In the run-up to this weekend's G-8 summit at Camp David, journalists have unfavorably compared European "austerity" with Barack Obama's economic policies.

The European Union (EU) has announced plans to levy a tax on airline emissions for all planes landing and taking off from EU airports. This tax would be calculated not only based on mileage flown in EU airspace but also for the entire length of the flight (thus, Chinese and Japanese airlines would be taxed for an entire journey from Beijing or Tokyo).

Here is another good news/bad news column about the 112th Congress.

Ominously labeled "Taxmageddon," a host of tax policy changes are set to occur at year-end, and there truly is much at stake: $3.67 trillion of additional tax revenue over 10 years from the Bush tax cuts alone.

A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association has concluded that there's an extra 13 auto accident deaths attributable to Income Tax Day (i.e., generally April 15, but which falls on April 17 this year). This is a drop in the bucket compared to the actual carnage that might be reasonably attributed to paying taxes in America.

The consequences for health spending and federal revenues of an above-the-line deduction for out-of-pocket health spending can be specified as a function of behavioral parameters.

Senator Carl Levin says that Facebook is exploiting a tax loophole in order to avoid paying taxes to the government. But Facebook is a textbook case of win-win-win: the company's creators get rich, society gets the benefit of an innovative communications platform, and the U.S. Treasury gets billions in new revenues.

Unlocking "unconventional" energy requires unconventional politics, and that's one resource that is genuinely scarce among today's backwards-looking bureaucrats and green interest groups.