Three Things

Thing The First

The Republicans have been giving Kerry a right fine drubbing about the head and shoulders these past few days. Zell Miller was especially brutal. I listened to his speech in the car last night. I had to keep explaining to my son why I was laughing so hard.

Arnold helped define what a republican is, which I thought was very kind of him. Laura Bush then went on to extoll the virtues of all that the republicans have accomplished. Many wonderful things, like money for African AIDS support, No Child Left Behind, etc, but isn’t it interesting to note that all of these things are a net increase in government spending. So, on the one hand, we have Arnold saying things like:

If you believe that a person should be treated as an individual, not a member of an interest group, then you are a Republican.

And then the First Lady gets up and touts republican-led increased spending for various interest groups as accomplishments.

This is classic cognitive dissonance. The republicans really need to to step back and review their message and try to develop a bit of consistency here and find a way back to their roots as a small government, individual freedom and responsibility party.

Thing The Second

Portland City Commisioner Randy Leonard wants to tax cell phone providers at 5 percent of their gross revenues. Obviously, the cell phone providers are upset and are telling the city that the rate increase will be passed onto consumers.

It seems that all public utilities in Portland pay a tax license fee based on their gross revenues. These fees go into the general fund and help pay for various basic city services. Apparently, the code that defines this scheme was written over twenty years ago and cell phone providers have not been included. Randy wants to plug that hole. Unfortunately, I think he suffers a bit of cognitive dissonance, too:

“I’ve learned this in my 10 years in the Legislature: The best tax is a tax somebody else pays,” Leonard said.

But then he goes on to say:

“The best policy is to try and find a way to raise revenue that spreads out the cost over as many people as possible, thereby allowing the rate to be as low as possible. I think this does that.”

His first statement seems to imply that the cell providers are going to eat it and pay the tax, completely ignoring the the simplest solution for the cell providers: pass the tax onto the consumer. His second statement then seems to acknowlege that the tax is going to be spread out over many people, i.e., the cell users, but he doesn’t seem to notice the incongruity of his statement. Who is this ‘someone else’ he’s talking about if it isn’t the cell user. Does he really believe that the cell providers aren’t going to pass the tax onto the end user?

Leonard says this ‘fee’ is necessary in the face of declining fee revenues. But why is the solution to declining revenues more taxes? Isn’t it possible that the reason revenues are declining is because Portland is already overtaxed and businesses and people have had it and are relocating to other cities in other counties outside of Portland? Perhaps, the city should do what any private indvidual does in the face of declining revenues: review the budget and decide where spending can be cut. If that’s something the city is unwilling to do, then perhaps they should consider lowering taxes and eliminating fees. One of the interesting paradoxes with tax cuts is that when taxes are cut, tax revenue increases. We saw this with Reagan’s tax cut in 1981. Why does this happen? People stop trying to avoid paying outrageous taxes and have no problem paying reasonable taxes.

Thing The Third

The criminal trial against Kobe Bryant has been dismissed in part because the woman had filed a civil suit.

This is going to get ugly. As if it wasn’t before. Now, both sides can really throw off the gloves and let the shit fly. This is going to be fun.