"Reaganomics: What We Learned" is the headline over a piece in the Wall Street Journal by Arthur Laffer: "Reagan knew from personal experience in making movies that once he was in the highest tax bracket, he'd stop making movies for the rest of the year. In other words, a lower tax rate could increase revenues. And so it was with his tax cuts. The highest 1% of income earners paid more in taxes as a share of GDP in 1988 at lower tax rates than they had in 1980 at higher tax rates."

The closure of that federally subsidized cellulosic ethanol plant in Georgia, the subject of a post here yesterday at 1:38 p.m., is the topic of an editorial in today's Wall Street Journal.

Likewise, the Journal editorialized on January 18 about the closure of the Evergreen Solar plant in Massachusetts after I posted about it on January 12.

And the Journal editorialized on February 8 about President Obama's bogus claim to Bill O'Reilly, "I Didn't Raise Taxes Once," after I posted about it on February 7.

The New York Times has a news article about the Bloomberg administration in New York City spending $325 million taxpayer dollars ($100 million for land acquisition, $175 million on "a toxic cleanup of the site, a 10-acre park, roads and water and sewer lines," and "$50 million in grants to subsidize the affordable units") on 908 rental apartments in Queens, "at least 685 of which will be set aside for working- and middle-class families earning $32,000 to $130,000 a year."

The Times doesn't take readers through the math, but if you work it out, $325 million divided by 685 "affordable units" amounts to $474,452.56 for each unit. I know plenty of New York City families earning $130,000 a year who would be happy to accept a subsidy of even less than that — say, $300,000 — and take the money, combine it with savings or a mortgage, and buy a house in New Jersey or Connecticut, or on Long Island or in Westchester.

Bloomberg News's Jonathan Weil has a column taking a look at the SEC's case against General Electric:

It makes no sense that GE could have defrauded its shareholders unless some living, breathing people committed the same violations. So either the wrongdoers got off scot free, or the SEC shouldn't have brought the case it did against the company.

This isn't enforcement. It's a charade.

U.C. Berkeley law professor John Yoo has quite the takedown of Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe's view of how the Supreme Court will rule on ObamaCare. Libertarian law professor Richard Epstein, who teaches at NYU, adds his own thoughts:

if you can force people to insure others just for living, why not ask them to do anything else under the sun? To my mind there should also be a substantive due process argument here, because I would not regard this form of legislation as appropriate even if done by the states which are not bound by any constitutional doctrine of enumerated powers.

Less than a month after Evergreen Solar announced it was closing its plant in Massachusetts that had employed 800 people and had been built with the help of "$58 million in state grants, tax incentives and loans," now Range Fuels has closed a Georgia cellulosic ethanol plant that, when it opened last year, was touted as the nation's first producer of ethanol from wood waste. Reports the Atlanta Business Chronicle:

The federal government stepped up in a big way to support the plant, first with a $76 million grant from the Department of Energy and later an $80 million loan guarantee from the Department of Agriculture.

The American Medical Association has a new study out with some data about competition and concentration in the health insurance market. As summarized by healthcarepayernews.com:

• In 60 percent of the metropolitan statistical areas, the two largest insurers had a combined market share of 70 percent or greater.
• In 18 percent of the metropolitan statistical areas, at least one insurer had a market share of 70 percent or greater.
• In 24 states, the two largest insurers had a combined market share of 70 percent or more.

Free-market types say one way to get more competition would be by allowing insurance companies to compete across state lines, and that there are plenty of vigorously competitive markets in which the two largest players have 70% or more market share — Coke and Pepsi for colas, Microsoft and Apple for operating systems. If the insurance companies try to take advantage of their market share by charging monopoly prices, you'd expect that eventually new entrants would arise to compete at cheaper prices.

The New York Times has a review of a new science building at Columbia University, where President Lee Bollinger, who is chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, makes $1,753,984 a year, including the tax gross-up on his dental insurance premiums. The reviewer writes: "The lobby interior is clad in richly veined Portuguese marble, the kind of sumptuous material that Loos used to lessen the severity of his spaces."

It's amazing what one can do with tax-exempt bond financing, the charitable gift deduction, National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health grant money, and Pell Grants and federally subsidized student loans. Mr. Bollinger gives out the Pulitzer Prizes, so the chances of his institution coming in for much scrutiny from the press for this sort of thing are between zero and none. The Times seems to be applauding it.

Michelle Malkin notices that General Electric will get its piece of the $53 billion the Obama administration wants to spend on high-speed rail: "In another such fortuitous coincidence, one of the top beneficiaries of the new White House rail bailout is GE Transportation -- the leading manufacturer of diesel-electric locomotives. President Obama recently named GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt to head the new White House jobs council."

John Stossel is also skeptical of high-speed rail. He writes:

At last month's State of the Union, President Obama said America needs more passenger trains. How does he know? For years, politicians promised that more of us will want to commute by train, but it doesn't happen. People like their cars. Some subsidized trains cost so much per commuter that it would be cheaper to buy them taxi rides.

Four defense lawyers are named in the front-page New York Times article on "insider trading" cases brought by the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, and the director of enforcement at the Securities and Exchange Commission, Robert Khuzami. They are:

From a Boston Herald story on Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, who is trying to extract concessions from Walmart before allowing it in his city, or else trying to keep it out altogether. "Wal-Mart makes their money and runs to the Midwest and deposits it in the bank. I want the money to stay in our neighborhoods and employ neighborhood people," he said.

I always thought Arkansas was the South, not the Midwest. But I guess it depends on how you look at it.

The Vineyard Gazette has the details on the latest way that General Electric, led by the chairman of President Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, Jeffrey Immelt, is getting subsidized by taxpayers: A $767,000 federal stimulus grant that is paying for GE appliances in 33 houses on Martha's Vineyard. The appliances are remote-controlled in a way that they use less power when there is high demand for electricity. That has its problems:

While the next generation hot water heater is programmed to buy and store energy at off-peak hours the price has hit code red frequently enough to be a problem. "People will call in to me and say, 'I just had a cold shower.' "

Peak load also frequently overlaps with dinnertime — between 5 and 7 p.m. — and Mr. Bayne can recall occasions where he has had to unplug stovetops from communicating with energy markets at the request of participants.

Still, not all the 33 appliance recipients are complaining:

The Cato Institute's Walter Olson has a post wondering why it took so long for the Department of Transportation to make public a report finding no problems with Toyota's electronics in relation to supposed sudden acceleration problems: "Did it make a difference that the federal government has taken a proprietor's interest in major Toyota competitors GM and Chrysler, or that a former trial lawyer lobbyist heads the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration? Those questions might be worth a hearing at the newly reconstituted House Energy and Commerce Committee."

President Obama's Chamber of Commerce speech singling out GE, Dow, Whirlpool, and Caterpillar for praise got me thinking: What if there were some way to invest in companies that have a close relationship to the Obama administration?

Would this be a money-making proposition, allowing an investor a piece of the upside as the companies use the power of the government to their advantage? Or would it be a money-losing proposition, because the companies whose CEOs are spending their time cultivating government relationships are doing so only as a desperate tactic because their firms are otherwise unable to compete successfully in the marketplace on the basis of the value they offer their customers?

Hayek biographer Bruce Caldwell (interviewed on FutureOfCapitalism.com here) has a new paper out from the Heritage Foundation: "Ten Hayekian Insights for Trying Economic Times." Professor Caldwell has some provocative thoughts, among them: "the reason the Austrian message has been almost wholly ignored in the current debate is that it is very dour....it is simply important to recognize that the Austrian message was not popular in the 1930s, is not popular today, and will never be popular."