The latest politician to blur the lines between legislating and running a protection racket is Representative Dan Eaton, division chairman of the New Hampshire state legislature’s powerful House Finance committee.

In what Charles Arlinghaus of the New Hampshire Union Leader generously described as “a rare moment of candor”, Rep. Eaton recently stated during a committee hearing that he was going to hold up an entirely uncontroversial bipartisan charter school bill purely for political purposes. As he explained, “I’m looking at this as political. We have a [budget] negotiation [with the state senate] coming up in June and I want to have a trump card or two, and this is … a very healthy trump card.”

Arlinghaus breaks it down:

Consider what he’s saying: He liked the bill and supports the policy, but he believes he can use the bill as part of a hostage negotiation with the Senate. He wants to say to the Senate “I know you want this, but we’ll kill it even though we like it too unless you do something else we want that is completely unrelated.”

Without question, some give and take and normal compromise will be part of a budget process. Everyone expects the House and Senate to pass different budgets and to then negotiate over the details of what gets included. But this bill isn’t part of that process and wouldn’t be part of that negotiation unless Eaton gets to keep it captive in a back room. In effect, he’s looking at charter schools and saying, “I’m sorry you got caught in the crossfire, but I think I can sell you for a good price.”

The bill in question was intended to clear up a misunderstanding about a recent change to the Granite State’s charter school law that the state attorney general’s office understood to mean the opposite of what the legislative authors had intended. The bill, which restored the previous statutory language, had already received a positive recommendation from the NH House Education Committee and passed the full NH House on a voice vote, meaning that the support was so overwhelming that it was unnecessary to count the votes in favor and opposed. What seemed like common sense to most legislators apparently looked like an opportunity for political hostage-taking for Rep. Eaton.

Without the fix, the five new charter schools that are already in the governor’s budget cannot be authorized. Even a delay until the budget negotiations in June will jeopardize the ability of these charter schools to be ready to open in September.

As a former member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, I can attest that the “Live Free or Die” state’s citizen legislature often embodies the highest ideals of self-government. Most of the legislators I encountered in both parties were principled and completely dedicated to making New Hampshire an even better place to live. Unfortunately, these sort of legislative shenanigans leave a stain on the august institution. Let us hope that sunlight proves to be a sufficient disinfectant.

State and local politicians love federal money. Every federal dollar that a state or local politician can spend is a dollar that he or she doesn’t have to ask his or her voters to come up with through taxes or fees.

One problem is that citizens might (erroneously) view local spending that is subsidized by the federal government as being a “free lunch.” Citizens are numbed to the real cost of government and the incentive for them to keep tabs on how state and local officials spend money is weakened.

According to an article in Politico, federal sequestration cuts to state and local subsidies could mean that local taxpayers will be asked by local officials to cover the difference: 

To keep their budgets in order, local officials across the country — many of whom don’t have the luxury of running deficits — say a dysfunctional Congress is forcing them to resort to the type of tax increases that Republicans, in particular, so fiercely oppose. 

…

Some of the hard-hit jurisdictions are obvious. Residents in Fairfax County, Va., which is home to defense contractors and thousands of federal employees, are being warned that property taxes could rise by an average of $262 later this year because of fallout from the sequester.

Heaven forbid that defense contractors and federal employees – already beneficiaries of captive federal taxpayers – might have to bear a greater responsibility for the local government services that they “benefit” from. Perhaps a potential tax increase will cause Fairfax County residents to take a closer look at how local officials have been spending money and decide that additional money isn’t needed. (And perhaps the defense contractors and federal employees in particular will have a better understanding of why some of us don’t want to pay additional federal taxes to help maintain current levels of federal spending.)

Sequestration might not be the ideal way to cut federal spending, but if it results in people appreciating that federal spending isn’t a free lunch, good.

See this Cato essay for more on fiscal federalism.

That’s the question posed by US News and World Report’s “Debate Club” today.

Here’s the opening to my response.

Tragically, the Iraq War was not worth the costs. The leading advocates for war understated the costs and exaggerated the benefits. They claimed that the war would be cheap, perhaps even profitable, thanks to lower oil prices. They suggested that it would be easy, a “cakewalk,” not requiring a long-term U.S presence to stabilize the country after Saddam Hussein’s ouster. They blithely dismissed concerns about the tensions between Arabs and Kurds, and between Sunnis and Shiites.

We now know how wrong they were. A new report from the Watson Institute for International Studies at BrownUniversity tallies up the costs: nearly 4,500 U.S. troop fatalities, more than $1.7 trillion spent, and another $490 billion owed. Estimates of the number of Iraqis killed in the sectarian bloodletting that occurred after the collapse of Saddam’s regime exceed 130,000. Millions were displaced, many still have not returned to their homes. The Iraqi Christian community has been decimated.

You can read the rest here and vote for the best argument.

For the first time in state history, the Idaho House of Representatives passed a scholarship tax credit (STC) bill. Like the bill that the Alabama legislature passed last month, Idaho’s STC legislation is a step in the right direction though it has some limitations.

The Idaho bill would grant tax credits to individuals and corporations in return for donations to nonprofit scholarship granting organizations (SGOs). The SGOs would fund low- and middle-income students attending nonpublic schools. To be eligible to participate, a family’s household income could not exceed 150% of the federal free-and-reduced lunch program’s income threshold ($63,964 for a family of four). According to the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, that would cover about 59% of Idahoans. The program is limited to students who attended a public school in the previous year or are entering kindergarten or first grade.

The program would be capped at $10 million per year. While the cap would adjust for inflation, there is no “escalator” provision to grow the program over time to meet demand, as in Arizona, Florida, and New Hampshire.

The program would also require participating private schools to administer standardized tests. This is an unnecessary provision that’s intended to provide accountability but could exacerbate the “teach to the test” problem. The most effective form of accountability is the chosen schools’ direct relationship with parents who can choose to leave if their kids’ needs are not met. Most STC programs do not require schools to administer standardized tests, yet many schools voluntarily administer them because parents desire it. However, when the state mandates testing to participate in school choice programs, there are fewer choices available to parents who want to avoid the “teach to the test” issue.

Despite the bill’s limitations, the Idaho House of Representatives just took the Gem State one step closer to having an education system that empowers families to choose the education that best meets their kids’ individual needs.

The New York Times reports today that Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and Aldi supermarket chains have decided not to sell a new form of genetically modified fish. The FDA is set to approve the sale of a type of salmon genetically engineered to mature more quickly than its natural ancestors. This will be the first genetically modified animal approved for human consumption. While the FDA has determined that the genetic alteration of the fish has no effect on its meat, “Frankenfish”—as some have called it—still gives many consumers the heebie-jeebies. 

I would just like to point out that consumer demand for natural fish has prompted a market response that provides convenient access for GM-wary eaters while (most importantly) preserving choice for less-cautious consumers. Mandatory labels like those proposed last year in California were not needed to ensure consumers received desired information; retailers have filled that function instead. 

Anti-GM campaigners lobby for restrictions on GM foods like out-right bans or onerous labeling requirements with the aim of ensuring that everyone has access to non-GM options. Whole Foods has offered non-GM products for a long time, but this has generally not mollified anti-GM campaigners, because Whole Foods is pricier than most grocery stores. Aldi, however, is very much a discount grocery store that targets and appeals to a different demographic than Whole Foods. I won’t hold my breath, but I’m hoping that anti-GM activists are now more open to the idea that consumers are empowered by choice, not mandates.

Without government intervention retailers will provide consumers with what consumers want. When government intervenes, retailers are forced to provide consumers with what ideological activists and lobby-savvy industries want them to have. Those industry groups are especially active right now as regulators seek to amend mandatory country of origin labels for beef and dolphin-safe labels for tuna that have been rightly decried by our trade partners as protectionist discrimination. Trusting consumers to look after themselves could save us a lot of trouble.

A picture of Shawn Moore’s 11-year-old clad in camouflage and holding a scary-looking gun prompted New Jersey’s Department of Children and Families to visit his house for an “inspection,” according to Moore. As reported by the Associated Press:

The elder Moore was at a friend’s house when his wife called, saying state child welfare investigators, along with four local police officers, were at the house, asking to inspect the family’s guns.

Moore said he called his lawyer Evan Nappen, who specializes in Second Amendment cases, and had him on speaker phone as he arrived at his house in Carneys Point, just across the Delaware River from Wilmington, Del.

“They said they wanted to see into my safe and see if my guns were registered,” Moore said. “I said no; in New Jersey, your guns don’t have to be registered with the state; it’s voluntary. I knew once I opened that safe, there was no going back.”

The Department of Children and Families has not confirmed that the Facebook picture was the reason for the surprise “inspection,” but a spokeswoman did comment that it is “important to note the way an investigation begins is through the child abuse hotline. Someone has to call to let us know there is a concern.” 

Yesterday, I argued on FoxNews​.com that the gun debate is really a culture debate. Two cultures are emerging in America. One culture respects guns as important tools in the hands of responsible citizens. The other culture is disgusted by guns. It is becoming increasingly difficult to bridge the gap between those cultures in order to devise reasonable and effective gun laws that respect citizens’ Second Amendment rights. 

Clearly, Mr. Moore is in the former camp and has taught his son how to responsibly use firearms. Appearing on “Fox and Friends” this morning, Moore’s son Josh said he’d been shooting guns since he was five, that he likes to hunt, and is a “pretty good shooter.” 

Yet many who are animated by “gun disgust” believe keeping firearms in the home is tantamount to child abuse. But the actual number of accidental firearm deaths of children are usually grossly overstated. In 2010, the CDC reported 62 deaths by accidental firearm discharge for children between 0–14 years old. (You can check the numbers yourself here.)

While each and every one of these deaths is undeniably tragic, the number is far less than deaths due to accidental drownings (726) or bicycles (approximately 100 in 2006). Yet I’m sure social services would not have visited Mr. Moore’s house if he had put up a picture of Josh on a new ten-speed. In fact, for an instrument with such potential for lethality, the number of accidental gun deaths for children is remarkably low. Even seemingly innocuous things, such as adult beds, can kill dozens of children per year. Between 1999–2001, 41 children under five died after being caught between a mattress and a wall or headboard. Nevertheless, during the Clinton administration the Department of Justice ran a series of ads designed to frighten parents about the dangers of unlocked guns, claiming that “an unlocked gun could be the death of your family.”

Those numbers are unlikely to change the minds of the gun-disgusted. As in many areas of public policy, facts often matter less than we’d like to believe. 

With Justice Breyer writing, a unanimous Supreme Court in Standard Fire Insurance Co. v. Knowles (opinion PDF, background SCOTUSBlog) has struck down as invalid a dodge used by some plaintiff’s lawyers to evade the provisions of the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (CAFA). As we wrote in October when Cato filed its amicus brief: 

In relevant part, CAFA provides defendants with the right to move class actions to federal court where the claim for damages against them exceeds $5 million. But can clever lawyers keep these cases out of federal court by simply “stipulating” that potential damages are less than $5 million — and before the named plaintiff is even authorized to represent the alleged class? In this case, Greg Knowles is the named plaintiff in a putative insurance-recovery class action against Standard Fire Insurance in Arkansas state court. Before the court certified the class, Knowles tried to avoid that removal to federal court by stipulating that his class would not seek more than $5 million in damages at trial. Notably, the stipulation is worded in such a way that it will not apply if the class definition is later altered. … CAFA was enacted specifically to discourage attorneys from “forum shopping” (seeking friendlier courts) and attempting to keep cases out of federal court. Lawyers who game the system by agreeing to cap damages in an effort to keep cases in more favorable state courts violate the federal due process rights of absent would-be class members, thereby flouting CAFA. 

In his opinion for the unanimous Court, Justice Breyer found that the named class representative lacked a right to limit absent class members’ claims in such a way. Individual litigants remain free to avoid federal jurisdiction through the use of damage stipulations, but that is a decision they are entitled to make only for themselves. That’s very much consistent with the principles Cato urged, and with the importance of individual rights as the fundamental basis for legal action, rather than as mere ingredients to be aggregated by lawyers seeking settlement advantage. Thanks again to the ever-brilliant David B. Rivkin, Jr., Andrew M. Grossman and colleagues at Baker & Hostetler for their work on the Cato brief.