The president has been "less-than-candid," Bob Herbert writes in the New York Times:

In his acceptance speech, for example, candidate Obama took a verbal shot at John McCain, sharply criticizing him for offering "a health care plan that would actually tax people's benefits."

Now Mr. Obama favors a plan that would tax at least some people's benefits. Mr. Obama also repeatedly said that policyholders who were pleased with their plans and happy with their doctors would be able to keep both under his reform proposals.

Well, that wasn't necessarily so, as the president eventually acknowledged. There would undoubtedly be changes in some people's coverage as a result of "reform," and some of those changes would be substantial.

If ObamaCare is such a good idea, why can't the president make the case for it without being "less-than-candid," as Mr. Herbert, who isn't exactly a member of the vast right-wing conspiracy, puts it?

Rep. Anthony Weiner and Rep. Yvette Clarke, both Democrats who represent districts in New York City, held a health care Town Hall on Sunday afternoon at a middle school in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn. FutureOfCapitalism.com reader Commenter Benjamin was there and submits the following report:

"Nearly three out of four Americans think that at least half of the money spent in the federal stimulus plan has been wasted," according to a new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll that also "indicates that 63 percent of the public thinks that projects in the plan were included for purely political reasons and will have no economic benefit." I found out about this from the Heritage Foundation's "Morning Bell" email.

President Obama looks kind of ridiculous with his presidential podium and Teleprompter in a Sixth grade classroom. The source for this item was an email tip from Reader E.

The newly launched Daily Caller site and Instapundit have been speculating about whether economist and television star Larry Kudlow will challenge Senator Schumer in the 2010 election for U.S. Senate in New York. Neither one mentions that a few months back there was talk that Mr. Kudlow would challenge Senator Dodd in the 2010 election for U.S. Senate in Connecticut. Mr. Kudlow's biography on the Web site of his firm, which is based in Fairfield, Conn., reports that "he and his wife Judy live in New York City and Redding, Connecticut." Assignment for the newly launched Connecticut Mirror: Find out whether would-be Senate candidate Mr. Kudlow has been voting or paying most of his taxes in Connecticut (which has lower taxes and closer elections) or in New York. Maybe he can run for both Senate seats and have two votes. Dislosures: Mr. Kudlow's column used to run on the New York Sun op-ed page, I'd like him to have me as a guest on his television program, and the Connecticut Mirror, which I already mentioned once already earlier today, has a chief operating officer who consulted for the Forward when I was working there 10 years ago and a director who is related to Commenter Ben, who is a regular voice in the FutureOfCapitalism.com comments section. Update: Welcome Instapundit readers! Please check out the rest of the site, sign up for the email list using the box toward the upper righthand side of the page, bookmark this Web site, or subscribe to the FutureOfCapitalism.com RSS feed using the button on the righthand side of the page.

A retiring congressman from Arkansas, Marion Berry, recounts a meeting with President Obama in which Mr. Obama explains why what happened to health "reform" and the Democratic majority in 1994 won't happen in 2010: "The president himself, when that was brought up in one group, said, 'Well, the big difference here and in '94 was you've got me.'" Maybe it was the president self-deprecatingly mocking his own ego, but the congressman certainly didn't take it that way. Politico has the story from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, which I found via an email from reader P., who sent along Mark Melcher's Political Forum newsletter in which it was repeated.

Bill Gates's annual letter touts one movie about education choice, Waiting for Superman, as we noted here earlier today. Now money manager and education activist Whitney Tilson e-mails about another movie on the same theme, The Lottery, which has a Web site up with a trailer featuring the great Eva Moskowitz. It's worth clicking through and watching the trailer.

Jeremy Grantham, co-founder of GMO, which manages $102 billion, is out with his January 2010 quarterly letter, which uses the term "bloodsucker" to describe his colleagues in the financial industry. "Finance was 3% of GDP in 1965; now it is 7.5%. This is an extra 4.5% load that the real economy carries. The financial system is overfeeding on and slowing down the real economy. It is like running with a large, heavy, and growing bloodsucker on your back. It slows you down," he writes. "Beware the financial-industrial complex. They are eating your lunch. (And to be honest, I've eaten more than my fair share. It was a good lunch.)" Mr. Grantham writes that his comments are a summary of his arguments in a debate sponsored by the Economist, a video of which is embedded below. When President Obama is calling the bankers "fat cat" and comparing them to suicide bombers, "bloodsucker" may not attract much of a response, though when the New York Times's Maureen Dowd used "blood-sucking" in reference to a historically Jewish bank at least the New Jersey Jewish News ran an op-ed piece calling a foul. Thanks to reader R. for sending in the tip about the Grantham letter.

New federal data indicate that, "Last year, for the first time in American history, there were more union members who worked for the government than there were in the private sector, though the private sector workforce is more than five times larger. We now have 7.9 million public sector union members, and only 7.4 million private sector union members," reports the Education Intelligence Agency, which wonders, "will we reach the point of having a virtually union-free private sector supporting a highly unionized public sector?"

At the AidWatch blog overseen by NYU's William Easterly, a guest post today by Michael Clemens picks up on the connection between the situation in Haiti and America's immigration rules, a point made here at FutureOfCapitalism.com in the post of January 15 headlined "Haiti and the Banks." Mr. Clemens writes: "the U.S. has forcibly stopped and repatriated about 5,000 Haitians per year for the past 20 years—people who never made it to the U.S. And this policy surely deterred thousands more each year from even trying. When Gallup asked people in Haiti last year if they would leave permanently if given the opportunity, 52 percent said yes. The U.S. is actively blocking the most effective poverty reduction strategy for Haitians...The best thing the United States could do for Haitians would be to let them in, either temporarily or permanently. We are now accepting about 21,000 permanent Haitian immigrants per year, and just a few hundred temporary workers per year. If we really wanted to raise Haitians out of destitution, we could absorb many times more than this."

The Connecticut Mirror, a newly launched non-profit online newspaper covering Connecticut, is off to an intriguing start with an article reporting on the outside income of some members of the Connecticut General Assembly. One Republican lawmaker "who has led the charge for legalizing medical marijuana in Connecticut," the Mirror reports, "was paid $113,000 over three years" by the Marijuana Policy Project, a non-profit group that favors legalizing the herb. Three Democratic lawmakers are empoyees of the state's public employee unions. A co-chair of the state Senate appropriations committee was paid as an employee of a non-profit that received $387,000 in state funds. Conflicts of interest are part of the world we all live in, and there may be cases to be made on the merits for medical marijuana or funding the non-profit that employs the co-chair of the appropriations committee. The high priests of "ethics" are sometimes more concerned with the appearance of impropriety than about whether there's been any actual impropriety. And the outside income makes it possible for Connecticut taxpayers to save money by paying lawmakers less than what is earned by full-time counterparts in other states. With all that said, it's an eye-opening dispatch from a newcomer to the Connecticut news scene.

Bill Gates has released his 2010 annual letter as co-chairman of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and there's some interesting stuff, even to someone like me who is a bit of a skeptic of non-profits and of development aid. Some highlights:

On foreign aid to India: "I also got to meet with Rahul Gandhi, who is part of a new generation of political leaders focused on making sure these investments are well spent. The foundation is considering funding measurement systems to help improve these programs. Rahul was very frank in saying that right now a lot of the money is not getting to the intended recipients and that it won't be easy to fix. His openness was refreshing, since many politicians won't say anything that might discourage a donor from giving more."

FutureOfCapitalism.com, January 20, 2010: "How big a win was it last night for Scott Brown? The Kennedy compound is in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, which is actually part of the town of Barnstable on Cape Cod. Scott Brown won in nine out of nine precincts in the town of Barnstable and carried the town overall by a margin of 12,331 to 7,543, or 61% to 37%, according to the town election results (pdf). Senator Kennedy's neighbors, in other words, voted for Scott Brown by a wide margin."

The American Civil Liberties Union, which has traditionally opposed limits on campaign speech, is considering an about-face after last week's Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, Joseph Goldstein reports. "The worst thing you could do – the absolutely worst thing you could do – is transform a civil liberties organization into a liberal political organization," Mr. Goldstein quotes First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams as warning the ACLU board. Of particular interest to FutureOfCapitalism.com readers may be the way advocates of limits on campaign speech use businesses as bogeymen. "The ACLU's version of democracy is from the ground-up," one civil rights lawyer, David Gans, told the ACLU's board, according to Mr. Goldstein's dispatch. "Now Exxon Mobil can spend 2% of its money and blow that all up. The Goldstein dispatch leaves unmentioned the irony that in the Citizens United majority opinion striking down limits, Justice Kennedy cited the ACLU itself as an example of an organization whose speech was unconstitutionally limited by the law the majority struck down: "the following acts would all be felonies under §441b... the American Civil Liberties Union creates a Web site telling the public to vote for a Presidential candidate in light of that candidate's defense of free speech. These prohibitions are classic examples of censorship."

One of the many services we provide here at FutureOfCapitalism.com is keeping readers informed about political direct mail campaigns. Two from Senate Republicans were covered earlier here, and one immigrant-bashing one from the Heritage Foundation was covered here. Direct mail gets less attention than television commercials or newspaper op-ed articles do because it often happens below the radar. It's hard to link to, and reporters may not even get the letters in the mail if they aren't on the lists. But it can be illuminating nonetheless, which is why we try to keep an eye on it. The latest example is from the Republican National Committee. It's problematic for three reasons. First, it uses the word "census" repeatedly to convey the false impression that it is a government document. "DO NOT DESTROY OFFICIAL DOCUMENT," the envelope says. Inside, the letterhead says "2010 Congressional District Census" and includes a survey with faux-official language like "Census Tracking Code" and "Census Certification and Reply" and "Census Document." The text of the letter includes a sentence that says "And when you send back your completed Census, I urge you to also demonstrate your commitment to the Republican Party by including a generous donation of $25, $50, $100, $250 -- or even $500." All this could easily dupe an unsuspecting target into thinking, incorrectly, that it was part of the real 2010 government census.