Archive for March, 2010
Obama’s Education Proposal Still a Bottomless Bag
This morning the Obama Administration officially released its proposal for reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (aka, No Child Left Behind). The proposal is a mixed bag, and still one with a gaping hole in the bottom.
Among some generally positive things, the proposal would eliminate NCLB’s ridiculous annual-yearly-progress and “proficiency” requirements, which have driven states to constantly change standards and tests to avoid having to help students achieve real proficiency. It would also end many of the myriad, wasteful categorical programs that infest the ESEA, though it’s a pipedream to think members of Congress will actually give up all of their pet, vote-buying programs.
On the negative side of the register, the proposed reauthorization would force all states to either sign onto national mathematics and language-arts standards, or get a state college to certify their standards as “college and career ready.” It would also set a goal of all students being college and career ready by 2020. But setting a single, national standard makes no logical sense because all kids have different needs and abilities; no one curriculum will ever optimally serve but a tiny minority of students.
Also, on the (VERY) negative side of the register, Obama’s budget proposal would increase ESEA spending by $3 billion from last year — for a total of $28.1 billion — to pay for all of the ESEA reauthorization’s promises of incentives and rewards. That’s $3 billion more that the utterly irresponsible spenders in Washington simply do not have, and that would do nothing to improve outcomes.
Even if this proposal were loaded with nothing but smart, tough ideas, it would ultimately fail for the same reason that top-down control of government schools has failed for decades. Teachers, administrators, and education bureaucrats make their livelihoods from public schooling, and hence spend more time and money on education lobbying and politicking than anyone else. That makes them by far the most powerful forces in public schooling, and what they want for themselves is what we’d all want in their place if we could get it: lots of money and no accountability to anyone.
As long as such asymmetrical power distribution is the case — and it’s inherent to “democratic” control of education — no proposal, no matter how initially tough, is likely to make any long-term improvements. As the matrix below lays out, no matter what combination of standards and accountability you have, politics will eventually lead to poor outcomes. It’s a major reason that the history of government schooling is strewn with “get-tough” laws that ultimately spend lots of money but produce no meaningful improvements, and it’s a powerful argument for the feds complying with the Constitution and getting out of education.
When all is said and done, you can throw all the great things you want into the federal education bag, but as long as politicians are making the decisions you’ll always come up empty.
Drug Violence in Mexico
The apparent drug gang killings of U.S. consular employees this weekend in Juarez, Mexico are a bloody reminder that President Obama is getting the United States involved in yet another war it cannot win. Drug gang killings also occurred in Acapulco, with a total of 50 such fatalities nationwide over the weekend.
Unfortunately, Obama has responded to the latest incident by following the same failed strategy as his predecessors when confronted with drug war losses: a stronger fight against drugs.
Though the deaths are the first in which Mexican drug cartels appear to have so brazenly targeted and killed individuals linked to the U.S. government, illicit drug trade violence has killed some 18,000 people in Mexico since President Calderon came to power in December 2006—more than three times the number of American military personnel deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined.
The carnage only shot up after Calderon declared an all-out war on drug trafficking upon taking office. After more than three years, the policy has failed to reduce drug trafficking or production, but it is weakening the institutions of Mexican democracy and civil society through corruption and bloodshed, which are the predictable products of prohibition.
The 29 people killed in drug-related violence this weekend in a 24 hour period in the state of Guerrero sets a dubious record for a Mexican state. And an increasing number of Mexicans, including former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda, are calling for a thorough rethinking of anti-drug policy in Mexico and the United States that includes legalization. Legalization would significantly reduce drug cartel revenue and put an end to an enormous black market and the social pathologies that it creates.
John Berry: Angry about Federal Pay
The head of the federal Office of Personnel Management, John Berry, has become unhinged by a few recent critiques of federal worker pay. Berry is an Obama appointee who apparently views his role as being a one-sided lobbyist for worker interests, rather than a public servant balancing the interests of taxpayers and federal agencies.
Here is an 11-minute audio interview with Berry on Federal News Radio on Friday, where he lashes out at USA Today, Washington Times, and the Cato Institute. Berry is defensive, emotional, and unwilling to accept that new data might indicate a possible problem with the underpaid federal worker thesis that is constantly pushed by the unions.
What do I mean when I say he is unhinged? An investigation by the USA Today found that in 83 percent of 216 occupations examined, federal workers earned more than comparable private-sector workers. Here is Berry’s response when asked whether he thinks the USA Today analysis is a good one: “It is absolutely not! It comes straight out of the Cato Institute!” But, believe it or not, the nation’s largest newspaper is not part of some libertarian plot.
The most troubling aspect of Berry’s performance is his deliberate effort to wrap himself in the flag and deny that anyone should even ask questions about federal workers during a time of national security concerns. It is strange that an Obama administration official would so vigorously use the Bush administration tactic of “waving the bloody shirt.”
The Executive Summary of the Executive Summary
In a highly symbolic gesture, the Federal Communications Commission published the executive summary of its “National Broadband Plan” in one of the most opaque formats going: It’s a PDF scan of a printed document.
This means you can’t cut and paste the bullet point that says:
“Increase civic engagement by making government more open and transparent, creating a robust public media ecosystem and modernizing the democratic process.”
Can an agency that publishes documents in inaccessible formats be relied on to deliver transparency? Did you know that this is Sunshine Week?! Let’s segue from symbolism to substance . . .
That bullet and the many that accompany it explode the FCC’s proper authority and propose an industrial policy fit for . . . well, the industrial age—not that industrial policies were any good then.
The executive summary is 56 bullets broken into four sections, and six “goals” carefully crafted to avoid measurement with nebulous concepts like “affordable.” (We all want it, but affordability is subjective. Nothing is universally “affordable” while it bears a price tag.)
The one goal that is measurable is telling in its own way:
“Goal No. 6: To ensure that America leads in the clean energy economy, every American should be able to use broadband to track and manage their real-time energy consumption.”
(Why should it take broadband to monitor your energy consumption? Does the FCC plan to send out scanned PDFs of photos of your electric meter?)
Whether we should have a network-managed energy system or not, note how the Federal Communications Commission’s “broadband” plan would make it a player in the energy business. It would also be a player in health care. And education. And “economic opportunity.”
As to the latter, maybe the FCC has a leg to stand on. Expanding the current “universal service” tax-and-subsidy scheme would provide economic opportunity of a sort to the better lobbied firms in the telecommunications industry.
As I wrote before, in an even more summary way, “The Federal Communications Commission should be shuttered.” That’s still the gist of what I have to say about the “National Broadband Plan.”
More on the Last-Shot Strategy
Related to my post below on whether last-second shots with time expiring, while good for basketball, might be bad for governance, Steven Horwitz offers a compelling hypothetical in academic governance at Coordination Problem:
…Nonetheless, the leadership insists this curriculum change is crucially important to the future of the institution and if only the Faculty Senate would pass it and put it in place, the faculty and students would then realize just how good it is. In fact, the faculty leadership, working with the clear approval of the president and VPAA, are now scouring Roberts Rules of Order to find a series of sure-to-be controversial parliamentary maneuvers to get the Faculty Senate to approve the new curriculum without it ever going to the full faculty, and possibly without the Faculty Senate ever actually taking a clean vote on it. The president, meanwhile, is going around to students and alumni telling them how important this new curriculum is and, in the process, criticizing the faculty opponents by charging they have self-interested reasons for defending the status quo, even as the new curriculum proposal contains the aforementioned special deals for some of the faculty supporters.
The faculty as a whole and the student body continue to oppose the new curriculum by a consistent majority.
Having considered this hypothetical scenario, here are my questions for you my friends:
Would you consider this a legitimate way to pass a new curriculum? If the faculty leadership in conjunction with the administration were to ram this through by questionable parliamentary procedure and over the objections of a clear majority, do you think this new curriculum would have any legitimacy? …
Monday Links
- Alan Reynolds: The truth about health insurance premiums and profits.
- An overview of the many hurdles the health care bill still faces in the House.
- Study: Public schools dishonest about the true cost of education. This video explains it all in less than three minutes.
- Will conservatives ultimately oppose the war in Afghanistan? Join us for a lively discussion this Thursday at Cato featuring Joe Scarborough, Grover Norquist, Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) and more. Registration free. Will be broadcast online live Thursday at the link.
- Podcast: “Documenting Human Rights Abuses in Venezuela” featuring Ian Vásquez. (Don’t tell Sean Penn.)
Joint Strike Figher Cost Overruns
The Pentagon has informed Congress about another of its procurement projects that is plagued by cost overruns. In other news, the sun will rise and set today, and the pope is Catholic.
Pentagon officials told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday that costs for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter have jumped more than 50 percent since the program began in 2001. Testifying before the committee, the Government Accountability Office noted that it has reviewed the JSF effort five times and the findings haven’t been positive:
We have consistently reported on the elevated risk of poor program outcomes from the substantial overlap of development, test, and production activities and our concerns about the Government investing in large numbers of production aircraft before variant designs are proven and performance verified in testing.
In our March 2009 report, we again noted development cost increases, additional delays in manufacturing and testing schedules, and the government’s increased financial risk from plans to increase procurement in advance of testing.
The GAO reports that just since 2007 the “total estimated acquisition costs have increased $46 billion and development extended 2 ½ years.” Incredibly, the GAO says that the Pentagon still “does not have a full, comprehensive cost estimate for completing the program.”
In private industry, it would be hard to imagine that a company and its contractors would put in such a poor performance, at least as a matter of routine, which it is with weapons procurement.
Bungled weapons procurement is not just the Pentagon’s fault. Congress is often at fault as well, as a Cato essay on cost overruns points out:
Still, Congress, not the Pentagon, deserves the main blame for cost overruns since it holds the purse strings. Rather than looking out for taxpayer interests, most members of Congress fight attempts to reduce defense spending in their districts, including spending on weapons that the Pentagon doesn’t even want.
Defense contractors exploit this parochial self-interest of legislators, and they skillfully spread out research and production work across many states and districts to maximize congressional support. The $70 billion F/A-22 fighter program provides an example. The Washington Post noted in 2005 that the F/A-22 “is an economic engine, with 1,000 suppliers — and many jobs — in 42 states guaranteeing solid support in Congress.” In 2009, Defense Secretary Robert Gates wanted to cancel further orders of the aircraft, but hundreds of lawmakers and state governors lobbied President Obama to keep the production lines going to preserve the 95,000 related jobs.
Comcast-NBC Universal: Everybody Loves a Fight!
If you haven’t been paying attention to the Comcast-NBC Universal merger, here’s a reason to: A good fight has broken out!
It starts with Mark Cooper, Director of Research at the Consumer Federation of America, who testified against the merger to the House Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet on behalf of CFA, Free Press, and Consumers Union.
The merger has so many anti-competitive, anti-consumer, and anti-social effects that it cannot be fixed,” says Cooper.
Cato Adjunct Scholar Richard Epstein lays into Cooper’s testimony with aplomb: ”Dr. Cooper has achieved a rare feat. The evidence that he presents against this proposed merger suffices to explain emphatically why it ought to be approved.”
And in a second commentary, Epstein ladles out another helping of humble pie to Cooper, concluding:
The cumbersome Soviet-style review process that Mr. Cooper advocates does no good for the consumers who he purports to represent. It only shows how far out of touch he is with the basics of antitrust theory as they relate to the particulars of the telecommunication market.
Maybe Cooper will have a rejoinder. But until then, I’ll just note that the best fights are the ones that your guy wins.
More Questions for Thoughtful ObamaCare Supporters
Last week, I posted a series of questions that I hoped would get supporters of ObamaCare thinking.
I received a brief response from the Center for American Progress’ Matt Yglesias on Twitter. The Guardian‘s Sahil Kapur provided a thorough response, and even posed a question in return.
I appreciate Kapur’s effort, and plan to respond. But before I do, I wonder if he (or any other thoughtful ObamaCare supporter) would answer just a few additional questions:
- What does it say that Democrats are having this much trouble getting their health care legislation through Congress even after hiding 60 percent of its cost?
- What does it say that Virginia’s legislature, including its Democratically controlled Senate, has approved legislation blocking the Obama plan’s centerpiece? Or that 31 other states are considering legislation or amending their constitutions to do the same?
- What does it say that veteran and centrist health economist Alain Enthoven writes, “The American people are being deceived...the bills in Congress…do little or nothing to curb [health care] expenditures. When the American people come to understand that ‘reform’ was not followed by improvement, they are likely to be disappointed.”
- What does it say that some Democratic pollsters are in open revolt against ObamaCare?
- What do you make of Yuval Levin’s observation that, in order to enact ObamaCare, Democrats must “amend a law that doesn’t exist yet by passing a bill without voting on it“?
- What does it mean if Democrats decide that ObamaCare will die if it faces a simple, up-or-down, majority vote in the House?
Axelrod: ‘Louisiana Purchase’ Somehow Not One of Those Corrupt, State-Specific Bribes
The House leadership plans to hold a vote, more or less, on the Senate health care bill this week. President Obama says he wants to “ge[t] rid of many of the provisions that had no place in health care reform — provisions that were more about winning individual votes…than improving health care.” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says Democrats will “take the pot-sweetening out of the process.” Yet Democrats have decided to retain the Senate bill’s $300 million subsidy for the state of Louisiana, commonly known as the “Louisiana Purchase,” and other state-specific bribes pot-sweeteners.
On ABC News’s This Week yesterday, Obama advisor David Axelrod argued that the “Louisiana Purchase” is not targeted solely at Louisiana:
The president does believe that state-only carve-outs should not be in the bill. There are things in the bill that apply to groupings of states…for example…what has been portrayed as a provision relating to Louisiana says that if a state, if every county in a state is declared a disaster area, they get some extra Medicaid funds. Well, that would apply to any state…
Sure, in theory. But as ABC News reported in November, the bill speaks of “certain states recovering from a major disaster” and “spends two pages describing what could be written with a single world: Louisiana.”
Axelrod would have us believe that after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) wrote the best darned bill he could, he slapped his head and said, “Omigosh! The way I worded this one subsidy provision, it would only apply to Louisiana — the home state of a senator whose vote I need! Gee whiz, what are the odds??” Using Axelrod’s rationale, if Reid had included a $10 billion pension for “all African-American former presidents,” that would not be an Obama-only pot-sweetener because it would apply to any African-American former president.
Playing Chicken Again
As I wrote in this post, Senators McCain and Lieberman proposed a broad piece of anti-terrorism legislation. The Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010 would use military detention to incapacitate suspected domestic terrorists, including American citizens. This is a sea change in counterterrorism policy and a break from American principles that mandate a day in court.
This bill is a bad idea for several reasons. First, for the points that I made in my previous post, the civilian criminal justice system successfully incapacitates domestic terrorists. Our laws are built to do that — it’s the international nature of al Qaeda and the necessity of military force in the expeditionary conflicts we are fighting that make things different. Second, I doubt that this policy will be seen as a bonanza for domestic counterterrorism, and the agencies responsible tasked with using military detention won’t actually have much use for it. Third, and most importantly, detaining American citizens minus a suspension of habeas is unconstitutional and will be held so in court.
The policy prescribed under this bill is to direct anyone apprehended and suspected of terrorism into military custody for their initial interrogation. The bill bars them from being read Miranda rights, directs a high-value detainee interrogation group to determine whether or not they fit the bill as an unprivileged enemy belligerent (Military Commissions Act 2009 language for unlawful enemy combatant), and further directs authorities to submit this information to Congress. Anyone designated as an enemy belligerent can be detained until the cessation of hostilities, which amounts to whenever Congress says that the war on terrorism is over.
The kicker is that aliens detained domestically under this system must be tried by a military commission. Citizens cannot be tried by military commissions, and the jurisdictional language in the Military Commissions Act (MCA) reflects this. Basically, the government would collect a bunch of intelligence that is inadmissible in federal courts and then hold American citizens indefinitely. Also, detaining large numbers of Muslim aliens (who may have strong ties to local Muslim communities) and prosecuting them in military commissions threatens to radicalize citizens who are Muslims. The perceived double standard — commissions for Muslims in America, civilian trials for everyone else — is counterproductive when it comes to defeating terrorist recruiting.
I say that this won’t be a bonanza for the intelligence community because I see this scenario playing out in three ways:
Last-Second Shots
On Sunday the University of Kentucky Wildcats saved their SEC tournament championship on a second-chance shot with 0.1 seconds left on the clock.
That’s a great way to win a basketball game, but not a good way for Congress to impose 2000 pages of federal rules on one-seventh of the American economy.
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