Content tagged with "politics"
Why Are the Bush Tax Cuts Expiring in the First Place?: Here’s why Bush’s tax cuts are set to expire – the income tax cuts and the estate tax cuts. If Republicans love their tax cuts so much, why…
One of the defining characteristics of your political view is how you think a government should balance charity against personal responsibility. Charity is the government giving aid in the form of…
Reading a book called Rise of the Robots about the increasing role of automation in our lives. The author takes a bit of a detour in the chapter on health care to discuss how the markets are broken….
At its absolute core, the difference between conservatives and liberals seems to boil down to one thing: liberals believe that society can be fixed by grand architecture, while conservatives believe…
I’ve been reading the Wikipedia article about Kwame Kilpatrick, the disgraced mayor of Detroit. I’m honestly wondering if there has been a more blatantly corrupt and dishonest politician in recent…
When I was in my first political science class at Augie, I remember the first paragraph of the text tried to define “politics.” It went something like this: Politics is what happens when people are…
What can get mystifying about politics is that opposing politicians can have such different opinions about political issues. It seems like they can never agree about what to do about a given situation…
Bush explains 9/11 classroom reaction: I find this really interesting. Former President George W. Bush says what some people took as his apparent lack of reaction to the first news of the Sept. 11,…
I own 25% of my company, which is a significant percentage. This chunk of ownership binds me to this company, in the sense that I see the company as a sort of extension of myself in many ways. I’m not…
I just finished Ron Paul’s book Liberty Defined. it’s a collection of essays on “50 essential issues that affect our freedom.” There’s everything from Abortion to Zionism (yes, it’s in alphabetical…
The Neal Boortz Commencement Speech: This supposed commencement speech by Neal Boortz is incendiary as hell, but I appreciated for articulating a point that I find very true: the difference between a…
Your personal political philosophy is highly influence by how you view the way individuals relate to their larger community. For example: Conservatives view the individual as the prime mover. The…
When discussing labels like “conservative” and “liberal,” it needs to be acknowledged that there are different contexts in which they apply. People can be both conservative and liberal at the same…
I try to give all political opinions a fair shake, but there is one conservative assertion that just makes me hang my head with embarrassment. This is the assertion that cutting taxes actually…
There is no one truth about anything. Everything is filtered.
As I write this, America is embroiled in the Ukrainian impeachment crisis. The claim is that Donald Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine in exchange for a political favor – he wanted them to…
I’m more than a little amazed that I stumbled on this article. A divided island: the forces working against Haiti: For years, I have wondered about this very question: why has the Dominican Republic…
Why I am a beautiful Christian Democrat: I enjoyed this post and agree with it in large part. At some point – the 1964 Republican Convention, say some – the Republican Party established itself as the…
Economic Inequality and Political Representation: Here’s some light reading for the weekend. I examine the differential responsiveness of U.S. senators to the preferences of wealthy, middle-class, and…
One would hope that politicians always act in ways which they think will directly benefit the country. But, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they do things that actually go against their better…
A bunch of Democratic senators are on the the run from Wisconsin so they don’t have to vote on what appears to be a union-busting bill sponsored by the governor. According to this CNN article, this…
The O’Reilly Procedure: Ebert writes about a pet peeve of mine – political commentators, both on the right and the left. They drive me nuts. Ebert discusses Bill O’Reilly in particular. Understand…
(This post is going to make some people hate me. I’m sorry for this in advance.) I’ve come to some peace about climate change. I wasn’t obsessing about it before, but I do think about it quite a bit….
There’s a constant debate in this country about the appropriate size, scope and strength of government. This debate has raged since all the country was founded and shows no signs of letting up….
I’m learning the difference between the statutory tax rate and the effective tax rate. it’s an important distinction. The statutory tax rate is the tax imposed by law (by “statute,” hence the name)….
I get annoyed when people “applaud” the Supreme Court for decisions, or vice-versa. John Thune just did it on Facebook: I applaud the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling in McDonald v. Chicago. The…
This is such a loaded phrase: “Tax cuts for the wealthy.” Every election season, it’s thrown around like a weapon. And it’s never questioned – it’s constantly accepted as patently bad, even downright…
Marriage is a bundle. It is, all at once, a contract, a romance, and a spiritual institution. But I don’t think it’s going to stay this way. Marriage is actually three structures, layered on top of…
I saw two animated statistical graphics recently that reinforced and sharpened a belief that I’ve had lurking in my head for years. Links to the graphics are below (I would embed, but they’d both be…
Walking Away From Church: This is a really interesting point in a really interesting article. Over the last few decades (and someone would say since the 60s), the Republican party has become the…
I don’t want to get too political, but Here’s my feeling on the process Congress is going through right now to get this health care bill passed. This is a huge bill, both in raw dollars and in the way…
We’ve talked a bit about the “conservative” and “liberal” labels, but you might be wondering why they matter. Indeed, why wouldn’t a politician just eschew labels and say “I’ll do what’s best for the…
Americans don’t really want spending cuts: This article is brutally honest, in two places. First, this is an important point to note: Any truly meaningful debt reduction plan must include Medicare,…
I have a theory: the U.S. economy requires a significant number of Americans to be stupid with money. If we ever all got our crap together and started managing our personal budgets responsibly, the…