My Cato colleague John Cochrane – who is way smarter than I am — has a generally excellent op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal on ObamaCare’s contraception mandate:

Salting mandated health insurance with birth control is exactly the same as a tax—on employers, on Catholics, on gay men and women, on couples trying to have children and on the elderly—to subsidize one form of birth control…

The tax rate and spending debates that occupy the media are a small part of the effective taxes and spending that the government achieves by these regulatory mandates…

The natural compromise is simple: Birth control, abortion and other contentious practices are permitted. But those who object don’t have to pay for them. The federal takeover of medicine prevents us from reaching these natural compromises and needlessly divides our society…

Sure, churches should be exempt. We should all be exempt.

My only quibble is with his claim, “Insurance is a bad idea for small, regular and predictable expenses.”

That’s generally true. But medicine is an area where, potentially at least, small up-front expenditures (e.g., on hypertension control) could prevent large losses down the road. So it may be economically efficient for health plans to cover some small, regular, and predictable expenses. Both the carrier and the consumer would benefit. In fact, that would be the market’s way of telling otherwise uninformed consumers, “Hey! Controlling your hypertension is a really good for you!” And really, if someone is so risk-averse that they want health insurance with first-dollar coverage of everything – and they’re willing to pay the outrageous premiums that would accompany such coverage — why should we take issue with that?

ObamaCare’s contraceptive-coverage mandate demonstrates that government does  a horrible job of picking only those types of “preventive” services for which first-dollar coverage will leave consumers better off. But I also think advocates of free-market health care generally need to let go of the idea that health insurance exists only for catastrophic expenses.

Cochrane on ObamaCare’s Contraceptive-Coverage Mandate is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

A couple of weeks ago I suggested that the person responsible for Ford’s anti-bailout ads was deserving of a raise. Today, I wonder how that extra income will be spent…in Siberia. According to media accounts seemingly originating with the Detroit News, Ford has pulled that ad after learning the Putin Obama White House was none too pleased.

It is unclear from the Detroit News article whether overt threats, implied repercussions, or mild expressions of regret best characterize the communications from the White House to Ford. Regardless, something spooked Ford enough to prompt it to pull the popular ad (no longer available on YouTube), which sought to differentiate the Ford brand over the “bailout” characteristic, which is not insignificant to auto purchasing decisions.

Hopefully, some probing journalists will discover the true nature of what transpired. In the meantime, it’s important to reflect on the fact that—contrary to the views of E.J. Dionne and others who cannot contemplate what is not seen—the auto bailout was not a discrete event, which happened and now resides in our memories. It is an ongoing tipping of the scales of competition—intentionally and inadvertently. Ford’s mere perception that the administration might stir up trouble if it didn’t fall into line is a vestige of the bailout.

To the extent that the administration wants to tout the bailout as evidence of its “successful” economic stewardship, it should know that there are plenty of us willing and able to do the auditing on that claim.

Ongoing Ripples from the Auto Bailout is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

After weeks of very little movement either militarily or diplomatically in Libya, there are apparent developments on both fronts in recent days. Rebel forces, aided by NATO’s air support, finally appear to be advancing into western Libya and cutting off supply lines to Tripoli, the long-time stronghold of support for Muammar Qaddafi. And reports are swirling about secret negotiations that might provide a peaceful exit from the country for the aging dictator.

Those developments underscore that U.S. and NATO officials urgently need to consider what strategy they intend to pursue if Qaddafi’s more than four-decade hold on power finally comes to an end.  That is more crucial for the leaders of the European members of the alliance, since Libya is located on Europe’s Mediterranean flank, but because the Obama administration unwisely chose to involve the United States in Libya’s internecine conflict by launching air strikes, it has become a pertinent issue for Washington as well.

The outlook for a post-Qaddafi Libya is midpoint between sobering and depressing.  It is possible that the warring parties will accept a de facto division of the country between the eastern and western tribes, although a formal agreement to that effect is unlikely. Even an informal partition would more accurately reflect the demographics, politics, and history of that territory than an insistence on keeping Libya intact. Moreover, the most probable alternatives to a peaceful territorial division would be a continuous, simmering civil war or a rebel victory that would merely breed resentment in the western part of the country and pave the way for a new round of fighting a few years from now.

The NATO powers must confront the question of how much they are willing to assist the insurgents in maintaining control of western Libya once Qaddafi is gone. Prospects are not good that a government formed by the eastern-dominated rebel forces would be able to win even a modest number of influential converts from the western tribes. And if the problem of achieving and maintaining political control was not enough of a challenge for the insurgents and their NATO sponsors, there is the matter of repairing the infrastructure damaged in the fighting and replenishing the now largely empty Libyan treasury.

A new government in Tripoli cannot count on oil revenues in the short or medium term to remedy those problems. Experts estimate that it will be at least three years before oil production can return to pre-war levels.

Libya’s probable security and economic difficulties will create tremendous pressure on NATO to provide extensive financial aid and deploy peacekeeping forces. Therein lies the danger to the United States. Logically, if NATO does deploy ground forces, they should come overwhelmingly from France and some of the other countries bordering the Mediterranean. Those nations have the most at stake in trying to stabilize Libya. NATO members in central and northern Europe (with the exception of Britain) have shown little desire to engage in such a mission. So far, the Obama administration has indicated that the United States will not put ground forces into Libya —a wise exercise in restraint.

But given the financial woes of Italy, France and other key European members of the alliance, and given the habitual desire of the Europeans to off-load security problems onto the United States as NATO’s leader, it is all too likely that we will see a concerted campaign to get Washington’s participation in a post-Qaddafi peacekeeping mission. The Obama administration should firmly reject such overtures.  Washington’s agenda is already more than full with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And the NATO nation-building missions in Bosnia and Kosovo provide ample evidence that a similar venture in Libya could prove extremely lengthy, expensive, and frustrating. President Obama should resist any temptation to involve the United States further in Libya’s domestic quarrels.

Cross-posted from the National Interest.

U.S. Must Resist Military Role in Post-Qaddafi Libya is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

It’s not an easy period for major media organizations, what with all this creative destruction revamping that sector of the economy.  So the Washington Post Co. couldn’t help but be pleased when it received a $570,000 bailout from ObamaCare‘s Early Retiree Reinsurance Program.  That program allows the Obama administration to run up the national debt another $5 billion by doling out cash to corporations that provide retiree health benefits.   The CBS Corporation received more than $720,000.  General Electric, a part owner of NBC Universal, Inc., cleared nearly $37 million.

Since The Washington Post, CBS News, NBC News, and MSNBC have now received subsidies (the latter two indirectly) from this very controversial law, their reporters should disclose that fact to their audiences when reporting on ObamaCare.  A disclaimer like this should suffice: “The Washington Post Corporation has received subsidies under the health care law.”  That would be consistent with how NBC discloses its relationship with General Electric:

Oh, and kudos to the marketing whiz who decided to call all these ObamaCare spending programs “slush funds.”

Wash. Post, CBS, NBC Should Disclose Receipt of ObamaCare Subsidies is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

There is good news and bad news about the report that the Obama administration authorized CIA teams to go into Libya to liaise with the Libyan opposition before instituting a no-fly zone over that country. (The phrase “sneakers on the ground” has emerged in response to the administration’s firm insistence that there are no US boots on the ground there.)

Get the map out

The good news is that the administration, despite prior appearances, does indeed have a strategy in Libya: siding with the rebels in their effort to depose Muammar Qaddafi. The bad news is that siding with the rebels in their effort to depose Muammar Qaddafi is not a good strategy.

It is probably important to make clear at the outset that I do not mean to overstate the stakes here. I am not suggesting that the Libya intervention necessarily will produce a Vietnam or Iraq-scale blunder. And it is always possible that Col. Qaddafi will be deposed swiftly and a reasonably orderly transition to a reasonably decent replacement will take place.

But I would not bet on it.

Why not? For one, the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper yesterday described the opposition itself as a “pick-up basketball team.” This, to my ear, does not sound like a group of people prepared for modern governance of a national state.There also have been somewhat murky reports that jihadists, if not inner-circle al Qaeda types, number among the opposition with whom we are siding. It is probably worth noting that Paul Wolfowitz, a vocal advocate of throwing our lot in with the Libyan opposition, responded to a question (at 56:50 of the video here) whether he could name the leaders of the opposition by admitting that he could not, advising instead that “you can Google and find out.” We just don’t know these people terribly well.

In addition, it is far from clear that the pick-up basketball team can win. A “senior U.S. intelligence official” yesterday reported that Qaddafi’s people have rather rapidly adapted to the no-fly zone:

Gadhafi’s forces have adopted a new tactic in light of the pounding that airstrikes have given their tanks and armored vehicles, a senior U.S. intelligence official said. They’ve left some of those weapons behind in favor of a “gaggle” of “battle wagons”: minivans, sedans and sport-utility vehicles fitted with weapons, said the official, who spoke anonymously in order to discuss sensitive U.S. intelligence on the condition and capabilities of rebel and regime forces. Rebel fighters also said Gadhafi’s troops were increasingly using civilian vehicles in battle.

The change not only makes it harder to distinguish Gadhafi’s forces from the rebels, it also requires less logistical support, the official said.

This seemed to me a blazingly obvious approach for Qaddafi to take, given that were he to move his armor or artillery, it would almost certainly become a target for the coalition, but it would be much harder to detect small groups of men armed with small arms. You fight with what you can use.

All of this seems to mitigate in favor of the government, but it should be pointed out that the unsophisticated, poorly led, and poorly armed rebels have some notable advantages as well. A reasonably unsophisticated force in Afghanistan currently has the modern world’s mightiest military power bogged down in that country with only limited organization, arms, and leadership of their own. From a defensive standpoint, a few thousand men with small arms who are willing to fight and die can cause a big headache for counterinsurgents, particularly were Qaddafi to attempt to retake Benghazi with these men he’s shipping eastward.

Secretary Gates was right to say that there is no vital U.S. interest at stake in Libya over the weekend, and he is right to threaten to quit if the administration moves to insert U.S. ground forces. It wasn’t worth war to get rid of Muammar Qaddafi two months ago, and it isn’t worth war today.

The Good News and Bad News about ‘Sneakers on the Ground’ is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The big schooling story is U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s assertion that this year 82 percent of public schools could be identified as failing under No Child Left Behind. That’s a huge percentage, and also hugely disputed. But the real story here, as always, is that government control of schooling is all about politics, not education.

Start with the 82 percent figure. It’s a consequence of NCLB’s demand that all students be “proficient” in mathematics and reading by 2014. That’s a severely reality-challenged goal, especially if proficient is supposed to mean having mastered fairly tough material. But the law largely wasn’t driven by reality — it was driven by politicians wanting voters to see them as uncompromising on bad schools.

Now the controversy. People who track NCLB results — including many Democrats — say the 82 percent figure is ridiculously inflated. Reports the Washington Post:

“I find it hard to believe,” said Jack Jennings, a former Democratic congressional aide who is president of the Center on Education Policy, an independent think tank that tracks the law. “I think they really stretched it for dramatic effect.”

And why the possible prioritization of “dramatic effect” over “reality”? Because the Obama administration is pushing to get the law rewritten along lines it likes, and might very well feel the need to scare the bejeepers out of the public to get momentum behind it:

Charles Barone, a former congressional aide who helped draft the 2002 law, called Duncan’s projection “fiction.” Barone tracks federal policy for a group called Democrats for Education Reform, which is generally in accord with Obama’s policies on education changes.

“He’s creating a bogeyman that doesn’t exist,” Barone said of Duncan. “Our fear is that they are taking it to a new level of actually manufacturing a new statistic – a ‘Chicken Little’ statistic that is not true – just to get a law passed. It severely threatens their credibility.”

But hold on! With only about 37 percent of schools identified as failing last year, the leap to 82 percent certainly does seem improbable. But quietly evading the spirit of NCLB — actually improving educational outcomes – some states backloaded their improvement goals to very late in the full-proficiency game, betting NCLB would be gutted by 2014 and they’d never be held accountable. So some states really might be on the verge of having to pay the piper big time, and the failure rate perhaps could be set to rise dramatically. But you’d have to know a lot about the political machincations in every state to figure that out. 

Indeed, that’s been the biggest problem with NCLB all along. It talks tough about proficiency, but leaves it to states to write their own standards, tests, and proficiency definitions. Again, it makes perfect political — but not educational — sense. Many of the federal politicians who voted for NCLB also know Americans cherish “local control” of education, so they wanted to appear to be both zealous protectors of local control and no-excuses enforcers of excellence. The result has been an endless stream of conflicting, confusing information — like the 82 percent figure — that few parents could ever hope to have the time or ability to sort through. And yet, as reported by the Post:

many educators agree that the law’s focus on standardized testing and minority achievement gaps shined a critical spotlight on problems that public schools have long sought to avoid.

A “critical spotlight”? NCLB is more like a deranged disco ball, randomly shooting out bits of light that make it impossible to ever know what’s really going on.

And the befuddling hits just keep on coming. At the same time the Obama administration is pushing national curricular standards that have little concrete content, as well as tests to accompany those standards that won’t be available until 2014, Duncan is decrying the “one-size-fits-all” nature of NCLB. Reports CNN:

“By mandating and prescribing one-size-fits-all solutions, No Child Left Behind took away the ability of local and state educators to tailor solutions to the unique needs of their students,” Duncan said calling the concept “fundamentally flawed.”

So at the same time he’s championing the ultimate one-size-fits-all solution — national curriculum standards — he is attacking NCLB for eroding local and state control. Of course, if you want to get political credit for fixing American education you first have to demonize what’s there, even if your solution comes out of basically the same mold. Don’t, though, think national standards coupled with as-yet-unseen national tests will solve our problems by ending state obfuscation. If the administration gets its way, the games will all just be played in Washington.

Trying to understand what’s really going on in education is enough to make you pull your hair out. But that’s what you get when you put government — meaning self-interested politicians — in charge.

At Least 82 Percent of Education Is Politics is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The Obama Administration’s decision to stop defending DOMA in the courts has provoked some widespread commentary. Jim Burroway hints that Obama’s strategy here is both deep and cynical. Obama’s locked in a losing fight with Republicans over the budget, because Americans really do want to cut federal spending. This remains true even if, notoriously, nearly the only specific program they want to cut is our negligible foreign aid.

The mood is anti-spending, and it’s just possible that a government shutdown scares Obama even more than it scares the Republicans. The remedy? Change the subject. Make Republicans in Congress defend their stance on gay marriage, which is so not the discussion they’d like to be having.

It could be one of the first instances in which gay marriage counts as a wedge issue against Republicans, rather than for them. Opposing same-sex marriage appeals strongly to a smallish base. To the center, the whole subject is distasteful either way, and they don’t mind if Obama drops it. Finally, more and more people just find the conservatives embarrassing here. Obama sees no need to do their dirty work for them, especially when the work really is that dirty.

Meanwhile, Orin Kerr is worried about executive power:

By taking that position, the Obama Administration has moved the goalposts of the usual role of the Executive branch in defending statutes. Instead of requiring DOJ to defend the constitutionality of all federal statutes if it has a reasonable basis to do so, the new approach invests within DOJ a power to conduct an independent constitutional review of the issues, to decide the main issues in the case — in this case, the degree of scrutiny for gay rights issues — and then, upon deciding the main issue, to decide if there is a reasonable basis for arguing the other side. If you take that view, the Executive Branch essentially has the power to decide what legislation it will defend based on whatever views of the Constitution are popular or associated with that Administration. It changes the role of the Executive branch in defending litigation from the traditional dutiful servant of Congress to major institutional player with a great deal of discretion.

If that approach becomes widely adopted, then it would seem to bring a considerable power shift to the Executive Branch. Here’s what I fear will happen. If Congress passes legislation on a largely party-line vote, the losing side just has to fashion some constitutional theories for why the legislation is unconstitutional and then wait for its side to win the Presidency. As soon as its side wins the Presidency, activists on its side can file constitutional challenges based on the theories; the Executive branch can adopt the theories and conclude that, based on the theories, the legislation is unconstitutional; and then the challenges to the legislation will go undefended. Winning the Presidency will come with a great deal of power to decide what legislation to defend, increasing Executive branch power at the expense of Congress’s power. Again, it will be a power grab disguised as academic constitutional interpretation.

Liberals: If you think declining to defend DOMA is the right decision, how will you feel when a Republican administration declines to defend in a school prayer case? Or an abortion case? Or on Obamacare itself?

There are two very, very distinct issues here. One concerns gays and lesbians. The other concerns the proper relationship among the three branches of the federal government. One is about policy; the other is about procedure. Deciding a procedural question based on what it means for a one-time policy outcome is just bad governance. The questions we should be asking are — How much power would this really give the president? Is this a particularly new power? (Arguably it’s not.) And in any case, are we comfortable with the president having it, even if he or she has radically different views about policy?

When we look at it that way, there’s a near-perfect parallel to the perennial debate over the filibuster. Everyone hates it when they’re in the majority. Everyone loves it when they’re in the minority. Politics really is the mind-killer.

The Non-Defense of DOMA is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

President Obama might want it to appear as though he is reining in defense spending with his budget submission for FY 2012, but his approach to the Pentagon’s budget reveals the opposite.

Perhaps the president hopes that his adoption of the faux cuts that Secretary Gates put on the table last month will be seen as responsible. Perhaps he is taking a prudent first step and signaling to the military, and its suppliers and contractors, that the days of double-digit increases are over. That may be; but far deeper cuts are warranted. . If the president had truly wanted to send a signal, he would have followed the advice of his own deficit reduction commission and endorsed far deeper cuts in military spending.

The Department of Defense will spend $78 billion less over the next five years than previous projections. This amounts to a drop in the bucket — technically just over 2% — of total Pentagon spending over that period. Nonetheless, in Washington-ese, this constitutes a cut. But the base budget (excluding the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) will increase — from $549 billion to $553 billion, the largest budget in the department’s history. In the past 12 years, the budget that has doubled in real, inflation-adjusted terms.

Deeper cuts should be made along with an effort to lessen worldwide defense commitments, reducing the strain on the force. It will be up to outside pressure — either from Congress or from interested groups outside of government – to force Washington to cease acting as the world’s policeman, and forcing other countries to take responsibility for their own defense.

The Pentagon’s Faux Cuts is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

House Republicans proposed some (tiny) spending cuts this week and the Obama administration will likely propose some (tiny) cuts next week in the federal budget.

So get ready for a barrage of slasher stories! National Journal started us off yesterday with the headline “WH Slashes Heat for the Poor.”

Coming down the pike are dozens of stories about how policymakers are planning deep, vicious, and inhumane cuts that will undermine the foundations of the republic. A 5 percent cut to a program that has risen 50 percent in recent years will not be a simple “trim,” but a brutal, gouging “slash.”

Every single one of the upcoming cuts will be to “popular” programs. So policymakers will propose a $1 million cut to mohair subsidies, and the headline will be “Congress Slashes Popular Mohair Program.”

In reality, government spending has soared over the last decade, but I don’t want to spoil the fun. So let’s enjoy the coming crop of over-the-top slasher stories, and treat them as a genre of modern publishing art.

I propose a “Slasher Story of the Month” contest for February. Send me an email if you see a great slasher story, and I’ll get my crack assistant, Amy, to analyze the rhetorical content. The winning story will have the most frequent uses of “slash” and “popular” to describe the programs that the godless heathens in Congress and the White House plan to ransack and decimate.

(Bonus points for any editorial cartoon showing Attila the Hun with the word “GOP” on his helmet hacking away at a defenseless child with “nutrition subsidies” on her shirt).

Slashing Popular Programs Contest is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Today POLITICO Arena asks:

At his press conference this afternoon, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs distanced the Obama administration from former Egypt envoy Frank Wisner’s suggestion over the weekend that Hosni Mubarak should stay in power as Egypt transitions to a new government. Was Wisner, a former U.S. ambassador to Egypt, right about that and about the potential for a power vacuum?

My response:

Wisner was half right, but on the Mubarak half he was almost certainly wrong. Transitions are messy — at best. Ask the French about theirs two centuries and more ago. Occasionally they’re done pursuant to existing constitutions. Ours from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution wasn’t, despite which it wasn’t all that messy. We were lucky. We had a relatively healthy culture and strong leaders, even if the early years were often touch and go, as we sometimes forget.

It appears, from press accounts, that the current Egyptian constitution does not provide for the kind of transition that many would like to see. If so, then extra-constitutional measures will need to be taken, including perhaps the drafting and ratification of a new or at least an interim constitution, or more likely some less formal arrangement through which interim authority can be brought into being with a semblance of legitimacy about it – whether a new government or a new constitution and ratification process. A simple call for elections is too simple: by whom, under what procedures, to fill what offices, in what institutions?

All of this is where politics in its most elemental form comes to the fore, for better or worse, as the French saw to their horror. It’s the ultimate test of a culture. So Wisner was right about “the potential for a power vacuum” — although in Egypt the army is likely to fill that vacuum — and in recognizing that a vacuum should be avoided, if possible. But he was likely wrong to suggest that Mubarak should fill that vacuum or serve as a transitional figure since it appears that he no longer has the credibility to do so. Ideally, leaders with credibility need to emerge, and soon.

On Egypt’s Transition is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The turmoil in Egypt, specifically in Cairo, turned violent in the past 36 hours as anti-government protesters clashed with pro-Mubarak groups.  During this period, and specifically today, the government crackdown widened to targeting foreign media.  Journalists and their crews were arrested, prevented from reporting, and beaten.  The anti-government protesters are pointing to Friday as a possible climax in what they are calling the “Friday of departure.”

President Mubarak, in an interview with ABC, said he would like to relinquish power now, but claims chaos will erupt if he did.  If he were to step down, or if he follows through on his promise not to run in the presidential election, the million dollar question in Washington becomes: who would the United States like to see as the new leader of Egypt?  And should Washington act to influence the outcome?

Over at The Skeptics, I address this by asking: Might it be better if the United States were to avoid micromanaging Egyptian politics altogether?  Whenever a crisis erupts in the world, policymakers usually approach the problem with the premise that Washington has to “do something.”  But must that include anointing another leader?

…Washington’s “do something” impulse seems to be overpowering common sense. Having backed the wrong person for too long, there is now a countervailing urge to correct our past error by backing the “right” person this time around.

I have a different idea. We should step back and consider that our close relationship with Mubarak over the years created a vicious cycle, one that inclined us to cling tighter and tighter to him as opposition to him grew. And as the relationship deepened, U.S. policy seems to have become nearly paralyzed by the fear that the building anger at Mubarak’s regime would inevitably be directed at us.

We can’t undo our past policies of cozying up to foreign autocrats (the problem extends well beyond Egypt) over the years. And we won’t make things right by simply shifting — or doubling or tripling — U.S. foreign aid to a new leader. We should instead be open to the idea that an arms-length relationship might be the best one of all.

Click here to read the entire post.

Should Washington Pick Egypt’s Next Leader? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The new Egyptian cabinet was sworn in today amidst a seventh day of protests across the country.  For the White House, the continual tweaking of their response to the crisis, and declining to call for Mubarak to step-down, has left many in Egypt and the region wondering if the United States does in fact want to see the arrival of democracy to Cairo, or if it is simply content with allowing the status-quo to remain, with minor reforms.  Or perhaps they are just waiting for the chips to fall where they may.

This illustrates the conundrum facing the Obama administration.  Over at The Skeptics, I examine this a bit further:

The Obama administration is stuck with a policy not entirely of its own making – decades of U.S. taxpayer support for the Mubarak regime – but it also seems trapped by the dominant worldview in Washington that is preoccupied with finding a solution to every problem in the world. This global view flows from deeply flawed assumptions about the likelihood of a worst-case scenario transpiring in every case, and then exaggerating the impact of that worst-case on U.S. security. In many instances, the impact is presumed to be nearly catastrophic. In actuality, they almost never are.

Might Egypt be an exception? It is an important country in its own right, traditionally a center of the Arab world. Its population of 80 million people is larger than that of Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon combined. Egypt is the second leading recipient of U.S. foreign aid, behind only Israel, and it straddles one of the most important choke points in the world, the Suez Canal. Given its size, influence and location, there is the possibility that this spreads elsewhere. Protests have also broken out in Yemen, Algeria, and Sudan. The Saudis and Jordanians are nervous.

So how should the U.S. respond? In the short-term, the U.S. government needs to strike a balance, and not be seen as pushing too hard for Mubarak’s ouster; but Washington should not anoint a would-be successor, either. The message should be: this is for the Egyptian people to decide.

Click here to read the entire post.

Protests in Egypt Continue is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

For the past couple of years, Nicaragua’s president Daniel Ortega has been desperately seeking to subvert his country’s constitution and feeble democratic institutions in order to stand for re-election next year. Since the Nicaraguan constitution bars him from running for a third term (he was president in 1985-1990), Ortega tried unsuccessfully to have the constitution amended by the National Assembly, where his Sandinista party lacks a majority to do so. However, through judicial shenanigans facilitated by a Supreme Court and an Electoral Tribunal packed with Sandinista allies, Ortega is likely to run again next year. Mary O’Grady of the Wall Street Journal and The Economist have documented the case.

Despite seemingly getting away with it, Ortega faces strong challenges at home from the independent media, civil society groups, and the opposition parties, which have all bitterly denounced his illegal maneuvers. His candidacy might be assured; his re-election not so.

Enter my home country: Costa Rica.

Unfortunately throughout both countries’ histories, it has become a norm that the Nicaraguan political class picks conflicts with Costa Rica in order to distract attention from domestic problems and rally nationalist support at home. Ricardo Jiménez, a Costa Rican president in the early 20th century, once said that Costa Rica had three seasons during the year: the rainy season, the dry season, and the season of conflicts with Nicaragua.

This time around hasn’t been different. Approximately 20 days ago, a dredging project of the San Juan River, whose right bank serves as the border between both countries, led to an incursion of the Nicaraguan army into Costa Rican territory. The conflict area is an uninhabited island (approximately 60 square miles) at the mouth of the San Juan River. Aerial pictures show the destruction of tropical forest in the island—which is part of a protected area in Costa Rica—in what seems like an effort to detour the San Juan River at the expense of Costa Rican territory.

Costa Rica has had no army since 1949, so the government of president Laura Chinchilla has to rely on international pressure to get the Nicaraguan army out of the occupied territory. Costa Rica’s bitter complaints at the Organization of American States have been met with calls from other members, and from the ineffectual secretary general of the organization, José Miguel Insulza, for both countries to engage in endless dialogue and solve this “border dispute.” This is not a border dispute, though. Costa Rica has provided dozens of official documents and maps, including maps produced by Nicaragua’s own government, the official texts of the Cañas-Jeréz Treaty that defined the border and subsequent arbitration awards, and a recent ruling by the International Court of Justice. They all show that the occupied area is indeed Costa Rican territory. As the OAS shows its incompetence, Nicaragua continues its military presence and deforestation works on Costa Rican soil.

Unfortunately Ortega’s move has paid off. Nicaragua’s independent media is now full of headlines supporting their government against what they call “Costa Rica’s expansionist agenda.” The opposition parties have also rallied behind Ortega, providing their votes for the unanimous approval of an increase in the military’s budget (this is the first time Ortega has gotten a unanimous vote in Congress). Pro-government mass rallies have been staged in Managua. Facing no external pressure to withdraw, Ortega is likely to continue or even expand the occupation of Costa Rican territory well into next year when he heads to the polls for reelection.

In the meantime, impotency has taken hold in Costa Rica. Some murmur about the wisdom of giving up the army decades ago, although most Costa Ricans still pride themselves on being a pacifist country with a longstanding civilian tradition. However, calls are growing for the government to give up diplomacy and ask a third country to intervene with troops through the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance. There is a realization that San José needs to draw a line in the sand with Managua. Appeasing Ortega will probably result in more conflicts in the near future.

It is still too early to tell what’s next. Costa Rica says it will bring the case to the UN Security Council in case the OAS fails to deliver. However, Russia’s veto is likely given Ortega’s close relationship with the Kremlin. Tellingly, the Obama administration has stayed mostly silent on the issue.



Ortega Picks On Costa Rica to Rally Support At Home is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

One of the many implications of yesterday’s election is that the new Congress will likely be more friendly toward trade-expanding agreements and less inclined to raise trade barriers.

Trade was not a deciding factor in the election, despite efforts by a number of incumbent Democrats to make it so. Many House and Senate contests were peppered with ads accusing an opponent of favoring trade agreements that gave away U.S. jobs to China. It was a stock line in President Obama’s stump speeches that Republicans favored tax breaks for U.S. companies that ship jobs overseas (a charge I dismantled in an op-ed last week). Yet on Election Day the trade-skeptical rhetoric and ads did not save Democratic seats.

Republicans Pat Toomey, Rob Portman, and Mark Kirk all won Senate seats in the industrial heartland yesterday (Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois, respectively) and all three voted in favor of major trade agreements during their time in the U.S. House. None of them ran away from their records on trade.

The key change for trade policy will be the switch of the House to Republican control in January. Democratic House leaders were generally hostile to trade agreements during their four-year tenure, refusing to allow a vote on the Colombia trade agreement in 2008 even after President Bush submitted it to Congress while allowing a vote this fall on a bill to raise tariffs against imports from China.

In contrast, the incoming GOP House leaders, presumptive Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, and Ways and Means Committee Chair David Camp of Michigan, have all voted more than two-thirds of the time for lower trade barriers, according to Cato’s trade vote data base. The trade-hostile influence of organized labor, so prominent the past four years, will be greatly diminished.

The new Congress will be more likely to consider and pass pending trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama. The Obama administration has endorsed all three in the abstract, but has done little to actually push Congress to approve them. These three agreements offer an opportunity for the White House to work with the new Congress in a bipartisan way to promote exports and deepen ties with friendly nations.

The news is not all positive on the trade front. A more Republican-weighted Congress will probably not be much different when it comes to rewriting the farm bill in 2012. Republicans have shown themselves to be similar to Democrats in supporting subsidies and trade barriers to benefit certain farm sectors such as sugar, rice, cotton, and corn. And Republicans are far more inclined that Democrats to support the failed, 50-year-old trade and travel embargo against Cuba.

What the 2010 Election Will Mean for Trade is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The Obama administration’s attacks on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce look a lot like a three-day story on its final day. The national media had its doubts, and even Democratic operatives decried the gambit.

Why did the administration go after the Chamber? The politics are not hard to figure out. Earlier actions of the Obama administration mobilized the Republican base. At the same time, the President and his party have been losing the support of independents for a year or so. Their only hope of limiting the electoral damage was to rally the Democratic base, who are discouraged and divided.

The Democratic base might agree about what they don’t like and fear: business, money in politics, and foreigners — or at least, foreigners spending money on politics. The attack on the Chamber of Commerce appealed to all three. The administration hoped that fear would engender hatred and hatred would bring people to the polls to vote against business and the GOP.

The most surprising part of the attack was the rather naked appeal to anti-foreign bias (see Bryan Caplan’s discussion of this concept here). Most people think of Democrats as friendly to undocumented foreign workers. But Democrats are first of all egalitarians; for them, the whole point of politics is to help the oppressed and harm the oppressor.  They do not favor undocumented foreigners because they believe people have a right to free exchange, borders notwithstanding. Instead, Democrats see undocumented foreigners as victims of oppression by American businesses. Foreigners who have enough money to spend on elections are oppressors in the egalitarian mind.

Obama promised hope and change. He and his party now want to maintain — so far as possible — the political status quo (that is, their control of Congress).  To do that they are trying to prompt fear and hatred among their most loyal voters. The new motto of the administration appears to be: fear and stasis.

Of course, the administration had no evidence the charges were true and argued that the Chamber should be seen as guilty until proven innocent. All in all, the whole affair suggests desperation and a complete loss of constraint in pursuing a political end. It suggests, I think, conduct that used to be covered by the word “Nixonian.”

Fear and Stasis is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Today ForeignPolicy.com has a feature article examining possible “Plan B’s for Obama,” with contributions coming from numerous experts. My contribution to the feature is titled “Cut (Really Cut) Military Spending.”

It is time for President Obama and the administration to finally notice the increasing calls—from across the political spectrum—that the Pentagon’s budget should not be off limits when reducing the deficit.  From the Foreign Policy article:

Despite all the hype about Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his cuts of big-ticket military projects, the Pentagon’s $680 billion budget is actually slated to increase in coming years. This is unconscionable at a time when taxpayers are under enormous stress and when the U.S. government must reduce spending across the board. Barack Obama can save big bucks without undermining U.S. security — but only if he refocuses the military on a few, core missions.

…

The hawks will scream, but America will be just fine. Obama can capitalize on the country’s unique advantages — wide oceans to the east and west, friendly neighbors to the north and south, a dearth of powerful enemies globally, and the wealth to adapt to dangers as they arise — by adopting a grand strategy of restraint. The United States could shed the burden of defending other countries that are able to defend themselves, abandon futile efforts to fix failed states, and focus on those security challenges that pose the greatest threat to America. A strategic shift of this magnitude will not only reduce conflict and make the United States safer, but it will enable Obama to reshape the military to suit this more modest set of objectives, at a price that’s far easier for taxpayers to swallow.

Click here to read the full article

Cut (Really Cut) Military Spending is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Several of today’s front pages feature iconic images of U.S. troops marching onto troop transports and into the sunset in Iraq. Today’s story by Ernesto Londoño in the Washington Post, features Lt. Col. Mark Bieger of the 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division,  “This is a historic mission!” Beiger bellows as his troops prepared to depart Baghdad for the last time, ”A truly historic end to seven years of war.”

No disrespect to Col. Bieger and his troops, but the war isn’t over, and it won’t be so long as there are significant number of U.S. troops in Iraq at risk of being caught in the cross-fire of a sectarian civil war.

The Iraqi government, more than five months after nationwide elections, remains in limbo. Talks over a power sharing arrangement have broken down. Meanwhile, violence is on the rise. Call it whatever you like, but the 50,000 troops who remain in Iraq are still dealing with a lot of challenges.

Much of the confusion in the media reporting revolves around semantics, words and phrases such as “combat” and “combat units.” It doesn’t help that George W. Bush declared on May 1, 2003 that ”major combat operations in Iraq have ended” under that infamous “Mission Accomplished” banner. But beyond Bush’s irrational exuberance, such terms are increasingly misleading in an era in which conventional, state vs. state organized violence — what we used to think of as war – has been replaced by murky, disorganized violence, perpetrated by disparate militias, or merely disgruntled individuals unhappy with their lot in life, and determined to take it out on anyone who happens to be around at the time.

Unfortunately, I have very little confidence that that state of affairs will change any time soon. And I seriously doubt that our people — our men and women in uniform, and, explains Michael Gordon in the New York Times, soon many more U.S. civilians and contractors — will be able to put everything right, and not for lack of trying. Meanwhile, I am deeply troubled by the rising chorus of voices calling on the Obama administration to ignore the remaining provisions of the status of forces agreement (SOFA) and prepare for an indefinite military presence in Iraq. (On this, see Ted Galen Carpenter’s latest entry at TNI’s The Skeptics blog.)

So, no, the war isn’t over. For better or worse (and chiefly the latter),  Americans will remain associated with an unpopular and government in Baghdad as it struggles to hold together the country’s disparate factions. They will be at great risk if the current political paralysis collapses into still wider violence.

Needless to say, I hope that doesn’t happen. But I won’t be striking up the band and declaring the war American in Iraq to be truly over, until all of our troops are back home.

Concerning the End of “Combat Operations” in Iraq is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Sending billions of federal taxpayer dollars to teachers and other public school employees is the bailout that just won’t die. It’s been sliced, shot up in a firefight between Democrats, and even had a battle with food stamps, but it just can’t be killed!

Now, let’s be clear: This is not some wonderful crusade all about helping ”the children.” It is pure political evil, a naked ploy to appease teachers’ unions and other public school employees that Democrats need motivated for the mid-term elections. It has to be, because the data are crystal clear: We’ve been adding staff by the truckload for decades without improving achievement one bit. Since 1970 (see the charts below) public school employment has increased 10 times faster than enrollment, while test scores have stagnated.

But suppose there were some rational reason to believe that we need to keep staffing levels sky-high despite getting no value for it. Lots of teachers’ jobs could be saved without a bailout if unions would just accept pay concessions like millions of the Americans who fund their salaries. But all too often, they won’t.

Sadly, this is all just part of the one education race that Washington is always running, and it absolutely isn’t to the top. It is the incessant race to buy votes. And guess what? Despite its reputation even among some conservatives, the Obama administration, just like Congress, is running this race at record speeds.

Grigori Rasputin Bailout is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Yesterday, the Obama administration filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Arizona’s recently enacted law that is designed to curb illegal immigration. The Arizona law has not yet taken effect — that will occur on July 29.  To generate more discussion and debate, Cato will be hosting a policy forum on the legal challenge and related issues on July 21.  If the weather in DC continues to cooperate, it will feel like we are actually in Arizona.

Go here for Cato work related to immigration policy.

Feds Challenge Arizona Immigration Law is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

In a move reminiscent of the George W. Bush administration, the Obama administration is cracking down on the Minerals Management Service…by changing the agency’s name.

The MMS has fallen into disrepute because, well, as E&ENews PM put it, “employees accepted gifts from oil and gas companies, participated in ‘a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity,’ and considered themselves exempt from federal ethics rules.”  The “drug and sex abuse [occurred] both inside the program and ‘in consort with industry.’ “  The New York Times reports that MMS employees “viewed pornography at work and even considered themselves part of industry.”  Yet this government agency somehow failed to prevent the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

So the Obama administration is giving MMS a makeover.  The agency formerly known as the Minerals Management Service will hereafter be known as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement.

That’s exactly how the Bush administration dealt with the unpopularity of the Health Care Financing Administration, the agency responsible for Medicare and Medicaid: by changing its name to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.  With candor and humor — two scarce commodities in such circles — Bush’s HCFA/CMS administrator Tom Scully explained the rationale:

The health care market . . . is extremely muted and extremely screwed up and it’s largely because of my agency. For those of you who don’t follow CMS, which used to be called HCFA, we changed the name because it was so well loved. I always say it’s kind of like when Enron comes out of bankruptcy, they’ll probably change their name. So, HCFA—Secretary Thompson and I decided to confuse everybody. We changed the name to CMS for a couple of years so people wouldn’t realize we’re actually HCFA. So far, it’s worked reasonably well.

For more on the pervasive cozy relationship between big business and big government, read Tim Carney’s Obamanomics.

For even more candor and humor concerning Medicare, read David Hyman’s Medicare Meets Mephistopheles.

Meet the New Minerals Management Service is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog