Taxing Thoughts

Have you ever felt like the same company owned every radio station in town? Have you ever flipped the channel on the radion not once, but twice, and had the same song playing on each station? If that has happened to you like it has to me, then you are not likely to be happy about this. The FCC is considering loosening the rules about media ownership for television, radio, and newspapers. The FCC loosened the rules on radio stations in 1996, now it wants to loosen the rules for the remainder of the media outlets. Wired has an article about how the rule changes will affect you.

Anatomy of FCC Media-Rules Change

Talking Points Memo by Joshua Micha Marshall has the following article on WMDs and the political machine in the White House today.

In recent days there has been a spate of news stories and editorials on whether the US intelligence community might have greatly overstated Iraq’s WMD capacity and, if this is so, why this might have happened.

First, let’s stipulate that if we eventually find that Iraq had few if any continuing WMD programs, that would be a major intelligence failure.

The New York Times has an article about President Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” law passed in 2002. The law requires states to administer standardized tests to the states’ public school students to measure a student’s proficiency in various academic areas. If schools do not meet passing standards Federal money can be withheld from the states and local school systems.

Many states, including Texas, are realizing that they will not be able to meet their own standards and are now lowering the passing standards to insure that they meet the law’s requirements. The “No Child Left Behind” law allows states to set their own passing standards, which completely destroys the credibility of the program. Any state can change the passing standard at their will, which will essentially allow states to gerrymander the test scores as evidenced by the following quotes.

Told only like John Irons at ArgMax can tell it.

T minus 9 days
Nine days until default….

The Senate is currently considering a $1 trillion increase in the debt ceiling, which now stands at $6.4 trillion. Just last year Congress and the President boosted the debt limit by $450 billion.

If Congress does not pass the debt-limit increase by May 28th, the government will not be able to meet its obligations to, among other things, pay social security recipients, make tax refunds, etc.

And Congress is about to pass, and the President is about to sign, the third largest tax cut in history - in the form of a dividend tax cut - that will have very little effect on the economy in the short run…

Dividend Voodoo

By Warren Buffett
Tuesday, May 20, 2003; Page A19

The annual Forbes 400 lists prove that — with occasional blips — the rich do indeed get richer. Nonetheless, the Senate voted last week to supply major aid to the rich in their pursuit of even greater wealth.

The Senate decided that the dividends an individual receives should be 50 percent free of tax in 2003, 100 percent tax-free in 2004 through 2006 and then again fully taxable in 2007. The mental flexibility the Senate demonstrated in crafting these zigzags is breathtaking. What it has put in motion, though, is clear: If enacted, these changes would further tilt the tax scales toward the rich.

Brad Delong summarizes a Paul Krugman article on last year’s Presidential State of the Union Speech.

Remember Last Year?

Paul Krugman reminds us of the things George W. Bush said in his last State of the Union Address that turned out not to be so:

* …the axis of evil… a phrase… that has vanished from Mr. Bush’s vocabulary…
* …the name of that guy he promised to bring in dead or alive…
* …he assured those who worried about red ink that “our budget will run a deficit that will be small and short-lived”…
* …”my economic security plan can be summed up in one word: jobs”…
* …can Mr. Bush convince us that his latest tax cut is just the tonic the economy needs? There are several reasons to doubt whether he can pull it off. For one thing, economists outside the administration, even those who always find ways to praise whatever he proposes, can’t see what this tax cut has to do with the economy’s immediate problems. This has led to a striking dissonance…

Talking Points Memo has two articles on how the liberal media has given the republican party a pass on its connections to China.

May 8th, 2003 — 2:06 PM
There’s only so much oxygen in the media universe at any one time. And much of it, understandably, is being taken up now by Iraq, Iran and North Korea. But if that weren’t the case, you’d think there’d be a lot more attention to the fact that a prominent Republican activist and fundraiser has been arrested on suspicion of being a double-agent for the People’s Republic of China.

In a day or two, I will be posting my comments on Mike Brewster’s article, which follows below, about what the Public Accounting Oversight Board should do.

Tax ’services’ must be challenged

Commentary: Accounting board should confront Big Four

By Mike Brewster
Last Update: 12:06 AM ET May 6, 2003

EDITOR’S NOTE: Mike Brewster is author of the recently released “Unaccountable: How the Accounting Profession Forfeited A Public Trust.”

NEW YORK (CBS.MW) — For the first time in 70 years, auditors won’t be writing the rules that govern public company audits.

Late last month the SEC officially recognized the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), the new accounting watchdog formed under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

Why has it taken the Democrats nearly a week to question the costs affiliated with President Bush’s trip to the USS Lincoln? I posted about it last week at Presidential Finances! It is now estimated that President Bush’s trip to the USS Lincoln (a ship that was 30 miles offshore and docked the next day in San Diego) cost the taxpayers nearly $1 million dollars to pay for “an extra day of air patrols, keeping the crew at sea, presidential security and flying Bush to the ship.”

Brad DeLong recently had a problem remembering his password to Timbuktu Pro X. I had the following response:

I’ve run into this problem before. My solution was to create an Excel Spredsheet with all of my passwords and the corresponding programs/websites. Normally, this would be a serious security risk, but since I am the only person who uses my computer (although, occasionally my spouse uses my computer) I put the Spreadsheet file in a really obscure directory (not My Documents or Mac’s equivalent) that I only know. Whenever I forget a password I know where to look.

Of course, there is always the chance that my computer could get hacked and someone could gain access, but there is added security by using an obscure directory.