The debate has been about whether to extend all the Bush-era tax cuts, or just the ones for Americans earning less than $250,000. But on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” National Urban League president Marc Morial called that a false choice. “The plan needs to be recast. It’s a 2001 tax cut plan that was designed as a stimulus to the recession that was taking place,” Morial said. “Why can’t we develop a new tax plan that might place greater tax relief for those at the middle and working levels? This tax plan gave those at the middle and working levels scant relief and gave greater relief to those up at the top. . . . Let’s design a tax plan for 2010 that confronts the problems of 2010.” It’s hard to remember that when those tax cuts were passed, the U.S. Treasury had a surplus. It’s harder still to believe that surplus was forecast to be $5.6 trillion by now.
The reason that the rich have become so much richer during the past couple of decades is not primarily because of globalization and technological changes but is a result of government policy decisions, according to the new book “Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer — and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class.” Political science professors Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson contend that as a result of tax laws, deregulation and other government action, “over the last generation, more and more of the rewards of growth have gone to the rich and superrich. The rest of America, from the poor through the upper middle class, has fallen further and further behind.” Noting this research, columnist Bob Herbert 
The political team at NBC News’ 
Though polls have shown overwhelming public support for Kansas’ statewide public smoking ban, could the state repeal it? State Rep. Brenda Landwehr, R-Wichita, current chairwoman of the House Health and Human Services Committee, wants to try. “I’d like to see us revisit the smoking ban,” Landwehr Follow us
