Boy, it's a good thing we've got the FCC to require expanded Spanish-language programming as a condition of approving the NBCU-Comcast merger/acquisition. As it is, only a mere three of the 11 outlets reportedly represented at President Obama's traditional State of the Union lunch with the TV anchors were from Spanish-language channels — Telemundo, Univision, and CNN Espanol.

President Obama's State of the Union address (the prepared text is here) was a reminder both of what's attractive about him and what's infuriating about him.

Attractive: He can sound reasonable and bipartisan, and he can articulate the openness and upward mobility and freedom that make America great.

some countries don't have this problem. If the central government wants a railroad, they get a railroad – no matter how many homes are bulldozed. If they don't want a bad story in the newspaper, it doesn't get written.

And yet, as contentious and frustrating and messy as our democracy can sometimes be, I know there isn't a person here who would trade places with any other nation on Earth.

The Wall Street Journal is suing to get the government to release details of how much money Medicare pays individual doctors and physicians.

I think this information should be public and applaud the Journal's suit, but I think the paper's explanation of it is off. The paper's editor, Robert Thompson, is quoted as saying, "It is in the interest of law-abiding practitioners that those who are gaming the system are exposed."

Dow Jones's general counsel says the confidentiality of the data "has allowed some doctors to defraud Medicare free from public scrutiny."

I think the data, if disclosed, would be an example of the Kinsley rule that the scandal isn't what's illegal but what's legal. In other words, if this data is released what it will show is that there are plenty of non-fraudulent, law-abiding practitioners that are earning incomes that fit the Barack Obama definition of "rich" by treating Medicare patients. That may not be a scandal but it may help explain with particular examples why Medicare costs have soared.

There's an approach to the 'Monuments to Me' issue other than the McGurn-Stoll law that would say no federal money can be used to name anything for a politician until the politician is dead. That alternative approach is the idea of a Georgia state senator, Robert Brown, who in 2008 suggested that Georgia create a registry, like a do-not-call list for telemarketers, of people who don't want any public building, road, or bridge named after them. The Atlanta Journal Constitution has the details.

There's another investment in addition to the Goldman Sachs Facebook fund that is open to foreigners but closed to Americans, notices Jonathan Hoenig of Capitalistpig Hedge Fund LLC. It's a fund that invests in collectible classic cars like Bugattis and Bentleys. The fund blames "the potential cost and regulatory issues for both covering the SEC and tax authorities," Mr. Hoenig writes. Yet another case of the Securities and Exchange Commission "protecting" Americans by depriving them of investment opportunities that are available to non-Americans.

A Texas Republican, Michael McCaul, has the excellent idea of a law preventing members of Congress from using taxpayer money to fund parks, buildings, bridges, tunnels, railroad stations, or academic centers that are named after themselves. William McGurn has a column about it in the Wall Street Journal.

This is even a "read it here first": Back on June 28, 2010, I had a post here about the Frank R. Lautenberg Rail Station — which Mr. McGurn uses as the lead paragraph in his column — that concluded, "How about a law that says no federal money can be used to name anything for a politician until the politician is dead?"

When Great Britain raised income taxes to 50%, New York Times columnist David Brooks loved the idea. It'll be interesting to see whether he revisits the concept now that today Great Britain has announced that its economy, as measured in GDP, shrank in the fourth quarter of 2010. The government tried to blame it on the weather. Paul Krugman hasn't posted about it yet but I expect he'll blame it on premature fiscal austerity.

"When Competing With Big Banks, Smaller Can Be Better" is the headline over a New York Times article about U.S.-based firms doing deals with and in China:

In 2010, the New York Global Group handled $1.1 billion in China mergers and acquisitions, up from $500 million in 2007, according to the firm's president, Benjamin Wey....

"You need rainmakers who have special access to Chinese companies — those special relationships drive deals," said Mr. Wey of New York Global.

His firm's Beijing staff includes two children of current mayors, the son of a chief prosecutor and another whose father is the chairman of a major state-owned enterprise.

There's a business development strategy: Hire the mayor's son or daughter! "Those special relationships drive deals."

Sam's Club, owned by Walmart, is going to start offering "health screenings" for $99 than include a blood test, "two health coaching sessions, access to a 24/7 nurse hotline and online health tracking tools," NPR reports.

The press release from U.S. Preventive Medicine, a privately held firm that is offering the kits and services via Sam's Club, says Sam's Club stores are also offering "free monthly health screenings" ("free" after you pay the fee to join Sam's Club) that include:

The March issue of Bloomberg Markets magazine carries a cover story on Goldman Sachs's investment management division, which the magazine says went through eight different heads in eight years. Netscape founder Jim Clark took his money elsewhere, the article reports:

He had met with Paulson & Co. founder John Paulson in August, 2006 and been impressed by the hedge fund manager's plans to bet against the subprime-mortgage market. His Goldman brokers talked him out of investing with Paulson, describing him as a bit player, Clark says.

Paulson generated a 590 percent return in his flagship credit fund in 2007.

"When it came out that Paulson had the biggest payday in history, I got angry," Clark says. The fact that Goldman Sachs had such a close relationship with Paulson incensed Clark further.

"They just butter their own bread and charge huge fees, these jerks," Clark says.

Goldman spokeswoman Andrea Raphael says the firm has no comment on Clark's complaint.

If there's a runner-up to GE's Jeffrey Immelt for the title of President Obama's favorite CEO, it might be Dow Chemical's Andrew Liveris. The Wall Street Journal reviews Mr. Liveris's new book, Make It in America, without any mention at all of the Obama connection. The Journal says Mr. Liveris "thinks that the U.S. government needs to draw up a national strategy to encourage more manufacturing, especially in renewable energy and other 'green' technologies." Also, "Mr. Liveris would like see the federal government offer financial incentives to various companies—beyond what is already dangled by state and local agencies—to encourage manufacturers to build factories in the U.S."

It'll be interesting to see whether the tennis stars and their corporate sponsors succeed in getting New York City taxpayers to fund a $200 million roof over Arthur Ashe Stadium. This would prevent rain delays, which are apparently bad for television ratings. The Wall Street Journal has the details. Since New York has already put tax dollars into stadiums for the Yankees and the Mets, backed a proposal that didn't end up working for the Jets in connection with an Olympics bid, and supported the construction of a Brooklyn arena for the Nets basketball team, if the mayor and governor suddenly find principles on which to stand against a tennis stadium subsidy it will be news. The Journal quotes a spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg as saying, "The City's budget issues are well-known."

"Public Universities Relying More on Tuition Than State Money" is the headline over a New York Times news article reporting that "tuition bargains are fading as the nation's public universities undergo a profound shift, accelerated by the recession. In most states, it is now tuition payments, not state appropriations, that cover most of the budget."

The article predicts that state "appropriations for higher education are likely to shrivel further." But there's no mention at all of what has happened to federal higher education spending, either in Pell Grants or in federal student loans, and how those programs in essence make it possible for states to shift some of the cost of their colleges from the state budgets onto the federal budgets.

A professor of finance and economics at Yale, Robert Shiller, gives an interview to the Five Books section of the Browser Web site that is interesting for how it illuminates where he (and probably some other academic economists) are coming from. He says:

There have been political changes in the US that allow the extreme high end to garner more wealth. Ultimately, it represents a failure of our society to take account of the fact that the extreme high end can lobby and can organise for its own interests, and we've let it happen.

So you feel inequality is central to what has gone on and that we really need to address that?

Yes – and there is very little concrete talk about addressing it. It's a very difficult problem. You might think that in a system of majority voting, the middle class and the poor would dominate and would prevent this kind of inequality from developing. But it hasn't been that way – it's been even less so that way lately, especially in the US....

New York magazine reports that President Obama met with the "chief strategist for the 2004 Bush-Cheney reelection campaign," Matthew Dowd. The magazine describes this as "surprising," or at least, "more surprising" than his meeting with President Reagan's chief of staff, Kenneth Duberstein: