The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
The Secret of Perpetual Motion
Dan Chapman of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution thinks high gas prices are a good thing. We have to admit we were skeptical at first, but the guy’s got science to prove it:
Other health benefits accrue to higher gas prices. Charles Courtemanche, an economics professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, recently published a study showing that a sustained $1 increase in the price of a gallon of gas results in a 10 percent drop in the nation’s obesity rate.
Americans who walk and bike more often and eat at restaurants less often will suffer fewer obesity-related diseases. Every $1 uptick in gas prices saves 11,000 lives and $11 billion in health-care costs annually.
With a U.S. population of 311 million, all it would take would be a gas tax of $28,272 a gallon, and no one would ever die. As an added benefit, between the revenue from the new tax and the $311 trillion annual health-care cost savings, the budget would be balanced in no time!
Union Chutzpah
“The Florida House delivered a major blow to public employee unions Friday, approving a bill that would ban automatic dues deduction from a government paycheck and require members to sign off on the use of their dues for political purposes,” the Orlando Sentinel reports. Union bosses and Democrats are predictably outraged:
“It’s about silencing the opposition. That’s not democratic,” said Rep. Richard Steinberg, D-Miami Beach.
During the last general election cycle, the statewide teachers’ union gave more than $3.4 million in campaign contributions, mostly to Democrats. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees doled out nearly $1.4 million, much of it directly to the state Democratic Party. And the AFL-CIO and other labor groups gave hundreds of thousands of dollars more. . . .
“This bill aims to do nothing more than silencing dissent,” said Florida Education Association President Andy Ford. “The lawmakers who voted for this bill have signaled their desire to use the power of government to single out and attack the hardworking men and women who serve Florida in public employment.”
The chutzpah of these people is amazing. They are the ones coercively collecting money from “hardworking men and women” to use for their own purposes, and they expect people to believe that stripping them of the power to do so is an attack on their victims.
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for thef “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”
