FutureOfCapitalism.com on Senator Schumer's campaign to stop Adidas from making NBA jerseys in Thailand instead of in upstate New York: November 24, 2009. New York Daily News on same topic: November 30, 2009. John Stossel on the same topic: December 2, 2009.

Via Instapundit comes news that two Republican members of Congress have introduced "the Geithner Penalty Waiver Act, requiring that the IRS assess the same penalty against U.S. taxpayers that came forward in the UBS tax fraud investigation as paid by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for failing to pay taxes on his IMF income — zero."

John Goodman's health care policy blog has a list of "conservative/libertarian" ideas on health care policy, with links.

When Norman Podhoretz cited the Encyclopedia Judaica in the course of his book Why Are Jews Liberals, he was rewarded with a scathing, mocking, review on the front of the New York Times Sunday book section that said, "There is something a little risible about the solemnity with which Podhoretz presents encyclopedia articles as evidence of his erudition ('I relied most heavily on one of the great works of 20th-century Jewish scholarship, the Encyclopaedia Judaica')." Now the New York Times's star business reporter and columnist, Gretchen Morgenson, has acknowledged in an e-mail to an associate professor of economics at Carthage College, Ron Cronovich, that for her new book The Capitalist's Bible, "About 65% of the book is rewritten from the Encyclopedia of Capitalism, published by Facts On File in 2003 for the college library market." Ms. Morgenson's name is on the front of The Capitalist's Bible in big letters with "edited by" credit, along with the description of her as a "Pulitzer Prize Winning New York Times Journalist." The disclosure in the book that it was produced "using some rewritten text from the Encyclopedia of Capitalism" appears at the end of the index in teensy-tiny type so small that I missed it when I originally reviewed the book. And I am a careful reader. The Times, for some reason, hasn't subjected its own reporter to the treatment it gave Mr. Podhoretz.

There aren't many outlets more supportive of immigration and entrepreneurship than this one, as the review we ran the other day of Immigrant, Inc. suggests. But of all the ideas to encourage immigration and entrepreneurship, one of the worst has to be the one floated in today's Wall Street Journal by Paul Kedrosky and Brad Feld: "If immigrant entrepreneurs want to start a company in the U.S. and are able to raise a moderate amount of money (perhaps as little as $125,000) from an accredited U.S.-based venture capital firm or qualified U.S.-based angel investors, we should let them start a company here." The troubling words in this sentence are "accredited" and "qualified." It amounts to another way of priviliging some investors over others in the flow of potential deals. Some government agency tied up in the immigration bureaucracy is going to end up accrediting venture capitalists. One of the many great things about immigrants to America is that it's hard even for a mighty government-accredited venture capitalist to tell ahead of time which of them, or their children, is going to succeed. Sergey Brin's father had worked as a central planner at Gosplan, the Soviet Central planning agency. Would some angle investor or venture capitalist have made a bet on him? Probably not. But his son started Google. Instead of making it easier for immigrants to come to America by raising the annual limits or by automatically stapling a green card to the diploma of every foreigner who gets an advanced degree at an American university, Mr. Kedrosky and Mr. Feld's idea would create a new hurdle, a new "accredited venture capitalist" hoop to jump through for would-be immigrants who might be merely seeking freedom and the rule of law. As it is, venture capitalists are known for extracting the best deals they can in term sheets on funding from entrepreneurs, so much so that there are entire Web sites set up for the purpose of allowing venture-funded companies to complain about their funders. With the additional leverage of an immigration visa to America, imagine how quickly the VC is going to wind up with 95% of the company, and the founder with next to nothing. Sure, let's encourage immigrant entrepreneurship, but find a way to do it without turning venture capitalists into an arm of the immigration bureaucracy, with all the sclerosis and government power that that entails.

Swedish government officials "could tell" the U.S. government-owned General Motors that Sweden "is open to providing loan guarantees to a new buyer" for the auto brand Saab, now owned by GM, the Wall Street Journal reports. One possible buyer is Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Co. The Journal article doesn't say so, but it is a Chinese state-owned company. In other words, it would take the combined assistance of the governments of America, Sweden, and China to keep this car-maker going. What a downfall for James Bond's "Silver Beast." For a corrective, check out a really wonderful article by Yang Jian, the managing editor of Automotive News China, who writes of "the conflict between serving the interests of the state and achieving success in the market":

In committee, Senator Grassley had inserted into the Senate health care bill the provision that members of Congress and their staffs get their health care through the same exchanges that the legislation would establish for the rest of the country. Now Mr. Grassley says the bill has been changed to exempt leadership staff and committee staff from that requirement: "Careful examination by the Congressional Research Service of the bill that Senator Reid brought to the floor revealed that one of the things that happened behind closed doors was that leadership and committee staff ended up being carved out from having to live under the new health care exchanges that this legislation would create and impose on the rest of the country," Mr. Grassley said. "This creates a double standard. It's inexcusable." Mr. Grassley says he plans to offer an amendment to close the loophole and also to require the president, the vice president, and executive branch political appointees to get their health insurance through the exchanges.

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Back in June, when Daniel Henninger wrote that "Without exception, the Obama people with responsibility for the private economy come from a lifetime in politics, public administration or academia," FutureOfCapitalism.com took exception, noting that many of the Obama administration's problematic economic "policies and programs were begun in the Bush administration, where the Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, had plenty of private sector experience." We also warned against underestimating such private sector experience as there was, pointing to Lawrence Summers's $5.2 million a year, one-day-a-week job at the D.E. Shaw hedge fund, or Rahm Emanuel's two-and-a-half year, $16.2 million stint as managing director in the Chicago office of Wasserstein and Perella. Those points are worth recalling in response to the American Enterprise blog's posting of a chart from a J.P. Morgan research report by the estimable Michael Cembalest showing unusually low levels of private sector experience among cabinet secretaries in the Obama administration. Just looking at cabinet secretaries doesn't tell the whole story -- it leaves out people like Mr. Summers and Mr. Emanuel, who are far more influential in the Obama administration than are the secretary of agriculture or the secretary of the interior. My favorite part of the J.P. Morgan analysis, not mentioned in the American Enterprise Post, is the decision that "in the rankings, private sector experience at a law firm counts for a 33% score, which I think is very generous. My wife strongly suggested raising this to 50%, but I refused." The chart is interesting. But it also tells just some of the story.

Amity Shlaes spoke of some of the Obama-FDR parallels in her Hayek Lecture. The American Spectator has an extended article along some of the same lines by Burton Folsom that includes some wonderful facts about Herbert Hoover's predecessor, Calvin Coolidge. Coolidge: "I agree perfectly with those who wish to relieve the small taxpayer by getting the largest possible contribution from people with large incomes. But if the rates on large incomes are so high that they disappear, the small taxpayers will be left to bear the entire burden." More, according to Mr. Folsom: in the 1920s, "Entrepreneurs enjoyed one of their most creative periods in U.S. history: from radios to sliced bread to Scotch tape, inventors marketed new products. Older inventions finally secured the capital to emerge: air conditioners, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, and zippers thus found their way into millions of households across America. U.S. patent numbers were higher in 1929 than in every year thereafter until 1965." When Reagan became president, "he put Calvin Coolidge's picture up in the cabinet room."

In the New York Post, columnist Andrea Peyser takes aim at those property owners who sued to try to stop their homes from being seized to build a new Nets arena and an associated development known as Atlantic Yards. She writes: "The Court of Appeals says the small knot of resisters who've refused to sell their properties to developer Bruce Ratner -- at handsome profits, I might add -- can be displaced by eminent domain. This is good news to the many New Yorkers who will win jobs and affordable homes, and bad news only to the selfish handful who'd refused to let their neighbors get a shot at prosperity. Smack in the middle of some of the richest real estate in the city sits Atlantic Yards, a spot so blighted, it's an outrage nothing has been built there in 40 years." As this New York Sun editorial points out, the 50% "affordable" housing that is part of the development was negotiated by ACORN, a group that the Post has been busy savaging elsewhere in its pages. It's not "selfish" for a man to resist the government seizing his own home that he worked to buy when the government is going to take that home and turn it over to a combination of rich folks such as Mr. Ratner and the Nets players and poor folks such as ACORN's "affordable" housing clients. Even the architecture critic for Bloomberg News, the wire service named after the mayor who enthusiastically backed the Atlantic Yards project, calls the latest design for the Nets arena in Brooklyn "a life-sucking eyesore."

One of the many problems with the growth in the non-profit sector is that if it keeps growing, pretty soon there will be hardly anyone left to pay taxes. That is the situation confronting Pittsburgh, where, the Wall Street Journal reports, about 40% of the property in the city is tax-exempt. As a result the city is considering what the Journal describes as "what appears to be a one-of-a-kind 1% tuition tax on local university and college students." If implemented it would be one of a kind, but Pittsburgh is not the only city to float such an idea; Providence, R.I. also explored a $300 a year tax on out-of-state students.

By far the largest political spender for the 2007-08 election cycle was the National Education Association, with more than $56.3 million in contributions, reports the Education Intelligence Agency, which keeps an eye on the teacher unions: "Just to put this in perspective, America's two teachers' unions outspent AT&T, Goldman Sachs, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, General Electric, Chevron, Pfizer, Morgan Stanley, Lockheed Martin, FedEx, Boeing, Merrill Lynch, Exxon Mobil, Lehman Brothers, and the Walt Disney Corporation, combined."

One of the themes of this site is that neither Democrats nor Republicans have a monopoly on bad ideas in Washington. That's the category into which we'd place the HAPPY Act, for "Humanity and Pets Partnered Through the Years," introduced by Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, a Republican of Michigan. The bill would allow individuals to deduct up to $3,500 per year in pet expenses from their federal taxes. The Tax Foundation lists several reasons this would be bad policy, among them, "people can deduct expenses for their own medical care only if those costs exceed 7.5% of adjusted gross income, so the bill would give your pet's medical bills better tax treatment than your own."

On his blog, Nobel laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman implies that the concern about the declining value of the dollar as measured against gold or other currencies is driven by anti-Obama partisanship: "Even now, the dollar is stronger than it was in early 2008. And the fall since its financial-panic peak (when everyone was rushing into the safety of US Treasury bills) has been trivial compared with the huge decline from 2002 to 2007. Do you remember all the scare stories, all the Wall Street Journal editorials, about the degradation of the dollar under Bush? Neither do I." Mr. Krugman must either not have been reading the New York Sun or he must have come down with a case of amnesia; the Sun published at least a half-dozen editorials during the Bush administration bemoaning the weakening greenback, starting with one in December 2005 headlined "The Bush Dollar."