I thought that post was really well put, and I'm not even as opposed as destor to marketing tools (at least if there's some policy we're really marketing).

John 

http://www.haberarts.com/

I think Mark put it very well...

I am very concerned that the Senator seems to elevate the importance of electoral success over the importance of good policies.  I am very troubled by what I read from Senator Schumer feeling that good policies are only important as long as they allow the D's to stay in power.  It (what the Senator proposes) all seems very politically expedient to me and runs contrary to good public policy.

A problem with trying to tax porn is identifying what porn is.  It is easy to identify alcoholic drinks, tobacco based products, gambling, etc., but porn is somewhat, at the least, in the eye of the beholder.  Much of what is mainstream TV today would have been declared to be porn back in 1950.  And, large areas of the country would still declare it to be porn. 

Hoppy in Sacramento

This "tax cheats" argument has probably got to stop, I think. I mean, the IRS claims there's a huge gap but... the IRS would say that, right? I mean, the agency is somewhat motivated to get more funding for itself, after all.

But I rather doubt that the gap is as big as the IRS claims it is. We have an incredibly high filing compliance rate and people who file tend to use accountants or software to do so. How many are outright cheating, do you think?

Of the ones the IRS will be able to identify, how many will be rich and how many will be poor. Of the rich ones, how many will take the IRS to court and beat the agency back?

I'm all for overhauling the tax code, and making it more progressive. But this "close the tax gap" argument just seems like it will empower the IRS to hound people who can least defend themselves.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

I'm not sure why 50% is a gimmick. It seems more realistic than pledging to eradicate problems altogether.

Are the UN's Millennium Development Goals ridiculous just because they aim to do things by halves? A lot of countries are on their way to meeting many of these goals, which, to my mind, is a good thing.

The fact that the proportion of people in Bolivia without sustainable access to drinking water will most likely be halved by 2015 seems like a good thing to me.

But maybe I'm just stuck in a philosophy of "fifty-percentism."

Absolutely!

And I was a little depressed by the direction  of his "at least" and "up to" here.  Raise legal immigration less... cut illegal immigration more...the end result is less immigration totally, which makes the policy anti-immigrant in toto.  Given the nature of policy decisions about who is elligible...the implication is more well educated and well-trained immigrants (the people not like my grandparents) will be welcomed into our technical meritocracy, but not the poor, but willing immigrants (the people absolutely like my grandparents). 

This is so pernicious--from so many different perspectives--that a long rant is called for-- (by someone else, please).  Let me just say that a policy like this is as much a robbery of a national resource as other forms of exploitation.  What percentage of those educated in the health professions in the Philippines actually work in the Philippines? 

We've come a long way from Emma Lazarus' sentiments.  But then we respect the statue in the abstract and allow the idea it represents to be dishonored by the breaking of them, don't we.

aMike

Politicians are not leaders they are followers. At best they can package up ideas that have come from elsewhere and get them made into useful legislation.

So if the Dems don't have a coherent set of goals it's our fault. The academics, pundits, philosophers and dreamers haven't been putting forth the kinds of ideas that can coalesce into a common theme. Part of the reason is that no politician wants to get ahead of the crowd on the intractable issues of our day. These include over population and declining resources. Both issues imply some sort of social control and/or adjustments to the standard of living, especially among the haves of this world. We, especially in the US, are unprepared to scale back our consumerist lifestyle. Substituting alcohol for gasoline is not a real solution, but nobody wants to say "drive less" or "get a smaller car".

As long as no one wants to see the elephant in the room all that is left are small bore ideas.

--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape

And taxing it at 25% provides a very hefty incentive to identify as many things as porn as possible.

With regard to property taxes, once you figure out what is meant by halving and freezing, you still are faced with a basic problem. The price of a house is driven in part by factors that affect the perception of value. However, once the value aspect is determined, the typical buyer goes for the most valuable house he can afford, based primarily on his total monthly cost of ownership. If property taxes are lowered buyers will generally pay more for a given house. Over the long run buyers pay more for the house but less funding is available for Government services. Sounds like something near and dear to the hart of any conservative twit economist.

Tax justice prohibits freezing either assessment or actual taxes.  Inevitably this results in effective income transfer from the relatively poor younger population to the relatively wealthy older population.  Every version of this, including all the tax abatement programs that exist throughout the US do the same thing. 

In the US, the population that is struggling is 30-35 years old and has 1-2 children.  Frozen tax rates and tax abatements for the retired transfer money from those very people to people in there 60s, 70s or older. Regardless of all the complaining, these older people should either pay their taxes or look for relief among their age-peers.  It is immoral to take money away from poor families with children.

the best property tax program is a completely transparent one where every property is appraised at 100% of value with the value updated every year and where all properties of the same class are taxed in the same rate throughout the state. 

Artificial smaller jurisdictions and all manner of ad hoc tax reduction schemes are the bane of tax fairness in the US and should be unconstitutional under the federal equal protection clause.  It is the lack of political courage that prevents the correction of these problems.

Politicians are not leaders they are followers.

In my opinion, it is only the BAD politicians who are not leaders but followers. If one looks at the good and great politicians in history, one will see they are indeed leaders--those who are themselves capable of guiding a nation and its people forward through times of trouble into times of victory, prosperity and security!

Unfortunately, the academics, pundits and philosophers of whom you speak have historically been more of a drain on society in terms of actively providing sucessful leadership, and I have never read tales of any pundit or philosopher that has risen up bravely and led any nation forward in times of great difficulity or change!

And most certainly I have never read of any great political leader in history that has affected a great change on a nation by leading through a visionary policy of 50% change.

EXAMPLE: Can anybody imagine JFK saying on May 25, 1961, "First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, getting 50% closer to landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth."?

Right, those are the rich people. They should be willing to tax themselves for the benefit for the state population, not for the benefit of their elite population.

Washington State is the norm. Property tax is unfair, not because of how it affects some special populations, but because by artificially fencing in narrow jurisdictions, the jurisdictions with the greatest wealth can have higher property tax for their own selfish benefit while still keeping their property tax low proportionate to their wealth or their own income. If they were in a much bigger pool, they would find themselves sharing that benefit with people they prefer to exclude, so they would not be able to attain the higher level of services without taxing themselves up to a point where it hurt. - To clarify, I don't especially relish that wealthy hurt, I just don't want them to get off easy when everyone else hurts.

Poor districts simply have to tax themselves a great deal proportionate to their own wealth or income in order to get a much lower level of services. The pool should be expanded to the entire population.

.> I'm sure if we hadn't sweated the
> second 50% ("and returning him
> safely to earth"), we could have
> landed a man on the moon sooner
> than than we actually did.
> :o)

I saw an interesting proposal for exploring Mars a few years ago: one-way trips, which are within our capability today, crewed with 60-something volunteers. As you note, carrying the supplies (esp fuel) to get home is the hard part, but a non-return trip with 5 years' supplies would be feasible. As I get older the thought makes more sense to me. I doubt it would ever fly (so to speak) in today's world, although if you think about it that is exactly what many exploration voyages in the 1400-1600s amounted to.

sPh

Well after digesting (and getting the corresponding indigestion) what Senator Schumer said yesterday my take on the Senator's Half-way-ism is, to quote the late FrankZappa, "We are only in it for the money".  It definitely isn't about good policy his proposal's only goals are to keep the D's in power.

Any politician who would propose censorship of protected speech based solely on content is, quite frankly, something I only thought I had to worry about from republican politicos.  Senator Schumer proved me wrong. 

The Senator's cavalier attitude towards protected speech got me to thinking.  Why not put a 25% tax on all campaign contributions to all candidates and their parties?  I know the giving of money has been ruled as "protected speech" under the 1st amendment of the constitution and tax exempt.  But based on the Senator's position on taxing other forms of protected speech I don't see why the contributions to politicos couldn't or shouldn't be taxed...

Thanks to Senator Schumer, sadly, it is time to reconsider my blind support of all Democratic politicians.  He proved they can easily be just as wrong and as potentially dangerous as the republicans.

Municipalities -- Good 4 A Merica's "narrow jurisdictions" -- are state created subdivisions of state power, only.

It has always puzzled me why states are permitted, constitutionally, to avoid their duties to treat their citizens equally by interposing these artificial governmental entities between themselves and their citizens.

Local autonomy probably made sense in the 1600s.  The very distance to the state capital would have rendered state administered local fiscal policies unworkable.  The trouble is that the policy, with respect to tax fairness, is outdated.  However, there are all manner of localisms that make reform near impossible.

The principal problem is the golden rule: He who has the gold, rules.  If the state raised all the taxes, the local governments would be forced to conform to state preferences in decisions even more so than they do now.  While that might be good in some sorts of policies, such as public assistance or education, it would likely be counterproductive in other policies such as recreation or library practices.

To the best of  my knowledge, no one has figured out how to raise the money from a very large pool (tax fairness), but to maximize discretion in small pools - very local jurisdictions (local values used in making decisions).  Grantors want to tell grantees what to do.  Central governments prefer categorical grants to block grants, or they use underfunded block grants to force lower levels of government to raise more taxes. Simple grant criteria become complex grant criteria...  It goes on and on.

A number of years ago a relatively small city across the bay from San Francisco had probably the best financed schools in the state because it housed a lot of large corporations and had few single-family residences and apartments. That was prior to Prop 13 and god knows what other fancy tax gimmicks let large corporations off the hook as far as paying their fair share of taxes into the local economy.

Bedroom communities where the more affluent lived and where industry didn't exist were constantly strapped for education funds (at the same time as the natives were popping kids by the droves.)

It was a situation where communities with relatively no kids had tons of money to support education while communities with scads of kids had very little money to support their schools.

At the time most of us agreed that "local" control might be a good idea but "local" financial support was screwy.