HT Ben Cunningham:

RCP:

John Locke Foundation:

North Carolina’s system of taxation aggressively interferes with individual liberty and retards economic growth. It does this by using the tax system to reward some activities and penalize others; by placing multiple layers of taxation on saving, investment, and entrepreneurship; and by promoting forms of taxation, the best example being the corporate income tax, that are completely hidden from those who pay. Because taxation inherently interferes with both personal freedom and economic decision-making, policymakers need to be vigilant about not only how much revenue is being generated but also how those revenues are collected. Some types of taxation are more damaging to freedom and prosperity than others. It is quite clear that our current system has been developed without any attention to this fact and without an understanding of how socially damaging a poorly designed tax system can be.

Pejman Yousefzadeh:

It needn’t be this way, and it shouldn’t be this way. We are a little over a hundred days into the term of the first African-American President in the nation’s history. Whatever one’s feelings concerning the election of Barack Obama-and I certainly didn’t vote for him-his election proves that we, as a society, have taken a giant leap towards doing what Martin Luther King, Jr. asked us to do in the first place: judging people not by their classifications, but rather, by their talents.

That was a triumph for American society. We have an opportunity to effect a similar triumph with the selection of the next Supreme Court Justice. We ought not to waste it.

Mark Perry:

UK Telegraph – Harriet Harman claims that women earn on average 22.6% less per hour than men and takes it for granted that this difference is the result of discrimination against women by men. And yet the Government’s own figures support no such conclusion. (more…)

Michael Barone column:

Over the past decade, the Gallup organization has been asking Americans whether the seriousness of global warming is generally exaggerated or generally correct. From 1998 to 2007, except for the run-up to the 2004 election, they said it was generally serious by roughly a 2-1 margin — 66 to 30 percent in 2006, for example. But in March 2009, that margin slipped to only 57 to 41 percent, with two-thirds of Republicans and nearly half of independents saying concern is exaggerated.

Similarly, last month, pollster Scott Rasmussen found that only 34 percent believes that global warming is caused by human activity, while 48 percent said it is caused by long-term planetary trends. That’s almost exactly the opposite of what he found 12 months before — 47 to 34 percent the other way around. However, 48 percent of the group Rasmussen calls the “Political Class” — in other words, the elite — continues to believe global warming is man-made.

On guns, Gallup has been testing opinion for many years on one extreme proposal that is the goal, usually unstated, of many gun-control advocates: banning the possession of handguns. Support was 60 percent in 1960 and 49 percent in 1965. It was as high as 43 percent in the early 1990s, before the Clinton Congress passed the so-called assault weapons ban.

Politico:

Justice David Souter once said that if a TV camera were ever allowed inside the Supreme Court, it would have to “roll over my dead body.”

Souter’s still alive, but he’s retiring at the end of this term - and advocates for televising the proceedings hope his departure will open the Court’s doors for the cameras to roll in.

This summer’s confirmation hearings for Souter’s replacement will give C-SPAN, which has long wanted to air oral arguments, a chance to push its case with the lawmakers who control the high court’s purse strings. While no sitting justice is on record favoring televised oral arguments - an idea that bubbles up every few years but then recedes from public view - Souter was the proposal’s most ardent public foe.

The Star:

Obama doesn’t have authority to close schools himself. That power rests with local school districts and states.

Newsmax:

If life came down to a jump shot at the buzzer, Rich DeVos would be taking it from well outside the 3-point line.

The Amway Corp. co-founder and owner of the NBA’s Orlando Magic rarely does anything in a small way. His unbending faith and knack for finding the motivational bright spot in even the darkest of moments turned this gritty World War II veteran into a leading businessman, philanthropist, and motivational speaker. [Editor's Note: See the full Rich DeVos interview by going here now]

Since starting selling vitamins in 1959 with his partner, Jay Van Andel,he has become one of the wealthiest men in the world (Forbes tallied his net worth at $3.5 billion in 2007). His Amway empire, and parent company Alticor, spans 40 countries and generated more than $7 billion in revenues in 2007. Clearly, DeVos, 83, likes challenges. He’s not only an evangelist for his Christian faith but also for his country and its free-enterprise system.

Newsmax:

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., says that the Obama administration shouldn’t rule out closing the border with Mexico as a strategy to combat the swine flu.

In an interview with Fox News Thursday, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee said, “We [Senators] urged [Homeland Security] Secretary Janet Napolitano to please keep that option open.”

Lieberman stresses that border closure isn’t a policy that he and other Senators recommend now. “It just seems to us that if we get to a point where contagion can be carried by proximity and there are more of the cases in Mexico, then we want to keep separate for a while.”

Napolitano said in a briefing Thursday, “Closing the entire border would have no benefit at this point because the virus is already in the United States.”

AP:

Jose Canseco used his mammoth muscles to take pitchers deep and trade blows with Danny Bonaduce. Now the former MVP will step onto the mat and try MMA. In his latest attempt to cash in on his flagging post-baseball career, Canseco is set to make his mixed martial arts debut on May 26 in Japan. The former Oakland A’s slugger and tell-all author is fighting South Korean Hong Man Choi on the Dream 9 card in Yokohama Arena. Choi is a 7-foot-2, 330-pound super heavyweight and has a 1-2 record in MMA. “I have no idea if I can do it,” Canseco said Thursday night. “It’s a tough sport.” Canseco has written two books, starred in a pair of reality shows, and had two celebrity boxing bouts since his 17-year baseball career ended. He boxed Bonaduce, a former “Partridge Family” child star, to a majority draw in a match in January. Canseco was listed at 6-4 and 260 pounds for that exhibition bout that featured only three, 1-minute rounds.

AP:

INDIANAPOLIS — The NCAA is trying to end the continual guessing game for college basketball coaches. Next season, coaches will have all their answers by May 8. On Thursday, the NCAA’s board of directors approved legislation that shortens the time players have to withdraw from the NBA draft, moving the date up from mid-June to early May. “This is a topic that I think has been frustrating for the college community as well as the professional community,” Division I vice president David Berst said during a conference call announcing the change. The new rule has attracted support from several key constituencies.

Reuters:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Walt Disney Co will buy a 30 percent stake in Hulu.com, bringing popular TV shows such as “Lost” and “Grey’s Anatomy” to the video website founded by NBC Universal and News Corp.

Disney’s entrance, which comes after months of negotiations, means that three of the four major U.S. broadcast networks now have stakes in Hulu: NBC, News Corp’s Fox and Disney’s ABC. Only CBS Corp is absent.

Hulu officials declined to provide financial details on the deal on Thursday. A source directly involved in the deal, who did not want to be identified because all sides in the deal decided that the terms would be confidential, put Disney’s stake at 30 percent, the same as the other networks.

Disney will get three seats on the 12-member board, the same as News Corp and NBC Universal.

Reuters:

BOSTON (Reuters) - Oracle Corp, the world’s No. 2 business software maker, plans to expand its small line of programs that companies access via the Web, said a person familiar with the strategy.

The person, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the plan, said that Oracle is developing Internet-based programs to help businesses manage human resources functions including employee recruitment.

The company is also expanding its line of customer relationship management software, or CRM programs, which companies use to manage sales and marketing activities, the person said.

Those CRM programs compete with ones from Salesforce.com Inc, the biggest provider of Web-based programs, which are known in the tech industry as software as a service or SaaS.

Reuters:

(Reuters) - Social-networking website Facebook has held meetings with private equity firms to explore raising another round of funding, the New York Post reported on Thursday, citing sources.

Facebook could not be immediately reached for comment.

Facebook held “valuation discussions” with Providence Equity Partners, General Atlantic, Bain Capital, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, among others, the paper said, citing multiple sources close to or involved in the situation.

The process has been informal and no term sheets have been drawn up, the sources told the paper.

The private-equity firms value the website in the $2 billion to $3 billion range, lower than Facebook’s estimate of $5 billion to $6 billion, the sources told the paper.

Reuters:

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Palm Inc’s highly anticipated Pre smartphone costs around $170 to make, according to analysis by research group iSuppli released on Wednesday.

Although the Pre has not yet shipped and Palm has yet to announce a release date, iSuppli said it generated the estimate of the device’s hardware and manufacturing costs based on second-quarter component and assembly pricing.

ISuppli expects Palm will try to sell the Pre to wireless carrier Sprint Nextel Corp for about $300, but said the actual cost to consumers will be around $200 due to an expected carrier subsidy.

Reuters:

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Today’s Twitters are often tomorrow’s quitters, according to data that questions the long-term success of the latest social networking sensation used by celebrities from Oprah Winfrey to Britney Spears.

Data from Nielsen Online, which measures Internet traffic, found that more than 60 percent of Twitter users stopped using the free social networking site a month after joining.

“Twitter’s audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month’s users who come back the following month, is currently about 40 percent,” David Martin, Nielsen Online’s vice president of primary research, said in a statement.

Heritage:

President Obama’s recently released “Budget Blueprint” proposes raising the tax rate on capital gains from 15 percent to 20 percent.[1] In real terms (that is, adjusted for inflation), the tax rate on capital gains already far exceeds 20 percent.

Inflation Drives up Real Capital Gains Tax Rate

The price of assets such as stocks, real estate, and collectibles must increase to keep up with inflation and maintain their value. The simple analogy is to wage gains. If inflation is 4 percent, then an individual’s real wages–i.e., wages after inflation–must increase by at least 4 percent, or else he takes a pay cut.

The tax on capital gains, however, does not recognize that such gains are illusory in that they do not increase the asset holder’s real wealth. As a result, the tax applies to both real gains and gains resulting from inflation; thus, the effective capital gains tax rate is much higher than the statutory rate (the 15 percent rate specified in law). The real effective tax rate in this case is the rate paid by an investor after accounting for the effects of inflation.

Heritage:

Every decent person abhors violent crimes that are motivated by prejudice or bias. Thus, the case for congressional legislation that would expand federal authority that already prohibits some “hate crimes”[1] may seem compelling. But the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 (H.R. 1913, HCPA) is based on serious analytical and constitutional flaws and would actually be counterproductive to prosecuting violent crime.

The HCPA builds off of a powerful truth: Racially motivated violence is especially repugnant. The Fourteenth Amendment was enacted to ensure that no state would deny the equal protection of its laws. Yet there is no serious argument that any particular state does not enforce its civil and criminal laws against violence in an even-handed manner today. Indeed, 45 of the 50 states have enacted “hate crimes” statutes that increase the punishment for crimes of violence and intimidation that are motivated by bias.

Center for College Affordability:

Financial aid programs are supposed to improve access and affordability in higher education. The effectiveness of these programs is increasingly being questioned as college attainment figures stagnate and the financial burden on students and families continues to climb year after year. This report identifies the main culprit for this unsatisfactory state of affairs as a misunderstanding of the effect of financial aid on schools.

Heritage:

A Heritage survey of the Members of the 111th Congress revealed that 44 percent of Senators and 36 percent of Representatives had sent their children to private schools. A failed amendment on behalf of the popular and successful D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program would have passed if Members of Congress who exercised school choice for their own children had voted in favor of the amendment.

Independence Institute:

Research on school choice programs shows parental choice in education benefits the individual, the community, and the school system. Students reap academic benefits while choice acts as an incentive for system-wide improvement. The chronology of choice is the struggle to give every child the chance to attend a good school.

Lexington Institute:

All signs point to the $787 billion federal economic-stimulus package signed into law on February 17 by President Obama becoming just the beginning of a major increase in governmental involvement in early childhood education, particularly of 3- and 4-year-olds.

The question is whether the billions of borrowed money will be spent on programs that maximize returns on the investment, or mainly benefit teacher unions by adding thousands of new, government-certified teachers to their membership rolls.

The 3.2-million-member National Education Association has invested heavily in promoting universal, government-run pre-kindergarten. The union has asserted consistently that “public schools should be the primary provider of pre-k programs, and all funding must be allocated to them in the same manner as K-12 schools.”

New Jersey is one state that already is dangling extra tax dollars in front of local districts that agree to use part of their federal stimulus aid for expanded public preschool. State education officials recently said the incentive funds could go for expanding preschool programs, hiring new government-certified teachers, or other costs.

City Journal:

Pedagogy of the Oppressed has achieved near-iconic status in America’s teacher-training programs. In 2003, David Steiner and Susan Rozen published a study examining the curricula of 16 schools of education-14 of them among the top-ranked institutions in the country, according to U.S. News and World Report-and found that Pedagogy of the Oppressed was one of the most frequently assigned texts in their philosophy of education courses. These course assignments are undoubtedly part of the reason that, according to the publisher, almost 1 million copies have sold, a remarkable number for a book in the education field.

The odd thing is that Freire’s magnum opus isn’t, in the end, about education-certainly not the education of children. Pedagogy of the Oppressed mentions none of the issues that troubled education reformers throughout the twentieth century: testing, standards, curriculum, the role of parents, how to organize schools, what subjects should be taught in various grades, how best to train teachers, the most effective way of teaching disadvantaged students. This ed-school bestseller is, instead, a utopian political tract calling for the overthrow of capitalist hegemony and the creation of classless societies. Teachers who adopt its pernicious ideas risk harming their students-and ironically, their most disadvantaged students will suffer the most.

WDAF:

OVERLAND PARK, KAN - One Overland Park man has neighbors crying foul for fighting to keep his chicken coop in the backyard. David Crupper wants to keep four of his chickens in his back yard so he can have fresh eggs and use the bird droppings for fertilizer.

During a Planning Commission meeting, there were mixed views from neighbors about whether a chicken coop should be in a residential neighborhood.

Elizabeth Miller has lived in her house for 35 years and she’s upset that Crupper won approval from the Planning Commission to keep his chicken.

“I don’t like it at all, if they want chickens they ought to go to a farm, to me that’s where chickens belong,” Miller said.

Crupper said the coop isn’t much different than a dog house and he said the chickens are not as loud as a barking dog.