Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Cruising the Web

The WSJ picks apart Warren Buffett's plea for higher taxes. But in his desire to pretend that he's being taxed at an absurdly low level, he's ignoring the taxes that he does pay through taxes on corporate income. He's also eliding away that Obama's proposals for raising taxes is not on millionaires, but individuals earning $200,000 and $250,000 for couples.
And during Buffett's call for higher taxes doesn't include a call to get rid of the charitable deduction. Doing so would certainly affect how much he pays.

Ohio and Florida just got their financial statuses
upgraded as a result of the policies that new GOP governors John Kasich and Rick Scott have implemented since taking office this year. It demonstrates that such tough policies will bear results.

Matthias Shapiro of Political Math Blog has a detailed and fact-laden post
to refute liberal talking points about how Texas's economy really isn't doing that well. He's not defending Rick Perry, but he is offering a honest assessment of the jobs situation in Texas. He concludes:
People are buzzing about the new Rasmussen poll showing Perry jumping into a double-digit lead over his nearest rivals, Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann. I wouldn't get too excited right now about such results. He's the new flavor of the month. As Krauthammer pointed out last night, Donald Trump had his own bubble of high poll numbers until people realized that the idea of a Trump presidency was a joke. Most people only know a couple of things about Rick Perry and he's already undergoing a full media proctological exam. Let's see how he holds up after that. I think his high poll numbers are just an indication of how dissatisfied GOP voters are with the present field.

Jonah Goldberg warns GOP voters
not to fall into the trap of thinking that they can defeat Obama with any conservative candidate that they can put up because Obama is so weakened. They shouldn't forget that a 2012 victory has to include winning over independent voters. And so they should be applying the Buckley rule: choose the most conservative candidate who is electable.

This won't be good news for Mitt Romney but Massachusetts' health care rates are increasing from 5 to 10% more than inflation. The good news is that rate of the uninsured is the lowest in the nation. But paying for that coverage is far exceeding projections.

One of the green energy companies that Obama propped up through the stimulus just went bankrupt. So much for Obama's promise of fighting unemployment through green jobs.

Mikhail Gorbachev
now says that he should have left the Communist party five or six years earlier than he did. It sounds like he's wishing that he could have played the role that Boris Yeltsin came to play. He wishes that he'd gotten Yeltsin out of the country by making him an ambassador somewhere. It's interesting to read his reflections on mistakes that he thinks he made at the time of the 1991 coup attempt.

Stephen Hayes has been getting a lot of buzz
for his story that Paul Ryan is seriously exploring the possibility of getting into the Republican presidential contest. I'm ambivalent. I'd support Ryan wholeheartedly, but I also worry that he would be so roughed up by the primary fight and ultimately lose because he's hasn't set up an organization yet and it's getting rather late. He's the party's best spokesman for the true situation we're facing with runaway entitlement spending and what reforms we need to embrace.

The Democratic state senators up for recall survived the vote yesterday. However, sentiment in Wisconsin is leaning against a recall of Governor Walker. Expect that sentiment to increase as it becomes clear the success that the Republicans' policy changes have had there. I guess voters just aren't fond of the idea of recalling their elected officials.

Jay Cost leads us through the politics of the invisible primary.

As Dorothy Rabinowitz reports
, those making excuses for the thuggery of looters in London and Philadelphia are trotting out their traditional rhetoric and excuses. Anything but acknowledge how their chosen policies have created the situation people are facing today.