I was only going to do a short weekly-summary note on the House passing a repeal of the estate tax. But then I started reading conservative blogs arguing against the “death tax”, and remembering what I learned from being executor of my father’s estate. It got too long for the summary, so it turned into one of this week’s featured articles: “Death, Taxes, and the American Dream”. That should be out sometime around 8 EDT. (I’m back home in the East.)
The other featured article continues the 2016 speech series by looking at Marco Rubio’s announcement speech. Short version: If your campaign is about being the new face with new ideas for a new century, you really ought to include one of those new ideas in your speech. Because “we need new ideas” is not a new idea. Gary Hart tried it in 1984, and his campaign started going south when Walter Mondale asked: “Where’s the beef?”
The weekly summary includes the debate about Social Security that Chris Christie started. And attending a Christie town hall meeting in New Hampshire Wednesday — I’ll get to the content of it some other week — caused me to make some observations about the importance of town hall meetings. (Christie is really good at them.) Also: a medical ethics professor live-tweeted from the abstinence-sex-education presentation the public schools inflicted on her son, and the North Carolina legislature is debating a proposal that would pretty much wreck the Research Triangle.
I’ll close the summary with a new sports craze from Germany. It involves a ping-pong table, a miniature soccer ball, and your head. My neck aches just from watching it.
Expect the Rubio article around 9 and the weekly summary by 11.
The Weekly Sift 