Today’s Links: December 14, 2011

OPINION

JOHN STOSSEL: “Job Creators Fight Back
“Government has no money of its own. All it does is take from some people and give to others, leaving less money in the private sector for job creation. Actually, it’s worse than that. Since government commandeers scarce resources by force and doesn’t have to peddle its so-called services on the market to consenting buyers, there’s no feedback mechanism to indicate if those services are worth more to people than what they were forced to go without.”

RAMESH PONNORU: “Inequality Talk Will Get Obama Nowhere
“President Barack Obama wants to spend the next year talking about economic inequality. Republicans shouldn’t take the bait. In a speech last week in Kansas, the President presented rising economic inequality as the defining issue of our time. As is often true of political speeches, Obama didn’t make anything resembling a tight logical case. Instead he relied heavily on caricature (Republicans allegedly want everyone ‘to fend for themselves and play by their own rules’) and dubious assertion (supposedly there are billionaires who pay only 1 percent of their income in taxes).”

VIRGINIA POSTREL: “U.S. Universities Feast on Federal Student Aid
“Any serious policy reform has to start by considering a heretical idea: Federal subsidies intended to make college more affordable may have encouraged rapidly rising tuitions. It’s not as crazy as it might sound.”

NEWS

MARKET – Your Face is Being Tracked
“Intel’s AIM Suite digital signs use facial detection cameras and software to determine a consumer’s age and gender, and then tailors their ads. If an 23-year old woman walks by the sign, it might display an ad for a hair product. But if a 53-year old man strolls past, a BMW ad may be displayed.”

HEALTH – Dem Senators to Obama Administration: On Plan B, It’s Put Up or Shut Up
“It isn’t every day that 14 Senators aggressively call out their own party’s Health and Human Services Secretary, imply that a major decision made their own party’s adminstration was not based on science, and demand proof to the contrary. But that’s exactly what’s happening right now in the dust up over the Obama administration’s decision not to relax restrictions on access to Plan B. “