There's a reason President Obama, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and many others are touting tax reform these days. On the campaign trail, it taps into deeply held beliefs about the way American society ought to work and the role of government.
There's one complaint visitors to Tokyo rarely make, and that is "not enough people." With a population of 36 million, the Tokyo metropolitan area stuffs an average 6,800 people in each square mile. By contrast, the New York metro area, with 19 million residents, has a density of 2,800 people per square mile.
If the foreign adversaries and competitors of the United States imagined a future that would fulfill their most ambitious objectives, it might begin with a government crippled by the House Republican leadership's "Ryan budget" released on Tuesday. Followed to its absurd conclusion, this document would lead America toward a withered state, approaching the point where Marxian dreams and Randian dogma converge.
President Obama says he want to make society more fair. Advocates of big government believe fairness means taking from rich people and giving to others: poor people; or people who do things politicians approve of, like making "green" energy equipment (Solyndra); or old people (even rich ones) through Social Security and Medicare.
The biggest challenge for fixing American health care isn't finding more money. It's learning not to spend money on the wrong things. The solution, conservatives say, is simple: Have patients bear more of the costs now being covered by private or government insurers. The concept has merit, except for this: How on earth can we mortals know we don't need something when the god wearing the stethoscope says we do?
The 2012 congressional redistricting cycle following the 2010 Census is just about over and done with. And it seems likely to make much less difference than many of us expected.
For everyone who originally supported the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan to oust the Taliban, the question today is how what was once a righteous mission can end in anything but ruin. Blaming the Bush administration's neglect and incompetence for the critical failures of the first several years is fair enough, but it is not easy to argue, let alone prove, that the Obama administration has improved upon the mess it inherited.
Scott Rasmussen looks at one of the fundamental gaps between the American people and their elected politicians: the perceptions of the relationship between economic growth, job creation and government spending. In official Washington, Keynesian economics still rules, and it is simply accepted as fact that cutting government spending will hurt the economy. Politicians also assume that increasing government spending and growing deficits will lead to job creation.
Three of the four candidates for the Republican presidential nomination -- Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul -- might soon agree with T.S. Eliot: for them, April may indeed be “the cruelest month.”
You can almost hear the note of surprise in their voices when you read the Washington Post and New York Times reporters' stories on their papers' latest political polls.
Here's why I'm not panicked about rising gasoline prices, as many headlines suggest we all should be. It's a personal story. Let me start at the beginning.
The automotive love of my life was my first. It was a 1979 Pontiac Grand Prix, already 10 years old when it drove to my door on that mild spring day. A cloudy ocean color, the mid-size car had a V6 engine, and boy, did it move. A whole lot of hood stood between me and the car ahead.
"If you have 10,000 regulations," Winston Churchill said, "you destroy all respect for law." He was right. But Churchill never imagined a government that would add 10,000 year after year. That's what we have in America. We have 160,000 pages of rules from the feds alone. States and localities have probably doubled that. We have so many rules that legal specialists can't keep up.
Who is writing that brilliant, stupid, nasty, brave and/or dishonest online comment? We haven't a clue, because the author hasn't shared his or her name, hometown, gender, age and/or nationality. Or even worse, the author pretends to be another real person. Scammers, misfits, crooks, creeps, criminals and nice people all venture through cyberspace without identifying themselves. We can only guess what they're up to.
In the cold, gray numbers of election returns and exit poll percentages, a reader with some imagination can find clues to people's deep feelings, their hopes and fears, their self-images and moral values.
To many New Englanders, Olympia Snowe had come to resemble Marilyn of "The Munsters" TV family. The senator from Maine seemed a normal Northeast Republican surrounded by party leaders sprouting fangs and cooing at bats -- but who regarded her as the odd one.
"You can't be too careful these days," Herman Munster, a Frankenstein-monster clone, would tenderly advise the wholesome Marilyn. "There are a lot of strange people in this world."
Many Republicans talk of an entitlement mentality that threatens the character and finances of the United States. In their view, the problem is that too many voters feel entitled to goodies provided by the government and financed by taxpayers.
When President Obama disparaged "loose talk about war" against the theocratic regime in Tehran, he wasn't minimizing the consequences of atomic weapons in the hands of the mullahs. The danger of terrorists acquiring a bomb would be multiplied by a regional arms race. The international nonproliferation regime would be crippled if not destroyed. The prestige of the United States would suffer fresh damage, and yes, Israel would be gravely threatened.
Kicking the can down the road. That's been the Obama administration's response on issues from Iran's nuclear weapons program to America's entitlement systems.
Now that Mitt Romney is likely to be the Republican nominee, we can expect new attacks on his "vulture capitalism." That's how Rick Perry characterized his private equity work. Newt Gingrich's supporters ran an ad about Romney's firm, Bain Capital, that said, "Their greed was only matched by their willingness to do anything to make millions in profits."
Too bad the Republican candidates had to comment on Rush Limbaugh's flaming attack on a female law student at Georgetown University. El Rushbo plays troubadour to the party's right wing from his home in its entertainment wing. The business of the entertainment wing is show business. That means making money off talk shows, books and TV appearances -- and running the publicity machine at hysterical volume. It does not mean keeping the interests of the Republican Party foremost.
