Just in time for the seventh anniversary of the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision in Kelo v. City of New London (June 23, 2005) that said a Connecticut city could use its eminent domain power to seize Susette Kelo's house to make way for an economic development project, Senators John Cornyn and Rand Paul have introduced the Protection of Homes, Small Businesses and Private Property Act of 2012. The legislation would prevent the federal government from using its eminent domain power, and prevent state and local governments from using federal funds in support of eminent domain, in cases when the "public use" is economic development.

From a ProPublica news article about narrowly targeted campaign emails:

We only know of one version of the Romney campaign email. But that's not necessarily because his campaign is any less sophisticated. The fact is, we aren't yet getting enough Romney emails to be able to say much decisively about how the campaign is targetting supporters — and there's something you can do about that.

Are you a Republican who gets campaign emails? Forward them to us! Do you have a Republican friend who gets campaign emails? Recruit them to forward the emails to us!

A recent Bloomberg View column described Hong Kong as "a case study in the flaws of one brand of capitalism." What brand of capitalism? "Finance-driven capitalism," the column says, or "laissez-faire" and "the Anglo- Saxon economic model," explaining that "The free-market crowd adores the city for its low taxes, unrestricted entry of foreign capital and rule of law." The column goes on to complain about income inequality, asserting, "suddenly, it's not much fun being Hong Kong."

The quarterly drive for paying subscribers that we've been running here this week is wrapping up today, so this will be the last pitch. The response so far has been really encouraging, but we are still just short of our participation goal, so if you have been meaning to do this, or are even halfway thinking about it, please seize the moment. Reasons for helping were outlined earlier this week in Ten Reasons to Become a Paying Subscriber, and, if you have any questions, they were probably covered in the Frequently Asked Questions. Bottom line: an entry-level $49 annual subscription is less than $1 a week, entitles you to receive quarterly reports sent only to paying subscribers, is crucial to sustaining the site's operations, and will send an encouraging signal of support for what we do here. Thank you to all who have already participated. The rest of you, please, help out. The link is here.

"Distaste for Health Care Law Reflects Spending on Ads," is the headline over a New York Times news article purporting to show that the reason polls show ObamaCare is unpopular is that opponents are spending more on commercials. Reports the Times:

even if the Obama administration wins in the nation's highest court, most evidence suggests it has lost miserably in the court of public opinion. National polls have consistently found the health care law has far more enemies than friends...

That success may stem in large part from more than $200 million in advertising spending by an array of conservative groups, from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ($27 million) to Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS ($18 million), which includes the billionaire Sheldon Adelson among its donors, and the American Action Network ($9 million), founded by Fred V. Malek, an investor and prominent Republican fund-raiser.

USA Today has an editorial calling on the Energy Department to approve the more than a dozen pending applications for permits to export natural gas. The editorial says wellhead natural gas prices in America are now around $2.50 per million British thermal units, while in Asia it can be above $18. "Let the free market work," the editorial says.

The newspaper also runs a column from Senator Wyden of Oregon and Congressman Ed Markey of Massachusetts taking the opposite point of view. This site had a post back in May about Markey's natural gas protectionism.

Commerce Secretary John Bryson has resigned. Here's a provocative idea: don't replace him.

Bloomberg News observes that the Commerce Department has 47,000 employees and a $7.5 billion annual budget. America didn't have a separate commerce department until 1913, yet somehow Americans managed to engage in commerce before that time without a federal government bureaucracy to assist them in doing so.

David Henderson, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, has a fine article up at the Hoover Web site about "the four years from 1944, the peak of World War II spending, to 1948. Over those years, the U.S. government cut spending from a high of 44 percent of gross national product (GNP) in 1944 to only 8.9 percent in 1948, a drop of over 35 percentage points of GNP. The result was an astonishing boom." That boom defied the predictions of Keynesian economists at the time.

Professor Henderson writes: "The bottom line is that after the biggest percentage government spending cuts in American history—the cuts in government spending after World War II—the economy boomed. There are, of course, policy lessons to be drawn from the post-war experience—lessons that we can apply to today's fiscal crisis."

Daniel Henninger has a good column in today's Wall Street Journal about economic growth and the presidential election:

Mr. Obama was exactly right in Cleveland when he said economic growth "is the defining issue of our time," that his and his opponents' views on growth are fundamentally different and "this election is your chance to break that stalemate." This he gets.

Answers to some frequently asked questions about the quarterly drive for paid subscriptions and memberships, which has been going on here this week:

Q. Is my subscription due for renewal?

A. If it is, we sent you a renewal notice by email earlier this week. If you didn't get the email, your subscription still has some time on it. Of course, if you like what's happening here, one way to say so would be to renew early or to purchase a second or third subscription.

Q. I want to join at more than the $49 a year entry-level subscription, but I don't want to spring for a $1,000 sustaining subscriber membership. What can I do?

A. We are considering adding something in between those. In the meantime, you can go ahead and renew your $49 subscription every quarter, or buy two or three at a time.

Q. Why do you ask for my email address or mailing address or phone number?

Thanks to all those who have responded to our quarterly drive by becoming paying members of the FutureOfCapitalism community, or who responded to the email notice to renew a subscription that is expiring. For those still on the fence, here are ten reasons to become a paying member or subscriber today.

1. You need to reallocate all the money you saved by canceling your New York Times subscription after Paul Krugman wrote that September 11 "has become an occasion for shame."

2. Might as well spend whatever money you have left now before President Obama taxes it away. If you spend enough, you might even avoid counting as one of the "millionaires and billionaires" for Obama tax-raising purposes.

3. You enjoy and learn from the content of FutureOfCapitalism.com and want to send an encouraging signal of support.

The plan to use the government's power of eminent domain to seize underwater home mortgages and sell them to private investors with ties to the Obama administration, reported here last week, is moving ahead.

The San Bernardino Sun reports:

San Bernardino County will enter into a partnership with Ontario and Fontana to look into a program with a unique approach to assisting underwater homeowners -- using eminent domain to seize ownership of their loans.

If you appreciate this site and the ideas you find here, please become a paying subscriber or member. Renewal notices went out by email this afternoon to those who joined last June; please keep an eye out for it and re-up if you can. Paying readers help sustain this site, and they also receive special subscriber-only quarterly newsletters from the editor about the site's progress. The entry-level price is a lot cheaper than a Bloomberg subscription, and the news and opinion skews less left-wing. The link is here. Thanks in advance.

A Politico article on Senator Schumer's attempt to repair relations with — er, wring more campaign contributions from — the financial industry carries this quote from hedge fund manager Bill Ackman: "Chuck Schumer is pro-business."

Just how "pro-business" is Senator Schumer?

He voted for the "Buffett rule" to raise taxes on capital gains and other income of high-income individuals.

He wants a Reichsfluchsteuer-style retroactive exit tax on anyone who decides to leave America for a lower-tax jurisdiction.

He denounced Adidas for deciding to manufacture some shirts in Thailand instead of in America.

Bloomberg View has an editorial depicting JPMorgan Chase as "a beneficiary of corporate welfare" that receives a government subsidy worth about $14 billion a year. Among Bloomberg's solutions is "Require banks' shareholders to put up enough capital to make bailouts highly unlikely (we advocate 20 percent of assets)."

Another possible approach, not mentioned by Bloomberg, would be to limit the amount of government deposit insurance for an individual institution. There's already a per-depositor limit of $250,000. Adding a per-institution limit of, say, $20 billion might make depositors and shareholders more vigilant about bank capital requirements — a market-based solution rather than a regulator-imposed one.

Thoughts?