The biggest reason why you would want to use higher taxes on the rich and the nation’s largest corporations if you’re going to pay for stimulative job-creation measures is not just because these would be the least disruptive offsets for an economy waiting to heal. Just as high on the list is the fact that low taxes on the ultra-rich distorts the economy and makes future growth nearly impossible.

A perfect example of this comes from the Washington Post’s salutary article today on capital gains taxes. This is something that hardly even gets talked about anymore, but it’s at the heart of at least one of the pay-fors on the White House’s list, the carried interest loophole. The only reason that hedge fund managers are paying drastically lower tax rates is because the taxes on their capital gains, which they are calling their entire income, is drastically lower than the income tax. And this has produced massive inequality, pushed along by the rich contributors of politicians in both parties.

Rick Perry has only two children?! As the biographical information flashed by on television during a recent debate of Republican presidential hopefuls, it was strangely incongruous to see that the rising star of the religious right was so woefully behind his competitors. Rick Santorum and Jon Hunstman led the pack with seven kids each, followed by Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and Michelle Bachman with five (and the 23 children she had fostered). To be sure, Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain also had a paltry two, but they, unlike Perry, were not considered to be the new favorite of the social conservative wing of the Republican.

The reason that Rick Perry has “only” two children, one can say with confidence about this normally private matter, is because of the widely disseminated fact of his vasectomy. cited in the New York Times among other places. (This procedure, to the delight of late night comedians, was apparently performed by his father-in-law).

We don’t have to have a system of government that actually encourages these destructive zero-sum strategies. We could adopt another election system, such as proportional representation, or even instant runoff voting (IRV), that allows for more than just two parties in the running without worrying about the “spoiler” effect.

This month, the Palestinian Authority plans to go to the United Nations and petition for statehood, against the wishes of the Israelis and the United States. It’s not entirely clear what form this statehood petition will take. The Palestinians could ask for full UN membership, which would go through the UN Security Council, or they could seek “Observer Status,” basically a first step toward eventual statehood, which would be subject to a vote at the General Assembly. The big difference here is that five Security Council states have veto power, and the US has already vowed to use it with respect to the Palestinian statehood push. So Mahmoud Abbas, who is leading the effort, may avoid the Security Council

In the New York Times Economists Bowl, I call it Princeton 2, Harvard 0.

Well, this is a bit unexpected. OMB Director Jack Lew strolled into the White House briefing room and laid out the plan to pay for the American Jobs Act, and it’s entirely from ending tax breaks for rich people and corporations.

In today’s USA Today, the Secessionist penned an op-ed which could be titled, “Being honest about Social Security means calling it a criminal conspiracy” — and he criticizes former presidents for not doing so.

A US State Embassy cable marked “confidential” and published by WikiLeaks reveals details on the detention of juveniles held in “Site 4″ in a Iraq Interior Ministry (MOI) detention complex. The juveniles allege sexual abuse by Iraqi interrogators, specifically that rapes were being used in the prison to induce confessions. The discovery of widespread abuse and torture, according to the diplomat who wrote the cable, is the worst since the infamous Jadriyah “Bunker” facility was discovered in 2005.

A Frontier Airlines flight from Denver to Detroit was taken to a “remote area of the airport” and searched for explosives. ABC reported “suspicious behavior,” which in fact was two people “making out” in the bathroom. The local ABC affiliate WXYZ in Detroit was more explicit: “The ABC News National Security team is telling Action News that their sources say the flight was disrupted by two people having intimate relations in one of the bathrooms.”

The FBI’s statement on all this covers up the fact that a couple Americans were trying to join the Mile High Club and that is why NORAD ended up scrambling F-16 jets to “shadow the flight until it landed.” The statement claims they were sent “out of an abundance of caution.”

The Democratic National Committee has set up a resource for the American Jobs Act, and has also released a TV ad to push for the jobs program announced by the President last week. This is part of the all-hands-on-deck approach for the plan, an attempt to move Republicans to act through outside pressure.