Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal reports that General Motors is getting ready to pay back some of the money it borrowed from the federal government ahead of schedule. That sounds like good news, until you learn that it is paying back the loan with money cash it got from the auto bailout.

General Motors Co. plans to begin paying back a $6.7 billion loan it owes the U.S. government starting late this year, putting it on track to potentially repay the entire note by the middle of 2011, said a person familiar with the matter.

The Wall Street Journal reports that next year's state budget problems will likely be larger than this year's.

Short-term budget gaps have battered states as revenues plummeted during the recession. Aided by about $250 billion in funds from the stimulus package expected through the end of next year, states managed to close the gaps this year. But both finance directors, speaking at a Pew Center on the States event in Washington, were pessimistic about their states' futures beyond fiscal 2011.

Scott Gottlieb writes in the Wall Street Journal that three flawed policy decisions have led to a shortage of swine flu vaccine in the United States.

The first fateful policy decision, made last spring, was to forgo vaccine additives—called adjuvants—that activate the immune system and make shots more potent. Adjuvants allow a smaller supply of vaccine stock to be stretched across more doses. These adjuvants are included in H1N1 vaccines world-wide, but not in the U.S.

Scott Gottlieb writes in the Wall Street Journal that three flawed policy decisions have led to a shortage of swine flu vaccine in the United States.

The first fateful policy decision, made last spring, was to forgo vaccine additives—called adjuvants—that activate the immune system and make shots more potent. Adjuvants allow a smaller supply of vaccine stock to be stretched across more doses. These adjuvants are included in H1N1 vaccines world-wide, but not in the U.S.

The Wall Street Journal has discovered yet another government giveaway program tucked into the federal stimulus bill. Did you know there's a tax credit for buying an electric car ... and that it applies to electric golf carts?

Congress's fabulous golf cart stimulus.

We thought cash for clunkers was the ultimate waste of taxpayer money, but as usual we were too optimistic. Thanks to the federal tax credit to buy high-mileage cars that was part of President Obama's stimulus plan, Uncle Sam is now paying Americans to buy that great necessity of modern life, the golf cart.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Ted Olsen stands up for the First Amendment, even when the political elites find it annoying.

Is outlawing political speech based on the identity of the speaker compatible with the First Amendment? Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will hear arguments to determine the answer to this question.

The Wall Street Journal notes the work of our colleagues at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in showing the ineffeciency of government-directed economic subsidies.

For the past 14 years, Lansing politicians have offered $3.3 billion in tax credits through the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and spent another $1.6 billion in outlays to create and retain jobs. The subsidies have ranged from tax breaks for Hollywood, to money for new industrial plants, to millions for TV ads starring Jeff Daniels and Tim Allen talking about business and tourism in the state.

Here's a little known Transparency fact, "The dream of state-provided transparency goes back as least as far as Abraham Lincoln, who established the Government Printing Office, which disseminates documents like the Congressional Record, on his first day in office in 1861." Printing and distributing for free a printed record may have been a novel idea at the time. But times and technology have changed. Sadly much of our government has been stuck in 1860's thinking and hasn't kept up with the possibilities of the digital age.

Someday your government may have as little privacy as you do.

Katherine Mangu-Ward
AUGUST 21, 2009, 1:03 P.M. ET

I've spoken in the past on how cap-and-trade can be an effective, market-based way to limit unwanted emissions. If done properly, cap-and-trade is a powerful tool that imposes a proper price on externalities, and solves the ever-vexing "Tragedy of the Commons".

Regardless of your opinion of cap-and-trade schemes generally, David Schoenbrod and Richard Stewart write in the Wall Street Journal that the Waxman-Markey bill moving through Congress isn't it.

One of the most clever and sinister ideas every devised by a government bureaucrat is the concept of automatically withholding the payroll tax. With every paycheck the government involuntarily takes a portion of your money before it ever reaches your wallet.