The Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio Moment – David Brooks, The New York Times

“For example, Rubio’s tax policy starts where all Republican plans start. He would simplify the tax code, reduce rates and move us toward a consumption-based system by reducing taxes on investment.But he understands that overall growth no longer translates directly to better wages. He adds a big $2,500 child tax credit that is controversial among conservative economists, but that would make life easier for working families.His antipoverty programs are the biggest departure from traditional Republicanism. America already spends a fair bit of money aiding the poor — enough to lift most families out of poverty if we simply wrote them checks. But the money flows through a hodgepodge of programs and creates perverse incentives. People are often better off over all if they rely on government rather than getting an entry-level job. As Oren Cass of the Manhattan Institute has pointed out, there are two million fewer Americans working today than before the recession and two million more receiving disabilities benefits.”

DL: I worry that the $2500 child tax credit might encourage extra children. It is time the world adopts a two child per couple or individual policy.

Source: The Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio Moment – The New York Times

China to End One-Child Policy, Allowing Families Two Children – The New York Times

Inconvenient News Worldwide

“BEIJING — China’s Communist Party brought to an end the decades-old “one child” policy on Thursday, when leaders announced that all married couples would be allowed to have two children in a bid to reverse the rapid aging of the labor force.”

Source: China to End One-Child Policy, Allowing Families Two Children – The New York Times

View original post

China to End One-Child Policy, Allowing Families Two Children – The New York Times

“BEIJING — China’s Communist Party brought to an end the decades-old “one child” policy on Thursday, when leaders announced that all married couples would be allowed to have two children in a bid to reverse the rapid aging of the labor force.”

Source: China to End One-Child Policy, Allowing Families Two Children – The New York Times

The Empire Strikes Back – Maureen Dowd Mugs Hillary Clinton Again in The New York Times

“Hillary Clinton faces the vapid, impotent right-wing conspiracy,” and fails, according to Maureen Dowd.

This feeble op-ed by Maureen Dowd is repulsive and sick.
Here is the comment that inspired me to publish the unworthy piece:

“Mary Scott is a trusted commenter NY October 24, 2015

“Ms. Dowd seems to have never gotten over the Ms. Clinton she couldn’t stand 20 years ago. In her view, there’s no room for the maturity, introspection and empathy that can grow within a person over decades if they work at it and that I see in Hillary today and I’m a Bernie Sanders supporter.

This will never happen, pure fantasy, but if Hillary Clinton ended child poverty, Maureen Dowd would probably find a reason she didn’t deserve any credit for such an accomplishment, some character flaw that only she could discern.

I think it’s time for Ms. Dowd to get over Ms. Clinton. Time to move on to someone like Paul Ryan, our soon-to-be House Speaker whose draconian, Ayn Randian budget proposals, will diminish the middle class and further impoverish the already poor.

His 2012-2013 budget took over $300 million dollars (estimates of reductions range from $300 to $500 million) out of the State Department’s budget, surely limiting their ability to protect our foreign service facilities in some of the most dangerous parts of the world, especially remote outposts which have been grossly underfunded for years.”

Source: The Empire Strikes Back – The New York Times

Meet a 21st-Century Slave In the 21st century, isn’t it finally time to abolish slavery forever? nytimes.com|By Nicholas Kristof

Sunday’s column from Saint Nich.
He writes near conclusion:
“The blunt truth is that no strategy works all that well against trafficking. But maybe the most successful has been Sweden’s, cracking down on traffickers and customers while providing social services and exit ramps for women in the sex trade.”

Meet a 21st-Century Slave

In the 21st century, isn’t it finally time to abolish slavery forever?

nytimes.com|By Nicholas Kristof

Why I Identify as Mammal – by Randy Laist, The New York Times

“In a world of conscious beings, identity matters. Self-perception plays a vital role in behavior, so the question of how human beings think about themselves in relation to the world is more than simply one of semantics; ways of seeing lead, directly and indirectly, to ways of acting.Given all that, I choose to identify as mammal.And this is my reason: Our relationship to the natural world, which is changing in such dramatic ways, is in desperate need of revision. Human exceptionalism — expressed in our treatment, use and abuse of other animals, and in the damage we do to the natural environment — has paved the way for enormous harm. It seems clear, then, that identifying exclusively as human has its pitfalls.”

Source: Why I Identify as Mammal – The New York Times

The Law School Debt Crisis – Editorial at The New York Times

Good piece, too many law schools are taking lots of money from students that will never qualify to practice law, leaving them drowning in debt. The editorial ends:
‘If fewer federal dollars were streaming into law schools’ coffers and more were directed to fund legal services organizations, the legal profession — and the American legal system as a whole — would be better for it.’

Source: The Law School Debt Crisis – The New York Times

Hillary and Benghazi The House Benghazi committee’s inappropriate approach is outdone only by the Stop Hillary PAC and its ghoulish commercial. nytimes.com|By Gail Collins

Protect us from the zombies. Great piece by Gail Collins.

Hillary and Benghazi

The House Benghazi committee’s inappropriate approach is outdone only by the Stop Hillary PAC and its ghoulish commercial.

nytimes.com|By Gail Collins

Like   Comment   Share

Comments

David Lindsay My favorite comment so far from the NYT Comments: Socrates Verona, N.J. 9 hours ago

And then there’s Ronald Reagan’s 1983 Beirut Benghazi for comparison:

On October 23, 1983, a suicide bomber drove a truckload of explosives through a lightly fortified plywood fence, past two marine guards with no bullets in their rifles at the Beirut marine barracks, and killed 241 sleeping American soldiers.

It was the deadliest day for the Marine Corps since Iwo Jima.

Ignoring earlier protests by Congressional Democrats and his own Secretary of Defense, Casper Weinberger, President Reagan had sent the marines to protect Beirut’s airport during the Lebanon civil war.

Citing the earlier April 1983 US embassy bombing in Beirut, where 63 people died including 17 Americans, Weinberger and Congressional Democrats had argued that Reagan’s plans for deploying additional marines to Beirut would make the American soldiers “sitting ducks.”

The day after the Beirut ‘Benghazi’, House Speaker Tip O’Neill told Congressional Democrats that “it was their duty, now, not to criticize but to support their President and to do nothing to undermine him no matter what the political advantage.”

O’Neill told them that it was time for “patriotism over partisanship.”

Reagan’s own Defense Department investigation blamed the White House for the tragedy and the Democratic House held a short non-partisan hearing and recommended improved security.

Today’s GOP ‘Benghazi’ investigation is nothing less than the Republican National Convention.

Party First: Country Last: GOP 2015

Nice people.

Reply 844Recommended

Like · Reply · Just now

Camelot Comes to Canada – The New York Times

Good column on the young Trudeau, but referring to all our current US candidates as wizened, I take this remark as a rude attack on Hillary Clinton. It is writer who is a wizened old misogynist.

“Trudeau’s remarkable triumph, which saw the Liberal Party jump to 184 seats from 36 in the 338-member Canadian House of Commons, was a victory over mean-spiritedness and the politics of fear. It was a thorough repudiation, after almost a decade, of the belligerent politics of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. As Ignatieff noted, the “nasty party,” an epithet that once belonged to Britain’s Tories, had become a fair description of Harper’s Conservatives.Harper had notably gone after Canada’s one million Muslims. His government’s attempt to prevent Muslim women from wearing a face-covering headdress, or niqab, during citizenship ceremonies was overturned this year by a court ruling. The prime minister, saying he found the veil “offensive,” decided to appeal the court decision, but lost last month”

Source: Camelot Comes to Canada – The New York Times

Why the Police Want Prison Reform Alternatives to arrests and overly severe sentences. nytimes.com|By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Bravo NY Times for a fine editorial.
All these suggestions are excellent. I would like the country to go farther, and at least decriminalize, if not legalize all addictive substances. Besides getting petty user and dealer out of jail, and keeping them from jail in the first place, it would stop the destabilization of governments around the world because of the power of narco gangsters, whose financial and military power allow them to destroy police forces and governments.
The US would still want a Marshall plan to offer help to legal addicts, programs, jobs, medical help, but all these investments would be far less than the 50 billion or whatever it is we spend on the drug wars every year, that is just money down the drain.The only incarcerable offence I would leave from non-violent drug users and dealers, would be if a legal addict encourabed or helped an non addict to become one. Pushing the addictive substances on any non addict would be punishable.

Why the Police Want Prison Reform

Alternatives to arrests and overly severe sentences can reduce crime and restore better relations between law enforcement and local communities.

nytimes.com|By THE EDITORIAL BOARD