Archive for November, 2010
Future Teachers Most Likely to Cheat in College?
The current issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education features a story by a professional ghost-writer of college student papers. One passage in particular caught my eye:
it’s hard to determine which course of study is most infested with cheating. But I’d say education is the worst. I’ve written papers for students in elementary-education programs, special-education majors, and ESL-training courses. I’ve written lesson plans for aspiring high-school teachers, and I’ve synthesized reports from notes that customers have taken during classroom observations. I’ve written essays for those studying to become school administrators, and I’ve completed theses for those on course to become principals….
This is of course the weakest of anecdotal evidence and no one should take it as gospel (particularly the seminary students who apparently also contract out papers to the same ghost writer). But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that it’s true—that ed school students are the most common consumers of fraudulent papers. How could we explain that?
There’s no reason to believe that future teachers are any more ethically deficient than their peers in other fields, so that’s an unlikely explanation. Could it be that ed school students are less well prepared for college? Certainly it’s an uncomfortable truth that the SAT scores of those applying to ed school (both undergraduate and graduate) consistently rank below those of applicants to most other college programs. But it is also widely acknowledged that the academic standards of ed schools are commensurately below those of other college disciplines, so future teachers shouldn’t have any more difficulty completing their assignments than students in other fields.
But there is one way in which education is fundamentally different from every other college discipline: it’s the only one whose students will go on to work in a government monopoly industry. Not only is the hiring process of public school systems less focused on identifying candidates’ academic excellence, there is evidence that it is actively hostile to excellence (e.g., that principals are less likely to hire top-scoring candidates from elite colleges than candidates from less rarefied institutions). What’s more, compensation for public school teachers is generally a function of time served (over which teachers have no control) and degrees conferred (over which they do). This has created demand on the part of teachers for graduate degrees—not necessarily for the acquisition of advanced skills, but for the diplomas themselves, which amount to valuable cash prizes.
Again, we can’t know from a single ghost-writer’s experience if ed school students systematically cheat more in college than their peers in other fields, but we certainly shouldn’t be surprised if they do. We’ve organized education in this country in a way that decouples skill and performance from compensation, and instead couples compensation to the mere trappings of higher learning (e.g., masters degrees). We’ve created a powerful financial incentive for existing and future teachers to cheat. Maybe not such a good idea.
Hat tip: Bill Evers.
Getting TSA to Look in the Mirror
If you travel by plane, you either hate the Transportation Security Administration, or will soon do so. The TSA has unveiled a new security pat down which is about as close to a strip-search as you can get while still wearing clothes.
With a metal knee replacement I invariably set off the TSA metal detectors. I can avoid a pat down by using the fancy new imaging machine where it is available. But this machine images everything on the body, and that means everything. The explicit nature of the pictures is reflected in the nick-name which I’m told TSA employees have applied to the machine. Let your mind wander, but imagine a crude term about measuring the male genitalia.
The other alternative is to accept the pat down. Until recently TSA employees used a hand-held wand to check for metal and did a limited hand check. The new system eschews the wand and replaces it with searching hands climbing up the inside of the thighs — all the way up.
The only saving grace for me is when veterans do the check. When they realize that I have an implant and go through the check weekly and sometimes daily, most of them take a more relaxed approach. But the newer, and often more determined to do everything by the book, employees really mean it when they announce that they are about to check my thigh.
Like never before, the new procedure has set off public protests. And anger could increase at Thanksgiving, when so many more people will be flying. No one wants airplanes to be hijacked, but few people believe that the current system does much to safeguard us. At least, much of what is done today looks to be “Security Theater,” meant to reassure rather than actually do improve security.
One possible alternative would be for airports to take back control of the process. Reports the Washington Examiner:
[Rep. John] Mica, one of the authors of the original TSA bill, has recently written to the heads of more than 150 airports nationwide suggesting they opt out of TSA screening. “When the TSA was established, it was never envisioned that it would become a huge, unwieldy bureaucracy which was soon to grow to 67,000 employees,” Mica writes. “As TSA has grown larger, more impersonal, and administratively top-heavy, I believe it is important that airports across the country consider utilizing the opt-out provision provided by law.”
Private security personnel obviously could mimic the TSA’s worst practices. But if there were multiple actors providing security services competition would encourage airports to look for improved techniques which would cost less, waste less time, and create less embarrassment.
The vast majority of the TSA personnel with whom I deal are polite and friendly. Most actually are working, though it’s not clear their activities always benefit the public. But they all seem to lack a sense of irony.
I enjoy wearing my Cato t-shirt with the P.J. O’Rourke quote about giving to power to government being like giving car keys and whiskey to a teenage boy. I receive a lot of admiring comments on it–including from TSA employees. Today it happened again, at Washington Dulles. As I was waiting for my regular TSA-provided fondling experience down below.
It’s no knock on the individual employees to point out that the TSA as an agency is a perfect example of what P.J. was warning against. Give Barack Obama & Co. this power and we are likely to lose our money, freedom, and dignity.
I’d like to believe we’ve entered a new political era in Washington, but I’ve worked through too many “new eras” to believe that this one is really new. But a popular uprising about TSA de facto strip searches would be a good start.
Earmark Donor States
I have an op-ed in Politico about “earmark donor states.” It’s a term I invented to highlight a rarely discussed side of earmarking: public choice economics.
As public choice theory would predict, the earmarking process operates under a system of concentrated benefits and diffuse costs. Based on an analysis of 2009 data, 16 states receive a disproportionately large percentage of the earmark pie and can be labeled “earmark beneficiary” states. The other 34 states and the District of Columbia are “earmark donors,” as they receive fewer earmark dollars than they proportionally should.
To determine which states win and lose in the earmarking game, I looked at the share of taxes each state sends to Washington and compared it to the share of earmarks that each state receives.
In the op-ed, I use Colorado, one of the biggest earmark donor states, as an example:
Colorado taxpayers contribute about 1.6 percent of total federal taxes, but they receive just over two-tenths of one percent of earmarked funds—proportionally speaking, less than a third of what it should be getting. This works out to more than $200 million dollars that Coloradans are spending to subsidize earmarks in other states – hardly chump change. So while Colorado’s representatives might pat themselves on the back for securing funding for an occasional municipal bus or bioenergy plant, their earmarking rivals in other states like West Virginia and Hawaii obtain funding for larger and more expensive projects and send the bill to the Centennial State.
Below is a table with additional data indicating which states are earmark donors and recipients. The key column is the “earmark ratio.” The lower the figure, the smaller a state’s share of earmarks is relative to the amount of taxes its residents and businesses pay. A state with an earmark ratio below 100% is a donor state. As you can see, Utah is the first state on the table that receives slightly more than its proportional share of earmark funds. Mississippi, the last state on the list, remarkably receives 11 times more than its proportional share.
Also note that the most populous states in the country are earmark donors – almost 90 percent of Americans live in earmark donor states.
‘Strip-or-Grope’ vs. Risk Management
In a humbly-toned USA Today opinion piece yesterday, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano asked for the public’s cooperation with airline security measures the Transportation Security Administration has recently implemented. The TSA has come up with an invasive pairing: ”Advanced Imaging Technology,” also known as “strip-search machines” and, for those refusing, “enhanced” pat-downs which explore areas of the body typically reserved for one’s spouse or doctor.
Anecdotal reports suggest that the machines are being used to ogle women, and we are seeing disturbing images and videos of children being handled by strangers online. The public is increasingly agitated by the TSA’s latest amendment to the air travel ordeal, and a “National Opt-Out Day” is slated for next Wednesday, the biggest travel day of the year.
Twice, Secretary Napolitano notes that these measures are “risk-based” or “driven by . . . risk.” But has the Department of Homeland Security conducted the necessary risk management studies to validate these programs? A March 2010 Government Accountability Office report says:
[I]t remains unclear whether the AIT would have detected the weapon used in the December 2009 incident based on the preliminary information GAO has received. . . . In October 2009, GAO also recommended that TSA complete cost-benefit analyses for new passenger screening technologies. While TSA conducted a life-cycle cost estimate and an alternatives analysis for the AIT, it reported that it has not conducted a cost-benefit analysis of the original deployment strategy or the revised AIT deployment strategy, which proposes a more than twofold increase in the number of machines to be procured.
I’ve seen no documentation that the strip-search machines, the invasive pat-downs, or their combination have been subjected to any thorough risk analysis. The DHS has mouthed risk terminology for years now, but evidence is scant that it has ever subjected itself to such rigor. Read the rest of this post »
Ban Spending Earmarks, But Not Tariff Cuts
Republican leaders in Congress announced Monday that they are all on board to ban spending “earmarks” when the newly elected Congress convenes in January. That is all to the good. While not a large share of the federal budget, the designation of tax dollars to fund specific pet projects in member districts has come to symbolize out-of-control spending in Washington.
Those same leaders should clarify that the earmark ban applies only to spending projects—not to the kind of tariff suspensions including in a recent miscellaneous tariff bill.
The U.S. Manufacturing Enhancement Act approved by Congress in July suspended tariffs on hundreds of imported items of special interest to U.S. manufacturers. House Republican leaders made the mistake earlier this year of including such tariff suspensions in an earmark ban they announced in March.
The overly broad definition of an earmark boxed the leadership into opposing a perfectly sensible trade bill. Despite the half-hearted opposition of the GOP leadership, the U.S. Manufacturing Enhancement Act passed overwhelmingly in the House on July 21, by a margin of 378-43, with Republicans supporting it by a 3-1 margin.
Most members of Congress already understood what the Cato Institute pointed out in a September 2010 study recommending reform of future miscellaneous tariff bills—that tariff cuts are not the same as spending earmarks. Here is what I wrote in the study about the difference between tariff cuts and the kind of spending earmarks that has angered voters:
Spending-bill earmarks distribute tax dollars not for any public purpose authorized under the U.S. Constitution, but rather to benefit a certain special interest or a specific city or district. They grant favors to a small group of beneficiaries at the public’s expense. In contrast, a tariff suspension repeals a narrow tax that falls disproportionately and unfairly on a small group of producers. Instead of granting a favor at the public’s expense, a tariff suspension relieves individual producers of a burden that falls on them and nobody else. Unlike a spending earmark, a tariff suspension creates no new claim on public resources. It does not expand the scope or size of government.
Including tariff suspensions in the moratorium is not a matter of curbing the power of lobbyists. There is a world of difference between lobbying for a $500,000 government grant for a project with narrow benefits, and lobbying to remove a $500,000 tax bill that only a handful of enterprises are required to pay. The former seeks an expansion of the government’s power and influence, the latter a reduction. Republicans who rightly complain about the growth of the federal government should be the first to embrace the suspension and repeal of hundreds of nuisance taxes distorting the economy and burdening American producers.
The new Congress may soon consider another miscellaneous tariff bill to further reduce discriminatory tariffs that impose real costs on U.S. companies trying to compete in global markets. Republican leaders should join with their Democratic counterparts in the new Congress to clarify that suspending or repealing unfair tariffs should not be banned but should be vigorously pursued.
New Paper on the Generalized System of Preferences
I have a new paper out today on the Generalized System of Preferences, the program by which the U.S. government allows certain imports from most developing countries to enter the U.S. market duty-free. The program has benefits: some producers in some poor countries are able to sell more than they otherwise would in the U.S. market, and U.S. consumers benefit to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year because of the tariff exemptions.
But the GSP still represents managed trade, and poorly managed at that. The program is designed so certain goods in which poorer countries tend to have a comparative advantage — textiles, for example — are excluded from the program, mainly because of the influence of the U.S. textile lobby. There are limits on how much of a particular product a beneficiary country can export duty-free, which means that truly efficient and competitve exporters are shut out. The very existence of the program has proved a stumbling block to (superior, if not first-best) multilateral trade liberalization, because GSP beneficiary countries don’t want reductions in general tariffs to erode their preferential access.
With the GSP expiring at the end of the year (more here on possible vehicles for its passage [$]), it is a good time for Congress to consider radically changing this program. The best way to secure an open, prosperous world economy is to allow trade to flow freely across borders. If that is a bridge too far for politicians, they should at least consider some of the other reforms I suggest to make the GSP more open to more products, and to reduce the interference these programs impose on voluntary, peaceful exchange. Opening the U.S. market on a permanent and non-discriminatory basis should be the ultimate goal.
Earmarks and the Constitution
Today POLITICO Arena asks:
Is Senate Minority Leader McConnell’s announcement yesterday that he will support a moratorium on earmarks a sign that establishment Republicans are caving in to the tea party faction of their party?
My response:
Far from a sign that ”establishment” Republicans are “caving in” to the Tea Party faction soon to arrive here, Senate Minority Leader McConnell’s announcement yesterday that he “will join the Republican Leadership in the House in support of a moratorium on earmarks in the 112th Congress” suggests that Republicans may be rediscovering their roots in limited government, however reluctantly for some. At the same time, McConnell’s unusually long press release brings out two main difficulties surrounding the subject: first, and most important, the overall growth of spending; and second, the question of who decides where that spending goes.
On the second question, McConnell is clearly right: It’s hardly an improvement if ending earmarks amounts simply to giving the president the discretion to determine where spending goes. And on that point he contrasts earmarks he himself has made toward projects that properly were federal — e.g., cleaning up a dangerous chemical weapons site in his state, which presidents in both parties had ignored — with the Stimulus Bill, “which Congress passed without any earmarks only to have the current administration load it up with earmarks for everything from turtle tunnels to tennis courts.”
To be sure, there’s enough mischief at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue to go around, but it’s the growth of spending, most on matters unauthorized by the Constitution, that is far and away the larger problem. McConnell calls for congressional oversight “to monitor how the money taxpayers send to the administration is actually spent.” Far more important will be hearings to determine whether Congress has constitutional authority to appropriate money on any particular matter in the first place.
Thus, the new Congress needs to see through the false alternative the earmarks debate has engendered. At bottom, it’s not a question of whether Congress or the president shall decide. Rather, after administration input, all but ministerial spending decisions belong to Congress — as constrained by the Constitution. Thus, if the voice of the electorate is to be respected, new and old members alike need to attend first to their oath of office.
Stopping the ‘Culture of Spending’
Sen. Mitch McConnell’s quick reversal on the subject of earmarks was a surprise, but that quick, largely symbolic win against profligate spending certainly won’t translate into a more permanent movement without sustained effort. Shortly after McConnell made his speech supporting a “moratorium” on earmarks, I spoke with Matt Kibbe of Freedomworks about turning the enthusiasm for smaller government into that enduring force. He said understanding public choice gives lawmakers a better shot at turning popular anger at government into reductions in its size and scope. Freedomworks recently held orientation sessions for freshmen members of Congress. A primer in public choice was on the agenda.
Cato’s Government Failure: A Primer in Public Choice is a good place to start to understand the mechanics of government dealmaking.
Provenge Controversy Argues for Medicare Vouchers
The new prostate-cancer vaccine Provenge (manufacturer: Dendreon) appears to extend life by an average of four months at the relatively high cost of $93,000 per patient. This week, Medicare bureaucrats will conduct a national coverage analysis before deciding whether Medicare will cover the vaccine. This “unusual“ step has sparked charges that government bureaucrats are rationing medical care to save money.
Today’s Washington Post includes letters from two cancer survivors that neatly illustrate why the government should not be in the business of providing health insurance or purchasing medical care at all. Cancer Survivor #1 argues that Medicare should cover Provenge:
“Expensive” treatments have given me many extra years with my family. I witnessed my older daughters graduate from high school, start college and celebrate events doctors told me I would never see…Time is precious, life is priceless and every breath is a gift.
Cancer Survivor #2 says no way:
As a 63-year-old cancer survivor, would I forgo just four more months of life if it would cost $93,000? Yes, in a heartbeat…Let’s quit trying to live forever and put those millions of dollars into educating the next generation.
If the government stayed out of health care, or just subsidized Medicare enrollees with a voucher, then both cancer survivors would get their wish. Cancer Survivor #1 could purchase coverage for expensive cancer treatments. Cancer Survivor #2, and millions like her, could buy lower-cost insurance and donate the savings to scholarships.
Yet politicians and government bureaucrats dictate what type of insurance Medicare enrollees get, which means they also decide what enrollees will not get. And no matter where they draw the line, someone loses. Either Cancer Survivor #1 won’t get her expensive medical treatment, or Cancer Survivor #2 won’t be able to fund scholarships for kids.
The only way out is Medicare vouchers. In addition to being the most plausible way to reduce Medicare spending, vouchers are the only way to protect Medicare enrollees from government rationing.
Fiscal Commission Compared to Clinton
The Obama fiscal commission’s draft report suggested that federal spending be reduced from 25.1% of GDP today to 22% by 2020, and lower after that. That’s a reasonable goal for a centrist kind of commission, but let’s remember that spending was just 18.2% in President Clinton’s last two fiscal years, 2000 and 2001.
For the final report, the commission’s staff might look to Clinton’s budgets for guidance. The chart shows federal spending as a share of GDP in fiscal 2001 and fiscal 2012. Fiscal 2001 was Clinton’s last year, and it was before all of President Bush and Obama’s spending increases. I choose 2012 as the end year because most of the “stimulus” spending will be finished by then, defense is supposed be down a bit as foreign troops are partly withdrawn, and the economy will have hopefully recovered. Based on President Obama’s Mid-Session Review, spending in fiscal 2012 will be 23.0% of GDP.
Total federal spending is expected to increase 4.8 percentage points of GDP between 2001 and 2012. The chart shows that increases have occurred in every part of the budget–entitlements, defense, and domestic spending. Thus, the Obama fiscal commission is on the right track to propose cuts across all areas of the budget. However, it needs to be about 4 percentage points of GDP more aggressive in downsizing the government to get us down to Clinton-level spending.
Will Obama Rise Above a Divided Nation?
Today POLITICO Arena asks:
Would Obama be more effective if he were to limit himself to one term?
My response:
It’s possible that Obama is self-absorbed enough to believe that he could unite the nation by announcing that he intends to be a one-term president and then, as Schoen and Caddell suggest, devoting all of his energy to solving the nation’s problems. After all, his speeches abroad early last year suggested that he and many of his devotees, including members of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, believed that he possessed similar powers over international problems.
But as both domestic and international reality has set in, as it has a way of doing, we’ve seen how it afflicts those whose grasp of it is less than sure. They long, disingenuously or not, for some mythical age of domestic comity, forgetting that the nation has ever been divided, even under George Washington, no less. Today, however, the issues that divide us are fundamental. Indeed, electoral majorities in California and New York have just reminded us of something the ancients understood, that democracy at bottom is a struggle between those who imagine the state to be their spiritual and material benefactor, including the perpetrators of that view who stand to profit from it, and those who have a more limited, arms-length understanding of the state.
As between those two camps, there’s not much in common. A wise politician will grasp that reality and pitch his tent accordingly. Thus far, Obama has grasped that, but he’s pitched his tent in the wrong camp.
Mao’s Last Dancer
The movie “Mao’s Last Dancer” is a sleeper hit, says the Los Angeles Times:
It features no big-name stars, drew mediocre reviews and traffics in the esoterica of Chinese ballet.
And yet “Mao’s Last Dancer,” the true story of a ballet performer who defected to the United States in 1981, has become one of the season’s biggest art-house hits.
Bruce Beresford’s Australian-produced film tells of Li Cunxin, an 11-year-old Chinese boy plucked from his rural village in 1972 under the reign of Mao Zedong to dance for the Beijing Ballet. While in residence at the Houston Ballet a decade later, he defected to the United States after a politically charged standoff that involved the FBI and diplomats from China and the U.S.
It’s been in theaters for three months, and I finally saw it this weekend. You can’t usually wait that long to see an indie film, but this one’s been hanging on under the radar. It’s a great story about Chinese communism, politically controlled art, and one individual who chooses freedom. In a climactic scene, the Chinese consul tells Li “the Party knows what’s best for you” and Li responds, “I know what’s best for me.” (The language is a little different in Li’s autobiography.)
The New York Times dismisses the movie as “nothing more than an old-fashioned tear-jerker,” complaining that it is
stuck in an earlier era of heavy-handed clichés about Chinese innocence and American experience. The juxtaposition of wide-eyed villagers and labored aphorisms with shopping malls and casual sex may accurately reflect Mr. Li’s book, but on screen it feels absurdly outdated.
Um, yes. The movie is set between 1972 and 1981. That was Mao’s China, even the China of the Cultural Revolution and the Gang of Four, and then the very earliest days of the liberalization under Deng Xiao-ping. Today it looks dated, as do most movies set 30 or more years in the past. Anyone who has visited China recently might not realize just how stunning the Houston skyline would have looked to Li in 1981. But I saw the Shanghai skyline seven years later, in 1988, and I know that Houston would have seemed a different world to Li at that time.
No doubt the Times reviewer also disliked the scenes in Chinese schools where students are told that China has the highest standard of living in the world, while the “capitalist and imperialist nations” live in unimaginable horror. And maybe the scene of Madame Mao visiting the Beijing ballet academy and demanding that the students perform only revolutionary ballet. But that was the reality of Maoist China.
I’ve written before about the remarkable dearth of anti-communist movies in Hollywood, especially when you consider that communism lasted far longer and killed far more people than national socialism, about which there have been many movies. Of course, this movie wasn’t produced in Hollywood; it was produced in Australia by the Australian director Bruce Beresford (“Breaker Morant,” “Tender Mercies,” “Driving Miss Daisy”). And “Mao’s Last Dancer” is as much a story of individualism and breaking out of a world that would hold you down (not unlike “Billy Elliott” or “October Sky”) as it is a political movie.
The fact that Li was allowed to visit the Houston Ballet temporarily in 1981 was a sign of the changes that were happening in China, and the country has made much more progress since then. But China is still not comfortable with this story, and the producers were forced to shoot some scenes in secret after being denied permission to film in China.
With Christmas movies coming, “Mao’s Last Dancer” won’t be in theaters much longer. See it now.
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