Michael Barone's latest Washington Examiner column is about how private-sector inter-city bus lines are solving a problem better than government can: "an older technology has been improved and adapted to fill a need while government dithers. The old technology in this case is buses. While the Obama administration has been desperately seeking to spend $53 billion on so-called high-speed rail lines, private businessmen have developed Chinatown and Megabus lines that provide intercity service that has attracted legions of price-conscious travelers....The buses have bathrooms, AC power outlets, and free Wi-Fi. They're not as fast as the much more expensive Acela train, but they tend to run on schedule."

The new Republican Senator from Florida, Marco Rubio, spoke last night at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. YouTube video embedded below:

Mr. Rubio spoke of the importance of "defining the proper role of government." While paying tribute to Reagan, he also nodded to President Clinton ("work hard and play by the rules") and George W. Bush ("compassionate America"). He said the growth of government "crowded out the institutions in our society," "weakened our people," and happened without taking into account how programs would be paid for.

"The no. 1 objective of our economic policy, in fact the singular objective of our economic policy, from a government perspective, is simple, it's growth. It's not distribution of wealth. It's not picking winners and losers. The goal of our public policy should be growth, growth in our economy," he said.

Columnist Jeff Jacoby inadvertently highlights one of the many ways in which Warren Buffett's New York Times op-ed was misleading. Mr. Jacoby writes:

Buffett lamented that the $6,938,744 he forked over in federal income and payroll taxes in 2010 amounted to just 17.4 percent of his taxable income. "What I paid," the world's most famous investor observed, "was . . . actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent."

The latest development in the unemployment-benefits-reform movement that has been gathering steam here is a really good Bloomberg News editorial describing programs in Maryland, New Jersey, and Oregon that offer business coaching and income support to entrepreneurs. "Participants try to start enterprises, rather than being required to look full time for traditional jobs," the editorial says, reporting that "Britain, France and Sweden have operated similar entrepreneurial assistance programs since the 1980s, with good results. In the U.S., though, only about a dozen states have followed suit, and most programs are tiny."

In the context of Warren Buffett's call to increase capital gains taxes on taxpayers making $1 million or more a year, it's worth remembering the Sage of Omaha's remarks from as recently as this April, at the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. As Shira Ovide reported it in the Wall Street Journal:

Buffett admits conglomerates are "unpopular" but says it can be a smart structure. (Note that two of the most valuable countries in the company by market value, General Electric and Berkshire, are indeed conglomorates.)

Buffett said one benefit of conglomerates is allowing the tax efficient transfer of money from businesses that don't have good ways of using it, into sister businesses that have better uses for it.

The Forward, a Jewish newspaper that I worked at from 1995 to 2000 when it was under different ownership, has an editorial quoting rich Jews who agree with Warren Buffett that they should pay more taxes.

George Soros: "Warren Buffett is living up to his reputation as an astute investor. The rich are hurting their own long-term interests by their opposition to paying more taxes."

Mark Cuban: "I agree that the wealthiest citizens of the country can afford to pay more and should. I agree that carried interest should be treated as regular income. I personally have no problem paying more taxes."

Edgar Bronfman Sr.: "Raise my taxes, and raise them now."

Michael Steinhardt (a partner of mine in the New York Sun and an investor in the Forward when I worked there): "Yes, they should pay more, both absolutely and relatively." (I love the use of "they" rather than "we.")

The Forward editorial complains that suggesting these individuals voluntarily write checks to the federal government "misses the point."

The most popular story on Yahoo! News this morning is a Reuters dispatch about food stamps. From the article:

In some parts of the country, shoppers using food stamps have almost become the norm. In May 2011, a third of all people in Alabama were on food stamps -- though part of that was because of emergency assistance after communities were destroyed by a series of destructive tornadoes. Washington D.C., Mississippi, New Mexico, Oregon and Tennessee all had about a fifth of their population on food stamps that month.

The article mentions a supervisor at Walmart and a part-time cashier at Target who are on food stamps.

Libertarian law professor Richard Epstein has a new piece up at the Hoover Institution's Defining Ideas site that takes on both Pope Benedict XVI and Warren Buffett. Professor Epstein writes, "A successful and sustainable political order requires stable legal and economic policies that reward innovation, spur growth, and maximize the ability of rich and poor alike to enter into voluntary arrangements. Limited government, low rates of taxation, and strong property rights are the guiding principles."

He really gets Mr. Buffett with this section:

lower capital gains rates generate more tax revenue for the federal government. Yet Buffett doesn't grasp the point when he writes: "In 1992, the top 400 had aggregate taxable income of $16.9 billion and paid federal taxes of 29.2 percent on that sum. In 2008, the aggregate income of the highest 400 had soared to $90.9 billion — a staggering $227.4 million on average — but the rate paid had fallen to 21.5 percent."

The Weekly Standard has a piece by Andrew Ferguson on the governor of Texas, Rick Perry:

Perry's emphasis on federalism is commonly taken to be a species of anti-government libertarianism. It's not. Perry isn't anti-government; he is anti-federal government. (Whether he'll remain anti-federal government when he's running it can't be known.) He is after all a man who has spent his entire professional life working for the government as a state legislator and executive. You might even call him a big-government conservative whose reach is constrained only by the Texas border. ....Perry's greatest failure as governor, to cite one example, was his plan to build a vast trans-Texas transportation network of new roads and rail lines. The plan would have allowed the state to wave around its power of eminent domain like a two-by-four, an exercise unprecedented in state history. Perry couldn't overcome opposition from landowners and conservatives who objected to what Tea Partiers might call a "land grab."

Yet:

Harvey Golub didn't mention it in his excellent Wall Street Journal rebuttal to Warren Buffett's call for higher taxes on the rich, and neither did the Wall Street Journal, but Mr. Golub and Mr. Buffett have a history. Mr. Golub was CEO of American Express from 1993 to 2001, which was a period of strong performance for the company's stock. Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway showed up in 1995 as American Express's largest shareholder, owning 10%.

My latest column, about the trouble with President Obama's favorite metaphor, is up at Reason.com. Check it out here.

What to Bill Kristol, Bill O'Reilly, Hugh Hewitt, Grover Norquist, John Roberts, Alan Keyes, Mitt Romney, George W. Bush, and Alan Keyes all have in common? Harvard degrees, writes Martin Nolan in the Boston Globe: "Harvard's influence on today's conservatives remains strong."

It's a pretty common experience: a journalist or publication you respect, trust, or admire writes or talks about an event in which you are personally involved or have firsthand knowledge. And the account turns out to be a lot less accurate than you would have expected.

Here's Charles Krauthammer talking about President Obama's vacation on Martha's Vineyard:

You know, the Vineyard doesn't have any bridges to it. You either get there on a ferry in your Maserati, or on a jet or a helicopter. It's not exactly where ordinary folks will take a vacation.

Here's Peggy Noonan, writing about the same topic:

it's a little island whose summertime population is dominated by those who, due to their affluence, are essentially detached from everyday life in America. It's a playground of the liberal rich: hedge-fund maestros, network producers, Wall Street heavyweights, left-leaning activists.

ProPublica has corrected the "Separate Fact From Fiction" article in response to the post here over the weekend pointing out that some of the "facts" were closer to fiction.

The National Business Group on Health has released the results of its annual survey, which includes 83 of the largest American companies, Health Care Payer News reports:

According to the survey, employers anticipate an average increase of 7.2 percent for their health benefit costs next year. While this is slightly lower than this year's 7.4 percent increase the rate of growth is still more than double the rate of inflation and outpaces the rate of overall economic growth....

To help control healthcare benefits cost increases and begin lowering costs to avoid the "Cadillac" tax, employers are planning to use a wider variety of cost-sharing strategies. More than half of respondents – 53 percent – plan to increase the percentage that employees contribute to the premiums, while 39 percent plan to increase in-network deductibles.