Richard J Grant

Published in The Tennessean , Sunday, January 30, 2011 Innovation versus the Sputnik fallacy by Richard J. Grant In Lake Wobegon, are all the subsidies above average? Does everyone receive more in payments from the government than they pay in taxes? Lake Wobegon's above-average students would recognize immediately that it is impossible to receive such across-the-board subsidies from Lake Wobegon's government alone. The extra resources would necessarily come from outsiders, perhaps from a neighboring county. No doubt President Barack Obama had visions of America as one big Lake Wobegon when he warned us that, “This is our generation's Sputnik moment.” He fears that we might be falling behind in scientific research, noting that China has become “the home to the world's largest solar research facility and the world's fastest computer.” His solution is to subsidize innovation, whatever he imagines that to be. It is of course quite likely, if we send more research dollar...

Published in The Tennessean , Sunday, January 23, 2011 Healthy government protects citizens, their property by Richard J. Grant With the advent of personal computers, we heard talk of something called the “information society.” It is certainly true that this new technology enabled us to save, process, and communicate certain types of information more cheaply and efficiently than ever before. But a bigger truth is that we have always lived in an information society. Thousands of years ago, the acquisition and interpretation of information was no less important to the survival of our ancestors than it is to ours today. Knowledge of how to find food and to evade enemies and other threats has always been important. We have also benefited from the improvement and use of tools and the expanded production of consumer goods that this made possible. We see the still-evolving Internet as a great and complex innovation, which it is. A spinoff from Defense Department research, it took on a life of...

Published in The Tennessean , Sunday, January 16, 2011 Palin's character carries her through adversity by Richard J. Grant In autumn 2008, just before the elections, some colleagues asked whether or not I considered Sarah Palin qualified to be president. My reply was, “She doesn't have to be. She just has to be better qualified than Obama and Biden.” Was she better qualified? Two years later, a poll by Rasmussen Reports found that “52 percent of likely U.S. voters say their own views are closer to Sarah Palin’s than they are to President Obama’s.” This was reflected in the 2010 election results when voters rejected the president's big-government agenda by severely reducing his congressional support. Though few admit it, Sarah Palin has shaken up both parties. Character and ideas have consequences. It has not been lost on the political professionals that, after two years of observation, the American people show a greater affinity to the constitutional attitude of the hockey ...

Published in The Tennessean , Sunday, January 9, 2011 Charities should reconsider their support for the estate tax by Richard J. Grant After the recent tax debate, Congress chose to keep most of the major tax rates where they were in 2010. One rate that will be higher is the estate tax. But a more interesting fact is the source of some support for the estate tax. It is understandable that a benefactor and possible heirs would oppose the existence of an estate tax. It reduces their choices. Any after-tax uses to which they could put their wealth would also likely be available in the absence of the tax. A non-taxed estate could be bequeathed to any heir, which could include any relative, friend, organization, charity, or even a government treasury. It doesn't work the other way around. The estate tax takes from the estate a portion of any wealth that is not allocated to governmentally approved uses. Contributions to any organization that the government deems to be a “charity” would b...

Published in The Tennessean , Sunday, January 2, 2011 New year means time to repeal ‘euphemisms’ by Richard J. Grant At the beginning of each New Year, we like to believe that we can have a fresh start. And sometimes we really need one. The trouble with fresh starts is that they don't start from where we would like to be, they start from “here.” This year we start from where the 111th Congress left off. We must recover from two years of overdosing on a witches’ brew of one part Obama administration with two pinches of Democratic majorities. This year begins with one less pinch. Historians might one day characterize this political brew as “death by a thousand euphemisms.” The administration began with the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.” This particular act was an attempt to take credit for what would have happened had the act not been passed. As we often say about justice, recovery delayed is recovery denied. It is a trait of progressives to feel satisfied with the...