Nice little tune.

My suggestion is Cuomo. here

Ps, I don’t know if making that a link worked, so if it didn’t, I apologize for the ugliness.

You accurately point out that there will be a point where sales start to level off. At the risk of exposing myself as a Clinton era New Democrat, why not let the market dictate the point where people’s behavior changes? And at the risk of exposing myself as a socialist, if it is a necessary industry that is is not working, why not nationalize it? Frankly I think either way is better than using tax policy to change an industry’s behavior. My position is that If there is price gouging going on, expose it through smart regulation.

I agree that raising taxes is usually a non-starter, but it does happen at the local and state levels for things like stadiums and transit. It is a major political risk, but now is the time for the Dems to take it. You have 2 (probably 4) years to develop a national healthcare system funded by higher taxes. If we can design a system that is easy to use, cost-efficient, and works, the tax increase that allowed the system will go from a political albatross to a success to campaign on. Of course, I could be wrong : )

“Simply saying they are price-gouging and taxing them more encourages more price-gouging so they can maintain their profits. If there is corruption, go after it, don’t levy tax as punishment.”

There is a certain point where prices will get too high, we haven’t hit it yet, but it has to exist. If you keep taxing them, for price-gouging, which they are doing, they might do it even more to keep up profits as you say, but then they will see a fall off in sales, at a certain point, thus making less profits, so they will lower prices again. Eventually people will be left without a choice.

It says you hate populism, It might at first glance seem like populism to “go get ‘em” when they make profits…but that’s not entirely what is happening. They are making record profits at a time when they are charging record numbers, which doesn’t make sense under any sane business model – if there was any other reasonable product on the market that would run a car they wouldn’t be charging these prices, because they would lose business…they are taking an utterly necessary industry and exploiting it at a very, very bad time to be doing so.

As to the last point, you can’t sell taxes to this country…you flat out can’t. One half of the country equates taxes with satan and the other half merely deals with them when they have to. There is virtually no program you can possibly convince the country to accept taxes for, they just won’t do it. If healthcare for children doesn’t convince people, nothing can.

Some Indian politicians have been less than careful in saying the terrorists were sent by Pakistan, the state, rather than that they came from Pakistan, the country (which hasn’t even been confirmed yet, anyway).

I am not sure if Pakistan is unwilling, or simply unable to deal with these elements. The case could be made that Musharraf was less than willing, but I don’t know enough about Bhutto’s husband to draw a conclusion.