I mean your intellectual-vitamin pill, of course. You can even take this on an empty stomach.

• There’s a good summary of the most-recent arguments against the porkulus bill in Brian Riedl’s new paper for the Heritage Foundation. He computes a cost of $233,000 per job created, with the package adding about $30,000 in new federal debt per American household. That’s the solution to a recession caused by easy money and excessive debt–more debt! Perhaps more ominously, the bill dramatically expands government-run health care and starts a rollback of the 1996 welfare reform. Despite political rhetoric to the contrary, it’s actually a perfect bill–if you’re a leftist who’s been howling at the moon in rage for 30 years.

• Karlyn Bowman of the American Enterprise Institute takes a crack at explaining recent public-opinion polls about the bailouts and porkulus bill. Americans are highly skeptical of TARP and the automakers deal, which is wise, and cautious about Obama’s proposals, which is a start.

• As proponents of a European social-democracy model for the U.S. continue to browbeat critics into getting out of their way, Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute dispels the notion that the severity of the current recession justifies an unprecedented expansion of federal power. On many measures, this recession has yet to rival the economic downturns of the mid-1970s and early 1980s:

With one exception – the steep 45 percent drop in the S&P 500 stock index since October 2007 – few other indicators of economic distress could support this being the worst postwar recession. Thanks to low inflation, for example, real disposable income rose every month during the fourth quarter – at an annual rate above 6 percent.
The president needs to be a calming voice right now, a source of strength. It’s not helpful for him to be warning of a “catastrophe” and making vague, untenable allusions to the Great Depression.

• An emerging conservative hero in the debate is Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, who has blistered Congress and the administration for mismanaging the situation and offering to bail state governments out of self-imposed fiscal messes. You might enjoy reading a recent commentary on the subject from Ashley Landess, head of Gov. Sanford’s favorite think tank, the South Carolina Policy Council. An excerpt:

Gov. Sanford is not tossing out “red-meat” to an elitist bunch of government-haters, as Associate Editor Cindi Scoppe suggested in a recent column, when he urges our state to wean itself off of government dependence. He is proposing substantive policies to let South Carolinians create businesses and jobs that can be sustained because there is a real demand for them. Those are opportunities that government could not possibly imagine, much less create. Fostering a climate that allows the private sector to flourish is the only way out of an economic downturn; government’s quick-fixes will only make it worse. Recognizing that has nothing to do with an emotional dislike of government, and everything to do with economic reality.

She also wonder what Andrew Jackson would think of all this, but calls him a “native South Carolinian.” Of course, we Tar Heels know that Old Hickory was really born north of the border. Don’t worry, it’s a Carolinas thing–the rest of y’all wouldn’t understand.