Feb
8
2009

URLs du Jour

2009-02-08

  • John Kerry was unwittingly honest on the Senate floor:
    I've supported many tax cuts over the years, and there are tax cuts in this proposal. But a tax cut is non-targeted.

    If you put a tax cut into the hands of a business or family, there's no guarantee that they're going to invest that or invest it in America.

    They're free to go invest anywhere that they want if they choose to invest.

    And Mary Katherine Ham noticed just how well that little snippet captures the essence of 21st-century American liberalism.
    Indeed, people with their own hard-earned money in their own pockets are free to spend, save, invest, or not wherever they please. Kerry betrays the fear that haunts every good liberal-- that the American people won't spend their money on exactly what good liberals would spend it on. Good liberals must, therefore, advocate for forcibly relieving the American people of the better part of a trillion dollars of their own money to fund things like STD education, welfare programs, and water parks.
    Plus which, you get to pat yourself on the back for saving the American people from the only sin liberals believe in anymore: variously called "selfishness", "greed", or sometimes "minding your own business."

  • Libertarian-tilting people looking for an answer to "Well, what would you do?" will want to check out Harvard's Jeff Miron's article (from an unlikely host: CNN). He proposes "a stimulus package libertarians can endorse." The major points:

    1. Repeal the Corporate Income Tax
    2. Increase Carbon Taxes While Lowering Marginal Tax Rates
    3. Moderate the Growth of Entitlements
    4. Eliminate Wasteful Spending
    5. Withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan
    6. Limit Union Power
    7. Renew the U.S. Commitment to Free Trade
    8. Expand Legal Immigration
    9. Stop Bailing out Businesses that Took on Too Much Risk

    Details at the link. Being an impure libertarian, I have problems with the "withdraw" recommendation, and, whatever its merits, the immigration item is unlikely to get much support, at least in our immediate high-unemployment future. You can read more on from Miron on killing the corporate income tax at Reason.

    But everything both (a) deserves to be at least seriously considered, and (b) won't be, in the current political climate. (CNN link via Greg Mankiw.)

  • Skip at GraniteGrok is your go-to guy for displeasure at Judd Gregg's nomination for Commerce Secretary. One immediate result is that Gregg has chosen to recuse himself from voting and discussion on the "stimulus" package, depriving the people who elected him of representation with his (usual) voice of fiscal sanity.

  • Via Power Line, an amusing correction from the New York Times:
    A chart last Sunday with an article about a generational shift in the new Senate misidentified the home state of Senator Jeanne Shaheen and former Senator John E. Sununu. They are from New Hampshire, not Nebraska.
    A mistake we have yet to make at Pun Salad, but then we are not Professional Journalists.

  • A couple of Southern Illinois University links:

    • Margaret Soltan, the University Diarist, points out and quotes extensively from an article that describes the connections between political contributions to everyone's favorite ex-Governor, Rod Blaogojevich, and appointment to the SIU Board of Trustees.

    • And SIU (the Carbondale campus) has been given the dishonor of being selected as owning the Foundation of Individual Rights in Education's Speech Code of the Month.

    Theory: political hacks in charge of a university tend to turn it into a mini-despotism filled with shoddy scholarship. I mean, more so than average.