The new NBC drama “Harry’s Law” has a preposterous premise, but it does give Kathy Bates a chance to chew some scenery. In the pilot — to be repeated tonight at 8 p.m. — she’s defending a young black man facing jail time for drug possession. And she unleashes a tirade against the drug war and against an outmatched prosecutor. Conservative bloggers have complained because Bates’s character Harriet “Harry” Korn said that the idea of drug decriminalization “was first raised by conservative Republicans … when the party had thinkers, before it was hijacked by the likes of Rush Limbaugh.” (Exchange begins at about 24:00 in the episode.)

Looking for video of her courtroom speech, I found this excellent discussion from Inimai Chettiar and Rebecca McCray of the ACLU. I yield the floor to them:

While the opening few minutes are a bit absurd (Harry’s first client is a third-time drug offender who literally lands on her after jumping off a building), the show’s pilot brings to light the serious problem of overincarceration in our country.

In her closing argument to a jury in defense of a young man charged with cocaine possession (minutes 27–31 of the episode), Harry delivers a touching and evidence-based appeal to the jury and argues that incarceration is not the appropriate way to deal with drug offenders. She points out:

“[S]tudy after study after study has shown that when you take kids like Malcolm [her young black client] and you stick them in jail, you increase the likelihood that they’ll remain addicts, or wind up homeless, or worst of all become more hardened and career criminals. When it comes to drug abuse, treatment is seven times more cost effective than incarceration. Seven times. It’s an indisputable fact.”

Since television statistics can often be far from the truth, we did a little research. It seems the show’s “seven times” statistic may be based on a 1994 reportcommissioned by the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy. Several recent studies also show that treatment is far more cost effective than incarceration for drug offenses. Drug offenses, especially possession, are often indicative of addiction. And addiction, more than being a criminal offense, is something that can be treated. Treatment rehabilitates drug offenders at a lower cost, allowing them to become productive members of society. Incarcerating someone is expensive. And as Harry so effectively points out, prison “neither treats nor trains nor rehabilitates” — it merely risks making someone more dangerous and likely to commit crimes in the future. Harry is right: these are the facts.

In one of the more poignant moments in her speech, Harry argues that “intrinsic to justice is humanity. Humanity couldn’t call for this young man to be locked up — it simply couldn’t.” It’s true. Not only is it inhumane to lock up people who are addicted to drugs, it’s unreasonable and fiscally irresponsible.

Taxpayers spend almost $70 billion a year on corrections and incarceration. There are 1.6 million Americans in prison — that is triple the amount of prisoners we had in 1987 — and 25 percent of those incarcerated are locked up for drug offenses. When those who are incarcerated are released, they earn approximately 40 percent less than they did before entering prison — that means their economic mobility is almost half of what it was before incarceration. In times of a global economic crisis, do we really want to spend this much money locking up small time offenders? And do we really want to lock up such a large chunk of our labor force and decrease their future earning potential when it could serve as a drag on our future economic recovery? And on top of all this, it’s proven ineffective to imprison people for drug offenses — incarceration doesn’t fix the problem of drug addiction.

It’s even more ineffective (and inhumane) to lock up our kids who are addicted to drugs — as Harry points out, doing so is akin to throwing them away — thereby increasing the likelihood they will have lives filled with inhumane prison conditions, mental health problems, lack of economic opportunity, and continued addiction. And by imprisoning our children for drug offenses, we risk creating a cycle that may prevent their kids from having brighter futures. One in every 28 children in this country has a parent behind bars, up from one in 125 just 25 years ago. We are sacrificing these children’s lives as well. Just as we increasingly can’t afford the cost of incarceration, we can’t afford to lose our kids and our country to the cycle of incarceration and poverty.

The show’s perspective isn’t necessarily profound, but it is pleasant to hear Harry’s words cut through the din of fear-driven plotlines that have for so long been a staple in popular television crime dramas.

Bonus libertarian point: The title “Harry’s Law” reminds me of “Harry’s War,” a 1981 movie about the depredations of the IRS.

One positive outcome of the recession, as the states struggle to find revenue to spend, is that state subsidies to businesses are facing increased scrutiny.

This week the New York Times reported that states are looking at reducing or ending programs that hand out taxpayer money to television and movie producers. In Pennsylvania, some last-minute handouts from outgoing governor Ed Rendell are under fire, including a $10 million state grant to rehabilitate a former Sony plant for new tenants. According to the Commonwealth Foundation’s Nate Benefield, this is the fourth time Pennsylvania taxpayers have subsidized the site:

Sony moved out in 2007, despite getting more than $40 million in corporate welfare under Gov. Robert P. Casey to come to Pennsylvania, then another $1 million grant under Rendell to stay in the state—a mere two years before shutting down its plant.

Before Sony, the site was occupied by Volkswagen, which got $70 million in state aid in the 1970s under Gov. Milton Shapp. This was touted as a great success — until Volkswagen moved out in 1987, after 10 years of operation.

Pennsylvania is merely renting jobs with this “economic development” spending, burdening other businesses with higher taxes. Hopefully, Gov. Tom Corbett can learn from the failed policies of the past and work on improving the state’s economic climate rather than trying to pick winners.

New Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett could learn a lesson from the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, which received another black eye this week. I’ve written previously on problems with the IEDC, which is the state’s corporate welfare arm. As a former budget official with the State of Indiana, I can attest that the IEDC’s string of embarrassments is as unsurprising as it is appalling.

On Tuesday, investigative report Bob Segall of WTHR-TV in Indianapolis released the latest in a series of reports on the IEDC’s exaggerated job creation claims. (Intrepid journalists take note: Bob and his team just received a prestigious Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award for their investigatory work on the IEDC.)

Bob took the findings of a recent audit and ascertained that Indiana governor Mitch Daniels and the IEDC haven’t been giving Hoosiers the full story.

From the report:

The “Summary of Incentive Program Review” prepared by audit firm Crowe Horwath examined 597 job-creation projects outlined in IEDC annual reports from 2005 to 2009. The projects were listed as “Indiana Economic Successes” that would bring new jobs to Indiana.

According to the report, those projects were expected to create 44,208 jobs by late 2010 and, based on the most recent information available to auditors, have so far resulted in 37,640 actual jobs — a realization rate of 85%.

But the state’s job realization rate is actually much lower than 85%, according to additional data reviewed by WTHR.

The numbers cited above are based solely on data for “reporting companies,” and they do not include job data for 200 other projects also listed as “Indiana Economic Successes” in IEDC annual reports. Including those projects, as well, the number of newly-created jobs the agency had anticipated to materialize by the end of 2010 is 57,088 (not 44,208), according to the report. Using that figure, IEDC’s job realization rate is 66%.

And nowhere does the audit report mention the 98,683 total new job commitments announced by IEDC from 2005 to 2009. Using that number — which IEDC and the governor have repeatedly promoted in their press releases, speeches and annual reports – the audit data suggests, so far, only 38% of jobs announced by IEDC have resulted in actual jobs. While that percentage is expected to increase in coming years (some of the companies are not expected to fulfill all of their job commitments for several more years), the overall numbers show IEDC’s real job realization statistics are much lower than the agency portrays to the public by citing far more limited data.

Two words in this selection from the report stand out: “press releases.” My observations of the IEDC from within the Daniels administration led me to coin the phrase “press release economics” to describe what Indiana government officials were really practicing.

Programs that hand out taxpayer money to businesses to lure or retain jobs are popular with state politicians, and Governor Daniels is no different. Better policies, like cutting business taxes across the board, require a willingness to expend substantial political capital without an immediate payoff. (I recently read that Daniels would sign a cut in the state’s high corporate tax rate if a proposal in the state legislature makes it to his desk. Daniels had turned down the idea of cutting the corporate rate while I was there, so the change of heart is curious but nonetheless welcome.)

Targeted business subsidies, on the other hand, are cheaper and generate immediate, favorable press. Unfortunately, this form of central planning is unsound as it merely transfers economic resources from taxpayers – including businesses – to businesses favored by government officials. And because government officials are inherently inferior to the market when it comes to directing economic activity, the results are far from ideal – and often downright counterproductive.

Over at Downsizing the Federal Government, we focused on the following issues this week:

• It should be clear that we, as a society, would be better off abandoning efforts to socially engineer a specific homeownership rate, either for the population in general or by racial group.
• The GOP should insist on the $100 billion in initial cuts they promised, and also demand passage of a legal cap on overall federal spending.
• Perhaps we should start calling farm subsidies “landowner subsidies.”
• How much money do federal taxpayers lose to food stamp fraud each year? Nobody really knows.
• A new House rule requires members of the 112th Congress to cite specific constitutional authority when introducing any new bill or program. A brief summary of how the General Welfare, Commerce, and Necessary and Proper Clauses was understood by the Framers is in order.

…the folks in South Carolina would be top contenders for the gold.

Here’s the thing: all the evidence shows that educators are human beings like the rest of us and that education benefits from the same market freedoms and incentives that have driven progress in every other field. So how do you unleash those market forces so that our kids have the best shot at fulfilling their potentials? For a start:

• You minimize regulation on what and how teachers teach.
• You make it easy for families to choose whichever schools (or homeschooling) they deem best for their kids.
• You encourage people to pay directly for their own children’s education to the greatest extent possible, reserving third-party payment (which is inherently problematic) to an as-needed basis

As a result, schools compete for the privilege of serving each and every child and they are attentive to parents’ demands because otherwise their livelihoods will suffer. Parents, in turn, become more invested in their children’s education—both literally and figuratively—because suddenly they have the power to exercise their educational responsibilities, and they expect to get value for the money they spend.

There are already a few school choice programs around the country that move in this direction, but a bill under consideration in South Carolina would do a better job than any of them. First, it offers tax cuts to parents who personally shoulder the cost of their own kids’ education, and those cuts are more meaningful in size than the ones currently offered in Illinois and Iowa. As Milton Friedman (and Pliny the Younger) rightly said: people are most careful spending their own money on their own families. Second, it extends its benefits to homeschoolers, which few other choice programs do. Third, it provides tuition assistance to low-income families through nonprofit scholarship organizations (SGOs) that are funded by private tax-creditable donations—better than any other system of third-party education aid.

If enacted, this program will not only provide a wonderful new range of educational options to South Carolina families, it will save taxpayers millions due to the tremendous inefficiency of the existing state-run monopoly school system. That combination of improved education options and reduced tax burden will in turn attract new businesses to the state, spurring economic growth. All in all, a pretty darn good deal.

During his campaign for the presidency, then-Senator Barack Obama (D‑Ill.) said he would post the bills Congress sent him online for five days before signing them. It was a basic transparency promise that would help prevent rushed legislation containing parochial amendments, unexamined earmarks, and errors. This and other promises brought hails of applause.

It was his first broken promise. President Obama signed the “Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009″ into law the day after it reached him.

I’ve tracked the promise on this blog, and in my November post noted President Obama’s improvement in 2010 over what can only be characterized as a lousy start. In the first year of his term, 2009, the president received 124 bills from Congress and signed a dismal 6 of them—only 4.8%.

On January 20, we reached the mid-point of President Obama’s term, and his mid-term Sunlight Before Signing stats can be announced. With a strong showing on the flurry of bills passed at the end of the 111th Congress, the president’s Sunlight Before Signing percentage has inched just above 50%.

Of 381 bills that should have been posted on White​house​.gov after President Obama received them, 192 were actually posted. That’s 50.393% if you like going beyond the decimal.

Here’s a summary table, showing year-by-year the bills presented, the one emergency bill not subject to posting, and bills properly posted. After the jump, you can see bill-by-bill how the president did with Sunlight Before Signing.

Sunlight Before Signing, Bill-by-Bill

(Parentheses indicate a separate White​house​.gov page with a link to Thomas legislative database)

* Page now gone, but it was either directly observed, evidence of it appears in White​house​.gov search, or White House says it existed.

[Brackets indicate a link from White​house​.gov to Thomas legislative database]

† Bill was posted for five days after final passage, though not formal presentment. Counted as “Yes.”

‡ Link to final version of bill on impossible-to-find page.

E! Emergency legislation not subject to five-day posting. Counted as “Yes” in simplifying graphs and tables.

Suzanne Lucas, who blogs as Evil HR Lady, isn’t really evil, she’s just uncomfortably candid about many workplace truths that her fellow HR professionals tend to gloss over.

One of those truths is that in general no one owes you tenure in your job, even if you do it well. In our society, the principle of employment at will is still (fortunately) given much legal weight, meaning that an employment relationship continues only if both sides want it to.

And a consequence of that might just be that the law creates no right to slag your employer on your Facebook page one evening and demand that your employer overlook it the next morning:

So, why am I in favor of companies being able to terminate an employee for online behavior? (These things, of course, aren’t limited to Facebook. Myspace, Twitter, and blogs are all good candidates for firing). Here are 3 Reasons.

Easy firing=easy hiring. I want companies to hire people. In fact, my fondest wish is that all my readers who are searching for jobs find one this year. The more restrictions government places on terminating employees, the more hesitant companies are to hire new people.

Bad judgment isn’t limited to online behavior. Companies need employees they can trust to make good decisions. If you lack the critical thinking skills to say, “Hmmm, if I post that my boss is a jerk, my boss just might find out about it,” then you probably lack the critical thinking skills to do your job. Yes, people vent. But the internet is not private. And anyone who thinks they can trust all their 476 friends to keep something quiet isn’t someone I want on my staff.

Companies should be able to presume loyalty. I know, I know, your company doesn’t care much about your career and they have no problem firing you, so why should you care about them? Because they pay you to care about them.…

You can read the whole thing, including the rest of her reasoning, here.

(HT: Schneier) Here’s a refreshingly careful report on cybersecurity from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s “Future Global Shocks” project. Notably: “The authors have concluded that very few single cyber-related events have the capacity to cause a global shock.” There will be no cyber-“The Day After.”

Here are a few cherry-picked top lines:

Catastrophic single cyber-related events could include: successful attack on one of the underlying technical protocols upon which the Internet depends, such as the Border Gateway Protocol which determines routing between Internet Service Providers and a very large-scale solar flare which physically destroys key communications components such as satellites, cellular base stations and switches. For the remainder of likely breaches of cybsersecurity such as malware, distributed denial of service, espionage, and the actions of criminals, recreational hackers and hacktivists, most events will be both relatively localised and short-term in impact.

The vast majority of attacks about which concern has been expressed apply only to Internet-connected computers. As a result, systems which are stand-alone or communicate over proprietary networks or are air-gapped from the Internet are safe from these. However these systems are still vulnerable to management carelessness and insider threats.

Analysis of cybsersecurity issues has been weakened by the lack of agreement on terminology and the use of exaggerated language. An “attack” or an “incident” can include anything from an easily-identified “phishing” attempt to obtain password details, a readily detected virus or a failed log-in to a highly sophisticated multi-stranded stealth onslaught. Rolling all these activities into a single statistic leads to grossly misleading conclusions. There is even greater confusion in the ways in which losses are estimated. Cyberespionage is not a “few keystrokes away from cyberwar”, it is one technical method of spying. A true cyberwar is an event with the characteristics of conventional war but fought exclusively in cyberspace.

The hyping of “cyber” threats—bordering on hucksterism—should stop. Many different actors have a good deal of work to do on securing computers, networks, and data. But there is no crisis, and the likelihood of any cybersecurity failure causing a crisis is extremely small.