What the president's proposal won't do is work. Insurance premiums have spiked recently because of insurance companies' losses on their investments, not their losses to victims. In fact, about half the states already have some limits on victim compensation, yet premiums in states with caps average about the same as premiums in states without caps. California finally controlled rates not by attacking victims -- that didn't work -- but by reforming the insurance industry and rolling back premium increases.

When you listen to tax-cut rhetoric, remember that giving one class of taxpayer a "break" requires -- now or down the line -- that an equivalent burden be imposed on other parties. In other words, if I get a break, someone else pays. Government can't deliver a free lunch to the country as a whole. It can, however, determine who pays for lunch. And last week the Senate handed the bill to the wrong party.

Supporters of making dividends tax-free like to paint critics as promoters of class warfare. The fact is, however, that their proposal promotes class welfare. For my class.

That's what made Sen. John Kerry's speech yesterday about service and citizenship so interesting. Of course, no one can be against national service or patriotism. President Bush speaks often about these subjects and has appointed some good people to lead his service effort. He could have killed the AmeriCorps program, President Clinton's creation. Instead, he morphed it into his USA Freedom Corps.

True enough. But Kerry gave the service idea a new twist. Drawing from fellow Vietnam veteran John McCain's rhetoric -- Americans, Kerry said, "think elected officials no longer ask them to serve a cause larger than themselves" -- the Democratic presidential candidate cast patriotism and community-mindedness as the opposites of "get-mine and get-out rhetoric" and of "a creed of greed." These he associated with Bush's overall approach to domestic policy.