Vox Sentences: The aftermath of the Ferguson police shooting

1. Two shots

A police officer removes crime scene tape from outside the Ferguson police station following an investigation of the area after two officers were shot and wounded. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

• Two police officers were shot outside the Ferguson Police Department amidst protests following the police chief's resignation.

  [Vox / Todd VanDerWerff, Jenée Desmond-Harris, and German Lopez]

• Both of the officers were released from the hospital this morning; one, from the nearby town of Webster Groves, was shot in the cheekbone below his right eye, and the other, a St. Louis County officer, was hit in his right shoulder.

  [NYT / John Eligon and Richard Pérez-Peña]

• St. Louis County police and Missouri Highway Patrol will assume responsibility for handling the protests from the Ferguson PD.

  [CNN / Greg Botelho]

• The shooter's identity and motivations are not yet known; three witnesses told the LA Times' Matt Pearce that the shots didn't come from the demonstrators.

  [Matt Pearce]

• The Obama administration immediately and forcefully condemned the attack; Attorney General Eric Holder: "This was not someone trying to bring healing to Ferguson. This was a damn punk, a punk, who was trying to sow discord."

  [Washington Post / Mark Berman]

• Jamelle Bouie: "there’s a chance these shootings could completely derail any attempt to repair the relationship between the police and the policed."

  [Slate / Jamelle Bouie]

2. Endgame

Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon and the then-foreign ministers of the five permanent UN Security Council members — British Foreign Secretary William Hague, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, US Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister of the People's Republic of China Wang Yi — on September 25, 2013. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

• The permanent five members of the UN Security Council (the US, UK, France, China, and Russia) are, along with Germany and Iran, discussing the possibility of the Council passing a resolution lifting sanctions on Iran should a nuclear deal come to pass.

  [Reuters / Louis Charbonneau]

• The administration has said any Iran deal wouldn't be a legally binding treaty requiring Senate approval.

  [Washington Post / Carol Morello]

• But a UN resolution would turn the deal into binding international law without requiring any Congressional approval. Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith explains: "a Security Council resolution could mean that the next President can reimpose congressional sanctions only by violating international law."

  [Lawfare / Jack Goldsmith]

• The UN approach would effectively blunt 47 Republican senators' point, made in a letter to the Iranian leadership, that a future president could renege on a deal at any time.

  [Vox / Max Fisher]

• Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Bob Corker (R-TN), who was not a signatory on the Iran letter, stated that going to the UN without going to the Senate would be "a direct affront to the American people and seeks to undermine Congress’s appropriate role."

  [Yahoo / Olivier Knox]

3. One for you, and 0.54 for me

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) talk before a news conference announcing their tax plan. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

• The Republican economic policy world has spent the past week debating a new tax plan proposed by Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Mike Lee (R-UT).

  [Marco Rubio and Mike Lee]

• The basics: cutting the top corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent; collapsing the current seven individual tax brackets to just two, 15 and 35 percent (the current bottom rate is 10 and the current top is 39.6); expanding the child tax credit; and eliminating taxation of investment income.

  [TaxVox / Howard Gleckman]

• A previous iteration of the plan, which didn't exempt all capital gains and dividends from taxation, would have cost $2.4 trillion in revenue over ten years, with the biggest tax breaks going to the top 0.1 percent and the lower middle class (the 20th through 60th percentiles); this version will likely cost even more, and concentrate more cuts at the top.

  [Tax Policy Center]

• The increased child credit would be able to count against payroll taxes — which is meant to make it more useful for lower-income people — but it's not fully refundable, which would be even better for the working poor.

  [New Republic / Danny Vinik]

• The plan also doesn't extend one of the Obama administration's expansions of the child tax credit, so some families could wind up worse off due to the change.

  [Off the Charts / Chuck Marr]

• Scott Sumner praises the plan, saying it "basically turns the income tax into a progressive consumption tax"; economists tend to like consumption taxes and think they're good for economic growth.

  [Scott Sumner]

• In fact, the Tax Foundation claims the plan will raise revenue in the long-run because it will increase growth so much; even under rosy assumptions, that's ludicrous.

  [TaxVox / William Gale]

• Ross Douthat: this is a good model for conservative tax reform, but it's way too expensive in its current form.

  [NYT / Ross Douthat]

• Reihan Salam: "I like the basic structure of Lee-Rubio. … What I don’t like is that in its current form, it is trying to promise everything to everyone. If Lee-Rubio ever gets to the point where it’s being debated in Congress, it will simply have to raise more revenue."

  [National Review / Reihan Salam]

• Josh Barro: the plan is trying to bridge a debate among conservatives about whether to emphasize cutting tax rates or expanding the child credit by doing both simultaneously. That's a fantasy.

  [NYT / Josh Barro]

• Jonathan Chait: this shows the rate-slashing supply side conservatives have finally beaten the pro-child credit "reform conservatives."

  [NY Mag / Jonathan Chait]

4. Misc.

• Scientists are debating when the "Anthropocene" — the new geological era brought about through mankind's enormous impact on the environment — began. Proposed dates include 1610, 1800, and 1964.

  [Slate / Eric Holthaus]

• For years, surveys have found conservatives are happier than liberals. New research suggests the gap is a mirage.

  [NYT / Erica Goode]

• The Hubble Space Telescope has found evidence of a saltwater ocean covered in ice on Jupiter's moon Ganymede.

  [Vox / Joseph Stromberg]

• Sychronized walking (like synchronized swimming, but on dry land) is a thing, and it's pretty impressive actually.

  [Now I Know / Dan Lewis]

• Bill Clinton's email to then-Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt — widely touted as the first ever email from a US president to another world leader — was in all caps, like he was shouting, because Bill did not know internet etiquette.

  [The Atlantic / Adrienne LaFrance]

5. Verbatim

• "Either psychological research sucks or everything else sucks."

  [Slate Star Codex / Scott Alexander]

• "If the main idea behind this treatment approach turns out to work, then society might face some complex questions about whether or not we should start to reward psychopaths wherever we can."

  [Practical Ethics / Andreas Kappes]

• "The Internet story of the year — perhaps of many years — began with a breezy, under-punctuated blog post on the Tumblr of some 21-year-old no one had previously heard of."

  [Washington Post / Caitlin Dewey]

• "The negative emotions of outrage are never going to be advertisers’ first choices."

  [Slate / David Auerbach]

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