Liberal Talk Radio

Handy little calculator for figuring out what your tax cut would be under an Obama administration. Clearly designed to remind people that, unless you make over $500k/yr, Obama’s plan means less taxes for you.
Of course, I don’t really go for the whole tax cutting argument. Taxes are used to buy government services, and [...]

… I must find out where they are going so I can lead them!

Matt and I talked about leadership on this week’s podcast, as in, we want to see more of it from our politicians. Pols, however, tend to follow polls. They want to do what’s popular.
But what if the [...]

Read Jon Cohn on why Medicare is awesome and how the only way to make it more awesome would be to cover everyone and have us all pay for it via a payroll tax deduction.

Damon Agnos reminds me of the best chart ever for countering the argument that we’re too heavily taxed in Seattle (Seattle ranks #42 out of 50 and Seattlites pay less in total taxes than residents of Phoenix, AZ or Billings, MT).
But his solution seems wrong to me:
Our low tax burden is one reason [...]

Goldy has a great take-down of the Seattle Times’ disingenuous efforts to paint Gov. Gregoire as an out-of-control spender.
Indeed, as a liberal, my biggest beef with Gregoire is that she hasn’t invested enough in the state. If she was actually the tax-and-spend socialist that the Times portrays her as, I’d be a lot happer [...]

In which my book purchase betrays my campaign bias.

I agree with this Ezra Klein post 100%:
But if Obama is going to be the transformational, Reagan-style pol he presents himself as, he’s going to have to grow comfortable speaking positively of the role of government, and selling some of his initiatives as good ideas worth paying for. It’s worth it to have effective [...]

Following up on this post from last week, an article in the San Francisco Chronicle highlights some efforts underway in CA to combat climate change via smart growth:
In Oakland, Fruitvale Village demonstrates how infill development, where new land uses are created on sites previously used for another purpose such as manufacturing, can encourage economic revitalization [...]

Matt Yglesias questions the effectiveness of charitable donations to wealthy universities and arts and cultural institutions, and wonders if we need to restrict the tax exemption:
To me, to figure this out we’d need to have some serious estimates about the impact of restricting charitable deductions. How much new tax revenue are we talking about? If [...]

If my previous post didn’t convince you that the current stimulus packages being bandied about are ill-conceived, how about hearing it from a Nobel prize-winning economist?
We should begin by strengthening the unemployment insurance system, because money received by the unemployed would be spent immediately.
The federal government should also provide some assistance to states and localities, [...]