18 November 2009

Today’s Tabbloid
PERSONAL NEWS FOR craig.kirchoff+fisccon@gmail.com

FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS

Beyond Parody [Cato at Liberty]
NOV 17, 2009 04:38P.M.
A former soldier in England has been arrested and convicted (and may
even go to jail for five years) because he found a gun in his yard and he
turned it over to the police. I presume this is in part a reflection of the
anti-gun ideology embedded in UK law, but don’t prosecutors and
judges have even a shred of discretion to avoid foolish prosecutions
and/or protect innocent people from absurd charges? Here is the news
report:
A former soldier who handed a discarded shotgun in to police
faces at least five years imprisonment for “doing his duty”.
Paul Clarke, 27, was found guilty of possessing a firearm at
Guildford Crown Court on Tuesday – after finding the gun
and handing it personally to police officers on March 20 this
year. The jury took 20 minutes to make its conviction, and Mr
Clarke now faces a minimum of five year’s imprisonment for
handing in the weapon. In a statement read out in court, Mr
Clarke said: “I didn’t think for one moment I would be
arrested.”
… The court heard how Mr Clarke was on the balcony of his
home in Nailsworth Crescent, Merstham, when he spotted a
black bin liner at the bottom of his garden. In his statement,
he said: “I took it indoors and inside found a shorn-off
shotgun and two cartridges. “I didn’t know what to do, so the
next morning I rang the Chief Superintendent, Adrian
Harper, and asked if I could pop in and see him. “At the
police station, I took the gun out of the bag and placed it on
the table so it was pointing towards the wall.” Mr Clarke was
then arrested immediately for possession of a firearm at
Reigate police station, and taken to the cells.
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Don’t Worry, Onion. The Feds
Have This Education Crisis
Covered! [Cato at Liberty]
NOV 17, 2009 04:31P.M.
Today, crack Center for Educational Freedom research assistant Ian
Hinsdale alerted me to an Onion News Network program on which
panelists decried Americans’ shocking ignorance about whales, a
problem the experts agreed, for the most part, started in the schools.
Toward the end of the segment one of the panelists spoke a little whale,
but she hadn’t learned it in her whale-studies deficient, inner-city K-12
schools. No, she had to learn it in adult school, illustrating how severely
we’ve shortchanged so many of our students. And don’t think for a
minute that whale ignorance is confined to low-income schools…
Now, you might think this was a joke – ONN does sometimes do a
parody or two. But this segment could not have been more serious. How
do I know? Because the federal government really does have a multi-
million dollar, whale-based education initiative: The Historic Whaling
and Trading Partners Exchange Program. And if the feds have a program
for something the problem must be real, and it must be serious!
Ilwhaleracy, quite simply, threatens the future of our nation — consider
just the potential devastation on our economic competitiveness with
Atlantis! – and I for one am glad to see Washington tackling the
threat head on!

… Prosecuting, Brian Stalk, explained to the jury that

possession of a firearm was a “strict liability” charge –
therefore Mr Clarke’s allegedly honest intent was irrelevant.
Just by having the gun in his possession he was guilty of the
charge, and has no defence in law against it, he added.

… Judge Christopher Critchlow said: “This is an unusual case,

but in law there is no dispute that Mr Clarke has no defence
to this charge. “The intention of anybody possessing a firearm
is irrelevant.”

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Pelosicare’s Problem: It Doesn’t
Fix Anything! [Americans for
Tax Reform]
NOV 17, 2009 04:06P.M.
There are basically two problems with the current health care system.
First, that costs are spiraling out of control, and second, many people are
uninsured. As we’ve seen previousl...
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
U.S. “the Most Open Market”?
Not Even Close [Cato at
Liberty“the Most Open
Market”? Not Even Close]
NOV 17, 2009 03:51P.M.
Accompanying the president on his trip to China this week, U.S. Trade
Representative Ron Kirk couldn’t resist repeating the old line that the
United States is “the most open market in the world.” The chief U.S.
trade negotiator was trying to rebut criticism from Chinese officials that
the Obama administration, with its 35 percent tariff on Chinese tire
imports and all that, has retreated from a commitment to free trade.
The administration’s “more open than thou” rebuttal is a weak one. As I
write in Chapter 9 of my new Cato book, Mad about Trade:
If an Olympics were held for the most open economy, the
United States would be out of medal contention. According to
the most recent annual Economic Freedom of the World
Report, people living in 26 other countries enjoy greater
“freedom to trade internationally” than do Americans. The
report considers not only tariffs on imports but regulatory
barriers, exchange rate and capital controls, and actual levels
of trade. Bragging rights for the most open economies belong
to, in descending order, Hong Kong, Singapore, the United
Arab Emirates, Chile, the Netherlands, Ireland, Hungary,
Switzerland, the Slovak Republic, and Estonia. The United
States lies back in the pack, in 27th place among the 140
ranked nations.
Despite the claims of openness, our government imposes
significant barriers against imported clothing, footwear,
leather products, glassware, watches, clocks, table and
kitchenware, costume jewelry, pens, mechanical pencils,
musical instruments, cutlery, hand tools, ball and roller
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18 November 2009
bearings, ceramic wall and floor tile, railway cars, processed
fruits and vegetables, rice, cotton, sugar, milk, cheese, butter
and canned tuna.
Since the book was printed, a new Economic Freedom of the World
Report has been published. The United States has slipped to the 28th
“most open market in the world.”
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
John Yoo on Civilian Trials for
Terrorists [Cato at Liberty]
NOV 17, 2009 03:37P.M.
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal published an article by John Yoo that
criticized the Obama administration’s decision to prosecute Khalid Sheik
Mohammed (KSM) and several of his fellow Guantanamo prisoners in
civilian court. Yoo makes too many claims for me to respond to in a blog
post, but let me address a few.
According to Yoo, “The treatment of the 9/11 attacks as a criminal matter
rather than an act of war will cripple American efforts to fight terrorism.
It is in effect a declaration that this nation is no longer at war.” That is an
odd thing to say for several reasons. First, it is all over the news: We are
still very much at war. Second, even if Obama pulled U.S. troops out of
Afghanistan and Iraq, would the United States really be “crippled” in the
fight against bin Laden? ”Crippled” suggests the U.S. is on the verge of
joining Costa Rica or Belize in terms of our military strength. Farfetched.
Third, the Bush administration also treated the 9/11 attacks as a
criminal matter when it indicted and prosecuted Zacarias Moussaoui in
civilian court. Yoo seems to think that that call was mistaken, but
did it ”cripple” the U.S.? Did the Bush administration, in effect, declare
that the U.S. was “no longer at war”? Of course not. So why does Yoo
make that claim now? Odd.
Next, Yoo complains that by bringing KSM to New York for a civilian
trial, the prisoner will get to “enjoy the benefits and rights that the
Constitution accords to citizens and resident aliens.” This is another odd
statement because the benefits of a civilian trial (public trial, jury trial,
calling witnesses, confronting adverse witnesses, etc) are not limited to
citizens and resident aliens. After all, Asian tourists and illegal
immigrants from Mexico, to take two examples, are not “citizens” or
“resident aliens.” If a federal prosecutor were to accuse them of a crime,
they would get a trial in civilian court. A claim that the government could
deny, say, a nonresident alien from China a civilian trial would be totally
at odds with American constitutional law. Yoo may disagree with that
law, but if he does, he should have made that clear because he left a
misleading impression.
Third, Yoo calls the Moussaoui trial a “circus” because it provided
Moussaoui with a “platform to air his anti-American tirades.” Well, to
start, just because Yoo calls a trial a “circus” does not make it so. The
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR craig.kirchoff+fisccon@gmail.com
federal judge in the Moussaoui case did what we would expect a
good American judge to do–that is, give the person who is accused of the
crime a fair opportunity to speak and to offer a defense. At the same
time, the judge must maintain order in the courtroom and anyone who
becomes disruptive (including the accused) can be removed. The
potential problem of a “tirade” is nothing new and is not, of course,
limited to persons who share bin Laden’s twisted worldview. Some
recent examples include the Unabomber and the shooter at the
Holocaust museum. In short, it is a weak argument to critique our
system of civilian trials because the defendant may want to insist on
saying something that is unpopular, unpleasant, or incoherent. And, at
the time of sentencing, a trial judge can respond, as Judge William
Young did when he sentenced Richard Reid to life behind bars.
For more on the subject of military commissions, go here and here. For
more on John Yoo, go here and here.
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
Fort Hood: That No Such Attack
Ever Occurs Again [Cato at
Liberty]
NOV 17, 2009 03:34P.M.
Colleagues and correspondents have kindly shared their understandable
discomfort with my conclusion in recent posts that the Fort Hood
shooting was nearly impossible to discover in advance, and thus prevent.
The one ray of hope I can offer is that the shooting itself makes such
things more foreseeable, putting the military community and
investigators on notice prospectively that this kind of thing can happen.
No formal policy change can do more than the Fort Hood shooting itself
to ferret out inchoate incidents like it in the future. Belief that the Fort
Hood shooting was easily preventable, though, is 20/20 hindsight.
I first read How We Know What Just Isn’t So: The Fallibility of Human
Reason in Everyday Life to get a handle on how it became so plausible
after the September 11, 2001 attacks that terrorists might next
use chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. Recall that their weapons
of choice for the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks were box
cutters. How did we proceed to the assumption that nuclear terrorism
was next?
One explanation is the “representativeness heuristic,” a mental shortcut
people use to organize the world around them. “According to this
overarching belief, effects should resemble their causes, instances should
resemble the categories of which they are members, and, more generally,
like belongs with like.” (page 133)
Big causes have big effects, so big effects come from big causes. … Right?
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18 November 2009
The 9/11 terrorists knocked down the World Trade Center and killed
3,000 people. Driven to match the huge effects of the those attacks to a
sufficient cause, our common sense imported skills, knowledge,
weapons, and organizational capability that terrorists do not in fact have.
(Ongoing pressure worldwide will ensure that remains true.)
As to the 9/11 attacks, the representativeness heuristic lead us astray. I
believe a similar mental error is at play in many people’s interpretation
of the Fort Hood incident.
Though it’s not true, many maternity room nurses believe that more
babies are born during a full moon than at other times. This is because of
confirmation bias: They notice babies born during full moons and
accumulate proof of the full-moon theory—but they fail to notice babies
born at other times.
How We Know What Just Isn’t So has a chapter called “Too Much from
Too Little: The Misrepresentation of Incomplete and Unrepresentative
Data” that discusses not only the excessive impact of confirmatory
information, but also the problem of hidden or absent data. We make
many judgments in life without considering all the relevant data.
An extreme instance of this is Fort Hood, about which political leaders
and millions of Americans are taking a few data points—one or two
things occurring—and concluding from them that all instances of these
things result in a shooting or other violence like we saw at Fort
Hood. But, as I said with regard to Nidal Hasan’s contacts with a jihadi
in Yemen, the relevant data includes thousands of times when such
things happen. Because they were offshore communications with a
jihadi, investigators appropriately examined the messages and found
them lacking signs of intended violence.
The other major indictment is that Hasan’s Islamist rantings should have
been a dead giveaway of violence to come. Political correctness drove
colleagues to turn a blind eye to Hasan, ”permitting” the Fort Hood
shooting to happen, this argument maintains.
There probably was some “political correctness” involved. I can think of
no community more likely to withhold judgment of others than
psychologists and psychiatrists, who are privy to the strange and
dangerous thoughts of their patients day after day after day.
Note again the full range of relevant evidence, though: Thousands of
times daily across the country, mental health professionals and social
workers hear people’s violent thoughts—not just political
rantings—which only rarely materialize into violence. In the military, it’s
harder to guess at a number, but certainly thousands of times per year,
service members discuss violence against other service members and
political opinions that are odd or controversial, including Islamist
political views. Very rarely—tragically when it does—this results in actual
harm to men and women in uniform.
Nidal Hasan may have been fit for expulsion from the military. He may
have been kept in by some form of political correctness or opportunistic
bureaucratic burden-shifting once it was clear he was leaving Walter
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Reed for Fort Hood.
But only operation of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy allows the
conclusion that his expulsion from the military would have averted the
tragedy. Because it followed in time, the shooting appears to be a result
of his continued military service or his looming deployment to
Afghanistan. But it is not so obvious that his discharge from the service
would have caused him to go limp, take a job at a convenience store, and
live a happy life.
Had he been pushed out of the military, it’s quite plausible that his
resentments would have grown, his contacts with jihadis would
have increased, his planning would have been more strategic, and so on.
It is simple assumption that expelling Hasan from the military would
have averted so many deaths and collective national pain, just like it is
simple assumption that it wouldn’t have.
As I discussed in a recent podcast, information always points to what
happened next when you look at it after the fact. Data does not point so
clearly to any conclusion when you observe it in real time along with all
the other then-relevant data.
The Fort Hood shooting was a tragic and regrettable incident, but
correctable security failure is not easily shown. The idea that the
shooting was predictable is fueled by a small array of common
perception problems and errors in logic. These errors have now inspired
a hearing in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
Committee later this week. The committee will try to find security lapses
and seek after conditions in which ”no such attack ever occurs again.”
Politicians can promise the public that every tragedy can be averted, but
soldiers know better than most that tragedy and loss do happen. At the
memorial service for the Fort Hood victims, Lt. General Cone captured
that reality, and the spirit in which we must accept it, saying to victim’s
families, ”The Fort Hood community shares your sorrow as we move
forward together in a spirit of resiliency.”
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18 November 2009
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K-12 Education Tax Credits
Save Millions [Cato at Liberty]
NOV 17, 2009 03:30P.M.
The latest fiscal impact review of Arizona’s scholarship tax credit
programs estimates that they saved between $44 million and $186
million last year. The programs offer individuals and businesses dollar-
for-dollar tax credits if they make donations to non-profit K-
12 scholarship-granting organizations. Those organizations, in
turn, provide private school tuition assistance.
This is much higher than the savings estimate offered by the Arizona
Republic last month, as the AZ Republic story linked above is quick to
point out. I deal with the reasons for the discrepancy below, but first,
here’s the crucial fact that the Republic has missed yet again: if the tax
credit programs were significantly expanded, such as by raising the
donation caps, the state would undeniably save many hundreds of
millions of dollars annually. In fact, if the share of AZ schoolchildren
participating in the program rose to just 40 percent, taxpayers would
save billions of dollars a year – even if the size of the
individual scholarships had to triple to achieve that result.
The Republic’s failure to report that inescapable and rather
important fact does it no credit.
Now, on to the reason for the discrepancy in savings numbers. The body
of the story hints at it: the Republic’s estimate assumed that private
school enrollment would have been flat or increasing without the tax
credit program, while the latest estimate does not.
As I pointed out at the time, the Republic’s assumption is demonstrably
mistaken. Official AZ statistics show that enrollment in private schools
peaked before the tax credit program had gotten under way, and had
begun to decline as a result of rapid growth in the (tuition-free) charter
school sector. So the Republic’s savings estimate was almost certainly too
low.
As the author of the latest study admits, his assumptions about the true
number of students who have migrated to private schools as a result of
the program are speculative, but at least they are reasonable and not
obviously erroneous, as the Republic’s were. In any event, the savings
from a much larger migration to the private sector are not in doubt.
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President Zero Sum Goes to
Asia [Larry Kudlow’s Money
Politic$]
NOV 17, 2009 01:28P.M.
President Obama took his declining dollar to the Asia-Pacific economic
conference, and he added to it a declinist opinion of America’s economy.
His big message? Don’t count on American consumers to lead the world
from recession to recovery and beyond. His second big message? In the
U.S., we must save more and spend less.
Huh? This is the same limits-to-growth, central-planning wisdom we
hear so often these days at home. It’s also tone deaf, to say the least.
Despite a sinking greenback that is wreaking havoc among the Asian
economies, and in the face of repeated currency warnings by Asian
officials, Obama brought no King Dollar stabilization message to the
conference.
Before getting into the currency question, let me say this: I think more
saving (and investment) by U.S. citizens is a great idea. But this need not
come at the expense of consumption. In a prosperous free economy,
people should be able to save, invest, work, and spend as much as they
like. More is better than less in each case. Grow the pie larger.
Of course, if the president and his team want more saving and
investment, they should end the multiple taxation of saving and
investment. Unfortunately, our system taxes saving as income, capital
gains, dividends, and inheritance.
Team Obama also intends to tax wealth more by raising the top personal
tax rate from 35 to 40 percent. And they apparently don’t object to
Nancy Pelosi’s plan to slap another 5.4 percent tax on the incomes and
capital-gains of successful earners in order to finance a government
takeover of health care.
Wealth is a crucial form of saving. And the investment that comes from
extra saving is used to finance the entrepreneurial start-ups that create
the jobs and incomes that allow families to spend. However, by creating
a zero-sum game between saving and spending, the Obama planners are
falling into an austerity trap — one that would hand the American
economy a second-place finish in the global race for capital and growth.
At the same time, Obama has no plan to stabilize King Dollar, and the
Asian economies don’t like it. China’s top banking regulator said the
Federal Reserve’s money-creating binge was the main cause of “massive
speculation.” Similar sentiments came from top officials in Hong Kong,
Singapore, and Japan.
And while Ben Bernanke tried to calm dollar worries during his recent
speech at the New York Economics Club, it was clear that the greenback’s
value ranks low on his priority list. Nothing but dollar lip service from
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18 November 2009
the Fed head.
Because of the slumping dollar, U.S. import prices have jumped 10
percent at an annual rate over the past three months, and nearly 6
percent excluding energy. This is a tax hike on consumers and
businesses, and it could depress holiday sales. It’s reminiscent of the
gigantic energy shock of 2008 that was caused by the dollar’s collapse.
And what’s the current U.S solution to the dollar problem? Blame China,
and call for a revaluation of the yuan. But beggar-thy-neighbor
protectionism never works, and it causes bad blood between the
countries involved.
The powerful Asian economies actually have a better idea. They want to
move toward a free-trade currency-cooperation zone — much like the
euro zone, fathered by Nobel economist Robert Mundell. This makes
more sense in terms of world price stability and free capital flows. But
the U.S. refuses to play.
So Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and others are forced to
desperately buy sinking dollars in order to protect their export
industries. But this only creates inflationary money expansion. The
beleaguered U.S. dollar is in effect exporting U.S. inflation overseas.
President Obama did talk about entering free-trade discussions. But his
Commerce secretary, Gary Locke, threw cold water on the idea in a
Singapore speech. He said trade agreements have to wait because of a
crowded U.S. legislative agenda. (Hat tip: James Pethokoukis.) He may
have a point: The South Korean free-trade bill has been languishing for
several years in the Democratic Congress.
Then there’s the massive U.S. health-care takeover plan, which is now
estimated at $3trillion. This additional dollar depressant will tax the
patience of China, Japan, and other would-be buyers of our massive debt
creation.
We cannot spend, tax, or devalue our way into prosperity. Nor can we
command the respect of other nations by telling them our economy
cannot grow as rapidly in the future as it has in the past.
Ironically, these same Asian countries — with their accelerated growth
rates — have borrowed a page from American free-market capitalism.
Yet Obama makes no defense of our free-market system, and provides no
leadership on the leading economic questions.
In terms of global leadership, Ronald Reagan would say, “If not us, who?
If not now, when?” It’s a pity that President Obama doesn’t share the
Gipper’s commitment to American leadership.
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FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
In Defense of Error-Laden
Reporting [Cato at Liberty]
NOV 17, 2009 12:51P.M.
Tempted though I am to join the pile-on over the many inaccuracies in
the data on the Recovery.gov stimulus reporting site—including claims of
jobs created in non-existent congressional districts—I think the White
House actually makes a good point here: You can get something out fast,
or you can get it out bug-free, but you usually can’t do both. And in fact,
concerns about “data quality” at government agencies have often been a
great enemy of transparency. It is, after all, embarrassing when your
department puts out information that’s poorly formatted or riddled with
typos or just plain wrong. But in practice, that means agencies sit on the
data until someone gets around to fixing it, which is seldom a high
priority. The insight behind open source is that the best debugger is a
release: Ten-thousand coders actually using software are going to find
and patch problems faster and better than any in-house team. And the
same holds here: Get the data out, and dumb mistakes get spotted.
There are, to be sure, ways some of these errors could have been avoided.
As David Freddoso points out, it would have been trivial to design the
backend to only permit legitimate congressional districts to be entered.
But again, getting the site up quickly means they can count on critics to
point out those sorts of possibilities for improvement. That said,
Freddoso surely has a point when he argues that there’s no sane reason
this kludgy beast of a site should have cost $18 million. Far better would
have been to take the open-source logic to its conclusion and simply
dump the raw data on a server in XML format, then let outside
groups—maybe the Sunlight Foundation or Americans for Tax reform or
just some clever lone hacker—figure out how best to mash it up and
present it.
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
Talkin’ Libertarianism [Cato at
Liberty]
NOV 17, 2009 12:49P.M.
In response to a question today, I found a C-SPAN appearance from
2006 on their website. Host Steve Scully was teaching a class on “Issues
in Media and Public Policy” with students at the Cable Center’s Distance
Learning Studio in Denver. He asked me to join him for a discussion of
libertarianism and public policy. For about an hour and 20 minutes I
answered questions posed by both Scully and the students. Video of the
event can be found on C-SPAN’s website.
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18 November 2009
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
Tuesday Links [Cato at Liberty]
NOV 17, 2009 12:49P.M.
• In the past eight months, the unemployment rate has jumped from
7.2 percent to 10.2 percent. Here’s why.
• Three trillion reasons to hope the Senate is not as fiscally reckless
as their counterparts in the House on health care reform.
• Obama a federalist? Not quite: “Not yet a year into his
administration, Obama’s record on 10th Amendment issues is
already clear: He’ll let the states have their way when their policies
please blue team sensibilities and he’ll call in the feds when they
don’t.” More here.
• It’s time to get immigration reform right: “Republican leaders need
to liberate themselves from the Lou Dobbs minority within their
own ranks that will oppose any legalization. Democratic leaders
need to face down their labor-union constituency that opposes any
workable temporary-visa program. Working together, President
Obama and a bipartisan majority in Congress can seize the current
opportunity to reform the immigration system and finally fix the
problem of illegal immigration.”
• Podcast: “Preventing the Next Fort Hood Shooting“
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
The Negative Feedback Loop
Begins [Cato at Liberty]
NOV 17, 2009 12:33P.M.
I wrote on the Tech Liberation Front blog a couple of months ago about
the shady practice among a few Internet retailers of handing off
customers who accept a “special offer” to a company that charges people
a monthly fee for some kind of credit monitoring service. And I argued
hopefully that maybe technologists and the Internet community could
generate a response to this problem:
Being a smart, informed, and aggressive consumer is each
person’s responsibility if a free market is to operate well. The
alternative is a negative feedback loop in which government
authorities protect us, we rely on that protection and stop
policing retailers. Thereby we abandon the field of consumer
protection to government authorities, who—try as they
might—can never do as good a job for us as we can for
ourselves.
The Senate Commerce Committee is having a hearing today on
“Aggressive Sales Tactics on the Internet and Their Impact on American
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR craig.kirchoff+fisccon@gmail.com 18 November 2009

Consumers.” *BigGovernment.com’s Andrew Breitbart

*Craig Shirley, Republican consultant and author of “Rendevous with
Destiny”
*National Review’s Jim Geraghty
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS *Kellyanne Conway, president and CEO of the Polling Company

On CNBC’s Kudlow Report Please join us. The Kudlow Report. 7pm ET. CNBC.

[Larry Kudlow’s Money

Politic$] FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
NOV 17, 2009 12:15P.M.
First Hand Experience With The
Public Option [Americans for
Tax Reform]
NOV 17, 2009 11:51A.M.

Canadian Blogger Taylor Cottam took this photo on the left outside his
local clinic. He writes a chilling tale of what we can expect if the “Public
Option” supported by Obama-Pelosi-Reid ...
This evening at 7pm ET:

OBAMA’S CHINA VISIT

CNBC chief Washington correspondent John Harwood will join us live
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
from China.

THE DOLLAR
ATR and CFA Join Sen. Thune
Obama gets an earful on easy money. in Calling for End of TARP
Panel: Bailout [Americans for Tax
*David Malpass, president of Encima Global LLC
*CNBC’s Rick Santelli
Reform]
NOV 17, 2009 11:28A.M.
*Peter Navarro, author of “The Coming China Wars,”

As the end of the year - the original expiration date for the financial
WILL A CHEAP DOLLAR HURT HOLIDAY SALES?
market bailout package - draws near, Sen. John Thune (R-SD) will be
introducing legislation that would rescind the Administratio...
*Kellyanne Conway, president and CEO of the Polling Company
*Vince Veneziani, writer at Business Insider

IS GOV’T HEALTHCARE GOING TO PASS?

Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla) will be aboard.

FINANCIAL FRAUD TASK FORCE

Mark Calabria, director of financial regulation studies at the Cato

Institute

SARA PALIN, POPULISM & THE GOP

Panel:

7
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FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
Club Op-Ed in the Orlando
Sentinel [The Club for Growth]
NOV 17, 2009 10:44A.M.
Club President Chris Chocola has an op-ed in today’s Orlando Sentinel.
In it, he asks, “What is a ‘Charlie Crist’ Republican anyway?”
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
“Stimulus” Fuzzy Math of the
Day: No Hope for Michigan in
“Stimulus” Plan [Americans for
Tax Reform]
NOV 17, 2009 10:43A.M.
This post originally appeared at at www.fiscalaccountability.org
Michigan, which has the highest unemployment in the nation, is not
faring any better because of the so-called “stimulus.” ...
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
Government Electric [Cato at
Liberty]
NOV 17, 2009 09:50A.M.
The recession has given the government an excuse for major
interventions into markets, and the word “bailout” is found in business
section almost daily. While there are justified concerns over government
bailouts of large corporations, big businesses cashing in on the economic
stimulus plan have flown below the radar.
In an essay for Cato Unbound on the issue of corporations and markets,
libertarian theorist Roderick Long states: “Corporate power depends
crucially on government intervention in the marketplace.” This
dependency is on full display in an insightful Wall Street Journal story
on General Electric’s overt efforts to hitch its future to billions of
stimulus dollars.
The article is worth reading from start to finish, but here are some
snippets:
The government has taken on a giant role in the U.S.
economy over the past year, penetrating further into the
private sector than anytime since the 1930s. Some companies
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18 November 2009
are treating the government’s growing reach — and ample
purse — as a giant opportunity, and are tailoring their
strategies accordingly. For GE, once a symbol of boom-time
capitalism, the changed landscape has left it trawling for
government dollars on four continents.
‘The government has moved in next door, and it ain’t leaving,’
Mr. [GE CEO Jeffrey] Immelt said at the International
Economic Forum of the Americas in Montreal in June. “You
could fight it if you want, but society wants change. And
government is not going away.’
A close look at GE’s campaign to harvest stimulus money
shows Mr. Immelt to be its driving force… Inside GE, he
pushed his managers hard to devise plans for capturing
government money.
By January, Mr. Immelt had become a leading corporate
voice in favor of the $787 billion stimulus bill, supporting it
in op-ed pieces and speeches. Reporters who called the
Obama administration for information on renewable-energy
provisions in the legislation were directed to GE.
When the stimulus package was rolled out, Mr. Immelt
instructed executives leading the company’s major business
units “to put together swat teams to get stimulus money, and
[identify] who to fire if they don’t get the money,” says a
person who heard him issue the instructions.
In February, a few days after President Obama signed the
stimulus plan, GE lawyers, lobbyists and executives crowded
into a conference room at GE’s Washington office to figure
out how to parlay billions of dollars in spending provisions
into GE contracts. Staffers from coal, renewable-energy,
health-care and other business units broke into small groups
to figure out “how to help companies” — its customers, in
particular — “get those funds,” according to one person who
attended.
It speaks poorly for American capitalism when one of the nation’s biggest
economic engines is assembling “swat teams” to go after taxpayer
money. Instead of corporate America trying to figure out what products
and services to bring to the marketplace, big business is taking its cue
from politicians and bureaucrats in Washington. This isn’t socialism; it’s
state corporatism and it bodes ill for long-term economic growth.
See this essay for more on the problems with special-interest spending.
Also see this essay on why the excuses for government interventions in
energy markets fall short.
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR craig.kirchoff+fisccon@gmail.com 18 November 2009

FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS

A Rarity: Newspaper Argues The Damage to Small

Against Techno-panic, Cites Businesses [Americans for Tax
Constitution [Cato at Liberty] Reform]
NOV 17, 2009 09:48A.M. NOV 17, 2009 09:42A.M.

Progress & Freedom Foundation president and Cato alumnus Adam
Thierer has done yeoman’s work for years pointing out, and arguing
against, the phenomenon of techno-panic as it relates to children. That’s
not the only area in which techno-panic can tighten its grip on the neck
of common sense and the constitution, of course.
Governor Patterson just can’t seem to figure it out. We’ve written before
about the New York Democrat’s inconsistent tax policy statements, how
serious his state’s budget ...

But here’s a delight I ran across this morning: the Los Angeles Times
arguing against techno-panic despite the use of Web sites to research
and case potential burglary victims (by the “bling ring,” soon to be the
subject of a major motion picture).
The Times editorializes:
[T]hieves [did not] have to wait for the invention of Google
maps to reconnoiter neighborhoods in search of easily
accessible homes. That’s worth remembering if, as we fear,
some legislator decides that a law should be passed to prevent
Internet surfers from looking at houses they easily could
scope out from the sidewalk. . . . . A law against
photographing a home or what occurs outside it in plain sight
— or disseminating the images to others — would be
overreaching, not to mention unconstitutional.
What a delight—a major newspaper arguing to keep a hot issue in
perspective and citing the constitution as a limit on government power!
Thank you, L.A. Times.
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
Education Tax Credits the
Choice for Independents in
Virginia [Cato at Liberty]
NOV 17, 2009 09:25A.M.
My last post focused on the general result’s of a school choice poll in
Virginia. Contra conventional wisdom, education tax credits are
significantly more popular and less opposed than are charter schools.
Even more interesting is the stability of support for donation tax credits
across party identification. A stunning 64 percent of Democrats support
credits, with only 21 percent opposed. Independents support credits 65
percent to 22 percent.

Charters are supposed to be the poster child for policies targeting

Independent voters. And yet charters draw 59 percent of support from
independents and 23 percent opposition.

That’s a swing from a 43 percent margin of support for credits to a 36

percent margin for charters. And vouchers run even further behind with

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR craig.kirchoff+fisccon@gmail.com 18 November 2009

a 22 percent margin of support from Independent voters. Charter schools draw 59 percent in support and 26 percent in
opposition. Vouchers find 57 percent in support and 35 percent in
Smart politicians looking for cost-saving and effective education reform opposition. Personal-use credits get the support of 59 percent and are
would do well to take note of these numbers. opposed by 32 percent.

More to come . . . Donation tax credits are supported by 65 percent of voters and opposed
by 23 percent.

Charters, vouchers, and personal-use credits, in other words, are equally

FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS popular, with credits and vouchers drawing a bit more fire. And donation
credits are wildly popular with only a rump of opposition.
What’s the Most Popular Choice
Reform in Virginia? [Cato at
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
Liberty]
NOV 17, 2009 09:04A.M. Heller Counsel Argues for an
Pop Quiz: What’s the best education policy a moderate politician in Originalist Revolution [Cato at
Virginia can pursue?
Liberty]
1. Vouchers NOV 17, 2009 08:54A.M.

2. Charter Schools
3. Education Tax Credits
Conventional wisdom says go with charter schools, because they are a
bipartisan, moderate compromise reform that will get you the largest
number of Independents and the least opposition. Vouchers are too hot
to touch. And what’s an education tax credit . . . oh, right, they’re too
controversial as well
Conventional wisdom is WRONG.
The Friedman Foundation has released another in their invaluable series
of state education polls, this time for once-purple Virginia. Their findings
are consistent with other polls, and the pattern is worth highlighting.
Alan Gura, who successfully defended the individual right to keep and
bear arms under Second Amendment in District of Columbia v. Heller
has now filed his brief in the case that seeks to apply that right to the
states, McDonald v. City of Chicago. (Cato earlier filed a brief supporting
Alan’s cert petition, the background to which you can read about here.)
The question presented in this case is: Whether the Second Amendment
right to keep and bear arms is incorporated as against the States by the
Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities or Due Process
Clauses. Remarkably, only 7 of the brief’s 73 pages are devoted to the
Due Process Clause, which is the constitutional provision by which
almost all the the Bill of Rights has been “incorporated” against the
states. Indeed, the brief argues that the Due Process Clause “has
incorporated virtually all other enumerated rights” and so there is no
reason to make the Second Amendment an exception.

The rest of the brief is far more interesting, arguing for overturning the
ill-fated Slaughter-House Cases, which eviscerated the Priviliges or
Immunities Clause in 1873. Slaughter-House forced the Court to start
protecting natural rights and fundamental liberties under the oddly
named “substantive due process” doctrine — and it remains a bugaboo
for legal scholars of all ideological stripes. Overturning it would
potentially open the door to challenges against legislation that violates a
host of unenumerated rights, such as the right to enter into contract or to
earn an honest living.

Understandably, libertarians are excited at the prospect of Privileges or

Immunities’ revival. But so too are liberals, at the thought of potentially
filling an empty constitutional vessel with positive rights (to health care,
education, pensions, etc.). I believe this to be an overstated threat from
the perspective of constitutional interpretation — as opposed
to legislation – and have an article coming out with Josh Blackman in

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR craig.kirchoff+fisccon@gmail.com 18 November 2009

the Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy in January making
this point. (The article, titled “Opening Pandora’s Box? Privileges or
Immunities, The Constitution in 2020, and Properly Incorporating the
Second Amendment,” will shortly be up on SSRN, but for now you can
read the abstract/introduction here.)
In any event, P or I (as it’s known) is a vastly superior way of giving
people in the states the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense. But
it’s ambitious to argue this way rather than settle for the traditional
jurisprudence. As Orin Kerr says at the Volokh Conspiracy, “It’s certainly
an attention-getting way to brief the case. It’s not just arguing for a win:
It’s arguing for a revolution.”
them in such-and-such a fashion and insisting that private persons have
to engage in a specified type of transaction just by dint of being alive. I
don’t think the best reading of the Commerce Clause encompasses either,
but it’s not that hard to conceive a reading that extends to the former but
not the latter. I stress this just because I don’t think you have to be a
libertarian or have a very restrictive view of the legitimate scope of
federal power to believe there’s a genuine question here. The real form of
the argument here looks an awful lot like: “Look, we’ve stretched
commerce…between the several states so absurdly already, why are we
even pretending it might be found to exclude anything?”

For further discussion of Alan’s McDonald brief — which Cato will be FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
supporting with an amicus brief next week – see Lyle Deniston’s write-
up at SCOTUSblog. Great Article on the Club for
Growth [The Club for Growth]
NOV 17, 2009 08:37A.M.
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
This story was on the front page of today’s Politico. It’s a solid piece that
The Constitutionality of the is actually pretty comprehensive.

Individual Mandate [Cato at

Liberty]
NOV 17, 2009 08:52A.M.

Ezra Klein defends an individual healthcare mandate against charges

that it’s unconstitutional, and what’s striking to me is that the argument
seems awfully wobbly even if you’re on board with a lot of the post–New
Deal jurisprudence about the scope of federal power. Sez Ez:

The summary is that you can look at the individual mandate

as a tax, which is constitutional, or as a regulation forcing
private actors to engage in a certain transaction, much like
the minimum wage, which is also constitutional. I’ve also
heard scholars mention auto insurance, which is an obvious
analogue, and the Americans With Disabilities Act, which
proved that the government can order businesses to install
ramps, despite the fact that the constitution doesn’t explicitly
give the federal government jurisdiction over entryways.

This doesn’t seem like the right level of analysis. Some taxes and
regulations are within the ambit of federal powers; that doesn’t mean
anything capable of being so described is. Some things not explicitly and
specifically mentioned in Article I are nevertheless necessarily implicit in
the enumerated powers; that doesn’t mean anything is. Auto insurance
seems like a poor analogue because it’s a condition of access to
government-maintained roadways. Ezra also mentions Massachusetts’
individual mandate, which seems rather beside the point in a discussion
of the scope of Congress’ Article I powers. But bracket that. Even if you
think the federal commerce power legitimately extends to legislation like
the ADA, there’s intuitively a world of difference between saying that a
commercial enterprise providing services to the public must provide

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