Updated daily, InsiderOnline (insideronline.org) is a compilation of publication abstracts, how-to essays, events, news, and analysis from around the conservative movement. The current edition of The INSIDER quarterly magazine is also on the site.
October 12, 2012
Latest Studies: 38 new items, including a new book by a new Cato President on the financial crisis, and a report from the Manhattan Institute on how to liberate the energy economy
Notes on the Week: Warnings ignored in Libya, more teachers not the cure for education, the latest Nobel farce, and more
To Do: See Hating Breitbart
Toolkit: Use Crowdfunding to Finance Your Projects
Budget & Taxation
• A Simple Measure of the Distributional Burden of Debt Accumulation – American Enterprise Institute
• The Romney Tax Plan: Not a Tax Hike on the Middle Class – American Enterprise Institute
• Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors 2012 – Cato Institute
• Fannie and Freddie’s Huge Profits Raise Questions for Future of Mortgage Finance – e-21: Economic Policies for the 21st Century
• Travel Promotion: Brand USA Marked by Waste and Abuse – The Heritage Foundation
• 2013 State Business Tax Climate Index – Tax Foundation
• States Moving Away From Taxes on Tangible Personal Property – Tax Foundation
• A Nation of Takers: America’s Entitlement Epidemic – Templeton Press
Crime, Justice & the Law
• Done With “Creative” Government Lawyers – Hoover Institution
• Patent Suit Pleading Standards Must Be Conformed to Supreme Court Precedents – Washington Legal Foundation
• State High Court Rulings Indicative of Alabama’s Civil Justice Turnaround – Washington Legal Foundation
Economic and Political Thought
• Suppose Joseph Story Had Been Right and Brutus Had Been Wrong – The Heritage Foundation
Economic Growth
• Boom, Bust, and Beyond: A Look at Housing Market Data in California – American Action Forum
• Heritage Employment Report: September Job Creation Still Slow – The Heritage Foundation
Education
• Can Teacher Evaluation Improve Teaching? – Education Next
• Exam Schools from the Inside – Education Next
• Florida Defeats Skeptics – Education Next
• Solving America’s Math Problem – Education Next
• Whose School Buildings Are They, Anyway? – Education Next
Family, Culture & Community
• Circumventing Citizens on Marriage: A Survey – The Heritage Foundation
Foreign Policy/International Affairs
• Al Shabaab After Kismayo – American Enterprise Institute
• NATO Must Refocus on Afghanistan – The Heritage Foundation
• U.S. Should Hold the Line on the U.N. Salaries – The Heritage Foundation
Health Care
• The State by State Impact of ACA Regulations – American Action Forum
• Prioritizing Malaria Control in a Time of Foreign Aid Austerity – American Enterprise Institute
Immigration
• When Tragedy Is the Hallmark of Failed Policy: The Death of Agent Nicolas Ivie – Center for Immigration Studies
• Global Entry Reciprocity: Creating a Trusted Travel Superhighway – The Heritage Foundation
Information Technology
• The Impact of Data Caps and Other Forms of Usage-Based Pricing for Broadband Access – Mercatus Center
International Trade/Finance
• Countervailing Calamity: How to Stop the Global Subsidies Race – Cato Institute
Labor
• Knox v. SEIU – Capital Research Center
Monetary Policy/Financial Regulation
• All That Glitters: A Primer on the Gold Standard – American Enterprise Institute
• The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure: Why Pure Capitalism is the World Economy’s Only Hope – McGraw-Hill
Natural Resources, Energy, Environment, & Science
• The Green Pipeline – Capital Research Center
• Individuals, Liberty, and the Environment: Challenging the Foundations of the Green Establishment – The Heritage Foundation
• Liberating the Energy Economy: What Washington Must Do – Manhattan Institute
The Constitution/Civil Liberties
• U.S. v. Jones: Fourth Amendment Law at a Crossroads – Cato Institute
Transportation/Infrastructure
• Privatization and Competition in New York City Transit – National Center for Policy Analysis
• Solving the Problem of Traffic Congestion – National Center for Policy Analysis
The main effect of the stimulus seems to have been to make government bigger. David Hogberg reports:
More than three-quarters of the jobs created or saved by President Obama’s economic stimulus in the first year were in government, according to a new study.
In early 2009, Obama economic adviser Jared Bernstein and the Council of Economic Advisers Chairwoman Christina Romer stated, “More than 90% of the jobs created are likely to be in the private sector.”
That hasn’t borne out, according to an analysis by Ohio State University economics professor Bill Dupor.
Under the $821 billion stimulus any entity, public and private, receiving grants, loans or contracts from the stimulus had to report back to the federal government the number of full-time equivalent jobs that were created or saved.
The data were all posted at Recovery.gov. Dupor found that of the roughly 682,000 jobs saved or created in the first year of the program, only 166,000, or 24%, were in the private sector. [Investor’s Business Daily, October 9]
Where to do business? Taxwise, the five best states for business are Wyoming, South Dakota, Nevada, Alaska, and Florida; and the five worst are Rhode Island, Vermont, California, New Jersey, and New York says the Tax Foundation in its just released 2013 State Business Tax Climate Index. The Index is a measure of the competiveness of each state’s tax system.
Ending corruption is hard work. An innovative effort to import institutions of the rule of law into Honduras has run into an obstacle, and that obstacle, of all things, is the Honduran Supreme Court. A five-judge panel of the court ruled that the plan to create a charter city with its own government, laws, and police forces, amounts to transferring national territory, which is forbidden by the constitution. The case now goes to the full 15-member Supreme Court. [CBS News, October 4]
The idea of charter cities has been developed by economist Paul Romer as a way of getting around the endemic political corruption that deters investment and economic growth in many underdeveloped countries. Short version: Transplant Hong Kong’s success to poor countries.
In a related report, the New York Times identifies the difficulty here: “To set up a new city with clear new rules, you must first deal with governments that are trapped in the old ones.” [New York Times, September 30]
Sidebar: Every single article about this project that we’ve read from a mainstream news source uses the adjective “privately run” to describe these planned cities while also reporting that the cities would have their own system of government. That’s a contradiction in terms. A museum can be privately run; an ice-skating rink can be privately run; a trash-collection service can be privately run; but a jurisdiction that has a government is by definition not privately run. It’s as if the media can’t conceive of political authority and accountability existing outside of a centralized national government. Nah, they couldn’t think that, could they?
J. Rufus Fears, R.I.P. The country lost a great teacher on liberty and history last weekend. J. Rufus Fears, three-time professor of the year at the University of Oklahoma, died of a stroke on Saturday. Fears was also a fellow at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, a free market think tank. The Oklahoma Daily, a student newspaper at the University of Oklahoma, reports some of the student response:
He would carry around a broomstick, and it would become a spear, pointer or javelin, whatever he needed. […] He would use the broomstick and act out different parts of the battles. He would roam the lecture hall of 200 plus students ... you were rife with attention. […] He had a special charisma and was a unique performer […] . He had a profound understanding of history ... the combination of these traits made him absolutely unique. [The Oklahoma Daily, October 7]
John Hood, president of the John Locke Foundation, recommends Fears as a source of continuing learning for everybody:
Dr. Fears was a distinguished scholar of the classics and edited the three-volume collection of the writings of Lord Acton, whom Fears greatly admired as a tireless defender of liberty and prescient critic of statism in Europe.
Rufus Fears is perhaps best known outside of Oklahoma, however, for his fantastic series of lectures published by the Teaching Company. These works represent nearly 150 hours of entertaining and insightful presentations on subjects ranging from mythology, classical literature, and the Great Books to the political, religious, and intellectual history of Europe, the Americas, and beyond. As it happens, I was just listening to his fascinating 36-lecture series on the history of freedom when I learned of Professor Fears’s untimely death. [National Review Online, October 8]
For a shorter sample of Fears’s teaching, give his December 2005 Heritage Foundation lecture a read: “The Lessons of the Roman Empire for America Today.”
As usual, the people who pay are forgotten: The Norwegian Nobel Committee has awarded its 2012 Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union for six decades of building peace in Europe. This committee is the same one that gave Barack Obama the award in 2009 for promoting a new climate in international relations. That new climate, by the way, killed an American ambassador last month. Aspirations, it seems, matter more than accomplishments to the Nobel Committee. Telegraph columnist Iain Martin:
Giving the EU a peace prize is at best premature, like knighting Sir Fred Goodwin in the middle of the mad boom. We have no idea how the experiment to create an anti-democratic federation will end. Hopefully the answer is very peacefully, but when Greek protesters are wearing Nazi uniforms, and Spanish youth unemployment is running at 50 per cent, a look at history suggests there is always the possibility of a bumpy landing.
Daftest of all is the notion that the EU itself has kept the peace. It was the Allies led by the Americans, the Russians and the British who defeated and disarmed the Germans in 1945. The German people then underwent the most extraordinary reckoning, transforming their country into an essentially pacifist society. The EU had very little to do with it. Throughout that period it was Nato, led by the Americans and British, which kept the peace in Western Europe. The American taxpayer picked up most of the resulting tab, and the British paid a significant part of the bill too. [The Telegraph, October 12]
In pursuit of European unity, Germany has now given Greece hundreds of billions of Euros for a bailout, but that isn’t enough for the Greeks, who rioted this week when the German chancellor visited their country. Doesn’t seem like Angela Merkel is enjoying the peace.
Meanwhile, most of the rest of the world is celebrating the work of 14-year-old Malala Yousufzai, nominated for the 2011 International Children’s Peace Prize for her efforts to promote the education of women in her country, Pakistan. Her work was so important that the Taliban tried to kill her by shooting her in the head and neck. She remains unconscious.
Not listening: The State Department ignored warnings that there was a security problem leading up to the September 11 attacks in Benghazi. So we learn this week from the testimony of two security officials who had been stationed in Libya. From Jake Tapper’s pre-hearing report:
[Regional Security Officer Eric] Nordstrom twice wrote to the State Department – in March and July 2012 – to beef up the presence of American security officers in Benghazi, but neither time was there a response. At no point from December 2011 through July 2012, when he left Libya, were more than three Diplomatic Security Service agents permanently and simultaneously stationed at the Benghazi post.
Nordstrom wanted at least five personnel to be stationed at Benghazi, but the State Department would not allow it. There were American security officers, however, at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, including three Mobile Security Detachments, which were part of the DSS, and a 16-member Security Support Team detailed from Special Operations Command AFRICOM, commanded by Wood. But the State Department would not give him permission to deploy them to be stationed at Benghazi. Deputy Assistant Secretary for international programs Charlene Lamb, in Nordstrom’s view, wanted to keep the number of U.S. security personnel in Benghazi “artificially low,” according to a memo for Democrats on the House Oversight Committee.
[Lt. Col. Andrew] Wood, a former Green Beret, told ABC News that he and other members of the Security Support Team wanted to remain in Libya past their deployment was scheduled to end in August, and that Ambassador Stevens wanted them to remain as well. Nordstrom has said that Lamb told him not to request for the Security Support Team to be extended again. (Its deployment had been previously extended in February 2012.) […]
“I do recall one conversation with her where she (Lamb) said that since we now had a residential safe haven in Benghazi that she didn’t seem to have a problem with having no agents on the compound because if something happened then personnel could simply go to that residential safe haven,” Nordstrom told investigators.
That safe haven proved a deathtrap. [ABC News, October 10]
How much do some public school officials hate competition? So much that they do something quite irrational with the public property placed in their trust: They refuse to sell unused school buildings to charter schools. Nelson Smith’s article on the problem provides a few examples:
• In late 2010, the Journal Sentinel reported that Milwaukee Public Schools spent more than $1 million a year to maintain 27 surplus school buildings. Yet the district refused sales to charter schools—on the grounds that they would compete with the district for students. In May 2011, the state legislature finally approved a measure allowing the City of Milwaukee to sell the buildings, despite the district’s objections.
• In December 2007, the Special Administrative Board of the St. Louis Public Schools approved terms on the sale of the old Hodgen Elementary School building that included a 100-year deed restriction prohibiting leasing of the building to medical clinics, taverns, adult entertainment facilities, and…charter schools. The restriction was removed by the board in 2009 after the measure was held up to well-deserved ridicule.
• In rural Pennsylvania, the Penns Valley Area School Board is leasing property for construction of a privately funded, $5 million community center that will house a YMCA, the county office for the aging, and other agencies. However, included in the 30-year lease is the following clause: “No groups in direct competition with the District are authorized to use the facility. Those groups in competition are defined as entities that serve the same purpose of the District at the same age level, i.e., charter schools.”
This kind of behavior will continue to be a problem, says Smith, until reforms give municipalities, rather than school districts, control of surplus school buildings. [Education Next, Fall 2012]
Could the 9/11/12 Libya attack have been anticipated? There were 12 security incidents in Libya between April 6, 2012 and September 10, 2012 that either targeted U.S. personnel or facilities or otherwise demonstrated that Western diplomats were in harm’s way, according to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Helle Dale provides the rundown:
April 6: IED thrown over the fence of the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.
April 11: Gun battle erupts between armed groups two-and-a-half miles from the U.S. Consulate, including rocket-propelled grenades.
April 27: Two South African contractors are kidnapped by armed men, released unharmed.
May 1: Deputy Commander of U.S. Embassy Tripoli’s Local Guard Force is carjacked, beaten, and detained by armed youth.
May 1: British Embassy in Tripoli is attacked by a violent mob and set on fire. Other NATO embassies attacked as well.
May 3: The State Department declines a request from personnel concerned about security at the U.S. Embassy in Libya for a DC-3 plane to take them around the country.
May 22: Two rocket-propelled grenades are fired at the Benghazi office of the International Committee of the Red Cross, less than 1 mile from the U.S. Consulate.
June 6: A large IED destroys part of the security perimeter of the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. Creates hole “big enough for 40 men to go through.”
June 10: A car carrying the British ambassador is attacked in Tripoli. Two bodyguards injured.
Late June: The building of the International Red Cross attacked again and closed down, leaving the U.S. flag as the only international one still flying in Benghazi, an obvious target.
August 6: Armed assailants carjack a vehicle with diplomatic plates operated by U.S. personnel.
September 8: A local security officer in Benghazi warns American officials about deteriorating security. [The Foundry, October 8]
State Department: Don’t blame us for wrong Benghazi assessment. Something definitely went wrong with the administration’s initial assessment that the 9/11/12 attack in Libya was not a planned al-Qaeda attack, but rather grew out of a spontaneous protest against an anti-Muhammad film. That bad assessment, however, didn’t come from the State Department, says the State Deparment. In fact, reports Josh Rogin, the State Department says it was never on board with that view:
In a conference call with reporters Tuesday, two senior State Department officials gave a detailed accounting of the events that lead to the death of Amb. Chris Stevens and three other Americans. The officials said that prior to the massive attack on the Benghazi compound by dozens of militants carrying heavy weaponry, there was no unrest outside the walls of the compound and no protest that anyone inside the compound was aware of.
In fact, Stevens hosted a series of meetings on the compound throughout the day, ending with a meeting with a Turkish diplomat that began at 7:30 in the evening, and all was quiet in the area.
“The ambassador walked guests out at 8:30 or so; there was nobody on the street. Then at 9:40 they saw on the security cameras that there were armed men invading the compound,” a senior State Department official said. “Everything is calm at 8:30 pm, there is nothing unusual. There had been nothing unusual during the day outside.”
The official was asked about why senior officials said in the immediate aftermath of the attack that it was related to the anti-Islam video and the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo earlier in the day. […]
“That was not our conclusion,” the State Department official said. “We don’t necessarily have a conclusion [about that].” [Foreign Policy, October 10]
Hiring more teachers won’t fix education, writes Jay Greene:
For decades we have tried to boost academic outcomes by hiring more teachers, and we have essentially nothing to show for it. In 1970, public schools employed 2.06 million teachers, or one for every 22.3 students, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s Digest of Education Statistics. In 2012, we have 3.27 million teachers, one for every 15.2 students.
Yet math and reading scores for 17-year-olds have remained virtually unchanged since 1970, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Assessment of Educational Progress. The federal estimate of high-school graduation rates also shows no progress (with about 75% of students completing high school then and now). Unless the next teacher-hiring binge produces something that the last several couldn’t, there is no reason to expect it to contribute to student outcomes. […]
Parents like the idea of smaller class sizes in the same way that people like the idea of having a personal chef. Parents imagine that their kids will have one of the Iron Chefs. But when you have to hire almost 3.3 million chefs, you’re liable to end up with something closer to the fry-guy from the local burger joint. [Wall Street Journal, October 8]
• See Hating Breitbart to learn more about the man who showed us how to take down the institutions of the Left by turning on the microphone and letting them talk. The movie will be in select theaters starting October 19.
• Watch the submissions to the American Enterprise Institute’s video contest. We especially like think the Third Place winner, “Joke of the Day,” is a good example of telling a story while making a point effectively in under two minutes.
• Read about the winners of the Walter Duranty Prize for Journalistic Mendacity. Named after the New York Times Moscow correspondent who downplayed Stalin’s crimes during the 1930s, these prizes are given annual by Pajamas Media to recognize journalistic dishonesty. First prize was given to writer Joan Juliet Buck and editor Anna Wintour for Vogue magazine’s 2011 gushing profile of Asma al-Assad, first lady of Syria. Andrew Sullivan of the Daily Beast, and Bob Simon of 60 Minutes won runner up awards.
• Browse the offerings at HarveyMansfield.org a new website featuring the writings of the one of the nation’s most important conservative thinkers.
Crowdfunding is financing your project idea by posting a clear description of it online and spreading the word through social media to drive people to a website where they can give small donations toward the project. The explosion of social networking in the past decade enables people with creative project ideas to let them go viral to collect hundreds or thousands of small gifts to completely fund a project. Whether you’re making a movie, printing a book, or purchasing a historic property to save it, any good idea can raise capital through this unique technique. It doesn’t cost you a thing if you don’t succeed. What kind of money can you raise? Movie producers Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer raised $212,265 to produce the film FrackNation on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter, which sees 44 percent of projects achieve their fundraising goals. It’s no wonder crowdfunding will be four times larger in 2013 than it was in 2009. Read the how-to guide written by a community of professionals called G+ to help you navigate which websites to use and what steps to follow to fund your project. The guide also warns of the pitfall of having too many investors for a privately traded company, which draws the ire of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Have a tip for InsiderOnline? Send us an e-mail at insider@heritage.org with "For Insider" in the subject line.
Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/InsiderOnline.
Looking for an expert? Visit PolicyExperts.org.
The Heritage Foundation
214 Massachusetts Avenue, NE
Washington DC 20002-4999
ph 202.546.4400 | fax 202.546.8328
No comments:
Post a Comment