A good "revenue enhancement" idea

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Yes, use the tax code to punish your enemies. That is one of the reasons it's so inefficient and nonsensical from any objective economic standpoint. But I can understand why CARL would enjoy the shear "shadenfeudic" spleen vented in this article - yes I can! 

Hmm.

You continue to assert that those who urge higher taxes on others, should be exempt from higher taxes themselves.

Yes, that's Torie.

...so, you want to punitively tax the entertainment industry because of the political leanings that it's perceived as having? Is there something I'm missing here?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

But you're not advocating something that corrects for a bias. You're just advocating swinging in the direction of another bias.

I say this as somebody who actually supports forms of Pigouvian consumption tax: This idea is not, in your case, motivated by any desire to raise revenue at all, at least not for its own sake. You're advocating this as a form of social engineering. There's nothing wrong with that--taxes can be used for both of those things--but trying to phrase it in ways like 'people who advocate for higher taxes should pay higher taxes' (as if this was about economic justice) is ridiculous. You seem to be using a synecdoche as a basis for policy proposals. You could just as easily eliminate the accounting gimmicks that you mention without imposing a new (or very old) tax, but I guess there's an aversion to eliminating loopholes within the Republican Party these days. I'm not saying that such aversion would be a stated reason for this proposal, but it shapes the narrative, and perception shapes reality in politics as in almost no other field except possibly religion and advertising (both of which are related to politics).

I'm not familiar with how the movie industry worked in the days when something like this existed under FDR and Truman, but I would hazard a guess that it was somewhat different back then, as was the economy in general considering we had just come out of a state of total war against three aggressive empires at once.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

All right, I stand corrected on several aspects of this, though I still think the excise tax is a bad idea and would support the AMT more (as indeed I would on the banks and car companies and everybody else).

I misread your statement about people advocating for higher taxes. Sorry.

I agree with you about antitrust enforcement, with the addition that I'd like to see much, much stronger laws against collusion (which can very easily create trusts in all but name) as well.

So I guess my main concern with this is that I really think the excise aspect doesn't work as well as an AMT (which, again, should be applied across the board, not just to a specific industry).

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

was I the only one to think CARL was going to propose a deportation tax on illegals?

No. No you weren't.