Archive for December, 2011
Digging Our Grave in Af-Pak
Last week’s killing of two dozen Pakistani soldiers by a NATO airstrike shows why the war in Afghanistan will continue to weaken, not stabilize, neighboring Pakistan, contrary to what U.S. officials and analysts claim. Perhaps the gravest outcome from this latest “tragic, unintended incident” will be the widening gulf between Pakistan’s senior military leadership and its junior officer corps, a chasm that opened under President-General Pervez Musharraf (1999-2008) and threatens to open far wider.
Pakistan’s alliance with the United States has always been a liability. After 9/11, Musharraf forced the reassignment or resignation of officers regarded as pro-Taliban or Islamist, because his decision to support U.S. counterterrorism efforts undermined his support among key military officials. In 2003, he narrowly escaped two attempts on his life—within 11 days of each other—that involved the collaboration of junior officers. The attacks came two months after al Qaeda’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, released an audiotape urging Pakistanis to overthrow the military general.
B. Raman, the former head of the counterterrorism division for India’s external intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), writes that while many in India might rejoice at this intra-military split and the further deterioration of U.S.-Pakistan relations, “This need not necessarily be a beneficial development for India. It is in our interest that the US retains the ability to influence the behaviour of the Pakistani military leadership.”
That is exactly what Washington risks losing the longer it prosecutes this ill-conceived quagmire in Afghanistan. “Imagine how we would feel if it had been 24 American soldiers killed by Pakistani forces at this moment,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) on Fox News Sunday. Fanning public anger in Pakistan is Jamaatud Dawa, Hizb ut-Tehrir, and other organizations that stand to gain whenever anti-U.S. anger spikes. But is it any wonder why Pakistani streets and newspaper editorials were brimming with anti-American sentiment? Such escalating pressures against General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, the chief of the army staff, come just after Pakistan’s security establishment was publicly humiliated for either being complicit or incompetent in America’s Osama bin Laden raid, and was accused of attempting to stage a coup in the recent “memogate” scandal.
Compounding the partnership’s endless string of controversies are recurring incidents along the Af-Pak border. These incidents hurt the honor of Pakistan’s military, decrease the country’s resolve to cooperate with America, and highlight a glaringly obvious problem with America’s current strategy. U.S. officials claim the coalition cannot fight its way to victory in Afghanistan. But by continuing to attack indigenous insurgents before withdrawing or engaging in negotiations, the coalition is undermining the potential for a diplomatic solution. Look no further than Pakistan’s refusal to attend this week’s Bonn summit. As Pakistan’s foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, told Dawn News television this week, “It is definitely not Pakistan’s intention to work against the rest of the world. But the rest of the world also has to understand that if they have pushed Pakistan into this corner, violated red lines, then they have denied the basis of partnership.”
Debate Needed on Nuclear Weapons Spending
Nuclear weapons have played a major role in U.S. force planning for many decades. But we have never had a thorough accounting of the total cost of these weapons, and we still don’t. (The best to date is probably this study by Stephen I. Schwartz and Deepti Choubey, but they don’t claim to capture every nickel spent on nuclear weapons.)
The Washington Post‘s Glenn Kessler published a fact checker article earlier this week that challenged the claim that we would spend $700 billion on nuclear weapons over the next decade. Since then, other organizations have come forth to decry the lack of transparency within the nuclear weapons budget, and call for the government to do a much better job of documenting all of the costs associated with our many nuclear weapons programs. This would include an understanding of the full life-cycle costs for fissile material, warheads, and delivery vehicles, from design and development, to production, to retirement and waste removal and abatement. As with the rest of the Pentagon’s budget, which has never been subject to a complete audit of its assets and liabilities, the nuclear weapons portion (much of which resides in the Department of Energy) remains shrouded in secrecy.
I hope that the latest dust-up over what we are actually spending creates additional pressure on the bureaucracy to open up its books.
This an excerpted version of a longer post from “The Skeptics” at the National Interest.
Will Obama’s Libya ‘Victory’ Aid Re-Election Bid?
It is well established that presidents do not gain much of anything when they launch unsuccessful military ventures. However, they generally don’t gain much from successful ones either. The public does not seem to be interested in rewarding—or even remembering—foreign policy success.
The data are now in on the most recent such military venture: the expedition in Libya. The United States and its NATO allies materially supported popular rebels in their ultimately successful efforts to overthrow the decidedly unpopular regime of Muammar Qaddafi, efforts that resulted in the terminal demise of Qaddafi, a certifiable devil du jour in the American mind for decades. And all this at no cost in American lives.
After the rebel success and the death of the dictator in November, CBS News conducted a poll and asked a fairly mild question about the mission. It revealed that the public was quite capable of containing its enthusiasm for the venture, no matter how successful it may seem to have been:
Although it seems unlikely the venture will hurt President Obama’s reelection prospects, it seems equally unlikely it will furnish him with any real bragging rights.
The Presumption of Liberty?
Check out NPR’s Morning Edition today, at least at 8:00 a.m., and you’ll find the lead item isn’t the impending jobs report, the European economic crisis, or even President Obama’s latest campaign speech. No, it’s “Catholic Groups Fight Contraceptive Rule.” Sex, women, discrimination, religion, and health care: What could be more natural for NPR, more right down its alley? Yet the issues the story raises—not broached in this story, of course—go well beyond those pegs. What we have here, in microcosm, is a conflict with a thousand and one variations in the modern ubiquitous state.
New regulations under ObamaCare, it seems, will require employers, universities, and others who offer health insurance benefits covering prescription drugs to cover prescription contraceptives as well. For many Catholics, of course, that’s a concern. As Catholic University President John Garvey wrote recently in The Washington Post, “if we comply, as the law requires, we will be helping our students do things that we teach them, in our classes and in our sacraments, are sinful—sometimes gravely so.” He and others are asking for a religious liberty exception.
But why stop there? The issue is perfectly generalizable. And it arises in the thousand and one ways it does because our ever-expanding anti-discrimination laws, as they restrict private parties, conflict directly with our liberties—in particular, with our right to associate, or not, with anyone we wish, for any reason, good or bad, or no reason at all.
Currently, the story notes, 28 states require contraceptives to be offered in health plans, eight with no exception for religious organizations. Some have tried to get out from under those laws by self-insuring, but that’s where the federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 kicks in. Still, the story adds, an EEOC ruling under that statute binds only if the people being discriminated against take action. Hence the ObamaCare rule, which compels up front.
And what’s the rationale for the anti-discrimination rule? “Prescription contraception is a form of health care that is unique to women,” says the ACLU’s Sarah Lipton-Lubet, “and the consequences of the inability to be able to access contraception, those fall primarily on women.” Women would have no access to contraceptives, we’re invited to believe, if their health insurance plans didn’t pay for them—or access as well to anything else not covered, presumably. That’s how we’ll all end up with “Cadillac plans,” until employers, unable to afford them, will stop providing any health insurance benefits at all—yet then will have to pay the penalty ObamaCare exacts for opting out.
But Ms. Lipton-Lubet’s rationale doesn’t stop there: “What the bishops and their allies are asking for is the ability to impose their religious beliefs on people who don’t share them,” she says. Think about that. It’s the bishops who are forcing their beliefs on others, not the government that is forcing employers to pay for coverage they oppose. That’s what we come to when, as Obama has repeatedly said, “we’re all in this together.” Opting out, cost free, is not an option—it’s discrimination, whether in health care, or housing, or lending, or college admissions, or employment, or any other private endeavor that today is so highly regulated by our anti-discrimination laws. Freedom of association is today the exception, not the rule, with government in charge of dispensing the exceptions.
Should You Need a License to Help Someone Find an Apartment?
Kansas City Premier Apartments v. Missouri Real Estate Commission is quite similar to the occupational licensing case of Locke v. Shore, in which Cato also recently filed a brief, except that the speech-licensing regulation here concerns not artistic expression but rather the dissemination of consumer-demanded commercial information — specifically, rental property listings that are free to the public.
The Missouri Real Estate Commission, acting on a complaint by a licensed realtor, decided that Kansas City Premier Apartments, which provides local rental listings, was acting as an unlicensed real estate broker and was therefore subject to fine and even criminal prosecution. (Before KCPA began operations, it had asked the Commission whether it needed a license and did not receive a clear answer other than that it was a “grey area” of law.)
KCPA challenged the Commission’s decision on First Amendment grounds, but the trial court found it to be constitutional without giving a reason for its conclusion. The Missouri Supreme Court affirmed the trial court after simply presuming the constitutionality of the speech restriction — contrary to the U.S. Supreme Court holding in Bolger v. Youngs Drug Products Corp. that “[t]he party seeking to uphold a restriction on commercial speech carries the burden of justifying it” — and placing the burden of proving unconstitutionality on KCPA.
Cato has now joined the Pacific Legal Foundation on a brief supporting KCPA’s request that the U.S. Supreme Court hear the case. Our brief notes that “this case combines the nationally important commercial speech issue with the equally nationally important question of the extent to which the Constitution tolerates occupational licensing.” We explain the difficulties that the Court’s “commercial speech doctrine” has caused and argue for a movement toward greater protection for collective and commercial speech, and away from a confusing four-part test established in a 1980 case called Central Hudson.
As in Locke, this latest case raises the question of whether occupational licensing schemes that have an effect on speech are constitutional. Also as in Locke, an infinite array of professionals and ordinary people could get caught up in this regulation, including even a friend helping another friend find an apartment.
Beyond the technical legal points, the case implicates broader policy issues such as the right to earn a living and the impact that speech monopolies have on consumers. Indeed, the consumer impact may be even more apparent here than in other occupational licensing cases because so many people struggle to find affordable apartments and other rentals in this economy — not to mention over the course of their lives.
The Supreme Court will decide early in the new year whether to hear Kansas City Premier Apartments v. Missouri Real Estate Commission.
Senate Postal Reform Bill Needs a New Title
The USPS is supposed to operate like a business by relying on the revenues from the sale of postal products to cover costs. Congress makes that harder by imposing various obligations and stifling attempts to reduce costs. Add in a weak economy, the growth in alternative forms of communication, and a predominantly unionized workforce that has secured excessive compensation and privileges and the result is a financial mess.
The Senate will soon consider a postal reform bill that is supposed to save the USPS: “The 21st Century Postal Service Act of 2011.” That’s a mighty peculiar title considering that the legislation would keep the U.S. Postal Service stuck in the 20th century. It’s also an overly-confident title as there’s zero chance that the legislation would enable the USPS to “flourish” into the 21st century as Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) claims.
I’m not going to go through all of the bill’s particulars (interested readers can view the committee’s summary here). The bottom line is that the bill does nothing to alleviate the USPS from the burden of congressional micromanagement. For example, one provision prevents the mere possibility of eliminating Saturday service for two more years. Talk about kicking the can down the road. For those who are perplexed by our enlightened leaders’ inability to reach a deal on deficit reduction, consider what this provision implies about their ability to oversee the government’s mail operation.
In the long term, either the USPS is going to be privatized or it’s going to go back to relying on taxpayer subsidies. Fortunately, a taxpayer bailout is off the table for now. However, taxpayers might not be so lucky the next time Congress steps in to “fix” a mess that is largely of its own doing. In fact, the continuing failure to think outside the box, which the Senate bill is a perfect example of, only increases the likelihood of government mail going on the dole.
See this Cato essay for more the U.S. Postal Service and privatization.
ObamaCare’s Premium-Assistance Glitch: Orrin Hatch Edition
The Senate Finance Committee’s ranking member is not amused.
A Weak Defense of an Illegal Fix to an ObamaCare Glitch
In this November 16 op-ed, Jonathan Adler and I explain how the Obama administration is trying to save ObamaCare (“the Affordable Care Act”) by creating tax credits and government outlays that Congress hasn’t authorized. (The administration describes this “premium assistance” solely as tax credits.) This week, the administration tried to reassure everybody that no, they’re not doing anything illegal.
Here’s how IRS commissioner Douglas H. Shulman responded to a letter from two dozen members of Congress (emphasis added):
The statute includes language that indicates that individuals are eligible for tax credits whether they are enrolled through a State-based Exchange or a Federally-facilitated Exchange. Additionally, neither the Congressional Budget Office score nor the Joint Committee on Taxation technical explanation of the Affordable Care Act discusses excluding those enrolled through a Federally-facilitated Exchange.
And here is how HHS tried to dismiss the issue (emphasis added):
The proposed regulations issued by the Treasury Department, and the related proposed regulations issued by the Department of Health and Human Services, are clear on this point and supported by the statute. Individuals enrolled in coverage through either a State-based Exchange or a Federally-facilitated Exchange may be eligible for tax credits. …Additionally, neither the Congressional Budget Office score nor the Joint Committee on Taxation technical explanation discussed limiting the credit to those enrolled through a State-based Exchange.
These statements show that the administration’s case is weak, and they know it.
When government agencies say that a statute indicates they are allowed to do X, or that their actions are supported by that statute, it’s a clear sign that the statute does not explicitly authorize them to do what they’re trying to do. If it did, they would say so. (A Treasury Department spokeswoman offers a similarly worded rationale.)
In our op-ed, Adler and I explain why the statutory language to which these agencies refer does not create the sort of ambiguity that might enable the IRS to get away with offering premium assistance in federal Exchanges anyway. (Nor does the fact that the CBO and the JCT misread portions of this 2,000-page law create such ambiguity.) That’s because there is no ambiguity in that language. There is only a desperate search for ambiguity because the law clearly says what supporters don’t want it to say.
Finally, the fact that these two statements are so similar shows that the administration considers this glitch to be a serious problem and wants everyone on the same page.
Washington & Lee University law professor Timothy Jost is an ObamaCare supporter and a leading expert on the law. He is also too honest for government service, for he has acknowledged that ObamaCare “clearly” does not authorize premium assistance in federal Exchanges, and that it is only “arguabl[e]” that federal courts will let the administration get away with offering it. (Again, in our op-ed, Adler and I explain why that argument falls flat.)
After reading the administration’s statements, Adler writes, ”If that’s all they got, they should be worried.”
Republicans Take an Ax to Government
We hear a lot these days about Republicans cutting, slashing, dismantling government. The latest ax-wielder is Virginia governor Robert McDonnell, an oft-mentioned candidate for vice president. Here’s what the Washington Post reports under the (paper) headline “McDonnell looks to shrink government”:
Gov. Robert F. McDonnell announced Tuesday that he is recommending eliminating two state agencies, cutting 19 boards and commissions and de-regulating three professions.
It’s part of his ongoing effort to reshape and shrink state government — one of his signature campaign promises.
McDonnell (R) made the recommendations to the General Assembly. The Department of Planning and Budget estimates the proposals will save at least $2 million per year.
Two million dollars. Two million dollars. That’s what the Washington Post sees as “shrinking government.” I’m guessing the Post doesn’t often run a story when a governor does something that “expands government” by $2 million.
But Virginia has a reputation for fiscal conservatism. Maybe $2 million is actually a big chunk of the state’s budget. Let’s check the numbers. As it turns out, this week the National Governors Association and the National Association of State Budget Officers put out a report on state finances, and it showed that Virginia’s general fund spending is up 7.1 percent in 2012. And according to Virginia’s own budget, that’s an increase of $1.1 billion in FY2012. That’s not the whole budget, by the way. In addition to the $16 billion in General Fund spending, Virginia will also spend $23 billion in FY2012. So let’s review:
Total Virginia spending FY2012 $39,600,000,000
General Fund spending 16,500,000,000
General Fund spending increase 1,100,000,000
McDonnell’s shrink-government savings 2,000,000
So I guess the total increase in Virginia spending in 2012 won’t be $1,100,000,000, it’ll be $1,098,000,000 — if the legislature approves McDonnell’s recommendations. And of course we certainly can’t be sure that the legislature will approve such recommendations as deregulating interior design and eliminating such vital boards as the Commonwealth Competition Council, the Interagency Dispute Resolution Council, the Virginia Public Buildings Board, the Virginia Council on Human Resources, the Small Business Advisory Board, and more.
Why Public Schools Crumble, and Why Another $30 Billion Won’t Change That
The Congressional Quarterly reports that Senate Democrats are pushing another $30 billion bailout—this time for public school buildings. By all accounts, many of those buildings are indeed sinking into decrepitude. But as I discovered a couple of years back, public schools are already spending 50% more per pupil than private schools that do manage to maintain their buildings. So what’s the real problem?
The answer comes from one of the federal government’s own assessments of school facilities nationwide. According to that report,
a decisive cause of the deterioration of public school buildings was public school districts’ decisions to defer maintenance and repair expenditures from year to year…. [And] deferred maintenance increases the cost of maintaining school facilities; it speeds up the deterioration of buildings and the need to replace equipment. [p. 3-4]
This is why we can’t have nice things: public school officials don’t take care of them. They already have far more money to spend than administrators of well-maintained private schools, so giving them yet more money won’t fix their problems. Perhaps Senate Democrats are not ignorant of these facts, and are merely proposing this new bailout in an attempt to make Republicans look bad for opposing a tax hike on the rich. Neither possibility shows the Democrats in a particularly favorable light.
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