Taxes
With all the angst about the economy, the deficit, and a looming government shut-down, I'm still concerned that we're treating symptoms rather than diagnosing the underlying disease.
I know something about this. I spent a week in the hospital last year having loads of tests done -- blood work, heart scans, stress tests, and sonograms. I was discharged without a diagnosis, merely with hopes that by treating the symptoms, whatever was wrong would go away. It didn't. It turned out my real problem was a tick-born disease, and once it was diagnosed, a ten-dollar prescription of antibiotics cured me. Without that ten-dollar prescription to treat the real problem, I could have experienced life-long disability.
In 2010, the moral measure of tax policy choice is: Does it further concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a few?
President Obama is getting no respite from contentious issues. Today, speaking at American University's School of International Service, he tackled immigration reform, held hostage for decades, he said, by political posturing.
