I never thought of it this way, but economist Dean Baker, writing in Business Week, points out that the current tax rule permitting private equity fund managers to pax taxes on performance-based fee income for services at the capital gains rate is tantamount to a special tax rate for one profession. Despite the many areas of dispute among economists, virtually all of them would agree tax rates should not vary by occupation. In other words, we don't want to see one tax rate for firefighters, a different tax rate for schoolteachers, and a third tax rate for bookkeepers...

Blogging at Tapped, Scott Lemieux comments on Paul Krugman's column($) in the New York Times today:

Some good news: key Republican Senators are defying President Bush on SCHIP. From CQ (sorry, subscription only): The chief Republican architects of a deal to expand a children's health insurance program are defending the proposal against criticism by President Bush, who has threatened to "resist" it. This week, members of the Senate Finance Committee tentatively agreed on a renewal and expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which covers about 6 million children from families that are low-income but not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid.

Roll Call ($$) reports that the Congressional Management Foundation (CMF) is working on a project to attempt to solve a problem facing Members and their staff, excessive amounts of e-mail that often causes their systems to crash. The article explains the many frustrations citizens and nonprofits are feeling in trying to carry out their advocacy work in encouraging people to contact Congress on important issues, and the frustration of those receiving the unmanageable number of messages.