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America as Texas vs. California: Who’s Moving Where Edition - Ryan Streeter
Texas’s low-cost, liberty-loving atmosphere has become an attractive alternative to California’s oppressive public sector and dysfunctional policy environment. No amount of heart-melting vistas, celebrity sightings, or traipses through wine country can make up for what almost appears a strategic attempt by one of the nation’s largest states to drive businesses and productive people away.
Thanks to an interesting interactive map at Forbes.com, we now can see some visual evidence of the trends we have been discussing. The map shows county migration in the United States in pictorial form. Black lines show inward migration to a county, and red lines show outward migration. The thicker the line, the higher the volume.
Before the Deluge - David Warren
Contrary to Leftist dogma, Arthur Laffer is not a joke. This is the economist who was saddled with credit for what we call the "Laffer Curve." He himself attributed the insight behind it to the great Berber sage Ibn Khaldun, died 1406, arguable founder of many social science disciplines. He has also mentioned John Maynard Keynes among various older economists who got the point.
Let us briefly remind ourselves of this proposition of "Reaganomics," that has long been an object of ridicule among the progressive types.
If a government has a tax rate of zero, there will be no revenue. (I hope this is self-evident.) If it has a tax rate of 100 percent, there will also be no revenue: because there will be no private income, or at least, none willingly declared. Between those two extremes are tax rates that generate revenue. (Those who "have a problem with this" can stop reading now.)
The question is what rate will maximize it? And to that question, Laffer and any sane economist would admit a number of considerations. They may argue the comparative weight of these. But universal experience shows optimum rates are low, not high.
The underlying reason is plain. As tax rates rise, the return on additional effort diminishes. On the other hand, the effort to conceal income, or move it offshore, increases. A government might actually collect more from a lower rate than from a higher. But whatever that case, high tax rates grind down economic activity, and so are counter-productive across the board.
In a recent piece for the Wall Street Journal, this same Laffer predicts that the American economy will go into tailspin at a predictable date: Jan. 1, 2011. This is the day the Bush tax cuts expire, and U.S. rates return to much more destructive levels.
Ship of Fools - David Warren
We learned a simple thing this week: that the BP clean-up effort in the Gulf of Mexico is hampered by the Jones Act. This is a piece of 1920s protectionist legislation, that requires all vessels working in U.S. waters to be American-built, and American-crewed.
So while, for instance, the U.S. Coast Guard can accept such help as three kilometres of containment boom from Canada, they can't accept, and therefore don't ask for, the assistance of high-tech European vessels specifically designed for the task in hand.
This is amusing, in a way: a memorable illustration of ... the sort of stuff I keep going on about. Which is to say, the law of unintended consequences, which pertains with especial virulence to all acts of government regulation.
How the Sestak job offer became a big deal - Chris Cillizza
The unfolding of events since Sestak told a local television host -- albeit obliquely -- in February that he had received a job offer from the White House speaks to one of the oldest political adages about the presidency: stonewalling almost never works. (The full White House report on the matter is here.)
Why did the White House contact Joe Sestak’s brother? - Michelle Malkin
Kurt Bardella, Spokesperson, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, responds: “If the White House is coordinating it’s response with the Sestak campaign, as Congressman Sestak has reported, it certainly explains why the President, when given the opportunity at a nationally broadcasted press conference, abdicated the opportunity to address the issue candidly and definitively. Instead, it appears as if the White House is taking time to circle the wagons and coordinating their message. This revelation that the White House initiated a dialogue with Sestak at the same time they are preparing their public response certainly leaves the impression that there is a coordinated effort going on. Of course, if everyone just did the right thing and told the truth, the need to speculate about motive and impartiality wouldn’t be necessary.”
Bill Clinton and the Sestak Scandal - Ira Stoll
The White House chooses the Friday afternoon before Memorial Day weekend to unload the news -- in the form of a memo from the White House counsel, so that anyone he talked to about it is covered by both lawyer-client privilege and executive privilege -- that "The White House Chief of Staff enlisted the support of former President Clinton who agreed to raise with Congressman Sestak options of service on a Presidential or other Senior Executive Branch Advisory Board." There's no explanation of why Mr. Clinton was enlisted for this task. If it would have been legal or appropriate for a White House official to do it directly, why bother getting Mr. Clinton involved? And if it would have been illegal or inappropriate for a White House official to do it directly, does the use of a cut-out, even if it comports with the letter of the law, match the spirit of the law or the administration's stated intention to set a high ethical bar?
Sestak was ineligible for job Clinton offered - Byron York
Why would the White House — normally pretty careful in such matters — offer Sestak a job he couldn’t take? Were there in fact other offers made to Sestak? So far, there has been little discussion of the fact that the Bauer statement said “options for executive branch service were raised with [Sestak].” The plural “options” certainly suggests that more than one job was presented to Sestak, but Sestak himself says his conversation with Clinton was very brief — less than one minute.
Obamacare’s Cooked Books and the ‘Doc Fix’ - James C. Capretta
The truth is the president and his allies in Congress worked overtime to pull together every Medicare cut they could find — nearly $500 billion in all over ten years — and put them into the health law to pay for the massive entitlement expansion they so coveted. They could have used those cuts to pay for the “doc fix” if they had wanted to, as well as for a slightly less expansive health program. But that’s not what they did. That wasn’t their priority. They chose instead to break their agenda into multiple bills, and “pay for” the massive health entitlement (on paper) while claiming they shouldn’t have to find offsets for the “doc fix.” But it doesn’t matter to taxpayers if they enact their agenda in one, two, or ten pieces of legislation. The total cost is still the same. All of the supposed deficit reduction now claimed from the health-care law is more than wiped out by the Democrats’ insistent march to borrow and spend for Medicare physician fees.
In Honor of a President Few Remember - Alan Snyder
In a free republic a great government is the product of a great people. They will look to themselves rather than government for success. The destiny, the greatness of America lies around the hearthstone. If thrift and industry are taught there, and the example of self-sacrifice oft appears, if honor abide there, and high ideals, if there the building of fortune be subordinate to the building of character, America will live in security, rejoicing in an abundant prosperity and good government at home and in peace, respect, and confidence abroad. If these virtues be absent there is no power that can supply these blessings. Look well then to the hearthstone, therein all hope for America lies.
Calvin Coolidge
US budget deficit wider-than-expected in AprilThe US government suffered a wider-than-expected budget deficit of 82.69 billion dollars in April, the Treasury Department said Wednesday.
It was nearly four times the deficit chalked up a year earlier and the largest ever recorded in April.
Most analysts had expected the April deficit, the 19th consecutive month of federal red ink, to be about 52 billion dollars.
The latest data brought the deficit for the first seven months of the 2010 fiscal year ending September 30 to 799.68 billion dollars, slightly lower than 802.9 billion dollars during the same period last year.
...
The White House had warned that the deficit for the 2010 fiscal year could swell to 1.555 trillion dollars, eclipsing the prior year's record of 1.415 trillion dollars due to massive spending to stimulate recovery from the worst recession in decades.
U.S. posts 19th straight monthly budget deficitThe U.S. full-year deficit this year is projected at $1.5 trillion on top of a $1.4 trillion shortfall last year.
White House budget director Peter Orszag told Reuters Insider in an interview on Wednesday that the United States must tackle its deficits quickly to avoid the kind of debt crisis that hit Greece.
