Browsing PBH By Articles

The Costly Effects Of Capital Gains Tax Rates

The Article: Capital Gains Tax Rates Benefiting Wealthy Are Protected By Both Parties by Steven Mufson and Jia Lynn Yang in The Washington Post.

The Text: The K Street office of Mark Bloomfield, president of the American Council for Capital Formation, is full of knickknacks collected in three decades of lobbying for cutting the capital gains tax.

The coffee table has campaign buttons that read “Capital Gains = Better Jobs.” One wall displays a blown-up cartoon retracing the steps that led President Jimmy Carter to reluctantly sign a cut in the capital gains tax rate. On a shelf sits a framed, handwritten note from President George W. Bush in December 2003 that says: “Dear Mark, I got your treatise on taxes — many thanks. I will look it over with keen interest. Merry Christmas.”

For the very richest Americans, low tax rates on capital gains are better than any Christmas gift. As a result of a pair of rate cuts, first under President Bill Clinton and then under Bush, most of the richest Americans pay lower overall tax rates than middle-class Americans do. And this is one reason the gap between the wealthy and the rest of the country is widening dramatically.

The rates on capital gains — which include profits from the sale of stocks, bonds and real estate — should be a key point in negotiations over how to shrink the budget deficit, some lawmakers say.

“This is something that should be on the table,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), one of 12 members on the congressional “supercommittee” tasked with reducing the deficit. “There’s no strong economic rationale for the huge gap that exists now between the rate for wages and the rate for capital gains.”

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ESPN’s Social Media Win On Super Bowl Media Day

On Tuesday morning, SportsCenter’s Twitter account asked for followers to submit questions that they would want answered by Giants and Patriots players during the Super Bowl’s media day. I replied with a insightfully silly question: Who is your favorite ninja turtle and why?

I wasn’t expecting an answer, let alone an acknowledgement, but it turns out the social media folks at SportsCenter and ESPN were listening dutifully to the social conversation. Within an hour and a half of my Tweet, my question was chosen, a reporter on the ground asked the question to Patriots running back BenJarvus Green-Ellis, and the answer was taped, put online, and Tweeted out to me and the general public.

Think about those dynamics for a moment. Through following a brand on Twitter, I was able to connect with a major athlete about to play in the Super Bowl about a show we both watched as children. Now that’s successful social engagement.

And it certainly didn’t hurt the answer was pretty good (though the right answer is Leonardo – sorry BenJarvus):

Rift On Israel Divides Democrats

The Article: Israel rift roils Democratic ranks by Ben Smith on Politico.

The Text: Two of the Democratic Party’s core institutions are challenging a bipartisan consensus on Israel and Palestine that has dominated American foreign policy for more than a decade.

The Center for American Progress, the party’s key hub of ideas and strategy, and Media Matters, a central messaging organization, have emerged as vocal critics of their party’s staunchly pro-Israel congressional leadership and have been at odds, at times, with Barack Obama’s White House, which has acted as a reluctant ally to Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government.

The differences are ones of tone – but also of bright lines of principle – and while they have haven’t yet made any visible impact on Democratic policy, they’ve shaken up the Washington foreign policy conversation and broadened the space for discussing a heretical and often critical stance on Israel heretofore confined to the political margins.

The daily battle is waged in Media Matters’ emails, on CAP’s blogs, Middle East Progress and ThinkProgress and most of all on Twitter, where a Media Mattters official, MJ Rosenberg, regularly heaps vitriol on those who disagree as “Iraq war neocon liar” (the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg) or having “dual loyalties” to the U.S. and Israel (the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin). And while the Center for American Progress tends to walk a more careful line, warm words for Israel can be hard to find on its blogs.

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Our Unimaginative Internet Economy

The Article: Our Unimaginative Internet Economy by Mary Joyce in OWNI.

The Text: We idolize the billionaire geniuses of the Internet, people like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, and Jeff Bezos of Amazon. We associate their companies with innovation and creativity and, on a technical level, this is true. But financially these firms have not innovated. They have made their money by tweaking the most boring old media monetization models – not old like the 1990?s, old like the 1740?s and 1830?s. For all their technical and managerial skill, these men are simply the ad salesmen and mail-order catalog distributors of the digital era.

You can’t make money selling digital goods.

Out in the real world people make money by selling goods and services of finite supply. On the Internet, you can’t do this. Any digital good by definition has an infinite supply. This is because, in the words of Lawrence Lessig, digital means “perfect copies, freely made.”

Hence the damage the Internet has done to companies such as newspapers, film studios, and music labels that sell goods that can be digitized (words, images, and sounds). Hence SOPA, the attempt by these industries to create legal obstacles to infinite digital supply. You can’t blame them for trying, but in the end they will lose. (I could make an argument that, because of the loss of profits by a range of media companies, the Internet has destroyed more profits than it has created, but I won’t try to do that here.)

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Crashing Sundance: The Time I Made Bruce Willis Mad

Bruce Willis was mad at me.

He didn’t say it, but there it was: the trademark steely-eyed scowl. The one that’s reserved for Eastern European villains from the 1980s, masked gimps, and now, apparently, irksome members of the press.

“I’m a good skier,” Bruce Willis growled. “I don’t know what your cousin is talking about.”

With that, Bruce Willis stomped into the Sundance premiere for Lay The Favorite. And I was asked to leave.

I lied.

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