Andre's Executive Order

This is part two of a series of articles challenging the Republican establishment to defend their representation of Conservative interests and to challenge current Republican talking points with common sense. Today's topic: Taxation Every single Republican running for federal elected office is asked (rather heavy handedly) to sign Grover Norquist's pledge to never raise, or cause to be raised, any income tax for corporations or individuals or to reduce any deduction available that in effect raises those taxes. The effects of this pledge and the mentality behind it saturate the Republican political landscape these days and was plainly visible in the debt ceiling debate earlier this month. The suggestion of raising revenues caused Cantor to storm out of a critical meeting and was a hard line in the sand drawn by all Republican leadership in both the Senate and the House. The opposition to tax increases was so vehement that the Republican party passed up two trillion in addit...

Taxation. It's one of the big talk-points and battle lines between the two moderate parties we have. Republicans love to slam Democrats for raising taxes and hurting business while Democrats love to slam Republicans for using tax cuts to benefit corporate deals made to further corporate greed at the expense of Americans. The Tea Party has recently brought taxation to the forefront of the news by raging in a nearly incoherent way against the increases in tax funded programs, taking a nearly libertarian stance on the potential tax impacts. Again, the #1 cited reason for this rage? The interference with business that such costs would have. What the hell do politicans mean when they say 'Business'? It's convenient to lump every kind of economic effort into a single word like 'business' and then use broad generalizations to talk about how a tax or legislation is for or against it. But pay attention folks. Doing business in the US has changed enormously in the last fi...