The CEO of Omega Advisors, Leon Cooperman, who spent nearly 25 years at Goldman Sachs before starting his own firm, has a piece in the New York Post objecting to President Obama's divisiveness: "My father was a plumber who practiced his trade in the South Bronx after he and my mother emigrated from Poland. I was the first member of my family to earn a college degree....To frame the debate as one of rich-and-entitled versus poor-and-dispossessed is to both miss the point and further inflame an already incendiary environment. It is also a naked, political pander to some of the basest human emotions — a strategy, as history teaches, that never ends well for anyone but totalitarians and anarchists."

It's big local news in New York this morning that a Brooklyn state assemblyman, William Boyland Jr., was charged with soliciting bribes from undercover FBI agents who were pretending to be real estate investors or representatives of carnival operators.

George W. Bush's Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, gave a select group of money managers at a July 21, 2008 meeting — Eric Mindich, Stephen Mandel, Dinakar Singh, Frank Brosens, James Chanos, Steven Rattner, Bennett Goodman, and Daniel Och — a different view of his plans for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac than he was giving the public, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports. Bloomberg Markets at times describes the money managers as getting advance word of a Fannie "rescue," but a more accurate description, at least for Fannie's shareholders (not bondholders), was a seizure, a term the article uses once.

Libertarian law professor Richard Epstein has a new piece up at the Hoover Institution's Web site:

Here's a YouTube of a 33-second Barack Obama campaign commercial titled "Billy" that aired in the 2008 campaign about Billy Tauzin, a congressman who went to work for the pharmaceutical industry as a lobbyist:

Here's a Bloomberg News article from today headlined, "Tauzin's $11.6 Million Made Him Highest-Paid Health-Law Lobbyist." It begins: "Billy Tauzin, the former congressman turned pharmaceutical industry lobbyist, was paid $11.6 million in 2010, the year he brokered a deal with President Barack Obama that helped pass the health-care overhaul."

Taken together, the two are a pretty devastating combination.

One interesting fact is that having lent their names to the landmark financial "reform" legislation that President Obama claims as one of his greatest accomplishments, neither Senator Dodd nor Congressman Frank is running for reelection. Maybe Mr. Obama will have better luck running on Dodd-Frank than either Mr. Dodd or Mr. Frank figured they would. Or maybe he won't. I have some more extensive thoughts on Barney Frank up in a piece for the New York Daily News, which you can check out here. Think I was too kind to him? Virginia Postrel reports that she met Frank in the late 1980s at a Reason event where he was teaming with Republican congressman Dick Armey to attack farm subsidies.

The New York Times's hypocritical front-page assault on Ronald Lauder's tax deductions is the topic of my weekly column. Please check it out either at the New York Sun (here) or Reason (here).

Lululemon yoga clothing and Ayn Rand, the topic of a post here back on November 21, is now the subject of a news article in today's New York Times.

Bloomberg News has a piece from the former chief technology officer of Microsoft Corp., Nathan Myhrvold, about alternative energy: "One of the ugly secrets of the renewable-energy industry is that its products make no economic sense unless they are highly subsidized....no economically viable green-energy product exists. It makes no sense for the U.S. to try to dominate a money-losing industry, especially by guaranteeing profits to inefficient power plants for 30 years."

A full-page ad in the current issue of Brooklyn Parent magazine advertises "semi-private tutoring, academic enrichment, and homework help" along with "free educational counseling" and "free practice SAT exams and college workshops" in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. At the bottom of the page is the name of a large Jewish charity to which I am a very small donor, along with the name of the private foundation that sponsors the program (which, when I check the Form 990 on Guidestar, turns out to have $84 million in assets and an executive making $144,000 a year for 20 hours a week of work). At the top of the ad is a quotation: "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." The quote is attributed to "Bob Derek, Former Harvard University President."

Of course, there is no "Former Harvard University President" named "Bob Derek." There was a Harvard president named Derek Bok. And there is an actress named Bo Derek. They don't look much alike.

The CEO of mutual fund and ETF giant Vanguard, Bill McNabb, is blasting Congress for failing to reach a deficit reduction deal via the supercommittee: "We're very disappointed. Last week, I joined with the leaders of several other major investment companies in urging the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction to arrive at an agreement, and to do so quickly. Unfortunately, no such consensus was achieved by the committee's deadline."

More: "The federal government's current fiscal trajectory is unsustainable. We're living beyond our means, the national debt has surpassed $15 trillion, and it's absolutely imperative that our elected leaders in Congress and the White House adopt more responsible budgets. While there continues to be a lot of debate regarding the need for the government to provide additional short-term stimulus, our take is that investors and the markets need to see a credible long-term plan....we aren't recommending specific spending cuts, tax increases, or any particular combination of those approaches."

Seventeen members of the United States Senate want to amend the First Amendment to make it possible for Congress or state governments to limit expenditures related to federal and state elections.

This is really quite something, since the First Amendment is a pretty foundational piece of American freedom. The 16 senators now backing the constitutional amendment are all Democrats except for Bernard Sanders of Vermont, an independent self-described socialist. The list includes some of the Senate Democratic leadership, including Charles Schumer of New York, who is vice chair of the conference and chair of the Senate Democratic Policy and Communications Center; Richard Durbin of Illinois, who is the assistant majority leader; and Mark Begich of Alaska, who is chair of the steering and outreach committee. Other senators cosponsoring the bill that carries the amendment, S.J. Res. 29, include Bennet of Colorado, Blumenthal of Connecticut, Sherrod Brown, Kent Conrad, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Tom Harkin of Iowa, Al Franken of Minnesota, and Tim Johnson, Jeff Merkley, Jack Reed, Jeanne Shaheen, and Sheldon Whitehouse.

Tomorrow is a federal holiday. Federal employees who want to keep track of the rest of their days off can download the "Federal Leave Record App" to their mobile phones from the Web site of GEICO, the insurance company owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. From the site:

For over 50 years GEICO has been providing leave record cards to federal employees, free of charge, to help you track your annual and sick leave. Now, we have created a mobile version of the federal leave record with the tech savvy federal employee in mind. Want to know when you will have enough leave to take that vacation? Well, take a look at your GEICO leave record app and set a date for your dream trip.

The site also includes a link to the Facebook page GEICO has set up to market insurance to federal employees: "Federal Employees could get a GEICO discount just for being a GS-7 or above! If that doesn't make you tingle, I don't know what will."

If you didn't watch the Republican debate cosponsored by the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute and televised on CNN, you probably made the right decision, because it was disappointingly dull. Highlights, or lowlights, depending on how you see it:

The first nine minutes were CNN Wolf Blitzer introducing himself, followed by the National Anthem performed by someone from the Tony Award-winning "Jersey Boys," which is now playing in Washington. That time might have been used for a question about, say, Europe. But alas.

Herman Cain must not have been paying close attention to the part where Mr. Blitzer introduced himself, because he referred to the moderator as "Blitz," before catching and correcting himself. Mr. Blitzer responded wittily, "Thank you, Cain."

The candidates were allowed to introduce themselves. Newt Gingrich said his father spent 27 years in the infantry. Michele Bachmann wished the servicemen a Happy Thanksgiving. Jon Huntsman said he was the father of seven children, two serving in the navy. Mitt Romney said he is the grandfather of 16.

Two members of Israel's parliament have introduced legislation seeking to ban grocery stores from displaying candy at the checkout counter, the Jerusalem Post reports. I suppose it's an alternative to the American approach, which would be to have the parents who can't say no to their children sue.