February 15, 2008 by Tom Armstrong.

This opinion in today’s WSJ caught my eye. This one did as well:

New York recently finished 50th in Chief Executive magazine’s survey of the best states to do business. Respondents cited high taxes, regulation and Governor Eliot Spitzer’s “hostile image toward business.” The Governor, for his part, seems to have decided that if he can’t convince companies to move to the Empire State, he’ll simply have to govern them from a distance.

 Eager to fund his proposed 4.8% budget increase this year (last year’s was 6%), Mr. Spitzer is attempting to force out-of-state retailers such as Amazon.com to collect New York state sales taxes. Readers of this page know that a 1992 Supreme Court decision called Quill prevents exactly this type of money grab. The Supremes ruled that forcing such obligations on companies with no physical presence in a state could cripple interstate commerce. Absent Quill, even small Web merchants would have to answer to literally thousands of state and local tax collectors.

The Governor argues that he can get to companies like Amazon through New Yorkers who run ads for Amazon on their Web sites. Nice try. If non-employees with some business relationship with a company were enough to establish physical presence, then Quill would be meaningless.

Rather than competing for the title of most-taxpayer-unfriendly state, Mr. Spitzer would be wise to consider ways to attract more taxpaying businesses. A good start would be improving New York’s overall business tax climate, which the Tax Foundation ranks 48th among the states, just ahead of New Jersey.

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February 15, 2008 by Tom Armstrong.

This article from Forbes concentrates on the supply side. It begins:

While some in Washington are quibbling about the details of the economic stimulus package, nearly everyone agrees with its basic idea: that our ailing economy needs Uncle Sam to play doctor and hand out some $150 billion in consumer spending money. But this sort of government intervention is not the cure for our economic troubles. It is the cause.

To understand why, we must first recognize that the key economic activity that causes growth is not consumer spending but production.

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February 15, 2008 by Tom Armstrong.

Kudlow on why Obama is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Obama is just another far-left liberal who believes government can solve all mankind’s problems. If government control of the economy is so effective and positive, the USSR, Cuba, and other command and control econcomies should have created great wealth for their citizens rather than forcing them into grinding poverty.

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February 15, 2008 by Tom Armstrong.

Congress needs to find something better to do than bash baseball players for making poor decisions. I’m sure each congressman has also made a bad decision (likely many), but they are not paraded in front of the world for doing so. It’s baseball’s business. Oh yeah, legalize steriod use NOW!!!

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February 15, 2008 by Tom Armstrong.

Oliver North writes today on the Heller Case. It begins: 

WASHINGTON — When the Council of the District of Columbia enacted the toughest gun control law in the nation in 1976, the city fathers — according to what they said at the time — believed they were making our nation’s capital a safer place. The measure failed miserably. Since passage, the murder rate in the District has skyrocketed by more than 200 percent. Now, the U.S. Supreme Court has a chance both to make our capital safer and to ensure that the Second Amendment to our Constitution is enshrined as an individual right for every law-abiding American.

No matter how well-intentioned, the D.C. firearms statute has been unfathomable from the start. On its face, the law bans handguns and requires rifles and shotguns to be registered. They also must be stored unloaded and either locked or disassembled. While it allows business owners to use firearms to protect their cash registers at their stores, they cannot use those same firearms to protect themselves and their families in their homes. Individuals who protect federal officials and property in the District with firearms are not permitted to provide similar protection for themselves and their families in their own domiciles.

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February 15, 2008 by Tom Armstrong.

I’m not making this up. Some now claim our recent global cooling is a result of global warming.

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February 15, 2008 by Tom Armstrong.

Good stuff from The Onion in 2001–evil, big-business credit card companies are driving out mom and pop loan sharks.  

HT: Division of Labor

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