose to take a hard line on spending and to confront the public employee unions whose contracts have driven the state close to bankruptcy. Others, like Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, chose to make a "deal with the devil," sacrificing principle in the name of political and economic expediency.
In what some are calling "a late-night, behind-closed-doors deal," Herbert recently put his signature on legislation that increased the state's tobacco tax, provoking the ire of the Tea Party movement and putting the governor's re-election bid in jeopardy.
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Heritage Foundation Rips Obama's Healthcare Claim
Tweet Share on Facebook April 5, 2010 Comment (17)By Peter Roff, the Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Now that the healthcare bill has passed, President Barack Obama is engaged in the arduous task of selling it to the American people.
It's a tough job. In the latest Rasmussen poll, 54 percent of likely voters favor outright repeal of the new law as opposed to 42 percent who say they support it. According to pollster Scott Rasmussen, the numbers are "virtually unchanged from last week and the week before" and include 43 percent who strongly favor repeal versus 32 percent who strongly oppose it.
Against this background, Obama is trying to present the new law as a moderate compromise. And he's being watched like a hawk while he does it.
Today, the Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based conservative think tank, issued a broadside complaining that, in an interview with NBC's Matt Lauer, Obama had distorted its position on healthcare reform in an effort to show the plan had wider support than it actually enjoys.
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Cadillac, Capital Gains Taxes of Healthcare Reform Kill Growth
Tweet Share on Facebook April 2, 2010 Comment (18)The original purpose of the just-passed changes to the U.S. healthcare system was supposedly to find a way to "bend the cost curve," to reduce the amount of money the federal government was spending each year on healthcare. According to a new report from the Congressional Joint Economic Committee, the reforms Congress passed and President Barack Obama signed miss the boat.
One component of the new law that is particularly problematic is the so-called "Cadillac Tax," the tax on high-cost health insurances plans that many allies of organized labor in Congress found especially objectionable. Bowing to political pressure, the Democrats used the reconciliation process to pare back the tax. Instead they chose to replace the lost revenues by permanently increasing the top rate for capital gains.
Specifically, the reconciliation bill moved the implementation of the "Cadillac Tax" from 2013 out to 2018 while increasing the thresholds, triggering the tax from $8,500 and $23,000 to $10,200 and $27,500 for single and family policies, respectively. The $117 billion revenue hole these changes produced over the 10-year budget window was filled by $123 billion that is supposed to come from increasing the capital gains tax and subjecting it to both the 2.9 percent Medicare tax and the 0.9 percent Medicare Surtax.
It is now well established that increasing the tax rate on capital gains--which is really a tax on savings, investment, productive economic activity, and success--actually reduces the revenue that comes into the federal government. Conversely, perhaps counterintuitively, history shows us that cutting the capital gains rate brings more money into the government.
