Labyrinth: an intricate combination of paths or passages in which it is difficult to find one's way or to reach the exit. “Treated for Illness, Then Lost in Labyrinth of Bills” http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/13/health/13paper.html
Palladium: anything believed to provide protection or safety; safeguard.
Museum: a building or place where works of art, scientific specimens, or other objects of permanent value are kept and displayed.
Narcissism: inordinate fascination with oneself; excessive self-love; vanity.
Odyssey: an epic poem attributed to Homer, describing Odysseus's adventures in his ten-year attempt to return home to Ithaca after the Trojan War.
Meander: to proceed by or take a winding or indirect course
Protean: readily assuming different forms or characters; extremely variable
Stoical: impassive; characterized by a calm, austere fortitude befitting the Stoics
Herculean: requiring the great strength of a Hercules; very hard to perform
Laconic: Using or marked by the use of few words; terse or concise.
Zephyr: a gentle, mild breeze.
Nemesis: something that a person cannot conquer, achieve, etc.
Flora: the plants of a particular region or period listed by species and considered as a whole.
Ambrosia: Classical Mythology. The food of the gods
Hermetic: not affected by outward influence or power; isolated.
Promethean: of or suggestive of Prometheus; creative; boldly original.
Nectar: 1Classical Mythology. the life-giving drink of the gods. 2 The saccharine secretion of a plant, which attracts the insects or birds that pollinate the flower.
Hydra: Classical Mythology. a water or marsh serpent with nine heads, each of which, if cut off, grew back as two; Hercules killed this serpent by cauterizing the necks as he cut off the heads.
Lycanthrope: werewolf or alien spirit in the physical form of a bloodthirsty wolf.
Martial: inclined or disposed to war; warlike
Sophistry: a subtle, tricky, superficially plausible, but generally fallacious method of reasoning
Fauna: the animals of a given region or period considered as a whole.
Stentorian: very loud or powerful in sound
Pyrrhic: consisting of two short or unaccented syllables
Victory: success or triumph over an enemy in battle or war.
Gordian knot: An exceedingly complicated problem or deadlock
Pandora’s Box: Something obtained from curiosity.
Cassandra: a person who prophesies doom or disaster.
Achilles talon: referring to the special weakness of a person
Oedipus: A son of Laius and Jocasta, who was abandoned at birth and unwittingly killed his father and then married his mother. Midas: a person of great wealth or great moneymaking ability.
Hades: 1Classical Mythology. The underworld inhabited by departed souls. 2 Hell
Spartan: suggestive of the ancient Spartans; sternly disciplined and rigorously simple, frugal, or austere.
Sibylline: mysterious; cryptic.
Tantalize: to torment with, or as if with, the sight of something desired but out of reach; tease by arousing expectations that are repeatedly disappointed.
Delphic: of or pertaining to Delphi.
Helicon: a coiled tuba carried over the shoulder and used esp. in military bands
Platonic: of, pertaining to, or characteristic of Plato or his doctrines
Draconian: of, pertaining to, or characteristic of Draco or his code of laws.
Calypso: a sea nymph who detained Odysseus on the island of Ogygia for seven years.
Amazons: Greek Mythology A member of a nation of women warriors reputed to have lived in Scythia.
Siren: a seductively beautiful or charming woman, esp. one who beguiles men
Mercurial: changeable; volatile; fickle; flighty; erratic
Procrustean: tending to produce conformity by violent or arbitrary means.
Aurora: the ancient Roman goddess of the dawn.
Iridescent: displaying a play of lustrous colors like those of the rainbow.
Panacea: remedy for all disease or ills; cure-all
Lethargy: the quality or state of being drowsy and dull, listless and unenergetic, or indifferent and lazy; apathetic or sluggish inactivity.
Gorgons: Greek Mythology Any of the three sisters Stheno, Euryale, and the mortal Medusa who had snakes for hair and eyes that if looked into turned the beholder into stone
Harpies: 1-Classical Mythology. a ravenous, filthy monster having a woman's head and a bird's body. 2-a greedy, predatory person
Titanic: Also, titan. of enormous size, strength, power, etc.; gigantic
Marathon: any long-distance race
The sword of Damocles: referring to that meant to a special person.
Definitions gotten from http://dictionary.reference.com/
jueves, 27 de septiembre de 2007
miércoles, 26 de septiembre de 2007
Fallacies
http://www.businessweek.com/investing/greenbiz/archives/2007/09/new_nukes_are_f.html
New Nukes are Finally Coming
Posted by: John Carey on September 24
Since 2001, we and just about every other business publication have written stories on the coming nuclear renaissance. (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_17/b3729077.htm?chan=search ) It’s a development that was seen as almost inevitable. The country needs more electricity. And with coal plants being blocked or cancelled because of concerns over global warming, nukes were looking more and more attractive. Sure, there are still lingering worries over waste disposal and nuclear proliferation, but the new generation of plants are safer and, the industry expected, cheaper to build. The question was, who would take the first leap?
Now we have an answer. It’s a Princeton, NJ-based utility named NRG.
Here the author of this piece of writing is definetly using rhetoric, more specifically, pathos since it talks about worries and concerns and what he believes to be safer. But he is also using fallaciess, he uses Argumentum and Populum, since it is since it is trying to refer to popularity and refers to the feelings of people towards the decision they are to make. And it also has Appeal to Emotion since thats the way it is expressing its opinion.
http://www.nrgenergy.com/
On Sept. 24, the company and South Texas Project Nuclear Operating Company filed an application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build two new nuclear units at the site of two existing nukes in Texas. "We think the nuclear renaissance is finally upon us," says NRG CEO David Crane.
Going first is risky. The application will test the NRC's new application process, which will grant both an construction and operating license. (In the past, companies had to first get a construction license, and then, once the plant was built, an operating license). The new approach is supposed to trim the time needed to get a plant up and running by a number of years. But no one knows yet what snafus will appear. If the process takes longer than expected, the utility that goes first could lose money.
That's why the half-joke in the industry has been that everyone was racing to be second. Let someone else test the process, but stay ahead of all the others.
Crane, however, argues that not being first is also risky. One little known fact is that there's only one supplier of the huge forgings that make up the pressure vessel--a Japanese steel company. If you don't snare their upcoming production soon, you won't even be able to build a plant. NRG has already contracted to buy the forgings it needs. "We had to order now for a plant that won't be online until 2014," says Crane. "It is very Machiavellian, trying to secure your forging." NRC was able to get the ones it needs by ordering through Toshiba.
Here the fallacy used is one of Appeal to Biased Authority since they are talking to a person who has lived thrrough it and is telling his experience to support the point of the author.
Another potential hurdle for those who follow is finding people who know how to build a complex nuclear plant. "We think filing later is risky because of a shortage of skilled labor," explains Crane.
It uses Appeal to Emotion to say what poeple are feeling of what they are supposed to try and live with.
So it's reasonable to expect that one or two other companies will jump in soon, in the wake of NRG. But those who wait too long will end far behind.
What about opposition? Nuclear power is an uncomfortable issue for the environmental community. Some groups, such as the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, have grudgingly accepted that, in the battle against global warming, nukes are a necessary evil. Others remain adamantly opposed. “Building nuclear reactors to solve our energy problems is like going fishing with grenades: it’s expensive, stupid, and dangerous, and there’s a ton of better options,” says Luke Metzger, director of Environment Texas. With the new plants being built on the site of existing ones, however, the opposition is not expected to be strong enough to derail the plans.
Here I would say many kinds of fallacies are being used. The fist one being the Snob approach since they believe that the few groups mentioned are correct and what they say is logical. It is also using Appeal to biased Authority since they are giving uniue organizations to support the ideas, and they are using them as areliable source that supports his ideas. And there might be a bit of Appeal to emotion since the person who gave his oppinion is stating what Luke Metzger feels about the nuclear reactors.
New Nukes are Finally Coming
Posted by: John Carey on September 24
Since 2001, we and just about every other business publication have written stories on the coming nuclear renaissance. (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_17/b3729077.htm?chan=search ) It’s a development that was seen as almost inevitable. The country needs more electricity. And with coal plants being blocked or cancelled because of concerns over global warming, nukes were looking more and more attractive. Sure, there are still lingering worries over waste disposal and nuclear proliferation, but the new generation of plants are safer and, the industry expected, cheaper to build. The question was, who would take the first leap?
Now we have an answer. It’s a Princeton, NJ-based utility named NRG.
Here the author of this piece of writing is definetly using rhetoric, more specifically, pathos since it talks about worries and concerns and what he believes to be safer. But he is also using fallaciess, he uses Argumentum and Populum, since it is since it is trying to refer to popularity and refers to the feelings of people towards the decision they are to make. And it also has Appeal to Emotion since thats the way it is expressing its opinion.
http://www.nrgenergy.com/
On Sept. 24, the company and South Texas Project Nuclear Operating Company filed an application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build two new nuclear units at the site of two existing nukes in Texas. "We think the nuclear renaissance is finally upon us," says NRG CEO David Crane.
Going first is risky. The application will test the NRC's new application process, which will grant both an construction and operating license. (In the past, companies had to first get a construction license, and then, once the plant was built, an operating license). The new approach is supposed to trim the time needed to get a plant up and running by a number of years. But no one knows yet what snafus will appear. If the process takes longer than expected, the utility that goes first could lose money.
That's why the half-joke in the industry has been that everyone was racing to be second. Let someone else test the process, but stay ahead of all the others.
Crane, however, argues that not being first is also risky. One little known fact is that there's only one supplier of the huge forgings that make up the pressure vessel--a Japanese steel company. If you don't snare their upcoming production soon, you won't even be able to build a plant. NRG has already contracted to buy the forgings it needs. "We had to order now for a plant that won't be online until 2014," says Crane. "It is very Machiavellian, trying to secure your forging." NRC was able to get the ones it needs by ordering through Toshiba.
Here the fallacy used is one of Appeal to Biased Authority since they are talking to a person who has lived thrrough it and is telling his experience to support the point of the author.
Another potential hurdle for those who follow is finding people who know how to build a complex nuclear plant. "We think filing later is risky because of a shortage of skilled labor," explains Crane.
It uses Appeal to Emotion to say what poeple are feeling of what they are supposed to try and live with.
So it's reasonable to expect that one or two other companies will jump in soon, in the wake of NRG. But those who wait too long will end far behind.
What about opposition? Nuclear power is an uncomfortable issue for the environmental community. Some groups, such as the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, have grudgingly accepted that, in the battle against global warming, nukes are a necessary evil. Others remain adamantly opposed. “Building nuclear reactors to solve our energy problems is like going fishing with grenades: it’s expensive, stupid, and dangerous, and there’s a ton of better options,” says Luke Metzger, director of Environment Texas. With the new plants being built on the site of existing ones, however, the opposition is not expected to be strong enough to derail the plans.
Here I would say many kinds of fallacies are being used. The fist one being the Snob approach since they believe that the few groups mentioned are correct and what they say is logical. It is also using Appeal to biased Authority since they are giving uniue organizations to support the ideas, and they are using them as areliable source that supports his ideas. And there might be a bit of Appeal to emotion since the person who gave his oppinion is stating what Luke Metzger feels about the nuclear reactors.
Endymon, Orion, Aurora and Tithonus, Acis and Galatea
These myths were definitely far from being the ones I’ve liked the most up to now. I really couldn’t understand the message being expressed to the people reading them and I didn’t see what it was that they were meant to explain. Okay, maybe it is obvious; Orion explained the constellation, and Aurora and Tithonus explains why every morning there is Dawn since Aurora is weeping for him. Still, I did not get the message expressed to me in all the other myths in which I feel there was like a hidden message expressed to the reader. It might have happened that this time I was not a as concentrated when reading this myth as I have been while reading the others, I don’t know. All I know was that I really didn’t like much these myths.
lunes, 24 de septiembre de 2007
The Trojan War, The Illiad, The fall of Troy, and The return of the greeks
These writings I wouldn’t consider them myths, I would instead call them something like a narrative since their intentions are to tell what occurred during the Trojan War but they obviously still contain mythology since many gods are involved and they control many of the conclusions of what would happen during the war, who would die, who would win, who would kill… I do believe though that even though very few of the facts stated are actually really facts, this is really unable to be proven true, even though, I would really personally like to believe it true. I really enjoy reading Greek Mythology and The Trojan War was one interest I have had since I was young and I have really enjoyed reading about it.
My opinion about the war is that I sometimes believe that the Trojans should have won but then I think about the consequences this would have left on the rest of the world and then feel glad that it was the Greek that one. What bothers me most of the fact that the Greeks have won is not necessarily the fact that they are Greeks but how they won. Using a horse to enter the city, and attacking it when it isn’t ready to defend itself might have been witty but it lacks all kinds of values and courage. It makes me see the Greeks as cowards because they got tired after fighting for ten years, and I stopped honoring its rival by stooping to fight under equal conditions and both having the possibility to defend themselves.
My opinion about the war is that I sometimes believe that the Trojans should have won but then I think about the consequences this would have left on the rest of the world and then feel glad that it was the Greek that one. What bothers me most of the fact that the Greeks have won is not necessarily the fact that they are Greeks but how they won. Using a horse to enter the city, and attacking it when it isn’t ready to defend itself might have been witty but it lacks all kinds of values and courage. It makes me see the Greeks as cowards because they got tired after fighting for ten years, and I stopped honoring its rival by stooping to fight under equal conditions and both having the possibility to defend themselves.
domingo, 23 de septiembre de 2007
Meleanger and Atalanta, Cupid and Psyche, and Vertumnus and Pomona
These three myths are all love stories, and these have made me realize once more how many of the Greek myths are actually based on relationships and how people interact in one relationship. Through these relationships and love pursuiting myths we are able to see many of the human flaws and see how gods punish or help the humans. These myths though, also remind me to many stories you sometimes gat to hear and they also resemble to the movies made currently, it’s as if humans have always been obsessed with love and they are always seeking it.
In Meleanger and Atalanta, for example, Meleanger falls in love with Atalanta and his love is so pure and strong that he even kills his relatives just to honor his beloved, still, his actions being disapproved by his mom, lead to his death, since she takes revenge. The same story but with less drastic actions occur every day. Many couples are not approved by their family or someone does something to dishonor them and then a revenge chain is begun between the people involved, and even though death is not commonly included, other drastic measures are taken between people that originally loved each other. Cupid and Psyche is another example of how family gets involved in every relationship. Cupid and Psyche had to overcome Cupids mom, Venus, and Psyches sisters, as obstacles to reach their long wanted love. It also occurred that both loving each other, were able to go over and defeat many obstacles just to be with one another once more. And in Vertumnus and Pomona, they both have to deal with different feelings to permit their relationship to prosper. Still at the end one always ends convincing the other to follow their feelings; in this case Vertumnus is able to convince Pomona to love him by taking the form of an old lady and telling him a story of a girl who was turned to stone due to her stony heart. And every day many people confess their love to someone and get them to fall in love with them.
In Meleanger and Atalanta, for example, Meleanger falls in love with Atalanta and his love is so pure and strong that he even kills his relatives just to honor his beloved, still, his actions being disapproved by his mom, lead to his death, since she takes revenge. The same story but with less drastic actions occur every day. Many couples are not approved by their family or someone does something to dishonor them and then a revenge chain is begun between the people involved, and even though death is not commonly included, other drastic measures are taken between people that originally loved each other. Cupid and Psyche is another example of how family gets involved in every relationship. Cupid and Psyche had to overcome Cupids mom, Venus, and Psyches sisters, as obstacles to reach their long wanted love. It also occurred that both loving each other, were able to go over and defeat many obstacles just to be with one another once more. And in Vertumnus and Pomona, they both have to deal with different feelings to permit their relationship to prosper. Still at the end one always ends convincing the other to follow their feelings; in this case Vertumnus is able to convince Pomona to love him by taking the form of an old lady and telling him a story of a girl who was turned to stone due to her stony heart. And every day many people confess their love to someone and get them to fall in love with them.
jueves, 20 de septiembre de 2007
Proserpine, Glaucus and Scylla, and Ceyx and Halcycyone
These three myths, as many others, have the love feeling inside them. Even though in the three of them there is a partner’s love, such as in a relationship, in Proserpine, there is also the kind of love a mother feels towards her daughter, one of care and affection. In Proserpine the two kinds of love, confront each other too see who keeps Proserpine, and both being very strong and demanding, end up in a tie. That is why Proserpine is able to be with her mom during half of the year, and she spends the other half with her husband. Glaucus and Scylla is another love story but one of romance. When Glaucus is turned into a merman, he falls in love with one of the water nymphs, Scylla. Still the love felt in this relationship was one-sided, since Scylla didn’t want to be with Glaucus and ran from him. Glaucus, being desperately in love went and asked Circe, an enchantress, to make Scylla fall for him. Instead Circe was the one who fell for him but Glaucus rejected her and specified that his heart belonged to Scylla, and only Scylla. Circe was unhappy with the response she had gotten and therefore cursed him: shy turned Scylla very ugly and drowned her; Glaucus would have to spend a thousand years collecting the bodies of drowned ones. When the time had passed, Glaucus received help from Endymion and became young again and Scylla was restored to life. Then Ceyx and Halcyone is also a love story in which Ceyx dies at sea and Halcyone prays for his wellbeing. When she discovers he is dead she weeps and moans but then as she sees his body returning to her after being many days at sea, she goes to receive him and turns into a bird. The gods, deciding they should belong as a couple, turn Halcyone into a bird as well and they are able to rejoin once more and spend their time together.
miércoles, 19 de septiembre de 2007
Taxing the Hand that Feeds Us
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/opinion/20ponnuru.html
Op-Ed Contributor
By RAMESH PONNURU
Published: September 20, 2007
Washington
Grady White
REPUBLICAN presidential candidates can’t get elected without owning the tax issue. So far, the current crop is giving it away.
A huge reason for Ronald Reagan’s popularity was his cutting of all income-tax rates and ending of “bracket creep,” in which inflation pushed earners into higher tax groups. Congressional Republicans promised a tax credit for children while sweeping the 1994 elections. In 2000, George W. Bush promised to expand that tax credit and to reduce income taxes.
Yes, the top Republican contenders for 2008 are promising to keep all of Mr. Bush’s tax cuts. But the Democrats are not threatening the child tax credit or Mr. Bush’s reductions in the lower-level income-tax rates. Those issues are off the table.
What Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani — who have made the most detailed remarks on taxes of the top-tier candidates — are really saying is that they will make sure that taxes on capital gains, dividends, estates and high earners will stay low. Not many middle-class taxpayers will benefit directly from any of those policies.
Mr. Romney adds that he will try to cut the corporate tax rate, which his adviser Glenn Hubbard calls “a drain on competitiveness.” Many of our trading partners have cut their corporate taxes, and more and more conservatives want the United States to follow suit. Apparently they haven’t been listening to their own speeches on free trade. Companies compete. Countries, however, are not engaged in a zero-sum contest where one nation’s gain is another’s loss. Cutting corporate tax rates may or may not be a good idea, but we don’t need to make it a priority to preserve our competitiveness.
Both Mr. Romney and Mr. Giuliani speak vaguely about making sure the alternative minimum tax doesn’t affect any more middle-class families. That is a step in the right direction. But it isn’t a tax cut.
Mr. Romney has also proposed an initiative to make the return on middle-class savings tax-free. It may also be a step in the right direction, but it’s small change. The primary focus of the Romney and Giuliani tax plans remains high earners.
What would be a serious middle-class tax cut? One answer is to expand the tax credit for children. But none of the candidates is proposing to do so, or any other big tax relief for regular folks. You might think that Mr. Giuliani would want to do everything he can to appeal to social conservatives short of actually becoming one himself. But why should he offer a pro-family tax cut when even the hard-core social conservatives in the race aren’t interested? Mike Huckabee wants a national sales tax and Sam Brownback wants a flat tax. Either proposal would increase taxes on a lot of middle-class families.
The Republicans in Congress are no better. For much of the right, the great passion of the moment is to make sure that the carried interest at hedge funds is taxed at what look an awful lot like preferential rates. For years, liberals have said that Republicans talk about “family values” but won’t do anything to meet the economic needs of families. Right now, on taxes, that charge hits home.
Two ideological misconceptions underlie the party’s lack of imagination. First, Republicans worry that taking people off the income-tax rolls, as an expanded child credit would do, would make voters think big government is free and turn to the Democrats. But there’s no real evidence for this. Besides, parents are likely to be future-oriented voters, and they will realize that they will be paying higher taxes again once their children have grown up.
Second, Republicans believe, in general, that the tax code should generate its revenue in a way that does the least damage possible to the economy. So they seek tax reforms that cut taxes on investment returns and thereby increase economic growth. What they ignore is that we overtax investments in children, too. Parents make financial sacrifices to produce the next generation of taxpayers, who will pay for everyone’s retirements. Yet the tax code does too little to recognize parents’ investments.
True, an expanded tax credit for children wouldn’t increase economic growth. Growth is good, and more growth is better. But present tax rates are perfectly compatible with healthy long-term growth. There is no pressing need to bring them down to improve growth.
A few conservative strategists have designed tax reform plans that modestly cut corporate tax rates and simplify the tax code while also helping families. (One idea is to make up the lost revenue by bumping affluent childless people into higher tax brackets.) So far, the candidates have not been interested.
As the Republican Party has gotten more socially conservative, its voter base has become lower in income. Many of the working-class social conservatives on whom the party relies are parents trying to make ends meet, or young people who want to start families but have financial worries. They have no particular attachment, or hostility, to free-market principles. A Republican Party that found a conservative way to meet their economic needs would both hold and expand its base.
Ramesh Ponnuru is a senior editor at National Review.
In this article the three kinds of rhetoric writing are found. For example the first paragraph is completely values, it is written in the present and it discuss how now days republicans have to own the tax issue to be able to be elected. This is all values because it is a reason for which people don’t consider voting for such a representative or for people to actually vote in their favor because is what they consider morally correct.
Still the author then changes to a different rhetoric characteristic. He uses the past to blame all the fake promises congressional republicans have made in the past. It also uses this for people to consider the future and make the correct choice of whom to vote for having in mind all that has happened in the past. And this once more connects to the present in which the ideas of the different candidates are presented and their morals and values will be compared with the beliefs of the voters, and by comparing and contrasting, the voters, in the future will once more make a choice of whom to vote for. The author then gives his own opinion of what should be done and suggested and states his values for them to get in the thoughts of the people in the present but for these values to influence the decision made in the future so that the wring things that have occurred in the past do not repeat themselves.
Referring to the other divisions of rhetoric, Ethos, Pathos, and Logos, we could say this article, even though it contains from all three of these points of views, is mostly Pathos. This is mostly Pathos because the author is making the readers feel bad about how the republicans have before lied to the public and how they have used their power wrongly. It also makes the reader feel bad about the people in middle classes about the taxes because the author focuses in stating the problems these taxes would cause these families. And he blames the republicans for having turned their job into an economical business and benefiting themselves instead of paying attention to the ideas he suggested, which, according to him, wont make the middle class families suffer as much as the current republican ideas.
Op-Ed Contributor
By RAMESH PONNURU
Published: September 20, 2007
Washington
Grady White
REPUBLICAN presidential candidates can’t get elected without owning the tax issue. So far, the current crop is giving it away.
A huge reason for Ronald Reagan’s popularity was his cutting of all income-tax rates and ending of “bracket creep,” in which inflation pushed earners into higher tax groups. Congressional Republicans promised a tax credit for children while sweeping the 1994 elections. In 2000, George W. Bush promised to expand that tax credit and to reduce income taxes.
Yes, the top Republican contenders for 2008 are promising to keep all of Mr. Bush’s tax cuts. But the Democrats are not threatening the child tax credit or Mr. Bush’s reductions in the lower-level income-tax rates. Those issues are off the table.
What Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani — who have made the most detailed remarks on taxes of the top-tier candidates — are really saying is that they will make sure that taxes on capital gains, dividends, estates and high earners will stay low. Not many middle-class taxpayers will benefit directly from any of those policies.
Mr. Romney adds that he will try to cut the corporate tax rate, which his adviser Glenn Hubbard calls “a drain on competitiveness.” Many of our trading partners have cut their corporate taxes, and more and more conservatives want the United States to follow suit. Apparently they haven’t been listening to their own speeches on free trade. Companies compete. Countries, however, are not engaged in a zero-sum contest where one nation’s gain is another’s loss. Cutting corporate tax rates may or may not be a good idea, but we don’t need to make it a priority to preserve our competitiveness.
Both Mr. Romney and Mr. Giuliani speak vaguely about making sure the alternative minimum tax doesn’t affect any more middle-class families. That is a step in the right direction. But it isn’t a tax cut.
Mr. Romney has also proposed an initiative to make the return on middle-class savings tax-free. It may also be a step in the right direction, but it’s small change. The primary focus of the Romney and Giuliani tax plans remains high earners.
What would be a serious middle-class tax cut? One answer is to expand the tax credit for children. But none of the candidates is proposing to do so, or any other big tax relief for regular folks. You might think that Mr. Giuliani would want to do everything he can to appeal to social conservatives short of actually becoming one himself. But why should he offer a pro-family tax cut when even the hard-core social conservatives in the race aren’t interested? Mike Huckabee wants a national sales tax and Sam Brownback wants a flat tax. Either proposal would increase taxes on a lot of middle-class families.
The Republicans in Congress are no better. For much of the right, the great passion of the moment is to make sure that the carried interest at hedge funds is taxed at what look an awful lot like preferential rates. For years, liberals have said that Republicans talk about “family values” but won’t do anything to meet the economic needs of families. Right now, on taxes, that charge hits home.
Two ideological misconceptions underlie the party’s lack of imagination. First, Republicans worry that taking people off the income-tax rolls, as an expanded child credit would do, would make voters think big government is free and turn to the Democrats. But there’s no real evidence for this. Besides, parents are likely to be future-oriented voters, and they will realize that they will be paying higher taxes again once their children have grown up.
Second, Republicans believe, in general, that the tax code should generate its revenue in a way that does the least damage possible to the economy. So they seek tax reforms that cut taxes on investment returns and thereby increase economic growth. What they ignore is that we overtax investments in children, too. Parents make financial sacrifices to produce the next generation of taxpayers, who will pay for everyone’s retirements. Yet the tax code does too little to recognize parents’ investments.
True, an expanded tax credit for children wouldn’t increase economic growth. Growth is good, and more growth is better. But present tax rates are perfectly compatible with healthy long-term growth. There is no pressing need to bring them down to improve growth.
A few conservative strategists have designed tax reform plans that modestly cut corporate tax rates and simplify the tax code while also helping families. (One idea is to make up the lost revenue by bumping affluent childless people into higher tax brackets.) So far, the candidates have not been interested.
As the Republican Party has gotten more socially conservative, its voter base has become lower in income. Many of the working-class social conservatives on whom the party relies are parents trying to make ends meet, or young people who want to start families but have financial worries. They have no particular attachment, or hostility, to free-market principles. A Republican Party that found a conservative way to meet their economic needs would both hold and expand its base.
Ramesh Ponnuru is a senior editor at National Review.
In this article the three kinds of rhetoric writing are found. For example the first paragraph is completely values, it is written in the present and it discuss how now days republicans have to own the tax issue to be able to be elected. This is all values because it is a reason for which people don’t consider voting for such a representative or for people to actually vote in their favor because is what they consider morally correct.
Still the author then changes to a different rhetoric characteristic. He uses the past to blame all the fake promises congressional republicans have made in the past. It also uses this for people to consider the future and make the correct choice of whom to vote for having in mind all that has happened in the past. And this once more connects to the present in which the ideas of the different candidates are presented and their morals and values will be compared with the beliefs of the voters, and by comparing and contrasting, the voters, in the future will once more make a choice of whom to vote for. The author then gives his own opinion of what should be done and suggested and states his values for them to get in the thoughts of the people in the present but for these values to influence the decision made in the future so that the wring things that have occurred in the past do not repeat themselves.
Referring to the other divisions of rhetoric, Ethos, Pathos, and Logos, we could say this article, even though it contains from all three of these points of views, is mostly Pathos. This is mostly Pathos because the author is making the readers feel bad about how the republicans have before lied to the public and how they have used their power wrongly. It also makes the reader feel bad about the people in middle classes about the taxes because the author focuses in stating the problems these taxes would cause these families. And he blames the republicans for having turned their job into an economical business and benefiting themselves instead of paying attention to the ideas he suggested, which, according to him, wont make the middle class families suffer as much as the current republican ideas.
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