Robert Samuelson has a column about controlling Medicare costs:

Almost everyone agrees that the delivery system -- the amalgam of hospitals, clinics, doctors and nurses -- should be reorganized to lower costs and eliminate unneeded care. The question is how. One group favors market-like mechanisms....The other way to control costs is regulation, as embodied in the Affordable Care Act.

My objection here is that the message voters are getting right now from Romney-Ryan isn't, "Obama and Romney-Ryan both want to reduce Medicare spending, there's just a difference of opinion about the best way to go about it." The message voters are getting is "Obama wants to take away grandma's wheelchair and we don't want to change a thing for anyone 55 or older." That message may be politically effective in states with lots of older voters, but it doesn't make it easy for Mr. Romney or Mr. Ryan, if they get into the White House, to get the federal budget back on track.

This is a bit far afield for the FutureOfCapitalism, but worth mentioning as an example of the power of the press to push or pull a president through an oddly worded question that contains certain assumptions. President Obama did a brief question and answer session with the press on Monday, and NBC News's Chuck Todd asked a question that said in part:

Mr. President, could you update us on your latest thinking of where you think things are in Syria, and in particular, whether you envision using U.S. military, if simply for nothing else, the safe keeping of the chemical weapons, and if you're confident that the chemical weapons are safe?

Mr. Obama answered, in part:

Libertarian law professor Richard Epstein's latest column is about "an Obama administration whose main agenda tracks Roosevelt's early one: Vilify the rich as unproductive ciphers of society and work toward a progressive tax rate structure; be hostile toward the growth of international trade by denouncing firms that outsource jobs as the enemies of domestic labor; continue to work in favor of extensive agricultural subsidies for ethanol and other farm crops, no matter how great of a disruption these impose on domestic and foreign food markets; and insist upon a rich set of unsustainable healthcare benefits through Medicare and Medicaid."

"We accept EBT Cash Benefit" reads the direct mail piece from this Papa John's pizza restaurant mailed to Brooklyn households. Something for the non-food-stamp-receiving taxpayers to think about as they are cooking dinner or washing the dishes tonight. I find myself noticing more and more of this sort of thing, not just on ads, but in storefront signage, and not limited to poor neighborhoods, either.

Mitt Romney's statement that as president he would eliminate the National Endowment for the Humanities is the subject of my column this week. Please check it out at the New York Sun (here) or at Reason (here).

At least the soda industry is defending itself against Mayor Bloomberg rather than folding or settling. At least for now.

The Internet is abuzz with Harvard professor Niall Ferguson's Newsweek cover article on why President Obama has been a failure and should not be re-elected. It's a pretty good summary of the case, I would say.

In an editorial, the New York Times faults Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney for meeting, with no reporters allowed, with Sheldon Adelson, the CEO of Las Vegas Sands. The Times refers to "the issues swirling about Mr. Adelson's business practices," as well as a fine imposed by Chinese regulators on the company for violating foreign exchange rules. The editorial faults Mr. Ryan and Mr. Romney for "allowing Mr. Adelson to have such an outsize role in their race," as if it is within their control how Mr. Adelson or his wife choose to spend their money.

Let's compare how the Times editorialists treat the Ryan-Romney-Adelson relationship— example number one—with how they have treated some other relationships between businessmen and politicians.

Opposition to car-service startup Uber from Washington D.C. cabdrivers was the subject of a post here the other day. Now the Boston Globe reports on the situation in Boston:

Since Uber launched locally, cab operators have complained that it creates unfair competition because it dispatches cars that are not regulated the way taxis are. And earlier this month, the state ordered Uber to shut down in Massachusetts, saying officials had not approved its system for calculating fares.

State officials reversed the ban Wednesday, allowing Uber to continue operating here, but cabbies are not giving up the fight.

"Uber exploited a loophole in the law," said Oleg Uritsky, who runs 45 cabs in Boston and is a spokesman for city taxi fleet owners. "Taxicabs everywhere are heavily, heavily regulated for public safety."

Koch Industries chairman and CEO Charles Koch writes:

Today, many governments give special treatment to a favored few businesses that eagerly accept those favors. This is the essence of cronyism.

Many businesses with unpopular products or inefficient production find it much easier to curry the favor of a few influential politicians or a government agency than to compete in the open market.

After all, the government can literally guarantee customers and profitability by mandating the use of certain products, subsidizing production or providing protection from more efficient competitors.

Cronyism enables favored companies to reap huge financial rewards, leaving the rest of us – customers and competitors alike – worse off.

Bridgewater, a large and high-performing hedge fund, will get $135 million in "state support" to move its headquarters to Stamford, Conn. from Westport, Conn. A press release from the governor of Connecticut, Dannel Malloy, announces:

State support for the project will come from the Next Five program, which is administered by the Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD). The assistance includes:

• A $25 million forgivable loan at a rate of 1% for a term of ten years to be used for the construction of the new facility

• A job training grant of up to $5 million

• A grant of up to $5 million for the installation of alternative energy systems

• Up to $80 million in Urban and Industrial Sites Reinvestment Tax Credits.

The most-emailed story at the New York Times Web site this morning is Maureen Dowd's column about Paul Ryan:

He's the cutest package that cruelty ever came in. He has a winning air of sad cheerfulness. He's affable, clean cut and really cut, with the Irish altar-boy widow's peak and droopy, winsome blue eyes and unashamed sentimentality.

Who better to rain misery upon the heads of millions of Americans?

He's Scrooge disguised as a Pickwick, an ideologue disguised as a wonk. Not since Ronald Reagan tried to cut the budget by categorizing ketchup and relish as vegetables has the G.O.P. managed to find such an attractive vessel to mask harsh policies with a smiling face...Ryan should stop being so lovable. People who intend to hurt other people should wipe the smile off their faces.

One could say the same things about Maureen Dowd herself...

Maybe the convention and the debates will help, but at the moment, Mitt Romney is sounding increasingly ideologically incoherent to me.

It's not just MediScare. The latest Romney comment to provoke a "huh?" is this, from an interview WMR did with Fortune (link via Mike Allen's Politico Playbook):

I believe infrastructure is going to see very substantial investments over the coming decade. I'm talking about highways as well as rail and air and communications infrastructure.

Great, now Mr. Romney is trying to convince me that if I want better highways and rail I should pick him instead of Obama?

Clive Crook writes in a Bloomberg View column: "It's well understood that Medicare spending needs to be contained lest its growth, under the pressures of demography and new medical technologies, crowd out other public spending or push taxes way up."

The assumption here is that new medical technologies must yield increased costs. Yet in many other fields, and sometimes even in medicine, new technologies are more likely to be adopted if they reduce costs. Think of the examples of voicemail replacing human secretaries, or ATMs replacing human bank tellers, or outpatient cardiac catheterizations and stents replacing many instances of open-heart surgery. Sure, there may be some technologies that yield such dramatic improvements in health-care outcomes that they are worth paying more for. But it's not by any means as certain as Mr. Crook suggests it is that new medical technologies will lead to increased costs.

David Stockman writes in today's New York Times:

Mr. Ryan professes to be a defense hawk, though the true conservatives of modern times — Calvin Coolidge, Herbert C. Hoover, Robert A. Taft, Dwight D. Eisenhower, even Gerald R. Ford — would have had no use for the neoconconservative imperialism that the G.O.P. cobbled from policy salons run by Irving Kristol's ex-Trotskyites three decades ago. These doctrines now saddle our bankrupt nation with a roughly $775 billion "defense" budget in a world where we have no advanced industrial state enemies and have been fired (appropriately) as the global policeman.