“Obama has added bullet points bragging about his own accomplishments to the biographical sketches of every single U.S. president since Calvin Coolidge (except, for some reason, Gerald Ford). Here are a few examples:

“• On Feb. 22, 1924 Calvin Coolidge became the first president to make a public radio address to the American people. President Coolidge later helped create the Federal Radio Commission, which has now evolved to become the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). President Obama became the first president to hold virtual gatherings and town halls using Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc. […]

“• President Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare signed (sic) into law in 1965—providing millions of elderly healthcare stability. President Obama’s historic health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, strengthens Medicare, offers eligible seniors a range of preventive services with no cost-sharing, and provides discounts on drugs when in the coverage gap known as the ‘donut hole.’ […]

“• In a June 28, 1985 speech Reagan called for a fairer tax code, one where a multi-millionaire did not have a lower tax rate than his secretary. Today, President Obama is calling for the same with the Buffett Rule.” [Seth Mandel, Commentary, May 15]

“Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, said it has so far excluded contraceptive services and products from its health insurance policy for students and will not participate in a plan that ‘requires us to violate the consistent teachings of the Catholic Church on the sacredness of human life.’

“In its decision to drop coverage, the school cited the contraception mandate, but also a requirement that the maximum coverage amount be increased to $100,000 for policyholders – claiming that would have made premiums skyrocket. A university official told Fox News Radio the students’ basic $600 policy was going to double in cost in the fall and triple next year and that the school’s insurance provider said the increases were the result of the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.” [Fox News, May 16]

“For decades, American schoolchildren have purchased books and other educational materials from Scholastic Book Club, Inc., which seeks to foster good reading habits and complement classroom education. However, courts in two states (Connecticut and Tennessee) have ruled this year that Scholastic owes back sales and use taxes, despite the fact that the company has neither property nor employees in those states, potentially disrupting Scholastic’s mission. […]

“With over 9,600 sales tax jurisdictions in the United States, each with a parochial and bewildering set of rates, rules, and bases, it is difficult for businesses to comply fully with these requirements, particularly since they are becoming less uniform and more complex each year. […]

“The rise of Internet retailers and economic integration generally means the costs of nexus uncertainty are more likely to burden and impede economic growth. The Scholastic cases illustrate the inconsistency of courts in deciding state tax authority and the necessity for Congress or the courts to definitively resolve the problem. States’ strong desire to shift the burdens of government from the voters and businesses that benefit directly from its services to unrepresented, remote taxpayers can only be checked by congressional or court action.” [Internal citations omitted.] [Joseph Henchman and Jordan King, Tax Foundation, May 15]

“The bank has more than $2 trillion in assets and made a profit of about $20 billion last year. So it lost one-tenth of 1 percent of its assets and an amount equal to about 10 percent of its income for last year. […]

“One can understand that the bank’s stockholders and board are unhappy with the mistake, because the bank’s stock took the expected hit. Heads are rolling already. That is, the board is fulfilling its responsibilities without more rules from Congress.

“Congress has the oversight responsibility for the U.S. government, in much the same way a corporate board has the oversight responsibility for a corporation. Mr. Levin has the responsibility (along with his colleagues) to make sure taxpayer dollars are spent wisely and not wasted or stolen. Medicare, for example, spends more than $500 billion annually. Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, who, unlike Mr. Levin, tries to be fiscally responsible, estimates that about 20 percent, or $100 billion, of Medicare spending is fraudulent. Other estimates of Medicare fraud, including those of the U.S. government, range between $20 billion and $100 billion. The point is that Mr. Levin and many of his colleagues prefer to spend their time bashing private businesses rather than protecting the taxpayer, which is their responsibility.” [Richard Rahn, Washington Times, May 14]

“If the United States joined the convention [UNCLOS], it would be required to transfer a portion of the royalty revenue generated on the U.S. extended continental shelf (the shelf beyond 200 nautical miles from shore) to the International Seabed Authority in Kingston, Jamaica. […]

“[I]t is unlikely that the United States would be able to prevent the Authority from distributing Article 82 revenue to Cuba and Sudan, UNCLOS members that the U.S. State Department has designated as state sponsors of terrorism. It would also be difficult for the United States to block the Authority from sending funds to the undemocratic, despotic, and/or brutal regimes in Belarus, Burma, China, Somalia, and Zimbabwe. Finally, the United States would have limited ability to stop the transfer of Article 82 revenue to corrupt regimes, especially given that 13 of the 20 most corrupt nations in the world are UNCLOS members. […]

“UNCLOS is silent on how UNCLOS nations that receive Article 82 royalty revenue should spend it. UNCLOS does not require recipient nations to spend the revenue on anything related to the oceans or the maritime environment. Nor does it require them to spend the revenue on humanitarian or development projects, even though most, if not all, of the eligible recipients are supposed to be poor, developing countries. Recipients are apparently free to spend the funds on military expenditures or simply deposit them into the personal bank accounts of national leaders.” [Steven Groves, The Heritage Foundation, June 7, 2011]

“The invitation to Mrs. [Kathleen] Sebelius is pictured by the university publicity office as one of rather minor significance, in the Public Policy Institute. I am sure this comes as news to the HHS secretary. It is an honors program, an awards ceremony, not a graduation. What difference this makes is not exactly clear. Fine distinctions abound. In any case, an address is to be delivered.

“Now, no one is naïve enough to think that more attention will be paid to some other speaker this year than to the HHS secretary. It is a perfect public relations or newsworthy set-up. A bureaucrat, speaking at a Catholic university, has proposed, in effect, shutting down most Catholic charitable and educational organizations unless they agree to support programs that are contrary to reason and faith.

“She speaks presumably in support of her position, a position specifically rejected by the nation’s bishops as contrary to our tradition of liberty and religious autonomy. It’s man bites dog. No reporter worth his salt would miss it. ‘FEDERAL OFFICIAL DEFINES RELIGION IN HONORARY ADDRESS.’ We can see it now.

“The rule of thumb in these matters is: ‘Tell me who you honor and I will tell you what you are.’” [James V. Schall, The Catholic Thing, May 15]

“Young America’s Foundation’s 19th annual ‘Commencement Speakers Survey’ reveals that 71 liberal speakers—and only ten conservatives—are scheduled to speak or have already spoken at the 2012 commencement ceremonies for the top 100 universities as listed by US News and World Report.

“Among the top 35 universities, only one conservative is scheduled to speak, compared to 29 liberals.

“Sixteen Obama administration officials and appointees will speak, more than all the conservatives combined. Young America’s Foundation’s previous research shows that Bush administration officials spoke at the top 100 universities a total of 14 times throughout his Presidency. In President Obama’s first three years, administration officials have spoken 29 times—more than double the total number of Bush administration speeches.” [Ron Meyer, Young America’s Foundation, May 14]

“Here’s a curious fact about the French economy: The country has 2.4 times as many companies with 49 employees as with 50. What difference does one employee make? Plenty, according to the French labor code. Once a company has at least 50 employees inside France, management must create three worker councils, introduce profit sharing, and submit restructuring plans to the councils if the company decides to fire workers for economic reasons.

“French businesspeople often skirt these restraints by creating new companies rather than expanding existing ones. ‘I can’t tell you how many times when I was Minister I’d meet an entrepreneur who would tell me about his companies,’ Thierry Breton, chief executive officer of consulting firm Atos and Minister of Finance from 2005 to 2007, said at a Paris conference on April 4. ‘I’d ask, ‘Why companies?’ He’d say, ‘Oh, I have several so that I can keep [the workforce] under 50.’ We have to review our labor code.’

“[…] Companies say the biggest obstacle to hiring is the 102-year-old Code du Travail, a 3,200-page rule book that dictates everything from job classifications to the ability to fire workers. Many of these rules kick in after a company’s French payroll creeps beyond 49.” [Gregory Viscusi and Mark Deen, Businessweek, May 3]

“His 2005 investigation reported 130,000 forced abortions and sterilizations that year in the city of Linyi alone. Building a case to sue local officials, Chen interviewed women about their harrowing experiences; summaries of 14 of his interviews are posted on the website of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers.

“Zhongxia Fang’s story began with a third pregnancy after giving birth to two daughters, despite an IUD implanted by Family Planning officials. While she sought to evade authorities, they systematically harassed 22 of her relatives – including her pregnant sister, a relative over 70 and several children – with fines, detainment and beatings.

“When the authorities threatened to beat her aunt to death, Zhongxia turned herself in. She was seven months’ pregnant. Officials injected her with an oxytocic drug and her baby was aborted the next day. Then they performed a ligation to sterilize Zhongxia. Only then was her aunt freed.

“Ping Liu testified before Congress last September about undergoing five forced abortions. The factory at which she worked, staffed mainly by women of childbearing age, strictly imposed the One-Child Policy and used collective punishment to enforce it. Fellow workers reported two of her pregnancies.

“To prove they weren’t pregnant, the factory’s female employees had to go to the ‘birth planning doctor’ once a month. Only then would they get paid for their work.” [Link added to original.] [Jennifer A. Marshall, McClatchy News Service, May 14]

• Sign up for Acton University. The program, which runs June 12 – 15 in Grand Rapids, Mich., is “an opportunity to deepen your knowledge and integrate rigorous philosophy, Christian theology and sound economics.”

• Get ready for the Heartland Institute’s seventh International Conference on Climate Change, May 21 – 23 in Chicago. This conference is the one that tries to figure out what’s really happening with the climate, and invites scientists from all perspectives to speak. Heartland even invited to Peter Gleick, the guy who faked a climate strategy memo he said he got from Heartland. Alas, Gleick turned them down. But there will be 60 other climate scientists making presentations.

• Delve into some Hayek and win $2,500. If you are a 35 years or younger, check out the Mont Pelerin Society’s Hayek Essay Contest, which this year focuses on Friedrich Hayek’s views on monetary institutions. Second and third prizes win $1,500 and $1,000 respectively. The deadline for entering has been extended to June 10.

• Get up to speed on national security issues during May—AKA, Protect America Month. The Heritage Foundation will be publishing and hosting events on national security all month. Check out the calendar.

• Relive the 35th Annual Resource Bank by checking out the videos and photos, the links to which are now available on the event Web page.

Five things to remember:

1. Headlines. If you post a link on your profile page, you can easily click inside the headline and change it (same goes for the summary). Think about what would make someone want to click that link or “like” it immediately. Be a little sensational and do your own headline marketing.

2. Questions. Ask genuine questions of your readers. If you’ve posted a link to an article about our troops in Afghanistan, for example, use the white space to ask your friends what they think in light of the link. Ask in a personal tone so people feel like it’s a conversation worth joining.

3. Action. A good mantra to remember on Facebook: “Ask and you shall receive.” Calls to action generally produce the best results. Ask people to “like” the post, “answer” the question, or “share” the video. Many times, people just don’t think about the action without a little prompting. Go for it.

4. Timing. Don’t post too many updates on your Facebook page. As a general rule, post only one to three times per day. Be aware of how long your posts generate attention. Respect the life span of a post and let it breathe as long as it wants to. Posting too often gets your posts lost in the shuffle, and the whole point is to have your message seen.

5. Value. What value does your post add to someone else’s Facebook newsfeed? Think about what others will see when they log in to Facebook looking for something interesting. Thoughtful posts with punchy headlines, genuine questions, substantial calls to action, and—most importantly—valuable information, will increase your worth as a Facebook friend.

“[S]ometimes reducing spending isn’t a macroeconomic strategy but something that is forced on you by reality. One response you hear to this is that reducing spending is bad for your economy when you’re in a recession. Maybe. I’m not convinced. Could be, but even if it’s true, if people don’t want to lend you money anymore or only want to lend you money at an extremely unattractive rate, that fact that your past profligacy now demands an unpleasant solution is simply an aspect of reality.

“Those who oppose spending cuts when the bond market no long likes you reminds me of a metaphor I recently heard from a student at SMU when I visited the campus […] . He used the metaphor of a restaurant patron who discovers that he doesn’t have enough money to pay the bill. No problem. Just keep ordering more food! That way you can put off the moment of reckoning. That is not a practical solution for irresponsible customers or countries who have gone too far. Greece is in this boat. They may soon be joined by others. I hope the US gets on a different boat.” [Russ Roberts, Café Hayek, May 10]

“According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), which provides the ‘only comprehensive estimates of state and local government [fiscal] activity available on a timely basis,’ state and local government spending grew by 6.6% from 2008 through 2011. During this same period, the consumer price index for all items grew by 4.4%, which means that state and local government spending expanded faster than the rate of inflation.

“Likewise, if government spending is measured as a percentage of the nation’s gross domestic product, state and local government spending increased by 0.9% over this period, although it peaked in 2009 and decreased by 2.3% between 2009 and 2011. […] [A] 2.3% decline in this context hardly qualifies as ‘sharp,’ especially since by the same measure, spending rose by 7.0% in the two years prior to this.” [Jim Agresti, Just Facts, May 9]

“Following years of large spending expansion, Spain, the United Kingdom, France, and Greece—countries widely cited for adopting austerity measures—haven’t significantly reduced spending since ‘austerity’ supposedly started in 2008.” [Veronique de Rugy, Mercatus Center, May 7]

“In 2010, however, Congress, ravenous for revenue to fund Obamacare, included in the legislation a 2.3 percent tax on gross revenue — which generally amounts to about a 15 percent tax on most manufacturers’ profits — from U.S. sales of medical devices beginning in 2013. This will be piled on top of the 35 percent federal corporate tax, and state and local taxes. The 2.3 percent tax will be a $20 billion blow to an industry that employs more than 400,000, and $20 billion is almost double the industry’s annual investment in research and development. […]

“Cook Medical is no longer planning to open a U.S. factory a year. Boston Scientific, planning for a more than $100 million charge against earnings in 2013, recently built a $35 million research and development facility in Ireland and is building a $150 million factory in China. (Capital goes where it is welcome and stays where it is well-treated.) Stryker Corp., based in Michigan, blames the tax for 1,000 layoffs. Zimmer, based in Indiana, is laying off 450 and taking a $50 million charge against earnings. Medtronic expects an annual charge against earnings of $175 million. Covidien, now based in Ireland, has cited the tax in explaining 200 layoffs and a decision to move some production to Costa Rica and Mexico.” [George Will, Washington Post, May 9]

“Job growth: The average increase for blue states was just 1.2% from June 2009 — the official start of the economic recovery — to March 2012. For red states, it was 1.9%. The national average was 1.8%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Unemployment: The jobless rate in March was 8.5% in blue states and 7.4% in red states, BLS data show.

“Income: Blue states also did a bit worse when it came to per capita personal pay, rising 4.27% in 2011 compared with 4.35% in red states, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis data

“GDP: The one measure where blue states outperformed was in gross domestic product growth, clocking an average 2.5% increase from 2009 to 2010 vs. red states’ 2.2%. State GDP figures for 2011 won’t come out until June.

“Home prices: People living in liberal areas suffered the most when it came to housing prices. Over the past year, the housing price index fell 3.5% in blue states. The index edged up by 0.03% in conservative states. Nationwide, it was down 2.4%, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s House Price Index. Over the past five years, housing prices in red states fell 7.5%, but by 18.5% in blue states.” [John Merline, Investor’s Business Daily, May 8]

“In 1962, Byron White’s hearing lasted 15 minutes and consisted of three questions. Can you imagine that happening now? Most district court nominees would take that deal. Is it because of TV and the media and the instant sound bite and the new media with the Internet and social networking and all the rest of it? Is it because the issues have gotten more ideologically divisive? I think the answer isn’t really any of these. It isn’t that there’s been a corruption of the confirmation process, the nomination process, presidential or senatorial rhetoric, or the use of filibusters. It’s a relatively new development but one that’s part and parcel of a much larger problem: constitutional corruption.

“As government has grown, so have the laws and regulations over which the Court has power. The Court’s power has grown commensurate with the power of Congress, because all of a sudden it’s declaring what Congress can do with its great powers and what kind of new rights will be recognized.  As we have gone down the wrong jurisprudential track since the New Deal, judges all of a sudden have more power behind them and the opportunity to really change the direction of public policy more than they ever did.” [Ilya Shapiro, Cato-at-Liberty, May 8]

“Quite literally, EMTs hold lives in their hands, yet 66 other occupations have greater average licensure burdens than EMTs. This includes interior designers, barbers and cosmetologists, manicurists and a host of contractor designations. By way of perspective, the average cosmetologist spends 372 days in training; the average EMT a mere 33. […]

“[I]rrationalities are particularly notable when few states license an occupation but do so onerously. One clear example is interior design, the most difficult of the 102 occupations to enter, yet licensed in only three states and D.C. Another is social service assistants, the fourth most difficult occupation to enter. It requires nearly three-and-a-half years of training but is only licensed in six states and D.C. Dietetic technicians must spend 800 days in education and training, making for the eighth most burdensome requirements, but they are licensed in only three states.” [Dick M. Carpenter II, Lisa Knepper, Angela C. Erickson and John K. Ross, ‘License to Work: A National Study of Burdens from Occupational Licensing,’ The Institute for Justice, May 2012]

“During experiments, [psychologist Martin] Seligman observed that when people realized they were powerless to influence their circumstances, they would become depressed and had difficulty performing even ordinary tasks. In an interview in the New York Times, Mr. Seligman said: ‘We found that even when good things occurred that weren’t earned, like nickels coming out of slot machines, it did not increase people’s well-being. It produced helplessness. People gave up and became passive.’

“Learned helplessness was what my wife and I observed then, and still do today, in social-democratic Spain. The recession, rigid labor markets, and excessive welfare spending have pushed unemployment to 24.4%, with youth joblessness over 50%. Nearly half of adults under 35 live with their parents. Unable to earn their success, Spaniards fight to keep unearned government benefits.

“Meanwhile, their collective happiness—already relatively low—has withered. According to the nonprofit World Values Survey, 20% of Spaniards said they were ‘very happy’ about their lives in 1981. This fell to 14% by 2007, even before the economic downturn.” [Arthur Brooks, Wall Street Journal, May 8]

“People would have been better off if we’d insisted that the c. 1800 Ottoman Empire had the same currency again: Tunisia, Turkey, Israel and Greece. Which is a real indication of how dumb it was to try and get Greece and Germany into the same currency.” [Tim Worstall, The Telegraph, May 9]