Front Row

Funky Time
Italy may be in a funk, with a shrinking economy and a high unemployment rate, but the United States can learn a lot from it, and not just about the benefits of public health care. Italians live longer. Their poverty rate is much lower than ours. If they lose their jobs or suffer some other misfortune, they can turn to a more generous social safety net. (Eduardo Porter, NYT, 8/14/2012)

So Eduardo thinks Italy is just the cat's pajamas, what with all the free stuff. Well let's check in with another source: The New York Times. Oh, wait a minute, it's the same source.

...For many Romans, this seaside town at the fringe of the capital has long been an arena of summertime rituals, where crowds of children built wobbly castles of soot-colored sand, parents snoozed in clusters, and beachfront resorts bustled with sun-soaked hordes of vacationers.

Not this year. Even now, at the height of the summer, chairs sit forlornly under the colorfully patterned beach umbrellas. Where there were once waiting lists for changing cabins, now there are vacancies. Despite their whimsical names — il Corallo (the coral), il Delfino (the dolphin), l’Oasi (the oasis) — the dozens of bathing establishments that have served as a seasonal escape for generations of Romans cannot escape hard times. (NYT, 8/14/2012)

Oops! Seems like we have a bit of cognitive dissonance here.

Eco-Boost
What is feasible is to look at the overall impact of a set of policies. For example, a general increase in socialistic policies tends to lower economic growth. And, more specifically, the Obama administration's weakening of individual incentives to work and produce by its sharp expansion of transfer payments can be reasonably viewed as retarding the U.S. economic recovery since the end of the recession in 2009. (Robert J. Barro, professor of economics at Harvard, WSJ, 8/14/2012)

The Romney-Ryan ticket gets another boost today when about 400 prominent economists from industry and academia endorsed his economic revival and jobs plan. We came across an advance copy of the statement which reads: "We enthusiastically endorse Governor Mitt Romney's economic plan to create jobs and restore economic growth while returning America to its tradition of economic freedom. The plan is based on proven principles: a more contained and less intrusive federal government, a greater reliance on the private sector…" The statement refutes many of the Obama campaign's loud claims that Mr. Romney's math doesn't add up. (WSJ, 8/14/2012)

So - taking a page out of the Liberal playbook - RedStateVT declares that the failure of Obama's economic policies is now "settled science."