YES AND NO: Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Dennis Kucinich (Ohio), currently dead-set against tax cuts, co-sponsored a bill in 1998 that would have cut taxes on dividends-one of the proposals for which he has attacked President Bush. Kucinich’s plan would have exempted only the first $400 in dividend income, not all, as Bush has proposed, nor the $500 that the Senate has been considering. Kucinich, a Cleveland Democrat, "said yesterday that he wouldn’t vote for his own bill if it were up for consideration now," reported the Cleveland Plain-Dealer on May 14. "‘Today we have a one-year deficit of at least $300 billion, and you have the economy staggering toward a double-dip recession, Kucinich said when asked about his 1998 bill, which was meant to encourage savings. ‘The tax cut made economic sense then. It just does not today, because the economy has changed.’" Meanwhile, fellow contender Sen. John Kerry (D.-Mass.) also has some explaining to do. Kerry is against President Bush’s method of eliminating the double taxation on dividends, but on Dec. 3, 2002, he said: "I think we should excite the capital markets by eliminating the tax on capital gains for investments in critical technology companies-zero capital gains on $100 million issuance of stock if it’s held for five years and has created real jobs. And we should encourage the measurement of the real value of companies by ending the double taxation of dividends." On May 8, he told AP, "This is not the time for a dividends tax cut that goes to individuals."
REMEMBER THE STATES: As conservatives in Washington battle the economically crippling notion of caps on carbon dioxide emissions, eco-statists work to convince state governments to impose their own disastrous rules. On May 6, the Maine state house voted to require the state government to develop a plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions levels to those of 1990 and eventually to an ill-defined level that would "eliminate any dangerous threat to the climate." "That last phrase could require that emissions be cut 75% to 80% below 2003 levels over the long haul," reported the Portland Press-Herald on May 9. Maine Gov. John Baldacci (D.) supports the legislation, which faces favorable prospects in the state senate but had not passed by May 20.
RACIAL POLITICS: The University of California at Berkeley’s board of regents waded into racial politics again and voted to oppose a measure that will be on the state ballot in March 2004. The Racial Privacy Initiative, sponsored by civil rights champion Ward Connerly, will forbid the state of California from collecting information on people’s race except in certain restricted circumstances, such as for medical studies or to maintain eligibility for federal programs. Connerly, an African-American and member of Berkeley’s board of regents himself, fought successfully for Proposition 209, which outlaws racist preferences in California’s public institutions. The board voted 15 to 3 on May 15 to oppose the measure. Connerly said that those who oppose the initiative could be "standing with the segregationists of the past in a belief that human beings should be divided, catalogued, and subdivided" according to race.
NOT THE WORST: The New York Times’ scandal over its reporter Jayson Blair, whom editors petted while he fabricated story after story, is not its worst. "In the early 1930s, for example, Times Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty helped Joseph Stalin cover up a Soviet extermination campaign that claimed millions of lives, mostly in the Ukraine-and when other reporters told the truth, Duranty libeled them," wrote columnist Marvin Olasky May 15. "In the late 1960s, the Times beat the pro-abortion drum so loudly that the Supreme Court began to listen, and the cost was many more millions of lives. Blair’s misconduct was spectacular, but no one died because of it, so the Times has certainly had many lower points in the 152 years since Henry Raymond, a conservative Christian, founded it. If Times Executive Editor Howell Raines wants to restore reader trust, he could begin by supporting the efforts of Ukrainians who want the Pulitzer Prize board to revoke its award to Duranty seven decades ago."
DOCTORS V. LAWYERS: On May 16, the Nebraska Supreme Court decided that the state’s $1.25-million cap on malpractice damages is constitutional. In 2000, a judge had decided that the cap violated equal protection requirements. "The equal protection clause does not forbid classifications; it simply keeps governmental decision-makers from treating differently persons who are in all relevant respects alike," the state supreme court said in its opinion.
