The Urban Institute research center recently dissected the candidates' tax plans and listed them nicely with bullet points:

• Senator McCain would permanently extend the (Bush) 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, increase deductions for taxpayers supporting dependents, cut the corporate income tax rate, and allow immediate deductions for the cost of certain capital equipment.
• Senator Obama would permanently extend particular provisions of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, primarily for taxpayers with incomes under $250,000; increase the maximum rate on capital gains and dividends; and enact new and expanded targeted tax breaks for workers, retirees, homeowners, savers, students, and new farmers.
• Both candidates would—in very different ways—extend the (Alternative Minimum Tax) AMT patch, increase the estate tax exemption, reduce the estate tax rate, broaden the tax base, and reduce corporate loopholes...
• Using a “current policy” baseline (where the AMT patch is made permanent and the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts are extended), Obama’s proposals would raise $730 billion and McCain’s proposals would lose $250 billion.
• The two sets of proposals would have markedly different impacts on different income groups. Obama would raise taxes on the wealthy to help pay for middle- and lower-class tax cuts; McCain would sharply reduce taxes for the wealthy at the cost of smaller tax cuts for other income groups.
• In 2009, under Obama’s plan, households in the bottom fifth of the income ladder (those making below $18,981 in 2008 dollars) would receive an average tax cut equal to 5.5 percent of their income. Those in the middle fifth ($37,595 to $66,354) would get an average tax cut amounting to 2.4 percent of income. In contrast, taxes would rise by an average 2.0 percent of income for the those in the top fifth ($111,645 and up), with an average 8.7 percent of income increase levied on those in the top 1 percent of households ($603,402 and up). The richest 0.1 percent ($2,871,682 and up) would see an average tax increase of 11.5 percent of income, or $701,885.
• In 2009, under McCain’s plan, households in the bottom fifth of the income distribution would get an average tax cut of 0.2 percent of income, compared with 0.7 percent for those in the middle fifth. The top 20 percent of households would receive an average tax cut of 3.0 percent of income. The top 1 percent would see their taxes fall by an average of 3.4 percent of income, while the richest 0.1 percent would see an average tax cut of 4.4 percent of income, or $269,364.

You can't get more different plans than that. I am still failing to understand how the regressive tax code -- making the rich pay a lesser percentage of their income -- stimulates the economy?

According to Urban Institute, if the candidates were to keep the AMT the same, "the candidates’ non-health tax proposals would reduce revenues by $3.7 trillion (McCain) and $2.7 trillion (Obama) over the next 10 years."

I'd like to see our candidates' plans to tackle the deficit. Yikes.

I loved Feministing's response to yet another hideous Linda Hirshman column suggesting that the feminist movement should be about white bourgeois women.

Er, bullshit. First of all, demanding that someone make room for you is not the same as forcing them out of the way. And, if your social change only helps rich hetero (etc.) women, your definition of success needs a lot of work.

Hear, hear hermana!

Sen. Kennedy Recovering From Brain Surgery: Sen. Ted Kennedy is at his home in Hyannis Port on Cape Cod, recovering from brain surgery, according to the Associated Press. He will start chemotherapy and radiation shortly for a malignant brain tumor.

Kennedy's son, Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) said his father planned to draft legislation for universal health care this year and help Sen. Barack Obama pass it if he is elected president this fall.

Celebrity Gossip Break: Actress Jessica Alba had a baby girl, Honor Marie Warren, on Saturday, according to People online...Rumor has it that Jennifer Lopez may write a song for Sen. Obama, according to The Hill online. She was spotted at Obama's office a week ago, but kept mum as to the purpose of the meeting.  

What else is in the news? What else is on your minds?

History was made yesterday as Sen. Barack Obama became the first African American to win a major U.S. political party's presidential nomination. CNN has all the results from last night's primaries in Montana and South Dakota as well as the final delegate count.

On Her Own: Military wife and North Carolina mom Tammy Dominski wrote a poignant piece for Newsweek about raising children on her own while her husband is deployed in Iraq. She was at the hospital alone when her son was born. Once her parents left for home (New York), she was left alone with two small children and no support. This piece made me shudder.

In related news, the parents of Ross McGinnis, 19, accepted the nation's highest military honor, the Medal of Freedom, when their son threw himself on a hand grenade to save the lives of his fellow soldiers.

Get Well, Sen. Kennedy: Sen. Ted Kennedy underwent brain surgery earlier this week and is now recovering in a hospital in North Carolina. He will undergo chemotherapy and radiation as well.

What else is in the news? What's up with you?

I am feeling a little election-fatigued, but it is an exciting race in that moms here and everywhere have a say in the nominating process. Indiana and North Carolina moms: Please give us updates!

The polls in North Carolina close at 7:30 p.m. EDT and at 6 p.m. local time in Indiana, according to my quick and dirty google search.

This is infuriating. Remember the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act I wrote about yesterday? Basically, it would reverse a previous U.S. Supreme Court ruling that has made it harder for women to sue their employers for pay discrimination. The bill was named after Lilly Ledbetter, a former Good Year tires manager who was consistently paid less than her male co-workers for the exact same work.

Well, the bill came up for a vote yesterday and was filibustered by Republicans. All of the Democrats and six Republicans voted to stop the filibuster, but they came up short by three votes, according to Ms. magazine. If you need more evidence that "maverick" Republican John McCain is no good for women voters, he did not show up for the vote while both Senators Clinton and Obama were there to try to break the filibuster.

Both Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama came back from campaigning to speak for passage of the Fair Pay Act and to vote to end the filibuster. Meanwhile, Republican John McCain remained campaigning in Louisiana. According to the New York Times, McCain said to reporters that he "would have opposed the bill since it could contribute to frivolous lawsuits harmful to business."

"Someone should tell McCain and the Senate Republican leadership that before the 2007 Supreme Court decision, this bill was the law of the land protecting women, people of color, older, and disabled workers from wage discrimination," said Eleanor Smeal of the Feminist Majority. "We are determined to pass the Lilly Ledbetter bill and to restore the Civil Rights act of 1964 from this orchestrated business attack."

Sen. Majority leader Harry Reid and the Dems have avowed to break the filibuster and will re-introduce the bill. In the meantime, women and party activists recommend you contact your senators -- especially if they oppose the bill.

Editor's Note: This is one of two stories on the same theme. Check out Dana's response just below. -Elisa

I do not read Slate’s “Dear Prudence” column on a regular basis, but I was disappointed at her personal vendetta against single mothers. In case you missed it, she recently went on a tangent on how single mothers are hurting their children, calling single parenthood a "national catastrophe." (Hey, with the Iraq War and impending recession, this would not top my list of concerns. But there you go!)

Studies have found that children born to single mothers are vastly more likely to be poor, have behavioral and psychological problems, drop out of high school, and themselves go on to have out-of-wedlock children.

While I do not doubt that a disproportionate number of single mothers live in poverty -- who the heck can afford to live on one income anymore? -- it is important to note that the mothers in question are already poor. Many have no college educations and were already living in poverty before their baby’s daddy came along. The fathers are also poor. My conclusion would be vastly different from Prudie’s: These children are poor because their parents are poor. Period. It is overly simplistic to solely blame the mother’s marital status.

Also, I am a big fan of the institution of marriage for the emotional security and financial perks it offers. But the last thing I would do to a sister or friend is encourage her to marry a guy she does not get along with or might be in trouble with the law or be in such bad financial straits it actually holds her back.  

I was chagrined that Prudie dismissed all this, saying she cheered on the ultrasound technician in the movie Juno for making disparaging remarks about children born into these circumstances.

Since many working-class men do not offer the financial stability they used to provide, women see little incentive to marry them. As (Sen. Barack) Obama said, "[M]any black men simply cannot afford to raise a family." (The out-of-wedlock birthrate among black Americans is close to 70 percent.) I'm trying to follow the logic here. I can understand that a woman looking to get married may decide that a man is such a poor economic prospect that he's not husband material (even if a husband with a low income is better than no husband and no income). But how then is that same man, or a string of them, worthy of fathering her children?

That’s right. Shame these women into becoming better mothers. Way to go, Prudie!

Except for Obama’s mother, she conveniently never mentioned the many single mothers who manage to raise successful children, probably because the economics at play would defeat her argument. Single mothers like Obama’s mother who had her parents nearby to help or celebrity moms like Angelina Jolie who have money to hire nannies don’t seem to have trouble raising well-adjusted children. I suspect it has to do with the fact they had resources to raise their children, more so than their marital status.

Rather than continue to kick down low-income single mothers who are already in the hole, may I suggest a hand-up? Prudie’s column could have been a call for universal healthcare, scientifically-based sex education in high schools or funds for high-quality childcare to help out single mothers. Instead, we were subjected to this clueless dribble.

If you need anymore reason to fear a John McCain presidency, check out his response to a sex education inquiry by the New York Times. (Thanks Salon for the tip!):

Q: What about grants for sex education in the United States? Should they include instructions about using contraceptives? Or should it be Bush's policy, which is just abstinence?

McCain: (Long pause) Ahhh. I think I support the president's policy.

Q: So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?

McCain: (Long pause) You've stumped me.

As Salon’s Rahul K. Parikh, M.D., pointed out, McCain’s continuation of Bush’s policy of abstinence-only education is not only disturbing, it is ineffective. Almost two-thirds of female adolescents have had sex by their senior year of high school, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most recently, the CDC found that one in four teen girls has a sexually transmitted disease.

McCain does support Bush's ideologically based policies. He has voted against legislation to ensure that sex education be scientifically accurate instead of just abstinence based, has voted to impose parental consent for teens seeking birth control, and has opposed legislation that birth control be covered by insurance. He has also voted against programs to increase awareness about emergency contraception.

How do Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama stack up? In Dr. Parikh’s view a heck of a lot better. They both have received a 100 percent rating from pro-choice groups and favor sex education that is based on science, including information on contraception. Clinton, however, has a longer record and has received the endorsement of all the women’s rights groups, including NOW and NARAL.

Okay, I am breaking my short-lived "no-politics pledge," to point you to this hilarious exchange in the Washington Post between Sinbad and the Clinton campaign. There are enough comebacks from both sides so I don't think it should offend one side over the other. Then again, I am an Obama backer and found it funny, so who knows?

For the record, Obama's former pastor's racial remarks against Hillary are nauseating. What a piece of work that guy is. If he is part of the Obama campaign -- from the coverage, it wasn't clear to me he was -- Obama should ask him to resign IMMEDIATELY.

Either way, Jeremiah White is deservedly being mocked everywhere, including on the Daily Show last night, which I admit, had me rolling.

Pursuing the American Dream: This personal account in Newsweek's "My Turn" is the best description of the immigrant experience I have read in a long time. I found myself nodding throughout it.

The Reality of "Low-Income" Families: The Urban Institute think tank just released statistical information on working low-income families. I am reminded of a popular bumper sticker here in Berkeley that close to three-quarters of poor people do indeed work. Here are the stats:

• Low income is generally defined as twice the federal poverty level, or $40,888 for a family of four in 2006.
• There were 11 million low-income working families at the beginning of 2007.
• Sixty-one percent, or 6.7 million, of these families had at least one full-time, year-round worker in 2006.
• The median wage for workers in low-income families was $9.62 an hour in 2006, compared with $17.55 for workers in all families.
• Low-income workers with children are more likely to be young, Hispanic, live in one-parent families, and report being in fair or poor health, compared with the average worker.
• In 2006, only 36 percent of the heads of household in low-income working families had any education beyond high school.
• One-third of families with children lack sufficient income to cover the basic costs of everyday living, including housing, food, child care, health insurance, transportation, and taxes.
• Work supports, such as tax credits, food stamps, and child care subsidies, help but often don’t close the gap between earnings and basic needs.

What else is in the news? Have a good weekend all!

Last night, was all about "RockObama" (Ari's words) as he won the primary in Mississippi by 28 points, according to CNN. Also, as it turns out, he won more pledged delegates in Texas than Sen. Hillary Clinton because he won the caucus down there, according to CNN.

How To Prevent Preeclampsia: Preeclampsia, a condition in pregnancy and the postpartum period marked by high blood pressure and swelling, is one of the leading causes of early inductions and c-sections. Parenting recently suggested that aspirin and vitamin D could thwart the condition.

Tina Fey Movie in the Pipeline: This sounds funny. Saturday Night Live's Tina Fey and Amy Poehler will reunite for a comedy about surrogate motherhood. Here is a synopsis of the film, Baby Mama, according to the blog Cinematical:

In the pic, Fey will play a single, successful executive for Happy Planet (which is described as a "Whole Foods-type grocery store") who desires a child of her own, but doesn't want the whole pregnancy thing to hinder her career. Thus, she hires a surrogate mother (Poehler) to do all the work ... and we get to watch the entire hilarious scenario unfold before our eyes. (Yes, in case you were wondering, this is a comedy.)

The film is slated for release on April 18, according to Rotten Tomatoes.

In case you missed it, Sen. Barack Obama won the Wyoming caucus on Saturday, 61 to 38 percent, according to CNN.

Also, I missed watching the returns as I sat on a panel with BlogHer CEO Lisa Stone and Silicon Valley Moms Blog editor Jill Asher to discuss the broad topic women in blogging. We spoke about how we started our blogs and where we saw it all going.

The event in San Francisco was put on by Yahoo, which plans to enter this space. The online behemoth plans to launch a website for and by women, which will include the content of bloggers, including parenting blogs. Yahoo encouraged all bloggers to register with the new portal, dubbed "Shine," and contribute content with the promise of possibly being promoted to the front page -- similar to the diary function on MotherTalkers. (Hey, the more, the merrier!) Shine is to launch by the end of this month.

What is up with you?  

Newsweek ran a trend story about ivy league schools lowering tuition and giving out generous financial aid to middle class families. As the experts in the article noted, these institutions ran the risk of taking in only two types of students: those whose families could pay full tuition and everyone else who was forced to take out student loans to obtain an education.

But now that these schools are poised to take in more middle class families, state schools and second and third-tier private colleges will lose their smartest students. Nonetheless, there is a college crunch for the children of baby boomers and less money, overall, for young people to study.

Sex Toys Allowed in Texas: (Editor's Note: This item was corrected.) I did not know this, but a Texas court struck down the state's ban against dildos and "pocket pussies" on, of all days, Valentine's Day, according to Slate. Virginia, Alabama and Mississippi also ban the sex toys.

Phasing Out Plastic Bags: Whole Foods plans to stop bagging in plastic on Earth Day, April 22, according to the Washington Post. It will become the first American grocery store to phase out plastic bags.  

Patrick Swayze Has Cancer: Actor Patrick Swayze has pancreatic cancer, according to USA Today. While it appears that he is responding to treatment, this bit of news left this Dirty Dancing fan crestfallen.

Update On J-Lo's Babies: It is official. Jennifer Lopez and husband Marc Anthony did have twins, a boy and a girl, according to People magazine. As expected, they named them Max and Emme.

The new parents welcomed their son and daughter on Feb. 22. Emme was born at 12:12 a.m. and weighed 5 lbs. 7 oz., and Max followed at 12:23 a.m., weighing 6 lbs.

Oh. My. God. Recently, I read this Newsweek story about a WalMart in Dearborn, Michigan, catering to its local Arab-American community by selling middle eastern products. I have problems with WalMart's business practices and reserves about the behemoth chain putting out the local Arab mom and pop shops. But upon reading the article, I gave the store props for celebrating diversity.

Then I read the comments following the article, and while I am not completely surprised, I am disappointed at the volume of anti-middle eastern sentiment expressed in the thread. Some ignorant shmuck even took a dig at Sen. Barack Obama for supposedly being Muslim. Whatever!

Posted By: AmyJRock @ 03/03/2008 1:09:40 PM
Comment: Just one more reason not to shop at Wal-mart. The list is growing. Do you think stores in the middle-east are opended with Americans in mind, I think not.

Posted By: deni520 @ 03/03/2008 1:09:37 PM
Comment: This is insane! You come to the US, you speak english and conform to our ways. Have people forgotten that as we cater to these people we have young men and women dying in their country? C'mon Walmart - how can you say you're American when you don't stand behind American ways?

Posted By: mtthw @ 03/03/2008 1:12:49 PM
Comment: First Wal-Mart next the white house.... Go ahead and vote Obama.

Posted By: julileav @ 03/03/2008 1:10:11 PM
Comment: How amazingly scary! We are giving away this country to middle easterners who denounce our ways and hate us for BEING AMERICAN! They take our jobs, run our hotels, drive our taxis, smell up our neighborhoods with their weird food, and now Walmart, in a drive to make yet another buck, is going to cater to their desires!!!! What's next, schools start teaching our children to speak arabic and how to construct a strap-on bomb?!?!?! This country is going to no good place with this type of mentality.

The hatred did not stop there. It extended to other groups as well: