Tidbits

A federal appeals court upheld Monday a lower court's block of much of Arizona's controversial SB 1070 law aimed at illegal immigration. Surprise, surprise!

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A headline at The Hill: Capitol Police Arrest DC Mayor At Rally Against Budget Deal.

Does no one but Obama and Geithner like this deal?

Washington Mayor Vincent Gray, Council Chairman Kwame Brown, Ward 4 Councilwoman Muriel Bowser and Ward 6 Councilman Tommy Wells were among 41 people who were arrested after protesters blocked Constitution Avenue.

A rider to this federal budget proposal would stop local taxpayer funds -- that's not federal money; it's tax money raised by D.C. itself -- abortions. The feds can't dictate things like that to the states, but D.C. lacks a lot of the rights that the states have (such as congressional representation) -- and DCers aren't happy about it.

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 Here's a link to an excellent article by Sam Pizzigati at OurFuture.org entitled A Ghost from a Ghastly Public Policy Past about Andrew Mellon, of the Pittsburgh banking family, who was appointed Secretary of the Treasury in 1921, a position he held for ten years and eleven months.  His fortune was exceeded only by those of John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford. 

"Mellon came to Washington as a man on a mission. That mission: to slash federal income tax rates on his fellow rich — and himself, of course, too. He succeeded. In 1921, America’s richest faced a 73 percent tax rate on income over $1 million. By 1925, Mellon had maneuvered that top rate all the way down to 25 percent."

He was the man at the wheel during the Roaring '20s -- and the subsequent crash.

"Mellon opposed, right up until his 1932 exit from Treasury, any efforts to get the federal government to come to the aid of [the tens of millions he had impoverished]. Hard times, he told President Hoover, didn’t have to be 'altogether a bad thing.'

“People will work harder,” Mellon pronounced. “Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people."

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On the budget deal:

Amanpour: How is President Obama playing now? Is this a victory as they are saying now?
George Will: If this is a victory, I wish him many more...

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Here's a link to a posting on Politico giving the results of a nationwide poll by PPP, Public Policy Polling, showing that 51% of Republicans believe that Obama was not born in the U.S. 28% believe that he was; 21% are not sure.

A CNN/Opinion Research poll in August showed that 25% of Americans have doubts about Obama’s citizenship, with 11 percent saying the president was definitely not born in the United States.

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Zaid Jilani at ThinkProgress has an article entitled "CHART:  As Services For Main Street Are Gutted, Richest Pay Lowest Taxes In A Generation."

"As this chart from from Wealth for the Common Good shows, the top 400 taxpayers — who have more wealth than half of all Americans combined — are paying lower taxes than they have in a generation, as their tax responsibilities have slowly collapsed since the New Deal era as working families have been asked to pay more and more:"