Archive for July, 2006
Boldly Buying Votes
Yesterday, at a news conference featuring New York Senator Hillary Clinton and Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) unveiled “a bold new plan” for American higher education. The American Dream Initiative would “award states $150 billion over 10 years to reduce tuition and increase graduation rates”; consolidate several federal tax breaks into “a single, refundable $3,000 college tuition tax credit”; and bolster “accountability” by instituting federal price controls.
What terrific, bold ideas these are! First, plow even more government money into a system that has grown obese on taxpayer funds, then throw government “accountability” on top of it, creating a groundbreaking socialist blend of wealth redistribution and government control!
Of course, in reality there’s nothing bold or new about anything in the DLC’s proposal; politicians have been dumping huge loads of money into higher education for decades, and proposing price controls for years. No, far from being “bold,” the American Dream Initiative is just another disgusting attempt to buy American votes by politicians who believe that a big enough dollar sign, wrapped in just enough lofty rhetoric, is the key to political power.
If We Bomb Them, They’ll Like Us?
One hesitates to make it all Bill Kristol, all the time around here, but if he keeps offering up fodder of this quality, our hand is going to be forced.
Click here to watch Kristol defend his idea to start a war with Iran by deploying the logic that
the Iranian people dislike their regime. I think they would be — the right use of targeted military force — but especially if political pressure before we use military force — could cause them to reconsider whether they really want to have this regime in power. There are even moderates — they are not wonderful people — but people in the government itself who are probably nervous about Ahmadinejad’s recklessness.
Right, so once the bombs start dropping on Iran’s nuclear facilities — some of which are buried deep beneath civilian population centers — the people of Iran will — under bombardment — overthrow the regime for us!
Reality Sets In on Capitol Hill . . . Finally
A number of Republicans on Capitol Hill have come forward in recent days with a new “spin” on events in Iraq, reports the Washington Post:
Faced with almost daily reports of sectarian carnage in Iraq, congressional Republicans are shifting their message on the war from speaking optimistically of progress to acknowledging the difficulty of the mission and pointing up mistakes in planning and execution.
Rep. Christopher Shays (Conn.) is using his House Government Reform subcommittee on national security to vent criticism of the White House’s war strategy and new estimates of the monetary cost of the war. Rep. Gil Gutknecht (Minn.), once a strong supporter of the war, returned from Iraq this week declaring that conditions in Baghdad were far worse “than we’d been led to believe” and urging that troop withdrawals begin immediately.
The Post‘s Jonathan Weisman and Anushka Asthana write, “Republican lawmakers acknowledge that it is no longer tenable to say the news media are ignoring the good news in Iraq and painting an unfair picture of the war.”
Healthy Interstate Commerce
The judge who threw out Maryland’s Wal-Mart law (which would have required large employers to dedicate at least 8 percent of its Maryland employee compensation to health care benefits) apparently did so on interstate commerce grounds:
In yesterday’s decision, Judge J. Frederick Motz of Federal District Court ruled that the Maryland law, which was overwhelmingly passed by the Democrat-controlled state legislature in January, was pre-empted by the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act, or Erisa.
The act sets out a national standard for company benefit plans, replacing what would otherwise be a patchwork of state regulations.
The law “violates Erisa’s fundamental purpose of permitting multistate employers to maintain nationwide health and welfare plans, providing uniform nationwide benefits and permitting uniform national administration,” he wrote in the decision.
Maybe that same judge should throw out state health insurance mandates. They have the effect of making it impossible for private health insurance companies to engage in interstate commerce. Once upon a time, the right to engage in interstate commerce free of state regulation was something in the Constitution — it did not merely depend on Erisa.
Wal-Mart Wins
Yesterday, a federal district court threw out a Maryland law requiring Wal-Mart to dedicate at least 8 percent of its employee compensation in that state to health care for its Maryland workers. The law was backed chiefly by the AFL-CIO, which has been attempting to get similar laws passed in 33 other states. Those efforts are now likely dead.
This will, no doubt, come as a disappointment to the National Education Association (NEA), which has had an anti-Wal-Mart campaign since last summer. “Huh,” you say? “What does Wal-Mart have to do with public education?” Well, all those NEA officials have to occupy themselves somehow during slow nights at the casino, or while riding around Hawaii in limousines.
No Consensus
The Wall Street Journal reports that “as gas prices again approach $3 a gallon, consumers are buying new vehicles that are faster and heavier than ever,” much to the annoyance of the EPA. Sometimes, no matter how much we hector and even tax and regulate them, the masses just persist in doing what they want to do in defiance of elite opinion. The story reminded me of several other stories that I wrote up recently at the Guardian blog:
A weekend article in the FT comes with this teaser: “A generation ago, Shin Dong-jin was trying to stop South Korean women from having babies. Now his planned parenthood foundation has the opposite problem–there aren’t enough babies being born. He must persuade the country to go forth and multiply.”
Apparently Shin Dong-jin is just the only person in South Korea who knows, at any given time, how many children people should have. But people make their own decisions.
The FT piece reminded me of some other recent articles about how stubborn people just won’t do what the planners want. A front-page headline in the Washington Post read: “Despite planners’ visions, outer suburbs lead in new hiring.” I was particularly struck by the lead:
As a consensus builds that the Washington region needs to concentrate job growth, there are signs that the exact opposite is happening.
Over the past five years, the number of new jobs in the region’s outer suburbs exceeded those created in the District and inner suburbs such as Fairfax and Montgomery counties … contradicting planners’ “smart growth” visions of communities where people live, work and play without having to drive long distances.
Maybe if tens – hundreds – of thousands of people aren’t abiding by the “consensus,” there is no consensus: there is just a bunch of government-funded planners attending conferences and deciding where people ought to live. It’s like, “Our community doesn’t want Wal-Mart.” Hey, if the community really doesn’t Wal-Mart, then a Wal-Mart store will fail. What that sentence means is: “Some organised interests in our community don’t want Wal-Mart here because we know our neighbours will shop there (and so will we).”
Similarly, another Post story reported that the Ford motor company has dropped a pledge to build 250,000 gas-electric hybrid cars per year by the end of the decade. Environmentalists accused the company of backpedalling: it seems not many people want to buy hybrid cars – even though the planners want them to.
Again and again, individuals insist on making their own decisions rather than conforming to planners’ visions and purported consensuses.
Ivory Tower Blueprint, Take Two
On Monday, the U.S. Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education released the second draft of what will ultimately become a final report, most likely sometime in September. Unfortunately, all the authors seemed to do between draft one and draft two is tone down some of their criticisms of colleges and universities—apparently, ivory tower denizens are a sensitive lot—while keeping in most of their bigger-government proposals, such as creating a “national strategy” for higher education and, of course, spending a lot more taxpayer cash.
Without question, there are going to have to be major changes between draft two and draft three to make the commission’s final report even the least bit palatable. Unfortunately, based on what we’ve seen so far, the best we can probably hope for is the same rat poison, with just a little bit more sugar sprinkled on top.
More on Military Tribunals and the Hamdan Ruling
For those interested in the Hamdan ruling and its impact on the law, check out my online debate (pdf) with John Baker, who teaches law at Louisiana State University. The Federalist Society just posted this debate on its website and it is framed in its popular “Five Questions” format, which means I throw five questions at Prof. Baker and vice versa. We then make claims and counterclaims about whether the question is actually relevant. True, this exchange does get pretty legalistic, but that sometimes happens when you’re asked legal questions about judicial rulings.
Why Wait to Bomb Iran? Find Out at Cato Unbound!
Gene quotes warmongering Bill Kristol below:
We might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later.
Why wait to bomb Iran? As it happens, the best discussion of this question anywhere is happening right next door at Cato Unbound.
In his reply to Reuel Marc Gerecht‘s Kristol-compatible brief for bombing, Edward Luttwak says he is not averse to an in-and-out quick strike to impede the develop of Iranian nukes, if it comes to that in the three or more years it will take Iran to develop the bomb. But, Luttwak says, it may not come to that, because there is plenty to be done in the meantime. Luttwak’s Center for Strategic and International Studies colleague Anthony Cordesman says diplomacy could work, and we should keep doing what we’re doing. Bombing might not actually keep Iran from getting nukes, and even if the U.S. exhausts all non-military options, we should at least wait until we know where the targets are. Cato’s vice president for defense and foreign policy studies Ted Galen Carpenter says bombing Iran might trigger a “massive regional crisis,” and that “America’s troubles with the Islamic world do not yet constitute a war of civilizations,” but attacks “could well produce that result.”
Why wait? Well, those are a few reasons. And containment? Carpenter, for one, argues that if we successfully contained a nuclear Soviet Union and China, we can contain a nuclear Iran. Don’t miss the detailed discussion about the future of American policy for this hotspot in the volatile Middle East.
Ralph Reed and the GOP
Christian Coalition co-founder Ralph Reed lost the Republican primary for lieutenant governor of Georgia yesterday by more than 12 points. After a career at the top of Republican politics — chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, Southeast Regional chairman of Bush-Cheney, one of Time’s 50 future leaders of America — it’s got to be galling to lose a Republican primary for a ceremonial job like lieutenant governor. Reed was tarred by his association with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. He became a poster boy for the downward spiral of the Republican Party — the born-again activist with the choirboy face who helped transform the GOP into a religious party and then got caught taking millions of gambling dollars to lobby against rival gambling firms. Makes the K Street Project look positively, well, saintly.
Ralph Reed lost a Republican primary election on the same day the anti-marriage amendment failed to pass in the House of Representatives. Maybe one day we’ll look back on July 18 as the day that the Republican party decided not to be a religious party and started to become once again a broad-based conservative political party.
War without End
Here’s the money quote from the Bill Kristol piece George Will went after yesterday:
“We might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions — and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement.”
And here’s a front pager in today’s Washington Post about neoconservative anger towards the Bush administration because of its newfound restraint in foreign policy. Prominent Iraq hawks like Max Boot and Cakewalk Ken Adelman are upset that their favored tactic, “bomb today for a brighter tomorrow,” no longer commands the respect it once did in Washington.
Now, you could marvel at the brazenness of all this: the same people who helped lead us into the biggest foreign policy disaster in 30 years trying to push another war (or wars) on us without so much as a prefatory “sorry about the whole Iraq thing, old boy.” But the current squawking also strikes me as a useful reminder of how very, very important war is in the neoconservative vision. It is as central to that vision as peace is to the classical liberal vision.
For the neoconservatives, it’s not about Israel. It’s about war. War is a bracing tonic for the national spirit and in all its forms it presents opportunities for national greatness. “Ultimately, American purpose can find its voice only in Washington,” David Brooks once wrote. And Washington’s never louder or more powerful than when it has a war to fight.
In 1997, Fred Barnes pouted about the “ennui” accompanying that decade’s peace and prosperity:
“The last great moment in Washington was Desert Storm…. It was exciting to follow and write about … Every press conference, I watched. Desert Storm was all I thought about or talked about. My stories concentrated on President Bush’s heroic role in the war.”
Indeed, for many neoconservatives, the 1990s were about the search for an enemy. Who it was didn’t much matter. That can be seen in this 1996 Foreign Affairs article by Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, in which they seem distinctly unsettled by the apparant lack of anyone for the U.S. to fight:
“The ubiquitous post-Cold War question — where is the threat? — is thus misconceived. In a world in which peace and American security depend on American power and the will to use it, the main threat the United States faces now and in the future is its own weakness.”
To dispel any notions of weakness, a little therapeutic bombing is sometimes in order. As AEI’s Michael Ledeen apparently put it some years ago:
“Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.”
It could be the Serbs. It could be Iraq. If we’re really feeling our oats, it might even be China. Even now, when the United States faces a genuine enemy in Al Qaeda, some neoconservatives are hedging their bets: If we wrap up this war on terror thing too quickly, let’s give great-power conflict a chance.
Who we’re fighting is secondary. That we’re fighting is the main thing. To be a neoconservative is to thrill to the sound of gunfire. (From a nice, safe distance, generally.)
Can Charter Schools Yield Market-Like Results?
That’s a question I was asked over at EdSpresso.com, to which I’ve just fired of the following answer:
Alas, no. In the short term, the charter schooling model lacks some of the essential characteristics of effective markets. I stressed competition in the cited op-ed [about Warren Buffett's gift to the Gates Foundation], but there are others I couldn’t mention for lack of space. Free-floating prices and at least some direct payment of tuition by parents are two other crucial ingredients. Charters have neither.
Prices are the mechanism by which markets signal quality and encourage providers to offer the services most in demand. Without the ability to set high initial prices for effective innovations, innovation cannot be financed. Hence, the whole process by which markets drive improvements in quality is crippled. If there had never been $1,000 DVD players and cell phones, there would not now be $39 DVD players and “free” cell phones (when purchased with a service plan). On the flip side, when providers do not set their own prices there is no incentive for them to find ways of undercutting their competitors by offering similar quality services at a lower cost, eliminating a key incentive for efficiency. There are still other problems with charter schooling that I haven’t listed here (e.g. the likelihood of re-regulation over time, if history is any guide) so that they do not represent a promising path to market education.
I’d be happy to be proven wrong by the march of events, but that’s the way it looks to me now.
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