This Week From AAI

Chicks Dig Jerks, School Choice Works, & Liberals Like Taxes

The Arkansas Project

Would you believe that state unemployment overpayments are only $44 million? We thought you might. And that's just the amount they've uncovered so far. David Kinkade at our affiliate, The Arkansas Project, has more on this feel-good story. 

States Delaying Obamacare Exchanges

States are lagging in the creation of health insurance exchanges, the supermarkets where millions of consumers are supposed to buy subsidized private coverage under President Obama's health care overhaul. Some want to set up rudimentary exchanges with limited features - as a defensive tactical maneuver - rather than cede control to Washington. More-conservative Republicans do not want to do anything at all. More from The New York Times.

Academic Hypocrisy

Academics love to say that businesses are not paying enough to people who work for them. But where in business are there people who are paid absolutely nothing for strenuous work that involves risks to their health? In academia, that situation is common. It is called college football. Thomas Sowell opines at National Review.

Ira Stoll on the Capital Gains Tax Rate

The founder of the Vanguard group of mutual funds, John C. Bogle, who says he is a lifelong Republican, is calling on Congress to raise capital gains taxes to the rates that apply to ordinary income." As a general policy, equalize the taxes, raise the taxes on capital gains," Mr. Bogle said earlier this month in an interview with Bloomberg Television's Betty Liu. Mr. Bogle has a lot of wisdom about investing, writes Ira Stoll, but on the question of capital gains, he's wrong.  Get the full story from Reason.

Obamacare's Bipartisan Critics

The ongoing controversy over President Obama's universal female-contraception entitlement decree reportedly found Vice President Joseph Biden, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, former chief of staff Richard Daley, and five Democratic senators opposing Obama's fusillade against religious liberty and economic freedom. This is the latest example of Democrats, in whole, or in part, giving the cold shoulder to Obamacare. Deroy Murdock has more at National Review.

Why Liberals Like Taxing The Wealthy

This election is a contest between a Democrat who wants to make this country more like Tocqueville's France and Republicans who want to keep it more like Tocqueville's America. The liberal bloggers are rooting for France. Michael Barone explains at National Review.

Milwaukee Parental Choice Program

In what the Wall Street Journal labeled "The Year of School Choice," 2011 saw the continued growth of one of the country's most prominent systems of school choice.  The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. More from the National Center for Policy Analysis.

Obama's Budget Badly Undercounts Tax Increases

President Obama's fiscal year 2013 budget proposal explicitly claims a $1.561 trillion tax hike over 10 years, as reported by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). This is a vast understatement, because that figure fails to account for all of the President's tax increases and improperly claims credit for reducing tax receipts from tax cuts that are not new policies. Curtis Dubay explains at Heritage.

Ray Lahood 1.0

Ray LaHood's latest attempt to revise the rules of the road in response to hysterical fears about in-car technology is nothing new. Get the full story from Reason.

Yes, Chicks Dig Jerks

One of the remarkable facts about domestic violence is that it is in many ways easier to draw up a statistical profile of typical domestic-abuse victims than it is to generalize about the men who commit domestic abuse: Age and other variables are more consistent for the victims than for the abusers. Kevin Williamson has more at National Review.

Our Debt, Not Our Children's

When explaining the dangers of America's ballooning national debt, fiscal conservatives unwittingly sabotage their cause by invoking "the children." They should spend lots more time discussing how federal red ink harms adults today. Deroy Murdock expounds at National Review.

James Q. Wilson In His Own Words

James Q. Wilson, who died Friday at age 80, was one of America's most consequential political scientists and a frequent Journal contributor. Read Wilson in his own words at The Wall Street Journal 

James Q. Wilson Remembered

One of our editors once made the mistake of referring to James Q. Wilson as a sociologist, and he was quickly rebuked with a note that, no, the professor was a political scientist. Jim Wilson liked to get things right, which as far as we can remember he always was. The Wall Street Journal remembers.

Pro-Union Activism by California's Attorney General

California Attorney General Kamala Harris is a close ally of the public sector unions, who are doing all they can to stop the state's burgeoning pension reform movement. So when the group California Pension Reform submitted two voter initiatives that would rein in the unsustainable costs of the state's pension system, Harris decided to behave as a political operative and besmirch the office she holds by distorting the official descriptions that most voters rely upon when making their voting decision. More from Reason.