Sunday digest II

- "Family Guy" has officially jumped the shark with that ridiculous "Shipoopi" bit tonight.

- Now this is some good writing - a journalist enrolls in a University of Chicago economics class for a bit and goes on to tell the tale. Lengthy, but definitely worth the read, especially in light of Milton Friedman's recent passing. I couldn't help but contrast how one of my old profs defined politics - "the systematic organization of hatred" - with how I think the prof profiled in the article would - the struggle to resolve the tension between fairness and efficiency.

- This is a devastating libertarian critique of mainstream American conservatism. The article itself is also lengthy, like the last one, and is best read when you are able to give it the attention it deserves because its philosophical thrust can be a little dense. Here are some practical excerpts that are worth keeping in mind the next time you are tempted to think of W. as some kind of far-right reductionist, or Bill Clinton as a statist liberal, for that matter. With data like this staring them right in the face, I have to wonder what kind of legacy the eventual Republican nominee in 2008 is going to inherit, and more importantly, who has an ego big enough to want to?

Government spending has increased faster under George Bush and his Republican Congress than it did under Bill Clinton, and more people work for the federal government today than at any time since the end of the Cold War. During Bush’s first term, total government spending skyrocketed from $1.86 trillion to $2.48 trillion, an increase of 33 percent (almost $23,000 per household, the highest level since World War II). The federal budget grew by $616.4 billion during Bush’s first term in office. If post 9/11 defense spending is taken off the table, domestic spending has ballooned by 23 percent since Bush took office. When Bill Clinton left office in 2000, federal spending equaled 18.5 percent of the gross domestic product, but by the end of the first Bush administration, government outlays had increased to 20.3 percent of the GDP. The annualized growth rate of non-defense and non-homeland-security outlays has more than doubled from 2.1 percent under Clinton to 4.8 percent under Bush.

The most damning indictment of Republican profligacy can be seen in the Republicans’ abuse of non-entitlement spending. Discretionary spending at the federal level has increased by 49 percent since President Bush was sworn in to office. But lest we think that President Bush is the only big spender in the GOP, let us not forget that discretionary spending has exploded since the Republicans took over Congress in 1995. Between 1995 and 2005, the number of congressional “pork barrel” projects added to Republican congressional budgets increased from 1,439 (costing $10 billion) to 13,997 (costing $27.3 billion), a staggering tenfold increase. By the end of President Bush’s first term, every single domestic agency of the federal government (with the exception of the Environmental Protection Agency) experienced inflation-adjusted budget increases. Since it took control of both the White House and Capitol Hill, the Republican Party has presided over the biggest explosion in federal spending and the greatest extension of the welfare state since Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society programs of the 1960s.

What a disgrace.