Reason TV has an excellent video interview (embedded below) with libertarian law professor Richard Epstein, who talks about his former University of Chicago law school faculty colleague, Barack Obama.

Professor Epstein gives the constitutional challenge to Obamacare a 20 to 25% chance of success, and he comes out against means-testing for Social Security or Medicare, arguing that that would increase the level of redistribution (an obvious point but one that alas seems lost on, or at least nondispositive to, a lot of people.)

The New York Times has an obituary up for Stephen Solarz, a former congressman from New York who "became a leading voice in the House on foreign affairs." The Times handles his post-congressional career as follows: "Mr. Solarz went on to work as a consultant and volunteer for nonprofit international organizations. He was a leader of the International Crisis Group, which works with governments and international organizations to quell deadly conflicts."

That just doesn't do justice to Solarz's post-congressional career. A quick search of the Foreign Agents Registration Act database of the Department of Justice indicates that Solarz was for years a registered, paid foreign agent of Turkey and Taiwan, and a search of the Senate lobbying database indicates he also registered as a paid lobbyist to advocate with his former House colleagues on a variety of issues.

Two magazine pieces are newly out about QE2.

In the New Yorker, James Surowiecki writes:

If you listen to the Fed's critics, you'd think that investors and lenders and borrowers are back to their reckless ways, pouring money into dubious investments. In reality, the economy is still dominated by caution. ... Although the stock market is reasonably priced, investors aren't exactly throwing money at new companies. ... In these conditions, injecting more money into the economy, and nudging people to take a little more risk, is what the Fed is supposed to do.

Contrast Mr. Surowiecki's claim that "investors aren't exactly throwing money at new companies" with this post by venture capitalist Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures at his widely followed "A VC" blog. Mr. Wilson writes:

Paul Krugman has a column in today's New York Times comparing America to Spain and asserting that the Federal Reserve, and its control over the dollar, is "the one big advantage we have over the suffering Spaniards."

But there's another big difference between America and Spain, as the president of the American Enterprise Institute, Arthur Brooks, who knows Spain well, has written:

The International Social Survey Programme asked Americans and Europeans whether they believe "It is the responsibility of the government to reduce the differences in income between people with high incomes and those with low incomes." In virtually all of Western Europe more than 50% agree, and in many countries it is much higher—77% in Spain, whose redistributive economy is in shambles. Meanwhile, only 33% of Americans agree with income redistribution.

Biased articles by Bloomberg News's in-house ideologue, Journo-lister Ryan Donmoyer, are becoming so frequent (see here, here, and here) that I hesitate to point them out, but every once in a while one comes along that is so egregious that it demands notice. Today's example is an article under the headline "Return of Estate Tax Looms as Final Impediment to Extending Bush Tax Cuts."

David Carr has a column in the New York Times claiming that the furor over airport pat-downs "began with a Drudge Report link to a video on Nov. 13 of an intrusive pat-down, and then leapt to social media and the rest of the Web." Mr. Carr is wrong; it began October 29 with a post by Jeffrey Goldberg at the Web site of the Atlantic.

Mr. Carr claims: "At a time of incredibly fractionalized [Does he mean factionalized?] politics, the pat-down was a single issue we could all rally around. For liberals, it was Big Brother grabbing liberties (with both hands) and conservatives once again felt the intrusive touch of Big Government in their pocket." But this gets the politics of the issue wrong; as the Cato Institute's David Boaz writes in a post headlined Conservatives, Liberals, and the TSA:

A couple more points about that ABC 'This Week' show featuring Bill and Melinda Gates, Ted Turner, and Warren Buffett talking about their "Giving Pledge":

ABC is touting the episode with the headline "Billionaire Chokes Up," reporting that hedge fund manager Tom Steyer became emotional and had to pause to regain composure while calling for higher taxes on rich people such as himself.

Christiane Amanpour tried at times to play devil's advocate, but there was no one on the show to disagree with the idea of higher taxes on the rich, or to point out that the "giving pledge" is itself a way to reduce the tax obligations of the rich by directing into tax-exempt charities money that would otherwise be subject to estate tax and taxes on growth.

ABC's "This Week" had Warren Buffett, Bill and Melinda Gates, Tom Steyer, and Ted Turner on today to talk about their "giving pledge." A transcript is here. A lot of the stuff is just politically correct talk about the need for nuclear disarmament, higher taxes, and combating global warming, but there were a few bright spots in there as well. Give Mr. Turner, of all people, credit for standing up against the idea of cutting Social Security benefits for the "rich." Here is the key section:

AMANPOUR: so what do you think about the prospects of cutting Social Security --and means testing for people like you

TURNER: Well I don't like it. I paid for Social Security. It's my own money I'm getting back. Social Security, we get taxed for Social Security. In my opinion. I think Social Security -- since you paid for it, it's yours and you're entitled to get it.

An economics professor at Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management, Robert H. Frank, has a column in the Sunday New York Times business section arguing for tax increases. "If the top tax rate were to rise, as scheduled, from 35 percent to 39.5 percent — its level during the Clinton era — many top earners would spend a little less on cars and parties," he writes. "The resulting revenue, however, could do a lot of good for our struggling economy. In the short term, it could be used for grants to state and local governments, which have been forced by their own revenue shortfalls to lay off hundreds of thousands of workers."

Thomas Friedman has a column in the New York Times backing a reduction in both payroll and corporate taxes.

An outfit called Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength has drawn the attention of the Wall Street Journal with a letter calling for a tax increase on those earning more than $1 million a year.

The Journal reporter asked a couple of the "patriotic millionaires" why they don't just send in voluntary checks to the Treasury rather than trying to raise everyone's taxes. One of them, Dennis Mehiel, responded, "Let's carry this voluntary taxation argument to its conclusion. We already have a country like that, it's called Greece. No one pays taxes in Greece. We've had a progressive income tax in the U.S. for decades and during that time we had a growing middle class and increased affluence and increase consumption. To say we should just write our own checks is a spurious argument. It's catchy. But it has no validity in a substantial dialogue about public policy."

The New York Times is going after the financial industry with a vengeance. First came a Times news video headlined "Wall Street Regains Its Swagger." It featured Susanne Craig intoning, "Most of America is still digging out from the credit crisis triggered by Wall Street, which made billions of dollars of risky investments. Many of those trades were real estate-related, and they've since gone sour. As a result, thousands of Americans have lost their homes, and the unemployment rate is currently hovering around 10%."

Back in August, I noted that the 90-year-old Rev. Sun Myung Moon was buying back the Washington Times and that the 92-year--old Sidney Harman was buying Newsweek. Little did I realize at the time that the Martha's Vineyard Gazette, a wonderful newspaper of which I am a paying subscriber and regular reader, was for sale, or that it would be bought, in a sale announced today, by 85-year-old Jerome Kohlberg and his wife Nancy.

As I put it then, "What's the takeaway? Do you have to be older than 90 to have the years of accumulated wisdom to see the value in a print publication? Or to have a short-term enough investment outlook not to worry that that value will be eroded by the Internet?"

Here's hoping Mr. Kohlberg and whatever publisher he hires keeps the quality up, because the paper really is a treasure.

The New York Sun has an editorial under the headline "How To Depoliticize the Fed."

Economist Benjamin Powell explains the economics of Thanksgiving: "Bad weather or lack of farming knowledge did not cause the pilgrims' shortages. Bad economic incentives did....In 1620 Plymouth Plantation was founded with a system of communal property rights. Food and supplies were held in common and then distributed based on "equality" and "need" as determined by Plantation officials....Faced with potential starvation in the spring of 1623, the colony decided to implement a new economic system. Every family was assigned a private parcel of land...This change, Bradford wrote, "had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been." Giving people economic incentives changed their behavior.