A Brief Tribute to Metaphor

What's more fun than:

(1) Analyzing Hillary Clinton's health plan?

(2) Deconstructing Clinton's potential Iraq policy

(3) Writing about "immigration deadlock"

(4) Looking at oil prices and the fate of Social Security

The answers, according to Howard Kurtz, are:

(1) and (2) Analyzing Hillary's laugh;

(3) Analyzing the impact of an April special election on the November 2006 Congressional elections;

(4) Analyzing the e-economy of the late 1990s

The Sweet Spot

Just a week ago, the Washington Post criticized Barack Obama for his proposal for refundable family tax credits, asking "Why do families making as much as $200,000 a year need new tax help?" It then went on to list a litany of benefits such families have received.

Yesterday, however, in the midst of attacking Hillary Clinton's stance on Social Security, the Post noted with approval John Edwards' proposal to fund Social Security as "a different, promising idea -- leaving the existing cap [of $97,500] in place but putting a surcharge on income over $200,000."

To the casual observer, the Edwards plan seems to pile a progressive tax rate on top of a regressive tax rate while exempting a small slice of the population from its effects.

How small? According to this table of individual incomes in 2004, men making between $97,500 and $200,000 account for only 5% of wage workers.

Reading between the lines, one gets the impression that the Post's opprobrium for Obama's plan and tepid embrace of Edwards' idea is based on the assumption that the sweet spot for taxation policy lies in cutting taxes for that 5%.

I wonder what an editorial page editor's salary is these days?

Them

I refer, of course, to the current crop of Democratic candidates, none of whom strikes me individually as worthy of any particular enthusiasm since, at this point, there seems such unanimity of opinion among the party faithful and establishment about all the things George W. Bush has screwed up that their first-term agenda seems pretty much all sewn up, minus the sort of niggling policy details that make editorial writers salivate and “upscale” voters, apparently, turn to the next page in the New York Times.

And is it true there are only eight candidates this time around? I keep on thinking there must be nine, just as in 2004, and I convince myself my count must be off every time I look at them assembled in a row for a debate (which, I'll admit, is as seldom as possible). Perhaps some organizer could be convinced to put up an extra podium at the next debate. For Elijah. Or, maybe, Al Gore.