Songwriter Denise Rich, ex-wife of commodities trader Marc Rich, is renouncing her American citizenship to live in London as an Austrian citizen, Reuters reports, observing, "She'll also be saving a lot of money in taxes by leaving her U.S. passport behind." People thinking of making this move may be doing it this year before the capital gains rates that apply on the "exit tax" are scheduled to increase next year.

David Brooks writes in his New York Times column:

Affluent, intelligent people are now more likely to marry other energetic, intelligent people. They raise energetic, intelligent kids in self-segregated, cultural ghettoes where they know little about and have less influence upon people who do not share their blessings....

Liberals are going to have to be willing to champion norms that say marriage should come before childrearing and be morally tough about it. Conservatives are going to have to be willing to accept tax increases or benefit cuts so that more can be spent on the earned-income tax credit and other programs that benefit the working class.

Political candidates will have to spend less time trying to exploit class divisions and more time trying to remedy them — less time calling their opponents out of touch elitists, and more time coming up with agendas that comprehensively address the problem. It's politically tough to do that, but the alternative is national suicide.

The eminent domain mortgage grab that has been covered here hits the New York Times op-ed page today in a column by Joe Nocera, who endorses the idea:

The plan calls for the county to buy mortgages at a steep, but fair, discount to its face value, and then to offer the homeowner a new mortgage that reflects much, though not all, of that discount. (Fees and costs would be paid for by the spread.) The money to buy the mortgages would come from investors; indeed, Mortgage Resolution Partners is in the process of raising money.

Libertarian law professor Richard Epstein latest column says the Supreme Court got it wrong in striking down as unconstitutional a law that made falsely claiming to have received military medals a crime punishable by a fine or imprisonment. He writes:

A quick look at the statute reveals some modest flaws in its drafting. Quite properly, the SVA applies only to false claims of receiving a military honor. But the statute does not require the claim made to be knowingly false, which is surely correct for criminal prosecutions. The omission in this case, however, counts for little, because it is hard to imagine that any person could make an innocent mistake about whether he or she has received the medal in question.

Virginia Postrel's Bloomberg View column is about shoes: "One reason for shoes' current cultural prominence is the sheer number of pairs people own today. Americans bought seven pairs per person last year, according to the American Apparel and Footwear Association. That's down from a peak of slightly more than eight pairs in 2006 but still high by historical standards."

That is a lot of shoes, and a reminder that no matter how badly the economy is doing under President Obama, Americans today, by "historical standards" or even the standards of the rest of the world, have it pretty good.

The oft-repeated left-wing claim that ObamaCare "Isn't the Biggest Tax Increase in History" is based on exceedingly flimsy evidence, and there's an entirely plausible case that it is the biggest tax increase in American history. So says my weekly column. Please check it out here at Reason and here at the New York Sun.

The Wall Street Journal has a news article that begins, "Merchants may soon begin to impose a surcharge each time a customer pays with a credit card, a practice Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. currently prohibit...Visa and MasterCard, which operate the world's largest card-payments networks, ban the practice in the U.S. as part of rules they require retailers to follow to accept their cards."

Paul Krugman has a New York Times column contrasting Mitt Romney with Mitt's father George Romney:

Unlike his father, however, Mr. Romney didn't get rich by producing things people wanted to buy; he made his fortune through financial engineering that seems in many cases to have left workers worse off, and in some cases driven companies into bankruptcy.

That's just ridiculous. The Romney or Bain Capital investment that most people are probably familiar with is Staples. No one forced anyone to shop there. Customers go there because they want to. And the "things people wanted to buy" in the case of Bain Capital included not only the products that customers bought but the shares in the funds that investors wanted to buy so that Mr. Romney and his partners could invest their capital.

Back in August 2011, when the Wall Street Journal wrote about the Fairholme Fund and its manager Bruce Berkowitz under the headline "Fund Stars Fallen," I observed that the Journal had also criticized Fairholme's performance in January 2009:

If a Journal reader had listened to the 2009 article and sold out of Fairholme, he would have missed out on annual returns of 39.01% in 2009 and 25.47% in 2010, which is something to consider when reading this latest Journal article focusing on Fairholme's returns for less than half of the month of August, or focusing on Monday's returns for an article in Wednesday's paper that doesn't include Tuesday's returns. Whatever one thinks of Mr. Berkowitz, he's a lot more credible than the Journal's coverage of him.

The Journal reports today that Fairholme "was among the top-performing U.S.-stock mutual funds in the first half of this year, with a 24.7% gain."

USA Today reports:

More states are enacting or considering laws that prohibit people who get welfare cash from spending it on liquor, cigarettes, strip clubs, gambling and guns — laws that even supporters say are difficult to enforce.

Ten states have passed such laws and at least 14 are considering them, the National Conference of State Legislatures says.

Under a new federal law, all states must prevent the use of cash benefits in liquor stores, gambling establishments and adult entertainment businesses by 2014. States that fail to establish policies face cuts in federal support.

Don't tell Mayor Bloomberg, but USA Today is reporting:

Three chains — Steak 'n Shake and some Taco Bell and Sonic locations — are promoting soft drinks on morning menus....In the 12 months through April, morning soft drink servings at big burger chains rose 3% vs. a 3% drop the year before, reports researcher NPD Group/CREST....Steak 'n Shake is offering a free breakfast taco with the $1.79 purchase of a 28-ounce Coca-Cola 6 a.m. to 11 a.m., through July 11. A Facebook coupon is required....Taco Bells in Southern California and Fresno are testing MTN Dew A.M. — an orange juice and Mountain Dew mix served until 11 a.m. It's "in response to consumer demand," says spokesman Rob Poetsch. Mountain Dew maker Pepsi had no comment.

In April we noted that economist Mark Zandi's failure to accurately predict the monthly employment numbers had not stopped him from issuing predictions, nor had it stopped journalists from quoting him.

In February Politico quoted him as predicting "The January employment report will be on the soft side. I expect payroll employment to increase by just over 100K." In fact the payroll survey jumped by 243,000.

In April the Wall Street Journal quoted Mr. Zandi as an optimist in the context of a "consensus expectation" for 210,000 new jobs for March. In fact the payroll survey showed only a 120,000 increase.

This morning Politico reported:

Toward the end of a Wall Street Journal article about trial lawyer Jim Ferraro's $27 million, 23,000-square-foot, 20-bathroom compound on Martha's Vineyard comes this:

He signed the property deed over to a grantor trust set up for his family and now rents the home from the trust, paying about $95,000 a month—a system Mr. Ferraro admitted helps him take money out of his estate and allows him to avoid estate taxes down the line.

Another good argument for repeal of the estate tax.

If you think about the way this works, the more expensive the house, the higher the rent the trust can charge the tenant, and the greater the tax benefits. It's just a slight variation on the overall effect of the estate tax, which is to give a tax preference to consumption now rather than saving for the future, while enriching lawyers and accountants who give advice on how to get around it with techniques such as the one used by Mr. Ferraro.

The European Union has a 20% value-added tax on electronic books.

France cut its rate to 7% and Luxembourg to 3%. The European Union responded this week with a stern note accusing the two countries of violating EU law.

According to the EU statement, "This situation is creating serious distortions of competition that are damaging to economic operators in the other 25 Member States since digital books can easily be purchased in a State other than the one where the consumer resides and, under the current rules, the VAT rate applies is that of the provider's, not the customer's, Member State. Local actors in the electronic book market have complained that some of the dominant players in this market have reorganised their distribution channels to benefit from these reduced rates, which has apparently had a serious effect on the sale of books (both digital and traditional) in the other Member States in the first quarter of 2012."

Frank Harris III, the chairman of the journalism department at Southern Connecticut State University, has a column in the Hartford Courant:

It's 2012 and Republicans seem determined to rally their supporters against health care like the Confederacy rallied its citizens against the North's efforts to destroy their slave-based way of life.

"Share the health? No way!" they say.

Their tongues crack like whips.

This is the sort of comparison that if it came from a journalism student rather than the department chairman might get a teacher's comment to the effect that it seems like a bit of a stretch.