Public policy and how it gets that way...

Caine in the TV show from the '60's "Kung Fu" was an amalgam of an amalgam: the part was the very embodiment of the martial arts genre as spaghetti western of which each borrowed from each other so that the origin was as mixed as Caine's character: A totally yin-yang sort of thing.

And so it is with public policy...

Link 2

...The tax rate on investment income is typically much lower than the rate on wages and salary. For example, the tax on a $1,000 capital gain from the sale of stock generally comes to $150, while the tax on $1,000 of salary can be as high as $350. The special low rate on investment income allows investors to avoid paying tens of billions of dollars in taxes each year. And yet the alternative tax does not treat that super-low rate as a tax shelter.

To be fair and efficient - and to help make up the revenue that would be lost by shielding middle-income taxpayers from the alternative tax - investment income should be taxed the same as ordinary earned income under the alternative system...

Well, yes, right certainly. But how come it hasn't happened?

Link 3

"There are a lot of people in America who look at what we do here in Washington with nothing but cynicism," said Emanuel. "Heck, there are a lot of people in Washington who look at us with nothing but cynicism." But, he went on, "there are good people here. Decent people on both sides of the political aisle and on both sides of the reporter's notebook."

...this particular community happens to be in the nation's capital. And the people in it are the so-called Beltway Insiders -- the high-level members of Congress, policymakers, lawyers, military brass, diplomats and journalists who have a proprietary interest in Washington and identify with it.

They call the capital city their "town."

- Sally Quinn


Bill Galston, former deputy domestic policy adviser to Clinton and now a professor at the University of Maryland, says ... "most people in Washington believe that most people in Washington are honorable and are trying to do the right thing..."

"This is a community in all kinds of ways," says ABC correspondent Cokie Roberts, whose parents both served in Congress...

"This is our town," says Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut,...



"This is a contractual city," says Chris Matthews, who once was a top aide to the late Speaker of the House Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill. "There are no factories here. What we make are deals.

Now admittedly, Sally Quinn was talking Lewinsky here, but let's face it: a community is a community is a community.

And why not include Daniel Okrent in that community?

Why not include ourselves?

Ultimately we run the United States- we are the bosses ultimately.

No matter what comes out of the NY Times, or the Washington Post or Fox, we still can know from where our money comes and where our money goes, and why and what is done in our name with the taxes we pay.

However, I think some people may not be aware of that.

Certainly not Joe Liberman.

And some, I suspect, may not care, like the folks who pay for rendition.