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
