The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
News of the Tautological
“Texas Farmers Plant Seeds to Sustain Agriculture”–headline, Houston Chronicle, June 9
Mayor Bloomberg’s Special World
On his “Taking Note” blog (formerly “The Loyal Opposition”), Andrew Rosenthal, editorial page editor of the New York Times, mocks a study by the Tax Foundation that found high-taxing New York state has lost a net 1.3 million residents in the past decade:
[The foundation’s Scott] Hodge gives us no reason to think that taxes played a part in a single person’s decision to leave New York–let alone that taxes “may have” spurred “many more” departures than weather. The Tax Foundation did not commission a poll on the topic, and does not present any evidence to support that assertion. Not even anecdotal evidence.
Rosenthal, by contrast, conducts a scientific study that turns up contrary results:
I’ll give the last word to Mayor Mike Bloomberg, also known as the richest man in New York City. Asked in 2008 if state tax hikes on the wealthy would cause them to leave, he said, “I can only tell you, among my friends, I’ve never heard one person say I’m going to move out of the city because of the taxes. Not one. Not in all the years I’ve lived here. You know, they can complain, ‘Ugh, I got my tax bill, it’s heavy.’ But my friends all want to live here.”
Tomorrow, Rosenthal will explain that George McGovern won the 1972 presidential election because Pauline Kael only knew one person who voted for Nixon. [Pauline Kael was The New Yorker film critic who is said to have said of Republican Richard Nixon’s presidential victory: “I can’t believe Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him.”]
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”
NOTE: James Taranto is on assignment. Today’s excerpts are from the BOTW archives from May 30 & June 11.
