Christmas carols have been in and out of fashion over of the centuries. Sometimes religious groups such as the Puritans believed singing holiday music was frivolous. At other times, it was thought the activity was related to idolatry and shouldn’t be allowed. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Iraq has shut its airspace to four Syrian flights scheduled to pick up attack helicopters that had been repaired in Russia, the spokesman to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said Tuesday. Syria has failed several times since June to retrieve the refurbished helicopters from Russia, and the regime of Bashar al-Assad appears to be growing more desperate as fighting intensifies. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
While most of the IRS’s various statistical reports tend to inspire little excitement in the public and media, the agency’s latest report,“Individual Income Tax Returns, 2010” is something of a barnburner, in part because it confirms several troubling trends in the federal income tax. A few stand outs: ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
All the yakking about a fiscal cliff seems to fall somewhere between mistaken Mayan prophecies about Doomsday and hypersonic skydiving from space.
The lame-duck 112th Congress – hamstrung by Tea Party Republicans in the House and filibuster-happy Republicans in the Senate – is proposing to Democratic President Barack Obama that Social Security, Medicare and other social services be cut. Meanwhile, the Economic Policy Institute has released a report with a solution: Cut the deficit by growing the economy. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The “fiscal cliff” is a a metaphor for a government that no longer responds to the biggest challenges we face because it’s paralyzed by intransigent Republicans, obsessed by the federal budget deficit, and overwhelmed by big money from corporations, Wall Street, and billionaires.
If we had a functional government America would address three “cliffs” posing far larger dangers to us than the fiscal one: ↓ Read the rest of this entry…