From today's front-page New York Times article on Congress moving to legalize Internet-based gambling so that it can capture what it claims will be $42 billion over 10 years in additional tax revenues:

Representative Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who leads the Financial Services Committee, has been the legislation's champion.

"Some adults will spend their money foolishly, but it is not the purpose of the federal government to prevent them legally from doing it," Mr. Frank said.

By adults spending their money foolishly, he's talking about people spending their own money on gambling, not the politicians spending the money they take from others in taxes. It's apparently not the purpose of the federal government to prevent either one.

With even Time magazine's Michael Grunwald reporting that the BP gulf spill, now capped, "does not seem to be inflicting severe environmental damage" and even the New York Times reporting, "The oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico appears to be dissolving far more rapidly than anyone expected," the question arises: where does BP go to get its $20 billion back? What if the money that President Obama essentially seized from the company is far, far more than what it costs to fix the damage? Will BP get a refund? Or will the money just be distributed anyway to various environmentalist groups or other Democratic constituencies? Had BP managed to hold out against the political pressure for just a few more weeks until the well was capped, its shareholders might now have a share of that $20 billion, and the company would be in a stronger position to negotiate than it was a few weeks ago.

NBC's White House correspondent and political director Chuck Todd reacts to the JournoList scandal (Via Mike Allen's Politico Playbook):

There is this belief with conservatives that there is a liberal bias in mainstream journalism. There isn't. You can argue geographic bias and even cultural bias but the idea that any LONGTIME, legitimate news organization is actually advocating for one political party or ideology is absurd. But Journolist gave the conspiracy theorists about the media an 'a-ha' or 'gotcha' moment that actually, when one looks closely, isn't there.

Absurd, huh?

There will be plenty of commentary and analysis of federal Judge Susan Bolton's decision to block much of the Arizona immigration law from going into effect, but the thing it confirmed for me (not that it needed much confirmation) is what a wonderful and shrewd reporter my former Harvard Crimson and New York Sun colleague Josh Gerstein is. In a July 22 Politico blog post, Josh pretty much called the judge's decision, six days in advance of the decision's being issued. It's hard enough accurately to report the news after it happens; the skill of predicting the news before it happens is rare indeed, and it is one of the things that makes journalistic reputations.

Last August, GE paid $50 million to settle an accounting fraud case with the SEC. Yesterday, the SEC announced another settlement with GE, this one for $23.4 million, involving alleged violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in a kickback scheme with the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein.

From the SEC release: "The SEC alleges that two GE subsidiaries — along with two other subsidiaries of public companies that have since been acquired by GE — made illegal kickback payments in the form of cash, computer equipment, medical supplies, and services to the Iraqi Health Ministry or the Iraqi Oil Ministry in order to obtain valuable contracts under the U.N. Oil for Food Program."

More context for Timothy Carney's observation:

Today's Wall Street Journal has a whole article about how to sneak into a Broadway show without paying. "I imagine that sneaking into shows is illegal," one character in the article says. What's next, an article on how to shoplift copies of the Journal from newsstands? The next time the Wall Street Journal hits Broadway producers up for advertising, the producers will be justified in using the old Bloomingdale-New York Post line, "But Rupert, your readers are my shoplifters."

The New York Times today publishes a really weird article about a paper by two economists. It runs under the headline, "In Study, 2 Economists Say Intervention Helped Avert a 2nd Depression."

Missing from the article is the following information:

Where the paper was published (a peer-reviewed journal?)

A hyperlink to the paper itself

Any information about the authors other than the following identifiers: "Alan S. Blinder, a Princeton professor and former vice chairman of the Fed, and Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics."

New York taxi owners have a legal win in their effort to prevent the city government from forcing them to buy energy-efficient hybrids. The Second Circuit's opinion is here; a New York Times report is here.

NPR on the president's frequent trips to swing states, sometimes combined with campaign fundraisers, touting the beneficial effects of the stimulus on economic recovery: "It is an overt sales pitch that Americans appear not to be buying."

Qantas airlines has reportedly settled out of court with an American passenger who sued the carrier over hearing loss after being seated next to a screaming 3-year-old boy. Walter Olson, call your office. Stories like this are a reminder that it's amazing that Congress is tackling health reform, financial reform, immigration reform, campaign finance reform -- just about every reform in the book, but not tort reform. Link via HIStalk.

The Boston Herald is keeping the heat on Senator Kerry about the half-million dollars in excise and in sales-and-use taxes he has dodged by mooring his yacht in Rhode Island, rather than in the state he represents in the Senate, Massachusetts. Today's Herald reports that the "clearly perturbed" senator "slammed the door" on reporters who were asking him about the matter — but only after cryptically responding to a question about whether he had brought the boat into Massachusetts by saying, "It depends on who owns it."

Earlier Herald coverage has reported that the boat is owned by a Pittsburgh, Pa.-based limited liability company, Great Point LLC, and that "Pittsburgh is home to Kerry's ketchup heiress wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry." And indeed, a 2004 New York Times article on the partial release of Teresa Heinz Kerry's tax return in connection with Senator Kerry's presidential campaign reported, "The Kerrys file separate tax returns, a common arrangement when one spouse is wealthy...Her official place of residence was blacked out in federal tax return, but a spokesman for the Kerry campaign said it was in Pennsylvania."

If Great Point LLC is owned or controlled by Pennsylvania-based Teresa Heinz Kerry rather than by Massachusetts-based John Kerry, it may be that no Massachusetts use tax on the boat is owed.

And if you think mooring the yacht in Rhode Island rather than in Massachusetts is a tax dodge, the senator's spouse's decision to be a Pennsylvania resident rather than a Massachusetts one for tax purposes has its own advantages. The Massachusetts state income tax is 5.3%, while Pennsylvania's is 3.07%, according to the Tax Foundation. The Massachusetts estate tax is up to 16%, while the Pennsylvania inheritance tax maxes out at 4.5%. The lost income to Massachusetts as a result of Teresa Heinz Kerry's decision to be an official resident of Pennsylvania probably dwarfs the $500,000 or so at stake in the debate over where the yacht is moored.

Richard Nixon's commerce secretary, Pete Peterson, slipped an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend with a reference to "tax aversion syndrome": "Some have tax aversion syndrome—they have never met a tax increase they didn't do everything in their power to block." The Journal's subheadline captured the spirit of the article: "Higher taxes and reduced entitlement benefits for the well-off are the only solutions."

Mr. Peterson is a champion at sounding the alarm over the federal fiscal imbalance, but you almost never see him utter a peep about state and local budget problems, which are driven in part by the "defined benefit" pension plans for public employees. Mr. Peterson made a huge personal fortune selling public pension managers on investing those pension funds with the Blackstone Group. We covered some of this in the review of Mr. Peterson's book.

The Boston Herald has been having some fun with Senator Kerry's decision to moor his new 76-foot, $7 million yacht in Newport, Rhode Island, rather than in Massachusetts, the state Mr. Kerry represents, a decision that, the Herald reports, saves the senator "approximately $437,500 in sales tax and an annual excise tax of about $70,000."

The boat was built in New Zealand. A follow-up story in the Herald quotes "Connecticut boater Steve Potter, who docks in Charlestown," as saying, "The message is, 'The American boat builders aren't good enough, and the Massachusetts people aren't good enough to maintain it.' It's just a bad message all around."

Thanks to FutureOfCapitalism reader-participant-community member-content co-creator F. for sending the links.

Ecuador is nationalizing its oil industry today. A Dow Jones article describes the developments as "reforms" but notes President Rafael Correa "said that oil companies that don't abide by the state's policies will have their fields nationalized and will be forced from the country."

Context: "QUITO, ECUADOR -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reached out Tuesday to one of the left-leaning populist leaders of South America, attempting to edge Ecuador's President Rafael Correa out of the orbit of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. By all appearances, the charm offensive had an impact. A beaming Correa professed admiration and respect for 'dearest Hillary' and for President Obama." -- Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post, June 9, 2010, "Hillary Clinton Tries to Fix Relationship With Ecuador President Rafael Corrrea."

Gabriel Schoenfeld, who was the chess columnist of the New York Sun when I was its managing editor, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and the author of the fine new book Necessary Secrets: National Security, the Media, and the Rule of Law.

He spoke to FutureOfCapitalism.com this morning by phone about the 92,000 classified documents about the allied war effort in Afghanistan that have just been published by the Wikileaks Web site and three major news organizations.

I asked if any crimes had been committed. Mr. Schoenfeld replied, "Clearly, there was a leaker somewhere in the government. He clearly violated a whole bunch of laws." He said it is possible that the documents also make public other sorts of information, such as signal intelligence or the identities of American agents, whose publication falls within categories that are expressly outlawed.