Senator Tom Coburn’s (R‑OK) office has released a new report documenting 100 examples of questionable stimulus spending. From a public policy perspective, it’s a tidy illustration of why the government doesn’t do a very good job of spending other people’s money. In terms of entertainment value, it’s a pretty amusing read in a sad sort of way. Although, I do have one question for the Coburn staffers who included the story of a cruise company receiving a million dollars in anti-terrorism funds: Did you not see Speed 2?!
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Security-by-Obscurity Is Weak
And we’re better off when it fails this way than when we learn the hard way that someone found an exploit.
Watch for the TSA to give extra scrutiny to wheelchairs, casts, and orthopedic shoes now that the screening manual giving those items a pass has been released.
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Tuesday Links
- Patrick Michaels on Copenhagen: “Expect a lot of heat, not much light, and a punt right into our next election.”
- Why the Supreme Court should strike down the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board: “Imagine a government agency with the authority to create and enforce laws, prosecute and adjudicate violations, and impose criminal penalties. Then throw in the power to levy taxes to pay for all the above. And for good measure, make the agency independent of political oversight.”
- Discussing Hayek over at Cato Unbound: Four problems with spontaneous order.
- Podcast: “Obama’s Patriot Act Duplicity.”
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UTLA Teaches Great Vocab Word: “Hyperbole”
A good vocabulary word–and an important rhetorical device–that kids should learn is “hyperbole.” Indeed, in Los Angeles the teachers union has apparently thought illustrating hyperbole so important that the union has, on its own time, provided a crystal clear example of it. Talking about a proposed 11.75-percent pay cut to control the Los Angeles Unified School District’s red ink flood, United Teachers of Los Angeles elementary vice president Julie Washington declared that she’s afraid “with a 12 percent pay cut we’ll see homeless teachers…”
That’s a deliberate exaggeration, alright! According to a February Los Angeles Daily News report, the average LAUSD teacher makes $63,000 a year. Even the lowest paid LAUSD teacher makes nearly $46,000. Meanwhile, according to the News, the average household–not single person–income in Los Angeles County is only about $73,000. So right now the household income of two average LAUSD teachers would be $126,000, almost 73 percent higher than the county average. A household of the lowest paid teachers would also substantially beat the county average, hitting $92,000. Presumably, that means that right now L.A. teachers can afford way better than average housing, much less no housing at all.
Would a 12 percent pay cut change that? No way! The average household of teachers would still make almost $111,000, and the lowest-rung teacher household would make nearly $81,000.
So thank you, UTLA: You’re always looking to set up teachable moments, and this time you’ve succeeded with hyperbole!
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It’s Stossel Thursday
Yes, folks, it’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for: John Stossel launches his new weekly show on the Fox Business Network Thursday evening at 8 p.m. (Even though the vaunted Fox News machine can’t seem to put a notice about it on their website, I have it on good authority that the show will go on!) Rumor is he’ll be talking about Ayn Rand on the first show. It’s a good time for a show about freedom and limited government — as the Baltimore Sun says, “Stossel’s new show should have no trouble finding an audience of viewers eager for a discussion about the pedal-to-the-metal pace of expansion [of government] since Barack Obama took office.”
Some people ask, Why give up ABC for the smaller Fox networks? (Presumably, these are not the same people who asked Stossel for years, “Why don’t you go to Fox? They’d love you there.”) The good news is that now Stossel has an hour a week to talk about freedom — as well as appearances on other Fox shows such as Beck and O’Reilly. His hour-long specials at ABC were excellent, and drew solid ratings, but ABC hasn’t put one on in more than a year. And even his “Give Me a Break” segments on 20/20 had become rare. So what’s the point in being part of a big but declining network that isn’t actually interested in serious political commentary? Now he’s on a smaller but growing network that wants him to do 44 hours of pointed commentary and analysis, plus contribute to other shows.
If you haven’t seen Stossel’s ABC specials, you need to. I can never decide which one I think is best. Of course, I’m partial to “John Stossel’s Politically Incorrect Guide to Politics,” in which I get a bit of screen time. But “Greed,” with Walter Williams, David Kelley, and Ted Turner, is great, too. And so is “Is America #1?,” featuring Tom Palmer. But there were plenty of others — “Stupid in America,” “Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death?,” “John Stossel Goes to Washington,” “Sex, Lies, and Consenting Adults.”
You can view some of them, including “Is America #1?,” at a website called Freedom Channel. And for the time being, at least, you can still watch lots of shorter Stossel videos at ABC News.
But meanwhile — tell your mama, tell your pa, to watch “Stossel” this Thursday at 8 p.m. on Fox Business Channel. And note: it will repeat at 10 p.m. Friday, giving you a chance to show ABC what they lost by watching “Stossel” instead of “20/20.”
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Palmer and Cowen on the Nature of Liberty
Two leading libertarian thinkers, Tom Palmer and Tyler Cowen, discussed Palmer’s new book, Realizing Freedom: Libertarian Theory, History, and Practice, at a recent Cato Book Forum. You can see the video or download a podcast here.
Two years ago, Cowen and Palmer were among the contributors to a Cato Unbound colloquy on the past and future of libertarianism. Cowen was interviewed for Cato’s Daily Podcast and expressed a more critical view of the concept of “negative liberties” than classical liberals typically do. A few days later, in another Daily Podcast, Palmer took on what he considers the coercive confusions of “positive liberty” and defended the necessity of “negative liberty” to a free society.
Listen to them both and buy the book.
Update: Here’s a portion of Palmer’s talk that focuses on the rule of law:
On Transparency, Talk Trumps Action
In the heady first days of the administration, President Obama issued a memorandum on transparency and open government that seemed it would set the ship of state on a course for transparency, participation, and collaboration. Many people expected that within the 120-day time-frame stated in the memo, the administration would issue the “Open Government Directive” it called for.
Well, 120 days from January 21 was May 21—and 200 days after that, we are finally going to see that open government plan. An announcement of it will be streamed live on the White House web site at 11:00 am.
It turns out that administrators didn’t fall woefully behind on President Obama’s instructions. His memorandum directed the not-yet-appointed Chief Technology Officer and others “to coordinate the development by appropriate executive departments and agencies, within 120 days, of recommendations for an Open Government Directive …” It was an instruction to coordinate on the writing of a directive, and within 120 days, people were surely coordinating.
Given the exciting campaign mantra of “change,” one could forgive people expecting the administration to set its course for good governance early. How un-change-like it is that nearly a quarter of the way through President Obama’s term (an eighth if he’s reelected), with old habits established and unlikely to be dislodged, we finally get that “open government plan.”
If only this good-government priority had been pursued as steadfastly as President Obama’s big-government priorities.
While coordinating and planning has gone on, President Obama has specifically declined to carry out an open government promise he made on the campaign trail. In fact, more than 100 times since he has been in office, he has declined to post online the bills sent him by Congress for five days of public review before he signs them. I’ll put up a new chart covering all the laws President Obama has signed sans sunlight later today.
Since I last wrote about this favorite topic, I learned of a new development, however. At some point earlier this year, the White House began posting links on Whitehouse.gov to bills that were heading its direction, a half-measure the White House told the New York Times it would take.
I failed to notice the existence of these pages, but I think it is forgivable error. There is no uniform structure to them, and there is no link I can discover on Whitehouse.gov that would bring anyone to them.
Based on my spot-checking, they haven’t been crawled by any search engine, so the only way a person could find them is by searching on Whitehouse.gov for phrases on the yet unseen pages or by searching the House or Senate bill numbers of bills that you know to look for because they have already passed into law.
This doesn’t fulfill the spirit of the Sunlight Before Signing pledge. It doesn’t give the public an opportunity to review final bills and comment before the president signs them. I doubt if a single one of the people who cheered when President Obama made his Sunlight Before Signing pledge has visited one of these pages and commented to the president as he told them they would be able to do.
There are further curiosities: The pages themselves are undated, but their “posted” dates, which appear in search results, are sometimes well beyond the date on which they became law. A Whitehouse.gov search for H.R. 2131, which became Public Law 111–70 on October 9th, shows that it was posted for comment on October 23rd.
Today the White House announces plans for dramatic steps forward on government transparency. But the steps it could have taken starting on day one remain promises unfulfilled. President Obama’s “Sunlight Before Signing” campaign pledge breaks every time he signs a bill without posting its final version at Whitehouse.gov for five days of public review before signing it.