Archive for October, 2011
Afghanistan: 10 Years and No End in Sight
When President Bush announced the commencement of military operations in Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, the campaign was seen as a clearly justified response to the horrific attacks of 9/11. It was narrowly targeted on those responsible for the attacks, and it had three specific goals: to punish al Qaeda and degrade its ability to carry out future attacks; to punish and drive from power the Taliban regime that had harbored al Qaeda; and to send a clear message to every other country in the world: If you support those who have killed Americans, and who wish to kill more, you will do so at your own peril.
The Afghan war enjoyed overwhelming public support at the time. It doesn’t any longer. The public mood has shifted not because the original war aims were unjust—they were not—but rather because our war aims have changed, and they bear little resemblance to those that guided the U.S. military in late 2001 and early 2002.
Few Americans could have imagined in October 2001 that there would be nearly 100,000 U.S. troops on the ground in Afghanistan 10 years later. Few at the time would have supported a war that would cost more than $100 billion annually, as our current operations do.
As we look back over the last decade of war, we should be grateful for the sacrifices of our troops and their families. We should honor their service by remembering why they were sent to Afghanistan in the first place and by recommitting ourselves, and them, to a goal that is both achievable and essential. Tragically, the current mission is neither.
We lack the power, the wisdom, or the patience to create a functioning nation-state in Afghanistan. We need not do so in order to keep al Qaeda on the run. The 100,000 U.S. troops stationed there were essentially irrelevant to the assault that killed Osama bin Laden in neighboring Pakistan, and they are equally unnecessary in nearly all of the other operations conducted against al Qaeda over the past 10 years. The organization has been severely weakened and bin Laden’s killing could have served as a useful bookend to bringing the long war in Afghanistan to a suitable close.
It still can. Ten years is long enough. It is time to end the open-ended nation-building mission in Afghanistan and to bring our troops home.
Steve Jobs, Prosperity Creator
The all-too-early death of Steve Jobs was reported on the day that President Obama made another defense of his so-called jobs bill. Which one actually benefited (or would benefit) Americans and the American economy? Lots of people have talked about the way Steve Jobs changed technology, changed business, changed the world. And I trust there’ll be no more churlish complaints about his alleged lack of philanthropy. As Dan Pallotta definitively pointed out,
What a loss to humanity it would have been if Jobs had dedicated the last 25 years of his life to figuring out how to give his billions away, instead of doing what he does best…. [T]he world has no greater philanthropist than Steve Jobs. If ever a man contributed to humanity, here he is.
Two years ago Portfolio magazine did a great graphic on “The Steve Jobs Economy,” trying to assess just how much value he himself had created for the economy. The conclusion: Jobs’s personal wealth at the time was estimated at $5.7 billion. But he was generating $30 billion a year in revenue for Apple, its partners, and its competitors (who were spurred to get better). Here’s the analysis (sorry for the imperfect tear sheet):
Click image to enlarge. And for text but not graphics at Portfolio, click here.
According to Portfolio and the experts it consulted, Jobs was producing $30 billion a year in value for various companies. And of course that means that consumers believed they were getting at least that much value themselves, or they wouldn’t buy the products. That’s a wealth creator. And that number pales in comparison to this one: After returning to Apple in 1997, Jobs took the total value of the company from about $2 billion to $350 billion.
How much value is the Post Office creating this year? Or Amtrak? Or Solyndra? And if you point out that the Post Office does create value for its customers even though it loses money every year, I would ask, how much more value might its competitors create, if it allowed competition?
Instead of another bag of taxpayers’ money for state and local governments and politically favored businesses, a real jobs program would encourage the next Steve Jobs to create value. What would that involve? Keep taxes on investment and creativity low. Reduce the national debt and its threat of huge tax hikes to come. Ease the burdens of regulation, especially regulations that make it difficult to open a business, hire and keep the best employees, and develop new ideas. Open the huge, stagnant postal and schooling businesses to competition, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Repeal some of the licensing laws that now afflict 1,100 occupations. Renew progress toward free trade. Make it smart for businesses to invest their time, money, and brainpower in productive activity, not lobbying.
Justice Scalia Reads Cato’s Amicus Briefs
During Wednesday’s oral argument in Golan v. Holder (transcript here), Justice Scalia said something that was at once obvious and startling:
It seems to me Congress either had the power to do this under the Copyright Clause or it didn’t. I don’t think that powers that Congress does not have under the Constitution can be acquired by simply obtaining the agreement of the Senate, the President and Zimbabwe. I do not think a treaty can expand the powers of the Federal government.
This proposition is obvious, because the Constitution vests Congress with limited, enumerated powers, which can only be increased by constitutional amendment, not by treaty. But Scalia’s words were also startling because Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said exactly the opposite almost a century ago—or at least that’s how his opinion has been read—in the canonical case of Missouri v. Holland. We filed a brief arguing that Holmes was wrong, and we are delighted that Justice Scalia agrees.
Thanks to Tim Lee for pointing out this exchange to me before I had a chance to read the transcript and to Georgetown’s Nick Rosenkranz, the principal author of our brief.
On ObamaCare, David Frum Just Doesn’t Get It
David Frum knows that ObamaCare can’t be repealed. But don’t worry, he also knows how to make it palatable to Republicans:
- Move up the start date of ObamaCare’s state waiver program from 2017 to 2014. As I explain here, that program will only produce alternatives to ObamaCare that are equally or more anti-market, such as a single-payer system. Frum wants that to happen sooner.
- Raise taxes, on everybody. I swear I am not making that up.
- Replace ObamaCare’s individual mandate with an equally coercive tax credit that accomplishes the same thing, but which the courts would probably uphold. Bra-vo. Frum implies it is necessary to “work around” the fact that Republicans are not “entirely rational” when it comes to the individual mandate. (True, but they’re getting more rational all the time.)
- Republicans should embrace government rationing of health care. Frum counsels Republicans to “unleash the cost controllers” and become the “green eyeshade party willing to do the disagreeable work of squeezing waste from the system.” How? Well, he doesn’t call for Medicare vouchers, under which enrollees would ration their own care. In fact, he has thrown cold water on that idea. But the only alternative is to have the government ration care. And Frum makes no distinctions between the elderly and non-elderly, which leads me to believe he wants Republicans to ration care to the under-65 crowd too. Slap that on a bumper sticker!
In sum, Frum’s GOP-palatable alternative to ObamaCare is … ObamaCare. But maybe more coercive. And implemented sooner. With higher taxes. And less vulnerable to legal challenges. And with Republicans playing the bad guy.
Frum laments that Republicans mistakenly threw away the opportunity to work with Democrats to implement these brilliant ideas in 2009 and 2010. But Republicans did so because these brilliant ideas hurt people. They were wrapped into a bill called ObamaCare, and Republicans rejected it. They were right to do so. And they are right that ObamaCare can’t be fixed.
(Related: Ramesh Ponnuru previously took down Ross Douthat’s ideas for fixing ObamaCare.)
(Also related: CNN has signed Frum to provide conservative commentary during the 2012 election.)
Ten Years in Afghanistan Is Enough
The United States executed its original mission in Afghanistan in the critical first months after the invasion: cripple al Qaeda and remove the Taliban from power. Now that the United States has expanded its mission to a fragile-by-design strategy of nation-building, it’s well past time for U.S. forces to leave.
In a new video Austin Bragg and I produced, Cato Institute vice president for defense and foreign policy studies Christopher A. Preble, foreign policy analyst Malou Innocent, and legal policy analyst David Rittgers comment on this dubious milestone:
Going ‘Page by Page, Line by Line’ through the Budget
The House Committee on Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations held a hearing yesterday on President Obama’s pledge to go “page by page, line by line” through the federal budget to eliminate programs “we don’t need.” I testified with an ideologically diverse group of budget experts.
My testimony can be read here, but the following are the key points:
- Assuming that OMB did conduct a line-by-line review of the federal budget, the president’s first budget proposal implied that he believed that 99.53 percent of the federal government was definitely needed. Subsequent recommendations for savings released with the president’s annual budget proposals in 2010 and 2011 have offered a similarly insignificant offering of spending cuts.
- The president’s list of savings created an aura of thoroughness because it targeted some obscure programs. For example, the proposed savings included terminating tiny programs like the Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation ($1 million) and the Javits Gifted and Talented Education Program ($7 million).
- My experiences as an Indiana state budget official taught me that political leaders are good at generating sound bites designed to make taxpayers believe that their interests come first. In reality, taxpayer interests usually end up taking a back seat to the interests of select individuals or groups.
- Cato has conducted its own page-by-page, line-by-line review of the federal budget and posted the results on our website, www.DownsizingGovernment.org.
- Policymakers need to do more than simply pledge to “eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse” in government programs. It’s time to cut “meat,” not just “fat.” If President Obama isn’t serious about terminating unneeded federal programs, then it’s up to Congress to do the job for him.
Had I to do over, I would have put more emphasis on that last sentence in my oral testimony. The “liberal” representative, Scott Lilly from the Center for American Progress, and “centrist” budget guru, Stan Collender, did the best job of pointing out that it’s Congress that needs to be doing the “page-by-page, line-by-line” review of the federal budget.
Much of the hearing consisted of Republicans and Democrats trying to score political points on each other. That’s just the way it is and it’ll never change, which is another reason why the American people should reconsider placing so much power and control over our lives in the hands of a select group of fallible human beings.
Panetta’s Obligatory Warning to NATO on Military Spending Will Accomplish Nothing
On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta issued a warning to NATO allies that reducing military spending on both sides of the Atlantic will risk “hollowing out” the alliance’s capabilities. Panetta implied that Europeans cannot continue to rely on the United States for their security. Following former defense secretary Robert Gates’s comments in June, Panetta joins the long list of U.S. presidents, secretaries of defense and state, and innumerable lower-level officials who have pleaded with Europe to pick up the slack on military spending, provide for their own security, and close the gap in capabilities.
But Secretary Panetta’s speech also praised NATO for the mission in Libya and he extolled Europe’s leadership in the campaign: “The alliance achieved more burden-sharing between the U.S. and Europe than we have in the past…on a mission that was in the vital interest of our European allies.”
Relative to past NATO operations, it may be true that Europe contributed more in this instance. But this ignores the fact that the mission would not have been possible without the unique capabilities of the U.S. military. As Justin Logan pointed out, the Europeans quickly ran out of munitions and relied on the United States to conduct air strikes. “Thus, Washington essentially borrowed money from China to buy ordnance to give to Europe to drop on Libya.”
Panetta’s finger-wagging will do little to alter the incentive structure European states confront when determining what they should spend on defense. As I explain in an article recently published at Big Peace, until the United States takes concrete steps to force Europeans to spend more for their security, they will continue to free-ride on the U.S. taxpayers’ dime.
Cutting the Pentagon’s budget without imposing additional burdens on our troops requires getting our allies to do more. That is unlikely to happen unless U.S. officials, beginning with Secretary Panetta, force the issue. Unfortunately, he is merely one of many in Washington who seem to forget how incentives work:
Those who simply assume that others would not do more to defend themselves and their interests often ignore the extent to which U.S. actions have discouraged them from doing so. Just as some welfare recipients are often disinclined to look for work, foreign countries on the generous American security dole do not see a need to obtain military power. Our great power, and our willingness to use it, even when our own interests are not at stake, has allowed others to ignore possible threats, always confident that the United States will be there to rescue them.
The Obama administration’s rhetoric merely reinforces this message. The National Security Strategy, published in May 2010, declares “There should be no doubt: the United States of America will continue to underwrite global security.” Taking their cue, U.S. allies have proved understandably disinterested in military spending.
Despite Panetta’s pleas, U.S. strategy—and NATO’s very existence—allows this free-riding to continue. The Libya operation appears to have reinforced these destructive tendencies. If Washington really wants our allies to spend more to defend themselves and their vital interests, U.S. officials must jettison their reflexive attachment to the NATO alliance, an organization that has been irrelevant to U.S. vital security interests for at least two decades.
Secretary Panetta understands the United States is dealing with its own fiscal problems, but he has missed a perfect opportunity to offload a share of our burdens on to our rich allies.
Snidely Whiplash in North Carolina
Jane Mayer of the New Yorker, fresh from her expose of the nefarious Koch Brothers’ conspiracy to reduce taxes and regulation, has found a new target: James Arthur (Art) Pope, chairman and CEO of Variety Wholesalers and a major contributor to free-market and Republican causes, especially in North Carolina. As she details, his perfidy knows no bounds: He is “spending millions in an attempt to change the direction of American politics”! He attends “secret planning summits” with political allies! He funds groups that run ads accusing Democrats of raising taxes! He’s an ideologue! He has made his money by selling necessities inexpensively to “low-income patrons”! He has funded free-market speakers at North Carolina State University, outraging a professor of English! Even a guy whose grandfather was a backer of Jesse Helms doesn’t like him!
And perhaps most tellingly, he “credits a summer program run by the Cato Institute, to which he has since given money, for immersing him in the writings of conservative icons such as Friedrich August Hayek and Ayn Rand”! If you think you’ve never seen F. A. Hayek’s name rendered that way before, you’re right. And it’s odd conservative icons who wrote “Why I Am Not a Conservative” (Hayek) and “Conservatism: An Obituary” (Rand).
Well, fair enough. People who give millions of dollars to ideas and politics can expect some criticism. As a First Amendment absolutist, I think Art Pope has a right to use his money to support candidates he favors, and the New Yorker has a right to use its money to accuse the voters of North Carolina to be dumb enough to vote for whoever a businessman tells them to vote for. ‘Cause, you know, it couldn’t have been a general national swing against the Democratic agenda that caused voters to turn out Democratic majorities in the North Carolina legislature.
But I wonder: If money in politics is so bad, where is the scathing Jane Mayer article on billionaire George Kaiser, the major fundraiser for Barack Obama who also was the major investor in Solyndra, which defaulted on a $535 loan from the Obama administration (and almost got “a second taxpayer loan of $469 million last year, even as the company’s financial situation grew increasingly dire”)? Or where is the story on Herb and Marion Sandler, who made billions in subprime loans, sold out just before the crash, and have spent tens of millions on MoveOn.org, ACORN, the Center for American Progress headed by John Podesta, liberal journalism projects, Democratic Party groups, and Democratic candidates? Aren’t they bigger fish than little ol’ Art Pope of Raleigh?
Or compare Mayer’s affectionate portrait of George Soros’s political activities with her takedown of Charles and David Koch. Apparently opposing a president who supports fiscal irresponsibility, the Patriot Act, the war on drugs, and secret wars is a lot more commendable if that president is a Republican.
Meanwhile, we can all be glad that the free market is vigorous enough to fund these pieces of time-consuming investigative journalism through the lush full-page ads from Cartier, Bottega Veneta, Goldman Sachs, Chevron, T. Rowe Price, HBO, Cadillac, Citibank, Louis Roederer, Air France, BMW, U.S. Trust/Bank of America Private Wealth Management, Credit Suisse, RBC Wealth Management, and various exotic travel destinations.
The Eternal Recurrence of Eminent Domain Abuse
Perhaps the only good thing to come out of the now-famous case of Kelo v. City of New London was a nationwide acknowledgement of both the importance and precariousness of property rights. In the wake of this startling case, a case in which Susette Kelo’s house was taken from her and given to a private developer as part of a large corporate welfare package for Pfizer, forty-three states passed laws forbidding their governments from taking private property for the purposes of economic development or for increasing tax revenue. To add insult to Kelo’s injury, the economic redevelopment project for which her house was destroyed eventually stalled. Where the house once stood there is only a vacant lot.
Susette Kelo and her case have been back in the news. It was recently announced that Jeff Benedict’s excellent book about the Kelo case, Little Pink House, will be made into a Lifetime movie staring Brooke Shields as Susette Kelo. Benedict also recently penned an op-ed in the Hartford Courant describing how Justice Richard N. Palmer of the Connecticut Supreme Court approached Kelo and Benedict at a reception and apologized to her. Benedict touchingly describes the scene:
Afterward, Susette and I were talking in a small circle of people when we were approached by Justice Richard N. Palmer. Tall and imposing, he is one of the four justices who voted with the 4-3 majority against Susette and her neighbors. Facing me, he said: “Had I known all of what you just told us, I would have voted differently.”
I was speechless. So was Susette. One more vote in her favor by the Connecticut Supreme Court would have changed history. The case probably would not have advanced to the U.S. Supreme Court, and Susette and her neighbors might still be in their homes.
Then Justice Palmer turned to Susette, took her hand and offered a heartfelt apology. Tears trickled down her red cheeks. It was the first time in the 12-year saga that anyone had uttered the words “I’m sorry.”
It was all she could do to whisper the words: “Thank you.”
R.I.P. Steve Jobs
Apple’s tribute webpage says it well:
Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. … Steve leaves behind a company only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.
Steve Jobs’ creativity and business acumen delivered a better life to millions. He did better than most at that task, bringing new things to more people in better ways.
To Jobs, the man, we bid goodbye with thanks. Condolences to his family and friends.
When we return to debating what systems best deploy the resources of our society, let’s remember Jobs as also a great capitalist and a counterpoint to the stories that too often dominate the narrative about business.
To Spur Technology Innovation, Stop Pulling on the Rope
I spent the morning at The Atlantic‘s Washington Ideas Forum. Before the big names were to do their spiels during the afternoon today and tomorrow morning, there were a series of breakout sessions, among which was one on “Technology Innovation.”
Our suggested “points to ponder” were:
- Can our nation regain our competitive edge through innovation?
- Will our knowledge and information-based workforce continue to offer cutting-edge technologies to improve the way we live and work?
- What measures can we implement to foster creativity and encourage companies to grow intelligently? and
- Will the paradigm of how people work, think and communicate be meaningfully transformed as a result of technology? Or is this another short-term trend, with no long term changes?
At least one of the other participants thought the summary of the discussion I gave in the latter half was pretty good, so I’ll share my takeaway here roughly as I did there—maybe sounding just a little more “Cato-y” here.
Ignore Reality, Sell Jobs Plan
It took them several weeks after introducing the American Jobs Act, but the White House has finally gotten into the numbers behind the Act’s edu-employment parts. A report released yesterday by the Obama administration – “Teacher Jobs at Risk” – tries to paint a picture of truly dire circumstances, which is a pretty easy task when you offer no context for your numbers.
The foundational assumptions, of course, are that more money necessarily equals better education, and less money worse. This so flies in the face of reality – at least according to federal test scores – as to be laughable. Well, laughable were it not for the fact that most people are wholly unaware of the truth, and that has made education a giant albatross around our wallets.
Which brings us to the more specific context-dodging deceptions in this report.
The sweet spot in the report — sweet like chocolate-covered arsenic — is a block on the first page pithily titled, “The American Jobs Act Could Prevent Hundreds of Thousands of Layoffs, and Allow Schools to Rehire Thousands More.”
Sounds great, right?
Sure, unless you consider that the $30 billion the administration intends to spend on this — yes, Virginia, there is a cost side — will have to come from people, either today or in the future. That’s right, it will be taken from human beings who are just as real as education employees, and who probably have lots of important things they would do with the dough if allowed to keep it. And that includes the hated “rich,” who would spend their money or invest it, leading to the ”saving or creating” of lots of jobs.
So this isn’t about opposing jobs. It’s about opposing government deciding who does or doesn’t get employed.
But perhaps we are on the verge of education employment Armageddon. The administration’s report, after all, says that 300,000 elementary and secondary jobs were lost between 2008 and 2011, which seems like a big number. The report doesn’t say whether that was net or total, and it is probably a worst-case scenario, but still, that feels huge.
Huge, that is, until you see what it’s out of. In 2008 the total number of school and district employees was 6,318,395. That means a 300,000 loss was just a 4.7 percent trimming — far from humongous. To put that in students-per-employee perspective, using the latest total enrollment estimate such a cut would have taken us from a ratio of 7.9 students per employee in 2008 to about 8.2 to 1 today. In other words, it would have created a student-to-employee situation we haven’t seen since all the way back in…2003.
Oh.
But what if we lost another 280,000, which is the scenario the administration if trying to scare us with for the current school year? Add that to the 300,000 worst-case loss between 2008 and today, and it would be a total edu-jobs loss of 580,000. In percentage terms that would be a 9.2 percent drop since 2008, and in student-per-staffer perspective an uptick to 8.6 kids per employee, a proportion we last saw in just 1998.
That’s regretable, perhaps, but considering the gigantic staffing increases over the decades — a near doubling since 1969 — and stagnant achievement scores, we should probably be asking why we’ve let cuts be so small up to now. And lest we forget: The nation has an over $14 trillion-and-growing debt, which threatens all of us like a gigantic asteroid hurtling toward Earth. In light of that, using taxpayer dollars to keep public schooling a perpetual jobs factory not only flies in the face of educational logic, it is fiscal and economic lunacy.
The Obama Administration’s edu-jobs plan might work politically — it might be a great weapon for getting votes — but as public policy it is utterly irresponsible.
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