One of my favorite Democrats, and certainly one of this era’s most entertaining politicians, died Friday (from the New York Times):

Edward I. Koch, the master showman of City Hall, who parlayed shrewd political instincts and plenty of chutzpah into three tumultuous terms as New York’s mayor with all the tenacity, zest and combativeness that personified his city of golden dreams, died Friday. He was 88.

The Times cannot lower itself to really praise his three terms as mayor, despite his obvious accomplishments …

Most important, he is credited with leading the city government back from near bankruptcy in the 1970s to prosperity in the 1980s. He also began one of the city’s most ambitious housing programs, which continued after he left office and eventually built or rehabilitated more than 200,000 housing units, revitalizing once-forlorn neighborhoods.

Politically, Mr. Koch’s move to the right of center was seen as a betrayal by some old liberal friends, but it gained him the middle class and three terms in City Hall. He was also the harbinger of a transformation in the way mayors are elected in New York, with candidates relying less on the old coalition of labor unions, minority leaders and Democratic clubhouses and more on heavy campaign spending and television to make direct appeals to a more independent-minded electorate. …

Confronted with the deficits and the constraints of the city’s brush with bankruptcy in 1975, he held down spending, subdued the municipal unions, restored the city’s creditworthiness, revived a moribund capital budget, began work on long-neglected bridges and streets, cut antipoverty programs and tried to reduce the friction between Manhattan and the more tradition-minded other boroughs.

Re-elected in 1981 with 75 percent of the vote — he became the first mayor in the city’s history to get both the Democratic and the Republican nominations — Mr. Koch markedly improved the city’s finances in his second term. Helped by a surging local economy, state aid and rising tax revenues, the city government, with a $500 million surplus, rehired workers and restored many municipal services. He also made plans for major housing programs, improvements in education and efforts to reduce welfare dependency.

… because of corruption scandals he wasn’t directly involved in, and, apparently, because the microscopic distance between his brain and his mouth caused hurt feelings:

He had always been frank, leaving himself open to charges of callousness. At various times he skewered and provoked the wrath of Jews and gentiles, business and union leaders, blacks and whites, feminists and male chauvinists. He vilified his Tammany foes as “crooks” and “moral lepers,” good-government panels as “elitists,” black and Hispanic leaders as “poverty pimps,” neighborhood protesters as “crazies” and [Bella] Abzug as “wacko.”

He was never a man of deep intellect or great vision, students of government and even his associates conceded. But, they said, he was more complex than his blurted assessments and gratuitous insults implied. Critics said he could be petty, self-righteous and a bully when his ideas or policies were attacked.

But associates and admirers, pressed to explain how the mayor could be so popular while reducing city services and apparently alienating so many groups, insisted that Mr. Koch had extraordinary political instincts and theatrical flair, and that his candor only reflected what many New Yorkers had long thought themselves.

It was one thing for a politician to offer excuses for litter, crime and poor transit service, as so many did. But it was another to say, as Mr. Koch did, “It stinks.” Over time, many New Yorkers, especially the middle class, came to accept, and relish, his puckish candor.

The New York Post has much nicer things to say about Koch:

The iconic New Yorker’s accomplishments were legion:

* He was the only person ever to run for a fourth term as New York City mayor — though he lost a primary to David Dinkins.

* He piloted the city through an era of fiscal crisis and managed to put New York back on sound financial footing.

* He was a staunch supporter of the NYPD at a time of rampant violent crime.

* He also helped reaffirm the Big Apple’s status as what he called “the capital of the world.”

There apparently was never a dull moment with Koch:

During his first term, he was dedicating a new shopping center in Brooklyn when a member of the crowd shouted, “We want John Lindsay!”

Koch had endorsed Lindsay for mayor 1965 — another treasonous act to some of his allies — but had come to believe Lindsay had been a disaster at City Hall.

“Everybody who wants Lindsay back, raise your hand,” he told the audience.

When a few did, he shouted, “Dummies!” The rest of the crowd roared its approval. …

Even political foes recognized Koch’s proudest moment — when he cheered on New Yorkers who were struggling during the crippling subway- and bus-worker strike in 1980. …

[Abe] Brezenoff, who served in all 12 years of the Koch administration, recalled yesterday how in later years, the former mayor would meet passers-by who would say, “We miss you. We want you back.”

“No, you don’t. You voted me out,” Koch replied. “And now you must be punished.”

“I was with him when he did that on several occasions,” Brezenoff said. “And he was only partly joking.”

Journalists with any brains seek out politicians who are quote machines, and Koch certainly was:

—”I’m not the type to get ulcers. I give them.”

—”You punch me, I punch back. I do not believe it’s good for one’s self-respect to be a punching bag.”

—”If you agree with me on 9 out of 12 issues, vote for me. If you agree with me on 12 out of 12 issues, see a psychiatrist.” …

—”If they want a parade, let them parade in front of the oil drums in Moonachie.” After the New York Giants, who play in New Jersey, asked for a permit to hold a parade in the city after winning the Super Bowl in 1987.

John Podhoretz writes that Koch did something that today’s Democrats, both nationally and in this state, desperately need:

The legacy of Ed Koch is all around us — and by “us” I don’t mean just us New Yorkers, though we remain today the chief beneficiaries of the remarkable and remarkably dramatic mayoralty over which he presided from 1978 until 1990.

By “us,” I mean Americans — because Koch played a role in snapping Democrats and liberals out of the political madness into which they were fast descending when he was elected mayor in 1977.

A onetime lion of the left, Koch didn’t let ideology blind him to the very real consequences of the very bad ideas that had gripped his party and his movement. When he saw an idea that was (one of his favorite words) “nuts,” he said it was “nuts,” no matter its partisan derivation or ideological coloration. He was, he said, a “liberal with sanity,” and he came along to show liberals a better way.

This was no small thing, for the liberalism of the ’70s and ’80s had become profoundly irresponsible. In a city that was drowning in crime, the liberal elite sympathized far more with the rights of criminals than with the victims of crime.

Koch made no excuses. “It stinks,” he said of soaring crime, and horrified his former Village supporters with his support for the death penalty.

An ideological distaste for capitalism manifested itself in regulatory hostility — it was just too expensive for private businesses to do business in the city, and they were fleeing in droves when he took over.

Koch understood that he needed to do what he could to convince the city’s business class that he viewed the private economy as the city’s lifeblood, not as a bunch of vampires. …

Then there was the madness of social disorder, best exemplified by the deranged ideas in liberal circles about homelessness. This disastrous phenomenon was viewed as the result of evil Ronald Reagan social policies, not as the result of the wholesale emptying-out of psychiatric institutions and jails.

Koch stood athwart famed liberal institutions that hotly defended the rights of people to live in the city’s streets, even though they were a clear danger to themselves and others and the most visible mark of a society no longer able to maintain any kind of civil order. …

Thanks to the prominence granted him by his position as mayor of the nation’s largest city, and to his undeniable star power, Koch’s successes as a liberal with sanity provided a blueprint of sorts for Democrats seeking to lead their party out of the Reaganite wilderness. By which I mean: No Ed Koch, no Bill Clinton.

At his best, he conveyed his infectious delight with the best that this city and this country could be, and did what he could to get them both there. He was an agent of change for New York, and for the Democratic Party and for the United States.

The last tribute goes to Michael Goodwin, who covered Koch for three New York newspapers and wrote an unauthorized biography of him:

He rescued the city from financial ruin — everybody knows that — but he did something else that, in the long run, was more important. By force of personality, he saved the city from the corrosive fear that a broke and battered Gotham would never come back and wasn’t even worth the effort.

As the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan told me in a 1984 interview, “History will record Koch as having given back New York City its morale. And that is a massive achievement.”

Indeed it was, and the dense, thriving, cosmopolitan New York that exists today wouldn’t have been possible without Koch. His determined leadership laid the foundation for the success of his successors.

My own relationship with Koch spanned 30 years, not all of them smooth, but we ended as allies and friends. …

The film about him, in which I offer my thoughts on his tenure, recalls the troubled, chaotic city he inherited with his improbable election in 1977. It also captures the larger-than-life personality he used to turn politics into theater.

I confess that I didn’t always enjoy that aspect of him. As the City Hall bureau chief for The New York Times during Koch’s second term, it was my job to be skeptical about his claims and motives.

We had our battles, but he never complained to my bosses. When he had a problem with something I wrote, he would tell me directly. He once snapped at me in public, then summoned me to his office to apologize. “I was hungry, and I get cranky when I’m hungry,” he said flatly. We laughed, and that was that. He was a gracious host to my young son and my father.

Whatever our disagreements, he was a mensch.

He was also amazingly accessible. Although he had daily press conferences, some in his private office, reporters could also get exclusive interviews. If you asked, you invariably found yourself ushered into his office, free to ask anything.

He created a remarkable familiarity largely gone from politics. Mayors now are so scripted and generally hostile to the press that they dole out private face time like it’s gold. It is their loss as much as the public’s.

The result of my time covering City Hall was “I, Koch,” a book that my co-authors and I subtitled a “decidedly unauthorized biography.” The cover illustration of the mayor in a Roman toga, with the Brooklyn Bridge and the Twin Towers behind him, captured our view.

Understandably, years of estranged silence ensued. I went off to write about other things, and he got embroiled in the huge scandal that marred much of his final term.

But contacts, inadvertent at first, began to resume, and I became his editor at another newspaper where he wrote a weekly column. In 2004, I was invited by his inner circle to help organize an exhibit on his mayoralty at the Museum of the City of New York and edit a catalogue of essays titled “New York Comes Back.”

By that time, our conservative-leaning politics were simpatico and we swapped ideas over the phone and occasional lunches. Everything was always on the record and we discussed writing a book together. In a call not long ago, he told me, “You’re doing God’s work.” When I demurred, he said, “I mean it.”

One hundred years ago yesterday, the federal income tax was legalized by Delaware’s ratifying the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Daniel J. Mitchell points out the consequences thereof:

The most obvious lesson is that politicians can’t be trusted with additional powers. The first income tax had a top tax rate of just 7 percent and the entire tax code was 400 pages long. Now we have a top tax rate of 39.6 percent (even higher if you include additional levies for Medicare and Obamacare) and the tax code has become a 72,000-page monstrosity.

But the main lesson I want to discuss today is that giving politicians a new source of money inevitably leads to much higher spending.

Here’s a chart, based on data from the Office of Management and Budget, showing the burden of federal spending since 1789.

Since OMB only provides aggregate spending data for the 1789-1849 and 1850-190 periods, which would mean completely flat lines on my chart, I took some wild guesses about how much was spent during the War of 1812 and the Civil War in order to make the chart look a bit more realistic.

But that’s not very important. What I want people to notice is that we enjoyed a very tiny federal government for much of our nation’s history. Federal spending would jump during wars, but then it would quickly shrink back to a very modest level – averaging at most 3 percent of economic output.

So what’s the lesson to learn from this data? Well, you’ll notice that the normal pattern of government shrinking back to its proper size after a war came to an end once the income tax was adopted.

In the pre-income tax days, the federal government had to rely on tariffs and excise taxes, and those revenues were incapable of generating much revenue for the government, both because of political resistance (tariffs were quite unpopular in agricultural states) and Laffer Curve reasons (high tariffs and excise taxes led to smuggling and noncompliance).

But once the politicians had a new source of revenue, they couldn’t resist the temptation to grab more money. And then we got a ratchet effect, with government growing during wartime, but then never shrinking back to its pre-war level once hostilities ended (Robert Higgs wrote a book about this unfortunate phenomenon). …

Here’s a chart I prepared for a study published when I was at the Heritage Foundation. You’ll notice from 1960-1970 that the overall burden of government spending in Europe was not that different than it was in the United States.

That’s about the time, however, that the European governments began to impose value-added taxes.

The rest, as they say, is history.

I’m not claiming, by the way, that the VAT is the only reason why the burden of government spending expanded in Europe. The Europeans also impose harsher payroll taxes and higher energy taxes. And their income taxes tend to be much more onerous for middle-income households.

But I am arguing that the VAT helped enable bigger government in Europe, just like the income tax decades earlier also enabled bigger government in both Europe and the United States.

So ask yourself a simple question: If we allow politicians in Washington to impose a VAT on top of the income tax, do you think they’ll use the money to expand the size and scope of government?

A comment on Mitchell’s blog makes an even more interesting point:

Blame the income tax on the prohibitionists. Previously, alcohol taxes were the largest domestic tax and the second largest overall source of federal revenue. The income tax was a necessary prerequisite to Prohibition.

And we all know how well Prohibition went.