The Light is shining bright on "the city on the hill."

Fire of Liberty
While you can turn to the MSM right now and find a barrage of news on Lewis "Scotter" Libby, Joe Wilson's so-called "personal hell" (I guess that book, plastering your face in the pages of Vanity Fair, Op/Ed's in the NY Times and LA Times as well as countless interviews on tv are so horrific) the persistent demeaning of Judge Alito, President Bush's poll numbers and Iraq, I doubt you've heard the good news that the economy grew 3.8% in the 3rd quarter even during the aftermath of Katrina. Thankfully, the great folks of at the Wall Street Journal editorial board have written a wonderful piece (protected behind a pay firewall) on how the economy is at full blast and the attempts by some wise Senators in D.C. trying to keep the US economic super-liner in a straight and steady course into the future. Here's a sample:

The economy has now grown at an annual rate of more than 3%, and often more than 4%, for 10 consecutive quarters going back to the second quarter of 2003. Students of fiscal policy will recall that this is the same time it became clear that tax cuts on dividends, capital gains and in marginal income tax rates would pass the Congress, retroactive to January 1, 2003.

Economist Brian Wesbury points out that real business investment has climbed at an average annual pace of 9% in those 10 quarters, or roughly twice the rate of the overall economy. Business investment that had collapsed in the wake of the stock market crash is precisely what the tax cuts were intended to lift. As a demonstration of supply-side fiscal policy, it doesn't get much better than this.

Yet in Washington many Democrats still claim that the tax cuts were a failure, and many Republicans are so politically timid that they're afraid to argue for their own policy success. GOP Senators Jon Kyl (Arizona) and Chuck Grassley (Iowa) are exceptions in that they are pushing to extend the 15% dividend and capital gains rates past their current expiration date in 2008 through 2010 as part of this year's budget reconciliation bill. But they're meeting resistance from several GOP Senators, who claim to worry about the "deficit" but really just want more money to spend.

Even on deficit grounds, however, the tax cuts have been a success, producing a windfall for the government. Federal revenues rose in the fiscal year that ended September 30 by an estimated $274 billion, or 14.6%. That's roughly five times the inflation rate, and reflects a boom in both corporate (47.6% increase) and individual (14.8%) income tax receipts.

I guess the folks in the MSM are playing their own games with the American public so I guess that leaves the burden to the good folks at the Wall Street Journal editorial shop soldier under Paul Gigot, the blogs, talk radio and the other conservative media outlets to get such info out. Long live this dynamic economy.