Archive for September, 2011
Dangerous Lessons in Islamophobia at the FBI
In a disturbing piece for Wired, my friend Spencer Ackerman reports on the appalling contents of training sessions on Isla
m delivered to FBI agents, which suggest that all devout Muslims ought to be considered as prone to violence and terrorism.
One comically amateurish chart even purports to graph the historical propensity for violence of the three main Abrahamic faiths. As you can see, Islam seems to rapidly plateau at a very high level of relative violence on some kind of made-up scale—though hard as I squinted, I couldn’t detect a blip in any of the lines around the 12th century that might correspond to the Crusades.
One presentation makes it quite explicit that, in the analyst’s view, the problem is not Islamic “extremism,” but the inherent propensity for violence of Muslims as such:
- There may not be a “radical” threat as much as it is simply a normal assertion of the orthodox ideology.
- The strategic themes animating these Islamic values are not fringe; they are mainstream.
- The individual applying these values and practices may likely be simply a pious and devout adherent: i.e., a true believer as opposed to a “radical.”
In other words, FBI agents are effectively told that Osama bin Laden was correct, and that a sincere Muslim who understands and practices his faith correctly will naturally be a terrorist. It would be offensive in any context for the government to sponsor this kind of smear session against the enormous peaceful majority of its Muslim citizens, but it’s downright dangerous in light of the vast expansion of FBI surveillance authorities over the past decade.
How to Spot Failure
Ezra Klein writes that “libertarianism fails in health care,” by which he means he has identified something he does not like: in a free society, no one would force you to purchase health insurance, whether for yourself or for others, from the government or from private insurers. Klein doesn’t like that, because of something neither of us likes: it means some irresponsible and/or unfortunate people would end up with expensive medical bills or worse—dead.
But that is like saying, “The Yankees fail because they have a lousy third baseman.” (Do they? I have no idea.) It tells us nothing about how well the Yankees perform (how many lives Libertopia would save) on the mound (preventive care), at first base (primary care), in the outfield (acute care and new medical technologies), on double plays (care coordination), or by avoiding unforced errors (same). It tells us nothing about whether the Yankees’s left fielder plays shallow or the team otherwise adjusts to minimize the lousy-third-baseman problem (whether people would take better care of their health and more people would purchase health insurance), how well the Yankees perform at the plate (generating wealth, improving living standards, and reducing the cost of care to bring it within reach of the poor), or lots of other things that a free economy would do that I could graft onto this lousy simile.
Klein doesn’t even begin to examine how other ways of organizing health care, including our very own health sector, perform on any of these dimensions. And he certainly doesn’t tell us the score. All he tells us is what we already knew: that a free market isn’t perfect. Which is to say, he tells us nothing.
Solyndra: Another Energy Boondoggle
The details surrounding the $535 million government loan to Solyndra – the now-bankrupt solar energy company that had been the green apple of the president’s eye – are still emerging. It remains to be seen whether or not the Obama administration broke any laws when it pushed the loan out the door despite obvious problems with the company’s finances.
At the very least, the administration is guilty of wasting taxpayer money. In that regard, it’s no different than all the other administrations that have tried to tinker with energy markets. When the dust settles, Solyndra will take its place alongside other infamous federal energy boondoggles, including the Synthetic Fuels Corporation, the Clinch River Breeder Reactor, and the Superconducting Super Collider. (All of these and more are discussed in a Cato essay on federal energy subsidies.)
Congressional Republicans are salivating over the prospects of a scandal involving a key initiative of the administration. But Republicans should be careful when casting stones given their past and present support for energy subsidies. (Note to investigative reporters: Republican [and Democratic] governors like to hand out subsidies to businesses, which often backfire on taxpayers. I’d know.)
As the political circus over the Solyndra loan unfolds, let’s not lose sight of the fact that the more important question is whether taxpayers should be forced to subsidize energy companies to begin with. The Cato essay argues that they shouldn’t:
The private sector is entirely capable of performing research into coal, nuclear, solar, and alternative energy sources for itself. Businesses will fund new technologies when there is a reasonable chance of commercial success, as they do in every other private industry. Federal subsidies may even be actively damaging to our energy future by steering markets in the wrong direction, away from the best long-term energy solutions…
Policymakers often make grandiose promises, such as proposing to make America ‘energy independent’ or to convert the nation to a ‘green economy.’ Those visions don’t make any sense, but even if they did history shows that the Department of Energy would be incapable of putting them into place with any degree of competence. Federal energy schemes are often poorly managed and generate huge cost overruns, or they aim at objectives that make little economic sense[.]
Rights and Powers: A Poll for Constitution Day
Lots of media are reporting that a new poll from the Associated Press and the National Constitution Center shows that 53 percent of Americans believe that “the government [should] give legal recognition to marriages between couples of the same sex.” Google “gay marriage poll,” and you get 284 news items. Good. It’s news. Even though it’s just about what other recent polls have found. And even though 48 percent also said they supported a federal constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, suggesting that at least 1 percent of respondents are as confused about their position as Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann.
But the survey had much else in it, as well. In fact, here’s an interesting data point from the survey, released a day earlier than the gay-marriage results:
82 percent of respondents say “The Federal Government should not have the power to require all Americans to buy health insurance.”
That is, 82 percent of Americans oppose the central plank of President Obama’s health care policy, the one that’s roiling the courts right now and headed for the Supreme Court.
But Google “poll health care mandate,” and you get no national media results. It’s sorta like it didn’t happen. But it did, and Democratic campaign consultants have no doubt noticed it.
As usual, not everything in the poll was encouraging. 61 percent say they oppose “giving the President more power at the expense of the power of Congress and the courts,” but that’s down from 73 and 75 percent the past two years.
Should the Federal Reserve Supervise Banks?
For about all of 5 minutes during the deliberations of the Dodd-Frank Act (to the extent there were deliberations) proposals were offered to separate the conduct of monetary policy from the regulation of banks. That is, remove the Federal Reserve’s supervision of banks and transfer such authority to another agency. Given the close relationship between Treasury, who was negotiating the bill for the White House, and the Fed, this was never a real possibility.
But would we have been better off removing the Fed’s supervision authorities? A recent NBER working paper by Barry Eichengreen and Nergiz Dincer suggest we would be. The authors examine 140 countries and analyze whether the combination or separation of monetary policy and bank regulation had any influence on the banking sector.
Their results: 1) Relative to countries that combine monetary policy and banking regulation, those countries that separate the two have fewer nonperforming loans as a percent of GDP; 2) They also have lower bank capital requirements, presumably because they have less need to protect against bad loans; 3) savers enjoy higher deposit rates; and 4) there is some weak evidence that separated systems have fewer systemic banking crises. These all seem like worthwhile goals to me.
Given the renewed, and much deserved, attention the Fed is now getting in political circles, we might actually have the opportunity, under a new President, for reform of our banking and monetary systems that would reduce bailouts and financial crises, rather than increase them.
Property Rights Are Not Second-Class Rights
When state and local governments violate federal constitutional rights (e.g., First Amendment free speech), they can be sued in federal court — except when that government action violates the Fifth Amendment’s protections for property rights. Under the Supreme Court’s decision in Williamson County v. Hamilton Bank, individuals and businesses alleging unconstitutional takings by state or local governments are required to exhaust state review procedures — seeking redress from the very officials who harmed them — before turning to federal courts.
This constitutional anomaly is evident in Colony Cove v. City of Carson, where the operators of a rental property in California alleged an unconstitutional taking when the local rent control board refused to approve an increase in rent to allow their business to operate profitably. California law forecloses judicial review of the findings of rent control boards, so municipal governments have an unchecked license to determine whether such businesses may operate: A property owner’s sole recourse is to appeal to the very rent control board who forbade her from charging a profitable rent in the first place.
These “review” procedures, like some others across the nation, are wildly insufficient. Even more significantly, once a takings claim has been fully heard in state proceedings per Williamson County‘s command, it is usually barred from federal review based on various prudential doctrines. The result is the indiscriminate exclusion of takings claims from federal courts, a situation that invites opportunist states to usurp private property rights.
Seeking to afford citizens across the nation the opportunity to assert Takings Clause claims in parity with other constitutional rights, Cato joined the New England Legal Foundation, National Federation of Independent Business, Institute for Justice, Goldwater Institute, and Professors James Ely and Richard Epstein in filing an amicus brief supporting the California property owners’ petition for Supreme Court review of the Ninth Circuit’s ruling against them.
We argue that Williamson County should be overruled because it relegates takings claims to second-class status despite the constitutional first principle that uniform protection of individual rights is vital to our system of government. At the very least, the Court should require federal reprieve when state procedures for rectifying a taking are futile — as they were here. Finally, we argue that the Court should correct lower courts’ misinterpretation of Williamson County, which puts property rights jurisprudence at odds with Section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act of 1871 (a statute that gives people access to federal courts when a state denies them their constitutional rights).
The Court will decide whether to review Colony Cove v. City of Carson later this year. Thanks to legal associate Anna Mackin for her help with the brief, whose counsel of record is Cato adjunct scholar Ilya Somin.
Is It Too Late for Another Candidate?
Two months ago I suggested that it might not be too late for another presidential candidate to enter the race. And I cited some ancient history:
Barry Goldwater announced his candidacy for president on January 3, 1964, about nine weeks before the New Hampshire primary. A decade later, Ronald Reagan announced his challenge to President Gerald Ford on November 20, 1975. After that unsuccessful race, he announced another, this time successful candidacy, on November 13, 1979.
Now the William J. Clinton Presidential Center (whatever happened to good ol’ Bill? I guess “William J. Clinton” sounds more presidential) reminds us of a more recent president who started his campaign later than any of today’s contenders. From September 30 to October 3, the center will celebrate the 20th anniversary of Bill Clinton’s announcement of his candidacy, which happened on October 2, 1991.
Is time running out? Or could a candidate with something attractive to offer still get into the race? It’s still earlier in the season than when Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton announced their candidacies.
Potato Chips Are Awesome
No, wait. The emergent order of the market is awesome, as evidenced by this EconTalk podcast on potato chips.
Make-Believe Defense Cuts
Earlier this week, the House Armed Services Committee Republican staff released a video using the anniversary of September 11 to argue for higher military spending while pretending that lately we have cut the defense budget. Chris Preble and I rebutted these outlandish claims, and Evan Banks made our comments into a cool video:
Hawks like HASC Chairman Buck McKeon (R-CA)—who thinks that “power in benevolent hands is a virtue, not a vice,”—pretend that we are about to slash military spending thanks to the Budget Control Act, the deficit deal legislated early last month. Reporters abet them by repeating the White House PR myth that the bill’s security budget cap will cut Pentagon spending by $350 billion over ten years, and writing that the sequestration provision will probably cut another $500 billion. But as I explained here, the BCA will likely produce either a miniscule defense cut in the near term or no cuts at all. That is because I consider a “cut” to mean spending less than we do now, not less than plans say, because agencies other than defense can absorb the cuts required by the security cap, and because the bill encourages lawmakers to move capped base defense funds into the uncapped war bill.
The Senate Appropriations Committee’s proposed funding levels (302b allocations in budget speak) released earlier this week bear out those concerns. Because they come after the BCA, the Senate spending levels are likely to guide those set by the House. Compared to 2011, the committee would cut just under $3 billion from the base defense budget, which is less than one percent. That cut comes entirely from the military construction and family housing account, which was recently bloated by the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process. The senators get another chunk of the $4.5 billion in security spending cuts required by the BCA from State, which would lose $3.5 billion, and Homeland Security, which loses a half billion. The National Nuclear Security Administration and the Veterans Administration get minor increases. For more on these allocations, see Stimson’s The Will and the Wallet blog, especially Matthew Leatherman and Russell Rumbaugh’s recent posts.
So that’s a minor defense cut, right? Maybe not. The Senate appropriators seem to have slipped a larger amount of base defense spending into the war bill (Overseas Contingency Operations funding). The committee’s markup press release brags that it fully funded the president’s war request of $117.8 billion, but then claims that they cut $6.6 billion from that request by trimming funding for U.S. and native forces in Afghanistan. What that most likely means is that the committee, probably in league with the Pentagon, cut the war bill by that amount and shifted the same amount over from the base, keeping the war bill flat and maintaining the fiction of a minor base defense cut. We won’t know for sure until the appropriations bills are published.
The longer term prospects for the BCA cutting defense spending are a story for another time. For now, suffice it to say that the prospects of the bill’s current spending limits staying in place for ten years are slim. Future Congresses easily free themselves from legislative bonds set by prior ones, and democracies with two-to-six-year election cycles can’t stick to ten-year plans.
Peter Schiff: For Jobs, Look to Microeconomics
Peter Schiff’s testimony to a House committee yesterday on the nation’s economic crisis provides a refreshing contrast to the Keynesian-dominated commentary that saturates the mainstream media.
Peter talks about how:
- The president’s jobs plan would create perverse hiring and firing incentives
- Infrastructure investment needs to earn a positive net return else it’s not worth doing.
- The minimum wage increases unemployment for low-skill workers
- Regulation and litigation reduce hiring
- Extended unemployment benefits exacerbate unemployment.
It’s all Econ 101 microeconomics, but it’s often forgotten these days by economists and pundits who only see the world through the lens of “aggregate demand.”
Sen. Rubio to Sec. Duncan: Dear Sir, Obey the Law
Senator Marco Rubio has just written to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, requesting that he not break the law. At issue is the administration’s plan to offer states waivers from the No Child Left Behind act if they agree to adopt national standards or pursue other educational goals of the administration. Rubio states that these conditional waivers violate the U.S. Constitution, the Department of Education Organization Act, and the No Child Left Behind Act. He’s right.
As my Cato colleagues and I have noted many times, the Constitution mentions neither the word “school” nor the word “education,” and so, under the 10th Amendment, reserves power over those concerns to the states and the people.
The Act creating the Department of Education is equally clear:
No provision of a program administered by the Secretary or by any other officer of the Department shall be construed to authorize the Secretary or any such officer to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution, school, or school system… .[Section 3403(b)]
Nor is the NCLB particularly ambiguous:
‘Nothing in this title shall be construed to authorize an officer or employee of the Federal Government to mandate, direct, or control a State, local educational agency, or school’s specific instructional content, academic achievement standards and assessments, curriculum, or program of instruction. [Section 1905]
The Secretary’s conditional waivers from NCLB mandates, in return for dancing as he desires on national standards, seem to violate all of the above. I wonder if any education reporter will have the temerity to ask Arne Duncan on what grounds he believes he is entitled to ignore these laws? Senator Rubio’s letter certainly gives them a golden opportunity to do so.
Attack on U.S. Embassy Highlights Need to Exit Afghanistan
Political leaders and military commanders will dismiss the Taliban’s recent coordinated assault on the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters in Kabul as a “one-off” incident. But the attack is a vivid reminder of how poorly things are going, and why America needs to leave.
By every measure, violence is higher than ever. The coalition and civilian casualty rate for this year is on pace to break the record for last year, which in turn eclipsed the record for 2009, which in turn eclipsed the record for 2008. Spiraling violence came after significant increases in troops and resources. Defiant optimists have claimed that with more troops comes more combat and naturally, more casualties. But to accept that things will get worse before they get better is also a slippery slope: never giving up, no matter the cost, discourages a dispassionate assessment of whether a continued investment is justified. In turn, the longer we stay and the more money we spend, the more we feel compelled to remain to validate our investment. Unfortunately, the conventional wisdom, as expressed by President Obama in March 2009, is that “If Afghanistan falls to the Taliban…that country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can.” We are also told that if America and its allies fail to create a minimally functioning government in Afghanistan, then Pakistan will collapse and its nuclear weapons will fall to the Taliban.
These claims of falling dominoes are all wrong.
First, if Afghanistan were to fall to the Taliban, it is not clear that they would again host al Qaeda—the very organization whose protection led to the Taliban’s overthrow. Besides, targeted counterterrorism measures would be sufficient in the unlikely event that the Taliban were to provide shelter to al Qaeda. Moreover, to declare that Afghanistan can never again be a base for terrorists justifies indefinite war, which does less to serve the American public and more to benefit the private industries that profit from conflict and nation-building. Perhaps the greatest tragedy is that after a decade of war, more than $450 billion spent, and over 1,600 American lives lost, the United States can still be attacked by terrorists. This creates a humiliating situation in which our Afghanistan policy weakens the U.S. militarily and economically and fails to advance its vital national interests.
Second, an endless war of whack-a-mole does far more to inspire terrorists “to kill as many of our people as they possibly can.” In this respect, our political leaders seem to have learned little from 9/11. The unintended consequence of U.S. intervention and meddling is that it serves as a radicalizing impetus. Regardless of what percentage of the Afghan population wants us to rebuild their country, our presence, however noble our intentions, can serve as both a method to combat insurgents and as the insurgents’ most effective recruiting tool. Aside from that “mobilizing militants” dilemma, our elimination of Taliban figures (including shadow governors, mid-level commanders, and weapons facilitators) may very well weaken the Taliban’s chain of command, but it hasn’t resulted in a decrease of Taliban activity. Indeed, the use of IEDs has reached record highs. Worse, the insurgents’ second-largest funding source is the U.S. taxpayer, with stabilization and reconstruction money often being diverted to insurgents to pay them to ensure security. Of course, they then use U.S. taxpayer money to buy bombs and explosives to kill American troops and Afghan civilians.
Finally, U.S. officials are playing with fire if they think these conditions help strengthen neighboring Pakistan. Certainly, Rawalpindi’s self-defeating support of Islamist proxies has not done its country any favors—but neither has the coalition’s presence next door. Continuing to stay the course in Afghanistan inspires the worst strategic tendencies among Pakistani military planners. It also encourages militants to attack NATO supply vehicles entering Afghanistan (nothing new), and has inadvertently contributed to the very instability that leaders in Washington ostensibly seek to forestall. As Karachi goes, so goes Pakistan, and current developments are doing more to push militants from Pakistan’s rural hinterland and into its major cities. Lastly, despite Washington’s nuclear obsessions, a large-scale foreign troop presence in Afghanistan does not resolve the ongoing rivalry between Pakistan and India. In fact, Pakistan has been accelerating its production of nuclear material for bombs and their ability to delivery them over the past several years.
In the end, the current scale and scope of the coalition’s mission in Afghanistan (over 100,000 troops and $120 billion per year from the U.S. alone) stems from overstated fears about what will follow if we fail. Luckily, America and its allies do not have to build a legitimate and stable Afghan government as an alternative to the Taliban. Al Qaeda is a manageable threat, and a conventional, definitive “victory” against them was never possible. Rather than drawing out our withdrawal and fighting an insurgency on behalf of an incompetent and illegitimate puppet regime in Kabul, American leaders should declare “mission accomplished.”
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