The Yglesias agenda

Matthew Yglesias, by way of defending New York Gov. David Paterson's 18% soft-drink tax proposal, describes his own priorities:

As liberals tend to do, I would like to see the government spend more money on infrastructure and social services. I think it’s important that we pay teachers enough to recruit an adequate number of people into the profession. And beyond teaching, we probably need to spend more on a range of civil service salaries. We need to upgrade our infrastructure and we need to make sure children aren’t going hungry. We need to do a whole lot of stuff, and it would cost a whole lot of money to do everything I’d like to see us do. A lot of money can be found for that stuff, over the long run, by reducing the amount of money we spend on non-productive things like defense and medical waste. But ultimately there’s some need for taxes.

Very interesting priorities there. Defense is one of the few things the federal government does that it is actually authorized to do under the Constitution, and Yglesias wants to cut defense as "non-productive" -- like "medical waste"! On the other hand, he worries that "civil service salaries" (i.e., government bureaucrats) need to be increased, along with money "to make sure children aren't going hungry" (despite the childhood obesity epidemic among the poor).

UPDATE: Cold Fury: "We ought to find some funds to mount the Founders' remains on rotisseries so they can spin in their graves with less effort, too." Heh.