Has the time for a tax on financial trading arrived?

The New York Times editorial board takes a stand today on the assertion that a trade charge on the buying and selling of stocks, bonds and derivatives is warranted.

The next president, in order to achieve progress on this issue, will have to be one that is willing to take on Wall Street.

Bernie Sanders has campaigned on engaging the investor class on terms such as this -- and has attempted to portray Hillary Clinton as too ensconced in Wall Street culture to be a reliable champion for Main Street.

Clinton, of course, would take exception to this characterization.

Donald Trump, unlike his Republican rivals, has spoken out -- perhaps surprisingly -- about the lack of fairness in the tax code regarding investor-class elites.

From the editorial:

"Critics ... contend that a financial transaction tax would have damaging effects on trade volume, volatility and the ability of markets to determine asset prices. That is debatable, and setting the tax rate low at first, and raising it gradually, would help avoid potential damage. But the possibility of unintended consequences is not the real obstacle to a broad and prudent financial transaction tax. It is that a majority of lawmakers are not willing to challenge Wall Street’s power."

Reuters: How Planned Parenthood's accusers became the accused

Reuters has published an illuminating explainer piece describing the legal maneuvering that turned the Planned Parenthood case in Texas upside down.

On Monday, a Harris County grand jury refused to indict the organization's Gulf Coast affiliate, and then surprisingly instead indicted the two anti-abortion activists on charges they used falsified government documents with the intent to defraud.

Planned Parenthood's Houston lawyer Josh Schaffer encouraged prosecutors to charge David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt.

Reuters reports:

"I made the argument regarding the charges that the grand jury returned," Schaffer said in the interview, "but I did not have to make them very forcefully because it was self-evident to the prosecutors that they engaged in this conduct."

Donald Trump says he will skip Fox News debate

Praising Fox News for integrity doesn't come naturally to those of us who were educated in journalism classes in college.

Democracy in the United States seemed to us to include a strong free press, backed by the First Amendment that guarantees (among other rights) an entitlement for the people to free expression and free speech.

Elected officials, and those campaigning to become elected officials, are running to be public servants, not dictators.

Enter Donald Trump, who is trying to dictate who the moderators in the next Republican debate will be. Kudos to Fox News for sticking with Megyn Kelly and letting Trump walk. (Trump's temper tantrum regarding Kelly is about how he sulked over Kelly's questions in a previous debate and said he was insulted about feeling that he was treated "unfairly" because she asked him basic questions about his past statements.)

It might end up being smart politics for Trump to continue to wage war with the media, and it will also hurt Fox News' ratings to hold the event without the reality TV star.

But for journalistic integrity, it's a rare win these days. And I tip my hat to Fox News for reminding us that this fight isn't over.

Slate: Nate Silver got the Trump candidacy wrong

Slate's Leon Neyfakh is calling Nate Silver out for saying Trump had no chance of being relevant in the Republican primary.

My gut feeling is that Silver is best as a predictor of outcomes as elections get close. This is when the statistics and the data matter most.

From months or a year away, data is much too fluid to be immune to subjective, rather than objective, interpretation.

Neyfakh takes this point further:

In 2008, Silver emerged as a new kind of journalist. His data-driven approach to political analysis was a necessary corrective to a media herd that too often relied on gut feelings and received wisdom. So long as punditry continues to exist, thinkers like Silver will remain essential. But the rise of FiveThirtyEight hasn’t changed the fundamental purpose of journalism: to pay attention as the world changes and to try to understand what’s driving that change.

I'm not making any predictions except for one: As the elections get closer, I'll still be checking Silver's data before reading Slate's Monday morning quarterbacking.