09.18.2011 - 9:53 AM
“Obama Tax Plan Would Ask More of Millionaires,” reads the headline of the lead story in today’s New York Times. Nice touch that “ask” part, as if paying taxes were voluntary.
President Obama wants to invoke the “Buffett Rule,” named for multibillionaire Warren Buffett, who complains that his tax bill is too low because his effective rate is less than his secretary’s. Buffett wrote in the Times last month,
09.18.2011 - 7:15 AM
For many liberal pundits, the blame for the circus that will unfold this week at the UN with the start of a debate over Palestinian statehood is to be assigned to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu whom they wrongly claim has obstructed peace talks. Others are inclined, with more justice, to put the onus for the problem on Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas whose pursuit of UN recognition of statehood without first making peace with Israel is seen as both futile and counter-productive to the end that he claims to seek.
But the lion’s share of the blame ought to fall on President Obama. Though peace talks were stalled when he took office in January 2009, the deterioration of a relatively stable standoff into the volatile situation that exists today is due in no small measure to the blunders that the president’s team has committed over the past 32 months. Though friends of Israel will rightly give Obama credit for sticking to his word and vetoing the Palestinian resolution — a stand that will be undertaken as much if not more in defense of U.S. interests than those of the Jewish state — the diplomatic disaster that is about to be played out is the fruit of his own misjudgments.
