Like President Bush before him, Obama has a knack for taking the worst ideas of his opponents and making them his own. It is truly bipartisanship in the worst of ways (think Sarbanes-Oxley, the TARP or No Child Left Behind). The newest example is the President’s proposed “infrastructure bank.” A bill along those lines was introduced a few years ago by then Senator Hagel, although the idea is far from new.

First, let’s get out of the way the myth that we have been “under-funding” intrastructure. Take the largest, and usually most popular, piece: transportation. Over the last decade, transportation spending at all levels of government has increased over 70 percent. One can debate if that money has been spent wisely, but there’s no doubt we’ve been spending an ever-increasing amount on infrastructure — so there goes one rationale for an infrastructure bank.

The real rationale for an infrastructure bank is to transfer the risk of default away from investors, bankers and local/​state governments onto the federal taxpayer, but to do so in such a manner that the taxpayer has no idea what they are on the hook for.

If there are truly great projects out there that will pay their own way, then they should have no trouble getting private funding.

Of course, we will be told that the bank will charge an interest rate sufficient to cover losses and that the taxpayer won’t be on the hook. Again, if it is charging an appropriate rate, then why does the bank need to be chartered (and backed) by the taxpayer? We’ve heard this story before…with Social Security, flood insurance, FHA, Fannie/Freddie…the list goes on, that all of these programs would pay their own way and never cost the taxpayer a dime. If there are truly outstanding infrastructure needs, then appropriate the money and pay for them. An infrastructure bank is just another way to allow Wall Street to line its pockets while leaving the risk with the taxpayer. If bankers aren’t willing to actually take the risks, then why exactly do we need them?

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.

Here’s a story for the better-late-than-never file. Former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro confessed that communism doesn’t work and that his nation’s economic system should not be emulated.

Fidel Castro told a visiting American journalist that Cuba’s communist economic model doesn’t work, a rare comment on domestic affairs from a man who has conspicuously steered clear of local issues since stepping down four years ago. The fact that things are not working efficiently on this cash-strapped Caribbean island is hardly news. Fidel’s brother Raul, the country’s president, has said the same thing repeatedly. But the blunt assessment by the father of Cuba’s 1959 revolution is sure to raise eyebrows. Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for The Atlantic magazine, asked if Cuba’s economic system was still worth exporting to other countries, and Castro replied: “The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore” Goldberg wrote Wednesday in a post on his Atlantic blog.

Too bad Castro didn’t have this epiphany 50 years ago. The Cuban people languish in abject poverty as a result of Castro’s oppressive policies. Food is harshly rationed and other basic amenities are largely unavailable (except, of course, to the party elite). This chart, comparing inflation-adjusted per-capita GDP in Chile and Cuba, is a good illustration of the human cost of excessive government. Living standards in Cuba have languished. In Chile, by contrast, the embrace of market-friendly policies has resulted in a huge increase in prosperity. Chileans were twice as rich as Cubans when Castro seized control of the island. After 50 years of communism in Cuba and 30 years of liberalization in Chile, the gap is now much larger.

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.

Many issues of the late, great libertarian magazine Libertarian Review are now available online. The magazine was published from 1972 to 1981, first as a newsletter of book reviews and then as a glossy monthly magazine edited by Roy A. Childs, Jr. It made quite a splash during those years, and Childs became one of the most visible and controversial libertarian intellectuals. After the magazine folded, as so many intellectual magazines do, he spent almost a decade as editorial director and chief book reviewer for Laissez Faire Books. He had read everything, and he knew everyone in the libertarian movement. He got lots of prominent people — including Murray Rothbard, John Hospers, Thomas Szasz, Roger Lea MacBride, and Charles Koch — to write for the magazine. And he discovered and nurtured plenty of younger writers.



Libertarian Review featured

• news coverage and analysis of inflation, the energy crisis, economic reform in China, the 1979 Libertarian Party convention and the subsequent Clark for President campaign, the Proposition 13 tax-slashing victory, the rise of the religious right, the emergence of Solidarity, Jerry Brown, Three Mile Island, and the return of draft registration.
• classic essays like Jeff Riggenbach on “The Politics of Aquarius” and “In Praise of Decadence,” Joan Kennedy Taylor on Betty Friedan, Rothbard on “Carter’s Energy Fascism.”
• interviews with F. A. Hayek, Howard Jarvis, Paul Gann, Henry Hazlitt, John Holt, and Robert Nozick.
• and especially Roy Childs: on William Simon’s A Time for Truth, on Irving Kristol, on the rise of Reagan, on drugs and crime, on the hot spots of Iran, Afghanistan, and El Salvador.

As Tom G. Palmer put it in a letter published in The New Republic of August 3, 1992, just after Roy died, “Roy Childs was one of the finer members of a generation of radical thinkers who worked successfully to revive the tradition of classical liberalism — or libertarianism — after its long dormancy, and who dared to launch a frontal challenge to the twentieth-century welfare state. An autodidact who knew more about the subjects on which he wrote than most so-called ‘experts’, his writings exercised a powerful influence on a generation of young classical liberal thinkers.”



Check it out.

On Labor Day, President Obama announced his plan for an additional $50 billion in spending, mostly on transportation. An area Obama specifically mentioned was more spending for bridges, playing on the widely held perception that America’s bridging are falling apart. While clearly there are bridges that are greatly in need of repair and represent a threat to passenger safety, what has been the overall trend in bridge quality? In one word: improving.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics only about 1 in ten bridges today can be characterized as “structurally deficient”, this is, in need of serious repair. This may sound high, but it is down from 1 in four back in 1990. As one can tell from the accompanying chart, the percent of deficient bridges has been on a steady decline over the last two decades.

It is also worth noting that over 80 percent of the deficient bridges in the U.S. are in rural areas, and subject to much less passenger traffic. Many of these bridges likely see little, if any, traffic. 

Perhaps more important from the perspective of “economic stimulus” is that additional bridge construction and repair would take years to have any real impact on employment. Rather than coming up with policies designed with solely political appeal in mind, the President and Congress should focus on broad policies that allow the private sector to determine what investment needs should be addressed.

This morning, in a column for National Review Online, I criticized a number of Democrats and Republicans who voted against Obamacare but had not signed a discharge petition that would force a floor vote on repealing the new health care law. One of the Republicans I singled out was Rep. Castle of Delaware, who is now seeking the GOP nomination for US Senate. This afternoon, Rep. Castle’s staff informed me that he intends to sign that petition as soon as he returns to Washington after the recess. That leaves five Republicans who have not signed. For the record, they are: Mark Kirk of Illinois, Joseph Cao and Charles Boustany of Louisiana, David Reichert of Washington, and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia.