Jinn of Current Events

Reason: Having examined the complaints against Lomborg, the Committees placed the Wig of Judiciousness on its head and lit the straw at the Danish statistician's feet. ... It's interesting to observe how impressively Denmark resolves issues of science that arise within its borders: by pronouncement. This saves a lot of time that is otherwise wasted on observation, experiment, analysis, and debate. 

BBC - History: ...fishermen and coastal dwellers of 17th-century Britain lived in terror of being kidnapped by pirates and sold into slavery in North Africa. Hundreds of thousands across Europe met wretched deaths on the Barbary Coast in this way. Between 1530 and 1780, more than one million Europeans were kidnapped by Muslim pirates and sold into slavery on the Barbary Coast. 

The richest 1 percent of US taxpayers, those who make more than $374,000 a year, pay 36 percent of all personal income taxes (but only have 18 percent of all pretax income). According to Citizens for Tax Justice, the wealthiest 1 percent will get almost one third of the overall benefit of eliminating the tax on dividends and accelerating the rate cuts. Since these most productive people are highly taxed in the first place, taking less from them sounds quite reasonable (not what that "Citizens" group means, though).

We're also told that the poorest 80 percent of the households, making less than $73,000 a year, would get only one fifth of the new tax breaks. Not too surprising, given that these people actually pay less than 20% of all income taxes! An amazing 24% pay no income tax at all.

Meanwhile, the top-earning 25% paid 84% of the federal income tax in 2000, says the Tax Foundation. The top one percent paid 37.4% of the total federal individual income taxes collected in 2000. Their burden was up from 25.1% in 1990.