Home > Jay Bookman > Archives > 2009 > January > 05
Monday, January 5, 2009
Bernard Madoff belongs in jail…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
… and he may have given prosecutors the opening they need to make that happen.
“Prosecutors on Monday said disgraced financier Bernard Madoff violated bail conditions by mailing about $1 million worth of jewelry and other assets to relatives and should be jailed without bail.
“The defendant’s recent actions amount to obstruction of justice,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Marc Litt told a judge at a hearing in federal court in Manhattan.
U.S. District Magistrate Ronald Ellis asked the lawyers to submit written arguments and said he would rule later.
Madoff’s lawyer, Ira Sorkin, described the items as heirlooms that included cufflinks and antique watches. He said they were not significant assets. The items were sent to Madoff’s children and to unidentified friends vacationing in Florida….
The judge said he was concerned whether any previous cases have claimed that potential economic harm represented a danger to the community.
‘In some instances, economic danger may be more severe than physical danger,’ he said.”
You live a different life when your lawyer can stand in court and argue with a straight face that a million dollars’ worth of jewelry does not represent significant assets. Given that the alleged losses amount to $50 billion, I guess in a strange way the lawyer had a point.
Permalink | Comments (73) | Post your comment |
Why abandon the gasoline tax?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The state of Oregon is toying with the remarkably stupid idea of trying to tax people for transportation based on how many miles they drive. The idea is to use that new tax revenue to replace the traditional per-gallon gasoline tax, which taxes people based on how much gasoline they consume.
“A state task force will look at equipping every new vehicle in the state with a Global Positioning System tracking device to quietly record every mile driven and where…. The plan still requires legislative endorsement, and the full details could take several more years to work out, but state analysts said the governor’s endorsement is a crucial step on a road many states are beginning to travel —- ending dependence on the gasoline tax.
‘This is a way to try to develop a fair funding mechanism that we’re going to have to have if we’re going to be aggressive in terms of looking at electric cars and hybrids and plug-ins and all those options, and at the same time continue to invest in our roads and infrastructure,’ said Rem Nivens, the governor’s deputy communications director.”
As the story suggests, the Oregon approach reflects a growing national disenchantment with the gasoline tax as a source of revenue. I’ve heard Georgia DOT Commissioner Gena Evans, for example, also speak favorably if theoretically about the idea of taxing by miles traveled instead of by gallons consumed. The fascination with tolls as a financing method for transportation is also motivated at least in part by that aversion to the gasoline tax.
But that makes no sense to me. For one thing, collecting revenue through a gasoline tax requires very little infrastructure or government bureaucracy, and no inconvenience to the motorist. It is simple and straightforward. By contrast, collecting revenue through tolls or a massive GPS-monitoring system is far more intrusive, complicated and expensive. (Do we really need to attach GPS systems to our cars so government can track our every move? Does the concept of privacy have no meaning any more?)
Second, the problem that Oregon is trying to address is that under the current gasoline tax, people who drive hybrids and other high-mileage vehicles will pay less in taxes than people who drive gas hogs. But that doesn’t sound like a problem to be solved; quite the contrary, it sounds like a solution to be encouraged.
Energy-wasting vehicles ought to be taxed higher, because they impose more external costs such as forcing us to import more oil and contribute more to air pollution and global warming. Using taxes to discourage energy inefficiency is a good idea, not a bad one.
Now, if all-electric cars ever become a major part of our transportation infrastructure, some kind of mileage-based tax might conceivably be necessary. But that’s a long, long way into the future. I see no reason whatsoever to abandon the gasoline tax.
As another writer recently put it:
“…. the virtues of a gas tax remain what they have always been. A tax that suppresses U.S. gas consumption can have a major effect on reducing world oil prices. And the benefits of low world oil prices are obvious: They put tremendous pressure on OPEC, as evidenced by its disarray during the current collapse; they deal serious economic damage to energy-exporting geopolitical adversaries such as Russia, Venezuela, and Iran; and they reduce the enormous U.S. imbalance of oil trade which last year alone diverted a quarter of $1 trillion abroad Furthermore, a reduction in U.S. demand alters the balance of power between producer and consumer, making us less dependent on oil exporters. It begins weaning us off foreign oil, and, if combined with nuclear power and renewed U.S. oil and gas drilling, puts us on the road to energy independence.”
That writer is the conservative Charles Krauthammer, in the current issue of the conservative Weekly Standard, proposing a $1 increase in the federal gasoline tax with the revenue used to reduce federal payroll taxes.
Permalink | Comments (77) | Post your comment |
What is Israel trying to accomplish?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Max Boot, the neocon’s neocon, is a good writer with a schoolboy’s naive enthusiasm for the benefits of war. But even Boot is of mixed feelings about the Israelis’ huge gamble in invading the Gaza Strip. It’s hard to conceive what end state in Gaza the Israelis are trying to achieve that might justify the large risk it has taken, but we’ll see ….
Writes Boot in the Wall Street Journal:
“The essential dilemma Israel faces is this: It can’t ignore Hamas’s attacks, not only because of the damage they inflict, but also because of the terrible precedent they set. Israel has always been a state that is one battle away from destruction, and it cannot allow its enemies to think that it can be attacked with impunity. But at the same time Israel cannot do what it takes to wipe out the enemy, because of the constraints imposed by its own public, which is far less willing than in the past to suffer or inflict bloodletting.
So the Jewish state is forced to fight an unsatisfying war of attrition with Hamas, Hezbollah and other entities bent on its destruction. The current incursions are only one stage of this lengthy struggle. The odds are that once Israeli troops leave, Hamas will rebuild its infrastructure, forcing the Israelis to go back in the future.
This is the definition of a quagmire, yet Israel has no choice but to keep doing what it’s doing. Unlike the French in Algeria or the Americans in Vietnam, it cannot simply pack its bags and go home. If Israel is to continue to exist, it will have to continue to wage low-intensity war for a long time to come — definitely years, probably decades, possibly centuries.”
That’s the sad truth, and I’m far from sure that Israel can survive that long under those sustained conditions.
Services »
