Feds Should Flunk out of Education | Neal McCluskey | Cato Institute: Commentary

Feds Should Flunk out of Education | Neal McCluskey | Cato Institute: Commentary: "On a per-pupil basis, the Digest reports an inflation-adjusted rise from $435 in 1970 to $1,015 in 2006"

"The problem is that politicians say lots of things, and, unlike when you pay more for a car to get better safety or mileage, when politicians spend money it's often not to get better education. No, it's to curry favor with teacher unions, administrator associations or other special interests whose members get paid with increased federal funding and will raise hell for politicians who don't push it. So spending goes up, up, up, but achievement stays down, down, down."

TSA Searches, Bomb Risk Near Zero | Jim Harper | Cato Institute: Commentary

TSA Searches, Bomb Risk Near Zero | Jim Harper | Cato Institute: Commentary: "In 99 million domestic flights over the past decade, transporting seven billion U.S. travelers, there have been zero bombs snuck on to planes and detonated. (The one failed attempt came from overseas.) Common sense calls that a risk that's near zero."

"Air travel will never be 100 percent safe. But it would take a lot of successful attacks to make it more dangerous, for example, than driving."

On Air Security, We Are the Ones We've Been Waiting For | David Rittgers | Cato Institute: Commentary

On Air Security, We Are the Ones We've Been Waiting For | David Rittgers | Cato Institute: Commentary: "Passengers have been holding their own as a check on terrorists quite admirably ever since the traveling public learned that the rules of the hijacking game had changed.

The passengers on United Airlines Flight 93 immediately took action on Sept. 11, 2001, storming the cockpit and stopping another terrorist attack at the cost of their own lives. Three months later, two flight attendants and a defensive line of international travelers sacked would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid before he could score.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was right when she said that 'the system worked' after a Dutch filmmaker tackled the would-be Christmas Day 2009 bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The system did work, if you count the passengers as part of 'the system.'"

The TSA's False Tradeoff - Robert P. Murphy - Mises Daily

The TSA's False Tradeoff - Robert P. Murphy - Mises Daily: "In fact, no matter what procedures are implemented, it's always possible that wily terrorists will still manage to beat the system. In real life, we can never guarantee safety. This is why so many pundits' discussions of airline travel miss the mark completely: they assume that there is some objective answer of 'the right' amount of security, when this is a complex economic question."

"Only in a truly free market — where different airlines are free to try different approaches to safety — could we approach a sensible solution to these difficult questions. Passengers who don't mind invasive scanning or sensitive inspections could patronize airlines offering these (cheap) techniques — assuming they were really necessary to achieve adequate safety. On the other hand, passengers who objected to these techniques could pay higher ticket prices in order to fly on airlines that hired teams of bomb-sniffing dogs, or set up very secure prescreening procedures (perhaps with retinal IDing in order to board a flight), or implemented some as-yet-undreamt-of method to keep their flights safe, without resorting to methods that their customers found humiliating."

"One possibility is that the legal system would hold airlines strictly accountable for such property damage, and that the airlines would need to purchase massive insurance policies before obtaining permission to send giant steel containers full of jet fuel hurtling over skyscrapers and shopping malls."

End the IMF - Henry Hazlitt - Mises Daily

End the IMF - Henry Hazlitt - Mises Daily: "If there were no IMF, governments whose currencies were shaky as a result of their reckless fiscal and monetary policies would be forced to go to private bankers or investors to extricate them, and private investors would insist on guarantees of fiscal and monetary discipline as a condition of such help. But Keynes insured that a nation's 'domestic' inflationary policies 'shall be immune from criticism by the Fund.' He provided for automatic borrowing rights, and left any aid conditions to the necessarily political decisions of other governments through their representatives on the IMF."

A Tale of Two Colonies - Gary Galles - Mises Daily

A Tale of Two Colonies - Gary Galles - Mises Daily: "The change from communal- to private-property rights dramatically increased the Pilgrims' productivity. The beginnings of that productivity led to the bounty celebrated at Plymouth's famous 1623 Thanksgiving. And as historian Russell Kirk reported, 'never again were the Pilgrims short of food.'"

Thoughtless Taxation | Richard W. Rahn | Cato Institute: Commentary

Thoughtless Taxation | Richard W. Rahn | Cato Institute: Commentary: "Many Democrats, including many lame ducks, are still demanding that tax rates for entrepreneurs be increased under the absurd claim that not to do so will 'cost' the government 'almost $2 trillion over the 2011-20 period' in lost tax revenues. To believe these bogus numbers that the Joint Tax Committee staff and the administration put out about the revenue loss, one needs to believe that upper-income people will not alter their behavior when faced with higher tax rates, that high marginal tax rates on capital (the seed corn of the economy) and double taxation of it do not damage economic growth and job creation, and that the government is smaller than its optimum size to maximize the general welfare. The empirical evidence as well as good economic theory demonstrate that none of the above is true — but to those politicians, mainstream media sorts and left-wing economists who cannot understand the difference between variables and constants, facts don't matter.

The Wall Street Journal reported this past week, 'Some of the nation's largest banks are exiting or scaling back their dealings with foreign embassies and missions because of the burden of complying with money-laundering regulations.' The head of the Angolan mission to the United States said, 'Bank account closures strain relations with the U.S. ... Without bank accounts, we find it very difficult to function.' Surprise, surprise. Most people (other than members of Congress and government bureaucrats) can figure out not to take an action if the costs outweigh the benefits. U.S. government financial regulations on banks have reached the point where it is no longer profitable for banks to engage in many normal and necessary banking operations, particularly with foreigners. Not a good way to make friends.

In March, Congress passed the 'HIRE Act' which has had the unintended — but not unforeseen by many of us — consequence of causing foreign banks to withdraw from investing in the United States because of the costs and uncertain liabilities of dealing with U.S. government regulations. Thus, the United States may lose a trillion or more dollars in foreign investment under the guise of picking up a few billion dollars in tax-avoidance revenue."

"Both plans recognize that tax increases have adverse economic consequences and are far more damaging than spending cuts, but both plans endorse major tax increases. Neither plan seems to have asked the fundamental question, which is: Why do we need to have a government bigger than the revenue the tax code now produces? The simple answer is that we don't.

Government is growing faster than the private sector, and thus it is an arithmetic fact that no amount of tax increases can solve this spending problem. When a politician promises a spending 'entitlement' to one person, that politician is also making the normally unstated promise to make someone else a tax slave to pay for the entitlement."

Conservatives Share Blame for TSA's 'Freedom Fondle' | Gene Healy | Cato Institute: Commentary

Conservatives Share Blame for TSA's 'Freedom Fondle' | Gene Healy | Cato Institute: Commentary: "But when every bungled attack — no matter how inept — gets the screeching siren treatment on Drudge, what do you expect that political dynamic to produce? Sober, sensible policy?"

"when prominent conservatives brush off constitutional concerns with the bromide 'the Constitution is not a suicide pact,' (or, as Mitt Romney put it in 2007, 'Our most basic civil liberty is the right to be kept alive') is it so surprising that liberty and dignity get sent to the back of the line?

Like it or not, we live in the world the alarmists have made.

Yet, in reality, we're remarkably safe. In 2009, terrorists caused just 25 U.S. noncombatant fatalities worldwide. That's 25 too many, but 'existential,' it's not.

My colleague Jim Harper points out that, since 9/11, 'in 99 million domestic flights, transporting 7 billion people, precisely zero domestic travelers have snuck an underpants bomb onto a plane. (The one that we have seen — which did not work — came from overseas.)'

Surely the existence of the TSA — hapless and bureaucratic as they are — deters some potential bombers. Even so, the agency won't — likely can't — identify a single genuine terrorist they've caught, and it's not at all clear, according to the Government Accountability Office, that even the nude machine would have exposed the Christmas bomber.

We're safe — but not perfectly safe. Hyping and politicizing the terrorist threat won't deliver us perfect safety. Nothing can. But, as we're learning, it can put us on the path toward a society that no longer looks like America — one where you're endlessly prodded and poked — and ordered not to joke about the poking."

A Public Display of BMA Ignorance | Patrick Basham and John Luik | Cato Institute: Commentary

A Public Display of BMA Ignorance | Patrick Basham and John Luik | Cato Institute: Commentary: "proponents usually argue that the sole aim of tobacco display bans is to reduce youth smoking. So why does the BMA's statement suggest that other goals are being promoted, too? Why is Ireland now held up as a tobacco control nirvana? Most importantly, why does the BMA ignore a plethora of contrary economic evidence on the effects of such bans?

Until very recently, tobacco-control advocates campaigned for a display ban because it would lead to reduced youth smoking, full stop. But the evidence from various jurisdictions that have implemented a display ban suggests that smoking prevalence, especially among adolescents, is at best unaffected by such a ban. Indeed, there is evidence in some places that display bans have coincided with an increase in smoking.

Consequently, ban advocates are quietly and subtly moving the empirical goalposts. They are replacing youth smoking levels as the test of success with a measurement of how many young people perceive that their peers are smoking and then propagating a lower score as 'evidence' of the display ban's effectiveness. It is an intellectually dubious tactic, but left unchallenged it may do the trick, politically."

Almost no oil recovered from sand berms - FoxNews.com

Almost no oil recovered from sand berms - FoxNews.com: "The government has said that much of the crude that spewed from BP's well following the April 20 rig explosion was skimmed, burned, collected or dispersed. E-mails, internal reports and a log of oil sightings obtained by AP confirm that very little of the estimated 200 million gallons that gushed from the bottom of the sea has been seen on or recovered from the berms."

Hindsight is 20/20. At the time, was it a reasonable precaution given the uncertainty?