Robert Shrum, the Democratic political consultant who advised, among others, Senator Edward Kennedy and Senator Kerry's presidential campaign, offers some surprising advice to President Obama:

To shore up fragile markets, the President could propose a permanent 15 percent rate for capital gains and investment. This wouldn't be an ideologically pure exercise in economic justice. But it's a pragmatic measure that could boost markets, sending a powerful, positive signal to voters. More than that, it will generate more investment and jobs—not in the distant future, but in the next two years. So there's something in this policy for Main Street, not just Wall Street.

Great idea. Link via the Heritage Foundation's "Morning Bell" email newsletter.

Check out how NPR, Bloomberg News, and Mike Allen's Politico Playbook handle coverage of this weekend's upcoming 8/28 "Restoring Honor" Glenn Beck rally in Washington. Each piece is almost a parody of press hostility and derision toward Mr. Beck and his listeners and viewers. Compare the tone of the coverage of Mr. Beck with the tone of the mainstream press coverage of the imam of the ground zero mosque. The imam and his followers generally get the benefit of the doubt, while Mr. Beck and his followers get scrutinized and caricatured.

Charles Krauthammer (as did William McGurn earlier) ties together the Arizona immigration, California gay marriage, and New York ground zero mosque debates:

how can one reason with a nation of pitchfork-wielding mobs brimming with "antipathy toward people who aren't like them" -- blacks, Hispanics, gays and Muslims...

The Democrats are going to get beaten badly in November. Not just because the economy is ailing. And not just because Obama over-read his mandate in governing too far left. But because a comeuppance is due the arrogant elites whose undisguised contempt for the great unwashed prevents them from conceding a modicum of serious thought to those who dare oppose them.

At the Coordination Problem blog, Steve Horwitz has posted a link to a PDF of an F.A. Hayek column from 1945 that Professor Horwitz writes is "very relevant to our own times." The most interesting section to me was the following:

In the piecemeal process of adaptation and change there has always been opportunity for the people to change institutions into something different from what they were intended to be, to create a society that was not the result of a single coherent plan, but of innumerable decisions of free men and women. The confidence that in the end things would somehow turn out right was largely justified by the fact that in a free society the actions of the Government were of minor importance compared with the manner in which people turned to their own use whatever instruments the government provided.

NPR's Planet Money program has a pretty good piece headlined "How To Spend $1.25 Trilllion." From the article:

In the end, they came very, very close to their target: They told us they were just 61 cents short. (In other words, they bought $1,249,999,999,999.39 worth of mortgage-backed bonds.)

The Fed was able to spend so much money so quickly because it has a unique power: It can create money out of thin air, whenever it decides to do so. So, Dzina explains, the mortgage team would decide to buy a bond, they'd push a button on the computer — "and voila, money is created."

The radio piece, which is worth listening to if you have the time and are interested in the Federal Reserve, refers to it as "magical."

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial on for-profit colleges that makes some good points but omits the role played by short-sellers. That role has been discussed in earlier posts here, here, here, here, and here.

There's a phrase you don't hear around here very often: a good New York Times editorial. But it applies to today's blowing the whistle on a White House effort to shovel some big farm subsidies to Arkansas to help Blanche Lincoln's Senate re-election campaign:

in many cases the payments would overcompensate farmers.

Relief payments would be based not on a farm's actual loss but on the amount it received under the government's direct payments program, a generous annual subsidy based on a farm's size regardless of market conditions. Anyone with a loss of more than 5 percent would get a check amounting to 90 percent of the subsidy. This would be a big, unjustified windfall, especially for big farmers.... this looks to us like a save-Blanche-Lincoln program rather than a save-the-farmer program....the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, promised to find the money.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg will host a fundraiser at his home for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's re-election campaign, according to a copy of the invitation obtained by FutureOfCapitalism.com.

From the invitation: "Michael R. Bloomberg invites you for breakfast at his home with special guest Senator Charles E. Schumer in honor of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Monday September 20th, 2010, 7:30 a.m. to 9:00 a.m." Make checks payable to "Reid Victory Fund" and mail to 150 Broadway, Suite 1011.

Price points: a "chair" contributes or raises $10,000. A "co-chair" contributes or raises $5,000. A "host" contributes or raises $2,400. A "friend," the entry-level ticket, is $1,000.

Politico's Maggie Haberman reported back in July that this was in the works.

Maybe the mayor is supportive of Mr. Reid's opposition to the ground zero mosque? His votes against partial-birth abortion? His support of gun rights? Some other stance on which Mr. Reid disagrees with the mayor?

Somehow I missed it, but over the weekend the New York Post ran a story under the headline "Hedge Fund Witch Hunt" that began, "One of New York's wealthiest hedge-fund gurus is on a witch hunt to track down the person who leaked his fund's latest quarterly investor letter. "

The move "to actually seek a court order to force a media outlet to divulge its sources, is extremely rare," the Post claimed. The article was about the Elliott Associates fund led by Paul Singer, who was a partner of mine in the New York Sun. The Post went on:

From a piece on the governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, in Bloomberg Businessweek:

In the well-to-do New York City suburb of Closter, N.J., which has a below-average crime rate, all but two of the 20 members of the police force are earning more than $100,000 this year, not including benefits or overtime. To blame: Arbitration rules that are tipped in unions' favor.

The CEO of Loews Corp., Jim Tisch, who is smart, gives an interview to Bloomberg News, which the wire service unloads in two parts, one here on investment ideas and one here on politics and the economy overall:

Tisch, 57, said President Barack Obama's health care reform, financial regulation and moratorium on offshore drilling are keeping businesses from spending money to expand.

"The thing that business people don't like is uncertainty," Tisch said in an interview at Bloomberg's New York headquarters yesterday. "Part of the problem is that business has very little confidence in what's been going on and very little visibility."...

This interview of a Bloomberg Businessweek editor by a Bloomberg News writer on the topic of global warming is pretty stunning in terms of the opinions aired by what once had a reputation as a "Just the Facts Ma'am" wire service. One question asked by the writer is, "What's the point of delaying the inevitable?" When the reporters think it's "inevitable" that one side of the policy debate they are covering will win — and they say so publicly — it makes you look at the rest of the coverage with a certain skepticism, no? It's worth clicking through and reading in full.

Movie director James Cameron, last seen here denouncing global warming skeptics as "swine," backed out of a debate/discussion he had challenged the skeptics to, according to this report.

Libertarian law professor Richard Epstein has a new column up at Forbes on the Food and Drug Administration's handling of both the salmonella eggs situation and the cancr-drug Avastin situation. I think he's a little too ready to support giving the FDA a big role in egg regulation, for reasons I get into here. But he's brilliant on Avastin:

Bill Frezza has issued a correction of his analysis of IRS data that he had published at RealClearMarkets.com and that I had cited in posts here and here. He explains: "The numbers I reported had two errors. First, they were from the top 5% column, not the top 1%. ...Second, I did a simple average of the annual reported blended rates and did not weight them against AGI, which increased over the eight years of each presidency. When you do a weighted average for the top 1%, their blended rates actually dropped from 28% under Clinton to 24% under Bush."

The rest of Mr. Frezza's analysis — that the "rich" paid more money in taxes under Bush than under Clinton and that their share of the overall income tax burden increased — stands.