My French is rusty, but I’m pretty sure the Fresh Prince just flipped out at the idea of a 75-percent marginal tax rate like that advocated by France’s new socialist president.

Today, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) became the latest governor to throw sand in the gears of ObamaCare, issuing an eleventh-hour veto of a bill to create an ObamaCare Exchange in New Jersey. An excerpt from his veto message:

While I am unwilling to approve the establishment of a statewide health insurance exchange at this time, I am mindful that the requirements of the Affordable Care Act still stand today and I intend to fully oversee New Jersey’s compliance in a responsible and cost-effective manner should its constitutionality ultimately be upheld by the Supreme Court… My Administration will continue this work and stands ready to implement the Affordable Care Act if its provisions are ultimately upheld.

Christie suggests he isn’t yet convinced that Exchanges are per se harmful. He also seems to suggest that if the Supreme Court upholds the law, creating an Exchange might be the best course for the state and that refusing to do so would put the state out of compliance with federal law–neither of which is true. But the veto message contains enough wiggle room for Christie to come out hard against any future ObamaCare Exchange.

Here’s hoping the Supreme Court renders all of this moot.

“Al-Qaeda bombmaker represents CIA’s worst fears.”

That’s the headline of a Washington Post story on Yemeni terrorists’ attempt to down a U.S. bound flight by placing a bomb on the body of an operative that turned out to be a CIA and Saudi agent. By straining to alarm readers about the bomb-maker, Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, the story makes three errors.

First, by defining the CIA’s “worst fears” as “a highly skilled terrorist determined to attack the United States,” the Post underestimates the imaginative capacity of intelligence officials and overrates Asiri’s prowess. The article uncritically quotes House Homeland Security Committee chairman Peter King’s claim that “Asiri is an evil genius. He is constantly expanding, he is constantly adjusting.” Whatever King means by “expanding,” “failing” would have been a better choice of words. In just one of the four Asiri plots mentioned in article did his bomb detonate properly. That one killed only its bearer, al-Asiri’s brother. The nearby target, Saudi’s Prince Nayef, suffered only minor wounds.

Second, the article dubiously claims that two of those plots nearly wreaked great damage:

If it were not for a technical problem (Abdulmutallab’s device failed to detonate) or solid intelligence tips (Saudi counterterrorism officials alerted authorities in Dubai and Britain to intercept the cargo planes), Asiri would have succeeded in staging a catastrophic disaster in American skies.

It is, however, questionable whether Abdulmutallab’s bomb, had it properly detonated, was powerful enough to cause his plane to crash. Even if it opened a hole, the plane might not have crashed.

In the second case, where bombs were hidden in printer cartridges on cargo planes, authorities tell us the detonators probably would have worked and could have downed the planes. But there remains a decent chance that detonation would have occurred while the planes were on the ground. Also, one reason that the devices made it on to cargo planes without detection is that they contain few people and thus justify less security. The death of a crew would have been tragic, of course, but “catastrophic disaster” is a stretch.

The likely success of terrorist plots can’t be assessed simply by looking at the stage of the plot that caused its failure. As Jim Harper argues, plots require success in a series of tasks, each of which drives down the odds of overall success. Bombs that are both difficult to detect and easy to detonate are tough to make, and competent bombers are hard to find. Borders have guards. Intelligence services employ double agents.

The article’s third error is its assertion that the Yemeni branch of al Qaeda has “taken advantage of Yemen’s political turmoil and seized large swaths of territory in the south.” That language conflates the terrorist group with a broader insurgency, confuses their goals, and overstates the group’s potency. The misperception invites a broad U.S. campaign against Yemen’s southern Islamists, which could heighten their enthusiasm for attacking Americans, creating the menace we feared.

Let’s review the record of the bombmaker who is labeled our “worst fear.” His organization has made no discernible progress towards its murky political objectives—though its Islamist protectors have gained territory amid a power vacuum. He has never produced mass violence nor apparently come close, and his most successful act of terrorism was to help his brother blow himself up. His next best effort resulted in a severe crotch burn for the bomber, who survived, talked to U.S. authorities for months, and is serving a life sentence.

That is “success” only under an exceedingly capacious definition. Bin Laden and his acolytes are being grandiose when they talk about bankrupting us. But their boasts show that “terrorism” remains a good label for their misbegotten efforts. They sustain their endeavors by imagining that violence, by generating fear and cost, will cause their enemy to fold and to accommodate their goals. By hyping their menace, we help them cling to that fantasy.

Cross-posted from the Skeptics at the National Interest.

On hearing of the death of the great French diplomat Talleyrand, his Austrian rival Metternich is reputed to have said: “What did he mean by that?” Perhaps we can be too cynical in assessing politicians’ motives. And so maybe we should just give President Obama credit for doing the right thing in endorsing marriage equality, and leave it at that.

But everything a president running for reelection does is subject to political analysis. President Obama certainly hasn’t jumped on a wildly popular position. Support for gay marriage has been rising fast, from about 30 percent in 2004 to 50 percent today, but the country is at best split right now. It will be interesting to see how much the president’s support moves popular opinion; polls have shown every group in society moving in a more approving direction except Republicans and conservatives, and Obama’s support may accelerate that division.

Obama’s new position isn’t likely to make much difference with the gay vote. Exit polls gave him 70 percent in 2008. Republicans captured 31 percent of the gay vote in 2010, a big Republican year, and only 23 percent in 2004 after President Bush endorsed a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. But that’s not a lot of difference in a small voting bloc. Obama may well have encouraged a bigger turnout among gay voters, however. And already, an incredible one-sixth of his big-money bundlers are openly gay, so this shift is likely to mean more money from those networks.

I see three constituencies with whom Obama’s new position should help him big-time:

• Hollywood. This move re-establishes Obama’s cool. Hope and change are back. Movie stars will be falling over themselves to be photographed with the president. That means money, excitement, and publicity. (This corroboration just in.)
• Silicon Valley. Creative and successful people are getting tired of being targets of antitrust and other regulators, and surely Obama’s constant demonization of the “one percent” is galling to people who have made big money by being creative and hard-working. And they had to fight with Hollywood for Obama’s support on SOPA and related bills. But the young, socially liberal tech community will join their Hollywood neighbors in new excitement for the president.
• The youth vote. With the wars slogging on, the economy not producing jobs, the president mocking the idea of drug legalization, young people were becoming less enamored of Obama. He won 66 percent of the 18–29 vote in 2008. Republicans still aren’t doing well with young voters, but the thrill was gone from their view of Obama. Pollster John Zogby pointed to young voters’ libertarian leanings as a problem for the president. But now Obama is cool again. The wars may continue, and there may be no jobs, but at least the president is now leading on this generation’s civil rights issue. Even a year ago, support for marriage equality was at 70 percent among young people. I suspect the president has reestablished his position as the overwhelming favorite of young voters, which will serve the Democrats well for years to come. Mitt Romney will help them by lining up with the minority of voters who oppose not just marriage but civil unions.

Obama’s campaign seems to believe that his new position is a political winner, judging by the look of his campaign website today and a new video titled ““Mitt Romney: Backwards on Equality.” Further deterioration in Democratic support among the white working class may be a good trade for money from gays, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley and renewed enthusiasm from young voters.

Today is his last chance to stop an ObamaCare Exchange.

My new piece at Daily Caller looks at how the Democratic Party’s approach to tax policy has changed over the decades.

The piece was prompted by a recent article from Norm Ornstein and Tom Mann claiming that needed bipartisan reforms are being blocked by the new “ideologically extreme” Republican Party.

Baloney. It’s the Democrats who have changed. The party’s leaders have moved far to the left on economic issues.

As evidence, I point to this Cato Journal article from 1985 by Democrat Richard Gephardt, who was a leader on tax reform. As a free-market guy, I agree with the great majority of what Gephardt said, yet I agree with virtually nothing that modern Democratic leaders say about tax policy.

Regarding ridding the tax code of special breaks, Gephardt says, “I confess that I am not qualified to act as a central planner and I do not know anybody on either committee who is.” Amen!

And Gephardt says, “We in Congress take pride in the free market system.” When was the last time you heard a Democratic leader say something like that?

Today, the Institute for Justice released a 200-page, comprehensive study on occupational licensing in the United States. The report details the plague of occupational licensing that has swept the country over the past 60+ years. According to the study, “In the 1950s, only one in 20 U.S. workers needed the government’s permission to pursue their chosen occupation. Today, that figure stands at almost one in three.”

Fifty years ago, in Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman warned against the dangers of professional licensing. At that time, Friedman quoted a previous study on licensure by Walter Gellhorn:

By 1952 more than 80 separate occupations exclusive of ‘owner-businesses,’ like restaurants and taxicab companies, had been licensed by state law; and in addition to the state laws there are municipal ordinances in abundance, not to mention the federal statutes that require the licensing of such diverse occupations as radio operators and stockyard commission agents. As long ago as 1938 a single state,North Carolina, had extended its law to 60 occupations. One may not be surprised to learn that pharmacists, accountants, and dentists have been reached by state law as have sanitarians and psychologists, assayers and architects, veterinarians and librarians. But with what joy of discovery does one learn about the licensing of threshing machine operators and dealers in scrap tobacco? What of egg graders and guide dog trainers, pest controllers and yacht salesmen, tree surgeons and well diggers, tile layers and potato growers? And what of the hypertrichologists who are licensed in Connecticut, where they remove excessive and unsightly hair with the solemnity appropriate to their high sounding title?

The Institute for Justice’s study found that licensing has only become more wide-spread and more absurd. But an increase in licensure is expected when interest groups are allowed to capture government and violate our economic liberties. Public choice theory predicts a growth in licensing if the anti-competitive interests of trades are not checked by constitutional rights. As Friedman observed,

In the absence of any general arrangements to offset the pressure of special interests, producer groups will invariably have a much stronger influence on legislative action and the power that be than will the diverse, widely spread consumer interest. Indeed from this point of view, the puzzle is not why we have so many silly licensure laws, but why we don’t have far more.

There are significant real-world effects to these laws. In a world of nine percent unemployment, barriers to work should be the last thing we want, particularly if those barriers do not make us safer or better off. The study found that the average license forces would-be workers to pay an average of $209 in fees, take one exam, and complete nine months of training. In the four places in which they are licensed (three states and DC), interior designers have the highest barriers to entry, apparently to save us from shag carpeting and misuses of the Pottery Barn. In the face of such requirements, particularly the months of training, it’s easy to see how someone can be discouraged from even looking for a job.

In addition, out-of-control licensing has other, more human costs, such as the monks of Saint Joseph Abbey, who were prohibited from building caskets in their monastery unless they obtained a funeral director license. The Institute for Justice won that case. Here’s hoping the new study gives IJ’s attorneys the data they may need to defeat other unconstitutional licensing regimes.

Below is the video announcing the study: