Politics

A law professor has evaluated the federal tax code on the basis of Judeo-Christian ethics, and found it immoral. The abstract of the paper:

This article severely criticizes the Bush Administration’s tax policies under the moral principles of Judeo-Christian ethics. I first document that Judeo-Christian ethics is the most relevant moral analysis for tax policy because almost eighty percent of Americans and well over ninety percent of the Congress, including President Bush, claim to adhere to the Christian or Jewish faiths. I also show that evaluating federal tax policy under Judeo-Christian principles not only passes constitutional muster but is also appropriate under the norms of a democracy. I then provide a complete theological framework that can be applied to any tax policy structure. Using sources that include leading Evangelical and other Protestant scholars, Papal Encyclicals and Jewish scholars, I prove that tax policy structures meeting the moral principles of Judeo-Christian ethics must raise adequate revenues that not only cover the needs of the minimum state but also ensure that all citizens have a reasonable opportunity to reach their potential. Among other things, reasonable opportunity requires adequate education, healthcare, job training and housing. Using these theological sources, I also establish that flat and consumption tax regimes which shift a large part of the burden to the middle classes are immoral. Consequently, Judeo-Christian based tax policy requires the tax burden to be allocated under a moderately progressive regime. I discuss the difficulties of defining that precisely and also conclude that confiscatory tax policy approaching a socialistic framework is also immoral. I then apply this Judeo-Christian ethical analysis to the first term Bush Administration’s tax cuts and find those policies to be morally problematic. Using a wealth of sources, I then establish that the moral values driving the Bush Administration’s tax policy decisions reflect objectivist ethics, a form of atheism that exalts individual property rights over all other moral considerations. Given the overwhelming adherence to Christianity and Judaism, I conclude that President Bush, many members of Congress and many Americans are not meeting the moral obligations of their faiths, and, I argue that tax policy must start reflecting genuine Judeo-Christian values if the country is to survive in the long run.

Oopsie.

I hold the now somewhat old-fashioned belief that wealthier people should be subject to higher tax rates. It is nice to know that Warren Buffet agrees with me:

I wouldn’t support it. We have, in my view, a taxation system that’s much too flat already. If you look at the payroll tax—which is over 12% now, and that applies on the first $80,000 or $90,000 of income—Bill and I pay practically none of that in relation to our income. For the people that work for us, their tax rate in many cases is the same or even higher than my own, since the rate on capital gains and dividends was cut to 15%. What has gone on in this country in recent years is a huge benefit to the very rich and not that much relief to people down below. Frankly, I think that Bill and I should have a higher tax rate on the income we get. We pay less than half the rate that I was paying 25 years ago when I was making a lot less money. They have really taken care of the rich.

(Via Rafe Colburn)

Jason Lefkowitz’s take on President Bush’s nomination of Harriet Miers as Supreme Court justice:

[T]he nomination sends a message loud and clear to all the conservatives who have supported Bush through it all over the years:
You’ve been punk’d. Suckers.
This is the moment you’ve been waiting decades for. The moment when an opening on the Supreme Court could be filled by a real, rock-ribbed, hard core True Grit Winger. Someone who’d put the women back in the kitchen and God back in the classroom and courtroom where he belongs.
O the trials you have endured, waiting for this moment. You gave every spare penny you could find to the Bush campaigns. You wrote letter after letter after letter to the editor. You canvassed and lit-dropped till your feet bled.
You even turned your church over to the GOP — allowed the tawdry ambitions of man into the House of God — because you believed in George W. Bush. When he said he was born again, you nodded me, too. When he said he wanted a “culture of life”, you said preach it, brother!
And then, after all the years of waiting, the moment came. And George W. Bush looked back at you and said:
Fuck you.

Go read the entire post; it continues and gets even better.

Holy curmudgeon, batman! I can’t believe it: I agree with Andy Rooney about something, specifically, the cost of the war in Iraq (though I still can’t stand him).

I swiped this image from Eliot Gelwan’s excellent blog, Follow Me Here:

From Maureen Dowd, regarding President Bush:

Why does this self-styled “can do” president always lapse into such lame “who could have known?” excuses.
Who on earth could have known that Osama bin Laden wanted to attack us by flying planes into buildings? Any official who bothered to read the trellis of pre-9/11 intelligence briefs.
Who on earth could have known that an American invasion of Iraq would spawn a brutal insurgency, terrorist recruiting boom and possible civil war? Any official who bothered to read the C.I.A.’s prewar reports.
Who on earth could have known that New Orleans’s sinking levees were at risk from a strong hurricane? Anybody who bothered to read the endless warnings over the years about the Big Easy’s uneasy fishbowl.

Making the rounds in the blog world today is an interesting Scientific American article about how and when young children learn to understand symbols.
Of course, the article got its own front-page post on MetaFilter, and the first commenter to that thread made a hilarious observation: “Even some older kids still miss the point”