In an Op Ed by Michael Reagan from today’s Washington Times:

More than three decades ago, my father took ownership of the smoking ruins of the American economy armed with nothing more than four very basic principles: Keep taxes low, restrain government spending, minimize the amount of regulation on private enterprise and keep the money supply sound.

His approach may have appeared basic, but the results were unassailable. Over the next eight years, more than 16 million new private-sector jobs were created, a payroll expansion of 17.6 percent.

It was called the “American Miracle” and was replicated by world leaders across the globe, who met with similar success.

Looking back at it from a distance, it’s remarkable to me that the concepts that worked so amazingly well just a short time ago have fallen so far to the wayside.

Well, the rest of the column speaks for itself.

During a time when most companies appear to be insecure about adding to their payrolls because of the uncertainty surrounding our economy, this country would be wise to carefully study why Texas employers seem to be largely immune to this insecurity.

Ay men!

There’s something in one of Seth’s email inboxes that I’ve been delegated to monitoring when I have time, called The Robbins Report, that has an interesting piece within that I’d like to share.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have been posted to the web outside mailings to subscribers and I can’t get a link yet, so:

I’ll copy and paste it into this post and hope a link becomes available quickly.

Enjoy

Sarah Palin’s critics routinely mock her intellect, so when the state of Alaska released 24,000 emails she wrote while serving as governor, “AOL Weird News,” an offbeat component of AOL.com, had a representative sample analyzed to see how well she wrote. They expected the results to confirm their anti-Palin bias, but they were in for a surprise.

Far from being an illiterate bumpkin, the standard Flesch-Kincaid readability test showed that Ms. Palin’s emails were written at an 8.5 grade level. This was “an excellent score for a chief executive,” AOLWN reported. To put some perspective on this number, Martin Luther King’s August 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech — much more heavily edited than Ms. Palin’s emails — ranked at 8.8 on the same scale, while Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address came in at 9.1.

A study by Smart Politics on the readability ratings of recent State of the Union addresses also showed Ms. Palin in good company. President George H.W. Bush’s average SOTU score was 8.6. Bill Clinton came in at 9.5. Ronald Reagan, who like Ms. Palin was heavily criticized by liberals and regarded as a doddering old fool, logged an impressive 10.3 rating. And George W. Bush, who earned even more left-wing contempt than Mr. Reagan, if that’s possible, edged the Great Communicator with a10.4 ranking.

Then there is President Obama, heralded as the smartest president and the most gifted orator in living memory, but whose 2008 “Yes we can!” victory speech came in at a comparatively anemic Flesch-Kincaid rating of 7.4. Some numbers just speak for themselves.

Well, well.

And speaking of President Obama…

As President Obama shifts increasingly into reelection mode, he is feeling persistent anger and discontent from the left as well as the right.

White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer was heckled and booed Friday at the annual Netroots Nation conference in Minnesota, a gathering of liberal activists from the online political community. When Mr. Pfeiffer reminded the audience that the president championed an equal-pay law, the moderator replied, “Frankly we’re a little sick of hearing about that one.”

Less than 24 hours earlier, White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley heard heated complaints from business leaders about burdensome government regulations at a meeting of the National Association of Manufacturers in Washington. As Mr. Daley listened to tales of the administration’s unnecessary interference in industry, he replied, “Sometimes you can’t defend the indefensible.”

Indeed you can’t.

I am in Manhattan for a couple of days (I can’t really stand the place anymore, it’s become so much more abrasive, overpriced and less pleasant since my first experience with the borough, but that’s another story).

Earlier today I was walking across one of the many parks (one of Manhattan’s few saving graces), Madison Square Park at 23rd Street and Broadway, when a scene on one of the benches caused me to stop and, well, rubberneck.

There was a man sitting there eating a sandwich. He appeared totally inoffensive (clean shaven, well groomed and neatly dressed). There was a small backpack sitting on the bench beside him and there were no other people sitting anywhere nearby.

There were five N.Y. Police officers standing around him, four patrolmen and one whose uniform included a white shirt who I think must have been a lieutenant, and they seemed to be giving him a hard time.

As I listened, the situation became apparent: In New York City, on top of the recently enacted law against smoking in city parks, on beaches or on city owned public concourses, there is also a law against placing ones backpack on a bench, thereby occupying a second space. It evidently doesn’t matter whether there’s anyone sitting nearby or anyone wanting, or not wanting, to sit where the backpack is sitting.

The police were threatening to give the man a ticket if he didn’t place the backpack on the ground.

This seems rather excessive to me in terms of the authority of the law, or whatever it’s called.

If my knowledge of American History is at all accurate, I could swear that a war was fought back in the 1770s to free Americans of such oppressive micromanagement, just as it was fought to liberate the people from the kind of overbearing taxation, including taxation without representation, as we are experiencing today.

I only hope those police officers don’t DARE have the nerve to expect extra pay for working the 4th of July or to barbecue and otherwise enjoy having the holiday off, because their in any way benefiting from Independence Day would be profound hypocrisy, just as would be the lawmakers who come up with such laws and, of course, the weasel named Michael Bloomberg.