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Michael Maiello's picture

How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Obama

What a four years it's been.  Back in 2008, after two terms of George W. Bush, I felt overtaken by an impulse to want to upend the entire system and to undo the wrongs of the Aught decade.  Hillary Clinton seemed to me to be the pugilist needed to egt the job done but when it became clear that she would not be selected, I learned to start liking Obama.  Clinton apparently came to the same conclusion and she has been one of the most effective members of her administration.

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Michael Maiello's picture

Will Romney Raise Taxes On The Middle Class?

By refusing to be specific, Mitt Romney has made his tax and budget plans difficult to analyze and, of course, difficult to criticize.  This might be by design though, of course, folks are trying to figure out what the Romney budget would mean for America.  The Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Urban Institute and The Brookings Institution, says that for Romney to cut the corporate tax rate and to cut taxes on high earners, he will have to eliminate deductions that favor the middle class, in effect, raising ta

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Michael Maiello's picture

Leave My Parents Alone, Bill Keller!

In the Times today, Bill Keller has a longish column about how selfish the Baby Boomers are for wanting their Social Security and their Medicare and even their Medicaid.  I'm not sure why he lumps Medicaid into it, as if poor people have a choice, but he does.  Keller's argument isn't novel.  He links to a Paul Begela Esquire article that made the esthetic anti-boomer case at the turn of the century.  Th

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Michael Maiello's picture

Are Democrats... Fighting?

Interesting action in the Senate today.  The Republican plan to extend the Bush-era tax rates for everyone failed and the Democratic plan to extend them for all household income up to $250,000 a year succeeded*.  Now the House is expected not to vote on, or to vote down the Democratic proposal and will likely pass the Republican one.  The bill will then go to the Senate, where Reid and company will replace it with the Democratic plan that the Senate passed and send it back to the House.

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Michael Maiello's picture

Misusing The Ring of Gyges

In the Times today, a professor of philosophy and a professor of government team up to tackle the "Moral Hazards of Drones," and they evoke Plato's tale of Gyges to make the case.

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Michael Maiello's picture

Pure Speculation on Bain and Romney

To me, one of the most amusing parts of the Mitt Romney/Bain story is that it took between early 1999 and late 2002 to transfer ownership of the company from Romney to his 26 managing directors.

Now, after 2000, when funding dried up because of the tech crash and recession (made worse in 2001 by the terrorist attacks), this might be understandable.  But in 1999, deals were getting done.

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Michael Maiello's picture

Oh, That's Rich

Like most of you (I'm guessing), I was delighted and appalled by the stories detailing the privilege and self regard of Mitt Romney's backers this morning.  Though I can kind of understand driving around the Hampton's yelling, "We're VIP!" at the help, given the amount of money these people had to give to Mittens.  They'd darned well better be VIP, right?  It's what they're paying for.  They want to be VIP in the eyes of the next president.

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Michael Maiello's picture

A Declaration of Independence From Government Incompetence

Hey, guess what?  I just read The Declaration of Independence for the first time in a very long time.  It's short!  It's part of a little pocket guide, combined with the Constitution, published by the CATO Institute, given to me a few years ago and I figured, what the heck, it's that time of year.

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Michael Maiello's picture

We Don't Need No Stinking Mandates

The Supreme Court will rule on Monday about whether or not the federal government can require people to buy health insurance from private insurance companies.  My own view is that, under the commerce clause, it can.  But, I see the point of conservatives here.  The mandate is probably the single biggest subsidy of a private, for profit, industry in history.

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Michael Maiello's picture

Stephen King's "The Red Throne"

Last week at KGB, four writers (including yours truly) read from the text of a lost Stephen King novel called "The Red Throne."  I wrote part three and, you'll all be shocked to know, Thomas Friedman is in it.

Check it out if you have a few minutes and could use a snicker.

 

 

 

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