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Rum tax break? Not quite…but it’s still $192 million!
Lisa Hawkins with the Distilled Spirits Council contacted me regarding the rum tax break issue that we earlier mentioned as among the earmarks in the $800 bailout. Apparently it’s not actually a “tax break” for manufacturers, but an extension of a Federal Excise Tax refund deal we have had with Puerto Rico and the Virgin [...]
Continue reading...Bailout bill gets $100B worse
3. October 2008
The bailout bill that the House rejected on Monday has been reformulated - now with $100 billion more largely unrelated spending! None of this is really relevant to the actual bailout effort, and it’s unfortunate that we’re going to get charged $800 billion for the supposed benefit of $700 billion. All this, just to fire [...]
Continue reading...A tax cut is not the answer to the bailout
1. October 2008
The first attempt at the bailout didn’t go through - and now the Senate is trying to reissue the proposal, but with a tax cut as bait to bring in more Republicans. The Senate measure will graft the bailout language to a tax bill it approved last week, on a 93-2 vote. It includes: a provision [...]
Continue reading...How the House voted on the bailout
30. September 2008
After the bailout bill got rejected yesterday, members of Congress were either lambasted or praised for either their pathetic failure to act, or for finally making a stand on principle. It all depends on what side you’re on, and right now, no one seems to know who supports this and who doesn’t. I’m not even sure [...]
Continue reading...Subcommittee hearing on GSEs way back in 2004
30. September 2008
Certainly there is more to the story than this - and the people involved here weren’t the only ones culpable. But the fact is that some in Washington, including Senator John McCain, anticipated the mortgage fallout before it happened and attempted to put a stop to it with regulations that might have saved us. Of course, [...]
Continue reading...Preparing for economic fallout
30. September 2008
Considering that no massive financial bailout is forthcoming, banks continue to fail, and businesses are rapidly realizing that they may soon be without a decent supply of capital from the commercial paper markets, the possibility of an actual depression is quite real. The fundamentals of our economy have become seriously eroded by bad debt and [...]
Continue reading...Pelosi helped destroy deal with her partisan comments
29. September 2008
Lost your job this week? Has your retirement account gone back in time 5 years? Well, you can thank Nancy Pelosi. Her speech today, laced with partisan attacks against President Bush and Republicans, is being credited with turning just enough Republicans against the House proposal to defeat it. Great job Speaker [...]
Continue reading...Bailout bill rejected; Dow drops
29. September 2008
he bailout bill, supported by the White House and expected to pass, has been voted down 228-205 by bipartisan opposition. The resulting panic caused the Dow to drop a total of 778 points, the most ever since October of 1987. Ben Pershing from the Washington Post gives some insight into why the measure failed: The simplest [...]
Continue reading...SpaceX makes history in spaceflight
29. September 2008
California-based SpaceX has gone where no space startup has gone before - it has launched the first privately funded liquid-fuel rocket to orbit the Earth. Coming barely a day after China’s successful Shenzou-7 launch and spacewalk, this makes for an exciting weekend. This is the fourth try for SpaceX; the previous attempts resulted in crashes of [...]
Continue reading...Congress spends $630 billion ahead of $700 billion bailout
27. September 2008
As if the bill weren’t big enough already, the Senate has just passed a rather sizable spending bill and sent it to the President to sign. A little over $630 billion in all, the measure naturally has the requisite hilarious earmarks, including: $7.5 billion for loans to US carmakers who are woefully unable to compete in [...]
Continue reading...- Governor Sarah Palin would be a bold choice for Vice-President
- Criminal complaint filed in the John Edwards sex scandal
- Zogby: McCain inching into lead
- Why is the media ignoring the John Edwards sex scandal?
- Another day, another close poll
- The ACORN doesn't fall far from the Obama tree...
- China fakes Olympic fireworks
- SNL nails Keith Olbermann's 'Countdown'
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- Governor Sarah Palin would be a bold choice for Vice-President (66)
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- Video: Ken Blackwell speaking at the 'Defending the American Dream' Summit (45)
- Arnold to cut CA state employees' pay to minimum wage (44)
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- Lesson of Mumbai: Come to India, be a sitting duck
- SNL nails Keith Olbermann’s ‘Countdown’
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- First impressions from the Defending the American Dream Summit
3. October 2008
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