More to come on this, but I didn't want to let this nasty piece of work by the New York Times go without comment. We've gotten to the point where the New York Times is illustrating its articles about the need for lower marginal tax rates in America with aerial photographs of selected hedge fund managers, their wives, and the country homes of the money managers. What do the wives and the country homes have to do with it? Where are the pictures of the country home(s) of the publishers of the New York Times, who also had a family office until it was basically wound down when the family fortune (already shielded from estate tax via a trust) diminished to the point where it was no longer worth the expense? Where are the pictures of the wives and country homes of the tax lawyers and accountants who dream up these plans and of the politicians who set rates that make them desirable? Notice that while George Soros is mentioned in the article, his wife or ex-wife or girlfriend and his country home are somehow left out. The whole thing is just executed as if it were something from a left-wing agitprop organ rather than a respectable mainstream newspaper.

Possibilities for the year ahead are the topic of my column this week. Please check it out at the New York Sun (here), Reason (here), and Newsmax (here).

Passed over for the nomination to chair the Federal Reserve, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers is now criticizing its decisions from a platform at the Washington Post. He writes:

Why is the Fed making these mistakes if indeed they are mistakes? It is not because its leaders are not thoughtful or open minded or concerned with growth and employment. Rather I suspect it is because of an excessive commitment to existing models and modes of thought

If Mr. Summers doesn't agree with the decisions of the Fed led by Janet Yellen and Stanley Fischer, it is a good reminder that economic policymaking of the sort the Fed is engaged in is as much an art as it is a science, and that humility and skepticism are in order all around.

David Frum has a thought-provoking and already much-discussed piece in the Atlantic about the problems facing the Republican Party and what might be done about them.

The hypocrisy of the New York Times — denouncing the pharmaceutical industry for raising drug prices while, at the same time, the newspaper increases its own charges to home-delivery customers — is the topic of my column this week. It includes a response from a Times senior vice president. Is pricing prescriptions different from pricing subscriptions? Please check the column out at the New York Sun (here), Reason (here), and Newsmax (here).

Wherever I go these days I hear people telling me that they are depressed by the state of American politics.

They observe that the leading candidate among the Republicans, Donald Trump, is a blustering demagogue, scapegoating Muslims and Mexicans. Lurking just behind Mr. Trump is Ted Cruz, a Republican so extreme — "hyperpartisan...abrasive," in the words of a recent USA Today editorial likening him to Barack Obama — that only Mr. Trump could make him look palatable. On the Democratic side, the candidate is likely to be Hillary Clinton, a candidate so cynically opportunistic she's been on both sides of issues such as gay marriage and the Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement. Mrs. Clinton is running to "rein in Wall Street," having, with her husband, accepted a total of $875,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs in 2013.

As a result of a small leak, I've recently been scanning some web sites for a sink faucet. I was struck by how much of the marketing of them seems targeted at assuring potential purchasers of regulatory and legal compliance. At this plumbing supply site, for example, a Moen faucet is described with the words, "complies with Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) specifications" as well as "meets current legislation, including ab1953 (california) and s152 (vermont)."

The politicians find a way to get their hands on everything, right down to, and including, your kitchen sink. Or at least the faucet.

Hillary Clinton's campaign claim that the economy does better with Democrats in the White House is the topic of my column this week. Please check the column out at CapX (here), the New York Sun (here), and Newsmax (here).

The Economist has an interesting report on how the big health insurance companies have been thriving under ObamaCare:

the share prices of America's five biggest health insurers—UnitedHealthcare, Aetna, Humana, Cigna and Anthem—have all roughly tripled over the past five years. The big insurers have been consistently and highly profitable (see chart). Unlike most big American firms, the trend is still upward. All five will probably report record profits for this year, next year and several more to come, predicts Ana Gupte, an analyst with Leerink, a research firm. For that, they owe a debt of gratitude to an unlikely creditor. The results of most financial firms may have buckled under the weight of new regulation, but health insurers appear to be thriving in the complicated new regulatory environment. ...the barriers to entry in the business are huge.

Ten people — Joseph Antos, James Capretta, Lanhee Chen, Scott Gottlieb, Yuval Levin, Thomas Miller, Ramesh Ponnuru, Avik Roy, Gail R. Wilensky, and David Wilson — have put together a crisp and mostly sensible statement on health care reform that is worth a look. It recommends gradually raising the Medicare eligibility age to 67 and emphasizing the use of health savings accounts.

Hillary Clinton's campaign proposal for an exit tax on companies moving their headquarters out of America to avoid our unreasonably high corporate tax rates is the topic of my column this week. I call it, "a striking example of how, this election cycle, neither major American political party has the right idea when it comes to the free movement of people and capital across borders."

Please check the full column out at CapX (here), the New York Sun (here), Reason (here), and Newsmax (here).

The New York Times has an article picking up on the Chronicle of Higher Education's annual survey of pay of the presidents of private colleges and universities. No. 1 for the survey, which covered the year 2013, was the president of Columbia University, Lee Bollinger. Says the Times: "Mr. Bollinger's compensation totaled $4.6 million, which the university said included $1.17 million in base pay, an incentive payment of $940,000, use of a university residence, and other deferred compensation." The president of Yeshiva University in New York, Richard Joel, reported annual compensation of $2.5 million. Says the Times: "Yeshiva University said Mr. Joel's compensation in 2013 was because of a one-time payment that covered six years of deferred compensation. Since then, Mr. Joel requested that his compensation be reduced by $100,000 in 2014, and reduced by an additional $50,000 this year, the university said."

The Wall Street Journal runs an interview with Peter Lynch of Fidelity Magellan Fund fame that includes this passage:

The market is different than in 1990. One of the biggest changes: exchange-traded funds. Mr. Lynch credits their rise with a distrust of mutual-fund managers, which he says is unwarranted. "People accept that active managers can't beat the market and it's just not true," he says. (A Fidelity spokesman says about three-quarters of its 49 equity funds managed by the same portfolio manager for at least five years were beating their benchmark over the manager's tenure as of Sept. 30.)

A day after implementing a 3% "Affordable Care Act Surcharge" on its menu prices to help pay the cost of employee health insurance coverage, a Brooklyn pizza restaurant, Franny's, is removing it after customers objected. DNAInfo has the details. It seems like a lot of restaurant's left-leaning customers like mandating health insurance coverage but don't like having to pay for it, or at least don't like having the cost made transparent to them. Franny's was always a favorite of mine when I lived in Brooklyn, not for the politics, but for the pizza, which was excellent.

Classical liberal law professor Richard Epstein's column on the Hoover Institution website uses the flap over Woodrow Wilson at Princeton as an entry point for a discussion of unions, antitrust, and race. President Wilson, Professor Epstein writes: