Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the genius behind the economic policy operation of the McCain 2008 presidential campaign (for examples, see here, here and here), is now reportedly going around calling the 5% economic growth envisioned by Timothy Pawlenty impossible.

The Austin American-Statesman reports that the Texas legislature has passed a law settling up a conflict with the federal government over the federal light bulb mandate:

Legislators also passed laws and resolutions pushing back at federal environmental regulators.

One bill called for the state attorney general to defend Texans if the federal government tries to prosecute them for an alleged violation of federal law based on the manufacture or sale of relatively inefficient incandescent light bulbs.

"An incandescent light bulb that is manufactured in this state and remains in this state is not subject to federal law or federal regulation under the authority of the United States Congress to regulate interstate commerce," says the bill, authored by state Rep. George Lavender, R-Texarkana.

The bill reportedly awaits Governor Perry's signature. Earlier coverage of the light bulb issue is here.

Libertarian law professor Richard Epstein offers his thoughts on extracting natural gas from rock via hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking": "guarded optimism":

A comprehensive strategy combines four elements, which should be arrayed in a two-by-two grid. On one axis, the choice is between a) damages after the fact and b) injunctive relief before the harm has occurred. On the other axis lies the choice between 1) government and 2) private enforcement of remedies. It is not likely that any one of these four cells will remain empty in a comprehensive review of the problem.

First Rep. Paul Ryan suggested cutting the top federal corporate tax rate to 25% from 35%. Then Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty suggested 15%. Now another Republican running for president, Newt Gingrich, is out with a piece calling for cutting the corporate tax rate to 12.5%.

"We are GE — the 800 pound gorilla — we can do whatever we want."

That's a quote that an executive in GE's healthcare finance business used while negotiating with the operators of nursing homes in Louisiana and Texas that were financed with tens of millions from GE, according to a lawsuit filed earlier this month in federal court in the Southern District of New York by the nursing home operators.

The suit also claims that the executive, Richard Arrowsmith, who is based at a GE office in Bethesda, Md., required the nursing-home operators to reimburse his expenses – "including his accommodations at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel" — when he traveled to New York to meet with them.

General Electric is rejecting the lawsuit as groundless. The managing director of communications and public affairs at GE Capital, Russell Wilkerson, told me, "Our policy is not to comment on legal matters, but I will say in this case that specifically the case is baseless, the charges are false and egregious."

Here's one Obama judicial nominee that Republicans should have no problem supporting quickly for confirmation: Jesse Furman, nominated yesterday by Mr. Obama for a federal district judgeship on the Southern District of New York. Mr. Furman graduated the same year I did from the same college; he was editor of the liberal — or "progressive," as they called it — newspaper. Don't hold that against him, though; he also clerked for Judge Michael Mukasey and for Judge Jose Cabranes, and he also worked for Judge Mukasey when Judge Mukasey was President George W. Bush's attorney general.

The Galen Institute's Grace-Marie Turner, writing in the Wall Street Journal, finds "disturbing" a McKinsey study finding that ObamaCare will cause employers to drop their employer-sponsored health coverage.

But what's "disturbing" about moving health-care purchase decisions to individuals rather than employers? They are only with employers to begin with as a relic of FDR-era wage-price controls. If you want consumer-driven health care that will eventually reward quality and value and curb inflation, you've got to make the costs more transparent to consumers, and taking the employer out of the equation as a third-party payer does that.

Granted, there are problems if the employer is just going to be replaced by the government as the payer. But even if the individual payer gets a subsidy, at least the cost of the subsidy then becomes more visible than the current hidden subsidy in the preferential tax treatment for employer-provided health care.

Timothy Pawlenty's campaign Web site has the text of his growth speech:

5% growth is not some pie-in-the-sky number. We've done it before. And with the right policies, we can do it again.

Between 1983 and 1987, the Reagan recovery grew at 4.9%. Between 1996 and 1999, under President Bill Clinton and a Republican Congress the economy grew at more than 4.7%. In each case millions of new jobs were created, incomes rose and unemployment fell to historic lows. The same can happen again.

Growing at 5% a year, rather than the current level of 1.8%, would net us millions of new jobs. Trillions of dollars in new wealth. Put us on a path to saving our entitlement programs. And balance the federal budget.

More: "We should cut the business tax rate by more than half. I propose reducing the current rate from 35% to 15%."

Jonah Goldberg has a column in USA Today about Congress's tendency to delegate taxing, spending, and regulatory authority to unelected bureaucrats and commissions. He mentions one counterproposal — the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny, or REINS, Act, which would subject every regulation with an economic effect of at least $100 million to an up-or-down vote by Congress before enactment.

Ramesh Ponnuru, who as senior editor of National Review might be expected to be a conservative voice at the new Bloomberg News opinion operation, has a column on Bloomberg accusing Republicans of disregarding the "middle class," a group he does not define. Mr. Ponnuru writes:

Reagan in 1980 promised to cut tax rates for everyone and stop inflation from pushing middle-class voters into higher tax brackets. He won re-election, and his vice president won the election to succeed him, in part by promising to keep these voters' taxes low. In 1994 and 2000, Republicans again made big wins in part by promising to cut taxes for middle-class parents.

The hottest issue in politics these days seems to be Medicare, notwithstanding polling showing voters care more about jobs and the economy.

Medicare was what the recent special election in New York's 26^th congressional district was fought over. The government health program for the elderly has also emerged as an issue in the Republican presidential primary, with Newt Gingrich making news by criticizing Congressman Paul Ryan's Medicare plan as too radical, and with the press then scrambling to saddle the other Republican presidential contenders with Mr. Ryan's plan. And Republicans won control of the House of Representatives in 2010 in part by criticizing Medicare cuts and Medicare tax increases in ObamaCare.

As Greg Ip wrote for the Economist, "any serious attempt to reform Medicare is going to be unpopular because it will cost the elderly something, and the elderly are on the way to becoming 30% of the voting population."

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial about Congressman Anthony Weiner that begins, "Last November, 47,000 citizens of the 9th U.S. District in Queens, New York, voted to return Anthony Weiner to the House of Representatives." This is a strange formulation, because the 9th District includes both parts of Queens and parts of Brooklyn. According to the New York State Board of Elections, Mr. Weiner actually received 49,981 votes in Queens and 17,030 votes in Brooklyn, for a total of 67,011 votes. [Update: The Journal has since updated the editorial, changing the number to 67,000.] The editorial goes on, "The private citizens of Queens voted to make Anthony Weiner a public citizen and their Representative." Again, why mention only Queens but not Brooklyn? What are we Brooklynites, chopped liver?

The Wall Street Journal has a fine editorial about the light bulb issue, which was covered here on Thursday of last week. From the Journal: "The question an (allegedly) free society should ask is if CFL bulbs are so clearly superior, why does the government have to force people to buy them?"

Bloomberg News, which has started running unsigned staff editorials, has a new one out under the headline "The High Price of Anonymous Cash in American Political Campaigns."

Leave aside the irony of anonymous editorial writers bemoaning the effect of anonymous campaign contributions, as if anonymity is good when it comes to editorials but bad when it comes to television commercials. Here is a passage from the editorial:

Last year, Republican groups won the opacity sweepstakes. Conservative groups relying on anonymous funds outspent liberal ones by 7-1, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. One such group, American Action Network, used anonymous contributions to pay for 178 airings of an ad .... American Action's chairman, political veteran Frederick V. Malek, refused to disclose his donors and claimed he was unaware of the "specifics" of the ads his group had produced. ... American Crossroads, another group, raised $71 million for the 2010 campaign; it is the brainchild of Karl Rove.

Elizabeth Kolbert, writing in the new issue of the New Yorker:

Since the midterm elections, Obama has barely mentioned climate change, and just about every decision that his Administration has made on energy and the environment has been wrong. In March, the Administration announced that it would be opening up new public lands in Wyoming for coal mining. In April, the White House delayed plans to impose stricter controls on the mining technique known as mountaintop removal. In May, the Administration put on hold rules aimed at cutting pollution from power plants at places like paper mills and refineries. Also in May, the President announced plans to increase domestic oil production by speeding up permits to drill off the coast of Alaska and in the Gulf of Mexico.

More: "Taking the steps that would reduce the risks of climate change is not going to be politically popular, which is why it is the President's obligation to press for them."