Russia - that's RUSSIA - may be showing the way on taxes. Last year the Putin government (1) closed a multiplicity of loopholes and trashed the Byzantine tax code, (2) cut corporate taxes by one-third (to 24 percent), and (3) imposed on individual income a flat tax of 13 percent. Result? As a percentage of Russia's gross domestic product, revenues from income taxes have gone up. As The Wall Street Journal puts it: "The tax reforms have provided a solid basis for economic growth and investment. Message to Congress and the Bush administration: "Please note the Russian example, especially on the flat tax."
There's good news in cancer statistics, as there often is when one re-centers the data. The traditional, or "cohort," method calculates how many patients diagnosed with a particular cancer have survived X number of years since their diagnosis. The newer, or "period," method more heavily weights patients undergoing the latest therapies - thereby diminishing the biostatistical influence of those diagnosed many years ago who underwent less advanced treatment. For many cancers, the newer - and better - technique shows dramatically higher survival rates.
And what's with Harry Belafonte, out there ripping African-Americans in the Bush administration - namely Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice? Belafonte, long a crooner on the leftist edge, blasted the two earlier this year for, in effect, daring to be Republican - terming Powell, e.g., an administration "house slave." Both responded, National Security Adviser Rice saying, "I don't need Harry Belafonte to tell me what it means to be black." Evidently, as with so many black entertainers and swamis, Belafonte deems it unacceptable for any leading African-Americans to think for themselves and not be slaves to the mandated Democratic/leftist creed. How is it any less racist to say, for instance, that a black woman cannot be a Republican or conservative, than to say a black woman cannot be believed because she is black?
Partly because of federal statute provisions affecting the low end of the FM spectrum generally reserved for noncommercial, educational stations, full-power evangelical stations are bumping "translator" stations - the core of National Public Radio. Left-leaning NPR, federally subsidized against private competition and long largely alone on that part of the FM spectrum, is understandably upset. One NPR general manager told The New York Times the new competition from evangelical radio "is, like, nuts." Which raises the question: Where is the sense in a free nation financing stations or networks - in competition with the private sector - through entities such as the government-funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting?
Short of sufficient oxygen? Yes, indeed - particularly in the lofty Ivy League. Of the eight Ivy colleges, only one - Cornell - offers Army, Navy and Air Force ROTC; Yale, Harvard, Brown, Columbia and Dartmouth offer none. In addition to Cornell, only Princeton offers Army ROTC and only Pennsylvania offers Navy ROTC; no Ivy college besides Cornell offers Air Force ROTC. Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Penn, Columbia and Brown allow students to participate in at least one of the service ROTC programs at a nearby ROTC-affiliated college. One of these days, the peacenik children running the non-Cornell Ivies should take some deep breaths and grow up.