Free Republic

---snip--- The saga of Philadelphia’s soda tax war is about more than arcane tax policy, and it’s about more than who may be up and who may be down in this year’s mayoral election. It really gets to a big philosophical question: Just what does it mean to be progressive nowadays? Mayor Kenney and his allies speak the lingua franca of progressivism, but when what you hold up as your signature accomplishment is a tax, as opposed to the program it might fund, and when that leads to the expansion of a food desert in a city with the worst...

When members of the U.S. Senate finally head home this week, they will be leaving the future of 50 individual and business tax breaks in limbo. All expire at the end of 2009. Among the disappearing breaks are the research tax credit and an annual alternative minimum tax "patch," which keeps 23 million additional middle-income Americans from being forced into calculating and paying the dreaded AMT. (For 2009, with the patch in place, 4 million upper-middle- and high-income families will pay AMT.)

Cap and trade legislation may be one of the biggest issues facing the oil and gas industry according to Dr. Daniel Fine, Associate of Policy, Strategy and Development at New Mexico Tech. He also serves on the New Mexico Center for Energy Policy which is hosting the presentation by former Shell Oil executive, John Hofmeister tonight. “What is the purpose to cap and trade?” asks Fine. “Is the purpose to raise revenue? Is the purpose to lower CO2? Or both?” The bill (Waxman-Markey) coming out of the U.S. House of Representatives claims both purposes without a clear policy declaration.