All Is Fair

Tiny Taxes
They call it the Robin Hood tax — a tiny levy on trades in the financial markets that would take money from the banks and give it to the world’s poor. And like the mythical hero of Sherwood Forest, it is beginning to capture the public’s imagination....The Obama administration has also been lukewarm, expressing sympathy but saying it would be hard to execute, could drive trading overseas and would hurt pension funds and individual investors in addition to banks. (NYT, 12/7/2011)


Well alright, once in a while Obama gets it.


Hacked Off
British police officials said on Wednesday that a 41-year-old man had been arrested in connection with the phone hacking scandal that has rocked Rupert Murdoch’s media outpost here, the 18th suspect taken into custody since inquiries into the scandal intensified in January. (NYT, 12/7/2011)


Breathless reporting from the Times on a publishing scandal in another country, but no updates on Climategate, Solyndra, or Fast and Furious and precious little on other Democrat scandals like Blagojevich or Corzine.


More Talk
The president gave a fine speech in Kansas. President Obama has given some great speeches. Good speeches are not his problem. The problem with voters is that they believe that they have heard it all before.


As Carter said, “The speech had a powerful moral dimension.” Well, that is not difficult to do in writing. Who can’t deploy carefully crafted words that are lofty and noble? President Obama has done that, and perhaps only that, more than any other politician in recent memory.


The problem is that he must govern, and the governed are waiting. His too-frequent righteous phrases and lofty verbiage have become part of his problem, not his solution. (Ed Rogers, Washington Post, 12/7/2011)


Liberals - even those who have recently fessed up to Obama speech fatigue - have briefly revived the notion that Obama has made another 'historic' speech.  Good job by Rogers at bringing them back to earth.


Dependency
Such a progressive code will make the state (NY) fisc even more dependent on millionaire incomes, which soar on capital gains and bonuses during good times but crash during recessions. This is the same progressive trap that has made California's budget hostage to economic boom and bust. 


The good times create an unsustainable revenue boom, which the politicians spend, only to find that the budget goes quickly and steeply into red when the economy slows. Then the politicians cry poverty and raise taxes again, driving more of the wealthy taxpayers the politicians need out of the state. This is why the highest-taxed states are always under fiscal duress. (WSJ, 12/7/2011)


Two paragraphs of required reading for Liberals. It's pretty simple, really.