Bob Lord

Bob has mostly wound down his 39-year career as a tax and business lawyer (with a 1-year interruption to run for Congress in 2008 (CD3), when he tried to unseat John Shadegg. Bob now serves as the senior advisor on tax policy for the Patriotic Millionaires, a group of wealthy Americans who believe the light taxation of America's rich is destabilizing our democracy, and as an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. Bob has been writing for Blog For Arizona since late 2011, concentrating mostly on federal issues, with an occasional foray into Arizona state politics.

Arizona: Seventh Most Regressive State Tax Structure

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Posted by Bob Lord Well, our friends at the Arizona legislature have a new distinction of which I'm sure they're quite proud. Arizona has the seventh most regressive tax structure of all 50 states and DC, based on a study by the Institute on Tax and Economic Policy. According to the ITEP study, the bottom 20% of … Read more

The Rich Get Richer

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Posted by Bob Lord So, the trend continues. According to analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, the income of the top one percent rose 8.2% between 2009 and 2011, while the income of the bottom 90% declined by 1.2%. The full analysis is even more grim. You can read Robert Reich's discussion of it here. … Read more

What Do You Know? Carter May Have Called It Right On Israel After All

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Posted by Bob Lord

About 5 or 6 years ago, President Carter wrote Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid, which immediately drew scathing criticism from the AIPAC crowd, led by Alan Dershowitz. Dershowitz found a handful of inaccuracies in the several hundred points President Carter made. President Carter acknowledged the few mistakes he made, but the media onslaught was so ferocious that his book never received a fair review. 

I've always thought history ultimately will be kind to President Carter. I'm still in the minority, but this may bring my view closer to vindication. The documentary, Gatekeepers, directed by Dror Moreh, an Israeli, has been nominated for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar. Here's how Huff Po describes Gatekeepers:

An Exquisite Flip Flop Flip

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Posted by Bob Lord This may be the most exquisite flip flop flip ever executed by a politician. Our very own Senator McLastInHisClass announced today that he supports comprehensive immigration reform, including a path to citizenship for the 11 million already here. Today's position is exactly the one he held in 2006. By 2010, however, … Read more

Patience, Diligence and The Human Mind

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Posted by Bob Lord

I just finished one of the most powerful, most compelling
books I’ve ever read, Kill Anything That Moves, by Nick Turse. I hope to write
more on the book in future posts. It reveals the horrible ugly truth about the
Vietnam War, in a way no other book on the subject has. It will change your
view of America forever. You can read Jonathan Schell’s excellent review of it
here or you can take my word for it, buy the book, and put everything else aside until you've finished.

This post, however, focuses on a thought I had while reading
the last chapter of Turse’s book, a thought which I hope, directly or indirectly, will
inspire one person, one day, to take on a huge task and succeed. That person
probably will be a younger person, with the energy, the focus and the
intelligence to follow the path I suggest. But that path is available to anyone. I hope
you’ll stay with me until the end. If you believe in the power of the human
mind, as I do, I hope you’ll pass it on.

We live in an age of unlimited information, but one in which the human qualities of patience and diligence are in precious short supply.
Therein lies an opportunity, for the few who have the patience and diligence to
pursue the truth. After the jump are the remarkable stories of the achievements
of four individuals who had such diligence and patience.