The Law of Supply Side and Dead Men

(Props to Monty)
Robert L. Bartley, editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal for more than 30 years, once again did the fiscally responsible thing to help save Medicaid, dying this week at the age of 66. Suckered by Arthur Laffer's cocktail napkin-based economic theories, during his tenure the Journal emerged as a practical treatise on why taxes and liberals are bad, honing its status as one of the leading conservative voices in the nation. The self professed "mouthpiece for supply-side economics" won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980 and earlier this month was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In later years at the Journal, Bartley was highly critical of President Clinton and his administration, particularly White House deputy counsel Vincent Foster. When Foster killed himself, a note in his briefcase read, "WSJ editors lie without consequence."