Over at Public​Square​.net — a nifty debate site — you can catch another installment of the ongoing McCluskey-Petrilli national curriculum tussle. As always, I think the argument against imposing national standards — and, soon, tests – rules the day, but listen to the exchange and decide for yourself. Once you’ve done that, make sure to leave a note explaining why you think national standards offer no hope for improving American education.

Today POLITICO Arena asks:

In his speech in Ohio yesterday, did President Obama draw a stark enough contrast with House Minority Leader John Boehner, whom he attacked by name eight times, to help his party in November?

My response:

The contrast the president drew was clear enough. His problem is that the people aren’t buying what he’s selling — and for good reason. His ideas, far from being new, have been tried countless times, both here and abroad. They don’t work. And they undermine basic American principles about individual liberty and free choice.

So when Obama says that Boehner and the Republicans have no new ideas, he’s partly right. (They have new ideas about how to address unsustainable entitlement programs — ask Rep. Paul Ryan.) At least in their rhetoric — their behavior in office, alas, is too often another matter — Republicans stand in substantial part for old ideas that work and conform more closely to the nation’s first principles, starting with lower taxes, less regulation, and less government management of the economy. That contrasts sharply with Obama’s countless “programs” to “stimulate” the economy, his targeted tax and spending schemes to create “green jobs,” to sell cars, and on and on. Listening to him, you’d think the economy would collapse were it not for Washington’s management of it.

The truth is quite the opposite, of course, as Americans are coming increasingly to appreciate. Economies prosper when entrepreneurs with ideas and capital are able to employ both for profit. But they won’t do that when conditions are uncertain, as they are when government meddles recklessly and uncertainly at every turn. How often have we heard entrepreneurs in recent months saying that they’d like to hire more people, but with the uncertainty of ObamaCare and so much else coming out of Washington, they’re sitting on their capital? And who can blame them?

So the answer is, get out of their way and let them do what they do best. But that’s not the Obama way. This “community organizer” — who organized people to demand more from government — seems to have no grasp of how economies work, beyond the failed command-and-control model. Even Fidel Castro has just now admitted that a government run economy doesn’t work. So either Obama smells the coffee coming now even from Cuba, or elections will take care of the matter.

I have written often about the Obama administration’s unwillingness to confront reality when it comes to foreign relations. Every time there is a new opportunity to reorient U.S. foreign policy, I hold out some hope that the president has taken stock of our relative security, examined the potential strength of our strategic partners, and decided to discard our costly and counterproductive strategy of the past twenty years, one premised on American global primacy. 

Once again the Obama administration had an opportunity to articulate a more restrained global posture, this time in a speech by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton before the Council on Foreign Relations. And once again the administration has chosen to cling to the tired old approach that holds out the United States as the “indispensable nation” and that saddles American taxpayers and American troops with nearly all of the burdens of global governance.

Secretary Clinton’s speech today reaffirms the administration’s preference for “leadership” in all areas, and a lack of interest in encouraging other countries to play a larger role. Indeed, the speech seems a step backward from a similar address last year. Whereas Clinton eighteen months ago had stressed partnering with other countries and engaging with adversaries, the tone in today’s speech, notes the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler, “was subtly different, focused much more on the importance of the U.S. role in managing difficult problems.”

This sort of meddling might appeal to Washington policy elites who are so confident in their ability to “manag[e] difficult affairs”, but it is unnecessary and dangerous. And much of this effort, good intentioned though it may be, is likely to fail.

It need not have been this way. There is ample evidence that a different approach could save hundreds of billions of dollars over the next ten years, while actually enhancing our security by reducing the likelihood that U.S. troops would become involved in unnecessary wars. Though his claims for what he would do to the domestic economy were grandiose, Obama’s rhetoric with respect to foreign policy evinced signs of humility. There was talk of a need to prioritize, and signs of open-mindedness to shedding some of the missions taken on by past presidents.

Within days of the election, however, the president-elect named Clinton Secretary of State, and announced that Robert Gates would remain at DoD. This move signaled continuity over change, and, more worrisome, suggested that Obama was now questioning some of his own good judgment in opposing the war in Iraq and other “dumb wars,” which other members of the incoming administration — Clinton most prominent among them — had supported.

Any lingering humility within the Obama administration seems to have been extinguished. The lesson to take away from the past decades, according to Secretary Clinton, is not of the need to temper our ambitions, husband our resources, and prioritize to deal with the most urgent treats. Rather, we are obligated to “lead” everywhere. “The world looks to us,” she explains:

because America has the reach and resolve to mobilize the shared effort needed to solve problems on a global scale — in defense of our own interests, but also as a force for progress. In this we have no rival.

“For the United States,” she continues, “global leadership is both a responsibility and an unparalleled opportunity.”

The language and tone is strikingly similar to Madeleine Albright’s confident assertion in 1998 that “We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us.”

Albright might have been forgiven such arrogance in the days before 9/11, before Afghanistan, before Iraq. But it is unconscionable for U.S. policymakers today to cling to American “leadership” in the face of our recent setbacks. There is an urgent need to rethink the purpose of American power. If we do not, the costs of attempting to police the planet will continue to mount, and the gap between our goals and the resources available to satisfy them will grow wider.

We should reaffirm that our military exists to advance our security, and shed our pretensions that we can manage other people’s conflicts, and build other people’s countries. While we will lead some of the time, we need not, and we should not, lead all of the time. It is long past time for others to step up.

You may have heard about the new survey in the Kentucky Senate race that shows Rand Paul up by 15 points. The disaggregated data from the survey are almost as surprising as the overall result.

About one-third of likely African-American and Democratic voters support Paul. He attracts solid majorities of young people, of college graduates, and of people who “almost never” attend religious services. Among the one-quarter of voters neutral toward the Tea Party movement, Paul receives 60 percent of the vote. He gets majority support from every region of the state. Paul’s support is the same from voters who make more or less than $50,000 a year. Paul’s weaknesses? People over 65 and women, both coming in around 45 percent.

Pretty amazing stuff, but there’s a caveat (there’s always a caveat).

One time in twenty, a well-done poll will return a misleading result. The 15 percent number may be wrong because of sampling error.

If not, Rand Paul might want to think about whether he really wants to keep his practice open on Mondays considering all that stuff he will be doing in DC. But maybe he’s not looking to make a career in the capital.

“Now on Democrats’ agenda: Budget cuts,” proclaims a front-page headline in Saturday’s Washington Post. The online headline reads, “Democrats add fiscal austerity as a campaign issue.”

Good news, huh? Let’s check it out:

The candidate was outraged — just outraged — at the country’s sorry fiscal state.

“We have managed to acquire $13 trillion of debt on our balance sheet,” he fumed to a roomful of voters. “In my view, we have nothing to show for it.”

And that was a Democrat, Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado, who voted “yes” on the stimulus, the health-care overhaul, increased education funding and other costly bills Congress approved under his party’s control.

Meanwhile,

Paul Hodes, the Democratic Senate candidate in New Hampshire, recently proposed $3 billion in spending cuts that would slice airport, railroad and housing funds. Elected to the House four years ago as an anti-war progressive, Hodes lamented that “for too long, both parties have willfully spent with no regard for our nation’s debt.”

So Senator Bennet is outraged at the national debt — for which we have “nothing to show” — but he has voted, apparently, for every one of the spending bills in his time in the Senate that have created today’s $13 trillion debt. The National Taxpayers Union says his overall voting record on spending bills rates an F.

And Representative Hodes is calling for a $3 billion spending cut. Sounds big, eh? Front-page news indeed. But of course, it’s less than 0.1 percent of the 2011 federal budget — and that’s assuming that all these cuts would come out of this year’s budget. Hodes’s press release doesn’t make that clear; they might be cuts over 5 years or so. And his very next press release said he was fighting for federal funds for local New Hampshire services.

Both Republicans and Democrats want voters to think that they’re getting tough on spending, deficits, and debts. But their statements are at wide variance with their actual records and actions. We didn’t pile up $13 trillion in debt while no one was looking; members of Congress, of both parties, voted for these bills. Voters need to watch what they do, not what they say.

My colleague Chris Edwards, quoted by reporter Shailagh Murray, is a little more polite:

“The problem from a fiscal conservative voter’s point of view is that every member or wannabe member claims to be a fiscal conservative these days, so it’s more difficult than usual to separate the wheat from the chaff,” said Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank.

A week ago today, I questioned both the premises and purpose of an upcoming National Journal forum on ObamaCare and job creation. The forum’s promotional materials touted the new health care jobs that the law will create as a Good Thing, even though we already have too many health care jobs. All in all, it looked to be a very dignified pro-Obama(Care) rally, funded by one of ObamaCare’s biggest beneficiaries, the drugmaker Eli Lilly. The Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney picked up on the story. Then Instapundit added his own pithy interpretation: “Hey, the Atlantic media empire needs money. Eli Lilly has it. Plus, it boosts Obama. Win-win!” (Actually, I believe that would be win-win-win.)

To its credit, National Journal has since added balance to the forum and its panel. I received a promotional email today that reframes the event by asking, “are the right jobs being created?” (Emphasis mine.) They’ve also added AEI’s Tom Miller to the panel, who I’m guessing will cast a skeptical eye on the value added by these new health care jobs. Now the event looks to be a dignified and balanced discussion of ObamaCare.

National Journal still describes ObamaCare as “reform,” which I submit compromises objectivity. But this is progress. Kudos to them.

Here’s a Reuters story about the Australian Tax Office harassing Paul Hogan, better known to Americans as Crocodile Dundee, because of a tax dispute. The grinches at the tax office took advantage of Hogan’s return for his mother’s funeral to hold him hostage, refusing to let him leave the country until he coughs up some cash. It appears that the tax police in Australia are just as politicized and above the law as the IRS. Hogan has never been charged with tax evasion and there are plenty of signs that the bureaucrats want to make him a high-profile victim to justify the amount of money that has been squandered in a probe of supposed offshore evasion.

Actor Paul Hogan, star of the “Crocodile Dundee” movies, has vowed to continue fighting the Australian tax office which has barred him from leaving Australia until he pays a massive bill, saying he’s victim of a witch hunt. Hogan, 70, was served with a departure prohibition order 10 days ago while in Australia to attend his 101-year-old mother’s funeral which has prevented him from leaving to return to Los Angeles where he lives with his wife and son. The Australian Tax Office refused to comment on reports of seeking tax on A$38 million ($34 million) of allegedly undeclared income from Hogan, saying it cannot give details of individual taxpayers. But the actor went public in the Australian media this week to put forward his side in his five-year row with the tax office, saying he had done nothing wrong and the tax office was on a witch hunt for a high-profile case. …“If I was a tax evader, which I’m not, I must be the dumbest one in the world to keep coming back here instead of fleeing to a tax haven … I know they’re absolutely desperate to nail some high-profile character with money to justify the expense to the taxpayer.” Hogan, who was once a painter on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, is under investigation as part of Australia’s biggest probe into offshore tax evasion, Operation Wickenby. The operation is budgeted to cost at least $300 million. The tax office has claimed he put tens of millions of dollars in film royalties in offshore tax havens, a claim that he has denied. He has never been charged with tax evasion.

This story is symbolic of a bigger issue, which is the the unfortunate tendency of governments to create ever-more oppressive and misguided laws in response to failures of existing policy. We see this in the failed War on Drugs, which leads to trampling of civil liberties and erosion of privacy. We see it in the failed War on Poverty, which leads to more redistribution that further traps people in dependency. We see it in the failed government-run education system, which wastes more money every year as outcomes remain stagnant and children from poor and minority communities suffer.

In the case of tax policy, politicians impose high tax rates and punitive forms of double taxation. As anybody with a modicum of common sense could predict, this bad tax policy undermines economic performance and drives economic activity to jurisdictions with better tax law. The politicians then have two ways to respond. They can lower tax rates and reform tax systems, an approach that simultaneously would boost growth and improve compliance (as happened during the Reagan years). Or they can tighten the thumbscrews on taxpayers, trample their rights, and conspire with other high-tax nations to punish the jurisdictions that do have good policy.

Not surprisingly, most politicians choose the latter approach. And the attack on low-tax jurisdictions is a particularly loathsome part of their response. As this video explains, tax competition is a liberalizing force in the world economy and the effort by high-tax nations to penalize so-called tax havens is driven by a statist impulse to prop up decrepit and inefficient welfare states: