Today’s Links: July 16, 2012

OPINION

MICHAEL HASTINGS: “Bright Lights, Big Secret”
“It’s been exactly 372 days since Vargas revealed, in a New York Times Magazine cover story, that he was an undocumented worker. An undocumented reporter, no less, who’d won a Pulitzer Prize and written for the country’s most esteemed publications, like The Washington Post and The New Yorker.”

JAIME JOYCE: “The Evolving State of Physician-Assisted Suicide”
“Should terminally ill patients have the right to kill themselves? Voters in Massachusetts will soon decide. Last Wednesday, the Secretary of the Commonwealth announced that on November 6, 2012, when Bay State voters go to the polls to pick the next President, they will also have their say on a ballot measure called the Death with Dignity Act.”

ALAN REYNOLDS: “The CBO on Falling Incomes and Rising Tax Shares of the Top 1%”
“A favorite talking point among redistributionists is to say the tax code was much “fairer” under President Bill Clinton, than it has been since the Bush tax cuts of 2003.  New Congressional Budget Office (CBO) figures show that the top 1% paid 21.3% of all federal taxes from 1993 to 2000, when Clinton was president, but they paid 25.1% from 2003 to 2008, after the Bush tax cuts.   If 21.3% was a fair share in the Clinton years, then the top 1% has been paying much more than its fair share since 2003.”

NEWS

UK – Free Access to British Scientific Research Within Two Years
“The government is to unveil controversial plans to make publicly funded scientific research immediately available for anyone to read for free by 2014, in the most radical shakeup of academic publishing since the invention of the internet.”

ITALY – Italy Eyeing Public Asset Sale to Slash Debt
“Italy’s new finance minister said the government could raise up to 20 billion euros a year in public asset sales, and accused the markets of failing to recognise Rome’s efforts to bring its finances in order. Vittorio Grilli, who was appointed just last week, also lashed out at rating agencies, in comments to the Corriere della Sera published Sunday in the wake of the decision by Moody’s to downgrade Italian debt.”

FOIE GRAS – San Francisco restaurant defies California’s foie gras ban
“Housed in a converted infantry barracks on a former U.S. Army base, the Presidio Social Club never attracted much attention from San Francisco’s avid gourmets — until Saturday night. That’s when foie gras lovers descended on the restaurant to have their first taste of the delicacy since California imposed a ban on July 1.”