Libertarian law professor Richard Epstein's column this week is about the City of Richmond, California and its Green Party mayor's effort to use the power of eminent domain to restructure residential mortgages. He writes:

property owners, both in Richmond and elsewhere, are long term losers if it becomes impossible for homeowners in hard-pressed communities to borrow funds from banks that won't lend when they know that these loans can be taken from them. The situation is doubly troublesome today now that housing prices are coming back making Richmond's operating premise of widespread failure ever more questionable.

The Hartford City Council has passed a resolution opposing a potential purchase of the Hartford Courant newspaper by the Koch brothers. The Courant has an article and the text of the resolution, which I saw linked at JimRomenesko.com.

The idea that the government should have a say in who is allowed to own newspapers seems to me to be fundamentally at odds with the freedom of the press principle embodied in the First Amendment to the Constitution and in the Connecticut State Constitution, which says, "No law shall ever be passed to curtail or restrain the liberty of speech or of the press."

It is really something that the mere prospect — not an announced deal or a consummated deal, just the prospect — of deep-pocketed, free-market-oriented newspaper owners has the politicians so alarmed that they doing everything they can to stop it.

President Obama's high-wage vision of the American economy could make a consumer's typical shopping trip nearly five times more expensive, I write in my column this week. I compared prices on a basket of items at one of Mr. Obama's favorite retailers, The Container Store, and at a retailer Mr. Obama's allies vilify for its lower wages, Walmart. Please check the column out at the Chicago Sun-Times (here), Newsmax (here), Reason (here), and the New York Sun (here).

A recent New York Times article reporting on two small Internet companies that shut down rather than comply with government requests for user information picks up a theme I wrote about in a recent column, which is that heavily regulated large firms have a hard time resisting government requests for national security cooperation. From the Times:

"Providers are in a bind," observed Orin Kerr, a law professor who specializes in surveillance law at George Washington University. "They need to respect the privacy rights of customers in order to keep customers, but they also have an obligation to comply with the law. A small company can say, 'Rather than comply with the law, we will go under.' But Verizon is not going to do that."

He added: "The government usually has an easier time with large companies because they have more of a long-term need to have good relations with the government."

The president of the Cato Institute, John Allison, is someone I respect, while the senator from Illinois Richard Durbin is someone I often disagree with. But it looks to me as if Mr. Allison overreacted a bit in his letter responding to Senator Durbin's inquiry about whether Cato had supported the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Senator Durbin wrote: "I acknowledge your organization's right to actively participate in the debate of important political issues."

Mr. Allison responded:

Your letter of August 6, 2013 is an obvious effort to intimidate those organizations and individuals who may have been involved in any way with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

Forbes has an article telling the ugly, sad story of why Connecticut's economy has been underperforming. In 2011 the state passed 77 tax increases, including retroactive income tax increases.

National Public Radio reports: "It's typical for young gays, who have often fled hostile environments, to make up a large proportion of the homeless who are under 25 — perhaps as much as 40 percent in major cities such as Boston and Los Angeles."

That "perhaps" is an alarm bell. Perhaps it's as much as 75 percent. Perhaps not. There's no link to any survey to back up the NPR claim. Google turns up a 2007 report by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, an advocacy group, that found, "Of the estimated 1.6 million homeless American youth, between 20 and 40 percent identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender." So NPR takes the advocacy group's estimate of "between 20 and 40 percent" and, without attributing the source, ramps that up to "a large proportion...perhaps as much as 40 percent."

The Tax Foundation has a new study out on the effect of eliminating the Earned Income Tax Credit and replacing it with an across-the-board income tax rate cut of 5.7 percent. It says that would boost GDP by $125 billion a year and boost federal revenues by $29 billion a year. It doesn't say what the distributional effect of the change would be, and while it says the change would "increase employment by the equivalent of approximately 783,000 full-time workers," it doesn't say over what period of time that increase would be, and how much would be new jobs or how much would be additional hours worked by people with existing jobs.

Bloomberg News has been doing a series of stories "outing" what it calls "hidden billionaires," or billionaires who have not appeared on published lists such as the one done by Forbes. The latest is Bob Piccinini, the majority owner of the Modesto, Calif-based Save Mart Supermarkets chain. Bloomberg reports that Mr. Piccinini "has expanded Save Mart by exploiting local zoning laws to thwart bigger competitors."

"Exploiting" is probably a bit of a loaded word there, but the article explains how it works:

Piccinini also has competed against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) and Boise-based WinCo Foods Inc. by opposing the retailers before local planning boards and city councils, often under the guise of neighborhood groups, according to state court documents.

Posting here has been less frequent than usual over the past few days owing to the arrival, over the weekend, of a new son. Your editor, who is also the father of this new son, is trying to keep up as much as possible. Thank goodness, the government hasn't yet imposed mandatory six-month paternity leave policies on small businesses, so I am free to work when I can. Until full service resumes, however, I encourage you to also check out Smartertimes.com if you don't already visit it regularly. There's an item up there today about mortgage eminent domain that will probably be of interest to FutureOfCapitalism readers. Thanks for your patience and readership.

The Home section of the New York Times isn't usually the place to turn for penetrating coverage of tax policy, but today's cover article, about a "former marketing and sales executive" who bought a 300-acre farm in Sonoma County, California, tells an interesting story. From the Times:

The farm, which is about 40 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge, cost $3.9 million, but the Smiths were able to get an open-space easement, financed through county sales tax initiatives, that returned $2.2 million, on the condition that their land never be developed.

When the Obama administration announced it was delaying the mandate for businesses to comply with its health insurance mandate, there were some that said it was brazenly illegal.

Once the executive branch starts deciding it can pick and choose which laws to follow, though, it's a slippery slope that can go far beyond health care. At the Web site of the Council on Foreign Relations, Elliott Abrams writes about an example involving the Foreign Assistance Act, which authorizes American aid to Egypt.

Fashion designers Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce, ordered by an Italian tax agency to pay vast Italian taxes after they sold their brands to a company in Luxembourg, where taxes are 4% rather than the 37% in Italy, shut down their stores in Milan as a protest. The New York Times has the story.

"80 dead, 36 critical after Spain train crash blamed on high speed; 5 Americans among injured" — Washington Post headline, July 25, 2013.

"I'm delighted to represent President Obama, Vice President Biden, and the American people on this, my second trip to Spain. I returned to listen and to learn. I've returned to extend the president's gratitude for Spain's technical support and guidance as America begins the heavy lifting of building a national high-speed rail network. And I've returned to ask for your continued collaboration as we move down the track toward a better future for both of our nations.

The American Spectator has published an article I wrote looking back at Michael Bloomberg's record as mayor of New York City. Please check it out here.