Theodoric (R-York)

The Republicans, it seems, have a solution to every problem.  Or, to be more precise, the Republicans have a solution to every problem.  Like the medieval barbers who thought that the cure for every malady was bloodletting, the GOP believes that the cure for every ailment is tax cutting.  The economy is good?  Cut taxes!  The economy is bad?  Cut taxes!  Taxes are too low?  Cut taxes!  I await the inevitable day when the Republican Party advocates tax cuts as a means of overturning Roe v. Wade, forestalling gay marriage, and putting a massive granite sculpture of the ten commandments in every federal courthouse.  Remember, if we don’t cut taxes, the terrorists have won.

The latest GOP quacksalver to prescribe this nostrum is the Republican Study Committee, a bunch of right-wingers that used the opportunity of the Wall Street bailout to push for a two-year moratorium on the capital gains tax and, in the process, also managed to scuttle the Wall Street bailout.  According to the folks at NRO, the RSC plan would be just the tonic for an ailing economy.  “Private capital will flood into Wall Street with zero capital gains and it will come at no cost to the taxpayer.”

Now, you may be asking yourself: “how many different kinds of crazy is this proposal?”  Well, first of all, assessing lower taxes on capital gains is justified primarily as a means of encouraging investment (it also compensates very roughly for inflation, but a system of indexing could work just as well).  The problem, though, is that, in the short term, cutting capital gains taxes merely encourages the sale of capital assets.  Far from encouraging investment, the elimination of capital gains taxes would instead lead to a fire sale of assets, with the inevitable result that prices would fall.  Moreover, a two-year moratorium won’t encourage the kind of long-range investment that either the economy needs or that Republicans tend to tout as the chief virtue of low capital gains taxes.  Instead, it would, under normal circumstances, simply push more assets into the marketplace and depress prices even further.

I live in Ohio. In my immediate area there were a lot of Obama signs before the primary. One person on my street was a rabid Hillary Clinton supporter, though. She had about five different Hillary signs on her lawn and festooned to her porch and one big handmade one — “We’ve got your back, Hillary!”

Just drove past her house today and saw this in her yard:

It doesn’t mean that much in and of itself but it made me smile, anyway.

In the Axis of Evil, there is one evil that stands above the rest, a country whose president will cause protests and allows commentators to rant for days in advance of his visits.  Of course that country is Iran.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

President Ahmadinejad visited the UN last week and we were treated to all the usual fireworks.  Senator Clinton and Governor Palin jostled to attend a National Coalition to Stop Iran Now protest, President Ahmadinejad made more anti-Zionist remarks and generally heaped ridicule on the US and both Senators McCain and Obama vowed to prevent Iran from getting the bomb in last Friday’s debate.  More important though, are Obama’s and McCain’s positions on negotiating directly with Tehran.  Are we missing a rare opportunity to actually make some progress with a country that has been a thorn in our side for twenty five years?