{"id":2237,"date":"2007-10-19T13:04:19","date_gmt":"2007-10-19T17:04:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2007\/10\/potpourri_12\/"},"modified":"2007-10-19T13:04:19","modified_gmt":"2007-10-19T17:04:19","slug":"potpourri_12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2007\/10\/potpourri_12\/","title":{"rendered":"Potpourri"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>According to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oecd.org\/home\/0,2987,en_2649_201185_1_1_1_1_1,00.html\">Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development<\/a>, in the United States the tax burden is <a href=\"http:\/\/bigpicture.typepad.com\/comments\/2007\/10\/global-taxes-as.html\">25.6% of G.D.P.<\/a>  This ranks 17th among developed countries.  The global average for the group is 36%.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Competing outlooks on the price of oil:\n<ul>\n<li>In <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/money\/industries\/energy\/2007-10-18-oil-prices-thursday_N.htm?csp=34\">one corner<\/a>:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;We don&#8217;t think industry fundamentals support oil prices near $60 (a barrel), let alone $90, but with excessive speculation and lack of government scrutiny, prices could go even higher, before they crash, eventually, in our view,&#8221; said Fadel Gheit, an analyst at Oppenheimer &#038; Co., in a research note.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n<ul>\n<li>In the other:<br \/>\n<object width=\"425\" height=\"350\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/UCDO_JVq9Pk\"><\/param><param name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"><\/param><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/UCDO_JVq9Pk\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"><\/embed><\/object><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;m betting we see a lot more $100+ oil than $60 oil.  But what do I know; I&#8217;m not a high-paid &#8220;analyst.&#8221;<br \/>\nUPDATE:  I just heard a guest on CNBC say that gasoline prices are about to catch up with oil prices.  He said the price per gallon could jump $0.20 in the next week or so and soon climb as much as $1.  If you think the political mood is pretty bad out there now, wait till this happens.\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Senator Sam Brownback is expected to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2007\/POLITICS\/10\/18\/brownback.dropout\/index.html\">drop out of the presidential race today<\/a>.  I never figured out why Brownback didn&#8217;t get more traction among the religious right, since he&#8217;s clearly played to that constituency in his senate career.  I guess he wasn&#8217;t &#8220;sexy&#8221; enough (in the political sense).<\/li>\n<li>Speaking of political oddities, I&#8217;ve repeatedly heard leading GOP talking pointers (Rove, Limbaugh, et al.) assert that Iraq was not the central issue in the 2006 election, and that it won&#8217;t be in 2008.  I find this very hard to reconcile with all the rhetoric we&#8217;ve heard from the same people about how this same fight is &#8220;World War III,&#8221; &#8220;World War IV,&#8221; the fight for our survival, and so on.  If this war is the most important challenge our nation is facing, why isn&#8217;t it the most important political issue?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2007\/10\/potpourri_12\/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permalink to Potpourri\"><p>According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, in the United States the tax burden is 25.6% of G.D.P. This ranks 17th among developed countries. The global average for the group is 36%. Competing outlooks on the price of oil: In one corner: &#8220;We don&#8217;t think industry fundamentals support oil prices near $60 (a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2237","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2237\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}