Its not just the blogs noticing now…
Even barring my own admittedly strong personal views on this issue, in a purely political sense, an openly pro-choice VP nominee would be a disaster.
The New York Sun editorializes on Barack Obama’s tax plan:
The Obama campaign has at long last lifted the veil of mystery that has surrounded the Democratic presidential candidate’s tax increase plans. Mr. Obama’s two economic advisers, Jason Furman and Austan Goolsbee, have an op-ed piece in today’s Wall Street Journal, and it isn’t pretty. To begin with, they propose bringing back the 39.6% top income tax bracket, an increase from the 35% current top rate. On top of that, he’d impose a new payroll tax on those top earners of 2% to 4%, bringing their marginal tax rate to as high as 43.6%. Add to that the top New York City income tax rate of 3.648% and the top New York State income tax rate of 6.85%, and the nominal marginal income tax rate mounts to a staggering 54%. Because Mr. Obama proposes to put the capital gains and dividend tax rate at 20% even for the “rich” — a mere 33% increase over the current 15% rate — expect to see plenty of high earners scurrying to find creative ways of structuring their income as capital gains or dividends rather than as earned income.
Meanwhile, the most astonishing sentence in the op-ed is this one: “His plan would not raise any taxes on couples making less than $250,000 a year, nor on any single person with income under $200,000.” It amounts to a declaration of war on two-income families, a marriage penalty of punitive proportions. If those two single persons with income just under $200,000 get married, Mr. Obama is going to hammer them with a huge tax increase. If the second earner, who in many cases is the woman, is going to have to give 54% of what she earns to the government, she might as well stay home with the children. Mr. Obama may be able to get away with symbolic slights to women, such as not picking Senator Clinton as vice president. But punishing them with confiscatory taxes for participating in the workforce at a high income level moves the slight into the realm of substance.
One thing I’ve always felt is that the structure of our government - where the majority of taxes are collected at the federal level - really doesn’t make much sense in light of the massive differences in cost of living from one part of the country to another.
In New York, $100k a year is not that much money for a family to live on. According to CNNMoney.com’s Cost of Living Calculator, $100k a year in New York is the equivalent of about $48k a year in Bozeman, MT. But taxpayers living in the higher cost of living areas pay much higher federal marginal tax rates - and often live in places where state and local taxes are higher as well.
Obama’s tax plans will penalize people living in high cost of living areas. As the New York Sun points out, this will seriously discourage economic activity and be especially hard on dual income families.
Courtesy of Ace of Spades HQ:
Full story on it here.
Here is Pollster.com’s running average of polls in the Stevens vs. Begich senate race.
It looks increasingly that if Stevens is the nominee, this seat is essentially gone. Dave Cuddy is Stevens’ chief opponent in the primary later this month.
Its here in this Stephen Hayes piece:
IN A WIDE-RANGING INTERVIEW aboard his campaign plane this morning, John McCain said that he is open to choosing a pro-choice running mate and named former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge as someone who merits serious consideration despite his support for abortion rights.
The McCain camp is dipping its maaaverick toe into the water, testing to see how the conservative base will react to the possibility (probability?) of a pro-abortion vice presidential pick. Pro-open borders. Pro-global warming hysteria. Might as well go for the trifecta.
Since the McCain campaign apparently reads this blog, I’ll be blunt. Don’t do it. From a purely political perspective its a bad, bad move which would bring an unnecessary distraction to the campaign. From an ideological perspective, it would disappoint me and a lot of other conservatives who have really warmed up to McCain in the last several months.
More: Ed Morrissey.
UPDATE: I would also note that being pro-choice is not the only issue with Tom Ridge as a vice presidential pick. John J. Miller of National Review did a profile piece on him when he was under consideration in 2000, and the picture ain’t pretty:
As you may have noticed, we have upgraded the site with a new theme and new look. We have also made the migration to Wordpress 2.6.
In the coming weeks, we’re going to ramp up our coverage of races around the country that are important to the conservative movement.
In the mean time, here’s some quality entertainment:
SavetheGOP is listed as one of the McCain campaign’s “suggested conservative blogs” on their website.