Joel Mathis

National Review's Victor Davis Hanson reports his frustration with a business-owning friend who won't buy equipment or expand his business. It deserves quoting at length: I asked a businessman two weeks ago why he said that he was neither hiring nor buying new equipment. He started in on “rising taxes.” “But wait,” I interrupted. I pointed out that income-tax hikes haven’t taken effect. The old FICA income caps are also still applicable. Health-care surcharges haven’t hit us yet. He countered with “regulations” and “bailouts.” I said, “Come on, get specific.” He offered up “cap and trade” and “the Chrysler creditors.” I parried with more demands that he tell me exactly how the federal government has suddenly curbed his profit margins, or how his electric bill had gone up since January 2009, or whether he had lost money on any investment because the government had violated a contract. Exasperated, he talked now instead of more cosmic issues — the astronomical borrowing,

At National Review, Victor Davis Hanson warns against those who see America in decline. Things could easily  get better, quickly, he says, and offers up a list of reasons why. And one of those reasons is rather extraordinary: We are soon to revert to the Clinton income-tax rates last used in 2000, when we ran budget surpluses. If likewise we were to cut the budget, or just hold federal spending to the rate of inflation, America would soon run surpluses as it did a decade ago. For all our problems, the United States is still the largest economy in the world, its 300 million residents producing more goods and services than the more than 1 billion in either China or India. But... but... conservatives at National Review and elsewhere have been stomping their feet for the last 18 months about the restoration of Clinton-era marginal tax rates! Along with spending on TARP, the stimulus bill and health care bill, letting Bush-era tax cuts expire has been a central tenet of the Tea Party/co