Political Ramblings of a Madman

2013-05-31

Cato: With All Due Respect, Rep. Cole, My Arguments Against Race-Based Government Are Quite Principled

While campaigning for former Hawaii governor Linda Lingle, who is now running for U.S. Senate, Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), the only Native American in Congress, said that opposition to the Akaka Bill is “arrogant” meddling in local affairs. (The Akaka Bill, which I’ve covered extensively, would create a race-based governing entity that would negotiate with the federal and state governments over all sorts of issues—effectively carving out an unconstitutional system of racial spoils.)

As quoted in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser ($):

“Hawaii has told us again and again, on a bipartisan basis, this is what we want to do,” Cole said. “I’d have to tell you, I think it’s incredibly arrogant, whether it’s a Republican or a Democrat that opposes tribal sovereignty — in this case sovereignty for Native Hawaiians—when the people of Hawaii have told us we’d like it. Who are we to impose our opinions?”

Cole’s attack is not only a calumny on those who oppose the Akaka Bill in good faith—including all but six of his House Republicans who voted against it in 2010 after years of deliberation, public vetting, and a 2006 Department of Justice conclusion that the bill was unwise as a policy matter and presented serious constitutional difficulties—but itself displays a dangerous misunderstanding of the issues involved.

It’s easy to think of the Akaka Bill as being “merely” another request for self-governance by native peoples as was extended to Aleuts upon Alaskan statehood, but that’s simply not what’s going on in Hawaii. Hawaiians, “Native” and otherwise, have a different history and political sociology from the tribes that are accommodated in our (dubious and counterproductive) Indian law, which itself is a unique compromise with pre-constitutional reality. Congress can’t simply define Hawaiians as an “Indian tribe” because that term has a fixed meaning, limited to preexisting North American tribes that were “dependent nations” at the time of the Founding. Such tribes, to benefit from the protections of Indian law, must have an independent existence and “community” apart from the rest of American society, and their separate government structure must have a continuous history for at least the past century. By these standards, Hawaiians don’t qualify.

Moreover, it’s false to say that Hawaiians support the Akaka Bill or ethnic/racial preferences more broadly. There has never been a public referendum—Akaka Bill supporters resist such a move—but a November 2009 Zogby poll revealed that 51% of Hawaiians oppose the bill, 60% opposed if you remove the undecideds. In addition, 76% would oppose tax increases to pay for the Akaka nation-tribe (which would be inevitable), only 7% favor separate laws and regulations for a new native government, and only 28% say the bill is fair with respect to racial discrimination. Perhaps most importantly, 58% would want a chance to vote before the Akaka Bill could become law, with only 28% saying that would be unnecessary.

Cato: With Alaska’s Pebble Partnership, The EPA Waves the Precaution Flag

On May 18, the Environmental Protection Agency took sides with opponents of Pebble Partnership, a company exploring a copper deposit, some 200 miles west of Anchorage, Alaska. Pebble is probably the largest accessible aggregation of copper-bearing minerals in North America.

The Obama Administration has been under relentless pressure to stop Pebble—much more of the pressure emanating from hordes of bicoastal environmentalists as opposed to citizens of sparsely populated Alaska. EPA’sAssessment of Potential Mining Impacts on Salmon Ecosystems of Bristol Bay, Alaska is designed as the first step to do just that, before the Pebble developers have even submitted one permit application.

All of this has very little to do with the welfare of Alaskans. It has much more to do with the President pleasing his environmental base. In fact, it seems that the less that one has been to Alaska, the more one knows what’s best for it. The dinosaur media, especially in northeastern cities, is particularly exercised about the stretch of desolate Alaska that is Pebble—land that was traded by the federal government to the State for mineral development, in exchange for the some land that became Lake Clark Park and Preserve.

EPA’s Assessment ignores this history and the positive economic impact $7 billion of new infrastructure would bring to a place without a diverse economy. The Assessment is designed to be used for regulation based upon the “precautionary principle”. This darling of the global left states that “if something has the potential to cause harm, it shouldn’t be done”. The UN’s a big fan and reports are that they have been sniffing around parts of Bristol Bay looking for a way to get in on the Pebble issue. In fact, its Framework Convention on Climate Change—the scaffold upon which the failed Kyoto Protocol on global warming was erected-is based on the precautionary principle, noting that a lack “full scientific certainty” should not provide grounds to preclude regulation.

Cato: If You Love Something, Set It Free: A Case for Defunding Public Broadcasting

Available today is my new policy analysis, “If You Love Something, Set it Free: A Case for Defunding Public Broadcasting.” As a long-time fan of public broadcasting, particularly NPR, it has often irked me that public broadcasting spends so much time embroiled in political battles. The recent kerfuffles over Juan Williams’s controversial dismissal from NPR and the sting videos of NPR executives making derogatory remarks about the Tea Party were only the latest episodes in a long line of political squabbles that goes back to the very beginning, 1967, when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act.

From the standpoint of politicians, however, political fights over public broadcasting’s content are not bugs, they’re features. Just as “war is the health of the state,” politicians view a politically controlled, sufficiently chastened public broadcasting system as a healthy one. During the debates over the Public Broadcasting Act, Sen. Norris Cotton (R-N.H.) explained how politicians would approach public broadcasting:

If this bill becomes law, … and if, as time goes on, we have occasion to feel that there is a slanting, a bias, or an injustice, we instantly and immediately can do something about it. First, we can make very uncomfortable, and give a very unhappy experience to, the directors of the corporation. Second, we can shut down some of their activities in the Appropriations Committee and in the appropriating process of Congress … . The Corporation is much more readily accessible … to the Congress, if it is desired to correct any injustice or bias which might appear.

As Senator Cotton’s remarks show, from the very beginning public broadcasting was intended to be politicized. In fact, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) was partly created to provide a politically controlled voice in the marketplace of ideas.

Cato: It’s Illegal to Say ‘None of Your Damn Business’

The government’s troops are rallying behind the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. “After the House voted this month to defund a major part of the U.S. Census Bureau, the agency is taking the threat very seriously,” reports the Washington Times, “with its supporters in both business and government rallying to preserve the annual questionnaire.”

Wait. Who could be against the Census Bureau? Its constitutional charter is to enumerate citizens every ten years for the purpose of apportioning representation in Congress. This is a necessary and unremarkable administrative function.

Oh, wait—again. Government bloat is a law of gravity, and the Census Bureau does far, far more than count noses. Its American Community Survey has made the Census Bureau the research arm for the welfare/redistribution state and a source of corporate welfare in the form of demographic data about Americans.

So Census goes around asking people dozens of questions that have nothing to do with the agency’s constitutional purpose.

Cato: How Soon They Forget

If you are a nonimmigrant American reading this, do you know why your ancestors came to America? The fact is, a large percentage of immigrants were trying to escape various forms of government persecution, including religious and tax persecution. The American Revolution was set off, in part, by a tax on tea that ranged from about 10 percent to 33 percent of its value. That and other grievances were enough to cause people to take up arms against the British.

Rather than taking up arms, most people who believe the tax burden now has become too great pick up and leave, such as all of those Californians and New Yorkers who are moving to Texas and Florida, where there is no state income tax. Many are all atwitter about Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin deciding to move to Singapore to partially escape what he believes is excessive taxation. Leaving the U.S. is a much more extreme action than moving from a high-tax state to a low-tax state, but a record number of Americans gave up their citizenship last year.

At what point would you consider leaving the U.S.? If you were taxed 98 percent of your income, or 75 percent as the new French president wants to do, or merely 50 percent-plus which is what many Californians will be paying if Gov. Jerry Brown gets his proposed tax increase and President Obama succeeds in getting his proposed tax increase?

Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, and Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr., Pennsylvania Democrat — whose thought processes seem to be similar to those of King George III in 1776 — have denounced Mr.Saverin and introduced legislation to punish him and others who may wish to leave because of high taxes. It appears to me that this is nothing more than a modern version of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which demanded slaves be returned to their “owners,” who were in effect imposing close to a 100 percent tax upon their slaves. If not for that pesky Constitution, you can bet Mr. Schumer would be proposing legislation to force all of those New York tax exiles in Florida and Texasto return to their high-tax New York plantations. The U.S., to its great shame, already imposes tax penalties on those who give up their citizenship — just like the old USSR did. Mr. Schumer, Mr. Casey, and others seem to have forgotten that theU.S. was founded on the idea of individual liberty, which includes the fundamental right of being able to flee what one views as an oppressive government.

Cato: WTO Correctly Calls the U.S. to Task for Lying about Dolphins

In a dispute between the U.S. and Mexico over federal regulations defining “dolphin safe” tuna, the World Trade Organization recently held that the U.S. rules are an unjustifiable discrimination against Mexican tuna fishers. They are also in violation of WTO obligations.

This outcome is a welcome indictment of American policies that prevent eco-conscious consumers from having effective access to information, and using their power in the free market to support environmental causes. Moreover, it casts light on a growing trend that opaquely mixes health, safety, and environmental regulations with trade protectionism.

Current U.S. law prohibits tuna producers from making any statements on their product labels about how their fishing practices affect dolphins unless they meet the minimum requirements for the official “dolphin safe” label. Advocates of the law say it is about truth in advertising and accuse the WTO of putting the world’s dolphins at risk for the sake of trade flows. This argument fails to appreciate the sophisticated competence of American consumers and, more importantly, ignores the fact that these federal rules are misleading.

Tuna caught in a part of the Pacific Ocean near Mexico must meet strict requirements before it can be labeled “dolphin safe.” Mexican tuna fishers work primarily in the Eastern Tropical Pacific where dolphins and tuna often school together. They catch tuna by “setting on dolphins,” that is, by locating a school of dolphins and encircling it with nets to catch the tuna swimming underneath. This practice can result in dolphin mortality as the tuna are captured, although dolphin death has declined significantly since the institution of the International Dolphin Conservation Program, which places independent observers on all Mexican tuna fishing vessels in the region. The U.S labeling law prohibits any tuna caught using this method in this part of the ocean from being labeled dolphin safe even if an observer certifies that no dolphins were killed.

Cato: Canada’s Economic Reforms

The lead article in the new Cato Policy Report is entitled “We Can Cut Government: Canada Did.” The article reviews Canada’s economic reforms since the 1980s, which have included free trade, privatization, spending cuts, sound money, large corporate tax cuts, personal tax reforms, balanced federal budgets, block grants, and decentralizing power by cutting the central government.

Those all sound like things we ought to pursue in America. The political systems of the two countries are different, but Canada’s pro-market reform lessons are universally applicable.

Canada’s reforms, for example, refute the Keynesian notion that cutting government spending harms economic growth. Canadian federal spending was cut from 23.3 percent of GDP in 1993 to 16.5 percent by 2000. Keynesians and their macro models would predict a crushing economic blow from such a spending reduction. They would argue that the “austerity” would slash “aggregate demand” and “take money out of the economy.”

Cato: FBI Free to Ambush our Bill of Rights

When I was a kid, beginning to learn what it is to be an American, I found a hero in George Mason, a leading Virginia delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention. Mason refused to sign on to the Constitution that was passed by the convention. Why?

“There is no Declaration of Rights,” he explained.

There was no section in the Constitution protecting citizens’ individual rights against an imperious government in this new America — similar to the charges Thomas Jefferson made against King George III’s government in our Declaration of Independence in 1776.

George Mason’s contagious objections became a major reason that the first 10 amendments, the Bill of Rights, were finally listed and ratified by enough states to be added to the Constitution in 1791.

And we still proudly have them! Or do we? As George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Barack Obama have eroded our guarantees of a self-governing republic, how many Americans are aware they are losing some of the liberties guaranteed in the Bill of Rights? How many Americans even know who George Mason was?

Thomas Jefferson said Mason was “of the first order of greatness” (“George Mason’s ‘Objections’ and the Bill of Rights,” Robert A. Rutland, “This Constitution: A Bicentennial Chronicle,” American Political Science Association and American Historical Association, 1985).

I know enough about my hero to have no doubt what George Mason’s reaction would be to one of the most persistent and unpunished present violators of the Bill of Rights — the FBI!

In the fall of 2008, just before the Bush administration left, then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey changed and expanded the Attorney General’s Guidelines for Domestic FBI Operations. The guidelines were made official on Dec. 1, 2008. They remain in force under Obama.

If James Madison and Thomas Jefferson could see this shredding of the Bill of Rights, they might be leading another American Revolution.

Cato: The Institute for Justice Exposes the Plague of Occupational Licensing

Today, the Institute for Justice released a 200-page, comprehensive study on occupational licensing in the United States. The report details the plague of occupational licensing that has swept the country over the past 60+ years. According to the study, “In the 1950s, only one in 20 U.S. workers needed the government’s permission to pursue their chosen occupation. Today, that figure stands at almost one in three.”

Fifty years ago, in Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman warned against the dangers of professional licensing. At that time, Friedman quoted a previous study on licensure by Walter Gellhorn:

By 1952 more than 80 separate occupations exclusive of ‘owner-businesses,’ like restaurants and taxicab companies, had been licensed by state law; and in addition to the state laws there are municipal ordinances in abundance, not to mention the federal statutes that require the licensing of such diverse occupations as radio operators and stockyard commission agents. As long ago as 1938 a single state,North Carolina, had extended its law to 60 occupations. One may not be surprised to learn that pharmacists, accountants, and dentists have been reached by state law as have sanitarians and psychologists, assayers and architects, veterinarians and librarians. But with what joy of discovery does one learn about the licensing of threshing machine operators and dealers in scrap tobacco? What of egg graders and guide dog trainers, pest controllers and yacht salesmen, tree surgeons and well diggers, tile layers and potato growers? And what of the hypertrichologists who are licensed in Connecticut, where they remove excessive and unsightly hair with the solemnity appropriate to their high sounding title?

Cato: Time for US to Normalize Ties with Pyongyang

With past and present policies clearly not working, it’s time for a bold approach

US leaders have painted themselves into a corner regarding policy toward North Korea. For more than two decades, Washington’s strategy has been to offer Pyongyang a stark choice: give up its nuclear program or face ever-greater isolation from the international community. President Barack Obama was especially blunt about presenting that alternative to North Korean leaders during his early weeks in office.

That approach clearly has not worked. Indeed, the Obama administration has created the risk of the worst possible outcome — a North Korea that is a nuclear power but lacks meaningful international economic ties, and has no formal diplomatic or economic relations with the US. It would be a blueprint for even more dangerous tensions on the Korean Peninsula and throughout East Asia than we face currently.

A new, radically different approach is needed. Instead of continuing the futile strategy of isolating North Korea, Washington should adopt a comprehensive strategy to normalize relations with Pyongyang. And China has a crucial role to play as the primary facilitator in that process.

The US would need to offer a number of conciliatory measures. Perhaps the most important step is to change the atmosphere of unrelenting hostility between the two countries. North Korean leaders undoubtedly fear that Washington might use its vast military power to intimidate Pyongyang or even engage in forcible regime change, as it did with Saddam Hussein. To reduce tensions, the Obama administration should offer to sign a non-aggression pact with North Korea. US leaders should also propose a peace treaty formally ending the armed hostilities on the Korean Peninsula.

Cato: Caribbean Trade Dispute Gives the U.S. a Rum for Its Money

Rum subsidies in U.S. Caribbean islands have sparked an internal trade war and are inviting a World Trade Organization (WTO) challenge from ill-affected countries in the region. According to an envoy representing a number of Caribbean countries that recently came to Washington, the U.S. government is unwittingly funding industrial policy in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico by tying aid dollars to rum production in a way that is inconsistent with our trade obligations and may cause the destruction of the entire foreign Caribbean rum industry. Under current law, U.S. Caribbean islands receive money from the U.S. treasury based on how much rum they import to the mainland. In recent years, they’ve begun to use that money to increase the amount of rum they produce, so they can get even more money. Although the total amount of money involved is low enough to keep it under Congress’s (myopic) radar, the resulting subsidies are too high for independent Caribbean economies to compete against. Unless Congress places restrictions on how the money can be used, the United States could once again find itself in the embarrassing position of being taken before the WTO for accidentally ruining the economy of a small Caribbean island.

The antagonist in this saga is something known as the “rum cover-over” program. As it does with all distilled spirits, the federal government charges an excise tax of $13.50 per proof gallon of rum sold in the United States. This equates to roughly $2 per bottle. Under the cover-over program, almost all of that money is directly granted to the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico using a complex formula so that each receives a share of the money based on how much rum it produces relative to the other. The tax is collected from sales of all rum imported to the mainland, even from other countries, and in 2010 the cover-over amounted to approximately $450 million—$100 million to the Virgin Islands and $350 million to Puerto Rico.

Cato: U.S. Doesn’t Need Industrial Policy

For a nation whose consumers spend twice as much on services than on goods, and where 90% of the workforce is employed outside the manufacturing sector, the obsession with manufacturing is misplaced.

This romanticized notion about manufacturing’s value to the U.S. economy often fosters policies with pernicious long-term economic effects: tax breaks, subsidies, trade barriers and other coddling market distortions.

Even Christina Romer, an architect of President Obama’s “stimulus” plan and one who is obviously not averse to government tinkering with the economy, concludes: “American consumers value health care and haircuts as much as washing machines and hair dryers. And our earnings from exporting architectural plans for a building in Shanghai are as real as those from exporting cars to Canada… A persuasive case for a manufacturing policy remains to be made.”

Cato: Stopping the EPA from Regulating Puddles

Some of the biggest Environmental Protection Agency abuses of property rights (see last term’s Sackett case and this term’s Koontz case) stem from expansive interpretations of the Clean Water Act. The EPA imposes huge costs on people who want to do anything on their property, claiming the agency has the authority to regulate “wetlands.” The agency is only supposed to have authority to regulate discharges to “navigable” waters, but the jurisprudence here is so confused that it’s become an area ripe for federal overreach. This week a group of Republican senators (Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Marco Rubio, David Vitter, and Mitch McConnell) introduced a bill that’s an excellent step to addressing the federal government’s endemic property rights violations. The Defense of Environment and Property Act of 2013 does a number of very good things:

Narrows the definition of “navigable waters” to waters that are “navigable-in-fact” or “permanent, standing, or continuously flowing bodies of water … that are connected to waters that are navigable-in-fact,” with explicit exclusions for such things as rainfall drainage channels and wetlands without a continuous connection to “waters of the United States”;

Directs that the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers shall not impinge on the primary power of states over land and water use;

Gives landowners judicial review in federal court within 30 days of any claim of federal authority over their land or water resources;

Cato: The Role of Partisanship in the Health Care Reform Challenge

The large interest shown by the public in the three days of oral arguments devoted to the constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) should be heartening to any fan of the US Constitution. Americans of all stripes listened to the arguments, learned the precedents and constitutional clauses the arguments relied on and engaged with the rich history and philosophy surrounding the Constitution. I doubt Roscoe Filburn, of Wickard v. Filburn fame, would ever have expected his name to be bandied about by so many people 70 years after his case was decided.

On the second day of argument, in which the Court took up the question of the “individual mandate,” the conservative justices each showed extreme skepticism that the commerce power gives Congress the ability to force people to purchase insurance. Some academics and commentators had gone so far to predict that the argument for the constitutionality of the individual mandate was so easy that even conservative stalwarts like Justice Antonin Scalia would kowtow to the government’s arguments. This was rapidly proven to be untrue. Justice Scalia in particular assailed the solicitor general with questions that demonstrated he understood the finely tuned arguments and subtle distinctions of the challengers.

The general anti-ACA tenor of the arguments has opponents of the act cautiously optimistic that the Supreme Court might actually strike down all or part of it. An argument that once had more skeptics than believers now may have more believers than skeptics, and five of those believers might be on the Supreme Court.

Supporters of the ACA are already upset that the Court was antagonistic to the government’s arguments in favor of the mandate. In a number of opinion pieces, the groundwork is already being laid for a fusillade of attacks on a “partisan” and “activist” conservative Court in the event that the ACA is struck down in whole or in part. The general theme of these editorials is the same as it was when the legal attack on the law was initiated — “there’s nothing to see here, there are no viable legal arguments against the law and only an ideologically motivated, hyper-partisan Tea Party Republican or Libertarian would strike it down.”

Cato: Dignity in Retirement

In his 2005 open letter to Karl Rove, Ed Crane defended Cato’s proposal for private retirement accounts thus: “You want to get people excited about personal accounts? Tell them about the 1960 Supreme Court case, Flemming v. Nestor, which explicitly says Americans have no ownership rights to the money they pay into Social Security. It is, the Court ruled, a social program of Congress with absolutely no contractual obligations. What you get back at retirement indeed, when you can retire and receive benefits is entirely up to the 535 members of Congress. Where is the dignity in such a system?”

President Bush’s reform of the Social Security went nowhere, but Ed Crane’s warning is no exaggeration. Yesterday, Dimitris Christoulas, a 77-year-old retired pharmacist killed himself in front of the Greek Parliament. “A suicide note found in his coat pocket blamed politicians and the country’s acute financial crisis for driving him to take his life, police said. The government had ‘annihilated any hope for my survival and I could not get any justice. I cannot find any other form of struggle except a dignified end before I have to start scrounging for food from rubbish bins,’ the note said.”

Cato: Conservatives And the Courts

Who says bipartisanship is dead? Left and Right have finally found something that they agree on. They are both unalterably opposed to judicial activism — except, of course, when they aren’t.

The latest meme from the Obama administration, congressional Democrats, and much of the media is that if the Supreme Court were to strike down all or part of Obamacare, it would place the Court’s legitimacy itself at risk. After all, since only 28 state attorneys general, at least two District Court Judges and five Circuit Court Judges (including a Clinton appointee), numerous law professors, the 52 organizations and hundreds of state legislators who filed briefs in support of the plaintiffs, and 72 percent of the American public believe that Obamacare’s attempt to force every American to buy a specific commercial product is unconstitutional, it would obviously be an unprecedented act of judicial activism for the Court to agree.

Of course, there is nothing really unprecedented about the Court striking down legislation that it finds outside of constitutional bounds. Between 1803 and 2002, the Supreme Court struck down as many as 1,315 laws on constitutional grounds. Indeed, many of the judicial decisions that liberals hold most dear involved striking down legislation. For liberals to now argue that legislative action has become inviolate is pretty much the height of chutzpah.

To some extent, though, conservatives are simply being hoisted on their own hypocritical petard. After all, opposition to “activist judges” has become a standard part of conservative boilerplate. It was only a few weeks ago that Newt Gingrich was winning plaudits for his threat to haul recalcitrant judges before Congress and pledging that he would simply ignore Court rulings with which he disagreed. And, when the courts struck down California’s Proposition 8, many conservatives were apoplectic at the idea that a court could overrule the democratic will of the voters. An entire generation of conservatives have seemed to echo Robert Bork’s call for deference to legislative majorities in nearly all circumstances and dismiss the Ninth Amendment’s description of unenumerated rights as a mere “inkblot.”

Cato: ‘May Cause Drowsiness, Use Caution Around Machinery’

Frank Harty of the Iowa law firm Nyemaster Goode describes a new kind of employer headache arising from the Obama administration’s hardline enforcement efforts on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) front:

…Common sense dictates that any medication that carries with it a warning that it “may cause drowsiness” or that the patient should “use caution” if operating machinery may pose a risk in the workplace. It is for this reason that many employers adopt a policy requiring employees to self report the use of prescription pain killers. This is especially important in potentially dangerous workplaces such as manufacturing and construction.

In a recent action that defies common sense, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has taken the position that such policies are unlawful under the Americans With Disabilities Act. The ADA prohibits an employer from conducting “medical inquiries” without a business reason to do so. In EEOC v. Product Fabricators, Inc., an action in federal court in Minnesota, the EEOC required a manufacturing employer to abandon its policy of encouraging employees to inform supervisors if they are under the influence of narcotic pain killers such as Vicodin. The EEOC took the position that an employer cannot ask about prescription pain killer usage unless it has “objective” evidence that an employee is impaired on the job.

This places employers in a very difficult position….

Cato: Farm Bill Would Increase Spending 47%

House and Senate farm subsidy supporters are pushing to enact the first big farm bill since 2008. Democratic and Republican supporters say that this year’s legislation will be a reform bill that cuts spending. Hogwash.

Last year, House farm subsidy supporters proposed a bill that would spend $950 billion over the next 10 years, while the Senate proposed a bill that would spend $963 billion. By contrast, when the 2008 farm bill passed, it was projected to spend $640 billion over 10 years. Thus, the proposed House bill would represent a 48 percent spending increase over the last farm bill, while the Senate bill would represent a 50 percent increase.

A new estimate of the House bill finds that it would spend $940 billion over 10 years, which would be a 47 percent increase over the 2008 farm bill. This new estimate is shown in the chart alongside the estimate of the 2008 farm bill.

The CBO score of the 2008 farm bill is here. Scores for the 2012 farm bill proposals are reported in this CRS report. And the new score of the House bill is here.

2013-05-30

Cato: Libertarian Gary Johnson: Spoiler Alert?

As a small-“l” libertarian, it’s not often I can say that National Public Radio cheers me up on my way into work. But it did the trick yesterday morning with an All Things Considered feature titled “Libertarians Find Their Voice in 2012 Race.”

“Somewhere on the path to the White House this year,” the announcer declared, “a powerful set of ideas began to creep into the mainstream debate over which direction the country will take. … free and open markets and extremely limited government. Those ideals are now becoming more mainstream.” Case in point, according to NPR, was the Libertarian Party’s decision Saturday to make former Republican Gov. Gary Johnson of New Mexico its nominee for president.

When the federally funded voice of urbane, upper-middle class liberalism says we’re on the verge of a “libertarian moment,” that’s what the lawyers call an “admission against interest,” and it’s worth paying attention.

Watching the Libertarian Party over the years, I’ve sometimes had the feeling that, as George Bernard Shaw once snarked about socialism, “we should have had libertarianism already, but for the Libertarians.”

Cato: On Breach of Decorum and Government Growth

Last week, the Center for Democracy and Technology changed its position on CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, two times in short succession, easing the way for House passage of a bill profoundly threatening to privacy.

Declan McCullagh of C|Net wrote a story about it called “Advocacy Group Flip-Flops Twice Over CISPA Surveillance Bill.” In it, he quoted me saying: “A lot of people in Washington, D.C. think that working with CDT means working for good values like privacy. But CDT’s number one goal is having a seat at the table. And CDT will negotiate away privacy toward that end.”

That comment netted some interesting reactions. Some were gleeful about this “emperor-has-no-clothes” moment for CDT. To others, I was inappropriately “insulting” to the good people at CDT. This makes the whole thing worthy of further exploration. How could I say something mean like that about an organization whose staff spend so much time working in good faith on improving privacy protections? Some folks there absolutely do. This does not overcome the institutional role CDT often plays, which I have not found so creditable. (More on that below. Far below…)

Cato: Hulu, Pricing Strategies, and the Costs of Piracy

I’ve written on a couple previous occasions about how our approach to copyright policy is badly distorted by wildly inflated estimates of what online piracy “costs” the U.S. economy. The true figure, as most serious analysts admit, is likely unknowable, but the content industries have discovered that no figure is too ludicrous to be parroted with a straight face by well-meaning politicians. The higher the fabricated number, the easier it becomes to claim that even the most expensive and draconian antipiracy measures, however questionably effective, can pass a cost-benefit test. Some recent news involving the video streaming site Hulu reminds me of yet another reason to be wary of those figures.

According to press reports, free access to Hulu content may soon be limited to users who already subscribe to a traditional cable package. The incumbent cable companies hope this will entice viewers to buy or maintain more profitable cable subscriptions rather than “cutting the cord” and shifting entirely to online viewing. Some may, of course, but others will predictably turn to piracy: Tech reporter Ryan Singel of Wired joked on Twitter that the Pirate Bay was probably purchasing new servers in response to the announcement. Regardless of whether Hulu ultimately opts for this approach, there’s a more serious general point to be teased out there, however.

Cato: Obama Labor Department Won’t Ban Kids’ Farm Chores

Farm families, along with the cause of liberty, won an important battle last week when the Obama administration scrapped plans to prohibit kids from doing a wide range of jobs in agriculture, even on farms belonging to their own family members. The rules would have barred youngsters under 16 from working with animals, storage bins, power-driven equipment, and various other things found on farms; perhaps most significant, they took an exceedingly narrow view of the so-called parental exemption provided by the law, so that (in the rules as proposed last year) kids would have been forbidden to work on an uncle or grandparent’s farm, or any farm less than “wholly” owned by their own parents. The Department of Labor was inundated by upwards of 10,000 comments, overwhelmingly negative, from farmers and ranchers; playing out in press outlets like the Custer County, Neb. Chief, the controversy was mostly ignored by the Eastern press, though NPR did do areport in December.

Read more at http://www.cato.org/blog/obama-labor-department-wont-ban-kids-farm-chores

Cato: North Korea: The Gulag State

North Korea is, to put it mildly, a “problem.” The so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea devotes much of its time to threatening other nations. Pyongyang spends money that it doesn’t have on nuclear weapons, missiles, and bizarrely choreographed and synchronized propaganda ceremonies. It has pioneered a system of monarchical communism, passing power from one idiot son to another.

Worse, at least for the North Korean People, the DPRK has created a genuine gulag state, with a smaller but still murderous “gulag archipelago,” as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously called Joseph Stalin’s creation. The most important political challenge facing Washington remains the North’s nuclear program. But the ultimate objective is to relax Pyongyang’s grip over the suffering population.

That the DPRK is repressive is hardly news. However, it is difficult for anyone in the West to imagine the full extent of repression in the North.

The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea recently issued the second edition of David Hawk’s The Hidden Gulag: The Lives and Voices of “Those Who Are Sent to the Mountains.” The study is grimly enlightening, relying on satellite imagery and personal testimony, ever more abundant now that there are more than 23,000 North Korean escapees now living in the South. The publication is a critical attempt, observes Roberta Cohen, who chairs the Committee, to breach “the conspiracy of silence surrounding the camps.”

Cato: Graffiti Problem … So Call in the SWAT Team!?

Hethmon had an up-close and unpleasant experience with the same kind of local police he had done so much to empower.The problem began with graffiti on a highway overpass in Bowie. Police there suspected that Hethmon’s teenage son might be involved and obtained a search warrant. They arrived at 7 a.m. on March 9 with a heavily armed team of county officers.

“Come in with masks, guns, screaming. You know, knocking everybody down,” Hethmon recalled. “I tried to explain to them, you know: ‘Look, I’m a lawyer, this is outrageous.’ [The reply was:] ‘Shut up and lie down on the floor.’ ”

Police said they found 2.5 grams of marijuana in the house. They filed charges against Hethmon, his son and his wife — all for the same drugs. The charges against Hethmon will be dropped, prosecutors said last week.

Hethmon said the experience has not changed his work.

“The fact that a law is legitimate and serving a purpose doesn’t mean that it can’t be abused,” he said. “Human beings are flawed people.”

Cato: Why College Should Be Given Away for Free

The editor of The Nation thinks college should be given away for free. She’s probably right, but perhaps not in the sense she intends. So many college degrees today are intrinsically worthless that it should really not be possible to find people willing to pay for them. As I wrote in a recent New York Times “Room for Debate” commentary:

Barely half of students at four-year public institutions graduate in six years — and many learn very little along the way. Nearly half of all college students made no significant gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning, or written communication after two full years of study, according to research by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa. Even among the more elite subset of students who stick around for four full years of college, a third made no significant gains in these areas.

Cato: Separation of Art And State

What do art, music, and religion have in common? They all have the power to touch us in the depths of our souls. As one theater director said, “Art has power. It has the power to sustain, to heal, to humanize… to change something in you. It’s a frightening power, and also a beautiful power… And it’s essential to a civilized society.”

Which is precisely why art, music, and religion should be kept separate from the state.

Government involves the organization of coercion. In a free society coercion should be reserved only for such essential functions of government as protecting rights and punishing criminals. People should not be forced to contribute money to artistic endeavors that they may not approve, nor should artists be forced to trim their sails to meet government standards.

Government funding of anything involves government control. That insight, of course, is part of our folk wisdom: “He who pays the piper calls the tune.”

Defenders of arts funding seem blithely unaware of this danger when they praise the role of the national endowments as an imprimatur or seal of approval on artists and arts groups.

We don’t need any more fights over “Piss Christ” or the National Portrait Gallery’s “Hide/Seek” exhibition on sexual difference in portraiture or the Enola Gay exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum. And we can thank our lucky stars that Kentucky’s Creation Museum is private, or we’d have a major political battle over that.