Stealth Numbers
First off, the fact that American casualties have topped the 1,000 mark is indeed news. That's 1,000 people forever missing from the fabric of our nation, from the loving nest of their families and friends, and from contributing to a brighter tomorrow. It's tragic, but it's not the only tragedy we should think about, as Juan Cole points out:

The U.S. military death toll in Iraq passed 1,000 yesterday, a statistic that Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry called a "tragic milestone" and that some analysts said could play an important role in the race for the White House.

The tally pales in comparison to the number of Iraqis killed (estimated at between 12,000 and 14,000) and to the U.S. body count at the height of hostilities in Vietnam. But it is three times the number of American dead from the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

By last night, 998 U.S. troops and three civilians working for the U.S. military had been killed in the war, for a total of 1,001.

The tally was compiled by the Associated Press from Pentagon and family records plus reports from journalists in Iraq.

About 7,000 other Americans have been wounded.

I would wager that very few American newspapers mention the estimate of 12,000 Iraqis dead in the war so far when they report the number of US military dead. (Note that the 12000 figure refers solely to civilian combat deaths and does not include Iraqi soldiers killed).

American television news very seldom shows wounded Iraqis in the hospital after an American strike, something that is a staple of Arab satellite t.v. Indeed, the US public is not being given a full view of the fighting in Iraq. I just don't see that many mentions of the US bombing Iraqi cities, and don't remember seeing much footage of this bombing or its aftermath. For the US to bomb inhabited city quarters in a country that it occupies strikes me as problematic. For all the talk of precision hits, civilians are inevitably harmed.

I was also reading last week's New Yorker last night (we get it a bit late on the West Coast) before going to bed, which was a bad idea as I got all worked up over an article about how the Bush administration and the Republicans have been subtly reworking the tax code to fulfill conservative flat tax fantasies. Admittedly, tax code isn't that interesting a subject, but this is an important read. Here are some of the highlights:

Rather than coming right out for a flat tax, the Harvard economists tend to use the less politically charged term “consumption tax.” Flat taxes and consumption taxes are closely related: both exempt saving and tax spending. Theoretically, it is possible to set up a progressive consumption tax, but most conservative economists favor a single rate set as low as possible; i.e. a flat tax. Such a system would penalize middle-class people, who spend nearly all the money they earn; a fact Hall and Rabushka, the originators of the flat tax, were straightforward about. In 1983, they wrote that a flat tax “would be a tremendous boon to the economic elite,” adding that “it is an obvious mathematical law that lower taxes on the successful will have to be made up by higher taxes on average people.”

[...]

In practice, however, it is far from clear that cutting taxes leads to more saving in the economy as a whole. A tax cut that isn’t accompanied by spending cuts, such as Bush’s, forces the Treasury to borrow more, which lowers the national rate of saving. By the same logic, one sure way to increase national saving is for the government to raise taxes and run a budget surplus. For some reason, conservative economists rarely mention this option.

[...]

Some of the consequences of Bush’s policies are already clear. This year’s budget deficit, at about 3.8 per cent of G.D.P., isn’t as big as it was twenty years ago, when it reached six per cent of G.D.P., but, as the International Monetary Fund has pointed out, returning to a balanced budget will be even harder this time around. A decade ago, it took “tax hikes, a sharp contraction in military spending, and an unprecedented economic expansion to achieve fiscal consolidation,” the I.M.F. noted. None of those things are on the horizon now.

The White House claims that the deficit will fall by two-thirds, relative to G.D.P., in the next five years. However, this prediction assumes that the economy expands by about 3.5 per cent a year; that spending on programs other than entitlements, defense, and homeland security rises hardly at all; and that the Alternative Minimum Tax isn’t cut back much. If economic growth comes in lower than forecast, government spending comes in higher, and Congress substantially modifies the A.M.T.—and all three are likely—the deficit will be bigger than projected.

[...]

Based on figures contained in a recent study from the Congressional Budget Office, it now appears that about two-thirds of the benefits went to households in the top fifth of the income distribution, and about one third went to households in the top one-hundredth of the distribution. To put it another way, families earning $1.2 million a year—that is, the richest one per cent in the country—received a tax break of roughly $78,500. Families earning $57,000 a year—middle-income families—got a tax cut of about $1,100.

Even these numbers, though, do not convey the full ambition of the Republicans’ agenda, which potentially involves a historic restructuring of the American system of government. Roughly two-thirds of taxable income is paid to workers in the form of wages and benefits. The other third goes to reward capital, or accumulated savings, in the form of corporate profits, dividends, and interest payments. If Bush’s economic agenda was fully enacted, the vast bulk of these payments wouldn’t be taxed at all, and labor would end up shouldering practically the entire burden of financing the federal government. In a new book, “Neoconomy: George Bush’s Revolutionary Gamble with America’s Future,” Daniel Altman, a former economics reporter for the Times and The Economist, describes what such a system might look like. “The fortunate and growing minority who managed to receive all their income from stocks, bonds and other securities would pay nothing—not a dime—for America’s cancer research, its international diplomacy, its military deterrent, the maintenance of the interstate highway system, the space program or almost anything else the federal government did. . . . Broadly speaking, that fortunate minority would be free-riders.”

A lot has been made in recent days of the bounce that President Bush has been receiving in the polls after the bi-polar Republican Lovefest/Angerpalooza last week, but here's some good news thanks to Ruy Teixeira of Donkey Rising:

Kerry Widens Lead in Battleground States!

Now that's a headline you're not likely to see in the mainstream media, consumed as they are with the storyline du jour about Bush's Big Mo' from the convention.

But that's what the internals of the latest Gallup poll tell us. Prior to the Republican convention, Kerry had a one point lead among RVs (47-46) in the battleground states. After the Republican convention, now that battleground voters have had a chance to take a closer look at what Bush and his party really stand for, Kerry leads by 5 in these same states (50-45)! Note that Kerry gained three points among battleground voters, while Bush actually got a negative one point bounce.

This is graphically represented by a WSJ/Zogby piece, which shows some strengthening by Bush in some states, but an overall strengthening by Kerry.