Wednesday Quick Hits

Lots of great stuff out there for your reading pleasure:

• Cato's Dan Griswold helpfully explains why all those allegedly "conservative/libertarian" arguments against FTAs are bunk.  (More on that here.)

• A ton of former USTRs and other US officials, from both parties, urge President Obama to get off his butt and submit all pending FTAs to Congress asap.

• Magic bean economics, Carolina-style: if your stimulus* can't create those mythical green jobs, then just spend $1 million more to reclassify existing jobs.  Problem "solved"!

• Aw, poor little crony capitalists: ethanol's apparently on the outs in Washington; I'll believe it when I see it.

• The Obama administration released its 2011 trade policy agenda yesterday; in response, the world let out a collective yawn and tried not to snicker when USTR Kirk said that his "Administration has blazed a new trail on trade." (I'll be providing an exciting review in the next few days.  Stay tuned!)

• Cato's Dan Ikenson is boycotting ABC and Disney because the once-venerable World News Tonight has made a conscious decision to air a week of jingoistic, fearmongering garbage.  (Of course, you already knew that.)

• The Koch brothers fight back against the Left's slander/libel, and in the process show that ethical, well-run businesses don't need or want protective tariffs.

• If the GAO's new report on redundant government programs, and the insane amounts of waste that they create, doesn't make you a libertarian (or at least a hardcore fiscal conservative), then I don't know what will.  Seriously.

• Cafe Hayek's Don Boudreaux has declared intellectual war on Ian Fletcher, the self-avowed protectionist, HuffPo blogger and new senior "economist" at something ironically called the "Coalition for a Prosperous America."  As exhibits one, two, three, four, five and six demonstrate, the results of this skirmish are as lopsided as you imagined.

• New Cato Study: the United States effective corporate tax rate is really, REALLY high.

Enjoy.