FactCheck.org Bush's Gas Attack: Does Good Policy Make Bad Politics? This is a super helpful site - one to send to the conservative relatives maybe, even. Looks like the main Bush tactic so far is going to be to just make stuff up about Kerry. The big question, then, is whether the media (especially the TV) will call them on it. How many lies do they have to tell before it becomes a big enough story to run with? We'll see, but given that the election is still eight months out, they're well on their way. Sites like this will help.

For what it's worth, I personally wouldn't mind seeing the gas tax raised one bit. I bike, take the bus and telecommute. We own a small, efficient car, and pay premium rent to live near where we work, on the grounds that time is just about the only thing you can't get more of in life so there's no point spending it in traffic. There's a shoulder-high stack of studies that point out what an incredibly negative effect sitting in traffic has on family life. It's curious that supposedly "pro-family" groups never take this issue up; I suppose scapegoating people with a different sexual orientation is an easier way to raise money than actually solving problems that affect kids' lives.

Since people aren't apparently making this connection on their own, one way to help them connect the dots is to do what economists call "sending a price signal," i.e. making it more expensive to drive, so that people consider alternatives and make housing choices that take transporation into account. I'm sure the Kerry campaign won't make this argument and it's probably just as well, but I look forward to a time when someone can at least try.
- posted by Unknown @ 9:30 AM -

 
Air America launches today. Go listen, if you can!
- posted by Unknown @ 9:02 AM -

 
In case you've been getting a sense of scandal fatigue (or scandal overload, even), but weren't sure if it's for real or just seems that way: Daily Kos is running this convenient list of 10 of the investigations occurring right now. 100% involve Republicans. You are not imagining things.
- posted by Unknown @ 8:10 AM -

 
A great article in Salon (subscription required) on globalization and the Economist, from James Galbraith (of the really interesting Univ. of Texas Inequality Project). I love a good Economist debunking, like the slicing and dicing of their two graphs at the beginning of the piece. But here's the conclusion...

Pursuing these goals will require placing the world's private financiers under a degree of regulation and control -- such as we used to have in the real golden age of development, from 1945 to 1970. That, of course, is not on the Economist's agenda. But it should be on ours.

The marginal rate (tax rate on the highest earners) was 90% in this country during most of that period, the longest sustained period of strong growth this country has ever seen. When right wingers say that high taxes inhibit growth, they're either lying, or they're at least ignoring large quantities of data.
- posted by Unknown @ 10:22 AM -

 
Steve Lopez has a point of view we just don't hear enough today...

"We are lucky enough to eat cake in the richest, most consumptive nation in history, and yet we can't stop talking about taxes, taxes, taxes.

You'd think we were the most put-upon, overburdened souls in the history of man. But in a ranking of the top 30 industrialized nations, the United States ranks 27th in local, state and federal taxation as a percentage of gross domestic product. Only Japan, South Korea and Mexico are lower."

- posted by Unknown @ 2:17 PM -

 
News story of the week. Bush campaign gear made in Burma.
- posted by Unknown @ 8:28 PM -

 
New Report Details Wal-Mart's Labor Abuses and Hidden Costs:

Wal-Mart's rock bottom wages and benefits cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars a year in basic housing, medical, childcare, and energy needs that the retailer fails to properly cover for its employees, according to a report released today by Congressman George Miller (D-Martinez).

The .pdf of the report itself and all the gory details is here, but the bottom line is that each store costs the community around it more than $400,000 a year.
- posted by Unknown @ 10:23 AM -

 
Morning crazy editorial roundup: Two from the News-Press this morning to get your blood pressure up without coffee. First, they're against the inclusionary housing ordinance on the grounds that it won't be effective in getting affordable housing built. Yet instead of proposing a real fix, they vaguely hint at some kind of "incentives" being needed. Incentives? You could build a 3 room, tin roof shack between the highway, a public bathroom and a sewage treatment plant here and sell it for three quarters of a million dollars. We sure don't need any more "incentives," but viewed through the market-fundamentalist colored glasses of the News-Press editorial page, incentives are the only solution that don't constitute "meddling." Those who are on the losing end of the housing equation here in town don't care about free market ideology and all the yammering that goes with it. They just want a place to live. If the market can't provide that - and here, clearly it hasn't - then lets try something else.

The next one was some syndicated hoo-hah from the Heritage foundation, Daniel J. Mitchell's Take ax to federal spending. It's long and could've just as well have been boiled down to this nut (warning, some of this may sound familiar):

Bigger government, though, is economically harmful. When politicians spend money, regardless of whether they get it from taxes or through borrowing, they're taking it from the productive sector of the economy.

More blind adherence to fiscally conservative idelogy, more oversimplistic garbage. Let's complete the sentence "when politicians spend money..." with a real answer: most spending goes towards things like education, firefighters & police forces (or defense, nationally), health care for people our broken system has forgotten, and protecting the environment - exactly the things that generate and maintain the so-called "productive sector" of the economy. These are democratically decided upon objectives, not the wanton desires of polticians that have been imported here from Mars that Mitchell paints them as. The "productive" sector wouldn't exist without education, the true generator of jobs in the current economy. Dumb!
- posted by Unknown @ 9:12 AM -

 
Stories like this sure make me thankful for Governor Schwarzenegger's steady hand and noble leadership...

Palo Alto High's budget is so tight that Sonia Ferrandiz-Bodoff's German teacher offers three extra credit points to any student who brings a box of tissues to class. In Cupertino, science teacher Katheryn McElwee gives her Monta Vista High students five points for a roll of paper towels.

Thank you, Governor. Thank you so much for the $72 you saved me on my Vehicle License Fee, and for saving me from the horrible, horrible burden that taxation imposes on our free society. Those darn kids shouldn't have to blow their noses anyway. I agree with you, Governor, that the fraud, waste and abuse in our school systems is just an abomination. So again, thank you.
- posted by Unknown @ 9:31 AM -

 
So, I'm going to give the Supreme Court a call today and see if I can schedule a duck hunting trip with Mr. Scalia. Or maybe he'd like to come here to Santa Barbara to give a nice keynote:

As the Supreme Court was weighing a landmark gay rights case last year, Justice Antonin Scalia gave a keynote dinner speech in Philadelphia for an advocacy group waging a legal battle against gay rights.

How is this possibly OK? How should this guy not be impeached so fast that it'd make his head spin?
- posted by Unknown @ 8:31 AM -

 
I'm glad Peaceful Tomorrows (a group of families of people who died Sept. 11th) and the NYFD find the September 11th flag-draped coffins in Bush's first campaign ads as offensive as I do. They're asking the campaign to withdraw the ads, although it seems to be falling deaf ears so far.

Sometime this week I'm going to write up an election wrap-up. It was a tough one and has been hard to think about, but these things seem to work better if they've sat and marinated for a week or so so I'm not rushing it.
- posted by Unknown @ 10:58 PM -