Only a day after Issue 2.15 was published, NCPA Chairman Pete Du Pont, J.D. ran yet another editorial in The Wall Street Journal’s online editorial page, www.opinionjournal.com. It followed the same raison d’être as my article about tax cuts.

Mr. Du Pont aptly denounces the left’s dogma that tax rate cuts cannot work, and even in the face of increasing revenues hold dear to the cry of tax cuts for the rich.

Opposing tax cuts has become the mantra of the liberal left. Sen. John Kerry wants to roll back Bush’s “unaffordable tax cuts.” Senator Mark Dayton (D., Minn.) called the cuts “dangerous and destructive and dishonorable.” Bill Clinton in 2003 said the cuts were “way too big to avoid serious harm.” And various New York Times editorials called them “economically unsound,” claimed that “they will increase the deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars” and said they were unlikely “to stimulate the wallowing economy.” Earlier this month House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi promised that the election of a Democratic House in November would result in a “rollback of the tax cuts.”

He goes on to point out that incomes for families are up, and the portion of income held by the top 10% of Americans is going down.

As I said before, let’s take all the celebration with a grain of salt. GOP Leaders on Capital Hill and in the White House need some spine when it comes to reiging in spending. Suggestions left over from the Contract with America and maintained by the Republican Study Committee in the House, such as earmark reform and balanced budget amendment, still need to be instated. And we need to continue to work toward replacing income tax altogether with the Fair Tax, or even a Flat Tax. However, since government is, as Ronald Reagan said, “an alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other,” progress is welcomed when it comes.

Did you know the United States Treasury has an Office of Financial Education? The mission of this office is to teach Americans how to “make wiser choices in all areas of personal financial management.”

We’ll pause to let the irony of this situation—a federal office advicing Americans on how to manage their finances—sink in for a bit.

Granted, the advice the department offers is quite sensible: don’t spend everything you make, save, etc. The only problem is that our federal government itself doesn’t follow this advice—if it did, we probably wouldn’t have an “Office of Financial Education” in the first place. (The office, which was created in May 2002, undoubtedly cost a few million dollars to start up and a few million more each year to keep running.)

Writes the New Ulm Journal editorial page:

This agency . . . is emblematic of myriad nice ideas upon which the GOP-controlled Congress and the Bush administration evidently felt compelled to spend our money. With no sense of limitations on what government ought or ought not to do, seemingly every nice idea becomes a tentacle of ever bigger government.

This leads me to another excellent thought, this one from Bryce at Blog of Bryce. In a post titled “It Flies Away,” Bryce writes:

Please don’t tell me that Bush cut taxes. I really don’t care. In fact, if one more person reminds me of his tax cuts, I may just scream. You think I should be delighted because tax cuts are lifting the burden from me while concurrently deferring a greater weight of debt to my children and grandchildren?

Exactly. What good are tax cuts if the government continues to spend money at rates not seen since the days of Lyndon Johnson and The Greaty Society? Do conservatives think money grows on trees, and 20 or 50 years down the road we can pluck $100,000 dollar bills off the branches to pay for our government’s annual spending deficits and mounting debt? No; unless a future president and Congress drastically reduces spending—which seems highly unlikely—the taxpayers will once again foot the bill and be burdened with higher taxes than before.

It’s unfortunate that the federal government can’t take its own advice when it comes to spending. Perhaps the Office of Financial Education should be directing its message toward the federal government and not the American people.

I’m not a huge fan of Wal-Mart, but I’m even less a fan of big government. And the state of Maryland has just taken another step down the slippery slope of socialism with its decision to require that Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart alone spend more money on employee health care.

As Michelle Malkin writes: “It’s on in Maryland, and the socialists are winning.”

You can read all about the state’s decision here. The Democrat-controlled House and Senate in Maryland were apparently able to muster enough support to override Gov. Robert Ehrlich’s veto of the bill.

The situation essentially boils down to this: a privately owned company is being punished by a state government for being too successful. Where does the Maryland legislature get the authority to impose these requirements on a privately owned and privately run company? Last time I checked, people aren’t forced into working at a place like Wal-Mart. If they do happen to work at Wal-Mart and don’t like the conditions, benefits, wages, or bosses, they have the option of quitting and getting a different job. That doesn’t seem so hard to understand, but apparently the folks up in Maryland have decided Wal-Mart’s evil, despicable actions require government intervention. If the government is able to dictate how much Wal-Mart—a privately owned company—has to spend on employee health care, what prevents the government from ordering the same thing of every private company or business?

This sounds like something we’d see in communist Russia, not in the good old U.S. of A.

Soccer Dad has some excellent coverage of the issue that is definitely worth checking out.

World Magazine blog is reporting that a new study published in the medical journal Acta Paediatrica found that women who have had an abortion are 2.4 times more likely to physically abuse their children than those who have had a miscarriage or stillbirth.

The next time you drive around your neighborhood looking at Christmas lights displays, keep Carson Williams of Mason, Ohio in mind.

For three years, Carson has hooked up roughly 25,000 Christmas lights around his home and programed them to . . . well, dance.

To Christmas music.

Playing on FM radio.

Not only has Mr. Williams attracted hundreds if not thousands of people who drive by to view the amazing display, he has also attracted the attention of national media, including NBC’s Today Show and the Associated Press:

This is the third year Williams has assembled the display, which grows every year. He said he merely built on a suggestion from his wife, Sherry.

“She wanted some lights on the house, and I work with computers, so I said, ‘There’s got to be a way to control it with computers,’” Williams said.

He explored the Web and found examples of other synchronized displays. It takes him about an hour to program each minute of the display, which flashes to music by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

That doesn’t mean neighbors have to listen to the sound track repeat itself all night.

“The sound, we actually broadcast on a low FM transmitter, so there’s actually no sound in the neighborhood,” said Williams, an electrical engineer with Cincinnati Bell Technology Solutions.

A sign tells passers-by where to tune to listen, and Williams often stays outside for hours at a time chatting with visitors and directing traffic.

Williams hasn’t had any problems with neighbors so far, and he has said that if anyone complains about the display he will shut it down. You can read the entire article about him and his house here.

Make sure you check out this incredible three minute video showing how the whole thing works! Remember to turn on your speakers, so you experience the whole thing with the music! (The ending is especially fantastic.)
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