Just a few recommendations.
- If you haven't already read it, former Reagan and Bush 1 economic adviser Bruce Bartlett's endorsement of higher taxes on the wealthy is a must.
"Growth was stronger in the 1990s when the relative revenue loss was small and was dismal during the George W. Bush administration, when two-thirds of the aggregate revenue loss occurred.
It is not class warfare to suggest that the richest 1 percent of people in society pay one-third of their income to the federal government, as they did under Ronald Reagan. Keep in mind that dividends were taxable as ordinary income every year of his administration, and in the Tax Reform Act of 1986 he supported taxing capital gains as ordinary income as well."
- There is a fascinating portrait over at Rolling Stone of an American who rose to the top of one of Mexico's most bloodthirsty drug cartels.
"He grew up in a middle-class development on the outskirts of Laredo, a kind of no man's land where Burger Kings didn't begin to sprout up until the Nineties. Even the people of Laredo considered it "Indian territory," an area rife with dope and illegal immigrants. Barbie's parents raised him and his five siblings in a tidy, orange-trimmed home with palm trees in the front. "They're regular Ozzie and Harriets," says Jose Baeza, a spokesman for the Laredo police department. "They're business owners, PTA, morning-jog people."
- Media Matters has reported that Wolfgang Wagner, the editor of the journal Remote Sensing, has resigned over the now infamous Robert Spencer piece they published about climate change, an article which was widely seized upon by the right in their ongoing attempts to discredit the scientific community. In Wagner's words, it was so wrong that it should "not have been published."
- We're still nowhere near being past race in America. NorthJersey.com highlights the disciplinary hearing of a grade school teacher who took to social networks and described her mostly minority students as "future criminals."
- Gawker has some coverage of the dubious sale of one of Ohio's prisons to a for-profit corporation. Yay! Let's let more politically connected business leaders who have direct access to judges and their election campaigns further incentivize harsher rates of incarceration. It has happened before.
- The Onion has couple of pieces that move beyond simple current events humor and into the realm of the meaningful HERE and HERE.
- Green Day frontman, Billie Joe Armstrong, was removed from a Southwest Airlines flight for having "saggy pants."
On that last note, I would remind regular readers of The Hand that I have recently suggested that this year's motto could plausibly be "no, I am not making this up."
- The Guardian notes that the release of thousands of un-redacted cables by wikileaks may well spell doom Julian Assange.
- Timothy Egan has read “Last Call,” Daniel Okrent’s book detailing the power of the small, socially extreme Temperance movement and its ability to ultimately alter the Constituiton with the Volstead Act. He finds within it a warning regarding the potential impact of the so-called Tea Party.
- The Economist shines some light on the latest madness from Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. She has introduced a bill to cut off U.S. funding to any U.N. organization that recognizes the right of a Palestinian state to exist. Yup.
- The following video has been making the rounds on Twitter. It is the Real King's Speech most of us only know about from the recent Colin Firth film.
- We're still nowhere near being past race in America. NorthJersey.com highlights the disciplinary hearing of a grade school teacher who took to social networks and described her mostly minority students as "future criminals."
- Gawker has some coverage of the dubious sale of one of Ohio's prisons to a for-profit corporation. Yay! Let's let more politically connected business leaders who have direct access to judges and their election campaigns further incentivize harsher rates of incarceration. It has happened before.
- The Onion has couple of pieces that move beyond simple current events humor and into the realm of the meaningful HERE and HERE.
- Green Day frontman, Billie Joe Armstrong, was removed from a Southwest Airlines flight for having "saggy pants."
On that last note, I would remind regular readers of The Hand that I have recently suggested that this year's motto could plausibly be "no, I am not making this up."
- The Guardian notes that the release of thousands of un-redacted cables by wikileaks may well spell doom Julian Assange.
- Timothy Egan has read “Last Call,” Daniel Okrent’s book detailing the power of the small, socially extreme Temperance movement and its ability to ultimately alter the Constituiton with the Volstead Act. He finds within it a warning regarding the potential impact of the so-called Tea Party.
- The Economist shines some light on the latest madness from Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. She has introduced a bill to cut off U.S. funding to any U.N. organization that recognizes the right of a Palestinian state to exist. Yup.
- The following video has been making the rounds on Twitter. It is the Real King's Speech most of us only know about from the recent Colin Firth film.
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