Archive for March, 2008
No End in Sight
Sunday’s New York Times contains a review of Charles Ferguson’s No End in Sight, the book version of his documentary film of the same name. The book is basically a 500 page compilation of the interviews Ferguson did for the film.
Like most of those who reviewed the film, the reviewer, Barry Gewen, has only good things to say about Ferguson’s project. For the most part, he’s right to praise. Ferguson made a fortune in software (after getting a PhD in Political Science from MIT!) and used a chunk of his wealth to travel to Iraq at great risk and make a first-rate documentary, even though he’d never before made a film. You have to give the guy credit.
On the other hand, both the film and book at least implicitly subscribe to the incompetence dodge: the idea that the problem in Iraq was the Bush Administration’s execution of the occupation, not the thing itself; means not ends. Ferguson, a liberal hawk who supported the war and, from what I can tell, still does, says in his preface that the purpose of the film was to answer the “big question of how and why all this had occurred.” “All this” means the disaster in Iraq. He answers by dissecting the management of the early occupation, particularly the decisions to disband the Iraqi Army and fire most Ba’athists from Iraq’s government. He demonstrates that these decisions were ill-considered, ill-advised and aided the insurgency. By stopping there, Ferguson implies that he has answered his question by looking at the tactics of occupation; that this incompetence is what went wrong in Iraq.
The Bush Administration was incompetent and then some in Iraq, but the occupation failed because it involved Americans trying to reorder the government of a far-off country with plenty of grievances and arms but no liberal ideology. It’s too much to say that success was impossible, but failure was likely, no matter who was President.
Gewen flags a quote Ambassador Barbara Bodine gives in the book: “There were 500 ways to do it wrong, and two or three ways to do it right,” Bodine tells Ferguson. “What we didn’t understand is that we were gonna go through all 500.”
What Gewen doesn’t say is that if she’s right and the odds of success are 1/250, the lesson is don’t chance it.
For an explanation of why civil war was likely in Iraq after an American invasion, no matter how well the President planned and whether they dissolved the Iraqi Army, read the essay, “Learning the Right Lessons from Iraq,” that I wrote for Cato with Harvey Sapolsky and Chris Preble.
On why getting this right matters, see Andrew Bacevich:
How Americans choose to incorporate Iraq into the nation’s historical narrative will either affirm our post-Cold War trajectory toward empire or create opportunities to set a saner course.
Banal maybe, but worth repeating.
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; General
Myth Dodger
Every Sunday, the Washington Post lets someone bust five myths about some public-policy matter. Most recently, the buster—or shall I say dodger—was Chester E. Finn Jr., President of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, who addressed five contentious accusations about the No Child Left Behind Act. Why “dodger”? Because rather than directly address the myths, in most cases Finn offered either tangential, deceptive, or just plain inaccurate responses. Let’s look at the five myths and Finn’s answers to them, but rather than go in the order that Finn listed the myths, let’s work from the smallest dodge to the largest.
Least-dodged myth: We begin at the end of Finn’s list, with Finn attacking the notion that “certified teachers are better than non-certified teachers.” Finn argues that “there’s no solid evidence that state teacher certification ensures classroom effectiveness,” and here he’s right on the money. In fact, I wrote the same thing just a few weeks ago.
Getting a little dodgier: In his second entry, Finn disputes the assertion that “No Child Left Behind is egregiously underfunded.” Here he rightly takes issue with constant complaints that NCLB is underfunded because Washington has never spent the full amount authorized under the law. 100 percent of an authorized amount is almost never spent under any law, and Finn correctly points out that “viewed that way, nearly everything born in Washington is underfunded.”
Where Finn runs into trouble is that he fails to directly address another common underfunding complaint: NCLB requires states and districts to do things—write and implement new tests, produce report cards, comply with lots of new rules and regulations—without supplying sufficient funds to pay for them. Finn logically points out that public schools in the U.S. spend nearly $10,000 per-pupil (though it’s more like $11,500 and counting), so they have plenty of money to implement new things, but to directly bust the myth it’s necessary to show that NCLB pays for what it requires.
Mid-way dodge: The third myth Finn addresses is that “setting academic standards will fix U.S. schools.” Finn is a proponent of national standards, so it’s no surprise that he finesses this myth by acknowledging that NCLB encourages states to set low standards while simultaneously suggesting that standards-based reforms can work if “good standards” are in place.
Finn is right about NCLB’s perverse incentives—if schools and states don’t make progress toward 100-percent “proficiency” they are punished, but states define proficiency for themselves—however, its a big leap to imply that government schools will ever put “good standards” in place. Teachers, school administrators, and education bureaucrats who have a strong interest in low, easy-to-meet standards control education politics, which might be why only three states—Massachusetts, California and South Carolina—have standards Finn considers good, and two of these three might soon have their high standards go away.
The runner-up dodge: In the penultimate dodge—and the fourth myth attacked on his list—Finn addresses the belief that “standardized testing required by No Child Left Behind gets in the way of real learning.” Instead of arguing that NCLB’s standardized testing requirements truly don’t get in the way of real learning, Finn argues that if testing is “an honest measure of a solid curriculum” it doesn’t have to get in the way. But based on the “setting academic standards” myth discussed above, we know that states aren’t honestly measuring solid curricula. And then there’s what Finn himself has written: Because NCLB puts all the carrots, sticks, and tests on math and reading, it has pushed other important subjects dangerously close to the margins, most definitely jeopardizing “real learning.”
The Big Dodge: Finn started with his big dodge, and I’ll end with it. Despite all logic and evidence screaming that it is absolutely not a myth that “No Child Left Behind is an unprecedented extension of federal control over schools,” Finn says it is. Why? Because states don’t have to follow the law if they’ll just turn down federal money, and NCLB is really just the latest incarnation of the decades-old Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).
First off, while states do “volunteer” to take federal money, their taxpayers have no choice but to pony the funds up in the first place, which means by following NCLB states are really just getting back hundreds-of-millions of their taxpayers’ dollars. And the notion that because NCLB is the latest permutation of ESEA it isn’t an unprecedented intrusion? Well, the original ESEA was only about 50 pages long, while NCLB occupies more than 600 pages! And the additional 550 sheets aren’t just filled with meaningless doodles or love notes; they contain scads of directives and programs heaped onto the law over decades of reauthorizations, including brand-new NCLB requirements for testing, teacher qualifications, “scientifically-based” reading curricula, etc. In other words, NCLB is absolutely an unprecedented extension of federal power, and no amount of myth-dodging can change that.
Meet the Latin American Left
Last week I participated in a conference in the city of Rosario, Argentina, on the 20th anniversary of the local Fundación Libertad. The event gathered the most prestigious representatives of Latin America’s classical liberal movement and it was a unique experience sharing three days with such enlightened minds.
The only downside was the encounter we had with a group of leftist strikers on Friday afternoon, when the bus we were riding was intercepted in the Ché Guevara plaza (coincidence?) by at least 150 thugs, who stoned and destroyed the vehicle. Among the people in the bus were well-known writer Mario Vargas Llosa and my Cato colleague Gabriela Calderón. It was a very tense and unnecessary moment, given that the group attacked us without any sign of provocation.
Fortunately nobody was hurt during the incident. Nevertheless, this situation reflects the degree of intolerance and violence which characterizes the Latin American “carnivorous” left, to paraphrase the authors of El Regreso del Idiota Latinoamericano (The Return of the Latin-American Idiot), also participating in the event in Rosario. These people are willing to use force against those who think differently, and it gets much worse when they manage to attain power, as they have in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, where they can deploy the repressive apparatus of the government to their own ends.
This is a picture I took during the attack:
New Zealand Cuts Corporate Tax Rate
The 39.3 percent corporate tax rate in the United States is very high by world standards, exceeded only by Japan. This is very damaging for job creation and prosperity – and it becomes an even bigger problem every time another nation lowers its corporate rate. The latest nation to move in the right direction is
New Zealand, which is dropping its rate to 30 percent, according to Tax-news.com:
An important initiative in the government’s ongoing programme to strengthen the economy takes effect on April 1st, 2008, when the company tax rate drops to 30%, Finance Minister Michael Cullen and Revenue Minister Peter Dunne announced on Monday. “Reducing the company tax rate will allow successful businesses to re-invest a greater share of their profits in new technologies and in further building-up the skill base of employees,” Dr Cullen stated. “We expect that lowering of the company tax rate will serve to strengthen the competitiveness of New Zealand-based companies, and that is good for the long-term interests of all New Zealanders,” Dunne added. The cut to the company tax rate to 30% (from 33% previously) represents the first time the company tax rate has been reduced in New Zealand since 1988.
Back to Somalia?
Buried in a story in Thursday’s Washington Post about the mess in Somalia is the following nugget:
In recent weeks, the State Department dispatched a team of contractors to Somaliland to explore the idea of establishing a military presence at an old airstrip there, according to members of the team interviewed in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. Somaliland’s government, eager for recognition, welcomed the possibility.
“If the U.S. wishes to have a military presence in Somaliland territory, we will welcome them and accept them,” said Somaliland President Dahir Rayale Kahin. “There are discussions, and we agreed to work together toward mutual ends. But things have not materialized so far.”
This demands more reporting. What kind of military presence? Most likely we’re talking about a staging ground for special operations forces or UAV flights. But that would presumably be secret, begging the question of what contractors are doing talking about it.
The State Department just designated al-Shabaab, a wing of the Islamic Courts Group, as a terrorist organization. The Courts Group is the loose-knit Islamist alliance that briefly gained power in much of Somalia before being routed by the Ethiopians and reforming as an insurgency.
Beyond claiming that “al-Shabaab is a violent and brutal extremist group with a number of individuals affiliated with al Qaeda,” State’s designation does not explain itself. Reuters cites officials who claim that al-Shabaab’s leader trained with al Qaeda in Afghanistan and that it shelters al Qaeda operatives involved in the 1998 and 2002 bomb attacks in Kenya. The UN is less certain about an al Qaeda presence in Somalia.
That is thin gruel. Prior links and several al Qaeda guys in the mix, while worrying, do not mean that organization is going to attack Americans, and is therefore one we should target.
Mixing a “war on terrorism” with the promiscuous designation of Islamic insurgent organizations as terrorists is a recipe for spending the next century tied up in other people’s civil wars. There’s a self-fulfilling aspect to this policy. Declaring war on insurgents may cause them to attack Americans or ally with those who do. There’s evidence that this dynamic is already occurring in Somalia. And if you agree with Robert Pape that military occupations cause suicide terrorism, American boots on the ground could create terrorists, rather than denying them sanctuary.
If we can locate terrorists bent on attacking Americans in Somalia, we should target them if the local government cannot. Aside from that, we should keep our powder dry and wait and see what emerges. Sending even a small force (and it’s possible we already have covert operatives on the ground to target airstrikes) into Somalia — even Somaliland, a relatively calm area in the south — is a terrible idea under present circumstances.
Wouldn’t it be terrific if we had a system of divided war powers so that Congress could monitor what the Pentagon is doing in Somalia, inform the public, and prevent a slide into a small war?
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; General
Will Switzerland Defend Financial Privacy?
The New York Times reports that high-tax nations such as France and Germany are badgering Switzerland to weaken its privacy laws so that flight capital can be tracked — and taxed. Germany’s former finance minister even argues that this would be akin to Switzerland helping to return a stolen car. But this argument is morally and legally wrong. On a moral basis, the German government is the one guilty of taking something it shouldn’t have. Over-taxed Germans are putting their money in Swiss banks because they don’t want the German government to confiscate too much of their money — especially since Germany is guilty of both high tax rates and pervasive double taxation of income that is saved and invested. If Germany wants to reduce tax evasion, it should reform its tax code rather than harrass peaceful neighbors. On a legal basis, nations help each other enforce laws using the principle of “dual criminality,” which means that an action has to be against the law in both nations. Stealing cars is illegal in both Swtizerland and Germany, so cooperation in the battle against car theft is appropriate. Confidential bank accounts, by contrast, are not against the law in Switzerland, so there is no reason for Switzerland the violate its human rights policiy on privacy just to help Germany enforce bad tax law. This upsets the Germans, yet they do the same thing when refusing the extradite suspects who might face the death penalty to America. It’s not their job to enforce American criminal law, so they have every right to say no. But it does indicate that German priorities are a bit strange. They defend the principle of dual criminality when they want to provide refuge to American murderers, but they think the principle should be discarded when politicians think they can grab some money from Swiss banks:
This land of stunning Alpine vistas, which has chosen to remain outside the European Union, has always loomed large in the global imagination as the place where the wealthy stash their money beyond the tax man’s reach. The best estimates suggest that image is true, to the tune of $1 trillion to $2 trillion. The scandal that threatens that lucrative business began when German authorities obtained secret financial data from Liechtenstein, Switzerland’s tiny neighbor with similar banking laws. The information in hand, investigators fanned out across Germany to seize documents thought to be related to tax evasion by hundreds of wealthy Germans. Cases are now being prepared based on the information, a process likely to take years. The fallout has claimed the job of one top executive, Klaus Zumwinkel, who had headed the German postal service, and has given the German left a political boost. But Switzerland is the bigger prize. And its continuing refusal to help other countries catch tax cheats hiding their money there appears to have hardened Europe’s resolve to force change. “If a car is stolen in Germany and taken to Switzerland, the Swiss help find it,” said Hans Eichel, a member of the German Parliament and a former finance minister. “But when it’s about tax evasion — and much larger sums — they do nothing. No one outside Switzerland understands that.” …European officials believe they can seize this moment to rally public opinion against the Swiss, German officials said. France, which will take over the rotating presidency of the European Union in the second half of this year, has agreed to take up the issue. …The concept of bank secrecy is deeply rooted in Switzerland, akin to the confidentiality rules governing doctors and lawyers in other countries, and a 1934 law makes it a crime for bankers to disclose client information. For foreigners, this combination is an effective shield against authorities at home. …Hans-Rudolf Merz, the Swiss finance minister, has brushed aside notions that Switzerland will water down banking confidentiality, a cornerstone of the financial system. Jean-Michel Treyvaud, a spokesman for Mr. Merz, called the debate “a media phenomenon” and declined an interview request.
Failed, Self-Contradictory REAL ID Myth-Busting
Today finds another post on the DHS Leadership blog attempting to defend the REAL ID Act. Despite never having made the affirmative case for REAL ID, Assistant Secretary for Policy Stewart Baker is attempting to defeat the arguments against it.
The “myth” he purports to dispell this time is that REAL ID creates a national ID:
REAL ID is simple. The regulation requires that states meet minimum security standards when they issue driver’s licenses and identification cards necessary for “official purposes,” like getting on a plane or entering federal buildings. That’s it. The federal government’s role is to make sure that states meet minimum standards of security, so that banks and airports in one state can count on the quality of licenses issued in another.
Once again, I believe savvy Stewart Baker is playing at the role of ingenue. He’s pretending to lack the common knowledge that government programs grow in size and power.
It’s true that REAL ID allows states to issue driver’s licenses and identification cards that don’t meet the federal standards. They won’t be acceptable for “official purposes,” which are defined as follows in the statute:
The term “official purpose” includes but is not limited to accessing Federal facilities, boarding federally regulated commercial aircraft, entering nuclear power plants, and any other purposes that the Secretary shall determine.
(emphasis added)
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; Law and Civil Liberties; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
Where Are Our Gold Medals?
One of the most revolting things that a politician can do is accept a hero’s accolades for passing a law that generously spends other people’s money. So I ask Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), the other politicians honored for giving D.C. students taxpayer dollars, and the officials who run the D.C. Tuition Assistance Grant Program, where’s my gold medal, and the gold medals for all the other federal taxpayers who actually fund the generous tuition grants for which politicians are being given such great adulation?
Jury Nullification, David Simon, and the Texas Prosecutor
David Simon has done it again. First, he created the best show on television, The Wire. Then, he and his co-writers wrote a passionate critique of the drug war in Time magazine, urging jurors to vote their conscience in certain cases. That article has, in turn, sparked a debate over at the Defending People blog. A Texas prosecutor started the debate with an anonymous post against jury nullification. The prosecutor went so far as to say that anyone advocating jury nullification could be prosecuted in Texas. David Simon just cheerfully joined the fracas.
Previous coverage here. Cato co-published the most comprehensive book on this subject, Jury Nullification: The Evolution of a Doctrine by Clay Conrad. For shorter works, go here, here, and here.
Real Federalism in Switzerland
An article in the Financial Times notes that the income tax imposed by the national government in Switzerland takes no more than 11.5 percent of a taxpayer’s income, and that most taxation (and spending) takes place at the canton and municipal level. This is genuine federalism, unlike the United States, where the national government is the dominant force in fiscal policy.
A big advantage of real federalism is greater tax competition, which — as the article notes — leads to lower tax rates and less government waste:
The federal constitution gives significant powers both to Switzerland’s 26 regional cantons, and to the individual towns and villages in them. …A handful of cantons have used ultra-low taxation to attract wealthy individuals to stimulate economic growth. Among the best known are Zug and Schwyz, both not far from Zurich. Most recently, Obwalden, a small, mountainous canton near Lucerne, slashed tax rates to match its low-tax rivals.
The cantonal levy is complemented by a local tax, calculated as a percentage of the cantonal level. Again, rates vary dramatically, even between communities in the same canton. For example, in the canton of Zurich, Switzerland’s most populous, local tax ranges from roughly 70 per cent of the cantonal rate in the wealthy and relatively low-tax towns and villages along Lake Zurich’s so-called Gold Coast, to more than 120 per cent in poorer and much more financially stretched communities in the hinterland. The local and communal taxes are capped by a federal tax, payable separately and at a different time of the year, that rises gently to peak at 11.5 per cent for the highest incomes.
Although three levels of taxation might sound expensive, personal taxes in Switzerland are relatively modest compared with much of Europe. Rates in the ultra-low-tax cantons can be as low as 16 per cent. Even “average” cantons tend to charge less than elsewhere in Europe, thanks to the cantonal tax competition that the Swiss say encourages cantons and local administrations to maximise efficiency.
Filed under: International Economics and Development; Tax and Budget Policy
“New Hampshire Joins Montana in Real ID Victory”
So reports Wired’s “Threat Level” blog as the Department of Homeland Security capitulates in the face of New Hampshire’s rejection of REAL ID. The same thing happened with Montana.
The key? The renegade states send a nice letter that is not a request for an extension of a looming deadline but touts the security of their driver’s licenses, which the Department of Homeland Security accepts as an official extension request. That lets DHS save face, even as it backs down from repeated threats to punish the citizens of rogue states.
New Hampshire wins.
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; Law and Civil Liberties; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
Passport Snooping Is Just the Beginning
Following up on the story earlier this week that the passport files of all three major presidential candidates had been snooped on, Brian Bennett writes in the April 7 issue of Time about plans to distribute passport information very widely indeed, such as to the Department of Homeland Security, IRS, employers, and foreign governments.
Meanwhile, the State Department has a video interview up on its website about passport privacy. Addressing the issue in a long format on a widely accessible medium is a good thing, so congratulations are due State for addressing the issue.
However, the lead question asked of Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy is a big waste of time: “Does every State Department employee have access to personal data that’s given us for passports or other reasons?” That pitch is so slow it doesn’t even reach the plate. But there is some interesting information about the State Department’s data security practices later in the video.
Unaddressed is Brian Bennett’s reporting on the proposal for wholesale sharing of passport information.
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; Law and Civil Liberties; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy; Trade and Immigration
Ironically Enough, McCain-Feingold Jeopardizes Public Campaign Financing
Six years ago today President Bush signed into law the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, otherwise known as McCain-Feingold. Sen. McCain, who has all but captured the Republican nomination for president in 2008, does not note the anniversary on his website. Perhaps, like many others, he has come to see the legislation as a mistake. According to his website, Sen. McCain is raising money today in Denver and Salt Lake City. Perhaps someone will ask him about the anniversary of his namesake legislation.
Over the past six years, there has been much debate about BCRA and its consequences. I will not repeat those arguments now; the discussion of a year ago remains relevant.
However, I do see one possible result of BCRA that will not please its sponsoring groups. I have been reading Joseph Cantor and Sam Garrett’s interesting history of efforts to pass taxpayer financing of congressional campaigns. They note that advocates have sought public financing as much to limit overall campaign spending as to prevent corruption. In the presidential system, for example, candidates agree to limit their spending in exchange for public money. If public funding were universal, so the argument goes, spending would be limited.
But candidates have never been the only sources of spending, and after BCRA, individuals and groups have learned how to raise and spend money independently. They have learned to design and manage vehicles for such independent spending. They have created arguments and legal theories to protect such vehicles and such spending from legal sanctions. Who knows? They may even have learned how independent spending can help a candidate without violating the law against coordinating such spending with a campaign.
Even if public financing for Congress passed, those who wish to spend money on campaigns have learned how to do so, voluntary spending limits on candidates notwithstanding. For that reason, it is hard to see how public financing would reduce overall spending.
So incentives established by BCRA have made public financing less likely to succeed on its own terms. I think that counts as an unintended consequence.
Bidding Adieu to No Child Left Behind?
Over the last few days there’s been a rash of stories about state legislators pushing to get out from under the No Child Left Behind Act.
In Arizona, the state’s House of Representatives yesterday approved by a voice vote a measure that would take the state out of NCLB’s standards-and-testing regime. A formal vote is expected as early as next week.
In Minnesota a day earlier, the state’s House K-12 Finance Committee passed an amendment to a supplemental budget bill that would pull the North Star State out of NCLB.
Finally, at the beginning of the month, the Virginia legislature passed a bill requiring the State Board of Education to recommend whether Virginia should withdraw from NCLB. It was a loud enough signal of revolt that yesterday U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings paid the Old Dominion State a visit and warned it not to drop out of her favorite law.
Unfortunately, though it might be uncomfortable to watch efforts to get states out of NCLB repeatedly percolating, the Secretary needn’t worry that too many states will actually break away. They just can’t seem to turn down the federal (read: taxpayer) money.
Few people in Virginia expect the State Board of Education to recommend turning down the roughly $364 million in federal education funds that the legislature itself didn’t have the courage to reject. In Minnesota, there’s good reason to believe the get-out-of-NCLB amendment won’t make it into law, lest roughly $200 million be sacrificed. Finally in Arizona, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne warned that “the problem is, we would lose over a half-billion dollars a year. And it would go to the schools that need it the most: the low-income schools.” Considering that Arizona’s amendment would only pull the state out if it reimbursed local districts for lost federal dollars, Horne is probably right.
There’s little question that many, if not most, states want to get free of the No Child Left Behind Act. Regrettably, there’s also little question that they’re unwilling to sacrifice hundreds of millions of dollars to do so.
Stewart Baker Should Start at the Beginning
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Policy Stewart Baker has posted the second in a series on the REAL ID Act at the DHS Leaderhip blog. I assessed his first try here.
This one raises the privacy issues with REAL ID, and it claims that privacy advocates “can’t and won’t tell you precisely how REAL ID threatens privacy.” Knowing his smarts and savvy, I’m confident that Stewart is feigning unawareness of my book Identity Crisis and the hearings in Congress that have exposed the many threats to privacy from REAL ID specifically, and national ID systems generally. He has also had the opportunity to read the DHS Privacy Committee’s report, which cited and discussed “serious risks” to privacy from the REAL ID program.
It’s true that privacy is a complex subject, and the complexity is preserved by the fact that a number of different interests are often lumped together under the “privacy” heading. But Stewart has certainly had the opportunity to read the Privacy Committee’s “framework document,” which articulates each of these interests. For a more thorough study of privacy in its strongest sense (control over personal information), he could re-read (or perhaps just read) my 2004 study “Understanding Privacy—and the Real Threats to It.”
The claim that privacy advocates won’t articulate the privacy problems with REAL ID is a shift from earlier public comments where Baker reportedly expressed puzzlement about privacy concerns with REAL ID, or his failure to understand them. One can’t be puzzled by the privacy concerns with REAL ID at one point in time and later claim that privacy concerns haven’t been articulated. There’s something else afoot.
I suspect it’s the fact that Baker gives higher priority to implementing REAL ID than to protecting Americans’ privacy. He just can’t bring himself to say so because it wouldn’t be popular or politic. (To be clear: He makes claims that REAL ID will protect privacy, but they do not pass muster.)
Baker should address the privacy consequences of REAL ID in a way that is not feigned ignorance or dismissiveness, but he should do something else first: Tell us what REAL ID is good for. The burden of proof in the debate over REAL ID is not on privacy advocates to say why not, but on proponents of the national ID law to say why.
No proponent of REAL ID, including Stewart Baker, has ever articulated how the program will cost-effectively secure the country against any threat. In fact, the Department of Homeland Security declined to articulate how REAL ID works to benefit the country in its analysis of the REAL ID regulations it issued. This is something I discussed, along with the privacy concerns, in my May 2007 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee:
The Department of Homeland Security has had two years to articulate how REAL ID would work. But the cost-benefit analysis provided in the proposed rules issued in March . . . helps show that implementing REAL ID would impose more costs on our society than it would provide security or other benefits. REAL ID would do more harm than good.
This is true if you assign no value to privacy at all. Americans do value their privacy and civil liberties, but the conversation should start at the beginning–with an articulation from Stewart Baker of how REAL ID provides cost-effective security.
Filed under: Cato Publications; Foreign Policy and National Security; Law and Civil Liberties; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
Newt: Schools Are a ‘National Security Issue.’
Newt Gingrich gave a luncheon talk about education at the American Enterprise Institute today. Among other things, he said he’d “argue with any conservative” about the role of the federal government with respect to education. It’s a matter of national security, he said. He called on the secretary of defense to give a speech every year on the state of our schools.
Just the latest indication of the drift on the right. Ronald Reagan promised to abolish the Department of Education. In 1996, after the GOP captured the Congress, Bill Bennett and Lamar Alexander urged Congress to abolish the Department of Education. Within a few years, the GOP was supporting Bill Clinton’s proposal to hire 100,000 teachers. Then Bush came along with his “Leave No Child Behind” law, which expanded the role of the federal government further. Now this.
Will the GOP ticket be McCain-Gingrich?
Filed under: Education and Child Policy; Foreign Policy and National Security; General; Government and Politics
Teachers: “All Your Money Are Belong to Us”
The Georgia legislature is currently considering a scholarship donation tax credit program that would allow individuals and businesses to give money to non-profit scholarship granting organizations that make it easier for parents to afford independent schooling for their kids.
In arguing against the bill, the head of the state’s public school employee organization, Jeff Hubbard, had this to say: “Our opposition is [to] taking state funds, taxpayer income, and giving it over to private schools.”
Umm…. The thing is, state funds and taxpayer income are not interchangeable terms, however much public school employee organizations might wish them to be. You see, you aren’t entitled to all taxpayer income — or even to all state funds — but just to those funds appropriated by the state in taxes and then allocated to the business of running public schools. When taxpayers claim a tax credit for a donation to help low income kids, no money ever enters the state’s coffers. So you see, these are in fact private funds.
For a good discussion of all this, see the Arizona Supreme Court’s ruling in Kotterman v. Killian (.pdf), upholding that state’s scholarship donation tax credit program, in part, on the grounds that the donated funds are not state money.
Filed under: Education and Child Policy; General; Tax and Budget Policy
Bush Opponents Upset That Bush Lost in the Supreme Court
In an interesting side-note to the Medellin decision, the case’s convoluted procedural history made for some rather strange political bed fellows. The Court’s decision, anchored by the “conservative wing” (Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito) and joined by the “moderate” Kennedy and (writing separately) the “liberal” Stevens effectively clears the last remaining roadblock to Texas’s imposition of the death penalty on the murderer Jose Erenesto Medellin. Consequently, Tuesday’s result disappointed death penalty abolitionists, who join on the losing side those who want international law to have direct applicability in the United States. That’s right, by ruling against President Bush’s executive overreach — which at least three members of the Court’s “liberal” wing implicitly ratified — the Court angered cosmopolitan liberals. Go figure.
It’s Almost Like You Can’t Have One-Size-Fits-All Day
Apparently, Florida’s Hillsborough County School District has tried to take religion off the calendar, resulting in almost everyone—religious or not—taking Good Friday off. As reported in the St. Petersburg Times on Monday:
After most Hillsborough students skipped classes on Good Friday, superintendent MaryEllen Elia initially used religion to explain the huge disparities in absentee rates between schools.
“Schools reflect their particular community. You may have in a community a particular religious affiliation that is strong,” Elia said.
This morning, the Times’ editors saw things differently:
The Hillsborough County School District should be embarrassed by the mess it made of classes on Good Friday. This was a regular school day, included on the calendar. Yet rather than function as normal, the district made clear to religious conservatives and overindulgent parents that students and staff could blow off the school day.
This issue should have been settled. Hillsborough spent two years wrangling in the national limelight over the calendar before agreeing to a secular schedule that recognized no religious holidays. Yet rather than hold fast to a decision already made and vetted by a committee of school officials and parents, the district gave a wink and a nod to treat Good Friday as an unofficial holiday.
The massive confusion over whether Good Friday was really a holiday led not only to many kids missing school for religious activities, but lots heading to the malls and beaches for more secular observances. It’s a somewhat extreme example of what regularly happens with one-size-fits-all public schooling: When you try to legislate away the values held by one group, you often end up creating havoc for everyone, whether with school calendars, textbook adoptions, freedom of speech, and the list goes on.
But how can we avoid these constant clashes and crashes? Oh, right: Instead of forcing everyone to support a single system, we could let parents use their public education dollars to choose their children’s schools. Then religious folks could pick schools with acceptable calendars, mathematical traditionalists could get the “old” math, conservative parents could choose which penguins their children read about, and so on.
But, of course, all that freedom would never work, right? It would just lead to chaos…
Paul Krugman’s Fallacious Forecast of a $6-7 Trillion Drop in Housing Wealth
The Case-Shiller index of house prices covers just 20 major metropolitan areas. It shows house prices down by 10.7% between January 2007 and 2008, but that largely reflects the fact that Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco account for 27.4% of the index.
In Fortune magazine’s March 17 interview, economist Paul Krugman says “We’re probably heading for $6 trillion or $7 trillion in capital losses in housing.”
Such estimates begin by assuming the S&P Case-Shiller index of house prices (which is now down 12.5% from its peak month) has a lot further to fall, and that it accurately represents the value of all real estate held by U.S. households throughout the 50 states.
The Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances (updated with flow-of-funds data by David Malpass of Bear Stearns), shows U.S. real estate worth $22.5 trillion in the fourth quarter—up 2.5% from a year earlier and accounting for 31.2% of household wealth.
If you think the Case-Shiller index will eventually fall by 30% (Krugman said 25%), then 30% of $22.5 trillion would yield an estimate of $6-7 trillion capital losses “in housing.” But the $22.5 trillion is not just single-family homes—it includes commercial property, apartments and farm land. More important, even single-family housing wealth is not located in only 20 major metropolitan areas.
The Office of Federal Housing Oversight (OFHEO) index covers all 50 states, including nonmetropolitan areas, but not the most expensive homes (which is not where Case-Shiller finds the biggest declines). The OFHEO index shows house prices down 3% in January, compared with a year before. But even that average is by no means typical of all housing (much less real estate) in the entire nation.
Between the fourth quarters of 2006 and 2007, house prices rose in all but two of the many states excluded by Case-Shiller, and the increase averaged 3.8 percent.
Economists and journalists who use gloomy predictions about the Case-Shiller index to predict a comparable loss of real estate wealth are making several serious mistakes.
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