THIS AND THAT

Next week will b e  a great week for this blogger. Besides the Council meeting Monday night, and the following Tuesday; there will be the  "Presidential Debate" Wednesday the 3rd.

The Tax Policy Center has published in the Washington Post 5 debunking myths about Romney's 47%. I will extract one for the next five blogs.(Bold face is mine)  The first::

 "1. Forty-seven percent of Americans don't pay taxes.

The most pernicious misconception about people who don't pay federal income taxes is that they don't pay any taxes. That oft-heard claim ignores all the other taxes Americans encounter in their daily lives. Almost two-thirds of the 47 percent work, for example, and their payroll taxes help finance Social Security and Medicare. Accounting for this, the share of households paying no net federal taxes falls to 28 percent.

And those aren't the only other taxes they bear. According to economic research, the corporate income tax discourages domestic investment; that depresses wages, so workers are effectively paying some of the corporate tax. More directly, many households pay federal taxes on gasoline, beer and cigarettes. And then there are state and local sales, property and income taxes — all of which are often less progressive than the federal income tax. Putting all these together, a family of three with an income of $30,000 would owe no federal income tax (in fact, they would get money back). But they could easily pay more than $4,500, or 15 percent of their income, in taxes."

Some personal afterthoughts to yesterday's blog on Israel's History:  A few weeks after the 1973 war ended I had the good fortune to travel with a group to Israel. We not only visited the Sinai up to the canal but also the Golan Heights. I gained an appreciation of why that area was so important to Israel. Imagine standing on the first Watchung Mountain overlooking Plainfield and a clear view for miles  towards the sea.. The Golan Plateau  is higher and a sheer facade over looking the Galilee and its kibbutzs. The Syrians would just take pot shots with mortars and rockets at the civilians working below. One had no warning. (If I can find some of my old pictures I will post).

Within weeks of the  Egyptian/Israel peace treaty Helen and I were in Egypt. One of our tour guides was a Coptic Egyptian woman who could not contain her enthusiasm about the peace treaty and the ending of a shameless loss of life..