The World Around You

Is the proposal by many of the Democratic presidential candidates to rollback the Bush tax cuts really sound policy? Paul Krugman doesn’t think so,

So if a Democratic candidate proposes a total rollback of the Bush tax cuts, he’ll be offering an easy target: administration spokespeople will be able to provide reporters with carefully chosen examples of middle-income families who would lose $1,500 or $2,000 a year from tax-cut repeal. By leaving the child tax credits and the cutout in place while proposing to repeal the rest, contenders will recapture most of the revenue lost because of the tax cuts, while making the job of the administration propagandists that much harder.

Purists will raise two objections. The first is that an incomplete rollback of the Bush tax cuts won’t be enough to restore long-run solvency. In fact, even a full rollback wouldn’t be enough. According to my rough calculations, keeping the child credits and the cutout while rolling back the rest would close only about half the fiscal gap. But it would be a lot better than current policy.

The other objection is that the tricks used to sell the Bush tax cuts have made an already messy tax system, full of special breaks for particular classes of taxpayers, even messier. Shouldn’t we favor a reform that cleans it up?

In principle, the answer is yes. But an ambitious reform plan would be demagogued and portrayed as a tax increase for the middle class. My guess is that we should propose a selective rollback as the first step, with broader reform to follow.

Will someone be able to find the political sweet spot, the combination of fiscal responsibility and electoral smarts that brings the looting to an end? The future of the nation depends on the answer.

Depending on this lot to find the political “sweet spot” seems like a lost cause to me. This issue should provide a golden opportunity for a candidate who needs some traction and wants to show he/she can manage the economy.

The Mobile Register spells out how dangerous the legal arguments being made by Roy Moore’s attorneys really are,

For evidence of the radical nature of his cause, look no farther than a recent article by one of his lawyers, John Eidsmoe, a professor at Faulkner University’s Jones School of Law.

Written for an outfit called American Heritage Research, Mr. Eidsmoe’s article openly states that the Moore case is based on the legal doctrine known as “interposition.” It holds that a state official can interfere with a federal official’s ruling if the state official considers it illegitimate.

Mr. Eidsmoe absurdly called interposition a “middle ground position,” but he also acknowledged that “implementation of the doctrine may be peaceable … or may proceed ultimately to nullification with forcible resistance.”

More concretely, interposition is the theory that was used by the Confederacy to justify secession from the union — and later used by former Gov. George Wallace to justify opposition to civil rights for black Americans.

The chief justice is not only raising the stakes in a way that his own lawyer admits could lead to “forcible resistance” (read: violence), but for a theory inextricably linked to blatant racial discrimination.

Mr. Eidsmoe’s article defending interposition takes readers on a wild ride through a full millennium of skewed history and quotes from theologians as well as politicians. But the gist of his argument is that if state officials abide by court decisions they believe to be unconstitutional, “the people will have ceased to be their own rulers.”

Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor, though, already has destroyed that argument. In a speech last month at Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law, Mr. Pryor noted that — unlike in past tyrannies cited by Mr. Eidsmoe — “our federal and state governments are far superior to Caesar in providing justice and securing religious freedom.”

Most important, we live in a society in which, “when the judiciary interprets the Constitution erroneously, we still retain all the lawful tools of political opposition. … We can campaign for different policies. We can elect candidates who will enact our favored policies. Our elected officials can appoint judges faithful to the rule of law. We can bring new cases before the courts and urge the overruling of erroneous precedents. If necessary, we can even amend the Constitution.”?

These arguments just strengthen my belief that the Supreme Court will see fit to let the order of the Court of Appeals stand. I also choose to believe that the Judicial Inquiry Commission will make the right decision and remove the suspended Chief Justice from office.