Reading Tim Lee on FISA, I had a historical revelation. We could have avoided the long national nightmare of Watergate if only the burglars had carried letters from President Nixon stating that John Dean had determined that they had a legal right to trespass.
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U.S. Sugar Program Costs Another $1.75 Billion
The state of Florida announced yesterday that it will pay $1.75 billion to buy out the nation’s largest sugar producer and 300 square miles of land it owns north of the environmentally sensitive Florida Everglades. Although most news stories ignored the connection, the deal is yet another cost Americans continue to pay for our misguided agricultural programs.
The company selling the land, United States Sugar, has for decades benefited from a federal program that guarantees a minimum price for United States Sugar’s crop through a system of loan guarantees and strict import quotas. This means American families and sugar-consuming industries are typically paying two to three times the world price for sugar.
The sugar program also imposes damage on the environment, which motivated yesterday’s announcement. Like other farm programs, the sugar program encourages over-production. In the case of United States Sugar, that means the extraction of fresh water that would otherwise flow naturally into the Everglades, and the over-application of fertilizers that artificially raise the phosphorous content of the runoff, causing a sharp decline in periphyton, such as algae, that supports bird and other animal life in the Everglades. [For more about the environmental damage caused by U.S. farm programs, see my 2005 article published by the Property and Environment Research Center.]
In large part because of the damage caused by subsidized domestic sugar producers, Congress allocated $8 billion in 2000 for cleaning up the Everglades. Florida’s purchase of United States Sugar was just the latest installment in an ongoing clean-up operation.
Of course, Congress could have avoided much of this mess years ago by repealing the sugar program. If Americans had been free to buy sugar at world prices, our domestic sugar industry would have been smaller and more efficient with a much smaller environmental footprint. Converting the sugar-cane fields to more environmentally friendly uses would have been much less expensive because the annual subsidies would not have been capitalized into the value of the land.
When the Democrats took power in Congress in 2007, they pledged themselves to be in favor of reform, fiscal responsibility, and protection of the environment. Yet the new farm bill that Democrats voting overwhelmingly in favor of last month, and that their likely presidential candidate Barack Obama endorsed, strikes out on all three counts.
Conflicting Data? What Conflicting Data?
The public school advocacy group Center on Education Policy released a new report today, titled “Has Student Achievement Increased Since 2002?” Its answer is “yes,” based on relatively worthless high-stakes state-level testing data and on the more esteemed National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). For reasons known only to the report’s authors, they make no use of the available U.S. trend data from either the PISA or the PIRLS international tests (though the CEP study mentions PISA results for a single point in time, it ignores the changes in that test’s scores over time.)
As it happens, U.S. scores have declined on both PISA and PIRLS in every subject and at both grades tested since they were first administered in 2000/2001. In the PISA mathematics and science tests, the declines are large enough to be statistically significant, that is: we can be confident (and disappointed) that they reveal real deterioration in U.S. student performance. In mathematics, our score has dropped from 493 to 474, causing us to slip from 18th out of 27 participating countries down to 25th out of 30 countries. In science, our score fell from 499 to 489, dropping us from 14th out of 27 countries to 21st out of 30 countries.
It is reckless and misleading to form judgments about trends in U.S. student performance without taking into account the declines on these respected international tests. And, as Neal McCluskey and I pointed out last year, the improving trends that exist on some NAEP tests predate the passage of the No Child Left Behind act, and have in some cases actually slowed since that law’s passage.
It is this rather discouraging reality that should guide policymakers in the coming year, as they debate the future of NCLB.
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Scientists Gone Wild
One of the oft-encountered talking points offered by the Left is the extent to which the Bush administration has alternatively ignored, intimidated, and done violence to the scientific community. The picture being painted is that of a know-nothing Christian fundamentalist in the thrall of corporate America waging unremitting war against the Enlightenment.
While there is enough truth to this charge to give it legs, the “science” lobby is scarcely blameless. For all the moral and ethical posturing surrounding the sanctity of “the scientific process” and the need to keep the same safe from assaults by power-hungry politicians and ignorant political mob action, climatologist James Hansen’s recent call to literally criminalize disagreement with him about climate change is a more radical assault on the the scientific process and the scientific method than anything forwarded by the Bush administration.
Now, James Hansen would probably argue that he’s not interested in criminalizing disagreement per se; he’s interested in criminalizing dangerous, life-threatening speech that the speaker knows is fraudulent. Perhaps. But exactly what is the nature of this special mind-reading power that allows James Hansen to determine that Rex Tillerson, head of ExxonMobil, believes X but says Y? Is it so beyond the realm of possiblity to think that Rex Tillerson actually believes what he says (pace, say, commentary by our own Pat Michaels on the subject)? Or does James Hansen presume to know Pat Michaels’ true and secret thoughts as well?
To the extent that James Hansen’s views are embraced by the self-appointed gendarmes of science, politicians are right to suspect that climate change alarmism is heavily influenced by the lust for power, the demands of ego, and the pursuit of political agendas that go far beyond a disinterested search for scientific truth. Moreover, one can’t help but wonder about the strength of an argument that requires the threat of force to silence critics.
Call me an idealogue, but criminalizing skepticism about scientific theories is probably not the best way to facilitate the quest for scientific truth.
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A Big-Government Running Mate for McCain?
The Washington rumor mill has Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty as the leading candidate to be John McCain’s running mate. If so, that would be a clear slap in the face to small-government conservatives.
Pawlenty, who reportedly coined the term “Sam’s Club conservative” to describe his political philosophy, has been an economic populist and big-spender generally. Among other things, he:
- Supported government subsidized health care for all children as the first step toward universal health insurance, and opposed President Bush’s veto of a Democratic bill that would have expanded the State Children’s Health Insurance program (SCHIP) to families earning as much as $83,000 per year;
- Supports Massachusetts-style health care reform, including a “health care exchange” and an individual mandate;
- Has called for banning all prescription drug advertizing, and seeks government imposed price controls for drugs offered through Medicare;
- Proposed a $4000 per child preschool program for low-income children;
- Pushed a statewide smoking ban smoking ban in workplaces, restaurants and bars;
- Increased the state’s minimum wage;
- Imposed some of the most aggressive and expensive renewable energy mandates in the country;
- Was an ardent supporter of the farm bill;
- Received only a “C” ranking on Cato’s 2006 Governor’s Report Card, finishing below such Democrats as Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack and tied with Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell.
It was the Republicans’ big-spending, big-government ways that helped ensure their defeat in the 2006 midterm elections. Suburbanites, independents, and others who were fed up not just with the war and corruption, but also with the Republican drift toward big-government who stayed home, or even voted Democratic, on election day 2006. That night, more than 65 percent of voters told a pollster they believed that “The Republicans used to be the party of economic growth, fiscal discipline, and limited government, but in recent years, too many Republicans in Washington have become just like the big spenders they used to oppose.”
John McCain cannot hope to win this fall without the support of economic and small government conservatives. Many are attracted to what appears to be McCain’s genuine fiscal conservatism. But many others are suspicious of McCain’s populist, big-government tendencies on issues from energy and the environment to civil liberties, the war and campaign finance. McCain needs to reach out to Reagan/Goldwater small-government conservatives. Vice President Pawlenty would be sending a very different signal.
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Happy Kelo Day
As our friends at the Institute for Justice will tell you, today is the third anniversary of Kelo v. New London, the property rights case that made my colleague Bob Levy’s list of the “Dirty Dozen” worst cases in modern Supreme Court history. This was the case where the Fifth Amendment’s “public use” requirement was found to impose essentially no restriction on the government’s eminent domain power. In some senses this was a lost battle leading to great progress in the war to preserve property rights, with legislatures in numerous states enacting anti-Kelo legislation in the wake of concerted grassroots activism against the decision.
This morning the Supreme Court found a curious way of winking at Kelo Day. As I was scrolling down the orders list — a many-paged list of administrative actions, mostly cert denials — I happened upon the following notation:
07–1247 GOLDSTEIN, DANIEL, ET AL. V. PATAKI, FORMER GOV. OF NY
The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied. Justice Alito would grant the petition for a writ of certiorari.
Now, it’s exceedingly rare for individual justices to have the clerk record how they voted on a cert petition, but here Justice Alito did just that, and in a case that rang a bell in my mind I couldn’t place. Then I realized that Goldstein v. Pataki was the appeal by a group of home- and business-owners who are likely to lose their property to a development that is to provide a new home to the the New Jersey Nets plus 16 high-rise office and apartment towers and a hotel. Thus, not only is Justice Alito as friendly a vote on this issue as was his predecessor Justice O’Connor (who wrote an impassioned Kelo dissent) but he is apparently an emphatic one. See a bit more here. This is not necessarily a surprise — and it still leaves us one vote short — but, again, the notation on the order list is a neon light to Supreme Court watchers.
Another Entrepreneur Escapes French Tax System
One almost feels sorry for the French. Several years ago, supermodel Laetitia Casta escaped to London because of France’s onerous tax regime. This was a a particularly painful blow to French pride since she was selected in 1999 to be Marianne, a symbol of the nation. To add insult to injury, one of France’s most prominent chefs has now escaped to Monaco. The UK-based Times has the details:
France has just lost one of its greatest chefs. Alain Ducasse, the holder of 14 Michelin stars and a worlwide restaurant and hotel empire, has given up his French citizenship for the privilege of becoming a Monegasque, we hear today. Ducasse, 51, whose interests turn over about 160 million million euros a year, has gone into tax exile. He could have chosen Switzerland and kept his citizenship but Ducasse, a southerner by birth, has ties to Monaco, where he owns the three-star Louix XV. Monaco imposes no income or wealth tax on its residents — provided they are not French. …So, the wheeze for French would-be exiles is to become a Monaco citizen — a privilege accorded very sparingly. Prince Albert II has just granted this “sovereign order” to Ducasse. There are only 8,000 Monaco citizens and there is a long waiting list for French candidates. …Because of the wealth tax plus steep income and social security taxes, many high earners and very well off people moved over the past two decades to London, Brussels and other capitals as well as the traditional haven Switzerland. They are not returning in noticeable numbers, mainly because the wealth tax remains and they do not trust their country to reverse policy at the drop of a hat. Sarko has maintained the Impôt sur la Fortune (ISF) as the 26-year-old annual tax is known (the exiles call it Incitation à Sortir de France). The tax gathers relatively little income and drives capital abroad but the public supports soaking the rich, so scrapping it is politically unacceptable.
But Americans should not be overly amused by this story. At least French taxpayers have the freedom to choose another nation’s tax system. The United States imposes an exit tax (a policy almost always associated with despicable regimes such as the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany), making it very difficult for people to dump the internal revenue code.