Ben Stein, droll Renaissance man, said in a recent piece in the New York Times that he doesn’t like paying taxes. But the lawyer, actor, and one-time speech writer for two presidents (Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford) is unimpressed with the supply side economics of the two most recent two-term GOP presidents, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. He’s also unimpressed that presumptive Republican nominee John McCain intends to continue supply side policies if elected president in November, stating that at a time when revenues are stagnant, deficits and indebtedness to foreign lenders are exploding, and government is growing, he will not allow tax increases during his tenure. Some increases in spending are essential, Stein believes, especially in rebuilding the US military.
That means, Stein says, that McCain’s prescription is precisely wrong. Writes Stein:
…the unhappy fact is that it’s necessary to raise my taxes and the taxes of all upper-income Americans. (I do wish, however, that “upper income” started just a dollar above me.)
The sad truth of the last two two-term Republican presidents is that their economic premise, the key part of their economic game plan, simply has not done what it’s supposed to do.
That is, cutting taxes, especially on upper-income Americans, does not generate so much economic activity that it replaces all the lost I.R.S. take and then some. At least those have been the results so far. When Ronald Reagan lowered taxes, personal income tax revenue stagnated from 1982 to 1984. Now, you may say that revenue rose sharply after that. So maybe that was a mixed result.
But when President Bush drastically cut taxes after he was first elected, the I.R.S. take from individual income taxes fell and did not recover its 2001 level until 2006.A conservative purist might rejoin here that it would be fine if income tax receipts fell, because we would then have a smaller government and a freer society.
That would be nice, but far from true. Instead, government just keeps growing. Government spending grew dramatically under President Reagan, very nearly doubling, and leaving us with a federal deficit vastly bigger than the one he inherited. I know that a large chunk of that increase was to rebuild the military. I heartily approved of it.
But if you want to have a military buildup — and we need one now, desperately — that’s usually a reason to raise taxes, not cut them.
Under the current president, we have had the same story. As income tax receipts fell, military and other spending rose rapidly. Again, this spending was justified as far as I’m concerned. But we have been left with immense deficits and a doubled national debt as President Bush enters his final months in office.
Mr. McCain wants to extend many of President Bush’s income tax cuts and to reduce taxes on corporations. But the facts of life are that we have a large budget deficit, even though some other nations have even larger deficits as percentages of gross domestic product. We have to pay interest on it. As a people and a nation, we owe this money in large part to foreigners — and that can have political implications. The facts of life are that federal spending is almost all untouchable: the military, Social Security, Medicare, interest on the debt, pensions. The discretionary part is tiny.
What’s intriguing about Stein’s critique of McCain’s stated intention of making the Bush2 tax cuts permanent and to not raise taxes during his watch is that Ben Stein, the son of one time chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Nixon, Herb Stein, is a conservative Republican. It isn’t just in the realm of foreign policy that the neo-orthodoxies of postmodern conservatism are questioned by traditional conservative thinking. That can’t bode well for John McCain as he strives to knit a new Republican coalition this year.
As someone who is concerned about government accountability, I admire exceedingly Alan Grayson, now running for our 8th District here in Florida (see here and here).
Because of his track record suing defense contractors, Grayson is completely uninterested and unintimidated by ridiculous arguments about secrecy and national security. He thinks that war crimes have been committed, that people need to be put in prison, and that we absolutely cannot let bygones be bygones with the 2000-2008 era. He’s also running a good campaign with one of the best commercials I’ve ever seen., and doing it without any help from the DC establishment.
July 23rd, 2008 by DAVID SCHRAUB, Assistant Editor
I’m live-blogging a forum on the McCain and Obama campaign’s tax policies here (it’s in progress right now). Both campaigns have representatives present, and analysis is being done by the Tax Policy Center.
UPDATE: Okay, live-blog done. Hope you enjoyed (and were more enlightened than poor me!).
You will not read a more visceral and affecting account of what the demise of the Big Three means to individuals, families, neighborhoods and regions than this one from Michigan (cross-posted from Michigan Liberal):
Yesterday my family joined the ever-growing group of Michigan families who now face an uncertain economic future due to lay-offs in the auto industry.
My dad’s employer, once part of The Big Three, offered their employees age 50 and over a puny buyout package, with the hopes that 300-400 people take them up on it. Whispers around the office led most to believe that if the buyouts weren’t taken, they’d still most likely be without a job, and the measly benefits. So as of August 1st, my dad will stay in Michigan, unemployed, with a mortgage, bills, and a very uncertain future. His job, like so many others, is heading to Mexico.
The news broke my heart and my spirit, just as it has for thousands others.
Here’s what worries me most - like many other laid off auto workers, my dad’s in his late fifties, with a bad back, arthritis starting to set in, and a minimal college education in auto repair, no thanks to the GI Bill. He can send me email, watch the funny YouTube videos I send him, but that’s about as far as his computer skills go. With a crummy economy, how does my dad compete with all the hungry, tech-savvy college graduates that don’t have families to support?
This is not the American Dream, this is the Auto Industry Nightmare.
Now what? Barack Obama? John McCain? Gov. Granholm? Anybody?
Under the radar screens of most Americans last week, a huge tax fraud case that implicates Switzerland’s leading bank was exposed. The case, which implicates a former American manager at UBS named Bradley Birkenfeld, could involve up to $20 billion and result in undermining Switzerland’s long-cherished reputation for bank secrecy.
“The testimony of 43-year-old Bradley Birkenfeld, who worked for UBS in Geneva from 2001 to 2006, is remarkable, and his description of the means used to deceive the American tax collector quite astonishing. But it remains to be seen - and this is the key question - whether these actions and practices were specific to him, or whether as he claims they were inspired, advised and even imposed by the bank itself, which is alleged to have set up a system. ”
“We must avoid any hasty conclusions in an investigation that has the potential to have explosive effects - for UBS of course, but more generally for the position of Swiss finance. … the enormous interests at stake, against a backdrop of fierce competition between financial centers on both sides of the Atlantic, contributes little to calming spirits.”
So our Sunday morning political festival will apparently be opening up with a late breaking story from Newsweek. In it, we find a tawdry tale of tax scofflaws thumbing their nose at their civic responsibilities… sort of.
Mrs. McCain, San Diego County Would Like a Word
When you’re poor, it can be hard to pay the bills. When you’re rich, it’s hard to keep track of all the bills that need paying. It’s a lesson Cindy McCain learned the hard way when NEWSWEEK raised questions about an overdue property-tax bill on a La Jolla, Calif., property owned by a trust that she oversees.
San Diego County officials, it turns out, have been sending out tax notices on the La Jolla property, an oceanfront condo, for four years without receiving a response. County records show the bills, which were mailed to a Phoenix address associated with Mrs. McCain’s trust, were returned by the post office.
Since I am a thinly disguised, cheap lowbrow hack, let’s get the mandatory McCain joke out of the way, shall we?
Wow! That John McCain really IS opposed to taxes, isn’t he?!
Har Har Har.
The story has already prompted a predictable response from some of the GOP’s detractors, causing some to label the McCains “deadbeats”, others to call this a “tax scandal” and causing The American Street’s Mark Adams to declare it the end of Big Mac’s presidential bid, with a banner to be hung over the McCain campaign headquarters reading, “Abandon hope all ye that enter here.”
A deeper look at this story, however, makes it a bit less of a clear-cut scandal or disaster of biblical proportions. First of all, it’s not clear that John McCain’s name is even attached to the property in any fashion. It’s also not directly held by his wife, Cindy, but by one of a number of trusts she oversees. (An elderly aunt of hers apparently lives in the condo.) Tax bills on the property have been sent out regularly, but it seems that they were being mailed to an old, incorrect address - not the bank currently handling the property - and being returned by the post office to the sender. It seems unlikely that Cindy McCain was even aware of the overdue bill, and even less probable that Senator McCain has even heard of the place for years.
Does this excuse Cindy McCain’s trust from their obligations to pay their taxes? Obviously not. And as the article shows, as soon as the error was pointed out, remissions were made.
Shortly after NEWSWEEK inquired about the matter, the McCain aide e-mailed a receipt dated Friday, June 27, confirming payment by the trust to San Diego County in the amount of $6,744.42. County officials say the trust still owes an additional $1,742 for this year, an amount that is overdue and will go into default July 1. Told of the outstanding $1,742, the aide said: “The trust has paid all bills shown owing as of today and will pay all other bills due.”
An embarassing error on the part of the heiress’s accounting staff to be sure. But does this story reflect on the personal responsibility and character of the candidate? I’ll leave that for the reader to judge, but this honestly sounds like the kind of paperwork snafu which can and does happen in any large, sprawling business enterprise. And does anyone think that roughly eight thousand dollars is even a fly on the windscreen of Cindy McCain’s family holdings?
I somehow doubt that John McCain is sharpening up his samurai sword for a seppuku ritual over this one. As for me, I’ll try to strike a balance between being shocked and bored.
BONUS ROUND: Hot Air has a bit more of an analysis on how this situation really doesn’t parallel Al Franken’s ongoing tax woes.
June 25th, 2008 by DAVID SCHRAUB, Assistant Editor
The Earned Income Tax Credit is one of America’s most successful programs battling poverty. Originally passed in the Ford administration, the EITC supplements the wages of poor, working families, giving them a boost as they work their way up the economic ladder. Its innovative “plateau” formula means that it acts to promote, not discourage, work: the credit rises alongside income up to a certain level, then (after flat-lining for awhile), begins to phase itself out as families transition to middle-class status. Because of this, the EITC enjoys broad bipartisan support — including former head of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, N. Gregory Mankiw.
However, despite a sterling record of accomplishment, the EITC has one of the lowest participation rates of any federal tax credit. A full quarter of eligible individuals (seven million people) miss out — either because it’s too complicated or because they just don’t know about it.
In light of that, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) have sponsored a bill simply requiring corporations to give eligible employees information about the EITC along with their W-2 form. The bill is supported by group as disparate as the SEIU and Wal-Mart (which has announced it will voluntarily adopt the guidelines starting next tax cycle).
But, as Rep. Emanuel said in the official announcement, this is a bill he hopes never has to get passed — for it is a regulation that could be implemented much faster and much more easily simply via an order from Treasury Secretary Paulson. Paulson could, with a stroke of a pen, help millions of working families and give the economy a well-timed stimulus. But, if he refuses to act, then hopefully the Schumer/Emanuel bill will force the issue and give millions of Americans the tax relief they are already entitled to under the law.
“The United States will not emerge from its deep structural crisis or its demented warmongering course without major surgery, even within the system. That requires first and foremost the dismantling of Bushism - a difficult task that will take awhile, and Obama is the only candidate with the support and the indispensable social energy to do it … provided they let him reach the White House.” Read the rest of this entry »
May 30th, 2008 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
[SEE UPDATE AT END OF ARTICLE]
Sales Tax Comes to the Internet For Certain: It’s true.
Tonight I went online to send a birthday gift to a friend in New York. When I went to the ‘checkout’ screen, a big red-lettered notice came up saying as of June 1, 2008, sales tax will be applied to all purchases being shipped to New York, no matter where they originate from
This new NY state law of taxing internet purchases and trades… was initiated by Eliot Spitzer and signed into law some days ago by the acting Governor, Paterson …since Spitzer was rather literally spit out of office for being involved in a prostitution ring…after a career of legally pursuing prostitution rings to bring them to justice.
New York tax law is already confusing enough. Not only do the rates change unexpectedly, get completely dropped or even disappear entirely at certain “tax holidays” throughout the year, now New York is trying to get a piece of the online pie.
The new tax law for affiliates started with the former governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer who was recently forced to resign from his post after being linked to an high-priced prostitution ring. The law which requires that Amazon and other online retailers collect New York sales tax, did not disappear along with the resignation however, as the new governor Paterson could clearly see the revenue potential of taxing New York based affiliates.
This new law is a huge blow to big online retailers like Amazon.com who have already been fighting the issue with a lawsuit against the state of New York, which was filed in early May.
Other retailers have already started dropping their New York affiliates to avoid the issue altogether: Borders, the mammoth book and music retailer, has announced it will begin selling its own products online.
Complicating things further, the suit filed by Amazon begs the question - how important is location in the internet age? Locations across the globe are accessible by a simple Google search, creating the potential for consumers to buy anything from anywhere. Affiliate programs such as Amazon, Overstock and countless others have simplified the seeking out of merchandise for consumers. Why should a Seattle-based company like Amazon be required to collect New York taxes on behalf of a state the retail giant doesn’t even reside in?
As of today, Overstock.com has also sued the State of New York.
And… in the meantime, All I know, is that tonight is the first time I have EVER paid sales tax to another state for an online purchase… ordering from a company in Chicago an item no doubt made in China, ordering it from my office in the Rockies, and said item being sent to Manhattan, crossing at least five state lines in the process.
UPDATE I spoke to a legal eagle in NYC tonight, and it seems that up at the NY State capital, Albany, there are issues about apportionment of state monies, with various long serving government workers going without raises for years, (more than 5-8 years in some cases), while various parts of the state fall into disrepair for lack of funds.
At the state capital there are, apparently, various ideas about how to extract new revenues. Some say Read the rest of this entry »
When and if Barack Obama takes the oath of office as President of the United States, who most will he owe that high privilege to?
According to Alexandre Adler, one of France’s leading historians, journalists - and according to many - a neocon, that person would be George W. Bush. Read the rest of this entry »
Apparently some conservative churches want to be politically active AND keep their tax exempt status. I hope this issue provokes a serious reconsideration of the rationale for special tax treatment.
I have never been much of a fan of the idea of tax exempt status. It seems to me that these organizations use the resources of the community as much as anyone else: Police, Fire, EMS, Street maintenance, Water, Sewage… And to the extent that they do not share in the tax burden the rest of us have to pay more than our fair share. I can accept that these spiritual operations may be providing some services that benefit the community such as feeding the poor that deserve some consideration. Perhaps they can pay slightly lower taxes in proportion to the services they provide or the government can pay them for the services provided.
This is true also for the tax exempt status of government entities. Here in Austin the land and buildings owned by the State and Federal government do not pay property taxes and their holdings are significant. In downtown Austin the State owns more than 13,000 parking spaces in the form of lots and structures. Again, to the extent that these entities do not pay property taxes the higher are those taxes for the rest of us.
I used to think that the GOP would be the party to lead the effort to revisit the long term habits of government that may no longer be reasonable or justified. The current effort of the White House to resist excessive farm subsidies is welcome but it is only a tiny bite of a very large problem. All of our taxes would be lower if the exemptions were as few as possible.
In his book, Schecter makes the case for why, although he supported McCain in his run in 2000, McCain no longer deserves support and in fact, his candidacy should be fought actively, without hesitation and on all fronts. Schecter outlines his reasons for these sentiments and fills in those reasons with more details than you may be able to absorb. Schecter draws a portrait of both McCain’s political trajectory and the parallel trajectory of how his political choices since 2001 are a thumbing of his nose at the very people who got him to the presidential precipice in the first place.
A couple of disclosures before I offer you my phone interview with Cliff: I’ve never been a McCain supporter. And I haven’t known of Schecter that long either - here’s the first post I ever wrote about Schecter. However, it was fascinating talking to someone with a seemingly vast knowledge base about someone whom I’ve never really studied.
JMZ: You argue on behalf of former McCain supporters who should be able to realize that McCain isn’t what he once was. Who, then, is the alternative and why?
CS: Well. There’s always, “What we have versus what we’d like to have.” I’m an Obama supporter and he has a lot of appeal to Independents. But he hasn’t done it the way McCain did it – by attacking his own party in big speeches. Obama has done it by standing up, not by splitting. Obama talks about rising above partisanship and reaching out to all people on all sides and getting past the muck where politics has gotten so nasty. Obama says, I’m going to talk to you like an adult. And that’s what McCain had called “straight talk” – but he hasn’t given us much of that [this election cycle.] Read the rest of this entry »
May 6th, 2008 by MICHAEL STICKINGS, Assistant Editor
In case you missed it, here’s what Hillary had to say about her idiotic gas-tax holiday proposal on ABC’s This Week:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Economists say that’s not going to happen. They say this is going to go straight into the profits of the oil companies. They’re not going to actually lower their prices. And the two top leaders in the House are against it. Nearly every editorial board and economist in the country has come out against it. Even a supporter of yours, Paul Krugman of The New York Times, calls it pointless and disappointing.
Can you name one economist, a credible economist who supports the suspension?
CLINTON: Well, you know, George, I think we’ve been for the last seven years seeing a tremendous amount of government power and elite opinion basically behind policies that haven’t worked well for the middle class and hard-working Americans. From the moment I started this campaign, I’ve said that I am absolutely determined that we’re going to reverse the trends that have been going on in our government and in our political system, because what I have seen is that the rich have gotten richer. A vast majority — I think something like 90 percent — of the wealth gains over the last seven years have gone to the top 10 percent of wage earners in America.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But can you name an economist who thinks this makes sense?
CLINTON: Well, I’ll tell you what, I’m not going to put my lot in with economists, because I know if we get it right, if we actually did it right, if we had a president who used all the tools of the presidency, we would design it in such a way that it would be implemented effectively.
So, everyone who knows anything about it, and isn’t just in it for the votes, opposes it, including Krugman, one of her leading supporters in the punditocracy. And Hillary doesn’t give a damn. She’s fightin’ for “hard-working Americans,” while everyone who criticizes her is part of some out-of-touch elite. And the economists? Damn them, too (unless they agree with her on, oh, say, health care or something, in which case she’s more than happy to have them on her side).
It’s bad enough that she’s running like a Republican. Now it seems she’s given up on reality altogether — or at least that’s the way her pandering comes across. She may not have embraced faith-based “reality” in reality — it’s just politics, you know, and she’s a faux populist — but the fact (in our fact-based reality) that she’s using this issue to distinguish herself from Obama (who refuses to sign on to such dangerous nonsense), as well as to attack him, says a lot about her candidacy, not to mention what she has become as a politician.
Regular gas was $3.55 a gallon here in southeastern Ohio yesterday.
Many people I know are curbing their summer travel plans. They’re even doing more planning when it comes to everyday errands, combining them so as not to waste gas.
This, of course, as average fuel prices climb, is happening across the country and the three leading presidential candidates have noticed. They’ve also noticed that the big oil companies are reporting record profits.
Obama has, in effect, put himself in the position of opposing a tax reduction.
That can be a dangerous stance to take. Early in the administration of George W. Bush, the President proposed tax cuts. Supply side economics insisted that if the federal government reduced Americans’ tax burdens, the economy would be stimulated and overall federal revenues would increase as a result of increased investment in the economy and greater personal income. The Bush tax cuts went into effect, but in the Senate, two members of the President’s Republican party opposed the plan: Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and John McCain of Arizona. At the time, McCain argued that reductions in taxes ought to be matched by reductions in spending.
McCain’s classic conservative position didn’t match the new conservative orthodoxy however, an orthodoxy which I think, results from a misreading of the Reagan years. Reagan, you’ll remember, got Congress to pass tax cuts as well. At the same time, Congress went along with massive increases in Defense Department outlays, endorsing the Reagan policy of trying to bring down “the evil empire” by forcing the Soviet Union into an arms and spending race that, it was thought, would bring the Soviets to their senses or to their knees. The Soviet Union collapsed, I believe, under the weight of the moral and fiscal bankruptcy of communism and because of a combination of the policy of containment in place from 1945 on in the US and the stupid decisions of the Moscow regime, the stupidest of which being the war in Afghanistan, where Muslim zealots like Osama bin Laden fought a guerilla war of attrititon designed to bleed the Soviets of people and money.
But Reagan insiders and apologists like Peter Robinson–whose book, How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life is excellent, by the way–conclude that in the end, budget deficits don’t matter. I doubt that Reagan himself, a stalwart opponent of deficits for decades, would draw the same conclusion, seeing the deficits his administration ran as temporary, and regrettable, expedients, necessary in the face-off with the Soviet Union, essential to causing the Soviets to reduce their nuclear stockpile.
McCain’s initial refusal to support the Bush tax cuts has won him a world of hostility from believers in the new conservative orthodoxy. Read the rest of this entry »
Republican presumptive Presidential nominee Senator John McCain is now riding high in the polls and in his cross-country image building trip: he can watch the two Democratic Presidential wannabes bloody themselves (and their party) up. But he faces a ticking time bomb in November: he’s running a campaign deferential to President George Bush when polls and historian rankings show Bush to be one of the most poorly-ranked in American history.
Bush’s poll numbers aren’t the lowest in history (yet) but he is so far down that he can see a sign that says SOUTH POLE and he needs to be careful of relief-seeking sniffing dogs.
Even worse worse in terms of the long view and his legacy, just look at this historians’ poll:
A Pew Research Center poll released last week found that the share of the American public that approves of President George W. Bush has dropped to a new low of 28 percent.
An unscientific poll of professional historians completed the same week produced results far worse for a president clinging to the hope that history will someday take a kinder view of his presidency than does contemporary public opinion.
In an informal survey of 109 professional historians conducted over a three-week period through the History News Network, 98.2 percent assessed the presidency of Mr. Bush to be a failure while 1.8 percent classified it as a success.
Can it get yet worse? Yes:
Asked to rank the presidency of George W. Bush in comparison to those of the other 41 American presidents, more than 61 percent of the historians concluded that the current presidency is the worst in the nation’s history. Another 35 percent of the historians surveyed rated the Bush presidency in the 31st to 41st category, while only four of the 109 respondents ranked the current presidency as even among the top two-thirds of American administrations.
Clintons Made $109 Million Since Leaving White House
Here’s the Friday night news dump: The Clintons had gross income of $109 million for 2000 to 2007, according to newly released tax documents. President Clinton made $51.8 million speeches over eight years and $29.6 million in book income, while Sen. Clinton made $10.5 million in book income.
The Clintons paid $33.8 million in taxes between 2000-2007, or 31% of adjusted gross income, and gave $10.26 million to charity over eight years.
Here are links to each tax return: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007
More details will be coming as reporters scrutinize the documents.
Over at Political Insider, I list the top five reasons why this was the perfect time to release this information.
Barack Obama’s speech on race and religion, called a seminal moment in the presidential campaign even by some conservatives, is now history and the spotlight is about the shift to Hillary Clinton. And perhaps uncomfortably so for someone who has spent so much time attacking her opponent on the issue of experience.
This is because of the long awaited and much anticipated release by the National Archives of thousands of pages of records from Clinton’s days in the White House as First Lady (photo), including speeches, logs of visitors and other details.
Central to the release is whether the records back up her contention that those years were a key element of her “35 years of experience” or merely are a detailed account of the daily grind of a woman who played a tangential role in domestic policy-making and had no role at all in foreign policy.
The Guardian’s initial examination of the records found that “she was often far from the site of decision-making during some of the most pivotal events of Bill Clinton’s presidency.”
The records are being released in response to a suit brought under the Freedom of Information Act by the conservative group, Judicial Watch.
The development is also likely to bring unwanted attention to the continued refusal of the Clintons to release their tax records. While Obama and John McCain have done so, the Clintons continue to stonewall, creating the impression that the candidate’s calls for transparency in government don’t include herself and that the records contain potentially embarrassing information that would hurt her struggling campaign.
What does the rest of the world think of President Bush’s last State of the Union Address? Among a number of quite skeptical reactions on WORLDMEETS.US, this editorial from de Volkskrant of The Netherlands assures, ‘One thing is certain: he will not be remembered as a uniter.’
EDITORIAL
Translated By Meta Mertens
January 29, 2008
The Netherlands - de Volkskrant - Original Article (Dutch)
At the beginning of his first term in 2001, George W. Bush promised to work as a “uniter, not a divider.” Over the years, this pledge has become a shrill echo. The last word on the meaning of Bush’s presidency has yet to be uttered, if only because he still has nearly a year to go and in his remaining time he isn’t as much of a lame duck as is sometimes suggested. One thing is certain: he will not be remembered as a uniter.
Monday night, he delivered his last State of the Union speech to Congress WATCH . The President himself of course assured that the country is well-governed, but the reality is different. The nation is deeply divided over the ongoing war in Iraq, even though last year’s surge led to a decrease in sectarian violence. In addition to this divisive struggle, the United States has recently been struggling against a looming recession.
The manner in which Bush treated economic problems in his speech is indicative of his unwillingness to compromise with the Democratic majority in Congress. To save the economy from a recession, the White House has launched a stimulus plan that consists primarily of a tip to tax payers. This is too little too late …
Ben Stein, droll Renaissance man, said in a recent piece in the New York Times that he doesn’t like paying taxes. But the lawyer, actor, and one-time speech writer for two presidents (Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford) is unimpressed with the supply side economics of the two most recent two-term GOP presidents, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. He’s also unimpressed that presumptive Republican nominee John McCain intends to continue supply side policies if elected president in November, stating that at a time when revenues are stagnant, deficits and indebtedness to foreign lenders are exploding, and government is growing, he will not allow tax increases during his tenure. Some increases in spending are essential, Stein believes, especially in rebuilding the US military.
Barack Obama’s speech on race and religion, called a seminal moment in the presidential campaign even by some conservatives, is now history and the spotlight is about the shift to Hillary Clinton. And perhaps uncomfortably so for someone who has spent so much time attacking her opponent on the issue of experience.
