Historian Diane Ravitch drives me nuts. She has written numerous, terrific books chronicling the ills of government control of education, including the wrenching social conflict it has caused; the ejection of meaningful content from textbooks and tests it has required; and the dominance of educrats over parents and children it has enabled. She has been, essentially, the official historian of government-schooling’s failure. And yet, in a new blog interview with journalist John Merrow, she appears not to comprehend the most important lesson her copious works have to offer: that government education is doomed to fail.

Why the huge disconnect between her historiography and willingness to act on its clear implications? Because, it appears, as much as she knows that government schooling fails, she fears educational freedom even more. “Privatization,” in her mind, is simply too dangerous:

I remember your saying in an interview years ago that you favored public schools but not the public school system that we have. In New Orleans Paul Vallas has called for ‘a system of schools, not a school system.’ What’s your ideal approach? Are we moving in that direction?

If “a system of schools” means that the public schools should be handed over to anyone who wants to run a school, then I think we are headed in the wrong direction. Privatization will not help us achieve our goals. We know from the recent CREDO study at Stanford that charter schools run the gamut from excellent to abysmal, and many studies have found that charters, on average, produce no better results than the regular public schools. Deregulation nearly destroyed our economy in the past decade, and we better be careful that we don’t destroy our public schools too.

Unfortunately, while Prof. Ravitch knows a gigantic amount about education history, she exhibits precious little understanding of freedom or its economic subset, free markets. For one thing, charter schooling – a system by which public schools are given a right to exist and largely held accountable by government – isn’t even close to “privatization,” if by that we mean taking control from government and giving it to free, “private” individuals. Worse, Ravitch evinces a reflexive and, frankly, simplistic fear of free markets in hyperbolically asserting that “deregulation nearly destroyed our economy in the past decade.” I’d strongly suggest that she explore some non-education history – for instance, that of government-sponsored institutions such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; federal laws such as the Community Reinvestment Act; and federal regulation – before making any such over-the-top declaration again.

Ultimately, it seems likely that Prof. Ravitch fails to grasp – or, perhaps, to intuitively feel – how freedom works, and hence she fears it. Like many people, maybe she’s just not comfortable with seemingly ethereal spontaneous order, and needs to have some higher power pulling the strings to feel safe. Perhaps she fails to see how freedom, by fostering competition and innovation, produces all of the wonderful things we take for granted. Maybe she doesn’t really understand that it is due to freedom that we have an abundance of computers, coffee cups, cars, houses, package delivery services, miracle drugs, and pencils, not to mention religious pluralism, marketplaces of idea, and even happiness.

And then there’s the flip-side: government failure. While she has done more than perhaps any other historian to detail government failure and damage it has inflicted in education, Ravitch seems dead set against applying what she knows to public policy. She knows, for instance, that government often works precisely for the powerful special interests it’s supposed to keep in check. She doesn’t, though, seem to know why that is, and why it is the rule in government. She doesn’t appear to realize that the people who would be regulated, or who are employed by government, have by far the greatest motivation to get involved in the politics of their narrow areas, and hence exercise by far the most influence over them. And she doesn’t realize that it is only when special interests control government – not when they are in free markets – that they can exert unchecked power, because it is only then that they no longer have to get others to voluntarily do business with them.

Unfortunately, Ravitch’s apparent fear of freedom forces her to deny the only hope for making American education really work: to empower all parents to choose, and to set educators free. Only then would schools be able to specialize in the needs of our hugely diverse children, and would children be able to attend them. Only then would educators have to compete for their money, forcing them to respond to the people they are supposed to serve rather than exercising political control over them. Only then would we see in education the kind of powerful innovation and progress we take for granted in everything from consumer electronics to restaurants.

And yes, freedom works in education, just as it does in almost every field of human endeavor. Despite much of the world having adopted the government-schooling model, we have ample evidence of this. For instance, James Tooley’s hugely important research reveals how private, for-profit schools are educating the world’s poorest children much more effectively than “free” government schools. And Andrew Coulson’s recent review of education research reveals that the more free an education system, the better its results.

Freedom, quite simply, works, and government, typically, does not. Which might be exactly why, after Ravitch has bashed “privatization” and “deregulation,” the only prescription she has left is blind, reality-ignoring hope: “At some point, we will have to get the kind of leadership that can figure out how to improve our public school system so that we have the education we want for our children.”

We should wait, in other words, for a miracle, a healing of that which is inherently broken. It is, of course, no solution at all, but both knowing the history of American education, and fearing real freedom, Ravitch has nothing else to offer.

As reported in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner called fellow bank regulators, included Fed Chair Ben Bernanke and FDIC Chair Sheila Bair, over for an obscenity-laced rant about their audacity in raising questions about his scheme to fix our financial system.

Reportedly the Secretary told regulators that “enough is enough” and that they’ve been heard, so the time for debate is over. This sounds eerily like the President’s previous comments about including Republicans in the talks over the stimulus — you’ve been heard, so you were “included,” now shut up. The shouting down of debate is becoming all too much a signature of this Administration.

The Secretary apparently also told the regulators in attendance that it was the administration and the Congress that sets policy. Perhaps next he’ll tell us that the power of the purse lies with the Treasury and the Congress. Secretary Geithner has no more constitutional authority to set policy than do any of the bank regulators. It is the job of Congress to make laws, not the Treasury Secretary’s. He can offer his opinion, just as they can, and should, offer theirs.

Of course, Secretary Geithner’s frustrations are understandable, given that his regulatory proposals have hit a brick-wall with both Congress and the Public. He has made no effort to explain to either Congress or the public how exactly his plan will stop future bailouts. Instead, any reasonable read of his proposal would lead to the conclusion that we will have more bailouts, rather than less, under the Obama-Geithner plan. Instead of directing his energies at anger, he should put them toward coming up with solutions that actually increase the stability of our financial system.

We were all told during his confirmation process that we must overlook such facts as his failure to pay taxes, because Tim Geithner was the “boy-wonder” who would save our financial system. As his recent out-bursts demonstrate, “boy-wonder” is only half-right.

An editorial in today’s Boston Globe announces, “Mass. bashers take note: Health reform is working.” The editors write:

Pundits and politicians who oppose universal healthcare for the nation have a new straw man to kick around — the Massachusetts reform plan that covers more than 97 percent of the state’s residents. In the myth that these critics have manufactured, this state’s plan is bleeding taxpayers dry, creating nothing less than a medical Big Dig.

The facts — according to the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation — are quite different. Its report this spring put the cost to the state taxpayer at about $88 million a year, less than four-tenths of 1 percent of the state budget of $27 billion.

Here’s why the claim that the reforms cost Massachusetts taxpayers just $88 million per year is wrong.

1. According to the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, $88 million is not the annual cost of the law, but the average year-to-year increase in state spending due to the law. It’s a marginal-cost estimate, not a total-cost estimate.
2. The foundation used (uncertain) future spending cuts to make the average annual increase in spending appear smaller. In 2009, the total cost to the state government, according to the foundation, will be $408 million, nearly five times what the Globe claims.
3. That $408 million is just the cost to the state government. According to the foundation’s estimates, the state government’s share amounts to just 20 percent of the law’s total cost of $2.1 billion in 2009. The remaining 80 percent is borne by the federal government (20 percent) and private individuals and employers complying with the law’s individual and employer mandates (60 percent). Since Massachusetts taxpayers also pay federal taxes and must comply with the law’s mandates, state taxpayers pay much more than $88 million to comply with the law. In fact, the total cost of the law is about 24 times what the Globe says it is.

So the Globe is wrong. But here’s why the Globe should have known better.

I recently wrote an op-ed where I picked apart the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation numbers. The op-ed hardly “manufactured myths” or “kicked around straw men.” I reached these conclusions using the foundation’s own data, and by talking with foundation president Michael Widmer. Widmer agrees with all of these points. (With one exception: he maintains it’s legitimate to use assumed future savings to reduce the average year-to-year increase in spending. But really, that’s a minor issue.)

I submitted that op-ed to The Boston Globe. They sat on it for a week, then rejected it. Which is fine. (FYI, the op-ed has been accepted at The Providence Journal.)

At a minimum, that raises the question of whether this misinformation was in fact disinformation.

Last week, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R) penned a wonderfully misleading oped for USA Today. In response, I submitted this poor, unsuccessful letter to the editor:

If Massachusetts were covering the uninsured for less than $800 a pop, as former Gov. Mitt Romney suggests [“Mr. President, What’s the Rush?”, July 30], then the health reforms he signed in 2006 would truly be a model for the nation. Yet data from the very watchdog organization Romney cites (the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation) indicate something different.

The Massachusetts reforms cost more than five times what Romney claims, because the state pushed more than 80 percent of the cost off-budget, and onto private individuals and the federal government. In fact, “RomneyCare” covers a family of four at a cost of at least $27,000 – more than twice the average cost of employer-sponsored coverage ($12,680).

Romney is correct that President Barack Obama has the wrong prescription for health reform. But that’s because Obama’s approach is Romney’s approach. Like Romney, Obama would have government force people to purchase health insurance; control the content, terms, and price of “private” health insurance policies; expand Medicaid; and create new government subsidies and bureaucracies. Like Romney, Obama would push most of the cost off-budget by imposing mandates on states and private individuals – which constitutes a huge tax increase on the middle class.

ObamaCare, like RomneyCare, is socialized medicine with a private façade.

Kaiser Health News has launched a new “Ad Audit” series that critiques the TV ads that various groups are airing both to promote or hinder the health care reforms moving through Congress. KHN correspondent Jordan Rau makes two solid contributions to the series. Two other audits leave something to be desired, however, while a fifth audit is just…well, you decide.

One lackluster audit examines an ad by the health-insurance lobby, AHIP. KHN dings AHIP for making bland statements in support of “bipartisan reforms” and “universal coverage” without offering “policy specifics about what these statements mean.” But the AHIP ad does make two policy statements that are susceptible to analysis:

If everyone’s covered, we can make health care as affordable as possible. And the words “pre-existing condition” become a thing of the past.

How is covering everybody supposed to make health care more affordable? Might there be a downside to requiring insurers to cover pre-existing conditions? KHN provides no analysis of the former statement. And rather than analyze the latter, KHN offers a spat between a left-leaning analyst and an AHIP lobbyist (I suppose that’s considered a balanced discussion) over whether AHIP’s proposed price controls go far enough.

Another lackluster audit examines an ad by Healthy Economy Now, a coalition comprised of “the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), AARP, the American Medical Association, the Advanced Medical Technology Association, Business Roundtable, Families USA and the Service Employees International Union.” This ad also provides fertile ground for analysis:

If we don’t act, medical bills will wipe out their savings…she’ll be denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition and he won’t get the chemotherapy he needs…health care costs will rise 70 percent…But we can act. The president and Congress have a plan to lower your costs and stop denials for pre-existing conditions.

Medical bills are wiping out many people’s savings — but would the Democrats’ legislation put an end to that? Again, are there any trade-offs involved in forcing insurers to cover pre-existing conditions? Might insurers stint on things like chemo because that would spur cancer patients to switch to other insurers (where they would bring down the competition’s bottom line)? Would health care costs grow more or less rapidly under the Democrats’ reforms? What does the Congressional Budget Office have to say? In place of such useful analysis, KHN merely reports that the ads are meant to influence the Blue Dogs, who had been holding up the Democrats’ health plans. (Of course, that in itself is interesting: why are these disparate groups so unified in their desire to see the Democrats’ reforms enacted? It’s a wonderful opportunity to test out the “bootleggers and Baptists” theory of regulation. But KHN…not interested.)

Yet the worst “audit” has to be KHN’s treatment of an ad by the group Conservatives for Patients’ Rights. KHN provides all the reasons that people should be suspicious of the ad and its sponsors: CPR was founded by a rich guy, who was ousted from his former gig as a hospital CEO amid fraud investigations, and who hired the “Swift Boat” crew to do his PR. Fair enough.

KHN goes off the rails, however, when it critiques the ad’s content. The ad states:

Some of Congress’ health care plans could squeeze you four ways. It could raise taxes by $600 billion—even taxing soda. It could add a trillion to the federal deficit. New rules could hike your health insurance premiums 95 percent. You still might end up on their government-run health plan.

KHN reports, “the facts are largely taken out of context, come from biased industry groups or have been discredited.”

KHN quotes the Urban Institute’s John Holahan as saying, “There’s absolutely nothing here that’s right. It’s unbelievable.” But regarding the $600-billion figure, KHN then writes, “Holahan says that number could turn out to be right, but it likely will be less.” Well, which is it? CPR says the tax hike could reach $600 billion. Holahan says it could, too. So how is it that CPR’s claim is absolutely, unbelievably not right? How could KHN not notice that contradiction?

“And,” KHN ads, “a soda tax is just one of many proposed revenue-raisers, including a cap on the tax deductibility of insurance premiums, a tax on the wealthy and an alcohol tax.” So what? Does that make the soda-tax claim untrue? Or even misleading?

KHN then challenges CPR’s “could add a trillion to the federal deficit” claim again by quoting Holahan:

It’s almost impossible to both say that you’re going to raise taxes by $600 billion and increase the deficit by $1 trillion—that means there’s no savings at all anywhere. That can’t be right.

First, that’s not what the ad claims. The ad claims only that either could happen. Second, given the difficulties that Democrats are having in paying for their reforms, and the tendency of government health programs to exceed spending projections, it’s not that unreasonable to think that both could happen.

Regarding the “could hike your health insurance premiums 95 percent” claim, KHN quotes Holahan as saying, “premiums are ‘almost guaranteed’ to grow 95% over a 10 year period” anyway. CPR’s claim has to do with the effects of imposing price controls on health insurance premiums (i.e., banning exclusions for pre-existing conditions), which would increase premiums for the healthy. Holahan does not refute CPR’s claim so much as confuse that effect with overall premium growth. In fact, price controls could very well increase healthy people’s premiums by 95 percent, and then overall premium growth could cause those premiums to rise another 95 percent over the next 10 years.

This is getting exhausting, so I’ll wrap up by noting that KHN’s refutation of CPR’s “You still might end up on their government-run health plan” claim was also a non-refutation. After insinuating that the Lewin study CPR cites is either biased, discredited, or both, KHN merely notes that the study produced multiple estimates of how many Americans would end up in a new government program. Oh, and different ways of creating a new program will influence that number. Well, no duh. And how on Earth does that impugn CPR’s claim?

KHN was not the only one asleep at the switch here. My friend Jonathan Cohn also missed the contradictions, shell games, and non sequiturs in this audit when he uncritically blogged about it over at The New Republic.

To sum up the situation, I can’t improve on Cohn’s closing line: “Sadly, it’s pretty typical of what we’ll be seeing and hearing…over the next few weeks.”

National Journal’s CongressDaily reports ($$) on a speech by Department of Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano:

“We need to be looking at [cybersecurity] not from a traditional standpoint of how we do law and order, but how we need to do it in a new and evolving world,” Napolitano said during the keynote speech at a cybersecurity conference hosted by the Secret Service. “We need to be thinking outside our traditional boxes. We need to be thinking ahead,” Napolitano said .…

Security expert Bruce Schneier sees it differently: “Securing our networks doesn’t require some secret advanced NSA technology. It’s the boring network security administration stuff we already know how to do: keep your patches up to date, install good anti-malware software, correctly configure your firewalls and intrusion-detection systems, monitor your networks.”

Entrepreneurial government officials would like you to think cybersecurity is big and new and all-different—a game-changer. But while there are some real challenges, it’s not anything so different that we need to “think outside of the box,” especially not the box that keeps government in its properly scoped law enforcement and national security roles.

Despite the happy talk from some government officials, the American people see the situation in Afghanistan as more likely to deteriorate than improve. Rasmussen Reports tells us:

Voters are less hopeful about the war in Afghanistan these days.

 A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 22% expect the situation there to get better, down seven points from a month ago.

 The plurality (41%) says things will get worse in the coming months, an increase of two points since the beginning of July. Another 24% say the situation will stay about the same during that time, up from 21% in the previous survey.

 Forty-three U.S. soldiers and 31 soldiers from other Western allies were killed in Afghanistan in July, the highest monthly total for both groups in the eight-year-old war. President Obama began shifting more U.S. troops to Afghanistan shortly after taking office because he contends that the country is the central front in the war on terror.

Unfortunately, there is much to be pessmistic about, as Cato’s Malou Innocent has been reporting.