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Cato Op-Eds
The Water Bed Effect in Drug Prohibition
Jeffrey Miron
If you lie down on a water bed, the amount of water does not change; it just moves elsewhere.
A similar phenomenon occurs with drug prohibition; targeting one drug reduces its use, but that displaced demand shows up somewhere else.
According to a new WaPo story, this is exactly what has occurred over the past ten years with respect to prescription opiates and heroin. As enforcement cracked down on Oxycontin and similar medications, demand shifted to heroin. And since purity information is noisy for an illicit good, heroin deaths increased noticeably.
Prohibition advocates will presumably respond with calls for greater enforcement against both prescription opiates and heroin, but the right response is the opposite. While opiate use carries risks, opiate prohibition makes these worse. Higher prices caused by prohibition, for example, encourage users to inject to get a big bang for the buck. But then prohibition-induced restriction of clean syringes fosters needle-sharing, spreading HIV.
The right test for policy is never whether some good or activity is "risky," but whether government intervention reduces those risks, and at what costs. Drug prohibition fails this test.
The Need for Discretionary Spending Restraint
Chris Edwards
The Obama administration released its 2015 budget this week. The budget shows federal debt held by the public falling from 74 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) this year to 69 percent by 2024. That reduction occurs even though entitlement and interest spending are projected to rise substantially as a percent of GDP.
One of the tricks behind the projected falling debt is that the administration assumes that discretionary spending falls sharply as a percent of GDP in later years. Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projections show a similar decline in discretionary spending in coming years.
I favor large discretionary reductions, and I have proposed many specific cuts. But does the Obama administration really favor the reductions down the road shown in its own budget? I doubt it. After all, the administration's new spending proposals would break existing budget caps, and that would come in the wake of both parties breaking caps under the Ryan-Murray budget deal. So projecting declining discretionary spending in later years is an accounting ploy to make the fiscal outlook look better than it really is.
If policymakers don't restrain discretionary spending, deficits and debt will be higher in coming years than shown in official projections. Let's call this the "business as usual discretionary spending" scenario.
Here are the implications of the scenario, based on the CBO baseline and my calculations. Let's suppose discretionary spending remains at the 2014 level of 6.9 percent of GDP through 2024, rather than falling to 5.2 percent as shown by CBO. That higher spending results in interest costs 0.4 percentage points of GDP higher by 2024.
Under this scenario, total outlays would rise from 20.5 percent of GDP today to 24.5 percent by 2024. The deficit would rise to a dangerous 6.2 percent of GDP.
Under the CBO baseline, federal debt rises from 74 percent of GDP today to 79 percent by 2024. But under my business as usual scenario, debt would soar to 91 percent by 2024, as shown in the chart. It would keep rising rapidly after that.
In sum, I hope that discretionary spending as a percent of GDP falls, as shown in the CBO and Obama projections. But without proactive efforts to cut and terminate programs, that may not happen. Of course, entitlement spending also needs to be cut.
However, if business as usual prevails in Washington with entitlement spending gobbling up more of GDP and discretionary spending not cut, we've got a really big fiscal crunch coming.
When Tolerance Becomes Intolerance
Doug Bandow
Individual liberty took another hit with Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer's veto of legislation enhancing protection for people's religious principles while doing business. Gov. Brewer suggests that if you hang out a shingle you should leave your deepest beliefs at home.
The issue in Arizona was not a lack of tolerance by those in business. There is no dearth of firms across the state willing to serve gays.
Instead, the question was tolerance for those in business. Should you be expected to abandon your conscience the moment you step into the commercial world?
Indeed, why would a gay couple insist that a Christian opposed to gay marriage photograph their wedding or prepare their cake? There's no need to force those with unfashionable views to affirm what they reject.
ObamaCare's contraception mandate has a similar effect—and almost certainly received vigorous support on the left for precisely this reason. As I pointed out in the American Spectator online:
the point was always state-mandated intolerance rather than health care. The objective was to force Catholics, mostly, and the few fundamentalist Protestants who hold similar theological views, to pay for what they oppose. In fact, there is no better way to humiliate those you dislike. It is pure and unadulterated intolerance, the ultimate Washington triumph: Make those you despise pay for what they despise.
Leaving people largely left alone to manage their own lives should be what a free society is all about. Of course, those who are on the receiving end of social disapproval understandably don't like the result. But no one has a "right" to be served by any particular person. Forcing someone into servitude is infinitely worse than simply finding someone else to do the job.
The right response is to change social attitudes. My friend Sheldon Richman at the Future of Freedom Foundation pointed to the use of "boycotts, publicity, and ostracism" to penalize those who refuse service. Such activism is why gay marriage has gone from a policy wish to dominant law in just a few years.
Unfortunately, throughout history newly empowered minorities often learn the wrong lesson. Rather than create barriers to new state injustices, some people use law for their own advantage. Hence state persecution of the New Mexico wedding photographer who felt she could not promote gay ceremonies which she believed to be wrong.
The principle runs multiple ways. Argued my Cato Institute colleague Ilya Shapiro, "gay photographers and bakers shouldn't be forced to work religious celebrations, Jews shouldn't be forced to work Nazi rallies, and environmentalists shouldn't be forced to work job fairs in logging communities." Government should not force anyone to leave his or her conscience outside when arriving at work.
There obviously are complex aspects of the issue about which another Cato colleague, Walter Olson, also has thoughtfully written. In practice, advanced industrial capitalism allows most people to make most economic decisions without focusing on the background or character of the person with whom they are dealing, a major positive for all of us. Nevertheless, some activities may be more uncomfortable than others. Covering a wedding—actively participating in and celebrating the ceremony—is different than taking a portrait for some photographers.
Despite the public hysteria generated by the Arizona legislation, it merely expanded existing law which bars government from imposing a "substantial burden" on religious practice without a "compelling state interest." That hardly seems unreasonable. What is unreasonable is interfering with religious faith with which one disagrees. Some other state legislative proposals have been less neutral and more controversial.
Any large, diverse society will find people at frequent odds, believing and behaving differently. In the main, government should leave them alone to find their own way. Especially when most basic freedom of conscience is involved. Tolerance is a cardinal virtue.
Indeed, liberty of conscience undergirds all human freedom. Such liberty is inherent to the human person, not a privilege granted by the state. Americans who believe in freedom should respect even unpopular religious beliefs, as in this case.
Climate Insensitivity: What the IPCC Knew and Didn't Tell Us, Part II
Patrick J. Michaels and Paul C. "Chip" Knappenberger
Global Science Report is a feature from the Center for the Study of Science, where we highlight one or two important new items in the scientific literature or the popular media. For broader and more technical perspectives, consult our monthly "Current Wisdom."
The bottom line from the new report from the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is that the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) knew, but didn't highlight, the fact that the best available scientific evidence suggests that the earth's climate is much less sensitive to atmospheric carbon dioxide input than the climate models they relied upon to forecast future global warming portray.
We covered the GWPF report and its implications in this post. But one implication is worth mentioning again, from the report's conclusions:
The [climate models] overestimate future warming by 1.7–2 times relative to an estimate based on the best observational evidence.
While the report's authors, Nicolas Lewis and Marcel Crok, are talking about the future, the same thing should apply to the past. In fact, a strong test of Lewis and Crok's prediction is whether or not the same climate models predict too much warming to have already taken place than observations indicate.
There is perhaps a no better general assessment of past model behavior than the analysis that we developed for a post back in the fall.
The figure below is our primary finding. It shows how the observed rate of global warming compares with the rate of global warming projected to have occurred by the collection of climate models used by the IPCC. We performed this comparison over all time scales ranging from from 10 to 63 years. Our analysis ended in 2013 and included an analysis of the global temperature trend beginning in each year from 1950 through 2004.
As can be clearly seen in our figure, climate models have consistently overestimated the amount of warming that has taken place. In fact, they are so bad, that over the course of the past 25 years (and even at some lengths as long as 35 years) the observed trend falls outside of the range which includes 95 percent of all model runs. In statistical parlance, this situation means that the observed trend cannot be reliably considered to be part of the collection of modeled trends. In other words, the real world is not accurately captured by the climate models—the models predict that the world should warm up much faster than it actually does.
That the models don't work when simulating the past is strong indication that they won't work when projecting the future.
And judging from past performance, the conclusions of Lewis and Crok, that "[t]he [climate models] overestimate future warming by 1.7–2 times relative to an estimate based on the best observational evidence" seem right on the money.
Global climate disaster averted! Too bad the IPCC didn't see fit to pass this important bit of information along to policymakers, but instead, attempted to sweep it under the rug.
Maybe there ought to be a congressional investigation. Staffers, start your engines!
Climate Insensitivity: What the IPCC Knew But Didn't Tell Us
Patrick J. Michaels and Paul C. "Chip" Knappenberger
Global Science Report is a feature from the Center for the Study of Science, where we highlight one or two important new items in the scientific literature or the popular media. For broader and more technical perspectives, consult our monthly "Current Wisdom."
In a remarkable example of scientific malfeasance, it has become apparent that the IPCC knew a lot more than it revealed in its 2013 climate compendium about how low the earth's climate sensitivity is likely to be.
The importance of this revelation cannot be overstated. If the UN had played it straight, the "urgency" of global warming would have evaporated, but, recognizing that this might cause problems, they preferred to mislead the world's policymakers.
Strong words? Judge for yourself.
The report "Oversensitive—how the IPCC hid the good news on global warming," was released today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF)—a U.K. think-tank which is "concerned about the costs and other implications of many of the policies currently being advocated" regarding climate change (disclosure: our Dick Lindzen is a member of the GWPF Academic Advisory Council).
The new GWPF report concluded:
We believe that, due largely to the constraints the climate model-orientated IPCC process imposed, the Fifth Assessment Report failed to provide an adequate assessment of climate sensitivity – either ECS [equilibrium climate sensitivity] or TCR [transient climate response] – arguably the most important parameters in the climate discussion. In particular, it did not draw out the divergence that has emerged between ECS and TCR estimates based on the best observational evidence and those embodied in GCMs. Policymakers have thus been inadequately informed about the state of the science.
The study was authored by Nicholas Lewis and Marcel Crok. Crok is a freelance science writer from The Netherlands and Lewis, an independent climate scientist, was an author on two recent important papers regarding the determination of the earth's equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS)—that is, how much the earth's average surface temperature will rise as a result of a doubling of the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide.
The earth's climate sensitivity is the most important climate factor in determining how much global warming will result from our greenhouse gas emissions (primarily from burning of fossil fuels to produce, reliable, cheap energy). But, the problem is, is that we don't know what the value of the climate sensitivity is—this makes projections of future climate change–how should we say this?–a bit speculative.
Unsurprisingly, there has been a lot of recent scientific research aimed at gaining a better understanding of what the climate sensitivity may be. We have detailed much of this research in our ongoing series of articles highlighting new findings on the topic. Collectively, the new research indicates an ECS value a bit below 2°C. The latest in our series is here.
But in its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) finalized this past January, the IPCC gave short shrift to the major implication of this collection of new research results—that the climate sensitivity is much lower than what the IPCC assessed it to be in its collection of previous assessment reports (issued every 6-7 years) and that the rate of climate change is going to be much less.
For example, formerly, in its Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), released in 2007, the IPCC had this to say regarding the equilibrium climate sensitivity:
It [the equilibrium climate sensitivity] is likely to be in the range 2°C to 4.5°C with a best estimate of about 3°C, and is very unlikely to be less than 1.5°C. Values substantial higher than 4.5°C cannot be excluded, but agreement of models with observations is not as good for those values. [emphasis in original]
In its new AR5, the IPCC wrote this:
Equilibrium climate sensitivity is likely in the range 1.5°C to 4.5°C (high confidence), extremely unlikely less than 1°C (high confidence), and very unlikely greater than 6°C (medium confidence)16. The lower temperature limit of the assessed likely range is thus less than the 2°C in the AR4, but the upper limit is the same. This assessment reflects improved understanding, the extended temperature record in the atmosphere and ocean, and new estimates of radiative forcing. [emphasis in original]
And IPCC AR5 footnote 16 states:
No best estimate for equilibrium climate sensitivity can now be given because of a lack of agreement on values across assessed lines of evidence and studies.
So, facing mounting scientific for a substantially lower climate sensitivity, the best the IPCC could bring itself to do was to reduce the low end of its "likely" range by one-half degree, refuse to put a value on its best guess, and still cling to its high end number. Big deal.
The reason that the IPCC could only make these meager changes was that the collection of climate models that the IPCC employs to make the bulk of its projections of future climate change (and future climate change impacts) has an average ECS value of 3.2°C. The IPCC couldn't very well conclude from the scientific evidence that the real value was somewhere south of 2°C—if it were to do so, it would invalidate the climate models and, for that matter the meat of its entire report (that is, its climate change projections).
We described the situation the IPCC faced last summer (prior to releasing the final copy of the AR5) this way:
The IPCC has three options:
- Round-file the entire AR5 as it now stands and start again.
- Release the current AR5 with a statement that indicates that all the climate change and impacts described within are likely overestimated by around 50 percent, or
- Do nothing and mislead policymakers and the rest of the world.
We're betting on door number 3.
As predicted, the IPCC chose option number 3.
The new GWPF report confirms, in detail, the IPCC's choice and how it came to make it—by confusing the reader with a collection of evidence that was outdated, already disproven, based upon flimsy assumptions, not directly applicable, or flat-out wrong.
Putting it nicely, Lewis and Crok describe the situation thus:
The AR5 authors might not have wanted to declare that some studies are better than others or to adjudicate between observational and model-based lines of evidence, but we believe that this is exactly what an assessment is all about: using expert knowledge to weigh different sources of evidence. In this section we present reasoned arguments for a different assessment to that in AR5.
Lewis and Crok go, in detail, through each climate sensitivity paper considered (and relied upon) by the IPCC and identify its shortcomings. At the end, they are left with a collection of five papers that, while still containing uncertainties, are built upon the most robust set of assumptions and measurements.
From those papers the Lewis and Crok conclude the following:
A new 'best observational' estimate of ECS can now be calculated by taking a simple average of the different observationally-based estimates….This gives a best estimate for ECS of 1.75°C and a likely range of about 1.3–2.4°C. However, recognizing that error and uncertainty may be greater than allowed for in the underlying studies, and will predominantly affect the upper of the range, we conservatively assess the likely range as 1.25–3.0°C.
Now compare these figures with those in AR4 and AR5….Our new 'best observational' ECS estimate of 1.75°C is more than 40% lower than both the best estimate in AR4 of 3°C and the 3.2°C average of GCMs used in AR5. At least as importantly, the top of the likely range for ECS of 3.0°C is a third lower than that given in AR5 (4.5°C) – even after making it much more conservative than is implied by averaging the ranges for each of the observational estimates.
And as to what this means about the IPCC global warming projections, Lewis and Crok write:
The [climate models] overestimate future warming by 1.7–2 times relative to an estimate based on the best observational evidence.
This is a powerful and important conclusion.
We recommend that you read the full report. Not only is it a comprehendible and comprehensive description of the current science as it relates to the climate sensitivity, but it is an illumination of how the IPCC process does, or rather doesn't, work.
The Obama Administration and its EPA will ignore this reality at their peril.
Whose Brother's Keeper? Obama Administration Denies School Choice
Jason Bedrick
The Obama administration's proposed budget for 2015 would continue unsustainable spending growth at more than twice the rate of inflation and hike taxes by more than $1 trillion. It also includes $69 billion in education spending, much of it on programs that are unconstitutional, proven to be ineffective, or both.
And yet, in one area where the federal government has the constitutional authority to fund and manage education policy—the District of Columbia school system—the Obama administration's budget cuts all funding to the Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP), which has proven to be much more effective than the government-run school monopoly. This cut does not even save the taxpayers a dime, since the OSP only spends up to about $8,250 for elementary school students and $12,400 for high school students each year compared to the $30,000 per pupil per year that the government-run schools spend to produce some of the worst educational outcomes in the nation.
The administration's proposal is particularly puzzling in the wake of the president's announcement last week that he is launching a $200 million charitable initiative called My Brother's Keeper to help young, male minorities. As Dr. Patrick Wolf of the University of Arkansas points out today at the Choice Words blog, there is solid evidence that school choice programs tremendously aid exactly that population:
Three evaluations of private-school choice programs have followed enough students for sufficiently long to determine their effects on the rates of high-school graduation, college enrollment, or both. A 2010 evaluation of the District of Columbia Opportunity Scholarship Program that I led for the U.S. Department of Education found that students offered private-school choice by winning a random lottery graduated from high school at the rate of 82 percent, compared with 70 percent for the control group. The impact of actually using an Opportunity Scholarship was to increase the likelihood of graduation by 21 percentage points, from 70 percent to 91 percent. Over 90 percent of the participants in the study were African American, and almost all of the rest were Latino American.
A similarly rigorous experimental study of the impact of privately funded partial-tuition K–12 scholarships on college-enrollment rates was conducted by Paul Peterson of Harvard University and Matthew Chingos of the Brookings Institution. They followed a large group of low-income elementary students in New York City for over a decade after half of them were awarded private-school scholarships by lottery, while the other half were randomly assigned to the control group. They determined that the impact of using a private-school scholarship was to raise the college enrollment rate for African Americans in the study from 36 percent to 45 percent, a gain of 9 percentage points that represented nearly a 25 percent improvement over the control-group rate. As with the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program evaluation, President Obama's very own Department of Education assigned this study its highest rating for scientific rigor.
Finally, I worked with a large team of researchers to evaluate the effect of the nation's oldest and largest urban school-voucher program, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, on student educational attainment in the form of high-school graduation, college enrollment, and college persistence. Over two-thirds of the students in our study were African American, and almost all the rest were Latino American. We found that low-income students who used a voucher to enroll in a private school in ninth grade subsequently graduated from high school, enrolled in a four-year college, and persisted in college at rates that were 4–7 percentage points higher than statistically similar Milwaukee students who started in public schools in ninth grade. These higher rates of educational attainment due to the Milwaukee voucher program represent improvements of 15–20 percent over the rates obtained by the comparison group of public-school students—nearly as large as those for the African-American students in the New York City study.
Given the results of these three studies, one which was overseen by the U.S. Department of Education and two which were recognized with the Department's highest award for rigor, we might expect President Obama to receive a swift response regarding his call for the federal government to search for programs that boost educational outcomes for African American men. The U.S. Department of Education need not search far and wide for such initiatives: they have already found one. Research shows that private-school choice through vouchers or scholarships is one of our nation's most effective dropout-prevention programs for African Americans. It should be number one on the list of programs that President Obama encourages My Brother's Keeper to support. But, apparently, it isn't.
Not long ago, President Obama woefully misstated the research on school choice programs. The most charitable explanation is that he hasn't seen the research from his own Department of Education. Fortunately, a few highly respected education policy gurus cut a short video to remedy that oversight:School Voucher Researchers Respond to Obama
Let's hope the president gets YouTube on his Blackberry.
Common Core End Game
Neal McCluskey
For far too long a big part of the Common Core debate has been about establishing simple fact: the federal government provided serious coercion to get states to adopt the Core, and the Core's creators asked for such arm twisting. Indeed, just yesterday, Andy Smarick at the Core-supporting Thomas B. Fordham Institute lamented that the write-up for President Obama's education budget proposal gives the administration credit for widespread Core adoption. Wrote Smarick: "The anti-Common Core forces will likely use this language as evidence that Common Core was federally driven." Of course it was federally driven, by Race to the Top (RTTT) and No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waivers! But the budget proposal tells us far more than that.
The big story in the proposal is – or, at least, should be – that the president almost certainly wants to make the Core permanent by attaching annual federal funding to its use, and to performance on related tests. Just as the administration called for in its 2010 NCLB reauthorization proposal, POTUS wants to employ more than a one-time program, or temporary waivers, to impose "college and career-ready standards," which–thanks to RTTT and waivers–is essentially synonymous with Common Core. In fact, President Obama proposes changing Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act – of which NCLB is just the most recent reauthorization – to a program called "College- and Career-Ready Students," with an annual appropriation of over $14 billion.
This was utterly predictable. Core opponents, who are so often smeared as conspiracy mongers, know full well both what the President has proposed in the past, and how government accumulates power over time. RTTT was the foot in the door, and once most states were using the same standards and tests, there was little question what Washington would eventually say: "Since everyone's using the same tests and standards anyway, might as well make federal policy based on that." Perhaps given the scorching heat the Common Core has been taking lately, most people didn't expect the administration to make the move so soon, but rational people knew it would eventually come. Indeed, the "tripod" of standards, tests, and accountability that many Core-ites believe is needed to make "standards-based reform" function, logically demands federal control. After all, a major lesson of NCLB is that states will not hold themselves accountable for setting and clearing high academic bars.
While it's a crucial fact, the full story on the Common Core isn't that the feds coerced adoption. It is that the end game is almost certainly complete federal control by connecting national standards and tests to annual federal funding. And that, it is now quite clear, is no conspiracy theory.
Cambridge Resists a Changing World
David Boaz
The noted biographer Justin Kaplan, who won both a Pulitzer Prize and an American Book Award for his biographies of Mark Twain, Lincoln Steffens, and Walt Whitman, has died at the age of 88. He had a long and distinguished career in American letters, not just with his biographies but as an editor of such writers as Bertrand Russell, Will Durant, Nikos Kazantzakis, and C. Wright Mills.
He also edited the 16th edition of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, published in 1992. I wrote a review of that book. I can't recall where it appeared, nor can I find it on the web. But along with praise for many of the changes he made, notably in making it fresher and more multicultural, I did note one concern with his selections, which I suggested was common among East Coast intellectuals:
The dozen years since the fifteenth edition have been marked by a worldwide turn toward markets, from Reagan and Thatcher to the New Zealand Labor Party's free-market reforms to the fall of Soviet communism. This historical trend seems to have escaped editor Kaplan, of Cambridge, Mass., who has given us more quotations from Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and Robert Heilbroner, while virtually eliminating F. A. Hayek and Milton Friedman, the intellectual gurus of the free-market revolution. A bust of Hayek now sits in the Kremlin, but Cambridge is holding out against the tide.
Hayek has been reduced to two quotations, neither of which reflects his particular contributions to social thought. Friedman is represented by three, including the wrongly attributed aphorism, "There's no such thing as a free lunch." Meanwhile, the towering figure of John Kenneth Galbraith receives 11 citations. (William F. Buckley, Jr., is unrepresented.)
As in 1980, the Bible is second only to Shakespeare in the number of quotations included. But Ayn Rand, who came in second to the Bible in a 1991 Gallup survey on most influential authors, gets only three citations. Margaret Thatcher likewise is represented with three quotations, none of which captures her free-market radicalism.
Quotations from recent presidents offer a similar surprise. John F. Kennedy leads the pack with 28 quotations, followed by Richard Nixon with 10, Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter with 6, George Bush with 4, and Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan with 3. Again, Reagan's impact on the world, not to mention his reputation as the Great Communicator, seems to have bypassed Cambridge. However, when one tries to remember which Reagan phrases ought to be included, one is struck by how many of them are derivative: "city on a hill," "Evil Empire," "rendezvous with destiny," "Where's the Rest of Me?" (Surely John G. Magee's "I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth" was added to this edition because Peggy Noonan used those lines in the remarks she wrote for Reagan after the Challenger disaster, yet there is no reference to Reagan.)
Still, one would think that a few of his off-the-cuff remarks–"There you go again" or "We begin bombing in five minutes"–might warrant inclusion, along with some Reaganesque phrases about politics and government, such as "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" or "the ant heap of totalitarianism" or "The nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth is a temporary government agency."
Which reminds me, where is Barry Goldwater's "A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away"? (For that, you'll need Bruce Bohle's Home Book of American Quotations.)
One might assume that these curiosities don't represent any conscious bias on Kaplan's part, just a blindness to the political and economic changes going on in the world. Dictionaries of quotations are perforce behind the times; they represent the distilled wisdom, or at least memorabilia, of centuries. As market liberalism sweeps the world in the 21st century, its architects will get their due. Still, it's disappointing to see a 1992 edition offering fewer selections from thinkers such as Friedman and Hayek. And Kaplan's response to an earlier criticism about the lack of Reagan quotations suggests a determined refusal to grant Reagan an important place in the world. Presumably the same animus is in fact reflected in the lack of quotations from Hayek, Friedman, and so on.
I should note that some of these criticisms were remedied in the 2002 edition, which Kaplan also edited, and in the most recent revision. Reagan, Thatcher, and Rand (though not Hayek) are better represented. And certainly these omissions in a massive reference work don't detract from Kaplan's great contributions to literature and biography. RIP.
End the Drug War: The American People are Not the Enemy
Doug Bandow
Drug use is bad. Arresting people for using drugs is worse. With the states of Colorado and Washington leading the way, the federal government should drop criminal penalties against those who produce, sell, and consume drugs.
The so-called Drug War has been a violent, often deadly, assault on the American people. There's no obvious moral reason to demonize the use of mind-altering substances which are widely used around the globe. Obviously, drugs can be abused, but so can almost anything else.
Some people still may abhor drug use as a matter of personal moral principle, but the criminal law should focus on inter-personal morality, that is, behavior which directly affects others. Basing criminal strictures on intra-personal morality essentially puts government into the business of soul-molding, a task for which it has demonstrated little aptitude.
Moreover, whatever one's moral sensibilities, drug prohibition has allowed extremely high use while yielding all of the counterproductive impacts of criminalization. The direct enforcement costs run more than $40 billion a year and affect every level of government. Forgone tax revenue is even greater. Attempting to suppress an enduring and profitable trade also has corrupted virtually every institution it has touched—police, prosecution, judiciary, Drug Enforcement Agency, and even military.
As I point out in my article for the Intercollegiate Studies Institute,
Perhaps the most perverse impact of the Drug War has been to injure and kill users. Far from protecting people from themselves, prohibition actually makes drug use more dangerous. For instance, actor Philip Seymour Hoffman chose to use heroin, but he could never be certain as to its quality, purity, and potency.
Threatening addicts with jail also makes them less likely to seek assistance. The drug war encourages needle-sharing by IV drug users. Congressional lawmakers fight to keep marijuana off-limits to the ill.
Nor is there any way to run a war against tens of millions of Americans without sacrificing their and our constitutional liberties. Indeed, the crusade against drug use has turned the supposed "land of the free" into a prison state. Drug offenders account for more than half of federal convicts. Roughly one fifth of state prisoners are in for drug crimes.
Ironically, the Drug War creates more and more dangerous crimes. As during Prohibition violence becomes the ultimate business guarantee in an illegal marketplace. Abundant drug revenues also underwrite criminal gangs and organizations. Even the late James Q. Wilson, who supported drug prohibition, admitted that "It is not clear that enforcing the laws against drug use would reduce crime. On the contrary, crime may be caused by such enforcement."
One still could imagine attempting to justify the Drug War if it eliminated drug abuse. However, drug prohibition has the most impact where it is least needed—discouraging some casual use.
Government figures indicate that nearly half of Americans older than 12 have tried illegal drugs. Tens of millions of people consume with some regularity.
Frustration with the Drug War was manifested by the decision of voters in Colorado and Washington to legalize recreational marijuana use. Uruguay has done the same, with pressure rising in other Latin American nations to shift away from prohibition.
Congress should allow America's states to experiment. Drugs could be sold with varying restrictions (evident with both alcohol and cigarettes). Greatest law enforcement efforts should remain directed at kids, which would be easier in a semi-legal gray market.
Legalization would not be a scary jump into the unknown. Portugal decriminalized all drugs a decade ago. Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Switzerland have permitted some legal drug use. A dozen American states previously decriminalized marijuana consumption and many more legalized the use of medical marijuana. While these policies have not been problem-free, none have seen challenges approaching those caused by criminal prohibition.
People should not abuse drugs. It might be best if they didn't use them at all. However, that is no justification for a war against drug users, arresting many and endangering all.
American governments at all levels should terminate the Drug War. It is time to stop treating the American people as the enemy.
Supreme Court Appears Set to Rein-In Questionable Shareholder Class Actions
Andrew M. Grossman
In what may be the biggest business case of the term, the Supreme Court today declined to show its hand.
Halliburton v. Erica P. John Fund, Inc. takes aim at shareholder class actions, a field of law that the Court itself created in a 1988 case, Basic v. Levinson. A four-justice majority in Basic held that shareholders suing over misrepresentations may prove that they relied on the false statements—a necessary element of any fraud suit—by presumption: if the market for the stock in question is more-or-less efficient, their reliance on any misrepresentations that are baked into the price of the stock may be presumed. Without this presumption, each shareholder would have to individually demonstrate his or her actual knowledge of the misrepresentation and actual reliance upon it, precluding the kind of "commonality" required to bring a class action.
Basic came at the tail-end of the Court's decades-long experiment in policymaking by creating and defining the contours of civil actions. Where Congress passed remedial laws—here, Section 10(b) the Securities Exchange Act of 1934—the Court would often read into them "implied" causes of action allowing private litigants to bring suit and seek damages over alleged infractions that would otherwise be left to regulators.
The test of time has shown that the Court is ill-suited to this function, particularly in the securities-law context. Since Basic, stock-drop class actions have boomed, and attaining class certification (merely by relying on Basic's presumption that the issues at play are common to class members) just about guarantees a settlement. But there has been commensurately little benefit to shareholders, who are, in the end, the ones who wind up paying any damages or settlements, with the lawyers skimming off a good portion. In other words, these suits are very likely a net negative for shareholders—which may explain why Congress has never authorized them legislatively. And in a 2013 decision, four of the Court's conservatives stated their willingness to reconsider Basic.
Chief Justice Roberts, however, kept his own counsel then, and that is what he did today. His few questions, most directed at the plaintiffs' counsel David Boies and Malcolm Stewart, arguing for the government in support of the plaintiffs, focused on concrete results.
"Don't most cases settle immediately following certification and so never reach the merits?," the Chief Justice asked Boies. Similarly, Chief Justice Roberts asked Stewart, "And when the Court decided Basic, were high-quality "event studies" available by which plaintiffs could show that the heart of Basic's presumption—that a given misrepresentation affected the stock price—holds true?"
Justices Alito and Kennedy, who led the questioning of the justices skeptical of Basic, took the Chief's drift. They pushed hard on a fallback argument by the defendant (also made by several law professors) that would require shareholder plaintiffs, at the certification stage, to prove that all class members were injured in the same way by the misrepresentation—that is, to show that the misrepresentation caused a price impact. That showing, the defendant's counsel Aaron Streett argued, is the "glue" that holds together the class. Even Justices Breyer and Sotomayor, assumed to be unlikely pickups for the defendants, expressed some sympathy for the idea that price impact is at least relevant to demonstrating commonality at the certification stage, though they wavered on whose burden it should be: plaintiffs to prove it, or defendants to rebut it. And Stewart conceded that requiring plaintiffs to make such a showing, such as through an event study, would not have any negative effects, given that (under any view of the law) plaintiffs are required to make such a showing at some point in the case—albeit, as currently understood, after certification during the merits phase if, that is, the case has not already settled.
The chief barrier to overturning Basic may not be its logic, its wisdom, or even its correctness as a matter of law, but instead stare decisis—that is, the Court's respect for its prior decisions, particularly where they interpret statutes that Congress may subsequently reverse through legislation. Justice Kagan, in particular, seemed to suggest by her questioning that any changes since Basic have been minor and do not justify the Court's upending settled law. The Chief Justice as well suggested that the Court is not well-suited to track developments in the field of economics that might undermine Basic and instead should leave that task to Congress.
If one had to make a prediction, it is that Basic's presumption of shareholder reliance will continue in force, but with a new requirement of price impact engrafted upon it. While that result would not correct the Court's initial mistake of creating and then expanding a kind of lawsuit that Congress never envisioned, it would at least limit the damage and do so in a way that is consistent with the Court's overall jurisprudence on implied rights of action and class action certification. That would cut down on abusive litigation, while leaving the bigger questions of policy to Congress—where they rightly belong.
More Taxes than Meets the Eye in Obama's Budget
Nicole Kaeding
Yesterday's budget from President Obama claimed to raise taxes by $650 billion in addition to the $650 billion in tax hikes from January 2013. However, careful analysis shows that the president wants much more money from American's pocketbook. The exact amount isn't entire clear due to the games the Office of Management and Budget is playing with its various tables, but if the president had his way, more than $1 trillion in tax hikes would be coming.
Here is just a sample of the tax hikes the president proposes:
- "Buffet Tax" ($53 billion): President Obama resurrected this tax that would require high-income individuals to pay at least 30% of their income in taxes.
- Limiting tax teduction ($598 billion): President Obama would also limit the value of itemized deductions for high-income earners.
- Changes to the "Death Tax" ($131 billion): The president suggests going back to the estate tax rules of 2009 which would increase the marginal tax rate on estates and lower the exemption, subjecting more assets to taxation.
- Changes to oil and gas taxation ($44 billion): Frequently criticized by the president, these tax provisions are not subsidies to oil and gas companies, but instead ameliorate the tax code's improper treatment of capital expenditures.
- Changes to international taxation ($276 billion): Instead of moving the United States to a territorial tax system like the rest of the industrialized world, the president proposes further raising taxes on corporation with overseas earnings.
- Cap on 401(k)/IRA Contributions ($28 billion): This provision would prohibit individuals from contributing to retirement accounts if the balance is greater than $3 million.
- Increase in tobacco taxes ($78 billion): To pay for his universal pre-k proposal, President Obama would increase the tobacco tax from $1.10/pack to $1.95/pack.
Like so many other sections of the budget, the president is trotting out old, tired, blame-the-rich rhetoric instead of tackling the country's real problems.
Supporting Marriage Equality in Utah and Oklahoma
Ilya Shapiro
Utah Constitutional Amendment 3, passed by referendum in 2004, states that no union other than one between a man and a woman may be recognized as a marriage. Derek Kitchen and five co-plaintiffs took issue with this definition and filed a lawsuit in federal district court last year to challenge the gay marriage ban. In a surprising and widely publicized December 2013 ruling, the court invalidated the amendment, finding that such a restriction was an affront to equal protection and the fundamental right to marry.
Meanwhile, Mary Bishop and Sharon Baldwin also filed a federal suit to challenge a similar provision that was added to Oklahoma's constitution by referendum in 2004. Like Utah's district court, the Oklahoma district court found the amendment unconstitutional. Following on the heels of last term's Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Windsor—which struck down part of the Defense of Marriage Act—these ground-breaking red-state cases are now both before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, which will consider the constitutionality of a state's decision to exclude same-sex unions from the definition of marriage.
Reprising our collaboration in Hollingsworth v. Perry—the Prop 8 case in which the Supreme Court avoided ruling on the merits—Cato and the Constitutional Accountability Center have filed a brief supporting the Utah and Oklahoma plaintiffs' fight for equality under the law in their respective challenges. We argue that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to protect from this same type of arbitrary and invidious singling-out that the Utah and Oklahoma marriage restrictions effect; that the original meaning of the Equal Protection Clause confirms that its protections are to be interpreted broadly; and that the clause provides every person the equal right to marry a person of his or her choice. We believe that the Utah and Oklahoma constitutional amendments conflict with the equal protection rights of those same-sex couples whose unions are treated differently than those of opposite-sex couples.
Every person has the right to choose whom to marry, and to have that decision respected equally by the state in which they live. Especially in the wake of Windsor, it is becoming clearer that laws like these that force same-sex unions into second-class status have no place in a free society. The Tenth Circuit should affirm the district courts' decisions.
With briefing in Kitchen v. Herbert and Bishop v. Smith now complete, the Tenth Circuit will be hearing argument shortly, with a decision expected in late spring or summer.
This blogpost was co-authored by Cato legal associate Julio Colomba.
Why Would School Staff Force a Student to Freeze?
Jason Bedrick
It seems mind-boggling. Minnesota public school staff forced a barefoot teenage girl in a wet bathing suit to stand outside in sub-zero weather until she developed frostbite.
It happened around 8:30 a.m. Wednesday at Como Park High School in St. Paul. Fourteen-year-old Kayona Hagen-Tietz says she was in the school's pool when the fire alarm went off.
While other students had gotten out earlier and were able to put on dry clothes, Hagen-Tietz said she was rushed out with just her towel.
On Wednesday morning, the temperature was 5 below, and the wind chill was 25 below.
A teacher prevented her from getting her clothes from her locker because the rules stipulate that everyone must immediately leave the building in the event of a fire alarm. Shivering, the student pleaded to be allowed to go inside a car or another building but her request was denied.
Hagen-Tietz asked to wait inside an employee's car, or at the elementary school across the street. But administrators believed that this would violate official policy, and could get the school in trouble, so they opted to simply let the girl freeze.
Students huddled around her and a teacher gave her a coat, but she stood barefoot for ten minutes before obtaining permission to sit in a vehicle. By that point, she had already developed frostbite.
How can something like this happen? Public choice theory offers an important insight: even in the public sector, people tend to act in their own self-interest and respond to incentives.
In this case, each of the rules makes perfect sense in the abstract. The fire alarm may signal a real danger so exiting the building with alacrity is essential. Likewise, rules about keeping students on school property and out of adults' vehicles reflect legitimate concerns about student safety. And yet, in enforcing these safety rules rigidly in an extreme case where they should not apply, the teachers and administrators violated the rules' very intention.
Government schools and their employees are not held accountable to parents, but to bureaucrats and their top-down rules. No doubt the school staff were well-intentioned—they recognized the harm this girl was suffering and almost certainly wanted to help her—but they were more afraid of violating the rules. Though the rules were written to protect students, in this case the rules were inimical to a student's well-being, yet the staff still chose compliance over common sense.
No school is perfect—no human institution is—but incidences like these are much less likely to occur when schools are held directly accountable to parents. The only way to make government schools directly accountable to parents, as their private counter-parts already are, is to enact educational choice programs that empower parents to vote with their (non-frostbitten) feet.
Obama's New Budget: Burden of Government Spending Rises More than Twice as Fast as Inflation
Daniel J. Mitchell
The President's new budget has been unveiled.
There are lots of provisions that deserve detailed attention, but I always look first at the overall trends. Most specifically, I want to see what's happening with the burden of government spending.
And you probably won't be surprised to see that Obama isn't imposing any fiscal restraint. He wants spending to increase more than twice as fast as needed to keep pace with inflation.
What makes these numbers so disappointing is that we learned last month that even a modest bit of spending discipline is all that's needed to balance the budget.
By the way, you probably won't be surprised to learn that the President also wants a $651 billion net tax hike.
That's in addition to the big fiscal cliff tax hike from early last and the (thankfully small) tax increase in the Ryan-Murray budget that was approved late last year.
P.S. Since we're talking about government spending, I may as well add some more bad news.
I've shared some really outrageous examples of government waste, but here's a new example that has me foaming at the mouth. Government bureaucrats are flying in luxury and sticking taxpayers with big costs. Here are some of the odious details from the Washington Examiner.
What can $4,367 buy? For one NASA employee, it bought a business-class flight from Frankfurt, Germany, to Vienna, Austria. Coach-class fare for the same flight was $39. The federal government spent millions of dollars on thousands of upgraded flights for employees in 2012 and 2013, paying many times more for business and first-class seats than the same flights would have cost in coach or the government-contracted rate. …Agencies report their premium travel expenses to the General Services Administration each year. These reports were obtained by the Washington Examiner through Freedom of Information Act requests. …The most common reasons across agencies for such "premium" flights in 2012 and 2013 were medical necessities and flights with more than 14 hours of travel time.
By the way, "medical necessities" is a loophole that can be exploited. All too often, bureaucrats get excuses from their doctors saying that they have bad backs (or something similarly dodgy) and that they require extra seating space.
But I'm digressing. It's sometimes hard to focus when there are so many examples of foolish government policy.
Let's look at more examples of taxpayers getting ripped off.
One such flight was a trip from Washington, D.C., to Brussels, Belgium, which cost $6,612 instead of $863. Similar mission-required upgrades included several flights to Kuwait for $6,911 instead of $1,471, a flight from D.C. to Tokyo for $7,234 instead of $1,081 and a trip from D.C. to Paris for $6,037 instead of $477. …NASA employees also racked up a long list of flights that cost 26, 72 and even 112 times the cost of coach fares, according to Examiner calculations. Several space agency employees flew from Oslo, Norway, to Tromso, Norway – a trip that should have cost $65. Instead, each flew business class for $4,668. Another NASA employee flew from Frankfurt, Germany, to Cologne, Germany, for $6,851 instead of $133, a flight that cost almost 52 times more than the coach fare. …One flight from D.C. to Hanoi, Vietnam, for an informational meeting cost $15,529 instead of $1,649, according to the agency's 2012 report.
Frankfurt to Cologne for $6851 and a domestic flight in Norway for $4668?!? Did these trips include caviar and a masseuse? Were the planes made of gold?
I do enough international travel to know that these prices are absurd, even if you somehow think bureaucrats should get business class travel (and they shouldn't).
And as you might suspect, much of the travel was for wasteful boondoggles.
Department of the Interior employees, for example, flew to such exotic locations as Costa Rica, Denmark, Japan and South Africa in 2012. …The Department of Labor sent employees to places like Vietnam and the Philippines for "informational meetings," conferences and site visits.
The one sliver of good news is that taxpayers didn't get mistreated to the same extent last year as they did the previous year.
The agencies spent $5.7 million in 2012, almost double the $3 million they paid for premium travel in 2013.
The moral of the story is that lowering overall budgets - as happened in 2013 - is the only effective way of reducing waste.
Nothing to Celebrate in Obama's Budget
Nicole Kaeding
Moments ago, the President released his fiscal year 2015 budget request. Sadly, for those who support smart, sensible budgeting, the President's budget is nothing to celebrate. The budget increases spending and fails to tackle the true drivers of our budget problem—entitlement spending. All deficit reduction included in the budget is from revenue increases, not spending cuts.
Over the several days, we'll be analyzing the President's budget in full detail, but here are the top-line numbers from the President's budget.
1-The President's budget suggests spending more than the Ryan-Murray budget passed in December. Under the agreement reached by Budget Chairs Congressman Ryan and Senator Murray, and supported by the President, discretionary spending for fiscal year 2015 should be $1,014 trillion. The President's budget includes a section that bumps that up by $56 billion, paid for mostly by tax increases.
2-Over the ten-year budgetary window, the President spends $171 billion more than Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projections. The budget also does not reach balance and runs deficits every single year.
3- According to Obama's budget, the federal government will collect $3.3 trillion in tax revenue this year, more than any other year in history. The budget includes $650 billion in new revenue though various distortionary tax hikes. The President's Office of Management and Budget also made rosier assumptions about the growth of the economy over the next ten years. As a result, over the ten-year budgetary window, the President's collects an additional $3.1 trillion in revenue than CBO assumed in February.
Will Venezuela Be Next?
Steve H. Hanke
Last year, Nicholas Krus and I published a chapter, "World Hyperinflations", in the Routledge Handbook of Major Events in Economic History. We documented 56 hyperinflations – cases in which monthly inflation rates exceeded 50% per month. Only seven of those hyperinflations have savaged Latin America (see the accompanying table).
At present, the world's highest inflation resides in Latin America, namely in Venezuela. The Johns Hopkins – Cato Institute Troubled Currencies Project, which I direct, estimates that Venezuela's implied annual inflation rate is 302%. Will Venezuela be the eighth country to join the Latin American Hall of Shame? Maybe. But, it has a long way to go.
The Hanke-Krus Hyperinflation Table
Latin American edition
Source: Steve H. Hanke and Nicholas Krus (2013), "World Hyperinflations", in Randall Parker and Robert Whaples (eds.) Routledge Handbook of Major Events in Economic History, London: Routledge Publishing.
Finding a Way Back From the Brink in Ukraine
Doug Bandow
Ukrainians won an important political battle by ousting the corrupt Viktor Yanukovich as president. But replacing Yanukovich with another dubious politico will change little.
Washington also triumphed. Without doing much—no troops, no money, few words—Americans watched protestors frustrate Russia's Vladimir Putin.
But now Russia is attempting to win as well, intervening in Crimea. Moscow has created a tinderbox ready to burst into flames. The only certainty is that the U.S. should avoid being drawn into a war with Russia.
In 2010 Yanukovich triumphed in a poll considered to be fair if not entirely clean. His corrupt proclivities surprised no one. However, while tarred as pro-Russian, in accepting Putin's largesse last November Yanukovich actually refused to sign the Moscow-led Customs Union.
Still, protestors filled Maidan Square in Kiev over Yanukovich's rejection of a trade agreement with the European Union. As I point out in my latest Forbes column: "The issue, in contrast to Kiev's later brutal treatment of protestors, had nothing to do with democracy, human rights, or even sovereignty." As such, it was not America's business, but up to the Ukrainian people.
And Ukraine is divided. Broadly speaking, the nation's west is nationalist and leans European while the east is Russo-friendly.
Demonstrations quickly turned into a de facto putsch or street revolution. Yanukovich's ouster was a gain for Ukraine, but similar street violence could be deployed against better elected leaders in the future.
Moreover, many of those who look east and voted for Yanukovich feel cheated. There was no fascist coup, but the government they helped elect was violently overthrown. Some of them, especially in Crimea, prefer to shift their allegiance to Russia.
Kiev should engage disenfranchised Yanukovich backers. Kiev also should reassure Moscow that Ukraine will not join any anti-Russian bloc, including NATO. But if Crimeans, in particular, want to return to Russia, they should be able to do so.
There is no important let alone vital security issue at stake for the U.S. in the specific choices Ukrainians make. The violent protests against the Yanukovich government demonstrate that Moscow has no hope of dominating the country. Kiev will be independent and almost certainly will look west economically.
Russia could still play the new Great Game. Unfortunately, rather than play Vladimir Putin upended the board by taking effective control of the Crimea.
Yet Putin tossed aside his trump card, a planned referendum by Crimea's residents. A majority secession vote would have allowed him to claim the moral high ground. However, an election conducted under foreign occupation lacks credibility.
As it stands Russia has committed acts of aggression and war.
Even in the worst case the U.S. has no cause for military intervention. Who controls the Crimea ain't worth a possible nuclear confrontation.
Putin is a nasty guy, but Great Power wannabe Russia is no ideologically-driven superpower Soviet Union. Moscow perceives its vital interests as securing regional security, not winning global domination. Yet bringing Ukraine into NATO would have created a formal legal commitment to start World War III.
The allies should develop an out for Russia. For instance, Moscow withdraws its forces while Kiev schedules independence referendums in Russian-leaning areas.
If Putin refuses to draw back, Washington and Brussels have little choice but to retaliate. The allies could impose a range of sanctions, though most steps, other than excluding Russian banks from international finance, wouldn't have much impact.
Tougher would be banning investment and trade, though the Europeans are unlikely to stop purchasing natural gas from Moscow. The other problem is the tougher the response the more likely Russia would harm American interests elsewhere, including in Afghanistan, Iran, and Korea.
The Ukrainian people deserve a better future. But that is not within Washington's power to bestow. Today the U.S. should concentrate on pulling Russia back from the brink in Ukraine.
A new cold war is in no one's interest. A hot war would be a global catastrophe.
Helicopter Parents, Helicopter Governance, and Today's Childhood
Walter Olson
Should parents helping their child's teacher put on a short class party have to submit to a background check first? Is it child endangerment to leave your toddler in the car for a few minutes on a mild day while you run into a shop? If your child gets hurt falling off a swing, is it potential child neglect not to sue every solvent defendant in sight? Should police have arrested a dad who walked into school at pickup time rather than wait outside for his kids as he was supposed to?
Author Lenore Skenazy has led the charge against the forces of legal and societal overprotectiveness in her book Free-Range Kids and at her popular blog of the same name. This Thursday, March 6 – rescheduled from a weather-canceled event originally set for last month – she'll be the Cato Institute's guest for a lunchtime talk on helicopter parenting and its near relation, helicopter governance; I'll be moderating and commenting. The event is free and open to the public, but you need to register, which you can do here. You can also watch online live at this link.
In Defense of Truthiness
Ilya Shapiro
If you only read one Cato brief this Supreme Court term, it should be this one.
Believe it or not, it's illegal in Ohio to lie about politicians, for politicians to lie about other politicians, or for politicians to lie about themselves. That is, it violates an election law—this isn't anything related to slander or libel, which has higher standards of proof for public figures—to make "false statements" in campaign-related contexts.
During the 2010 House Elections, a pro-life advocacy group called the Susan B. Anthony List (SBA List), published ads in Ohio claiming that then-Rep. Steven Driehaus, who was running for re-election, had voted to fund abortions with federal money (because he had voted for Obamacare). Rather than contesting the truth of these claims in the court of public opinion, Driehaus filed a complaint with the Ohio Election Commission (OEC) under a state law that makes it a crime to "disseminate a false statement concerning a candidate, either knowing the same to be false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false."
While the complaint was ultimately dropped, the SBA List took Driehaus and the OEC to federal court, seeking to have this law declared unconstitutional and thus enable advocacy groups to have more freedom going forward. The case has now reached the Supreme Court.
Joined by legendary satirist (and Cato's H.L. Mencken Research Fellow) P.J. O'Rourke, our brief supports the SBA List and reminds the Court of the important role that "truthiness"—facts you feel you in heart, not in your head—plays in American politics, and the importance of satire and spin more broadly. We ask the Court a simple yet profound question: Doesn't the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech protect one man's truth even if it happens to be another man's lie? And who's to judge—and on what scale—when a statement slides "too far" into the realm of falsehood?
However well intentioned Ohio legislators may have been, laws that criminalize "false" speech don't replace truthiness and snark with high-minded ideas and "just the facts." Instead, they chill speech, replacing the sort of vigorous political dialogue that's at the core of the democratic process with silence. The Supreme Court of all institutions should understand that just because a statement isn't fully true, that doesn't mean it doesn't have its place in public discourse. Moreover, pundits and satirists are much-better placed to evaluate and send-up half-truths than government agencies.
The Supreme Court will hear argument in Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus on April 22.
A Closer Look at Congress's Views on Trade
K. William Watson
Cato's congressional trade votes database now includes votes from last year on major trade bills and amendments in both houses of Congress. The purpose of the database is to educate the public about the trade policy preferences of individual members. We do that by recording their votes on major trade bills and amendments and using the data to map a broader ideological profile.
Whether a particular member qualifies as a free trader, an isolationist, an internationalist, or an interventionist based on our methodology depends on their support for (or opposition to) trade barriers and subsidies.
In previous years, the farm bill and its various amendments have provided a treasure trove of vote data to pin down members' proclivities on specific commodities and willingness to use public money to distort the economy for the benefit of select cronies. This year was no different, except that votes taken in the House of Representatives on the full package bill have been excluded. Those votes hinged almost entirely on the issue of food stamps, and because the purpose of the database is to reveal members' trade policy positions, including them in the database would be inappropriate.
That doesn't mean, of course, that you shouldn't be dismayed by Republicans who, after successfully removing food stamps from the bill so that productive debate could be had on reforming farm programs, nevertheless voted en masse to continue our Soviet-style agriculture policy with no significant change.
The new votes on the site include the Senate farm bill, failed votes in both houses to reform the sugar program, an amendment to avoid protectionist regulations on imported olive oil, an extension of "Buy American" policies in government procurement, and a continuation of export marketing subsidies for wealthy agribusiness.
I encourage you to check out the site, read up on our unique methodology, and find out just how protectionist your favorite (or least favorite) member of Congress really is.


text:
Kathy Cassidy
First impression on unpacking the Q702 test unit was the solid feel and clean, minimalist styling.
Building a PC is a little like walking a tightrope without a net. Okay, it's not quite that dangerous, but unlike buying an off-the-shelf system, you have to be your own tech support staff. Sure, you can try to get support from individual component suppliers, but that can be frustrating--your motherboard maker points at your memory suppliers, who blames your graphics card manufacturer, and so on. Before you know it, the money you saved from building your PC has been outweighed by the time you spent getting it to work.
Fortunately, we have a few tips that can help you find and fix your home-built PC's problems. First, we're going to cover some troubleshooting tips, and then we'll take a look at some common issues with DIY PCs.
How To Troubleshoot Your PC
Here are a few tips to avoid getting stuck in a troubleshooting rut.
State the problem clearly, even if it's only to yourself. If you need to, write it down. "The system won't boot" isn't good enough. Instead: "The system won't boot; when it tries to boot, it generates an error saying that no operating system is installed. When I try to reboot, I can see that my hard drive isn't visible to the BIOS."
Pay attention to your system's changes. If something isn't working that was working before, ask yourself, what's different? Was an app installed? A new driver update? A BIOS update? In the above example, of the system not booting, you might realize that you just installed a second hard drive in your system.
Make only one change at a time. If you're experienced, it's particularly tempting to shortcut this process. "I'll update the BIOS, detach the second new hard drive, and swap out the power supply." If the system starts working, you don't know what actually solved the issue. If the system still doesn't work, it's possible that one of your multiple changes may be the new cause of the problem. Make one change at a time!
Document your changes. You don't have to keep a detailed lab notebook. Just grab a sheet of paper and note each step along the way, what worked and what didn't. Once you solve the problem, throw the page or pages into a folder for future reference.
Getting frustrated? Walk away from the problem. A little downtime can bring new inspiration or help you catch clues you may not have noticed.
Ask for help. If you're still having problems, bring in a second pair of eyes. Even a nontechnical person can make useful suggestions, if you've explained the issue clearly. Also, try an online forum (like the PCWorld Forums). If you go online for help, make sure you present a detailed description of the problem, including brand names and model numbers, if appropriate.
Using a well-defined process to work through problems will result in speedier, more satisfying solutions--and save you a few bucks. While it can be tempting just to throw money at a problem ("This motherboard is dead! I'm going to go buy a new one!"), make sure to pull out your credit card only after you're sure you'll need it.
The System Won't POST!
Every PC goes through POST--power-on self test--when it first powers up. One mistake many new system builders make is to assemble the entire system, then try the first boot. The problem with this approach is that it's difficult to narrow down the actual culprit behind a boot problem. Instead, install the CPU (with CPU cooling solution), memory, and (if applicable) the graphics card. Don't connect hard drives, external storage, or optical drives. Don't install additional expansion cards yet, either. Try a bare-bones boot first, with only the monitor and keyboard attached to the system.
With that in mind, let's look at first-boot issues.
Nothing happens on startup. After attaching the monitor and keyboard, you press the power switch and... nothing. The fans don't spin up, lights don't come on. The system appears to be completely DOA. While it's possible that the motherboard is completely dead, it's been my experience that defective motherboards will still light up their diagnostic LEDs. If you're getting no indication of power, something else is likely the culprit.
First impression on unpacking the Q702 test unit was the solid feel and clean, minimalist styling.
For work use, Microsoft Word and Excel programs pre-installed on the device are adequate for preparing short documents.
The Fujitsu LifeBook UH574 allowed for great mobility without being obnoxiously heavy or clunky. Its twelve hours of battery life did not disappoint.
The screen was particularly good. It is bright and visible from most angles, however heat is an issue, particularly around the Windows button on the front, and on the back where the battery housing is located.
My first impression after unboxing the Q702 is that it is a nice looking unit. Styling is somewhat minimalist but very effective. The tablet part, once detached, has a nice weight, and no buttons or switches are located in awkward or intrusive positions.
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
Overview : With lush woods, gorgeous vistas, challenging trails and remarkable stone formations, Castle Rock State Park is a highlight reel for... more »
Content provided by
Overview : With lush woods, gorgeous vistas, challenging trails and remarkable stone formations, Castle Rock State Park is a highlight reel for... more »
Hiking poles come in handy on this hike.
Trail Camp is popular with local Scout troops, most of whom are returning on Sunday mornings... more »
At Castle Rock, explore the many nooks and crannies for an up-close look at a major "tafoni" formations.
If you scramble around behind the rock you can enter a large cavern, big enough for several people.
Castle Rock Trail continues on the west side of the rock -- follow it for about a half-mile down to Saratoga Gap Trail.
Turn left here and head toward Castle Rock Falls.
This section of trail heads downhill under a thick canopy of Douglas Fir.
After about a third of a mile you'll round a turn and cross a creek at this junction. You'll revisit this trail intersection when the hike's almost over.
Turn left, continuing toward Castle Rock Falls.
After .2 of a mile, a large wood deck appears on the left, overlooking Castle Rock Falls.
Most of the year the flow is relatively mild, but if you come in winter after several days of rain might be quite a gusher.
On clear days there's a wonderful view of the Santa Cruz Mountains southwest of the park.
The trail hugs a steep hillside with fantastic views of the Santa Cruz Mountains.
This two-mile stretch has lots of tricky footing -- watch your step -- but it's also the most engaging section of the hike.
Take your time and enjoy the experience. Wildflowers decorate the hillside in springtime; the blazing sun of summer will make you regret... More
Just before you get here, there's a steel-cable handhold on a narrow sliver of trail above a drop-off on the hillside. Be extra careful here.
Russell Point looks westward toward neighboring Big Basin Redwoods State Park, home of some of the oldest trees in California.
The trail then curves to the right and heads toward the backpackers'... More
Turn left on Ridge Trail.
There's quite a bit of climbing along this way. Groves of shiny brown madrone trees arc to and fro across the forest along the first section of this route.
Eventually you'll pass out of the Madrone forest and into a stretch of oak woodland. After about 1.1 miles you'll reach the turn-off to Goat Rock -- a popular... More
Make sure you don't interfere with any of the climbers on Goat Rock -- some are dangling from fixed ropes on the rock as they practice their moves.
When you're done hanging out at Goat Rock, get back on Ridge Trail by taking the stone stairway downward and to the left of the rock.
Take Ridge Trail for a half-mile till you return to the... More


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- numbes's Activity
@StormyJoe: its not all multiplats it is one game on id tech five an engine designed to use sod all ram the next ue3/ue4/frostbite/cryengine game won't make 1080p 60fps
@StormyJoe: John D. Carmack m$ must love him could get things running at 1080p on a voodoo 3
it is fairly solid and in a market where cod has not changed in a decade and the battlefield series has moved to being completely broken i see why many are excited for it but it is no revolution
@pigonsteroidz: it would probably have been another 760g mobo they are most common you want a 970/990x/990fx also the games i listed as being bad console ports you can give them the worlds best hardw...
spec ops:the line dark souls ass creed and dragon age bad console ports duke nukem: forever just plain bad going to the 8350 from what you have won't change much 280x is fairly solid for 1080p the 760...
i did have a small amount of hope for this despite hating the whole idea of mechs but it is crap 6v6 is not a problem at all the best multiplayer fps game i have played since bf3 is loadout 4v4
got a squad to go hunting with? if no don't bother. curious as to how you have got to 96 hours i'm at 48 i lone wolf it it takes about 30 mins to get fully kitted out once you know the map then there ...
1. half life 1/2/blackmesa2. return to castle wolfenstein /enemy territory3. call of duty 1/24. gta 3/vice city/san andreas5. fallout 3/new vegas6. quake 3 arena 7. pokemon r/y/b8. portal 1/29. medal ...
looking for a good testicle heater desktop all the way for gaming


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Cellar/Tasting Notes One of the all-time great Palmers... An opaque blue/black color suggests a wine with thrilling levels of concentration and intensity, and That's exactly what a taster gets.
Cellar/Tasting Notes "This is a fabulous wine, with that tell-tale, dense, inky blue color that Angelus always seems to achieve. It displays an extraordinary nose of acacia flowers (or is it violets?) intermixed with blueberry liqueur, black raspberries, cassis, licorice, incense, and graphite. Full-bodied, viscous,..
Cellar/Tasting Notes "One of the greatest young wines I have ever tasted, the monumental 2009 Cos d'Estournel has lived up to its pre-bottling potential. A remarkable effort from winemaking guru Jean-Guillaume Prats and owner Michel Reybier, this blend of 65% Cabernet Sauvignon and the rest Merlot (33%) and a touch..
Cellar/Tasting Notes "This is unusually elegant in 2010 with its refined nose of raspberry and earth though there are background notes of grilled meat and smoke. The supple, mouth coating and utterly delicious broad-shouldered flavors possess a silky texture yet there is plenty of power and punch to the very firmly..
Cellar/Tasting Notes "The dense ruby/purple-tinged 2007 Cote Rotie La Mouline will be bottled around the time this report is released. A superb effort made in the style of the 1991 (which is drinking beautifully at age 20), the 2007 displays silky, velvety tannins, a seamless integration of acidity, alcohol and tannin,..
Cellar/Tasting Notes "This wine is fermented in oak tanks, malolactic in barrel, aged on its lees, then bottled unfined and unfiltered. A brilliant wine, opaque blue/purple in color, with an extraordinary nose of the essence of wet rocks intermixed with a floral perfume aspect, it displays enormous creme de cassis,..
Cellar/Tasting Notes Since the fifteenth century, men and women have left their property to the Hospices de Beaune. The Hospices de Beaune area is so built as a reflection of the generosity of the Burgundians and the multitude of the greatest terroirs of Burgundy.
The wines, sold at auction every third Sunday..
Cellar/Tasting Notes An inky/purple wine with an extraordinary nose of black raspberries, blueberries, acacia flowers, licorice and camphor, it is full-bodied, multi-dimensional and layered, with silky tannins, stunning purity, and a finish of 50+ seconds. This is an opulent, sexy, sumptuous style of wine to drink over..
Cellar/Tasting Notes Between 900 and 1,000 cases are normally made of the luxury cuvee, the Hermitage Les Bessards. An astonishing wine for the vintage, the 2011 is a candidate for the wine of the year in the entire Rhone Valley. Its black/purple color is accompanied by copious aromas of pen ink, licorice,..
Cellar/Tasting Notes "The 2010 Clos de Tart is still a work in progress, but this early tasting is fascinating. Layers of deep, dark fruit nearly jump from the glass in this exotic, full-bodied Clos de Tart. Crushed flowers, violets and spices develop over time as the wine gains its easy upper register. The tannins are..


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Rare Bi-color "Candy" Series Rouge Casaque Epsom Birkin 30cm
Measurements: Body length 11¾", height 9½", width 6", drop handle 4¼"
Please note that this is a previously owned item; imperfections are a unique aspect of vintage product.
Our quality control team has inspected this item and verified that it is in the condition described.
This bag comes with a box, dust bag, clochette, lock, keys, and clochette dust.
Material: Clemence leather
Brand: Hermès
Origin: France
Finding the perfect carryall is easy once you check out this stylish mix. You'll find everything from convertible satchels and quilted leather totes to slouchy hobos and bejeweled envelope clutches from a covetable list of designer names, including Isabella Fiore, Christopher Kon, and Badgley Mischka.


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Pathways to Housing DC is committed to ending homelessness for individuals with serious mental illnesses, co-occurring substance abuse disorders and/or other medical challenges in our Nation's capital. We accomplish this mission by offering resources, skills, and hope. We support self-directed recovery through low-barrier access to permanent housing and a broad range of time unlimited, wraparound supportive services including: mental and physical health treatment, substance abuse services, education and employment opportunities, family reunification and community integration. Since our inception in 2004, we have ended homelessness and supported recovery for more than 600 individuals.
Pathways' "Housing First" model meets the needs of individuals who are both homeless and have complex needs- whether psychiatric disabilities, addictions, PTSD, and/or other barriers to housing- and supports them in obtaining immediate access to housing. Once housed, an individual receives comprehensive support and treatment services so that he or she can make long-lasting strides in their recovery. This approach has consistently been shown to end and prevent chronic homelessness for 85-90% of individuals who have been traditionally seen as "noncompliant," "treatment resistant," and "not ready for housing." Pathways DC believe that housing is a basic human right, anyone who says they want a place to live is "housing ready," and that people can be successful in housing with the proper combination of supports. Using this evidence-based model, Pathways DC successfully engages, houses, supports and treats chronically homeless adults with serious psychiatric and other disabilities who have been living on the streets for years and facilitates their recovery and integration into our communities.
Pathways to Housing DC touches the lives of hundreds of individuals experiencing homelessness each year. More than 475 individuals participate in our Housing First program. These individuals all receive permanent housing and intensive, long-term treatment and support services to help them remain in housing and be successful in their recoveries. Through a partnership with the Downtown and Golden Triangle Business Improvement Districts, we operate two Street Homeless Outreach Teams whose goal is to engage, assess, and end homelessness for individuals living on the streets in the downtown area. In addition, we recently began managing the Urgent Care Clinic, one of the first of its kind, at the DC Superior Court. This clinic provides immediate behavioral health and addictions treatment to arrestees (over half of whom are homeless). Finally, recognizing the importance that access to healthcare has on an individual's ability to recover and maintain healthy lifestyles, we have partnered with Unity Healthcare to establish a walk-in primary healthcare clinic.
You can help the people we serve today by donating an item off of our wish list. We keep this list updated with the items people need the most when moving off the streets and into their own apartments.
We always need (new or gently used):
- Toiletries (shampoo, toothpaste, soap, lotion, deodorant, etc.)
- Pillboxes
- Metro cards ($1.00 or more)
- Safeway/Giant gift cards for clients without income who are awaiting approval of their benefits
- General gift cards (Visa, MasterCard, Walmart or Target)
- TVs and/or TV Converter boxes
- Pots and pans, dishes and silverware
- Alarm clocks/clock-radios
- Linens and towels
- Microwaves
- Hats, Scarves and Gloves
- Can openers
For questions or to arrange a drop-off, please contact:
Hannah Zollman, Director of Development
(202) 529-2972 ext. 130
Due to limited onsite storage space, we are unable to accept large furniture donations. In order to furnish the homes of the people we serve, we partner with A Wider Circle.
Thank you for your support!


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Cost of a Soul
|Release Date: May 20, 2011
|Running Time: 109 mins.
|MPAA Rating: R
|Genre: Crime, Drama, War
Chris Kerson
Will Blagrove
Mark Borkowski
Judy Jerome
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Summary:Wounded in the war, Tommy Donahue and DD Davis return home from Iraq to the slum neighborhood they grew up in. Tommy returns to his wife, Faith, whom he abandoned while she was pregnant to escape a life of crime. Tommy meets his disabled six-year-old daughter, Hope, for the first time, and she begins to melt his frozen heart.While DD struggles to m... Full Summary >>
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