Happy Birthday to Charisma Carpenter, 42. I have to say that Angel is easily my least-favorite of the Joss Whedon TV shows...there are certainly bits I like, but overall I found it rather forgettable. I do like, however, what happened to Cordy (really? I would have thought it was spelled Cordi), at least in the first couple of seasons. A character who had earned the right to grow up.
On to the good stuff:
1. An excellent contribution to the WaPo "5 Myths" series: Michigan's Ted Brader on campaign ads.
2. The idea that most undecided voters typically break towards the challenger turns out to be a myth (one that I used to believe, until Nate Silver did the work on statewide elections that convinced me otherwise). Now Silver turns to presidential elections to show the same thing.
3. Nice Ezra Klein post about taxes, small business, and jobs.
4. Suzy Khimm discusses some options for reforming the filibuster; good post, and always good to ask Sarah Binder on this topic -- but she didn't mention Superbill!
5. And I'm not watching The Newsroom now, and probably won't catch up with it later, but I still totally enjoyed Alex Pareene's great Sorkin rant.
Monday, July 23, 2012
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I don't like the Superbill concept for a number of reasons. What about turning the idea around and giving the minority leader a limited number (say, 3) of chances to filibuster for each session, sort of like instant replay challenges in pro football? That would preserve the right of a minority to attempt (with no guarantee of success) to filibuster a few bills or appointments they most strongly oppose but would get rid of the now routine 60 vote requirement for doing anything.
ReplyDeleteThe hard part about this is that it's really tough to game out how these things would actually work.
DeleteOn your idea...see, I don't think it would work in practice. There's nothing to stop the majority, in that scenario, from bringing up the same idea as a different bill, is there? So you filibuster it as S. 1, then you filibuster it again when it comes back as S. 101, and one more time when it comes back as S. 201, and then you're done for the session.
Not saying that Superbill is perfect, BTW, but I still haven't been convinced against it after about two years of floating it. Granted, it's a solution to what I see as the problem, and others disagree with me on that.
Angel was easily my most-favorite Joss Whedon show. Cordelia's growth was one of the highlights. Others:
ReplyDeleteWesley. He went from being a doofus to a great, nuanced character.
Faith. Yes, she was only in a few episodes, but her redemption storyline, and the fact that she was the only one who wouldn't kill Angelus... C'mon.
Lindsey. Forgetting the final season, he was a great villain.
The Angel/Darla relationship. Great stuff.
Holtz. GREAT villain.
Yes, the Cordelia/Connor thing was gross. That was the point. And it wasn't really her-- she was being controlled by Zoe (sorry-- I forgot what they called her on Angel).
Jasmine.
DeleteI have a question regarding small businesses and taxes. If I have the argument right, critics say that a tax on indiviuals making more than $250,000 is also a tax on small businesses because many of those business owners report their business revenues as personal income. My question: do they have to report their business revenues as personal income or could they simply change the way they file their taxes and eliminate the entire issue?
ReplyDeleteReplace the words 'business revenue' with 'business profit' and it makes more sense. Many small businesses are organized as LLC's or S Corporations, where profit after tax deductible expenses flows directly to the owners to be taxed on their personal return. So if your small business is your sole income, then you would have to receive more than $250k in distributions (profit) from your business for the increased tax to hit.
DeleteThis can hurt in the case where you may have spent a lot of money on equipment... Say, computers, but can only deduct a portion of the overall cost as depreciation over a period of years. So you may have spent' money that year that gets counted as profit. But you will catch up in latter years. But I believe even the depreciation rules have been eased for small businesses.
Replace the words 'business revenue' with 'business profit' and it makes more sense. Many small businesses are organized as LLC's or S Corporations, where profit after tax deductible expenses flows directly to the owners to be taxed on their personal return. So if your small business is your sole income, then you would have to receive more than $250k in distributions (profit) from your business for the increased tax to hit.
DeleteThis can hurt in the case where you may have spent a lot of money on equipment... Say, computers, but can only deduct a portion of the overall cost as depreciation over a period of years. So you may have spent' money that year that gets counted as profit. But you will catch up in latter years. But I believe even the depreciation rules have been eased for small businesses.
Thanks for the response. But do they have an option to organize some other way that would separate their income from company profits? Would it constitute a substantial burden to reorganize? Or would the fact that the profits essentially are the income of a sole owner make that nonsensical?
ReplyDeleteAs a C corporation, the profits are taxed prior to distribution to shareholders. This is normally done if you want to retain money in the corporation. Think IBM and GE type corporations. Most smaller businesses don't go this route to avoid the double taxation of the corporate tax and the personal tax on salary or dividends.
ReplyDeleteThe two structures I mentioned in the previous comment avoid double tax, hence why they are preferred by many small businesses.
I don't buy the idea that small businesses are getting hit, except in the depreciation case I mentioned. If you make $250k profit on your small business, you took home $250k and should be taxed as such - life is good.
Thanks, again.
DeleteI really like Angel. Anonymous gets most of the high points. I'll add Amy Acker's Fred, once she stops being crazy. My least favorite Whedon shows are Dollhouse and Dr. Horrible. I just don't get/like musicals, even ones with Nathan Fillion and Neil Patrick Harris in them. And Dollhouse had about three good episodes in total.
ReplyDeleteWell, I certainly like Amy Acker a lot. But I think Dollhouse wound up being terrific...just wish I had time to make the case for it.
DeleteThis is the Anonymous who praised Angel earlier. Dollhouse was easily my least-favorite of his shows. Its central problem was that the structure prevented character development. When the main character is imprinted with a new persona every episode, there isn't much that can be done for character development. The only scene in the entire series I really liked was when the computer geek imprinted one of the dolls with himself. He had a great conversation with himself thanks to the surprisingly good actor who played the doll. Also, it had one really good line: I feel so obsolete. Like Old people. Or Blockbuster.
Delete