The latest report by the Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold on Beltway tomfoolery tells of what happened when both Democrats and Republicans asked government workers and the public for suggestions on how to reduce government spending. Apparently neither party had much interest in the responses.

Fahrenthold first looks at the Obama White House’s effort:

After President Obama set up a national online suggestion box asking federal workers for new ways to cut the budget, 86,000 ideas came in Some, inevitably, were a little odd. 

…But many others were more serious, sent in by people who had seen real government waste close up: stop the “use it or lose it” budgeting policy, which leads agencies to blow taxpayer money at year’s end; stop giving paper calendars to workers who already have online calendars; stop letting every armed service design its own camouflage. 

In the end, none of those things happened. Instead, those suggestions became a little-known part of the maddening story of Washington’s budget wars. 

…Obama, for instance, chose 67 suggestions out of those 86,000. While some produced results, many seemed unambitious. Often, the administration picked ideas that applauded what it was already doing, instead of forcing it to start new reforms. Still, the White House considers that a win. 

Of course it does. 

Fahrenthold then turns his attention to the GOP’s “YouCut” website. Created in 2010 and run by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, regular Americans were to be given menus of potential spending cuts, and they were asked to vote for one. Winning ideas were then supposed to go to the House floor for a vote. In the end, only two of the 36 winning ideas became law. No bill was introduced for nine of the winning ideas, and 12 were “introduced only,” which means that they never even made it to the floor for a vote. 

Like the administration and its online suggestion box, Cantor’s office claims that YouCut was a success: 

“The purpose of the YouCut program was to change the culture of Washington,” Rory Cooper, a spokesman for Cantor, said in an e‑mail. “Today, as is evident to anyone paying attention, that culture has been changed.” 

Of course it has. 

And now that the “culture has been changed,” it appears that the people’s input on spending cuts is no longer needed: 

YouCut appears to be dead. No new votes have been held in the current Congress. Cantor’s spokespeople did not respond to questions about the program’s status this week. 

Note: For more on the awesomeness of the GOP’s YouCut endeavor, see commentary from Chris Edwards and me here, here, here, and here. 

Confirming the pattern of 2011’s Wal-Mart v. Dukes, the issue of class action procedure continues to generate a sharp 5–4 ideological split at the Supreme Court. On Wednesday, replicating the general Dukes line-up, the Court’s five conservatives ruled against certifying a large antitrust class action against Comcast over its conduct in the Philadelphia cable market, finding that the plaintiffs’ model of economic damages did not suffice to justify handling the case as a class action. (The trial court had knocked out three of the plaintiffs’ four theories of recovery; the majority found the plaintiffs’ economic model did not distinguish among the theories in such a way as to enable a court to recognize distinct damages attributable to the surviving theory.)

Despite protest from a few pro-antitrust commentators and sweeping claims of victory by a few on the defense side, Comcast is most likely to be remembered as a relatively narrow ruling with limited impact on future cases, for reasons Andrew Longstreth explains at Reuters. Some plaintiffs will need to be a bit more careful in constructing their cases, but the differences won’t be major. Indeed, the dissenters, led by Justices Ruth Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, describe the majority’s ruling as “good for this day and case only.” 

The Cato Institute had entered the fray with an amicus brief arguing the following: 

1. Courts must engage in a rigorous analysis at the certification stage rather than wave plaintiffs through the gate, even when such an inquiry overlaps with questions of merits that go to the case’s ultimate substantive resolution.
2. In particular, expert reports at the certification stage should be subject to Daubert tests of admissibility, as they are at the merits stage.

The majority opinion emphatically agreed with us on the first point and the dissent did not make any real attempt to challenge it. That suggests that a sound view of this question may command a broad or even unanimous consensus on the Court.

To many participants’ surprise, the Court never reached the second point about admissibility, instead proceeding to rule on questions of predominance. This led to a sharp protest from the four dissenters that the majority was reaching out to decide the case on a different ground than it had been briefed on. 

Few doubt that we can expect more wrangling at the Court on class action standards. That could soon happen in its consideration of a Sixth Circuit washing-machine case called Whirlpool v. Glazer, discussed by Ted Frank here.

To both a greater and lesser degree of success, foreign policy scholars have tried to explain the disconnect between President Obama’s soaring idealism of America’s role in the world and his halting political caution about it in discrete situations. That vacillation has drawn criticism, both for being too meddlesome and for not being meddlesome enough. 

Daily Caller contributor Adam Bates ably sums up the president’s incoherence as “not based on any particular logic or worldview beyond the president’s own desire to distance himself from America’s foreign policy past without bothering to actually change any policies.” Indeed. As this author has written in the past, specifically on counterterrorism policies, 

On the one hand, Obama openly rejected Bush’s ‘with us or against us’ approach to foreign affairs. On the other hand, Obama’s sophisticated demeanor opened him to criticism, with hawks condemning him as too weak and easily manipulated by America’s enemies. 

The administration has supported policies that have failed to deliver tangible benefits to the American people (Libya), continued to prop up brutal regimes (Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt), and helped tether our country to the region’s parochial quarrels (Afghanistan, Pakistan, and perhaps ever-more-so in Syria). Despite seemingly courageous attempts to distance itself from failed policies of the past, the Obama administration has managed to drift into strategic purgatory. 

It seems the Wall Street Journal editorial board has yet to identify a conflict in which the United States should not intervene. Today, they again call for U.S. military intervention in Syria and criticize President Obama for his inaction. Their main recommendation? Easy: set up a no-fly zone: 

The U.S. could boost its diplomatic leverage with the rebels and their regional allies by enforcing no-fly zones over portions of Syria. That would help prevent the regime from using its attack jets and helicopter gunships against civilian targets while allowing insurgents to consolidate and extend their territorial gains. It also means we could use limited force in a way that strengthens the hand of rebels we support at the expense of those we don’t. 

The key point here is that the Journal leaves open the possibility of using “limited force” to help the rebels. Indeed, this is what no-fly zones often become: precursors to additional involvement at a later date (think Iraq and Libya). I argued as much last week: 

If the no-fly zone fails to swiftly halt the violence, some will claim that preserving U.S. credibility requires an even deeper commitment. Or [no-fly zones] can just become a slippery slope in their own right. The ink was barely dry on the UN Security Council resolution authorizing a no-fly zone over Libya before the mission morphed into a no-drive zone on the ground, and then a major military operation to overthrow Qaddafi’s government. 

As a general rule, we shouldn’t send our military on feel-good missions that have little chance of success. And that is what no-fly zones are. They also have a clear political purpose, in this case to ensure that the opposition prevails over the Assad regime and its supporters. There is no such thing as an impartial intervention. 

In Libya, there wasn’t such an explicit call for a no-fly zone as a means to toppling Muammar Gaddafi. The UN resolution authorizing the no-fly zone did not include “regime change” as a goal, but that’s what it became. In Syria, a no-fly zone would be used explicitly for the purpose of toppling Bashar al-Assad’s regime. But if regime change is the goal, a no-fly zone will not do much to lead us there. They are security-theater, as Ben Friedman has pointed out: “No-fly zones commit us to winning wars but demonstrate our limited will to win them. That is why they are bad public policy.” 

The Journal inadvertently recognizes all of these points and would rather we just go all the way and couple a no-fly zone with the use of American military force: 

The U.S. could also follow last week’s call by Senators John McCain and Carl Levin for targeted air strikes against Mr. Assad’s air force and Scud missile batteries. We should add that such a use of force would require Mr. Obama to persuade Congress and the American public that it is in the national interest, something he has rarely tried to do even when 100,000 U.S. troops were in Afghanistan. 

To be clear, they are asking President Obama to explicitly use military force against Assad’s forces (though they do not call for American troops on the ground). This would be an act of war and would require congressional authorization. The Journal sort of acknowledges this by pointing out that the president is required “to persuade” Congress and the American public of the necessity of military intervention. But they don’t go all the way and recognize that the Constitution requires congressional authorization. It is OK for the president to wage war as long as he convinces us it is okay, the Constitution be damned. 

President Obama is exercising restraint, for now, on Syria. But should he change his mind, it is Congress’s job to check his authority to wage war. In recent history, Congress has not been very good at checking the executive’s authority and excercising its constitutionally mandated war powers. Until they reclaim this power, the Journal and others might have their way on intervention in every hot spot around the globe. 

***You can find my lengthier arguments against intervention in Syria here and here. For more on the problems with no-fly zones, see Ben Friedman here and here. On why many of the same problems with the Libya intervention applies to Syria, see Friedman here. Finally, on the topic of Syria and chemical weapons, see Doug Bandow here and here.

There she goes again.

Just a few weeks ago, Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post falsely accused scholarship tax credit programs of being “welfare for the rich,” an absurd claim that was easily debunked. Now Strauss is making similarly absurd claims about voucher programs in response to the Indiana Supreme Court’s unanimous decision upholding their constitutionality:

The notion is that families deserve to have a “choice” of schools for their children. The reality is that the amount of money provided in each voucher isn’t enough to cover tuition at a great many private schools, especially the elite ones that get most of the media’s attention, such as Sidwell Friends, which the Obama daughters attend.

The implication is that since school choice programs do not provide enough funding to make all choices affordable for low-income families, they don’t really provide “choice” at all. Moreover, Strauss seems to be arguing that if we can’t afford to send every child to the same school as the children of the president of the United States, then we shouldn’t do anything to expand educational options for low-income families. One wonders if Strauss also opposes food stamps because recipients can’t afford filet mignon every night.

While hiding behind weasel words that are technically correct—a “great many private schools” are too expensive for most low-income families even with vouchers—Strauss ignores the “great many private schools” that school choice programs do make affordable for low-income families. Take, for example, this story from yesterday’s New York Times:

Some parents of modest means are surprised to discover that the education savings accounts put private school within reach. When Nydia Salazar first dreamed of attending St. Mary’s Catholic High School in Phoenix, for example, her mother, Maria Salazar, a medical receptionist, figured there was no way she could afford it. The family had always struggled financially, and Nydia, 14, had always attended public school.

But then Ms. Salazar, 37, a single mother who holds two side jobs to make ends meet, heard of a scholarship fund that would allow her to use public dollars to pay the tuition.

She is now trying to coax other parents into signing up for similar scholarships. “When I tell them about private school, they say I’m crazy,” she said. “They think that’s only for rich people.”

Excluding the nine voucher programs for students with special needs and the two for students in failing public school districts, five of the nation’s eight general voucher programs have income caps or give priority to low-income families. The more than 41,000 students participating in these means-tested voucher programs manage to afford private schools that they prefer over their local government schools. These numbers are small compared to the total number of students in those states, but I suspect that Strauss would not support lifting the caps on the number of vouchers available or increasing the voucher sizes, which range from 29 percent to 56 percent of the government schools’ operating per-pupil spending (excluding capital expenditures).

Strauss also misleadingly asserts that students participating in voucher programs do not benefit academically:

There are arguments made that students in voucher schools do better than their peers who wanted vouchers but didn’t get them and are in public schools. Research shows that that is largely not true.

Again, Strauss hides behind weasel words. Her assertion that it is “largely not true” that vouchers improve performance obscures the fact that all the randomized-controlled research shows that voucher students perform as well or better than their peers that sought vouchers but didn’t get them. Professor Patrick Wolf explains:

Nine different research teams have conducted 12 rigorous evaluations of these types of programs over the past 17 years. Eleven of those studies have reported at least some positive findings and no negative results from private school choice. People who claim there is no evidence that opportunity scholarship or “voucher” programs work clearly are not paying attention.

Wolf also cites the increased graduation rates and college enrollment that school choice programs produce at a fraction of the cost of traditional government schools. Moreover, the voucher recipients are “on average, more disadvantaged than the typical public school student and thus dramatically more disadvantaged than the average private school student.”

There are legitimate concerns about voucher programs, as with every public policy. But it is intellectually dishonest to pretend that they don’t expand educational opportunities for low-income families or to ignore the copious research showing academic benefits. Strauss should correct the record.

The current U.S. immigration system gives more preference to the family members of American than to foreign workers. As a result, about two-thirds of immigrants who received a green card in 2011 gained it through family-sponsorship.

Some supporters of immigration reform see the family-sponsored immigration sections as a problem, arguing that family sponsorship should be scaled back while the number of workers should be increased. Jeb Bush and Clint Bolick, in their book Immigration Wars, wrote that “Narrowing the scope of family preferences [to immediate family only] would open hundreds of thousands of opportunities for immigrants even without expanding the current numbers of legal immigrants who come to the U.S. each year.”

The family-based categories they would propose eliminating add up to fewer than 140,000 green cards a year. 

Avoiding a lot of legal nuances and annual variations, this is how the family-based immigration system currently awards green cards:

Many of the immigrants who come in as family-sponsored immigrants are also workers. The employment rate for family-based immigrants is 54 percent, excluding the parents and minor children of U.S. citizens because they are less likely to be of working age. Using some numbers from the Public Policy Institute of California, 38 percent of that group had less than a high school degree and 55 percent of those employed work in a low-skilled occupation. 

There is no green card category for lower-skilled immigrant workers, but the family-based immigration system allows for some who happen to be related to American citizens and green card holders. Refugees, diversity visa holders, and employment-based immigrants have higher rates of employment, but the family-based immigration system has an important and unintentional labor market component that shouldn’t be ignored. 

Just because more workers should be allowed in does not mean family immigration should be reduced by an equal amount. Immigration isn’t a budget that needs to be balanced. Worker immigration at all skill levels is severely restricted and should be loosened, but it shouldn’t be done at the expense of the family immigration system, which provides entry for some lower-skilled immigrant workers. Because family members are so often workers, decreasing family immigration would also unintentionally decrease worker immigration.

End note: Numbers calculated from the New Immigrant Survey.

Are charter schools uniquely susceptible to bad ideas?

Yesterday, NPR reported that a group of charter schools in Arizona are employing a teaching method called “Applied Scholastics,” which is based on the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard, the eccentric science fiction author and founder of Scientology. A teacher at one of the schools described the training sessions as “very weird.” Last year, the Tampa Bay Times reported that a charter school in Clearwater, Florida was also using the Scientology-influenced teaching method. 

Some charter school critics leapt on these stories to discredit the entire charter school movement. Responding to the Clearwater revelation last year, Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post argued that the use of Applied Scholastics “underscores continuing oversight problems with some charter schools across the country.” Apparently Strauss would prefer students to attend traditional government schools that have lots of oversight, like Prescott Middle School in Baton Rouge:

Inside the industrial looking brick walls of one of Louisiana’s poorest performing middle schools, Scientologists finally have achieved a longtime goal.

A study skills curriculum written by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard is being taught as mainstream public education.

All the eighth-graders at Prescott Middle School are being taught learning techniques Hubbard devised four decades ago when he set out to remedy what he viewed as barriers to learning.

The state eventually took over Prescott and now a charter school organization is seeking to make it a charter school.

The reality is that no entire group of schools — public, private, or charter — are immune from adopting silly education fads or outright quackery. We should hold schools accountable for their performance, but using such examples to smear large swaths of unconnected schools without even attempting to demonstrate a systemic problem is intellectually dishonest.