The New Yorker's George Packer comments on President Obama's Iraq speech:

What President Obama called the end of the combat mission in Iraq is a meaningless milestone, constructed almost entirely out of thin air, and his second Oval Office speech marks a rare moment of dishonesty and disingenuousness on the part of a politician who usually resorts to rare candor at important moments.

"Rare," that is, unless one counts how he handled health care, as I described it earlier:

Robert Rubin and Julian Robertson follow up the arguments they made in the conference call covered here July 21 with an op-ed piece in today's Wall Street Journal under the headline, "Bring Back the Estate Tax Now."

A few points in response. First, if people managed their personal finances the way that Robert Rubin managed Citigroup (whose market capitalization collapsed on his watch) and the Harvard University endowment (which also collapsed while he was involved in its management as a member of Harvard's governing Corporation), there'd be lot fewer estates subject to the tax, because everyone would have a lot less money.

Under the headline "Small global taxes would make a big difference for world's 'bottom billion,'" the foreign minister of France, Bernard Kouchner; the foreign minister of Japan, Katsuya Okada, and the development cooperation minister of Belgium, Charles Michel, have an op-ed piece suggesting a tax on foreign currency exchanges to finance safe water, food, and education for poor countries. "A levy of five cents for each $1,000 exchanged could bring in more than $30 billion per year," they write.

When people suggest taxes, they always start out "small." But once the door is opened to the idea of "global taxes," you can bet they won't end small. Never mind all the issues about whether development aid actually helps poor countries or just winds up empowering corrupt local dictators and their cronies.

Michael Barone has a new column up:

The Obama Democrats, faced with a grave economic crisis, responded with policies appropriate to the Big Unit America that was disappearing during the president's childhood.

Their financial policy has been to freeze the big banks into place. Their industrial policy was to preserve as much as they could of General Motors and Chrysler for the benefit of the United Auto Workers. Their health care policy was designed to benefit Big Pharma and other big players. Their housing policy has been to try to maintain existing prices. Their macroeconomic economic policy was to increase the size and scope of existing government agencies to what looks to be the bursting point.

What we see is Big Government colluding with Big Business and trying to breathe life into Big Labor.

The Washington Examiner's Timothy Carney notices that of the 12 richest members of Congress, only three are Republicans, and puts that together with some other data points to argue that the stereotype of Republicans as the "party of the rich" is inaccurate.

Steven Rattner, who worked for the Obama administration restructuring the auto industry and who reportedly has the Securities and Exchange Commission on his case for the Chooch situation, lands on the front page of today's Vineyard Gazette (the last Tuesday issue before the paper reverts to weekly publication until next summer). The issue now is a horse farm, Crow Hollow Farm, that Mr. Rattner, according to the Gazette article, recently bought for $2.3 million.

A piece in the American Thinker wonders how tax-exempt bond financing for the ground zero mosque-swimming pool is going to be squared with the Islamic legal prohibition against interest. There are ways around it. Maybe a tax-exempt municipal Islamic bond?

Even so, it's got to be galling for those people out there trying to raise or borrow money without being able to offer tax-exempt interest to see a collection of characters like those putting together the ground zero mosque-swimming pool considered for tax-free financing.

Now that some natural gas reserves have been privately discovered off the coast of Israel, there are noises about the Israeli government making a power grab for the revenues. The Washington Post reports:

the initial euphoria over the prospect of energy independence for Israel is being overshadowed by the dispute between Israeli officials who want to increase the state's share of the profits and U.S. and Israeli investors who say the government's stance threatens Israel's status as a safe place to invest....

Under current law, Israel would be eligible to claim royalties of 12.5 percent of the value of the gas, along with some additional charges....

The Post quotes Rabbi Michael Melchior:

Amity Shlaes has a new column up at Bloomberg about the tax competition between states, including that between New Hampshire and Massachusetts and between Connecticut and New York.

During a congressional debate between candidates in New York's 20th District, the candidates clashed over taxes, according to a report by the Albany Times-Union's Jimmy Vielkind. The Republican candidate, Chris Gibson, said letting the Bush tax cuts expire would be a bad idea:

It's not a good idea. You know what happened in 1929? They raised taxes twice and went from 6.5 percent unemployment to 13 percent unemployment, and then to 25 percent unemployment. That's the real truth of what happened. All that, by the way, was a year after the crash of the stock market."

When Mr. Vielkind asked Mr. Gibson about it after the debate, Mr. Gibson answered:

The other day we mentioned that one of the surprising things in the battle of ideas these days is the degree to which the center-right of the political spectrum wants to make government tax and spending policy tilt more away from the "rich." The latest to pile on is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Andrew G. Biggs, who "was the principal deputy commissioner of the Social Security Administration and, in 2005 ... worked at the White House National Economic Council on Social Security reform."

Reason magazine's Matt Welch catches Jane Mayer contradicting herself over George Soros.

They may try to build it with tax-exempt bond financing, the Washington Examiner reports, commenting, "It's like someone is sitting in a room dreaming up ways to make this mosque project even more unpopular than it already is."

The New York Times has some information from an anonymous source on the developer behind the ground zero mosque-swimming pool:

His late-blooming real estate career came after a difficult youth: Mr. Gamal pleaded guilty to at least six misdemeanors in his late teens and early 20s, including charges related to disorderly conduct, drunk driving and attempted shoplifting. He was once arrested for soliciting a prostitute in Manhattan, according to a law enforcement official.

In 2005, Mr. Gamal was arrested after he punched a man who owed rent to his brother, who is also a property owner. Mr. Gamal later settled the matter for about $15,000.

More: "Mr. Gamal plans to buy the land from Con Edison, the current owner, which has said the transaction would proceed as long as Mr. Gamal agrees to a price set by an appraiser."

The debate over taxation on "carried interest" is one that we've tried to cover here is some detail, but somehow we missed Steven Schwarzman weighing in. Paul Krugman noticed.