Starting Dec. 1, Wisconsin will no longer be collecting the estate tax for the next three years (until 2011). This will produce a loss in tax revenue of about $100 million. As seen on Madison.com:

Companion bills in the state Legislature would hasten the death of the death tax, making it retroactive to anyone who died this year as well. In the past five years, estates valued at $675,000 or more have been subject to the Wisconsin estate tax.

Business groups have lined up in favor of getting rid of the tax early as a way to keep businesses, retirees and investments in Wisconsin. Opponents -- including groups representing farmers and the elderly -- say eliminating the tax benefits a small number of very wealthy people at the expense of the rest.

Labels: taxes

BBC News reports that Germany may soon move to ban Scientology. Banning a religion? In a supposedly democratic, civilized country? I know some people think Scientologists are crazy, but why should a government be the one to judge that and prevent them from enjoying their beliefs?

Germany's federal and state interior ministers have declared the Church of Scientology unconstitutional, clearing the way for a possible ban.

The ministers have asked Germany's domestic intelligence agency to examine whether the Church's legal status as an association could be challenged.

Scientology is not recognised as a religion in Germany. ...

For years, Scientology has been monitored by German intelligence agenices, who claim the movement's structures and methods could pose a threat to the rule of law and "democratic order."

A threat to democratic order? How about a threat to democracy and freedom from persecution?

Labels: religion

Mitt Romney delivered a long-awaited speech on how his religion - and his faith in general - will factor into the 2008 election. Not since JFK has a candidate's religion (not the same thing as religiousness) been a significant topic of concern and consternation. In 1960, JFK addressed a congregation of Protestant ministers about his Catholicism. On Thursday, Romney spoke at President George H. W. Bush's Presidential Library about the role (or non-role?) of his Mormonism and how his "faith will inform [his] Presidency."

Mr. Romney's speech was entitled "Faith in America." Overall it was a sermon extolling the presumed value and pervasive presence of religion in America today, all the while emphasizing that, while he is Mormon, he really is a Christian above all. And he will bring his good ol' Christian morals and values to the Presidency as the savior of these United States, delivering us from the evil that is godlessness. Or at least that's what I felt he said when I listened to the speech.

"Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom... Freedom and religion endure together, or perish together." The speech wouldn't be complete until he mentioned freedom. I took this quote to have underlying meaning - that, if we weren't a religious society, we would no longer be free and oh those infidels would destroy America (oh the horror!). I'm not quite sure I see the jump between losing religion and destroying "freedom" and destroying societal structure. Unless, of course, you believe that it already has been ruined by the gays and unwed couples and atheists.

As expected, there was the obligatory quoting of Kennedy about being "an American running for President." Mr. Romney also emphasized that no Church "will ever exert influence on presidential decisions." Good to know... I almost believe you. The Churches I fear are the ones that go by the names like Big Oil, Big Pharma, and Big Tobacco... and I'm pretty sure they are exerting influence on decisions today.

"I love the profound ceremony of the Catholic Mass, the approachability of God in the prayers of the Evangelicals, the tenderness of spirit among the Pentecostals, the confident independence of the Lutherans, the ancient tradition of the Jews, unchanged through the ages, and the commitment to frequent prayer of the Muslims." And I'd like to give a shoutout to my roommate from freshman year - your interpretation of Nelly really moved me. Holla to my homeboys who dig the lyricism of El Guante - you speak deep truths. And four for Glenn Coco - you go Glenn Coco! Oh, I'm sorry, I thought we were in the Girl Scouts closing circle, where we say something nice about everyone in the group.

Speaking of "the group," why does Mr. Romney (and so many others) limit himself to Abrahamic religions? Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are not the only religions out there. Would it kill you to give a shoutout to Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Taoism, Shintoism, Native American religions, rastafarianism, pastafarianism, etc?

"It is as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America - the religion of secularism. They are wrong." [Applause.] At this point, Mr. Romney pontificated on the meaning of separation of Church and State and stresses that he "will not separate us from 'the God who gave us liberty.'" I think that, in trying to solidify his religious cred, he leaned a bit too far the other way and denounced secularism.

"We do not insist on a single strain of religion - rather, we welcome our nation's symphony of faith." A nice line, but what about atheists and agnostics? Do we not welcome those?

"We face no greater danger today than theocratic tyranny" and links this to "radical Islamists" and the "coercion of minds and the shedding of blood." Religious right rhetoric. And unfairly dramatizing Islam as a religion to be feared.

Normally I'm not one to pick apart a speech phrase by phrase. However, Mitt Romney's speech on religions was hyped as the greatest thing since sliced bread. Eh...not so much. It had little of the earth-shaking effect that JFK's did, and instead it came across as just another let's-placate-the-moral-conservative-base stump speech.

Labels: 2008, religion

Every so often you get the chance to see something that completely changes the way you view a situation. I had one of those moments while watching the Iraq War documentary "No End In Sight." This is a movie that recounts much of what has gone wrong in Iraq by talking to the people who were a part of it and the people who tried to make a difference. Those of of you who know my thoughts on the Iraq war know I am not particularly left-leaning on this issue. I also always tend to be very suspicious of documentaries because I think in many cases they takes quotes and actions out of context to make them fit the movie's own very specific agenda. This movie really makes an effort to be fair and to just show the facts while letting the viewer decide. If even half of what is shown in this movie is true it would be enough to stun just about anyone.

This documentary recounts events in the Iraq war from the beginning up to the present by interviewing the people who were actually there and involved in the decision making process. After watching the movie it is clear that basically everyone who disagreed with the highest levels of executive leadership was ignored including members of the military and the state department. I really don't want to summarize too much of the movie for fear of distorting its message. Rather, I just want to make an appeal for everyone to watch it!

If you found Sicko interesting then "No End in Sight" will rock your world. For whatever reason this movie has been pretty much ignored by the media and I think that it is our duty to try and get as many people to watch it as possible. I would strongly recommend that the College Democrats host a showing of this movie as they did for Sicko. After all we are voting for a new President in less than a year the single most important duty of the College Democrats is to help get students educated and interested in the issues facing our country!

Now that we know that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program four years ago, Democrats will hopefully take advantage of the situation and convince the American public to elect a president who will know how to engage the Middle East diplomatically. Today the Democratic presidential candidates discussed the new intelligence on Iran at an NPR sponsored debate.

Senator Joe Biden (D-DE), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, gave a scathing review of the administration's actions towards Iran and stated flatly that the U.S. had lost further credibility with regard to the Middle East.

It will be interesting to see who Biden endorses if he drops out of the primary race early. Biden is undoubtedly the most experienced candidate in terms of foreign policy and you can tell when you watch him speak. His opinion should be given a certain amount of value.

Slinging Mud for Christmas

I realize that there are different perspectives about what is fair game in the presidential race. But there are some things that should just be laughed at.....

"....Clinton announced in an interview with CBS that she was sick of being a punching bag for Obama and former North Carolina Senator John Edwards and that she intended to fight back. "After you have been attacked as often as I have from several of my opponents, you cannot just absorb it. You have to respond," she said. Since that declaration Clinton has done just that, attacking Obama's plans for health care, Social Security reform and diplomacy with Iran. She even went so far as to dig up a kindergarten essay of Obama's entitled "I Want to Be President" to accuse him of lying about not having a lifelong lust for the Oval Office...."

Raise your hand if you never wrote an essay like that in elementary school.

Actually, I wanted to be a paleontologist when I was in Kindergarten (I liked Dinosaurs), guess I was a lying six year old now that I'm a social welfare major.

Today's Capital Times reports that "Dane County locks up 97 black drug offenders for each white offender" - making us 3rd in the entire country in terms of racial disparity. I know County Executive Kathleen Falk and the Dane County Board of Supervisors have been at least discussing this issue for quite some time. Hopefully this saddening report will prompt some more action.

...

"It's very sad what the finding is for Dane County," said Jason Ziedenberg, executive director of the Justice Policy Institute, which issued the report today. "It's equally sad that 97 percent of the counties witnessed racial disparities."

...

The study said that while survey data show that illegal drug usage and sales among blacks and whites for 2002 were similar, blacks, who account for only about 13 percent of the U.S. population, were sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of whites nationally.

...

In January, the National Council on Crime and Delinquency released a study that found that black juvenile offenders in Wisconsin in 2002 were locked up at nearly 20 times the rate of white juvenile offenders, more than twice the national average
....

"It's as great at the federal level, but what we see in this report that we've never been able to show before is the pervasiveness of it," he said. "What this confirms is the federal findings that groups like the Sentencing Project have been reporting for some time are not an anomaly. This is something that's playing out in every community in the country."

The study also included Waukesha County, which locked up black drug offenders at 24 times the rate of white offenders, and Milwaukee County, which incarcerated blacks at a rate of 15 for each white.

The two counties that exceeded the Dane County rate were Onondaga County in New York, with 99 blacks incarcerated for every white on drug charges, and Forsyth County North Carolina, which saw a rate of 164 black drug offenders imprisoned for each white drug offender.

...

"The fact that African-Americans are admitted for drug offenses at 97 times the rate of whites should give people a moment to pause and think about why that is," he said.

Labels: race

I hate to do this, but my streak of taking on Badger Herald opinion columnists continues for another week. This time, it's the College Dems very own Gerald Cox.

Mr. Cox's column today talks about how he thinks the United States is ready for a new health care system, but not one like the that proposed by Senator Hillary Clinton. Rather, Mr. Cox prefers the alternative proposal of Senator Barack Obama. In a battle between two budding economists, I encourage Mr. Cox to respond to this post.

The plan called for by Mr. Obama will allow Americans to purchase health care through a pooling process, at a lower rate than if they did so as individuals. The principle behind the plan is simple: if more people buy in, you share the risk associated with health care and help to keep costs lower for everyone. This technique is duplicated by employers and governments across the country, the larger the entity, the more people they have to spread the risk over.

Senator Obama's plan is no different from the plans proposed by Senator Clinton and former Senator Edwards, except for one thing: Mrs. Clinton's and Mr. Edwards' plans both MANDATE that every American get health insurance. They will still have options as to which plan they choose (In Massachusetts, where a similar program exists, people get to choose from five different plans), but they require that everyone, regardless of health condition or age, get health coverage.

Now, why would you want to mandate coverage? Mr. Cox writes,

"Mr. Obama’s equivalent effectively deals with the American public’s aversion to a government-run health care system and avoids the sweeping mandates that Ms. Clinton prefers. Mr. Obama’s plan puts the government into a role of enabler for Americans who can’t afford health care; Ms. Clinton’s, it seems, makes the government an enforcer. How Hillary of her."

The problem is that Mr. Obama's plan has the strong possibility of going bankrupt. Healthy, young people like us won't purchase health insurance because we simply don't have enough risk to justify expending our limited income on health insurance. When the only people buying health care are older people who require more coverage, the cost of health care skyrockets and the system fails. To top it off, conservatives have all the justification they need to continue to our broken system in perpetuity.

How about the feasibility of Mrs. Clinton's plan? As Mr. Cox says,

"In theory, the Clinton plan will cover every American, and every American will dutifully shoulder the load. However, I’m partial to the Obama equivalent. I like the emphasis on health care that is affordable for every American, versus an unenforceable mandate that requires every American to buy health care in this country."

Unenforceable? Not really. It's pretty simple when you look at Massachusetts. When you file taxes, something that governments have recorded pretty well, you're required to document insurance coverage. If, in the first year, you don't have it you're prevented from taking certain tax deductions (bummer). In the second year, you're actually fined! And guess what? It's working.


Here's the bottom line:

Health care in our country is broken beyond repair. We all know the numbers by now. Forty-seven million Americans without health coverage. Almost nine million children.

A Band-Aid isn't going to fix this, we need fundamental change. Remember,

"If there is a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for their prescription drugs, and having to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it’s not my grandparent."

Those words may sound familiar. They should. They were Mr. Obama's words at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, the speech that catapulted him into the national spotlight.

We are all in this together, the healthy and the sick, the rich and the poor, the strong and the meek, and we all have to invest in each other.

It's time for fundamental change, Mr. Cox. Don't you agree?

Labels: Badger Herald, Gerald Cox, healthcare