Today is Tax Freedom Day, says the Tax Foundation. You’ve worked four months just for the government. Now you can start paying that mortgage.

Targeted tax breaks have not succeeded in creating new jobs in Michigan. So why do Michigan’s leaders love the policy so much? Mackinac Center’s Jack McHugh notes a perverse political dynamic created by the Michigan Economic Growth Authority (MEGA):

The idea of targeted incentives seems plausible, so why doesn’t it work? The answer is that our economy is bigger and far more dynamic than any group of central planners can possibly comprehend or manage. Specific census numbers put this in perspective: In 2002, the last year of complete data, 587,361 jobs were created in Michigan, and 591,696 disappeared. In contrast, an honest tabulation of the jobs attributable to MEGA credits over 10 years is at best 13,541 jobs, or 2.3 percent of a single year’s worth of job creation in this state (actually less, because not all those credits were claimed). Another stark contrast: MEGA gave out incentives to only 27 of 21,185 new business establishments in 2002.

The magnitude of those job churn numbers is typical of the entire U.S. economy, which is dynamic, not static. They highlight all the silly and irrelevant press releases from the governor and legislators that announce 20 jobs here and 200 jobs there thanks to these special favors.

Perhaps the most damaging aspect of targeted incentive programs is that by letting politicians take credit for jobs provided by particular beneficiaries, they make it easier for themselves to avoid doing the harder but more fruitful work of fixing this state’s punishing tax, regulatory and labor climate. Had they done that real work in the past, nothing would have prevented Michigan from netting its share of the 6.8 million new jobs created in this country since 2003. There are no press releases or ribbon “un-cutting” ceremonies for the countless new business start-ups that were stillborn because of a punishing business climate, or were created elsewhere.

On Friday morning, Resource Bank participants got to see the Acton Institute’s new documentary The Call of the Entrepreneur. It’s a fabulous portrait of those who, by their ingenuity and vision, create new wealth for the world. Highly recommended.

Watch the trailer.

Check for premieres.

My first comment this morning has to be about the spectacular view from the 15th floor of the Loews Philadelphia Hotel. I’m looking out the window as I type, and I’m really enjoying the vastness of the Philly skyline. It’s an impression that fades a little bit (just a little) with the morning light. Philadelphia lit up at night is amazing.

The D.C. skyline has its charms, too, but monuments become a little boring when you’ve seen them every day for years. Sometimes it’s good when your job takes you out of the office. Even better when your job takes you to a different city—one with a different scale and a different style and some verticality.

My hotel window faces up Market Street (I think) toward the river. I see a neon sign, now unlit, that says Benjamin Franklin House. In the daylight, I also see the hodge-podge of architecture that Philadelphia has. There are buildings of all shapes and sizes and styles. Some might say it’s a messy skyline. I have no idea how the city came to look this way, but it certainly seems unplanned.

The messiness may discomfit some, but I like it, and it seems like a good setting for a gathering of folks who place liberty higher than order on the scale of political values. Of course, the best reason for conservative, free-market, and libertarian think tanks to gather in Philadelphia is that it is the birthplace of a constitutional order that made individual liberty its central concern—a fact noted by both featured speakers yesterday, Ken Blackwell and Newt Gingrich.

Yesterday’s best speaker (that I heard anyway) was Heartland’s Jay Lehr who gave a great synopsis of all the reasons to be skeptical of the alarmist storyline on global warming. I’ll repeat two of them. First, more carbon dioxide and higher temperatures are beneficial to life, as nearly 300 Department of Agriculture studies have concluded. Second, the alarmists claim there is a scientific consensus on climate change, which is reason to doubt their understanding of science. Science is about seeking truth, not consensus.

Ken Green’s talk was good, too, but he aroused some suspicions by concluding that cap-and-trade policies are on the way unless conservatives come up with an alternative. Green’s alternative is a revenue-neutral carbon tax.

At the session titled “Man and State: Restoring the Proper Balance,” Amity Shlaes convinced me to buy her forthcoming book. The Forgotten Man takes a new look at the Great Depression and the role it played in transforming American government. The question of the day, however, was asked by a member of the audience, who made the point that most people agree that government should do less and be smaller, but they don’t ever change their behavior because nobody wants to be the first to give up something that government is giving them. She asked how conservatives can get past this obstacle in their efforts to make government smaller. Everybody on the panel agreed that it was a good question. Henry Olsen, the moderator, concluded that, in terms of a small government agenda, things haven’t gotten much better in the past 27 years, but they haven’t gotten much worse, either.

Readers of this blog may know that, in several previous posts, I have praised George Washington’s Mount Vernon as a great place to visit and learn about American history. During his dinner speech, Newt Gingrich referenced Mount Vernon as well, noting the inspiring film shown there about George Washington’s decision to cross the Delaware for a Christmas-day attack on Trenton. Gingrich said Washington’s example should teach us never to give up on liberty. The watch words that Washington chose for that night were: “Victory or death.”

Later in the evening, when our stellar events crew had retired early so they could be up for this morning’s events, I kept the Heritage flame going by checking out the hotel bar. A good crowd of Resource Bank participants was there, and I heard a lot of comments about how smoothly and efficiently the event was being run. I said thanks on behalf of the events crew. Happy to do my part, guys!

I also heard a number of comments about how great it is that so many people from different countries are here at Resource Bank. A good part of the credit for that belongs to the Atlas Foundation, which hosts its Liberty Forum at the same venue, but prior to Resource Bank. Liberty Forum, which is a more international gathering of think tanks, helps bring in a lot of people from other countries who might not otherwise attend Resource Bank.

(I compared the conjunction of conservative events this week to what NBC used to do with “Must See TV.” I said Liberty Forum was to Resource Bank as “Mad About You” was to “Seinfeld.”  The person to whom I said this stated that I must be older than I look, to which I said: “Thanks.”)

Time to get back the sessions.

Monday: Hear John Blundell explain what Margaret Thatcher’s revolution can teach us about achieving change. The Director General of the Institute of Economic Affairs is hosted by The Heritage Foundation.

Tuesday: Celebrate the United Kingdom’s 300th birthday by having dinner in London with Lord Tebbit, Andrew Roberts, and the Countess of Mar, hosted by the Bruges Group.

Tuesday – Wednesday: Discover how philanthropy can help preserve American history and Founding principles. The Philanthropy Roundtable and the Manhattan Institute host a two-day conference in New York City.

Wednesday: Examine whether the No Child Left Behind Act hinders the education of the scientists, mathematicians, and engineers needed for American competitiveness. The American Enterprise Institute hosts.

Thursday: Get an answer to the question: Who are we today? The Hudson Institute hosts the 2007 Bradley Symposium featuring John McWhorter, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, David Blankenhorn, Linda Chavez, Ross Douthat, Yuval Levin, John O'Sullivan, Stephan Thernstrom, James Q. Wilson, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Amy Kass.

Thursday: Find out where “fast track” trade promotion authority is headed, as the Mercatus Center hosts an examination of the economics of trade promotion authority.

Friday: Learn about threats to Internet security and the appropriate responses of government, businesses, and consumers. The Progress and Freedom Foundation hosts its Second Annual Internet Security Summit.

Friday: Listen to Clifford Winston discuss his new book Government Failure vs. Market Failure, hosted by the AEI-Brookings Joint Center.

Singapore adapts. Singapore isn’t taking any chances on global warming, reports Der Spiegel. The island city-state is consulting with Dutch experts on building dikes to protect itself from the possibility that sea levels will rise as a result of any future global warming. Apparently, Singapore has hasn’t yet embraced the master plan of mankind trying to control the weather.

Health care in Britain isn’t quite free at the point of delivery. Consumers in Britain often pay so-called top-up fees in order to get better service than the basic level provided by the National Health Service, says the group Doctors for Reform. The group points to the development of this practice as evidence of a need for a national debate on the future of health care funding. Here’s a suggestion: Let consumers pay for what they want.

Yale’s idea of drama. Yale Dean of Student Affairs Betty Trachtenberg has decreed that realistic looking weapons may not be used in Yale theater productions, reports Yale Daily News. The decision, apparently, is a response to the tragedy at Virginia Tech. Student director Sarah Holden said the restriction turns theater “into ‘creamy bon-bons’ instead of ‘solid fare’ for a thinking, feeling audience.” Weapons that are obviously fake, such as wooden swords and plastic guns, will still be allowed. Also, the decision has no impact on portrayals of violence that don’t involve weapons at all. So portrayals of hangings and beatings are still allowed. (Via Volokh Conspiracy.)

The singularity will arrive in North Dakota last. North Dakota has passed a law against forcing people to accept implantation of microchips into their bodies, reports Hit and Run. The law’s author says it is aimed at preventing domineering employers or abusive spouses from coercing someone into accepting a microchip into his or her body. That sort of thing wasn’t legal before, was it?

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) wants to consider reviving the Fairness Doctrine, which would require broadcasters to “afford reasonable opportunity for discussion of conflicting views on matters of public importance.” But, as Jesse Walker recounts it, the history of the Fairness Doctrine does not commend a revival.

The wording of the Fairness Doctrine may sound mild and unobjectionable, but when it was in effect, it gave politicians and pressure groups a tool to harass any station that transmitted views they found disagreeable. Even when it wasn’t being deliberately deployed to suppress speech, it made broadcasters less willing to present ideas that might be controversial. And the chief effect of removing it was a renaissance in opinionated broadcasting—not just by conservatives but by a host of populist voices that were once marginalized on the airwaves. If Kucinich thinks the media is a servant of a narrow corporate agenda today, rest assured that there will be even less variety on the air if the Fairness Doctrine is restored.

Writing at The American Conservative, Walker concludes that Kucinich is wrong if he thinks only the conservatives on Fox News will be negatively impacted by bringing the Fairness Doctrine back.

Caught my eye at the bookstore: The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb.

Apparently, it’s about humans’ inability to predict the future because we think in terms of bell curves instead of power-law distributions. If that sounds suspiciously like a book about math, don’t worry. Here’s part of a review by David Shaywitz (clearly a fan):

Mr. Taleb is fascinated by the rare but pivotal events that characterize life in the power-law world. He calls them Black Swans, after the philosopher Karl Popper’s observation that only a single black swan is required to falsify the theory that “all swans are white” even when there are thousands of white swans in evidence. Provocatively, Mr. Taleb defines Black Swans as events (such as the rise of the Internet or the fall of LTCM) that are not only rare and consequential but also predictable only in retrospect. We never see them coming, but we have no trouble concocting post hoc explanations for why they should have been obvious. Surely, Mr. Taleb taunts, we won’t get fooled again. But of course we will.

Writing in a style that owes as much to Stephen Colbert as it does to Michel de Montaigne, Mr. Taleb divides the world into those who “get it” and everyone else, a world partitioned into heroes (Popper, Hayek, Yogi Berra), those on notice (Harold Bloom, necktie wearers, personal-finance advisers) and entities that are dead to him (the bell curve, newspapers, the Nobel Prize in Economics).

A humanist at heart, Mr. Taleb ponders not only the effect of Black Swans but also the reason we have so much trouble acknowledging their existence. And this is where he hits his stride. We eagerly romp with him through the follies of confirmation bias (our tendency to reaffirm our beliefs rather than contradict them), narrative fallacy (our weakness for compelling stories), silent evidence (our failure to account for what we don’t see), ludic fallacy (our willingness to oversimplify and take games or models too seriously), and epistemic arrogance (our habit of overestimating our knowledge and underestimating our ignorance).

I like reading books about how much we don’t know. They always seem pertinent to politics.

The Social Security and Medicare Board of Trustees issued their annual reports to Congress today, the upshot of which is that Social Security and Medicare’s

currently projected long run growth rates are not sustainable under current financing arrangements. Social Security’s current annual surpluses of tax income over expenditures will soon begin to decline and then turn into rapidly growing deficits as the baby boom generation retires. Medicare’s financial status is even worse. Medicare’s Hospital Insurance (HI) Trust Fund is already expected to pay out more in hospital benefits this year than it receives in taxes and other dedicated revenues. The growing annual deficits in both programs are projected to exhaust HI reserves in 2019 and Social Security reserves in 2041.

In a separate statement, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson put Social Security’s fiscal imbalance into context:

Social Security's unfunded obligation—the difference between the present values of Social Security inflows and outflows less the existing trust fund—equals $4.7 trillion over the next 75 years and $13.6 trillion on a permanent basis. The actuarial imbalance expressed as a percent of taxable payroll is 1.95 percent over 75 years and 3.5 percent over the indefinite future. This means that, to make the system whole on a permanent basis, the combined payroll tax rate would have to be raised immediately by about one-third from 12.4 percent to about 15.9 percent, or benefits reduced immediately by 22 percent.

Refusing to toe the line on global warming data has gotten a scientist stripped of his title as Associate State Climatologist for Washington.

As Todd Myers of the Washington Policy Center tells the story, the dispute concerns the claim that snowpack accumulation has decreased 50 percent between 1950 and 1995. It’s a statistic that some, including Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, point to as a damaging impact of global warming. Says Myers: “In a state where salmon, hydroelectric power and water resources generally depend on snowpack, the claim is a potential blockbuster.” But is it true?

Associate State Climatologist Mark Albright pointed out in an e-mail to members of the University of Washington Climate Impacts Group and the UW Department of Atmospheric Sciences that the figure of a 50 percent reduction in snowpack was achieved through carefully selecting the endpoints 1950 and 1995—in other words, cherry picking:

I believe a more accurate statement would be along the lines of 1) The average snowpack in the Cascades has increased over the past 30 years in spite of the steady upward trend in global temperature, or 2) Long term data indicates no significant trend in Cascade Mtns snowpack over the past 90 years, or 3) The snowpack (1997-2007) at Mt. Rainier Paradise has increased 11% since the 1940s.

Albright subsequently refused to clear his communications on the subject with his bosses, and on the first day of his next vacation, he received an e-mail informing him that he could no longer use the title, Associate State Climatologist.

Monday: Learn how big box stores benefit consumers, workers, and the economy. John Locke hosts economist Richard Vedder.

Tuesday – Friday: Discover some new ideas on how to build effective organizations in the battle for liberty. In Philadelphia, the Atlas Foundation hosts its Liberty Forum from Tuesday through Thursday; State Policy Network and Atlas together host a Leadership Development Breakfast on Thursday morning; and The Heritage Foundation offers its annual Resource Bank on Thursday and Friday.

Tuesday: Hear Secretary of Health and Human Service Michael Leavitt lay out the Bush administration’s vision for ensuring that all Americans have access to affordable care, at the American Enterprise Institute.

Tuesday: Find out whether free markets or socialized medicine is the way to go in health care reform, at the Commonwealth Foundation.

Tuesday: Get a state perspective on the past and future of No Child Left Behind, at The Heritage Foundation.

Wednesday: Examine the constitutionality of McCain-Feingold with the lawyers involved in the cases Federal Elections Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life, and McCain v. Wisconsin Right to Life, hosted by the Cato Institute.

Thursday: Celebrate World Intellectual Property Day by attending the Institute for Policy Innovation’s forum exploring the connection between intellectual property and global economic growth.

Thursday: Take in a Keene perspective on the future. The Georgia Public Policy Foundation hosts American Conservative Union Chairman David Keene.

Friday – Saturday: Confab with Rudolph Giuliani, Fred Barnes, Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.), and Michael Steele at the John Locke Institute’s Conservative Leadership Conference.

Junk science is hazardous to your health. Spraying DDT is the most effective anti-malarial tool in the world, which is why the World Health Organization finally lifted its misguided 30-year ban on the mosquito-killing substance. Now, reports Stephen Milloy, researchers in South Africa claim that high levels of DDT in blood are associated with low sperm counts in men. Milloy actually took the time to read the study. The alleged associations, says Milloy, are statistically insignificant. That’s good news for the billions of people in developing countries who would otherwise be vulnerable to this debilitating and life-threatening disease.

The terror of climate change. A group of generals has issued a report urging the government to integrate global warming policy into its national security strategies, reports Financial Times. According to the generals, global warming will exacerbate the problem of terrorism by increasing the severity and frequency of floods, droughts, hurricanes, etc. Marlo Lewis at OpenMarket points out some things the generals overlooked, including: Limiting greenhouse gas emissions means limiting developing country use of energy, and that means keeping those countries in poverty. Might poverty be a “threat multiplier,” too?

Global warming: good for birds, bad for headline writers. Birds are struggling to cope with the changing British climate, according a headline from In the News (via Amy Ridenour). The struggle, apparently, is that warmer weather makes it easier for birds to find food in the countryside which keeps them away from garden feeding tables. That’s where bird lovers, such as those in the British Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, like to observe and count them. (It seems that all news is environmental news, and all environmental news is bad news.)

But when is lawmaker self-awareness month? April is financial literacy month. The goal is to educate Americans on how to manage their money better. Too many of us, apparently, spend ourselves into debt and fail to plan for future expenditures. The House of Representatives, which (along with the Senate) has spent the government into debt and fails to plan for future entitlement spending, shares that concern, and has voted to support the goals of financial literacy month. Hopefully, we’ll all learn something.

Congressmen don’t do their own taxes. Approximately 75 percent of U.S. Senators and Representatives hire someone else to do their taxes, reports Rob Bluey. According to a poll done last year by Fox News/Opinion Dynamics, 52 percent of taxpayers nationwide seek professional assistance to do their taxes. It appears, then, that 75 percent of members of Congress have decided the tax code is too complicated for them to grapple with individually. Might this be a good voting block for simplifying the tax code? When is lawmaker self-awareness month, again?

Blogging might be a little light next week, as a fair chunk of The Heritage Foundation, including yours truly, heads up to Philadelphia for the 30th Annual Resource Bank. But do look for occasional updates from the event itself. We are expecting a great group of over 600 folks from about 50 different countries. Hope to see you there.

Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson:

The most recent data we have on the tax gap comes from 2001. It indicates that the vast majority of the tax gap was attributable to underreporting of income. Most of the underreporting is attributable to individuals with business income and corresponding self-employment tax liabilities. This includes small businesses, farms, and ranches. It's unclear whether this underreporting is the result of deliberate deception or a simple misunderstanding of what needs to be reported and how to do it.

To substantially improve compliance in this regard, Congress would have to mandate additional requirements, which would affect not only those who don't report all of their income, but also those who already do. I have come to the conclusion that there is a big part of the tax gap we simply won't be able to reach without adding draconian and painful requirements on all taxpayers. And I don't believe any of us really want to do that. We must remember that the tax gap is simply not a pot of gold that we can dip into every time we want to pay for a new or expanded program. Nor should it be viewed as an easy solution to existing challenges, such as the alternative minimum tax.

As you know, narrowing the tax gap is about improving compliance. It is not about changing the baseline to raise more revenue. The budget resolution passed by the Senate assumes revenue collections are raised by hundreds of billions of dollars. Some believe this level of revenue can be achieved largely through measures to reduce the tax gap. I believe it is unrealistic to assume that reducing the tax gap will yield that level of additional revenue.

Critics of today’s media marketplace say either that consumers have too few choices or that they have too many. Either way, says Adam Thierer, what the critics want is new government regulation of content. The scarcity-camp wants a revived fairness doctrine that puts the government in charge of policing the airwaves. Meanwhile, the overabundance camp worries that niche Web sites and filtering technologies allow consumers to receive only the information they want to receive. Their solution: Force partisan Web sites to include links to opposing views, a sort of fairness doctrine for the Web.

But it’s all nonsense, says Thierer:

A 2002 FCC survey of 10 media markets—from the largest (New York City) to the smallest (Altoona, Pa.)—showed that each had more outlets and owners in 2000 than in 1960. And the FCC counted all of a market’s cable channels as a single outlet (even though the typical viewer would regard each channel as a distinct one) and didn’t include national newspapers or Internet sites as media sources, so the diversity picture was even brighter than it seemed.

…

In truth, one can make a strong case that the new media—and the Internet, above all—are facilitating a more rigorous deliberative democracy and a richer sense of community. “In modern American political history, perhaps only the coming of the television age has had as big an impact on our national elections as the Internet has,” observes Raul Fernandez, chief executive of the software firm ObjectVideo. “But the effect of the Internet may be better for the long-term health of our democracy. For while TV emphasizes perception, control and centralization, Internet-driven politics is about transparency, distribution of effort and, most important, empowerment and participation—at whatever level of engagement the consumer wants.”

As for community, “the Digital Age hasn’t mechanized humanity and isolated people in a sterile world of machines,” believes Richard Saul Wurman, author of “Information Anxiety.” The Internet, he points out, has enabled people across the globe to band together and communicate in ways previously unimaginable.

Cato’s Tim Lynch:

Hate crimes legislation will take our law too close to the notion of thought crimes. It is true that the hate crime laws that presently exist cover acts, not just thoughts. But once hate crime laws are on the books, the law enforcement apparatus of the state will be delving into the accused’s life and thoughts in order to show that he or she was motivated by bigotry. What kind of books and magazines were found in the home? What internet sites were bookmarked in the computer? Friends and co-workers will be interviewed to discern the accused’s politics and worldview. The point here is that such chilling examples of state intrusion are avoidable because, as noted above, hate crime laws are unnecessary in the first place.

Bruce Bartlett likes blogs (mostly):

It’s like being in a seminar room with some of the smartest people on the planet, where we are all searching for answers to the same questions, but coming at them with very different experiences and philosophical perspectives.

But it is really better than that—because in a seminar room only one person can speak at a time, some people speak too long, others go off on tangents, while others effectively sabotage any effort to narrow differences by focusing only on those areas where agreement is impossible. With a blog discussion, these problems go away. There are no time constraints, people must write their comments, those that are off-topic can be skipped over, and those who abuse the forum can have their comments deleted by the host.

Also, in a seminar room people can sometimes get away with making outrageous claims or factual errors that cannot be responded to in that forum. In a blog discussion, no one can get away with such things. Fact-checkers will immediately swoop down on mistakes and often provide hyperlinks to original sources that can be checked by anyone for verification. The result is an automatic self-correction mechanism that helps keep everyone honest.

According to a new study by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., abstinence education has little impact on youth sexual activity. Here's Family Research Council’s take on the study:

The four programs that Mathematica evaluated (beginning in 1999) have already been revised and improved, and they are by no means representative of abstinence education as a whole. They also included no high school component—so one logical conclusion is that to achieve the greatest effectiveness, programs must be intensive and long-term, so that the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to reject sex before marriage are constantly reinforced—particularly in the pivotal high school years. Abstinence programs have faced the challenge of improving the services they deliver, and fortunately most have done so. A recent HHS-sponsored conference in Baltimore unveiled evidence from more than two dozen other studies that abstinence programs are producing positive outcomes for youth. For every study that disparages the abstinence approach, there are many others that point to its success and suggest that effective, long-term programs should be given more funding—not less.

You’ve paid your taxes, now what’s in it for you? What do you get from the government (besides staying on the good side of the Internal Revenue Service)?

Via Heritage’s Brian Riedl, here’s how your tax bill breaks down:

The federal government collects $21,992 in taxes per household and spends $24,106, leaving a per-household deficit of $2,114. (You might think of that last figure as taxes you haven’t paid yet but someday will—or at least somebody will, maybe your kids.)

Per household, the government spends:

• $8,301 for Social Security and Medicare,
• $4,951 for defense,
• $3,550 for antipoverty programs,
• $2,071 for interest on the federal debt,
• $907 for federal employee retirement benefits,   
• $664 for health research and regulation, including the Food and Drug Administration,
• $627 for veterans’ benefits,
• $584 for education,
• $418 for highways and mass transit,
• $392 for administration of justice,
• $305 for natural resources and environmental protection,
• $304 for foreign aid, contributions to international organizations like the United Nations, and for maintaining U.S. embassies abroad,
• $299 for unemployment benefits,
• $282 for community and regional development, which includes the Federal Emergency Management Agency,
• and $451 for all other federal programs, including farm subsidies, social services, space exploration, air transportation and energy.

Some of the biggest non-profit institutions in the United States are decidedly hostile to capitalism, and they are often immune to outside pressures. Not only do the largest non-profits not have to worry about shareholders, many don’t even have to worry about donors because they are endowed. At the same time, the influence of non-profits on American society is burgeoning. Do non-profits need to be checked? Do we need government laws, for example, that require non-profits to respect the wishes of their long-departed founders. Or perhaps laws requiring public universities to report on efforts to promote intellectual diversity, as suggested by David Horowitz?

Unchecked as individual institutions may be, the non-profit sector as a whole, writes Gerard Alexander in The Weekly Standard, exhibits considerable “pluralism, competition, change, and dynamism,” and that makes government regulation unnecessary. Alexander cites data from the Foundation Center showing that “of the foundations that either had assets of at least $1 million or gave away at least $100,000 in 2004, a fifth were launched in the 1980s and fully half created since 1990.”

Also, non-profits are becoming subject to market discipline because for-profits now openly compete with them in areas where non-profits traditionally were dominant. For-profit institutions, says Alexander, have been gaining ground in hospitals, health insurance, and education. Between 1975 and 1978, for example, nonprofit hospitals grew from 7.8 percent of beds in community hospitals to 14 percent, as many nonprofit hospitals converted to for-profit status in order to get the capital they needed. In the 1980s, health insurers also began a wave of conversion to for-profit status. By 2002, Blue Cross/Blue Shield plans had converted to for-profit status in over a dozen states. And in education, writes Alexander:

Three-quarters of a million students and tens of thousands of full- and part-time faculty can now be found enrolled and employed in the (mostly U.S.-based) programs of America’s seven largest for-profit higher education companies: ITT Educational Services, Laureate Education, Career Education, DeVry, Strayer, Corinthian Colleges, and the market-leading Apollo Group, which owns the University of Phoenix.

Alexander concludes:

The point is that not even the best-endowed foundations have guaranteed influence or status. We can’t foresee the content of the coming American philanthropic wave, any more than we’ve been able to predict the direction of America’s innovative economy.

Monday: Find out if the United States should be more like Scandinavia, at the Cato Institute.

Monday: Assess options to fix the Alternative Minimum Tax, at the American Enterprise Institute.

Monday: Learn about various obstacles facing innovative businesses in the United States, at the Rayburn House Office Building, hosted by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Tuesday: Hear about some new ideas in international development from the Mercatus Center.

Wednesday: Learn how successful charter schools are created. The Pacific Research Institute hosts a full day seminar in New Orleans.

Thursday: Catch the Washington, D.C., premier of An Inconvenient Truth … Or Convenient Fiction, Stephen Hayward’s rebuttal to Al Gore, at The Heritage Foundation.

Friday: Find out if excessive regulation and litigation are eroding U.S. financial competitiveness, at the American Enterprise Institute.

Friday – Saturday: Help reclaim and restore Pennsylvania by attending the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference. Featured speakers include Laura Ingraham, Pat Toomey, and Newt Gingrich.

Heritage in Focus: Ben Liebermann explains how ethanol mandates make gas more expensive; Robert Rector breaks down the fiscal burden of low-skilled immigrants; and James Carafano describes the impact of delaying supplemental funding for military operations.

At Heritage: Allen Guelzo discusses Abraham Lincoln’s politics of prudence; Paul Rosenzweig of the Department of Homeland Security and Kelly Ryan of the State Department give their views on anti-terrorist immigration restrictions impacting innocent civilians; Wendy Cutler, Assistant U.S. Trade Representative, discusses the economic benefits of the recently concluded U.S.-South Korea Free Trade Agreement, for which she was the lead U.S. negotiator; and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) lays out a wide-ranging plan for transforming U.S. health care.

A revolution is announced. Boris Berezovsky has called for a revolution to overthrow Vladimir Putin’s government in Russia, reports Bloomberg. The Russian billionaire, who is currently enjoying political asylum in Great Britain, said he has been in touch with political elites in Russia who are helping finance the effort. Berezovsky told Bloomberg: “I am calling for revolution and revolution is always violent.” The U.K. Foreign Office is not happy. The Russian government, of course, is highly sensitive to the prospect of Western meddling in Russian politics. So much so, reports the Los Angeles Times, that authorities there have recently suspended the operations of all foreign adoption agencies.

Internet in outer space. The Web may one day outgrow its “World Wide” moniker if visions of an interplanetary internet are realized. The Department of Defense is taking a step in that direction now, reports BBC. The Pentagon has plans to launch a satellite router by 2009 that will allow troops in remote regions to communicate over the Internet. DOD plans to open up the router for commercial use after an initial testing. The technology will allow satellites to communicate directly with each other without having to be routed through ground-based systems.

Developing countries seek intellectual property rights, too. Senegal is considering a law that would create a special police brigade to enforce intellectual property rights, reports the Financial Times (via PolicyBytes). Senegal’s music industry has asked for the law because it is losing money to music piracy. Music producers would also like to have a domestic CD production facility, but can’t find the investment for it. Cracking down on piracy, they say, will help them assure investors of the project’s viability.

Watch out for bread? The World Health Organization has identified yet another substance in bread as a human carcinogen: ethyl carbamate. But, says Ruth Kava of the American Council on Science and Health, ethyl carbamate is one of many elements in bread that could be labeled as a carcinogen. “These substances,” says Kava, “are present in such minuscule amounts, though, that they pose no risk to consumers whatsoever. … Indeed, the danger from consuming bread is simply one of over-consumption—eating too many calories.”

At least they admit it. Twenty-five percent of Americans admit they would cheat a restaurant over an item inadvertently left off of a bill. This tidbit is one of many from The National Cultural Values Survey, recently published by the Culture and Media Institute. What it means is that about 75 percent of Americans are relatively honest—assuming that most respondents to the survey told the truth.

More brilliance from Don Boudreaux:

“Tariff” is simply another word for “excise tax”—here, a levy imposed by government on each unit of some class of products bought domestically.

Descriptions of higher tariffs, though, almost always focus on foreigners—such as a headline in this very paper on March 31: “U.S. to slap trade tariff on China.” But a more accurate headline would have read “U.S. to slap higher taxes on Americans buying paper from China.”

As they say, read the whole thing.

The National Taxpayer Advocate has said that the Alternative Minimum Tax is the poster child for tax law complexity.

Alex Tabarrock has a solution: Don’t get rid of the AMT, expand it, index it to inflation, and get rid of the income tax instead.

It’s not the AMT by itself that’s complex; it’s the fact that the AMT sits on top of the regular income tax system, which is plenty complex on its own. So why keep that system, when the AMT is already a form of broad-based flat tax?

The 2007 Bastiat Prize is now open for submissions. The details from the International Policy Network:

IPN's Bastiat Prize for Journalism was inspired by the 19th-century French philosopher and journalist Frédéric Bastiat. The prize was developed to encourage and reward writers whose published works eloquently and wittily elucidate the institutions of a free society: limited government, rule of law brokered by an independent judiciary, protection of private property, free markets, free speech, and sound science. The prize (a total of USD $15,000) will be split among First, Second and Third placed winners.

Judges this year will include: former British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Lawson of Blaby and 2002 Nobel Laureate, Professor Vernon Smith

The Heartland Institute wants Al Gore to debate skeptics of the “man is causing catastrophic global warming” story line. The Institute has launched a campaign to urge the former Vice President to accept a debate with Christopher Monckton, Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. Last month, Lord Monckton, a former adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, challenged Al Gore to debate the proposition “that our effect on climate is not dangerous.”

Gore, who has said the scientific debate is over, has so far refused Monckton’s offer. Heartland is urging Gore to accept the debate, and asks others to join in asking the Vice President take up the challenge.

The Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 requires federal agencies to produce annual performance and accountability reports. So, are agencies actually reporting on their performances?

Some agencies do and some don’t, according to the Mercatus Center’s annual survey of the agencies’ reports. The Departments of Transportation, Labor, Veterans Affairs, and State all provide good reports that help citizens judge what their tax dollars are accomplishing. On the other hand, Mercatus identifies the Departments of Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, and Housing and Urban Development, as well as the Office of Personnel Management as poor performers on the reports.

Agencies that come up short in their reporting, says Mercatus, tend to focus on processes rather than results, fail to identify the costs of achieving outcomes, and fail to explain shortcomings or plans for fixing them. Jerry Ellig, acting director of Mercatus’s Regulatory Studies Program observes:

In some reports, it isn't even possible to identify performance shortfalls. HHS, for example, reported only one missed goal—but it reported on only 35 “key” measures, with data missing for half of them. The Office of Personnel Management reports that it achieved all of its 58 goals—but, as most of these goals are operational and activity measures, not genuine outcomes, it's difficult to judge actual performance.

Ellig says that failure to identify outcomes, costs, and plans for fixing shortcomings suggests that “management is not really using performance information to manage the agency.”

A recent related post: What Inspectors General Can’t Do: Find New Solutions points to a Washington Post article describing how Inspectors General often focus on processes instead of results.

A lot of states are considering borrowing a good idea from the federal government: creating on online searchable database of government spending so that citizens can more readily find out how their state tax dollars are being spent.

Now Americans for Prosperity, Americans for Tax Reform, the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste, and the National Taxpayers Union have launched a new coalition and a Web site to push the idea. Show Me the Spending offers model legislation and tracks legislative developments in each state.

Wouldn’t it be great if consumers could subscribe to cable television channels individually, rather than in packages that include a lot of channels they don’t really want? No, says Derek Hunter of Americans for Tax Reform, who challenges the view that consumers of religious- and family-oriented fare are being forced to subsidize content to which they object:

Smaller religious and family cable stations do not subsidize MTV, VH1, and other channels some people may find objectionable. Rather, the opposite is true, MTV, VH1, et. al, subsidize the small religious and family stations. By bundling them all together, it exposes the smaller channels to people who otherwise wouldn’t choose them, netting them more potential customers.

If providers were forced to offer channels individually, the small networks with few subscribers would fizzle out due to lack of exposure.

Mandating a la carte is certainly a bad idea because it puts the government in charge of deciding which business models best serve the consumer interest. Franchise reform would be a helpful step. If municipalities didn’t treat cable TV franchising as a cash cow, there would be more competition in cable, lower prices, and pressure on providers to experiment with different product packages.

Heritage’s James Gattuso has noted that the Federal Communications Commission has contradictory views on a la carte pricing, issuing both a report that confirms and a report that refutes the contention that a la carte pricing would work.

Which is right?

The answer is unclear. What is clear is that politicians and regulators are poorly positioned to find out. Whether a la carte pricing would work is a question much better answered in the marketplace—with rival firms testing alternative ways to serve consumers.

This is where the competition debate comes in.

…

[U]nder current law, new cable competitors must receive a franchise from local regulators before offering service. There are some 8,000 local cable authorities, meaning nationwide service could be delayed for years. So far, the debate over competition has focused on the economic effects, primarily reduced cable rates. A study by Criterion Economics estimates that, if this kind of competitive pressure existed everywhere, rates would drop 15 percent nationwide, saving consumers more than $5 billion.

New competitors could also make it easier for parents to control the content of their TV programming. By its nature, the digital technology used by telephone companies makes it easier for viewers to decide what they see and when they see programming. And, as newcomers to the market, the telephone companies are unencumbered by past business practices, making pro-choice policies easier to implement. Although neither firm now offers a la carte channel selection, AT&T has said it would like to offer its customers that option. Moreover, both Verizon and AT&T embrace “choice” as an integral part of their marketing strategies—providing a way to differentiate themselves from the existing cable providers.

By Jim Weidman, Director of Editorial Services, The Heritage Foundation

Who doesn’t miss the block-long lines at the pump, the odd-day/even-day fill-up regime, and the malaise that went with it? Certainly not Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.). He wants to bring back that whole ’70s vibe by imposing gasoline price caps.

For years Heritage has told policymakers that price controls—on gas, medicine, or any other commodity—just don’t work. Instead of improving public access to goods and services, they merely produce shortages and delivery delays.

Nearly a year ago, Heritage energy analyst Ben Lieberman tried to steer Congress away from energy price fixing in a memo articulating all the unintended consequences that would flow from such feckless action.

Today, a new study from The American Council for Capital Formation reaffirms Lieberman’s conclusions. The ACCF report demonstrates that Stupak-style initiatives would make gas shortages worse and discourage refinery investment. The bottom line, as articulated by ACCF Board Member Charlie Stenholm, is that “price gouging legislation [is] misguided and ineffective, and will ultimately cause more harm than good.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development program funds a lot of non-rural development, reports the Washington Post, which analyzed rural development grants and loans since 2001. The Post found:

More than three times as much money went to metropolitan areas with populations of 50,000 or more ($30.3 billion) as to poor or shrinking rural counties ($8.6 billion). Recreational or retirement communities alone got $8.8 billion.

Among the recipients were electric companies awarded almost $1 billion in low-interest loans to serve the booming suburbs of Atlanta and Tampa. Beach towns from Cape Cod to New Jersey to Florida collected federal money for water and sewer systems, town halls, and boardwalks. An Internet provider in Houston got $23 million in loans to wire affluent subdivisions, including one that boasts million-dollar houses and an equestrian center.

Rural development programs were originally created in the 1930s to assist struggling farmers and to bring electricity to isolated rural areas. These days, a city can be wealthy, but still eligible for rural development aid as long as it is small enough. A city’s eligibility for rural development assistance is based on population—with different thresholds for different types of grants. Eligibility is based only on permanent population. That means a city like Wildwood, N.J., is eligible for rural assistance even though it swells to a summer population of 250,000. Wildwood, reports the Post, has received $13 million in rural development grants and loans since 2001, even though “the city is undergoing a revitalization, with property values tripling to about $2 billion.”

Another problem is that utilities can become eligible for low-cost loans and remain eligible basically forever regardless of how much the communities they serve have grown. As an example, the Post points to three utilities serving booming suburban Atlanta which have received more than $400 million since 2001.

Some other examples:

• In 2004, the USDA guaranteed a $1.2 million loan for a new Hyundai dealership in Harrisburg, the state capitol of Pennsylvania. According to government data, there are about a dozen other car dealers in the same Zip code. Harrisburg’s population of 48,000 is just small enough to make it eligible. At a population of 50,000, it would not be eligible.
• In State College, home of Pennsylvania State University, the USDA guaranteed a $4.6 million loan to United Entertainment of St. Cloud, Minn., to open a multiplex movie theater.
• In 2005, the USDA’s inspector general questioned more than $100 million in loans to wire subdivisions near Chicago, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh and Kansas City. In one case, ETS Telephone Company & Subsidiaries got $22.9 million to wire a series of new subdivisions outside Houston, including one near a golf course.

So the Post has identified some areas where Congress could cut spending—just in case Congress wanted to.

Sen. John Sunnunu (R-N.H.) and Sen. Tim Johnson (D-N.D.) soon will introduce a bill allowing auto and home insurers to opt into a national regulatory regime instead of a state-based regime, just as banks can do now. Eli Lehrer of the Competitive Enterprise Institute says the idea is a good one as long as it doesn’t subject insurers to both federal and state regulations. Lehrer says the current set-up’s

… patchwork regulation increases average rates and reduces economic efficacy. It makes risk pooling harder and undoubtedly contributed to maladies as ranging from the slow pace of rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina to the difficulty of finding affordable wholly private auto insurance in states like Massachusetts. In fact, insurance remains one of the only areas where workers in countries like France and Germany produce more than their American counterparts.

What the new earmark database portends, according to the Washington D.C. Examiner:

Public opinion is likely to generate mounting pressure in future years to put more such information on the Internet, especially as citizens groups, nonprofit activists, journalists and bloggers dig into the data and find evidence of wrong-doing, conflicts of interest and corruption.

Monday: Take a new look at the Great Depression with Amity Shlaes at the American Enterprise Institute.

Tuesday:  Examine the economics and ethics of the welfare state with former President of the National Bank of Poland and former Minister of Finance of Poland, Leszek Balcerowicz at the Cato Institute.

Wednesday: Hear a discussion of how anti-terrorist immigration restrictions impact innocent civilians who have been forced to provide material assistance to terrorist organizations. This Heritage event features Paul Rosenzweig of the Department of Homeland Security and Kelly Ryan of the State Department who give their views on how waivers can be used to address this difficult problem.

Wednesday: Assess the threat of inflation to the U.S. economy. America’s Future Foundation hosts John Tamny, editor of RealClearMarkets, and Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal.

Thursday: Sort out sense from nonsense on global warming by catching the San Francisco premier of Stephen Hayward’s new film An Inconvenient Truth … Or Convenient Fiction.

Friday:  Hear Kathleen Parker address the topic Media Elites v. Ordinary Americans, hosted by the Ashbrook Center.

Heritage in Focus: Daniella Markheim describes what’s at stake for American workers in free trade agreements; Peter Brookes explains why Speaker Pelosi’s trip to Syria was ill-advised; and Brian Walsh notes the judicial implications of the Supreme Court’s decision on EPA regulation of greenhouse gases.

At Heritage: A half-day seminar looks at the future of U.S.-Russia relations.

A malaria breakthrough, but not a silver bullet. Researchers at the Malaria Research Institute at Johns Hopkins University, reports Michael Fumento, have engineered a new mosquito that is immune to malaria. Researchers envision that one day such genetically modified mosquitos will be released into the wild, where they will have a breeding advantage over their non-engineered counterparts that are vulnerable to the disease. It is hoped that eventually such breeding will reduce the mosquito population that carries malaria, a disease that infects 400 million and kills 1.3 million people each year. Ninety percent of the victims are in sub-Saharan Africa. Fumento reports, however, that this technology is at least a decade away from having an impact, which means DDT is still desperately needed. “[B]ring on the mosquito research and vaccine research. But for now and in the indefinite future the best weapon we have against this vicious mass-murderer of a disease is old-fashioned insecticide. Low-tech works now and we cannot afford to wait.”

Taxes go up. State and local taxes combined will take 11 percent of the nation’s income in 2007—an all-time high—according to a new report by the Tax Foundation. Since 1986, state and local collections had hovered between 10 and 10.9 percent. This year’s high-water mark, says the Foundation, is caused by rising individual and corporate incomes that are pushing taxpayers into higher brackets. Many states have tax systems whose progressivity mirrors or exceeds that of the federal government. Also, revenue from property taxes has surged.

Teachers avoid teaching, students avoid learning. A government study has found that many British school teachers are avoiding teaching about the Holocaust, reports the Daily Mail (via Volokh Conspiracy). The teachers drop the subject in order to avoid confrontations with Muslim students who may be steeped in Holocaust denial at home or in Mosques. Meanwhile, British government figures also show that one in five students fail to make any educational progress at all between the ages of 11 and 14, reports the Telegraph. Education officials say the problem is low expectations combined with too much mixing of kids with different abilities.

Health savings accounts growing. Health savings accounts now cover 4.5 million people—a 43 percent increase in the past year—according to a report by America’s Health Insurance Plans. Also, notes Friends of ATR, there are 1.65 million HSA accounts open (double the 2006 figure), nearly $2 billion is held in HSAs (also double the 2006 figure), and 31 percent of HSAs have a balance greater than $1,000. Just think how much more HSAs would grow if Congress didn’t try to meddle with the details of plan design.

How about a medal for stupidity in government? In the United States, it is illegal to give or receive anything of value in exchange for an organ. This prohibition has produced a shortage of organs for transplant that claims the lives of over 5,000 individuals each year in the United States. Now, reports UPI (via Marginal Revolution), members of both the House and the Senate have introduced bills that would honor organ donors with a commemorative medal. Recapping: Congress creates a shortage by outlawing markets in a needed good, then proposes another law that recognizes the tragedy, but utterly fails to address the underlying problem.

From Antonin Scalia’s dissent in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency (via Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog):

Not only is EPA’s interpretation reasonable, it is far more plausible than the Court’s alternative. As the Court correctly points out, ‘all airborne compounds of whatever stripe,’ ante, at 26, would qualify as ‘physical, chemical, . . . substance[s] or matter which [are] emitted into or otherwise ente[r] the ambient air,’ 42 U. S. C. §7602(g). It follows that everything airborne, from Frisbees to flatulence, qualifies as an ‘air pollutant.’ This reading of the statute defies common sense.

Inspectors general do good and important work, but they’re not the end-all-be-all of government accountability. Steve Kellman:

[I]nspectors general focus on controls, not creativity. When was the last time you heard an IG call for agencies to do more to develop creative, innovative solutions to problems? These aren’t words IGs use, and this isn’t how IGs think. Their remedies almost always involve the application of hoary management tools from the turn of the last century, such as having armies of inspectors check for defects rather than preventing problems in the first place, and constant surveillance of employees, who are assumed to be venal or incompetent.

Furthermore, IG reports generally advocate more checks and controls. Controls are, of course, needed by every organization. But favoring this approach means government concentrates on avoiding the bad, not on accomplishing the good. This prompts employees to keep their heads down to avoid fire rather than working to distinguish themselves in a way that might encourage attention. This is disastrous for government’s ability to recruit and retain talented people, especially young workers who seek an environment that encourages creativity. It also means IGs contribute to the talent deficit that hurts government.

The whole article is worth a read, as it points out the many ways in which IGs emphasize processes over results—and how that ideology hampers the efforts of government contractors to find solutions in important areas like homeland defense.

Why are some corporations lining up behind Al Gore’s climate alarmism? Because they think they’ll get rich. Craig Marxsen at TCS Daily explains:

[I]f citing a new refinery, or expanding a competitor's existing one, involves an increase in the emission of carbon dioxide, which it almost certainly would, then a cap on carbon emissions will covertly serve the same purpose. In a March 6 article in TCS Daily, Arnold Kling explains that "cap and trade" legislation is being proposed as a method of limiting carbon dioxide emissions—a method that would exempt some or all of the existing levels of emissions from present-day refineries by capping them. Permits licensing some or all emissions at the enactment date's levels would be given to established firms which could then sell them to other firms. What that legislation would do, in addition to providing a valuable permit windfall, is make it more costly for competitors to expand their refining capacity or to enter the refining industry at all.

Emergency spending on agriculture isn’t new. Rich Lowry observes how it works:

A study of the past 21 years of emergency disaster aid by the Environmental Working Group found that most farmers and ranchers rarely receive the aid, but a small minority “are chronically dependent on disaster aid and over two decades have collected it one year out of every two or three, if not more frequently.”

Roughly 21,000 recipients collected “disaster aid more than 11 years out of 21, amounting to $2.5 billion,” or nearly 10 percent of the total disaster aid of $26 billion in that period. This highlights another rule of federal agricultural spending — it tends to benefit very few farmers and ranchers.

Over the past decade, most farmers (66 percent) didn’t receive subsidies, but among those who did, a select 10 percent received 73 percent of all payments, according to EWG. That means they raked in more than $120 billion from 1995 to 2005 and received an average of $34,000 a year. Some of them are very rich, and they effortlessly evade the notional annual-income cap on subsidies of $2.5 million.

Citizen watchdogs have a new tool for examining federal spending today—spending in fiscal year 2005, anyway. The Office of Management and Budget has updated its earmark database so that it now includes information on actual earmarks—which makes it, truly, an earmark database. Previously, the site had only summarized the amount and number of earmarks by agency.

Now, just about any citizen can log on and get details about all the special projects to which Congress has directed funding. OMB defines an earmark as a spending instruction that circumvents the merit-based or competitive allocation process of the executive branch, or specifies the location or recipient for funding. According to OMB, the database provides details on 13,496 earmarks totaling more than $19 billion for fiscal year 2005.

The site obviously isn’t going to be perfect at this point. For instance, once you reach the main page, it’s not obvious where you have to click to get to the actual database. You have to scroll down to see a menu of how you want to search. (Currently, the site offers a choice of searching by agency, or by state.) If you search by state, it takes six clicks to get to the actual details of any particular earmark. One speed bump searching the state breakdown is that there is no one list for each state. There are separate lists by agency for each state. And then you have to click through a bureau and an account list before you reach a list of actual earmarks.

So if you want to find out how much pork is going to a particular city, for example, you would have to click on every agency, bureau, and account list and then scan each of those lists of earmarks. Try a few, and you’ll quickly realize that is a lot of clicks.

But even if you were willing to go through that many clicks, you would not end up with a 100 percent accurate compilation. Everything is certified, says the OMB (about 13,496 times), but OMB can’t guarantee that the recipient listed is the ultimate beneficiary of the earmark.

One example: I clicked on Michigan (since that’s where I’m from), then Department of Agriculture, then Agricultural Research Service, which pulled up a list of one item (salaries and expenses). Clicking that led to a list of four items, including Wild Rice, St. Paul, MN.

Get it? Apparently, the item is listed in Michigan because the North Central Agricultural Research Station is located in Grand Rapids, but the beneficiary is located in St. Paul, Minn.

So the database isn’t perfect, but at least the information is out there. Probably somebody else will figure out how to take the data and republish it in a more user-friendly and easier searched format. The next step of course, will be to get data for 2006. Stay tuned.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled for Massachusetts in the state’s suit against the Environmental Protection Agency over regulating greenhouse gas emissions. Early commentary on the decision has picked up on two points.

First, in order to reach the merits of Massachusetts’s claims, the Court had to lower the bar of standing, which is likely to be more significant than any immediate impact on environmental policy. (The Court didn’t rule that the EPA must regulate greenhouse gas emissions, only that it must give better reasons for not doing so.) David Rivkin:

Massachusetts and other states now have shiny new rules that go easier on them because of “special solicitude.” Chief Justice Roberts’ dissent argues that the creation of “special solicitude” for Massachusetts is an implicit acknowledgement that it cannot establish standing on traditional terms.

Second, as Jonathan Adler observes, the government, in various policy actions and statements, has indicated that it views climate change as an environmental threat, undercutting its legal argument that it has the discretion to decide not to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Christopher Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute observes the same and concludes that the EPA needs to get right with science:

It is (long past) time the administration (and Congress) stop worrying about the sensitivities of pressure groups and how a hostile press will caricature them, and just stake out what’s in the U.S.’s best interests. This SCOTUS opinion affirms that: Had EPA simply pointed out the scientific uncertainties, ab initio—after all, what are we spending billions on every year?—and that even if they demanded that the U.S. deindustrialize it wouldn’t detectably influence global climate, we wouldn’t be sitting here today confronting this. So now’s the time.

So this appears to be a case of bad policy impacting what the Court does, as much as a bad legal decision impacting what policymakers must do.

Read the decision: Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency

On the Fence Films has a new one out that looks pretty good. Indoctrinate U looks at how intellectual freedom is being squashed on campus in the name of political correctness. Apparently, at American colleges and universities you’re not allowed to offend anyone. See the trailer. Get more info.