More than a month after the New York Times reported the Alan Blinder-Mark Zandi paper on the stimulus that was discussed here, here, here and here, USA Today fetches up with a big news article about it that runs under the absurd headline, "Economists agree: Stimulus created nearly 3 million jobs."

Later on, the article concedes, "It's impossible to determine precisely how many jobs or how much growth the stimulus program caused."

Highlights of President Obama's interview with Brian Williams of NBC News (a full transcript is here):

"Well, look, we — we anticipated that the recovery was slowing."

On polls showing Americans think he is Muslim or foreign-born: "there is a mechanism, a network of misinformation, that in a new media era can get churned out there constantly."

On Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor rally: "Well, I have to say, I — I did not watch the rally...the country's going through a very difficult time, as a consequence of years of neglect in a whole range of areas...given all those anxieties — and given the fact that, you know, in none of these situations are you going to be fix things overnight. It's not surprising that somebody like a Mr. Beck is able to stir up a certain portion of the country. That's been true throughout our history."

From a long Wall Street Journal profile of George Mason University economist Peter Boettke, who is said to personify a resurgence of Austrian economics:

It wasn't a lack of government oversight that led to the crisis, as some economists argue, but too much of it, Mr. Boettke says. Specifically, low interest rates and policies that subsidized homeownership "gave people the crazy juice," he says.

Also in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard economist Robert Barro has an op-ed piece arguing that if the Obama administration hadn't extended unemployment benefits, the jobless rate would be 6.8% rather than 9.5%. He makes some interesting points about unemployment benefits, but I don't agree with his management advice: "President Obama can reasonably blame his economic advisers. They should have protected their boss by standing firm and arguing that a reckless expansion of unemployment-insurance coverage to 99 weeks was unwise economically and politically." Professor Barro agrees with Congressman John Boehner that Mr. Obama should fire his economic policy team.

Bloomberg News has an article cheerleading for more government spending. It begins, "The bond market is giving President Barack Obama the green light to spend more money to boost the faltering economy." It goes on, "Obama has the bond market on his side as he heads into midterm congressional elections":

With inflation so low, "fiscal-policy restraint is not a virtue, but a deflationary vice," Paul McCulley, a managing director at Pacific Investment Management Co., which runs the world's biggest bond fund, wrote in a report posted on the Newport Beach, California-based firm's website on Aug. 13.

The New York Sun has an editorial about what it describes as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's decision "to take the matter of Arizona's immigration law to the United Nations Human Rights Council." The editorial quotes a letter from the governor of Arizona, Jan Brewer, to Secretary Clinton: "the idea of our own American government submitting the duly enacted laws of a State of the United States to 'review' by the United Nations is internationalism run amok and unconstitutional."

Mark Helprin, writing in the Wall Street Journal about the 15-story mosque and swimming pool planned for near ground zero, says:

the opposition to what they propose is no more anti-Islamic or intolerant than to protest a Shinto shrine at Pearl Harbor or Nanjing would be anti-Shinto or even anti-Japanese. How about a statue of Wagner at Auschwitz, a Russian war memorial in the Katyn Forest, or a monument to British and American air power at Dresden? The indecency of such things would be neither camouflaged nor burned away by the freedoms of expression and religion. And that is what the controversy is about, decency and indecency, not the freedom to worship, which no one denies.

Norman Braman, who owns auto dealerships in Florida and who unsuccessfully sued to try to prevent public funds from being used to build a baseball stadium for the Florida Marlins without voter approval, has an op-ed piece in the Miami Herald about the finances of the Florida Marlins baseball team.

The team was earning tens of millions of dollars in profits at the same time as it was seeking county and city subsidies "including a $35 million county loan to the privately-owned Marlins." At the same time, the team owner "paid about $22 million for land and a home in Southampton, N.Y."

Mr. Braman calls the government aid to the team "unnecessary corporate welfare." Looks like a reverse Robin-Hood.

The Miami Herald has an editorial criticizing the Miami-Dade county budget, which raises property taxes to pay for benefits for mostly unionized public employees: "60 percent of homesteaded property owners will see their tax bills increase...many longtime homeowners are seeing increases of $1,000 or more on their proposed tax notice. They wonder why, if their property values are down, they would pay more....The county would get $175 million more by bumping up tax rates, to cover $125 million on archaic perks such as flex, longevity, premium and merit pay for already well-paid county employees."

The Herald says "county commissioners... count on union support during campaigns" and that "too many" of the commissioners "appear to be living in a vacuum, unable to bring common sense to union contracts."

The Harpswell (Maine) bureau sends a contest idea:

yes, a contest idea for a "never let an opportunity to trash Bush go to waste"...

As I watch the sun rise here in the Harpswell Bureau, I heard that our president is going to New Orleans. I speculated on how Obama will engage in Bush Bashing today. Maybe when he does events like this, you could hold a contest for who most closely guesses the It's All Bush's Fault line. My guess: "Never again shall the federal government neglect its responsibilities and abandon its citizens who are least able to protect themselves, especially those of color."

I don't know what the prize would be. Maybe a 1-20-13 bumper sticker?

Or a coveted FutureOfCapitalism.com coffee mug?

Look for more in the prime time televised Iraq speech, though I suppose it's remotely possible that President Obama would credit Bush for the surge.

Senator Jim DeMint has an interview with the Wall Street Journal editorial page's Steve Moore:

"When I got to Congress in 1999, instead of working on the reforms that I ran on—wealth-creating personal accounts and individually owned health insurance and some simple tax, the things that I thought all of us believed in—instead we worked on redistricting and getting the vulnerables on the right committees and getting earmarks to the people who needed them. Everything was about numbers and electing more Republicans. We'd always promise to get to the principles later." He shakes his head: "I just thought maybe there's something I don't understand."

From the final paragraph of a Wall Street Journal news article on Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey firing his education commissioner, Bret Schundler:

Mr. Schundler confirmed that he was asked to resign from his $141,000 job, but "I said it would be much better if they terminated me because I can't afford" to go without unemployment benefits while job hunting. "I have to cover bills," he said.

Add Mr. Schundler as a new category to the post on Who Are the Unemployed?

Paul Singer's remarks at the Manhattan Institute dinner in April, reported here on April 29 the morning after they were delivered, are all of a sudden a front-page article in the New York Times four months after they were delivered. Weird.

The libertarian law firm the Institute for Justice has two items worth a look.

First, an op-ed piece by Christina Walsh in the Daily Caller on how authorities in Montgomery, Alabama are trampling private property rights under a state law that gives cities the power to demolish structures that "due to poor design, obsolescence, or neglect, have become unsafe to the extent of becoming public nuisances…and [are] causing or may cause a blight or blighting influence on the city and the neighborhoods in which [they are] located." Reason magazine has a post about this, too.

The prolific Thomas Sowell has a new column up on moral hazard and unemployment:

International studies show that people in countries with more generous and long-lasting unemployment compensation spend less time looking for jobs. In the United States, where unemployment compensation is less generous than in Western Europe, unemployed Americans spend more hours looking for work than do unemployed Europeans in countries with more generous unemployment compensation.