Archive for February, 2011
Getting Out of Afghanistan
Today’s Washington Post features an op-ed by Reps. James McGovern (D-MA) and Walter Jones (R-NC) on the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. This particular bipartisan pairing isn’t particularly noteworthy; the two men have collaborated before. But the arguments presented in the piece — one set designed to appeal to conservatives, the other aimed at liberals — have the potential to join together a much broader left-right coalition in opposition to an open-ended mission that, according to McGovern and Jones, has already cost U.S. taxpayers $450 billion dollars, and whose costs are accumulating at a rate of nearly $10 billion every month.
My colleagues and I have argued on numerous occasions for why the Obama administration should refine our objectives in Afghanistan. The issue isn’t about getting out of the country, per se, but rather about what we are asking our brave troops to do there. We owe it to them to give them a mission that is achievable within a reasonable time frame. Policy makers in Washington must be reasonably certain that the mission advances U.S. security, and that alternative strategies that have a higher likelihood of success and/or less cost have been thoroughly considered.
I don’t believe that they have been. There is ample evidence to suggest that our attempt to build a functioning nation-state in the Hindu Kush is likely to fail. Most nation-building missions do fail, and the conditions for success — especially a functioning economy and a capable, representative government that enjoys broad-based support — simply do not exist in Afghanistan, and won’t for a very long time.
Above all else, the McGovern-Jones op-ed is an appeal to the American people and to their representatives in Congress to pay attention to what is happening in Afghanistan, and to think deeply about the mission. For a window into what that mission actually looks like, check out the HBO special “The Battle for Marjah.” The similarities between what the brave troops of Bravo company dealt with in the spring and summer of 2010, and what other units were doing in 2009, as documented in this Frontline program, are striking. I don’t know how anyone can watch either of these programs and be confident that we are making progress. And I especially don’t know how you can watch these and not share the frustrations of our troops.
And if those video snippets aren’t sufficient to convince you to rethink what we’re doing in Afghanistan, and to question whether we really are making progress, the numbers tracking the last two years there are only worse.
Showdown in Madison
Today POLITICO Arena asks:
Should Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker be commended or criticized for his proposal to change certain collective bargaining agreements for public sector employees, adding that Republicans won’t be “bullied” by protesters?
My response:
In November the government-union cabal that has driven Wisconsin, like other states, to the brink of bankruptcy was thrown out of office in a landslide election. So what are the union thugs now occupying the capitol and the state’s Democratic senators who’ve fled the state complaining about? The lack of democracy. That so many are “teachers,” waving signs likening Gov. Walker to Hitler and Stalin, gives rise only to sympathy for the children of Wisconsin.
In fact, if ever there were an argument for separating school and state, it’s unfolding today in Madison. Private schools in the state are functioning quite normally through this Athens-like spectacle, because they operate under normal market conditions, where parents, administrators, and teachers decide personnel matters through voluntary agreements. By contrast, as the Cato Institute’s Chris Edwards has shown through numerous studies, because public-sector unions occupy, effectively, both sides of the bargaining table, their pay and benefits over the years have far outstripped those of private-sector workers who pay those benefits.
Well the taxpayers spoke in November. The unions’ beef is with them. Deal with it.
Alaska’s Parnell Becomes 2nd Gov. to Refuse to Implement ObamaCare
The Associated Press reports that Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell (R) told the Juneau Chamber of Commerce that he will not be implementing ObamaCare:
“The state of Alaska will not pursue unlawful activity to implement a federal health care regime that has been declared unconstitutional by a federal court,” Parnell told the Juneau Chamber of Commerce, to applause, Thursday.
The AP included a couple of interesting comments from ObamaCare supporters Timothy Jost, a law professor at Washington & Lee University, and Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA.
Jost described Judge Roger Vinson (to whom Parnell referred) as “one renegade judge,” when in fact two federal judges have struck down ObamaCare’s individual mandate as unconstitutional. (Since only two federal judges have upheld ObamaCare, who’s to say which pair are the renegades?)
Jost also called Alaska an “outlier” among states, while the AP reported, “Neither [Pollock] nor Jost knew of any other state taking action similar to Parnell.” Jost and Pollack should know that Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) had already refused to implement ObamaCare. (Here he is telling an approving audience of Cato supporters.) Ironically, the AP story overlooking Scott’s leadership appeared on the Miami Herald web site, which had previously reported that Scott even returned to the federal government the ObamaCare money that his predecessor Charlie Crist accepted but hadn’t spent. Scott may not be enough company to keep Parnell from being an outlier. But Jost should also know that dozens of governors who are implementing ObamaCare are also hoping the Supreme Court will strike it down as unconstitutional. Parnell and Scott are outliers for their courage, not because they oppose ObamaCare.
The news about Parnell came as the U.S. Department of Justice filed a motion asking Judge Vinson to clarify that his declaratory judgment “does not relieve the parties of their rights and obligations under [ObamaCare] while the declaratory judgment is the subject of appellate review.” Ilya Shapiro and I clarified that issue in our oped, “President Should Heed Court and Stop Implementing ObamaCare.”
A Reply to Andy McCarthy on Patriot and Roving Wiretaps
National Review‘s Andrew McCarthy thinks proponents of Partiot Act reform, yours truly included, are too concerned with hypothetical problems:
Concerns about “John Doe” warrants — i.e., roving wiretap authorizations that do not name a specific person or place to be surveilled — have been discussed since 2001. Two things stand out. First, although we’ve now had this provision for close to a decade, civil liberties advocates like Mr. Friedersdorf and Cato’s Julian Sanchez still have to couch their objections in the subjunctive mood: the warrants “raise the possibility” of overbreadth abuses “disturbingly similar to the ‘general warrants’” prohibited by the Fourth Amendment. That is, although the Patriot Act has been examined, debated, and reauthorized a number of times since its initial passage shortly after 9/11, critics still have no concrete record that roving taps have been systematically abused, so they have to raise potential abuses that never seem to materialize.
A few points. The concerns about overbreadth—which at the collection stage are at least as likely to result from error as deliberate abuse—are about as “subjunctive” as the benefits of roving taps, given the paucity of public information about their use, which is precisely why caution is in order. (So useful are they, on McCarthy’s telling, that you’d have to be “downright dumb” not to get a roving tap whenever you do FISA surveillance. I’m not sure what he means to imply about our intelligence agents, given that 99 percent of FISA wiretaps are non-roving.) We’ve had extensive Inspector General audits of both Section 215 business record authority and expanded National Security Letter powers—audits which have assuaged some worries in the former case and confirmed them in the latter one. We’ve had nothing comparable for roving wiretaps. It seems a little cute to use the very absence of transparency that characterizes surveillance in the criminal context as some kind of cudgel. And it seems downright absurd when you consider some of the practical realities of intelligence surveillance.
Just in fiscal 2008, the FBI alone collected 878,383 hours (or just over 100 years) of audio, much of it in foreign languages; 1,610,091 pages of text; and 28,795,212 electronic files. A recent review of FBI backlogs by the Office of the Inspector General found that fully a quarter of the audio collected between 2003 and 2008 remained unreviewed (including 6 percent of counterterror acquisitions and 31 percent of counterintelligence acquisitions, the two categories covered by FISA wiretaps). Let that sink in for a second: They have literally years worth of audio material alone that the Bureau itself can’t be sure of the contents of, never mind any kind of independent oversight body.
Time to Get Rid of the Corporate Income Tax?
Here’s a video arguing for the abolition of the corporate income tax. The visuals are good and it touches on key issues such as competitiveness.
I do have one complaint about the video, though it is merely a sin of omission. There is not enough attention paid to the issue of double taxation. Yes, America’s corporate tax rate is very high, but that is just one of the layers of taxation imposed by the internal revenue code. Both the capital gains tax and the tax on dividends result in corporate income being taxed at least two times.
These are points I made in my very first video, which is a good companion to the other video.
There is a good argument, by the way, for keeping the corporate tax and instead getting rid of the extra layers of tax on dividends and capital gains. Either approach would get rid of double taxation, so the economic benefits would be identical. But the compliance costs of taxing income at the corporate level (requiring a relatively small number of tax returns) are much lower than the compliance costs of taxing income at the individual level (requiring the IRS to track down tens of millions of shareholders).
Indeed, this desire for administrative simplicity is why the flat tax adopts the latter approach (this choice does not exist with a national sales tax since the government collects money when income is spent rather than when it is earned).
But that’s a secondary issue. If there’s a chance to get rid of the corporate income tax, lawmakers should jump at the opportunity.
No Mr. Secretary, It Is Not in America’s “Interest” to Stay in Iraq
In testimony yesterday before the House Armed Service Committee, Defense Secretary Robert Gates stated that the United States has an “interest” in keeping troops in Iraq past the agreed date of withdrawal, December 31, 2011. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) pressed Gates by asking:
How can we maintain all of these gains that we’ve made through so much effort if we only have 150 people there and we don’t have any military there whatsoever,” Hunter asked. “We’d have more military in Western European countries at that point than we’d have in Iraq, one of the most central states, as everybody knows, in the Middle East?
The logic of Rep. Duncan’s question provides some interesting context. His logic implies that the thousands of U.S. troops stationed in wealthy, developed, Western Europe is both necessary and beneficial to our current interests. But this is not a very good argument as European countries continue to cut their defense budgets in large part because they are sheltered under the American security umbrella. It is in fact highly questionable why Americans should be willing to accept massive deficits as far as the eye can see and spend still more on our military, so that our allies can continue to shirk their fundamental obligations to their own people. There is no reason why we should want to adopt the same model for Iraq.
And yet, Rep. Duncan assumes that U.S. troop deployments in Europe are the model for providing political and economic stability everywhere in the world. If U.S. troops withdraw, all of our “gains” in Iraq would be lost.
This assumes that, first, U.S. troops can provide this stability, and second that our strategic interests in Iraq are on par with those in other parts of the world. But leaving U.S. troops in Iraq for another two, five, or seven years will not advance American security. It is not now, and should never have been, the responsibility of U.S. troops to create a functioning state in Iraq. That is the responsibility of the Iraqi people and their government. Likewise, our troops should not serve as Iraq’s police force.
There is no doubt that there are political and security challenges in Iraq, but these concerns should not delay the withdrawal. There will always be excuses, especially from those who favored the war at the outset, for a continued presence. And these risks will persist no matter how long U.S. troops stay. The future of Iraq lies with the people of Iraq, and it is well past the time when they must take the reins.
A handover of security responsibilities to the Iraqi people is in America’s strategic interest. As we are currently seeing with European defense budgets, the United States has been in the business of doing for other governments what they should be doing for themselves. Now would be a good time to start to change this pattern.
How Many 215 Orders?
There was an interesting exchange during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing yesterday concerning the use of the Patriot Act’s §215 orders for business records and other tangible things. FBI Director Robert Mueller hinted that the orders may have been used to track purchases of hydrogen peroxide purchases in the investigation of aspiring bomber Najibullah Zazi, while Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oreg.) asserted that there is “a huge gap today between how you all are interpreting the PATRIOT Act and what the American people think the PATRIOT Act is all about and it’s going to need to be resolved.”
Let’s leave our curiosity about that by the wayside for the moment, though. I’m curious about one simple empirical claim Mueller made in his testimony: That the provision has been used over 380 times since 2001. I assume he’d know, but that seems inconsistent with what’s been publicly reported to date. It’s worth noting that there are actually minor discrepancies between the numbers provided in Congressional Research Service reports, audits from the Office of the Inspector General, and the Justice Department’s annual reports to Congress. But there are plenty of legitimate reasons these numbers might vary depending on how you count, and the total variance is a difference of about 17 orders total over the years.
We know from those Inspector General reports that the majority of those 215 orders issued were “combination” orders issued in tandem with another type of surveillance order called a “pen register” so that investigators could get subscriber information about the people whose communications patterns they were tracking. When Congress amended the Patriot Act in 2006, it built that authority right into the pen register statute, making it unnecessary to seek those “combination” orders. Prior to the amendment, the government got 173 of those “combination” orders. “Pure” 215 orders, which are now the only type needed, have been used much more sparingly. None were issued at all until 2004, and from 2004 through 2009 (depending on whose tally you want to use) there were between 75 and 92 orders issued (for an average of 12–15 annually since 2004). Throw in the combination orders and the upper-bound number through the end of 2009 is 265 orders.
Gambling Raid in Baltimore
The Baltimore police must have solved the city’s violent crime problem. They’ve shifted resources to illegal gambling:
Baltimore County police arrested five men after an undercover detective infiltrated an illegal high-stakes poker game in Edgemere, records show.
Police say “Texas Hold ‘Em” games were held regularly at the Lynch Point Social Club in the 3100 block of Roger Road, where organizers were making as much as $1,500 in profit a night, according to charging documents.
After receiving a tip, officers conducted surveillance at the club and later sent an undercover detective inside, who participated in a game with a $65 buy-in. The detective played for hours — leaving after he lost all his chips, records show.
A tactical unit conducted a raid on the club Feb. 11, seizing poker chips, electronic gambling machines and a surveillance system, among other items. Forty-one people were inside at the time of the raid.
Posted at the Raidmap, where you can find similar “isolated incidents.” A December gambling raid in South Carolina turned into a gun fight when poker players mistook a SWAT team for armed robbers. The family of Sal Culosi, the Virginia optometrist killed in a 2006 gambling raid, just settled its lawsuit against Fairfax County for $2 million. Radley Balko has more on that tragedy here.
Thoughts on the F-35′s Extra Engine
I’m a bit late to the party in commenting on the passage of the Rooney Amendment, a successful effort on the part of 2nd-term Republican Tom Rooney (R-Fla.) to strip funding for the F-136, an engine that the Pentagon doesn’t want for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
A few additional thoughts: unlike nearly all other amendments to the CR, Rooney’s passed, and fairly easily. Part of the reason is strong administration support for the effort, key especially to securing votes from Democrats — those who don’t have F-136 plants in their districts, that is. But Gates had signaled his displeasure many times previously, so that alone doesn’t explain this rare victory for budget hawks.
I would guess that an additional factor is the slew of new Republicans elected on a platform of fiscal prudence. Having Rooney as a champion for the cause certainly helped, with 110 Republicans voting for the amendment (vote tally here). A majority within the GOP still treat weapons contractors with kid gloves, but claiming that every single weapon system is essential to the nation’s survival can get pretty laughable, especially when the Secretary of Defense and all the relevant uniformed officers disagree.
(Speaking of laughable, wouldn’t it be absurd for the Obama administration to threaten to veto the CR because it now has too little money for the Pentagon? Wait. That happened.)
Much as I would like to dwell on the defeat of the F-136 in the House, however, I am sobered by the reality of budgeting for the military. This is hardly the final blow in this battle. Opponents and supporters of the extra engine in the Senate have already lined up their forces. The engine might yet re-emerge. And we must not lose sight of the fact that the total amount saved – $450 million — is tiny relative to the Pentagon’s budget of around $540 billion in this fiscal year. Perhaps rather than debating the need for a second engine, we should be debating the need for a plane that is grossly over budget, badly behind schedule, and riddled with performance problems?
So kudos to Congressman Rooney for leading this fight, but there is still much, much more to do to bring military spending down to reasonable levels. (For example, removing U.S. troops from Europe, a policy that already enjoys considerable support.)
Measuring Progress on Violence against Union Members in Colombia
During a recent Congressional hearing on President Obama’s trade agenda, Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.) stated his continued objections to the FTA with Colombia:
“Union worker violence in Colombia remains unacceptably high – if not the highest in the world. Limited progress is being made in the investigation and prosecution of those responsible. Additionally, reports indicate that threats against union workers and others have increased, and there has been little concrete action today to pursue these cases.” [Emphasis added].
Levin warned that, despite signs of a more constructive approach to this issue from Colombia’s new president Juan Manuel Santos, “The only adequate measuring stick is progress on the ground.”
Rep. Levin should take a look at the Free Trade Bulletin that my colleague Dan Griswold and I published this week: “Trade Agreement Would Promote U.S. Exports and Colombian Civil Society.” When it comes to progress on the ground regarding violence against union members, Colombia already has a remarkable record. The number of assassinations of trade unionists has dropped 77% since its peak in 2001, compared to the total number of homicides in the country, which declined by 44% in the same period.
Sources: National Union School (ENS) and Ministry of Social Protection (MPS).
If we look at the homicide rate as defined by the number of murders per 100,000 inhabitants, the rate for union killings was 5.3 per 100,000 unionists in 2010, six times lower than the homicide rate for the overall population (33.9 per 100,000 inhabitants).
In our paper, we present evidence that shows that union members enjoy greater security than other vulnerable groups of Colombian civil society, such as teachers, councilmen and journalists. Also, we highlight research conducted by economists Daniel Mejía and María José Uribe of the Universidad de los Andes in Colombia, which found no statistical evidence supporting the claim that trade unionists are targeted for their activities. Instead, their results show that “the violence against union members can be explained by the general level of violence and by low levels of economic development.”
As for Rep. Levin’s claim that there has been “little concrete action” to pursue crimes against trade unionists, once again the evidence says otherwise. In 2010 there were over 1,400 trade unionists under a government protection program—more than any other vulnerable group of Colombia’s civil society. In 2007, a special department was created in the Office of the Prosecutor General dedicated exclusively to solving crimes against union members and bringing the perpetrators to justice. Close to 85 percent of the sentences issued since 2000 for assassinations of trade unionists were issued after the creation of this department.
If Rep. Levin’s “adequate measuring stick is progress on the ground,” then he should recognize the tremendous achievements made by Colombia so far in reducing violence against trade unionists, and solving the crimes committed against them.
You can read the full paper here.
I’ll Take “Whatever Evidence I Like” for Hundreds of Billions, Alex
Right before the President’s 2012 budget proposal was released, I wrote a bit about what I was hearing the administration would call for with Pell Grants. Notably, ending year-round Pell on the grounds that the cost was too high and “there was little evidence that students earn their degrees any faster.” I found this argument a bit odd because eligibility to get more than one Pell award annually started in just the 2009-2010 academic year — way too recently to have any conclusive evidence on its effect one way or the other. I was also surprised because, well, evidence of success has never been important in decisions to keep or kill programs.
Take the embattled — and near dead — Washington, DC voucher program. There is currently a concerted effort to revive the program, but the Obama administration and most congressional Democrats evinced no qualms about killing it despite its well-documented success with graduation rates and parental satisfaction. Documented, in fact, using “gold-standard,” longitudinal, random-assignment research methods. That documentation is why Cato Center for Educational Freedom director Andrew Coulson last week testified to the House education committee that “there is one federal education program that has been proven to both improve educational outcomes and dramatically lower costs. That is the Washington, DC Opportunity Scholarships Program.”
Sadly, the administration – and, to be honest, pols of all stripes – are as happy to ignore the evidence of success in programs they dislike as the very common evidence of failure in programs they support.
Take the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program, which funds after-school activities intended to keep kids off the streets and provide them with social and educational enrichment. A series of studies — the last published in 2005 — found that not only didn’t the program appear to provide many positive results, it might have had overall negative effects:
Conclusions: This study finds that elementary students who were randomly assigned to attend the 21st Century Community Learning Centers after-school program were more likely to feel safe after school, no more likely to have higher academic achievement, no less likely to be in self-care, more likely to engage in some negative behaviors, and experience mixed effects on developmental outcomes relative to students who were not randomly assigned to attend the centers.
In light of its (at-best) impotence, did the program go away? Of course not! In FY 2010 it was appropriated $1.17 billion, and the Obama administration has asked for $1.27 billion for FY 2012. And this despite not just poor performance, but a pesky $14 trillion national debt.
This is small potatoes, though, compared to some other programs. Take Head Start: Run by the Department of Health and Human Services, Head Start is supposed to give poor kids an early boost in life. In reality, however, it has proven itself to be largely worthless, with benefits disappearing after just a few years. It’s a finding that was repeated in a federal evaluation released in 2010, which reported that ”the advantages children gained during their Head Start and age 4 years yielded only a few statistically significant differences in outcomes at the end of 1st grade for the sample as a whole.”
Despite this fecklessness, the administration wants to increase funding for Head Start from $7.23 billion in FY 2010 to $8.10 billion in FY 2012.
Clearly, “evidence” doesn’t drive budgeting decisions — it’s just a term that’s invoked when it’s politically expedient to do so. But maybe one more bit of evidence is in order to illustrate this. Compare increases in overall federal spending on K-12 education to the academic performance of 17-year-olds, our schools’ “final products”:
In light of this, if federal policymakers really cared about evidence, would they still be spending money on education at all? The evidence on that, unfortunately, is almost indisputable.
Schools for Misrule Spring Speaking Tour
The first copies of my new book Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America are here from the printer, and I’ll be touring the country to promote it in coming weeks. Some highlights:
- February 21. Bloomington, Ind. Indiana University Law School, sponsored by Federalist Society chapter.
- February 22. Urbana-Champaign, Ill. University of Illinois School of Law, sponsored by Federalist Society chapter. Commenting will be Prof. Larry Ribstein.
- March 3. Washington, D.C. Cato Institute Policy Forum. Commenting on the book will be the Hon. Douglas Ginsburg, U.S. Court of Appeals, and moderating will be Cato legal director Roger Pilon.
- March 10. University of Minnesota, sponsored by Federalist Society chapter. Commenting will be Profs. Brad Clary and Oren Gross, and moderating will be Prof. Dale Carpenter.
- March 16. New York, N.Y. Manhattan Institute luncheon (invitation). Commenting will be James Copland, Manhattan Institute.
- March 22. Washington, D.C. Heritage Foundation forum. Commenting/moderating: Todd Gaziano, Heritage Foundation.
- March 28. Boulder, Colo. University of Colorado School of Law, sponsored by Federalist Society chapter.
- March 29. Laramie, Wyo. University of Wyoming School of Law, sponsored by Federalist Society chapter.
- March 30. Sacramento, Calif. McGeorge School of Law, sponsored by Federalist Society chapter.
- April 6. New York, N.Y. Manhattan Institute Young Leaders evening event (private).
- April 7. Washington, D.C. American University Law School, sponsored by Federalist Society chapter.
- April 13. Washington, D.C. Book club appearance (private).
- April 27-29. Dallas, Tex. Heritage Foundation Resource Bank meeting (private).
Always check in advance with the hosting group for venues and exact times; some events open to the public require advance registration. The book’s official publication date is March 1, and copies should be arriving in the bookstores soon.
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