WORST. PROGRAM. EVER. Via Tyler Cowen, Human Events lists the “ten most harmful government programs,” two of which — income tax withholding and earmarking — aren’t programs at all. The super-popular pillars of the social insurance state — Social Security (#1), Medicare (#2), and Medicaid (#7) — all make the list, along with genuinely harmful farm subsidies at number five in a tie with “contraceptive funding.” Rounding things out are affirmative action and the obscure-until-last-fall Davis-Bacon Act. Liberals need, I think, to do a better job of generating public understanding that irregardless of what any given politician has to say on any given day, this stuff represents the real goals of the conservative movement.
–Matthew Yglesias
