Multiple choice Mitt gets every option wrong on his tax plan

Romney has proposed a 20% rate cut and limiting deductions to $17,000 or $25,000 or $50,000, depending how generous he’s being with imaginary money that day. So, would such a tax reform be revenue neutral, or even raise revenue?

Tax Policy Center:

Eliminating all itemized deductions would yield about $2 trillion of additional revenue over ten years if we cut all rates by 20 percent and eliminate the AMT. Capping deductions would generate less additional revenue, and the higher the cap, the smaller the gain. Limiting deductions to $17,000 would increase revenues by nearly $1.7 trillion over ten years. A $25,000 cap would yield roughly $1.3 trillion and a $50,000 cap would raise only about $760 billion.
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Without more specifics, we can’t say how much revenue such limits would actually raise. But these new estimates suggest that Romney will need to do much more than capping itemized deductions to pay for the roughly $5 trillion in rate cuts and other tax benefits he has proposed.

So, even at its best, Romney is talking about cutting revenue by about $300B per year. Like, say, cut Medicare benefits by nearly half. That would do it.

Reckless geoengineering/profiteering

Martin Lukacs, The Guardian

As controversy mounts over the Guardian’s revelations that an American businessman [Russ George] conducted a massive ocean fertilisation test, dumping around 100 tonnes of iron sulphate off Canada’s coast, it has emerged the Canadian government may have known about the geoengineering scheme and not stopped it.

The news combined, with Canadian obstructionism in negotiations over geoengineering at a United Nations biodiversity meeting in Hyderabad, India, has angered international civil society groups…

Why would anyone do such a thing? For money, of course. Martin Lukacs:

A controversial American businessman dumped around 100 tonnes of iron sulphate into the Pacific Ocean as part of a geoengineering scheme off the west coast of Canada in July, a Guardian investigation can reveal.

Lawyers, environmentalists and civil society groups are calling it a “blatant violation” of two international moratoria and the news is likely to spark outrage at a United Nations environmental summit taking place in India this week.

Satellite images appear to confirm the claim by Californian Russ George that the iron has spawned an artificial plankton bloom as large as 10,000 square kilometres. The intention is for the plankton to absorb carbon dioxide and then sink to the ocean bed – a geoengineering technique known as ocean fertilisation that he hopes will net lucrative carbon credits.
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Scientists are debating whether iron fertilisation can lock carbon into the deep ocean over the long term, and have raised concerns that it can irreparably harm ocean ecosystems, produce toxic tides and lifeless waters, and worsen ocean acidification and global warming.

Hell is not hot enough.

Washington Post’s Bogus “Fact Check” About Economists And Outsourcing

The WaPo’s fact check on last night’s debate claimed that “economists are unanimous that trade, including outsourcing, is hugely beneficial to economic growth at home and abroad”. Not so.

Dean Baker at CEPR has the goods:

First, economists are unanimous in agreeing that trade could have major distributional consequences. And some prominent economists, such as Paul Krugman, have argued that the recent pattern of trade for the United States has had negative distributional consequences for large segment of the U.S. workforce.

The second reason that it is misleading is that economists are unanimous in believing that in the context of below full employment economy, like the one we have seen the last five years, a larger trade deficit implies lower growth and fewer jobs. In this context outsourcing hurts the economy.

Indeed.

Anthony Weiner Resigned. Scott DesJarlais Hasn’t.

This Daily Kos diarist sums it up for me:

Republican Congressman is a doctor, cheats on his wife multiple times with multiple different women, gets caught, wife gets divorce, during the trial it is revealed he is reckless with handguns, and abusive towards her, knocks up one of his mistresses, who happens to be a patient, pushes her to get an abortion despite his so called “pro life” sacred beliefs…and holds on to his seat. No media firestorm. Republicans silent.

Democratic Congressman sends a woman a picture of his dick and resigns immediately under pressure from his own party after media goes crazy.

By the way, here’s Scott DesJarlais’ Democratic opponent, Eric Stewart. No mistresses that we know of, much less ones who he tried to pressure into getting abortions. Since Scott DesJarlais, up to now, has had pretty low name recognition in his own CD (which underwent major surgery in the last redistricting), and since the biggest story that’s likely to increase DesJarlais’ name recognition isn’t likely to make him more popular, it looks like Stewart might have a chance here.