IN THE MAIL: From Michael Wade, How to Make Presentations to Councils and Boards.

INDIANA AND WISCONSIN court businesses fleeing Illinois tax increase.

CUTTING THE DEFICIT: $156 billion in low-hanging fruit.

ANN ALTHOUSE:

Some people seek power for the wrong reasons or go astray after they’ve reached power. We need to observe the government with a clear, active, and critical eye. I can certainly understand how someone who holds power would love to turn off the criticism, but that is not the system we have, and it’s self-serving for government officials to tell us to inculcate these false beliefs in children.

It would make more sense to teach creationism instead of evolution than to teach these wishful lies about government since children need to learn how to be effective citizens and lulling them into passive admiration of the government undermines the democratic process. Believing or not believing in creationism, by contrast, isn’t going to change what happened in the grand expanse of evolutionary time.

Indeed.

EXIT AND VOICE IN ILLINOIS: Larry Ribstein on the Lame Duck tax increase. “Obese states should remember that the best way to lose weight is to stop eating. This will lead to reduced services, which will anger voters. But the tax ‘solution’ will drive out the most mobile residents and investors. It’s not pretty, but unfortunately for profligate governments, push has come to shove. And, by the way, the U.S. also has to worry about residents and capital markets.”

DAN MITCHELL: Texas, California, And The Tale Of The Coyote.

GOLD PRICE BUBBLE “a high probability?” Personally, I find the notion that gold is overvalued more comforting than the notion that it’s undervalued. . . .

BYRON YORK: GOP gears up again to strip NPR of federal funds.

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: Aftermath of Arizona shooting: More guns in more hands? “Despite gun control efforts in Congress in the wake of the Arizona shooting, it’s unlikely that America will see more gun control laws. In fact, the opposite may happen, at least in Arizona.”

MARIN COUNTY, HOTBED OF RACISM? HUD busts the liberal bastion (Barbara Boxer’s former district!) for insufficient minority population.

AT AMAZON, it’s the Friday Sale.

REASON TV: Former LA Mayor Richard Riordan on Schwarzenegger, Unions, and Bankrupt Cities.

WHY THEY’D RATHER TALK ABOUT SARAH PALIN (CONT’D): Inflation rate headed up? The impact of higher food, energy prices.

Related: Producer Prices Up the Most in 11 Months in December.

Americans frantically buying silver coins?

THE MANOLO SAYS CIVILIZATION HAS COME TO AN END. “Manolo says, yes, it has come to this. For the people who believe that readjusting the Snuggie when you move from the Barcolounger to the mobility scooter is too much work, comes the Forever Lazy, described as: ‘the one piece, lie around, lounge around, full body lazy wear!’ (Please note that the exclamation mark is in the original, apparently the punctuational celebration of sloth rewarded.)”

He must be right. When I posted this on Facebook, everybody wanted one. Well, with the new ice age coming, and oil heading to $100 a barrel, you have to keep warm somehow: Soon, everyone will be wearing them everywhere. Forever Lazy — It’s like the Mao Suit of the hope-n-change era!

DAILY CALLER: Congressmen want increased security for themselves — but are they in more danger than teachers and doctors? No, but they’re more important, don’t y’know.

Threats and attacks are serious concerns, but are they serious enough to justify special treatment at already-well-secured airports because some lawmakers feel “ill-at-ease” around the general public?

According to data from the Bureau of Labor, those precautions are probably justifiable so long as social workers and primary school teachers get to skip TSA pat-downs, bus drivers and animal trainers are given security details and health-care professionals are allowed to work with patients from behind three inches of shatter-proof glass.

As for salesmen, retail workers and their managers, they should all be issued a concealed-carry permit.

Being a member of Congress is a very safe job. Please just try to do it, instead of passing more special privileges for yourselves.

WHY THEY’D RATHER TALK ABOUT SARAH PALIN (CONT’D): AP: Over 1 million Americans seen losing homes in 2011. “The bleakest year in the foreclosure crisis has only just begun. . . . Lenders are poised to take back more homes this year than any other since the U.S. housing meltdown began in 2006. About 5 million borrowers are at least two months behind on their mortgages and industry experts say more people will miss payments because of job losses and also loans that exceed the value of the homes they are living in.”

REPUBLICAN REP. PETER KING plans to go ahead with dumb anti-gun bill establishing floating gun-free zones around Congressmen. He claims he’s got GOP support. The GOP had better hope he’s wrong — if this turkey passes, they’re in big trouble next election cycle.

More on King’s dumb idea here.

ONE MAN’S LOSING FIGHT against Ladies’ Nights.

UNSUSTAINABLE: “The problem, obviously, is the debt, not the debt limit. But the public’s focus on the debt ceiling presents both an opportunity and a hazard for Republicans–an opportunity, if they can extract substantial spending cuts and other relief in exchange for what I assume is an inevitable increase in the limit; and a hazard if they can’t, and if voters perceive an extension of the limit as evidence that Republicans aren’t following through on their promises.”

SALESMANSHIP: Dear Tea Party Morons.

I don’t know how much credibility Grover Norquist has to lose, but this isn’t helping. Anyway, count me as a supporter of President Obama’s war effort, not Norquist’s duck-and-run approach.

JOHN HINDERAKER: SUPPORT THE ALTERNATIVES.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: THE MAJOR POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF QE2.

In his 1991 book, “Monetary Mischief,” Friedman concludes from his lifelong study of monetary policy that there is a pattern in the lags.

Six to nine months after an injection to the money supply, there is a short-term increase in economic activity. After 24 months, inflation appears and is persistent until money growth is slowed, another recession occurs, and 24 months pass before the inflation is abated.

If these lags are superimposed on the nation’s political calendar, there is a disturbing conclusion.

A short-term increase in economic activity will occur before the 2012 presidential election, and a virulent inflation will occur after the votes are in.

Read the whole thing. I wonder, however, if Friedman’s timetable still holds true in our more tightly-coupled era.

DIRE STRAITS NOW banned in Canada as homophobic.

KIRSTEN POWERS: Obama Should Have Been Harder On the Anti-Palin Smears. “Sure, the president provided his usual inspiration, but he failed to shut down the ridiculous media meme that right-wing talk radio was responsible for the Arizona shootings. And how are ordinary Americans to blame?”

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: DFW VP Quits Amid Investigation Of Congresswoman’s Scholarships. “A DFW International Airport vice-president quit Thursday morning amid an investigation into a college scholarship his daughter received from Dallas Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson.” (D-TX).