April 27, 2012
Latest Studies
30 new items, including the Reason Foundation’s latest privatization report and a Manhattan Institute report on how FDA regulation stifles new cures
Blog Entries
Limited government is working in Colorado Springs, Kevin “Seamus” Hasson wins Salvatori Prize, and more
Budget & Taxation
• Planned Parenthood Federation of America: Target of Government Investigations – Capital Research Center
• State Center, Phase 1 – Maryland Public Policy Institute
• The Appearance of Fiscal Prudence – Maryland Public Policy Institute
• Privatization, Outsourcing and Insourcing Trends in Federal Government – Reason Foundation
• Trends in Texas Government: Local Government Spending – Texas Public Policy Foundation
• Trends in Texas Government: State Government Spending – Texas Public Policy Foundation
Economic and Political Thought
• Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph – Harper Collins
Economic Growth
• Bono Wants To Save the World: But He Needs Your Money to Do It – Capital Research Center
• Chinese Economic Reform: How the U.S. Should Prepare – The Heritage Foundation
• Wall Street Isn’t Enough – Manhattan Institute
• No, They Can’t: Why Government Fails—But Individuals Succeed – Threshold Editions
Education
• A Better Way to Pay: Five Rules for Reforming Teacher Compensation – The Heritage Foundation
• Urban and Rural Poverty and Student Achievement in Massachusetts – Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research
Foreign Policy/International Affairs
• The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future – Harper Collins
• Lord’s Resistance Army: A Symptom of Central Africa’s Larger Problems – The Heritage Foundation
• Washington Should Advance U.S.–Turkey Ties Through Missile Defense – The Heritage Foundation
• The Syrian Rebellion – Hoover Institution
• Sudan, South Sudan, and Darfur: What Everyone Needs to Know – Oxford University Press
Health Care
• Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis – Independent Institute
• Stifling New Cures: The True Cost of Lengthy Clinical Drug Trials – Manhattan Institute
• Will Americans Ever Control as Many of Our Own Health Dollars as the Swiss, the Swedes, or the Canadians? – Pacific Research Institute
International Trade/Finance
• Give Shoe Taxes the Boot – The Heritage Foundation
National Security
• CISPA Amendments Make the Good Even Better – The Heritage Foundation
• Organizing for a Strategic Ideas Campaign to Counter Ideological Challenges to U.S. National Security – Hudson Institute
• The U.S. Navy Shipbuilding Plan: Assumptions and Associated Risks to National Security – Hudson Institute
• Permanent Emergency: Inside the TSA and the Fight for the Future of American Security – Palgrave Macmillan
Natural Resources, Energy, Environment, & Science
• The Pollution Solution: Save the Environment, One Property Right at a Time – Hoover Institution
Retirement/Social Security
• Social Security Finances Significantly Worse, Says 2012 Trustees Report – The Heritage Foundation
The Constitution/Civil Liberties
• Two-Fer: Electing a President and a Supreme Court – Hoover Institution
Transportation/Infrastructure
• Abundance of Land, Shortage of Housing – Institute of Economic Affairs
Defender of Religious Liberty Wins Salvatori Prize
Named after businessman and philanthropist Henry Salvatori, The Salvatori Prize recognizes “Americans who uphold and advance the principles of the American founding, embody the virtues of character and mind that animated America’s founders, and exemplify the spirit of independent and entrepreneurial citizenship in the United States.”
In 1994, Hasson founded the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty to defend religious liberty in the courts. The organization has had some notable victories over the years including convincing the very liberal 9th Circuit to change its mind on the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance (Newdow v. Rio Lindo Union School District) and convincing the Supreme Court that a church school should be able to choose its own teachers without being subject to discrimination claims (Hosanna Tabor v. EEOC). (For more on the Becket Fund, see our interview with Hannah Smith in the Spring 2012 issue of The Insider.)
Currently the Becket Fund is representing four clients suing the Department of Health and Human Services over its mandate (pursuant to ObamaCare) that virtually all employers must cover contraception and abortion-inducing drugs in their employee health plans. In his acceptance talk, Hasson, who currently serves as president emeritus of the Becket Fund, said the mandate is symptomatic of a broader antipathy toward religion of those currently in power.
Hasson went on to note three reasons that defending religious liberty for all faiths is important: (1) Sometimes it’s smart to set precedents by representing faiths which might arouse more sympathy from the “politically correct”; (2) if not everybody in America has religious liberty then nobody in America has religious liberty; and (3) religious faith is being assaulted by those who believe in nothing, and so we need to defend the right to believe something even if it is the wrong thing, so that people can also have the right to believe the right thing.
Toolkit: Get Started on Tumblr
If you’ve discovered the weird and wonderful world of Tumblr, you’re likely looking for a few tips to get you started or just get into the groove of this ever-growing online community.
Tumblr has been around for awhile but has recently gained a lot of attention since President Obama began one. It’s in your best interest to learn the ins and outs of this non-traditional social medium. The following seven tips should be of good use to anyone making their way on Tumblr:
1. Following: Like Twitter and Facebook, Tumblr is a place to make friends. You start doing that by following Tumblrs that interest. Search the Tumblr interests section to find a few of the spotlighted Tumblrs in your interest area. Your favorites aren’t easy to find but you have to start somewhere.
2. Tagging: If you are looking for Tumblrs on specific subjects, simply tag your search in the search bar. For example, if you are looking for people writing about cyber-security issues, use that tag in the search and you’ll find what you are looking for.
3. Re-Blog: As you scroll your Tumblr dashboard (the place where all the Tumblrs you follow feed into), reblog the ones you like! It’s like a ReTweet on Twitter. Adding commentary with your own opinion about it to the reblog is a great way to attract attention from the original Tumblr and their followers.
4. Like posts and comment on them: Like every other social media, Tumblr users like to be noticed. When you feed their ego, they’ll feed yours back. Be sure to leave a “note” (the equivalent of a Facebook “like”) on posts you enjoy and comment on those you have something to say.
5. Start arguments: If you have a disagreement with a Tumblr, reblog their post and state your disagreement. Usually, they will respond and others will join in the action as well. In turn, you’ll receive more followers. People will see you are a person worth paying attention too.
6. Use effective photos and GIFs: GIFs are a Tumblr staple and if you can make your point with one, the more popular you will be. The visuals on your Tumblr can make or break you so be sure you pick out funny, appropriate photos to accompany your point.
7. Be Funny: The Tumblr community thrives on comedy. You must be able to make fun of yourself, take others lightly, and listen to their opinions. A great way to throw in the humor is getting #6 down pat: stellar GIFs.
—Ericka Andersen
Colorado Springs Shows Limited Government Works
Colorado Springs plays host to this year’s Resource Bank, held Thursday and Friday this week. The city, nestled at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, is a great place to have any conference, but it is especially fitting for a meeting of 500+ leaders in the free market/limited government movement. As Wayne Laugesen, editor of the Colorado Springs Gazette explained earlier this week (April 24):
Colorado Springs stands for freedom, perhaps more than any other American city. So it makes good sense that a collective meeting of men and women “of the mind” would gravitate to America the Beautiful City and the country’s finest resort.
What Colorado Springs does right was the topic of discussion in one of the sessions. That panel was moderated by Sean Paige, a former Washingtonian policy wonk who moved out to Colorado Springs about a decade ago to write editorials for the Colorado Springs Gazette, and then got involved in city government. We caught up with Paige to talk about the city and his experiences here:
InsiderOnline: Why do you call Colorado Springs “Freedom City USA”?
Sean Paige: It’s a limited government city. It has had that tradition even before the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights was created here. We want to be a magnet city for conservatives and libertarians. Michelle Malkin moved here recently in part because we have great schools because of the school choice we have here. I think it’s a vision. We fall short. Like other cities we own a hospital. We own a utility company. But right now we are in the process of discussing privatizing the hospital.
IO: What does Colorado Springs rely on the private sector for or not do at all that other city governments do?
SP: It seems elemental, but garbage collection. Denver has city employees collecting their garbage. When they go on strike or the city runs out of money, they don’t pick up the garbage. We have a great zoo, we have a great philharmonic, we have a great art museum here, and they’re all private.
In the recent economic turndown, we privatized our community centers, we privatized our pools, we moved toward privatizing our museums—getting them to stand alone. With the ebbs and flows of a city budget, there are certain entities that traditionally face the axe more than others. I think it’s actually liberating to take a community center or a pool that might be on the cutting block every time you go through a downturn in revenues and privatize it.
IO: Are those things run better now that they are private?
SP: Oh, no question. I was at one of the community centers when it was run by the city and I’ve been back several times since it’s been run by a Jewish group, and it’s like night and day. It’s amazing. The level of services has increased. It’s costing the city almost nothing. We do pay for basic maintenance, because we still own the building. But the private group runs all the programs.
IO: So you got involved in city government yourself a few years back, right? Was it the fiscal crisis that prompted you to run for city council?
SP: I got involved and then it just so happened we had a fiscal crisis, and that was an incredible opportunity for a limited-government person like me. Because of the situation we were in, people were more open-minded about limited-government ideas. It was only a couple of weeks after I was on the city council that we needed to find $20 million in budget cuts.
The community centers, the pools, and so on were on the chopping block. I put out the call to have public-private partnerships to get the private sector to help out with these things and people stepped up. I had a sense that they would because that’s kind of in the tradition of our city. We have such strong non-governmental actors. The reason they are strong is because we have kept government in check and not allowed it to encroach on private initiative.
IO: How hard was it to get the data you needed on to make decisions on city spending?
SP: That’s always problematic, especially in the old city-manager model. The city staff really ran the city and just spoon-fed stuff to the city council.
You really need some skeptical people on the council. I think my background as a journalist helped me. It wasn’t as easy for the staff to spoon-feed me what they thought I ought to know.
I see around the country there is a drive to open up city government. I think getting that transparency is one of the necessary steps to reforming city governments. Once people see what a city is doing, then in most cases they get motivated to act to fix the problems.
IO: So what is the state of the city finances now?
SP: Better. We got a lot of guff during the crisis for doing some things like turning off some city street lights. But we’re a lot better off coming out of it. We didn’t let the city government get that big to begin with, so when we had to roll it back, it wasn’t as painful. Right now we have a surplus. When I went on the council, we had to find $20 million to cut, which is significant for a city this size. When I left the council we were $20 million ahead. I certainly don’t take all the credit for that.
The natural dynamic is after the crisis passed, you see some backsliding into the old way of doing things. We’ve seen some of that with current councils. But we have a really strong mayor who wants to keep spending in check. If you make those hard decisions all they way along, they become less hard during a crisis.
IO: What would you say other cities could learn from Colorado Springs?
SP: Tax-limitation laws work. A tax-constrained environment actually strengthens the city because it allows the non-governmental entities to remain strong. The lesson of Colorado Springs is that people will take on some of those roles that government played if they are invited to do so. Unfortunately, we don’t find that out until a crisis. But it’s something that cities should be constantly evaluating. Should the government be doing this? Is it affordable? Can we do it in a more cost-effective way? Can we privatize it?
I’d like people to know that Colorado Springs is a successful city that runs well with a small government.
Charles Colson, who died Sunday at 80, was one of the most important conservative spokesman for prison reform and the founder of the world’s largest outreach effort to prisoners, ex-prisoners, and their families. And he did it all after serving seven months in federal prison in 1974 for obstruction of justice in connection with the Watergate scandal. The Wall Street Journal described Colson as President Nixon’s “hatchet man,” and he described himself as “the chief ass-kicker around the White House” and a “flag-waving, kick-’em-in-the-nuts, anti-press, anti-liberal Nixon fanatic.”
But after leaving government, Colson became a born-again Christian, and his time in prison provided him with a mission for the rest of his life. Michael Gerson (Washington Post, April 22), who worked as a research assistant for Colson in the mid-1980s, remembers Colson this way:
Chuck was a powerful preacher, an influential cultural critic and a pioneer of the dialogue between evangelicals and Catholics. But he was always drawn back to the scene of his disgrace and his deliverance. The ministry he founded, Prison Fellowship, is the largest compassionate outreach to prisoners and their families in the world, with activities in more than 100 countries. It also plays a morally clarifying role. It is easier to serve the sympathetic. Prisoners call the bluff of our belief in human dignity. If everyone matters and counts, then criminals do as well. Chuck led a movement of volunteers attempting to love some of their least lovable neighbors. This inversion of social priorities — putting the last first — is the best evidence of a faith that is more than crutch, opiate or self-help program. It is the hallmark of authentic religion — and it is the vast, humane contribution of Chuck Colson.
The Department of Health and Human Services is conducting a “demonstration” project that will pay Medicare Advantage plans more than they would have received under ObamaCare—essentially reversing some of the cuts. Conveniently for the White House, most of the nearly $7 billion in bonus payments will be handed out this election year. The Government Accountability Office (“Quality Bonus Payment Demonstration Undermined by High Estimated Costs and Design Shortcomings,” March 21) says the project doesn’t look like a real experiment:
The estimated budgetary impact of the demonstration, adjusted for inflation, is at least seven times larger than that of any other Medicare demonstration conducted since 1995 and is greater than the combined budgetary impact of all of those demonstrations. While the demonstration is similar in size and scope to some Part D demonstrations, it is unlike many Medicare pay-for-performance demonstrations in that it is implemented nationwide and allows all eligible plans or providers to participate. […]
The design of the demonstration precludes a credible evaluation of its effectiveness in achieving CMS’s stated research goal—to test whether a scaled bonus structure leads to larger and faster annual quality improvement compared with what would have occurred under PPACA. Because of the timing of data collection […] the demonstration’s incentives to improve quality can have a full impact only in 2014. In addition, the demonstration’s bonus percentages are not continuously scaled—in 2014, plans with 4, 4.5, and 5 stars will all receive the same 5 percent bonus—and its bonus payments do not consistently offer better incentives than PPACA to achieve high star ratings in 2013 and 2014. Moreover, because the demonstration lacks a direct comparison group, it may not be possible to isolate its effects […] .
Recording Police Protects Citizens from False Prosecution
The First Amendment isn’t the only source of a right to record police on duty. The case for a due process right to record police interactions with citizens—especially in non-public areas—is also very strong, say Glenn Harlan Reynolds—AKA, Instapundit—and John Steakley (Washington University Law Review, April 16). They point to the case of Tiawanda Moore, charged with illegal wiretapping for recording an attempt by Chicago Police Internal Affairs officers to convince her to drop a sexual harassment complaint. Moore was acquitted of wiretapping by a jury, who apparently agreed with Moore’s lawyer that the recording showed the officers had tried to intimidate Moore. In the recording, one of the officers suggested they “could almost guarantee” that the accused officer would never bother her again if she dropped her complaint.
Reynolds and Steakley:
[T]here seems no good reason why she should have been prosecuted for recording this interaction, and it seems quite likely that a jury would not have believed her testimony about the Internal Affairs officers’ behavior, which was indeed almost “incredible,” without such evidence.
The authors continue:
At present, perhaps because ubiquitous audio and video recording technology is a very recent development, there is little, if any, case law on point. However, a due process right to record the police would represent a logical step beyond existing law that deals with law enforcement’s duty to preserve potentially exculpatory evidence for the benefit of criminal defendants. Such duties on the part of law enforcement are limited by the burden that such evidence preservation might pose, but that burden is not present where the evidence in question is gathered and preserved by individuals. In such cases, law enforcement officers need simply do nothing. Their only “burden” would consist of a duty not to interfere.
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