President Obama’s audacious — some might say condescending — speech to the NAACP yesterday leaves me cold. What’s most chilling is the speech comes from a person who opposes helping poor parents assume the most important responsibility of all, choosing the best school for their child.

From the president:

To parents, we can’t tell our kids to do well in school and fail to support them when they get home. For our kids to excel, we must accept our own responsibilities. That means putting away the Xbox and putting our kids to bed at a reasonable hour. It means attending those parent-teacher conferences, reading to our kids, and helping them with their homework…

It also means pushing our kids to set their sights higher. They might think they’ve got a pretty good jump shot or a pretty good flow, but our kids can’t all aspire to be the next LeBron or Lil Wayne. I want them aspiring to be scientists and engineers, doctors and teachers, not just ballers and rappers. I want them aspiring to be a Supreme Court Justice. I want them aspiring to be President of the United States.

divThis, from the man who supports killing the DC voucher program, the ONLY education reform empirically proven to work through multiple random-assignment studies. These are thousands of young lives we are talking about.

This, from a man who sends his daughters to one of the most expensive private schools in the country, rather than the miserably failing and unsafe schools in their backyard.

Make no mistake, President Obama knows exactly what he’s doing and what his action and inaction means:

So, I know what can happen to a child who doesn’t have that chance. But I also know what can happen to a child who does. I was raised by a single mother. I don’t come from a lot of wealth. I got into my share of trouble as a kid. My life could easily have taken a turn for the worse. But that mother of mine gave me love; she pushed me, and cared about my education; she took no lip and taught me right from wrong. Because of her, I had a chance to make the most of my abilities. I had the chance to make the most of my opportunities. I had the chance to make the most of life.

Yes, Mr. President, and you received a scholarship to attend that wonderful school. That scholarship helped you to become president. It would be nice if you supported funding the same kinds of opportunities for other children in need.

Ari Schwartz responded in characteristic even tones to my critique of his testimony in favor of the PASS ID Act, which would revive the moribund REAL ID law. It’s worth a rejoinder, and I’ll offer him the same again here if he wishes.

Ari clouds matters slightly by suggesting that my “strong biases” obscure certain facts. I readily admit having a strong bias in favor of liberty — it’s why I do what I do. Ari admits several biases, including one in favor of consensus-building, which was what I accused him of prioritizing over principle. Let’s put aside the question of bias.

It’s good to see Ari state that CDT does not support a national ID system. It would be better to see him state that CDT opposes having a national ID system. (I imagine this is just a matter of word choice, but it would be good to have clarity.)

Next, Ari says his testimony “makes it clear that we believe that PASS ID prevents the creation of a National ID system.” I don’t believe this is clear from his testimony. More importantly, this is not a sound assessment of what a national ID is or what PASS ID does.

We need some defined terms, so let’s tease out what he means by “national ID.” (He has told me that there is some distinction between a “national ID,” a “national ID system,” and perhaps a “national ID card,” but the distinction is lost on me. I believe a national ID card is part of a national ID system, both of which are commonly referred to in shorthand as a “national ID.”)

Twice in his testimony, he correctly calls REAL ID a national ID system. The factors that make it so appear to be “the very real possibility that individuals would not be able to function in American society without a REAL ID card” and “giving unfettered discretion to DHS to expand the ‘official purposes’ for which REAL ID cards could be required.”

In my recent post on the subject, I defined a national ID as being a card: 1) nationally uniform in its key elements; 2) the possession of which is either practically or legally required; and 3) that is used for identification.

I think 1) and 3) are both given. Ari’s take on 2) — inability to function without it — and my formulation — practically required — are equivalent, so Ari and I agree on that much.

But is DHS discretion to expand “official purposes” an essential element of a national ID card? I don’t think so.

Let’s say Congress passes a law requiring employers to check a certain card before they hire new workers. What if Congress requires credit issuers to check the card? States require presentation of the card at the voting booth? What if Congress requires pharmacists to check it before selling people cold medicine?

Is this card system saved from being a “national ID system” because someone other than DHS came up with these ideas? Of course not. DHS discretion to expand usage is not what makes an ID system a “national ID system.”

The better definition is what we agree on: A national ID is national, identifying, and practically or legally required, meaning the lack of it disables people from functioning in society.

Do REAL ID and PASS ID differ in ways that make the one a national ID and the other not a national ID? No, and Ari doesn’t say so. He merely says PASS ID would slow national ID mission creep by some margin because it denies DHS some discretion. (PASS ID “[r]emoves from DHS’s authority the ability to unilaterally determine new official purposes for which a PASS ID-compliant card can be required .…”)

This is not central to “national ID-ness,” and PASS ID doesn’t actually deny DHS that authority — it simply removes the specific grant of authority in REAL ID. Removing a grant of authority in one law does not deny an agency authority it has elsewhere. (It’s like the difference between “not supporting” and “opposing” something.) DHS and other agencies almost certainly have power under other law to require the IDs they choose for functions that are plausibly related to security or fraud prevention.

I was wrong to assume that it was lack of principle driving CDT and Ari to endorse the PASS ID Act, which revives our moribund national ID law. Other explanations are no more palatable, though, and no other group that I am aware of missed the true import of PASS ID.

Here’s a memorable Bruce Schneier quote to emphasize the importance of opposing a national ID, which so many civil liberties groups are doing:

History will record what we, here in the early decades of the information age, did to foster freedom, liberty and democracy. Did we build information technologies that protected people’s freedoms even during times when society tried to subvert them? Or did we build technologies that could easily be modified to watch and control? It’s bad civic hygiene to build an infrastructure that can be used to facilitate a police state.

No civil liberties group supports PASS ID. CDT can’t claim that mantle while it does.

More than 250 economists have signed an “Open Letter to Congress and the Executive Branch” calling upon them to “defend the independence of the Federal Reserve System as a foundation of U.S. economic stability.”

Allan Meltzer is not a signatory to the petition and he has explained why not. The Fed has frequently not shown independence in the past, and there is no reason to expect it to do so reliably in the future. Professor Meltzer has just completed a multi-volume history of the Fed and knows all-too-well of the Fed’s willingness to accommodate the policies of administrations from FDRs to Lyndon Johnson’s. 

I would add that the Fed’s behavior under Chairman Bernanke breaks new ground in aligning the central bank’s policy with Treasury’s. Much of what the Fed has done, first under Bush/​Paulson, and now under Obama/​Geithner, involves credit allocation. Since that ultimately involves the provision of public money for private purpose, it is pre-eminently fiscal policy. Central bank independence is a fuzzy concept. If it means anything, however, it is that monetary policy is conducted independently of Treasury’s fiscal policy.

In short, it is not the critics of the Fed who threaten its independence, but the Fed’s own actions. Its intervention in the economy is unprecedented in size and scope. It is inevitable that those actions would lead to calls for further Congressional oversight and control. The Fed is a creature of Congress and ultimately answerable to that body. 

The petition raises legitimate concerns about whether the Fed will be able to tighten monetary policy when the time comes, and exit from its interventions in credit markets. But it is precisely the Fed’s own recent actions that raise those problems. Critics of recent Fed policy actions have for some time complained that the Fed has no exit strategy. Apparently the critics are now going to be blamed for the Fed’s inability to extricate itself from its interventions.

Cross-posted at ThinkMarkets

In my IBD piece today I gave total per pupil spending in DC as $29,000 per pupil. That was based on an official k‑12 audited enrollment count of 44,681, which I was told by a district official included the special needs students placed by the district in private schools. It turns out this was not the case, so we have to add in the special needs students to arrive at the total enrollment figure. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get that enrollment correction into the IBD in time for publication. Its impact on per pupil spending is not large, however.

The grand total audited enrollment was 48,353 students. From that we have to subtract 997 students in adult education programs and 1,498 students in preschool programs who are not covered by my k‑12 budget calculations. That leaves us with a k‑12 audited enrollment of 45,858. Dividing that in to the District of Columbia’s $1.3 billion k‑12 education budget yields a per pupil spending figure of about $28,000.

In an op-ed Chris Edwards and I wrote for National Review Online yesterday, we shed light on the $100 billion or more in government subsidies pilfered by recipients through fraud and abuse:

Every year, criminals and cheats pilfer over $100 billion — that’s $40 billion more than Bernie Madoff scammed off his investors — in federal benefits to which they are not legally entitled. Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, refundable tax credits, and many other programs are targets for looting.

Chris and I focused on fraud and abuse perpetrated by the recipients of taxpayer largesse, and Bernie Madoff made for a good comparison. But as the great economist and Cato adjunct scholar Robert Higgs also pointed out yesterday, “Bernie Madoff Was Only a Petty Crook Compared with Uncle Sam.” Typically, Higgs doesn’t mince words when it comes to comparisons between private and public Ponzi schemes:

Madoff, in contrast to the government, carried out his fraud in a civilized way: he merely misrepresented what he was doing, purporting to invest his clients’ money and to obtain a high rate of return on these investments. People dealt with him voluntarily. Those who suspected something was fishy did not do business with him, and some people went so far as to give substantial information to the SEC to show that Madoff’s business had to be fraudulent (which information the SEC ignored for years on end, of course).

The leaders of the U.S. government have carried out their Social Security fraud—essentially a Ponzi scheme, in substance exactly the same as Madoff’s scheme—since 1935.… The U.S. government, however, does not bother to claim any prowess in investing the money it forces people to surrender to its scheme. It admits that the ‘client’s’ return is now close to zero (varying a bit according to the client’s age and other factors). Nor does it carry out its admitted Ponzi scheme in a civilized way. Not only is participation in the scheme involuntary, but the government threatens violence against anyone who fails to participate as it commands him. Thus, the government operates its Ponzi scheme in a markedly more thuggish manner than Bernie would ever have dreamed of. He might have been a crook, but he was not a thug.

If Congress votes to build even more F‑22s in the 2010 Defense Authorization bill, it will be a sad example of parochial interests overriding our nation’s security. The move would defy the wishes of the Pentagon and Defense Secretary Gates, who have wisely called for the program to come to an end.

The Raptor’s whopping price tag—$356 million per aircraft counting costs over the life of the program— and its poor air-to-ground capabilities always undermined the case for building more than the 187 already programmed.

In the past week, Congress has learned more about the F‑22’s poor maintenance record, which has driven the operating costs to more than $44,000 per hour of flying, which is well above those of any comparable fighter. And, of course, the plane hasn’t seen action over either Iraq or Afghanistan, and likely never will.

If Obama is serious about getting a handle on the enormous federal budget deficit, confronting Congress over the clear wastefulness of the F‑22 is certainly a good place to start.

Kevin Carey, policy director at the think tank Education Sector, asserts that when it comes to higher education libertarians are boxed in, unable to find a solution to out-of-control college costs that won’t violate at least one, basic libertarian principle:

This puts libertarians in somewhat of a box. On the one hand, they tend to be hostile toward the tens of billions of public dollars that flow into colleges every year. The more colleges cost, the greater the claim on the average citizen’s hard-earned money and thus reduction in their precious liberty etc., etc.

But the best way to bend down the long-term higher education cost curve and thus reduce government spending is to increase government regulation in the form of mandatory reporting. So it’s a pick your poison situation for the Cato folks — would you rather have Big Brother’s hand in your wallet or his eye on your business? You really can’t avoid both.

Now, I don’t want to seem obnoxious about this. After all, in the same piece that produced this quote, Carey notes that “while my politics are pretty far from Cato’s and I often think they’re wrong, they tend to be wrong in interesting ways.” I thank him for that (I think), though I should note that the impetus for his piece is a paper that comes from the John William Pope Center – the same paper I discuss here – not from Cato. So it might not even be Cato that Carey finds interesting. Regardless, here’s my potentially obnoxious-sounding reply:

Without even discussing the extremely dubious assumption that more regulation will lead to lower college costs, wouldn’t the best, most direct way to “reduce government spending” obviously be to, well, reduce, or even stop, government spending?

Of course it would, and that is the obvious solution for libertarians! It would get Big Brother out of our wallets and kill whatever justification subsidies might give him to gaze into our business. And it wouldn’t just make libertarians feel better – the benefits would accrue to almost everyone. If students and donors, rather than taxpayers, were to cover much more of colleges’ costs, taxpayers would save money, colleges would be unable to charge as much as they currently do, and schools would have to focus much more on their customers and patrons.

So there is no either-more-regulation-or-higher-costs box. Indeed, the only box that libertarians could possibly be trapped in is a mime’s box – a purely illusory one that someone has to really, really want to believe in for it to have any sort of existence at all. 

Having broken free of the invisible, intangible box, let me address one other thing that Carey brought up both in the discussion held at Cato, and his latest commentary:

The problem is that colleges aren’t just going to unilaterally release lots of new information on their own. Nor would it help matters much if they did; for data to matter it has to be standardized in a way that allows for comparison. That’s why companies report one set of quarterly financial results to the SEC, not 50 different sets to each state. Given that higher education is a national market this leads to a similar national solution: The federal government should compel colleges to release much more information about success as a condition of receiving direct or indirect federal aid.

The idea that a market that happens to be national in scope somehow requires federal control is both very common, and very inaccurate, simply equating “national” with “federal” and moving on from there. Even worse, though, is the even more basic assumption that to get something good, or just standardized, government control is required.

Whether it’s McDonald’s or Ruth’s Chris, an item on the menu in Beverly Hills is going to be essentially the same as in New York City. Why? Not because Washington says it must be, but because that keeps the customers coming. Or consider the QWERTY keyboard: It became the national standard by free-market, not government, forces. And how about the Model T, which was driven by Americans from Maine to San Diego? It was standardized not because the federal government said “this is a national car, so we must make it the national standard,” but because one company produced it and it was freely chosen by customers from sea to shining sea. And how do we choose automobiles today? Not by going to some federal report on what a car should be (though perhaps that day is coming) but, often, by consulting such trade mags as Road and Track.

Clearly, we don’t need government to set standards or inform consumers – markets will do those things themselves. But that markets will set their own standards is just part of the story. Sometimes – indeed, almost all of the time – you simply don’t want a single standard: Vegetarians don’t want a great steak. Many people would rather click than type. The English major fascinated by Chaucer doesn’t need a cyclotron. The working mom often doesn’t want the same education as the parentally funded 18-year-old.

And then there is the gigantic – but usually ignored – problem of government failure: Government regulation and standardization is very costly. It can be used to crush the opponents of the politically well-connected rather than advance the common good. It can have crippling unintended consequences. And, as former Dickinson College president, Clinton-era Department of Education assistant secretary, and current George Mason University professor A. Lee Fritschler made clear at the discussion of the Pope Center’s paper, it also simply fails – a lot. Indeed, based on his experience at the Department of Education, Fritschler is adamant that the feds are simply incapable of effectively regulating higher education.

So once again, Carey sees a mime’s box. This time, though, it’s not one he imagines entrapping libertarians, but one he thinks Washington can drop on the ivory tower to make it work right. It’s a different box, but just as illusory.