Photo: Flickr/Tony

• Lydia DePillis says Washington, D.C. needs a fiscally-conservative alternative to the lefty D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, the only think tank focused on the city’s local government.
• Are participants in marathons and other event-based fundraisers really donors in the same sense as direct-marketing donors? Tom Belford says no.
• Pork Barrel Barbecue has released a barbecue-scented fragrance. Really.
• It’s not clear why repairing ill-maintained local transit infrastructure ought to be a federal responsibility.
• Last but not least, Conan O’Brien spoke last week at Dartmouth’s commencement:

  

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). Photo: Wikimedia/Gage Skidmore

• Rep. Paul Ryan makes the case for his 2012 budget. My colleagues at Heritage give it two cheers, and Ross Douthat calls it the “triumph of policy” over politics.
• E.J. Dionne warns that Ryan’s budget would mark the end of progressive government, which is actually a good thing.
• A new report released by the New Organizing Institute both offers insights into e-mail advocacy and explains why careful testing is important.
• Megan McArdle explains that the complexity of accounting practices means  it’s perhaps futile to try to design a corporate tax without “loopholes” of any sort. “A corporate income tax,” she writes, “needs to start by calculating income, and as anyone who has ever looked at a corporate financial statement knows, that’s really complicated.”
• Mark Hemingway points out the facts about who has received campaign donations post–Citizens United. We shouldn’t forget, though, that principle is a better way to make policy than a cui bono analysis.
• Last but not least, Trent Hamm makes the case that your leisure time should not be spent idly. Leisure time, he writes, “can provide all the space you need to take on personal goals and get involved in things you might not otherwise enjoy.”

F.A. Hayek Photo: Wikimedia

America’s national debt recently crossed the $13 trillion mark, and taxpayers are on the hook for several times that amount as government spending on social programs rises uncontrollably.

Congress would do well to heed F.A. Hayek’s warning in The Constitution of Liberty: “[D]emocracy will have to learn that it must pay for its own follies and that it cannot draw unlimited checks on the future to solve its present problems.”

“…all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…” Photo: Wikimedia

“States don’t have rights,” Stephen Green reminds us. “Individuals do. It’s time we went about the business of restoring those rights, without alienating a huge constituency which suffered too long without them.” Green rightly argues that conservatives’ use of the language of states’ rights is not only muddle-headed but, for historical reasons, tends to associate conservatives with Jim Crow.

Nicola Moore and Eric Heis are undertaking an innovative project to raise youth awareness of federal overspending: they’re making a video game caled U.O.Me. They’re accepting contributions through mid-August to fund the game’s programming.

Realizing that spending is an issue of growing salience, progressives are rallying around new gimmicks like advanced rescission to bolster their budget-cutter bonafides. George Will is having none of it: the plan “certainly would not reduce deficit spending: Under the president’s proposal, if Congress kills the projects on the president’s list, the budgetary allocation would not be reduced, so legislators could dream up new things on which to spend the money.”

Timothy Carney, for his part, wonders if conservatives will look to military budgets as a source of savings.

E.J. Dionne says it’s ironic that conservatives who decry big government are calling for the federal government to more effectively manage the Gulf oil spill. Dionne, of course, is missing the point: there’s a difference between effective government (or energetic government, as Publius dubbed it in the Federalist) and big government. But all too many conservatives allow progressives to make such arguments by advocating for small government rather than a limited government that undertakes only its core responsibilities.

And last but not least, this is a clever submission to Google’s Search Stories campaign:

Would the Dupont Circle CVS perform better with open windows instead of opaque displays? Photo: M.V. Jantzen

Window-shopping isn’t what it used to be, Philip Kennicott explains in the Washington Post. In an effort to maximize shelf space, all too many D.C. retailers like CVS block their windows, which reduces engagement with passers-by. I wonder: have retailers ever tested whether an engaging, inviting storefront might improve sales and offset revenues from lost shelving? (via GGW).

Ross Douthat says Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul is a prime example of why politicians must exercise prudence in addition to principle. Julian Sanchez makes a similar point: “Libertarians need to think harder about how our principles should degrade elegantly, how they can guide us through a fallen world where the live political options seldom afford a full escape from injustice.”

Michael Perkins argues that federal workers shouldn’t get effectively unlimited mass-transit benefits, and suggests instead a benefit that can be spent on any form of transportation. But why stop there? Why not eliminate the benefit altogether and increase salaries accordingly, allowing workers to spend their incomes as they see fit? Not only would this remove the distortions Perkins rightly decries, but it would free workers to choose their own spending priorities.

This Washington Post headline raised hopes, but only briefly, that President Obama had proposed spending cuts: “Democrats cautious on Obama’s spending-cut proposal.” Alas, it refers only to the President’s (important) assertion of budgetary authority—but not to any evidence that he plans any actual reduction in outlays.

And last but not least, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has released a clever ad poking fun at many prominent critics of her state’s immigration law:

Rand Paul. Photo: Gage Skidmore

Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul, son of Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), won the Republican primary on Tuesday in part by smoothing over differences with traditional conservatives, as David Weigel explains. Can this new, libertarian-leaning fusionism prevail in November?

Paul seems to have already gotten himself in some trouble for his  remarks about the Civil Rights Act. Mark Tapscott warns that the liberal-leaning media is likely to jump all over such rookie mistakes.

Cautioning that Paul’s particular brand of conservatism may not be viable outside Kentucky, Daniel Larison outlines the younger Paul’s political beliefs:

First of all, Paul is one of a very few Republican candidates in the country who is truly serious in his desire for fiscal responsibility. In his hostility to expansive government and reckless spending, he does not make exceptions for military spending, and he is appropriately skeptical of government power whether it comes in the form of military adventurism and empire-building or sweeping social legislation and bailouts.

Speaking of sweeping legislation, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget offers a budget simulator that challenges you to push the federal debt under 60 percent of GDP by 2018. It’s curious that many (though not all) of its fixes amount to fiddling around the edges, where more substantial reforms, like tax simplification or paring back of whole spending programs, may be more appropriate. Special challenge: win the game without imposing onerous new taxes!

Newsweek says neoconservatism is alive and kicking.

CAP responds to Citizens United:  “Indeed, with hundreds of billions of dollars of corporate profits at stake every time Congress begins a session, wealthy corporations would be foolish not to spend tens of billions of dollars every election cycle to make sure that their interests are protected.” Of course, it’s the fact that billions are at stake whenever Congress meets that’s the real problem. Ilya Somin, meanwhile, defends free speech rights.

And finally, Conan O’Brien stays classy in his final Tonight Show.