A Washington Post story on DC mayor Anthony Williams's "contested legacy" contains this: 37 percent of District adults are functionally illiterate.  Another 24 percent attain "Level 2" literacy, which indicates slightly more functional, but hardly adequate, reading skills.  The government report, The State of Literacy in America, scores literacy in five levels.

Individuals in the lowest two literacy levels make up 75 percent of food stamp recipients, and 70 percent of the prison population falls within the lowest two literacy levels. 

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has endorsed Proposition 75, a paycheck protection ballot initiative that 55% of likely voters in California support.

The measure has union bosses and Democratic activists worried because, when asked to consent, union members don't allow their dues to pay for their union's political activism.  You wouldn't pick that up from union activists, as the Christian Science Monitor recently found out.

Fred Glass is worried that if a November ballot initiative passes here, teachers, firefighters, police, nurses, and other public employees will lose their collective political clout.

"If we can't bundle our money together, we cannot mount credible challenges to candidates and causes backed by wealthier donors," says the instructor at San Francisco City College, a member of the California Federation of Teachers.

Judging from recent paycheck protection initiatives, "we" is probably the wrong pronoun.  In 1992, a similar measure passed in Washington with the support of 72% of voters.  There, political contributions from teacher union members dropped from 48,000 contributors to 8,000 contributors.  In Utah, which has a paycheck protection law, only 6.8% of teacher union members allowed a political use of their dues. 

From guestblogger Kurt Weber of the State Policy Network:

On Sept. 20, long-time St. Louis (MO) Alderman Thomas E. Bauer was successfully recalled from office in a special election. Bauer was ousted in large part because of his support of eminent domain. He was a proponent of a plan to take several properties from their owners so a QuikTrip gas station and convenience store could be built in Dogtown, an up-and-coming old urban neighborhood. "This is terrific news," said Judy McNamara, a spokeswoman for the group pushing the recall. In a Sept. 21 St. Louis Post-Dispatch article she stated, "We should not have to worry about our homes being taken away." Jason Hannasch at the Show Me Institute in Missouri concluded, “This was an important decision by the local electorate in support of property rights, which are the foundation of liberty. May this recall inspire others across the country whose homes and businesses are threatened by government abuse of eminent domain.”

This weekend Washington hosted the largest anti-war protest since the Iraq campaign began.  David Frum has a good column on some of the protest's special guests.

In addition to the anti-war protests, Washington was also fortunate to host the IMF/World Bank meetings, a conclave that usually brings its own protesters.  These protesters, usually teenage "anarchists," were absorbed into the the general anti-war protest, I must relate.

The blogosphere is replete with photos of the protests, but I'll add some more, with captions and commentary when necessary.

Above: DuPont Circle.  The police brief the protesters before they head to the IMF/World Bank and explain that the protesters will have few problems as long as they refrain from damaging property.  Protesters frustrated  the police by interjecting with various complaints on foreign affairs over which these two policemen had little control.  "But George Bush didn't have to start the war!" was a frequent refrain, as were other comments about global warming and free trade.

Above: DuPont Circle.

Above: DuPont Circle.  This is probably the most common protest scene--a drum circle with a passing banjoist.

Above: In front of the White House.  Counterprotesters did not come out in great numbers, but their presence was felt.

Above: The Mall. The President is a puppet controlled by Dick Cheney, who's controlled by Satan.  It's good to know that LaRouche's minions don't take the weekends off.  If you look closely, you'll notice the drinking oil in the President's left hand.

Above: The Mall.  Cheney in '08.

Above: The Ellipse.  Cheers sounded as speakers, including Ramsey Clark, Cindy Sheehan, and George Galloway, incited the crowd.

Above: Constitution & 15th.  Hiding behind the Constitution.

Above: The Mall.  Children also joined the protests.

Georgia schoolkids are going back to school tomorrow after Governor Sonny Perdue called off school today and yesterday.  The purpose of these unexpected holidays was gas conservation.  Gov. Perdue anticipated that parking school buses for two days would save 500,000 gallons of gas, a claim that is not without dispute.

In Utah, 17-year-old Mellissa Evans chose to save gas by riding her horse Nighthawk to school, as was noted on Drudge yesterday.  What the Drudge headline didn't relate was that the school has a horse ban.

The Tooele High School senior began hoofing it to school this week on her 11-year-old gelding, Nighthawk. Joined by junior Chapa Stevenson and her horse, Wink, the pair made the 30-mile trek between their homes in Rush Valley and school twice a day on horseback. 

But school officials told them Thursday that horses on school grounds are against the rules. 

"I guess we have to go back to carpooling," said Evans, who kept her horse in a stall inside the high school's animal laboratory while she was in class. "When you have a car that gets 10 miles per gallon, you have to do something."

(via Obscure Store)

To many of the ill-informed in Congress, on TV, and elsewhere, when gas prices are high, there has to be some sinister and malevolent force behind the high cost.  The blame inevitably falls on gas station owners, who are accused of gouging their customers, and on oil companies, who are accused of benefiting from a "windfall."  This morning the Christian Science Monitor looks at ways gas purveyors and producers are taking the blame.

By tearing through the engine room of the US economy, two hurricanes have pushed gas prices to record highs and stirred a different kind of storm: populist anger at alleged price gouging.

State and federal agencies are probing thousands of consumer complaints. And some lawmakers are urging a tax on the oil industry's "windfall profits."

Heritage's Ben Lieberman has already exposed the error of a popular remedy to "price gouging"--implementing price controls.  Nearly a month ago, he wrote,

At first blush, setting prices may seem like a sensible solution. But the United States has tried oil and gasoline price controls before, when the federal government implemented them in the 1970s, and they were an unmitigated disaster. In fact, the attempts by Washington to force down prices during that decade backfired so badly—resulting in shortages and gas lines—that they should have served as a permanent cautionary tale. Policymakers should leave the market to do what it does best: allocate limited resources to their most valuable uses.

But now, as the Monitor notes, lawmakers are turning their attention toward another bad policy idea--taxing "windfall profits."  As Kevin Hassett points out in his column yesterday, "windfall profits" are a natural result of the free market.  And the effects of taxing these profits only show why the markets are best left untouched by lawmakers.

What would such a tax accomplish? In this case, we have a history to go on. In 1980, President Carter signed into law the Crude Oil Windfall Profit Tax Act, enacted in concert with the gradual dismantling of domestic oil price controls that were in effect throughout the 1970s. The law, which was repealed in the late 1980s, established excise taxes as high as 70 percent on the difference between the selling price and a price set by law.

Economic theory suggests that such a measure would discourage exploration. Drilling for oil is very risky, and investors will take that risk only if they believe there is some chance they will make great profits. Take away the profits, and drilling will stop. It doesn't matter that the tax doesn't, as in the Dorgan bill, apply to new wells. Are oil companies really to believe that similar laws won't be passed again?

In 1990, the U.S. Congressional Research Service studied the effects of the 1980s tax, and found that it had exactly the predicted effect. U.S. production was reduced, and reliance on foreign oil increased sharply. Reinstating the tax would, Congress's research agency concluded, ``make the U.S. more dependent upon foreign oil.''

Hassett terms the calls for these taxes "sadistic."  He's right--now's the time to encourage supply, not discourage it.

In November, voters in Washington will have the opportunity to repeal a gas tax increase.  A few weeks ago, voters in Oklahoma overwhelmingly defeated a proposal to raise the state gas tax by five cents.

It may seem like an inopportune time to raise gas taxes, but calls for more taxes are hardly uncommon, as this story reveals.

But some newspaper columnists and even auto industry executives are calling just for that: an increase in the federal gasoline tax.

Faced with virtually no support in Congress or from the public, they nevertheless say a tax hike closer to levels seen in Europe is needed to shift the U.S. economy to more fuel-efficient cars, ease dependence on foreign oil and pay for better public transit.

Gasoline tax hikes remain unpopular with the general public and lawmakers. Legislators opt for other misguided strategies, while the public votes as it did in Oklahoma--87% against a tax hike.

Louisiana is the Gulf state best-remembered for its populism.  It was, after all, the state that Huey Long governed and later represented in the US Senate until his assassination in 1935.

Now 70 years later, Louisiana's neighbor to the east has two populist crusaders of its own.  Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood says that insurance companies are responsible for flood damage caused by Hurricane Katrina, according to the Wall Street Journal.  Private insurance companies, however, don't cover floods, and their contracts say so.

For decades private insurers have had flood exclusions in their contracts--which is one reason the federal government decided to offer its own flood insurance. Yet Mr. Hood now says these exclusions are "unconscionable," and he is suing private insurers to cover all of Katrina's costs. Hot on his heels is tort kingpin Dickie Scruggs, whose own home was damaged and who promises to sue the industry for what he claims are deceptive business practices.

Wading through this muddled thinking takes some effort, but the first thing to understand is why insurers have flood exclusions. The simple reason is that floods are not a typical insurable risk. The entire point of insurance is to spread risk by collecting premiums from a large group of people who pay into a pool, which is then used to compensate the relatively few who suffer accidents. Floods don't work that way. The only people who buy flood insurance are those who are very likely to be flooded, making it impossible to spread risk. Floods also tend to wipe out entire regions, causing extraordinary losses. And they often result in repeat losses, because people rebuild in flood-prone areas.

Flood insurance has instead been offered by the federal government for 37 years, and FEMA, which administers the National Flood Insurance Program, spends millions of dollars annually to promote this coverage in the Gulf Coast and other areas. It's true that few Mississippians actually bought this flood insurance--which explains Mr. Hood's populist suit--but that was because either they didn't bother or didn't want to spend the money because they assumed the feds would bail them out anyway if disaster struck. It was not because the public didn't realize they weren't covered by their private policies, which practically scream about the exclusion on the declaration page.

Yesterday, the House passed legislation that extends Head Start and allows faith-based groups to consider religion in their hiring.  This faith-based language was added to the bill when it came to the floor, no doubt the the delight of Heritage's Jonathan Butcher and Grace Smith, who argued for this amendment in a recent paper.

The protection of faith-based organizations’ hiring rights must be preserved. The freedom to hire employees whose convictions are consistent with the organizational mission is intrinsically important to religious groups whose identity—and programmatic efficacy, too—depends on such beliefs. The leadership and personnel of any organization determine its priorities, carry out its mission, and embody its values; groups that take a faith-based approach to providing social assistance depend upon this constitutional guarantee.

From the Washington Post:

Scalia said Thursday he believes the government did not violate the First Amendment in the case of the Serrano photo [of a crucifix immersed in urine]--it did not pass any law to throw the "modern day DaVinci" into jail nor did it stop him from displaying his art, he said.

"I can truly understand the discomfort with government making artistic choices, but the only remedy is to get government out of funding," he told the audience.

Yesterday the Senate passed the $100 billion agriculture bill, as the Washington Post reports this morning.  The bill had overwhelming support and several notable amendments.  One amendment that the Post points out might keep fancy, three hundred dollar per pound beef off of our dinner plates.

A measure to keep Kobe beef off U.S. menus if Japan won't buy American beef. Senators want to retaliate against Japan, once a $1.5 billion-a-year customer of U.S. beef, for refusing to lift a mad cow-related ban. Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., said two U.S. cases, compared to 20 in Japan, mean that mad cow disease is statistically nonexistent in this country.

I'm sure this will anger gourmands who will miss their Kobe beef corn dogs.

Not long ago, the Central American Free Trade Agreement generated a lot of buzz on the Hill.  CAFTA passed narrowly, but not without a lot of effort and some deal-brokering.  But, after two Supreme Court vacancies, a hugely destructive natural disaster, and another hurricane on the way, free trade has dropped from the radar.

Today, however, the Christian Science Monitor revisits CAFTA and finds that it is gaining ground in difficult territory.  In Nicaragua, where opponents of CAFTA include Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, "the predictable opposition to CAFTA has, in fact, been a little weaker--and the support for the trade pact broader and deeper - than expected."

Marching down Universidad Avenue toward congress came thousands of protesters, throwing their fists into the heavy, humid air, waving anti-American placards. The demonstration against the proposed Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) earlier this month was expected to be about 20,000 people strong.

In fact, more like 4,000 people showed up.

The Nicaraguan congress has not ratified the agreement yet, but it is expected to do so.

Today Susette Kelo testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the New York Times reports.  New London claimed Kelo's home and transferred the property to another private owner in an eminent domain decision that the Supreme Court upheld.

"What is happening to me should not happen to anyone," Susette Kelo told the lawmakers. "Congress and state legislatures need to send a message to local governments that this kind of abuse of power will not be funded or tolerated."

Others who expressed their disagreement with the Kelo ruling included a minister whose church was taken and the Washington director of the NAACP.

For more on eminent domain, read here.

Florida Governor Jeb Bush recently made Cheri Pierson Yecke, formerly of the Center for the American Experiment in Minnesota, chancellor for K-12 education.  Today on NRO, the Fordham Foundation's Chester Finn writes on a new report by Yecke on middle school.

Mayhem in the Middle," as it's called, is a thoughtful examination drawing on gobs of evidence that shows the middle grades are where U.S. student achievement begins its fateful plunge, and where a growing number of other nations begin to outpace us.

That the middle grades can be a time of strong academic growth and marked achievement in core skills and knowledge is demonstrated by numerous effective school examples. Though youngsters between the ages of 10 and 15 can be ornery and exasperating, they can also learn much about math and history, literature and science, and art and music. They can develop sound character, admirable values, good habits (with occasional slippage), positive attitudes (also with lapses), and excellent social skills. There's nothing about kids this age that undermines their capacity to learn and there's nothing about grades 5, 6, 7, and 8 that precludes them from being places of powerful teaching and intense learning from a solid core curriculum. All this can happen even in places called "middle schools." Grade configuration is not the key issue.

Yecke focuses instead on the education philosophy, assumptions, goals, and expectations that drive a school spanning the middle grades and those who lead and teach in it. If they worship at the altar of middle schoolism, their theology tells them not to dwell overmuch on academics; other things matter more. If these leaders and teachers subscribe to standards and results-based accountability, however, they will pay greater heed to their students' long-term prospects than to their short-run adjustments, and to the academic gains that play so large a role in these youngsters' futures.

Yecke's goal is to show why middle schoolism should be consigned to history's dustbin — another education fad that, however well intended, now needs to be retired.

In today's Christian Science Monitor, Cato's Michael Tanner reminds us of what it means to be "compassionate" toward victims of Hurricane Katrina.  Compassion, he writes, is letting private charity assist victims instead of relying on big government to do the job.

As we hear calls for a "compassionate" response to the victims of this tragedy, it is important to remember that you can't be compassionate with other people's money. This difference is as simple as the difference between my reaching into my pocket for money to help someone in need and my reaching into your pocket for the same purpose. The former is charity - the latter is not.

Moreover, private charity has long been recognized as more effective and efficient than government welfare programs. Local churches and community groups are the best positioned to understand the needs in their respective areas, and can direct money or services to where they are most useful.

Private charities are generally far more flexible than government agencies, which are frequently bogged down in red tape and regulations. Just ask yourself, who has done a better job at timely and effective response, FEMA or the American Red Cross?

The NTU's John Berthoud calls out House Majority Leader Tom DeLay for his remarks last week in the Washington Times.

House Majority LeaderTom DeLay's remarks as reported in The Washington Times ("DeLay declares 'victory' in war on budget fat" September 13, 2005) are a clear sign that he fails to grasp the gravity of the nation's fiscal situation and just how culpable he and his fellow Republicans are for gaping federal deficits.

Among the majority leader's flatly wrong claims was that his party has achieved "ongoing victory" against bloated federal spending and that (as paraphrased by The Times) there is "simply no fat left to cut in the federal budget." Mr. DeLay was responding to pressure from fiscal conservatives to find ways to offset the $62.3 billion that Congress has appropriated for Hurricane Katrina relief. By simply adding those costs -- plus what could be billions more for additional supplemental spending bills this fall -- the federal deficit is set to jump back up to at least the $400 billion range. 

If Mr. DeLay actually believes what he said -- that "after 11 years of Republican majority we've pared it [the federal budget] down pretty good" -- then he has clearly lost touch with reality and Republicans must ask whether he is really the best person to continue leading their party.

In a few weeks Oregon voters will have an opportunity to put a spending cap measure on the November 2006 ballot.

Oregon is becoming the next battleground in a spreading fight between anti-tax activists who want to cap government spending and their opponents, who say such a move would put schools and important social services at risk.

Tax foes, riding high from crushing a proposed $800 million tax hike for Oregon in 2004, are promoting a spending limit that matches the most stringent one in the nation, enacted by Colorado voters in 1992. That cap limits spending increases to population growth and inflation.

The group that's going to lead the Oregon campaign, Washington, D.C.-based FreedomWorks, said it expects to be able to begin collecting petition signatures within a month to place the spending limit initiative before voters in the November 2006 election.

Federal employees with government-issued credit cards--there are around 250,000--have seen their credit line skyrocket in recent days.  In order to better assist hurricane victims, the feds have upped the purchasing of the power to $250,000.  Usually, it's a mere $2,500.

A lot of people aren't happy--fraud and government credit cards often go hand-in-hand. 

In recent years, several GAO audits found hundreds of thousands of dollars of improper expenditures at the Pentagon and other agencies, from purchases of remote control helicopters and airline tickets to Palm Pilots and $2,500 flat-panel computer monitors. Someone even bought a dog.

Navy personnel also in 2002 used separate government travel cards to hire prostitutes at brothels, gamble and attend New York Yankees and Los Angeles Lakers games. One civil employee ran up nearly $35,000 in personal expenses over two years, including breast enlargement surgery for his girlfriend.

Sens. Grassley, Lieberman, and Collins want to lower the max to $50,000, and the White House has issued more stringent guidelines for using the cards.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the Alliance for School Choice has called on the federal and state governments "to take action to allow private schools to take in displaced students."  On Tuesday, the Washington Times noted the Alliance's efforts.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay wants rules relaxed so that the children can use vouchers to attend private schools. Mr. Delay's is a reasonable request, one that would aid parents as they begin to move into cities that they eventually call "home" and as, even amid the uncertainties of long-term reconstruction of the Gulf Coast, FEMA reforms begin to take shape. As Clint Bolick, president of the Alliance for School Choice, said yesterday: "Private schools can provide an educational life preserver for the children who are victims of Hurricane Katrina. We call upon the president, Congress and state legislators to cut the red tape and seek every possible educational option for these children."

Today, Bolick contributes his own column and writes that the federal government should allow FEMA dollars to be used to fund children's education at private and parochial schools.

Mr. Bush can cut through this bureaucratic nonsense by issuing an executive order suspending the FEMA restrictions. In the wake of Hurricane Andrew in 1992, the elder President Bush suspended federal Davis-Bacon Act prevailing-wage requirements to ease rebuilding in southern Florida. Cutting through FEMA red tape is necessary to deliver precious educational opportunities, and the president owns the scissors. 

Nor is there any constitutional impediment to providing such aid. The Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that public funds may be used in religious schools so long as parents choose where to spend the funds.

Meanwhile, at NRO, the Fordham Foundation's Chester Finn and Michael Petrilli offer advice for rebuilding the public schools in New Orleans.

Build from the bottom up. Rather than recreating a school system, New Orleans should create a system of schools. This is a chance to keep the central office minimal. The early focus should be on creating new, excellent, autonomous schools and figuring out what services they need (from a central office or something else) later. Through chartering and contracting, the city (or the state — which already has authority to charter schools in high-need areas) could create such a network, holding each school to rigorous academic standards while giving them room to innovate. Finally, parents should be able to choose which school in the city (or state) best suits their children's needs. (Yes, many will need help with transportation.)

The Policy Blogger notes  House Majority Leader's Tom Delay's declaration of victory to the Washington Times yesterday, and Heritage's Brian Riedl weighs in with a less triumphant declaration:

There is so much fat in government spending—from $300 million bridges to islands with 50 residents in Alaska to billions of dollars in overpayments by federal departments—that it is hard to know where to begin. Declarations of victory are, to say the least, rather premature.

In a stroke of fortuitous timing, Citizens Against Government Waste yesterday released its 2005 edition of Prime Cuts.  The 600 recommendations in Prime Cuts would cut the 2006 budget by $252 billion, a major weight-loss plan for the government.

Read CAGW's top nine proposals here or browse the complete recommendations here.

At least, we hope this is a beginning.

The Wall Street Journal reports today (sub. req'd) that grassroots support for Ron Utt's proposal to redirect funding from highway pork projects to infrastructure rebuilding in the areas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina is gathering steam:

Some public-spirited folks in Bozeman, Montana, have come up with a wonderful idea to help Uncle Sam offset some of the $62 billion federal cost of Hurricane Katrina relief. The Bozeman Daily Chronicle reports that Montanans from both sides of the political aisle have petitioned the city council to give the feds back a $4 million earmark to pay for a parking garage in the just-passed $286 billion highway bill. As one of these citizens, Jane Shaw, told us: "We figure New Orleans needs the money right now a lot more than we need extra downtown parking space."

An op-ed in today's Bozeman Daily Chronicle furthers the cause:

Isn't this a radical idea -- that we should sacrifice locally to help pay for something far away? No. The concept of "shared sacrifice" is nothing new: I have on my bookshelf a 1943 Victory Cookbook, published so that Americans could help the war effort by using less of the foods needed for the troops. Over the past two weeks, Americans have shown tremendous private generosity; it's time to bring back that sense of "greatest generation" unity, and tighten our belts -- as communities -- for the good of the country....

All big ideas start small. Let's let Washington know that we're ready to make hard choices, so that we don't leave the bill for Katrina to our kids and grandkids. If we lead, our leaders will follow.

And the Journal points out why this would be an especially fitting course:

In all there are more than 6,000 of these parochial projects -- or about 14 for every Congressional district -- funded in the highway bill. The pork reduction plan is particularly appropriate as a response to Katrina, because we have learned in recent days that one reason that money was not spent on fortifying the levees in New Orleans was that hundreds of millions of dollars were rerouted to glitzier earmarked projects throughout the state of Louisiana.

All that's needed is one state, one congressional delegation, to take the lead and throw a few of its pork projects into the pool. Other delegations would face enormous pressure to follow suit, as well they should.

Unfortunately, it looks like Alaska--proud bearer of highway-bill largesse--won't be the state to start the stampede. Again, from the Journal:

And in the face of the worst natural disaster in U.S. history, couldn't Alaskans put a hold on the infamous $454 million earmark for the two "bridges to nowhere" that will serve a town of 50 people? That same half a billion dollars could rebuild thousands of homes for suffering New Orleans evacuees. One obstacle to this idea apparently will be Don Young, the House Transportation Committee Chairman who captured the funds for Alaska in the first place. A spokesman in his office told the Anchorage Daily News that the pork-for-relief swap was "moronic." Sounds like someone who wants Mr. Young to become "ranking Member" next Congress.

If 26 of the 50 served by that 'bridge to nowhere' agree, would Young reverse course? That's a project for some intrepid soul.

George Will on "congressional narcissism:"

The idea that Katrina would change the only thing that matters -- thinking -- perished even more quickly, at about the time Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, a suitable symbol of congressional narcissism, dramatized the severity of the tragedy by taking a television interviewer on a helicopter flight over ... her destroyed beach house. ``Washington rolled the dice and Louisiana lost,'' she said in a speech on the Senate floor that moved some senators to tears. You can no more embarrass a senator than you can a sofa, so the tears were not accompanied by blushing about having just passed a transportation bill whose 6,371 pork projects cost $24 billion, about 10 times more than the price of the levee New Orleans needed. Louisiana's congressional delegation larded the bill with $540,580,200 worth of earmarks, one-fifth the price of a capable levee.

In the Wall Street Journal, John Fund asks about fiscal responsibility in the wake of hurricane Katrina.  While federal funds are may be needed in the Gulf area, there aren't many legislators who are willing to make sacrifices of their own in order to responsibly fund disaster relief.

There are few calls for offsetting cuts in other programs, apart from antiwar opportunists who see in Katrina a chance to undermine the Iraq effort. Last week Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma asked White House Budget Director Josh Bolten if he planned to continue to pursue budget reductions the administration had already proposed in its January budget. Mr. Bolten said he "didn't have time" to worry about that.

Katrina is not the first disaster or trauma to befall the United States, but it would be helpful if our legislators remembered the kinds of sacrifices that accompanied past national emergencies.  Extraordinary events call for extraordinary measures--today that means showing some sign of fiscal restraint.  A widely-echoed proposal has been that Congress rescind the earmarks from the highway bill, resulting in $24 billion in savings.  A disaster that leaves hundreds of thousands homeless should convince legislatures to give up their precious pork.

As Fund writes, past presidents--and no heroes to conservatives--have cut non-essential spending in times of national emergency.  FDR, from 1942-1944, cut non-defense spending by 20 percent, with cuts including the elimination of many of his New Deal programs.  During the Korean War, Harry Truman cut non-defense spending by 28%.

With federal spending on Hurricane Katrina estimated in the $150-$200 billion range, Congress will have to cut more than $24 billion in pork from the highway bill.  The first step will be for constituents to call on their legislators to sign the no pork pledge.

Yesterday Arnold Schwarzenegger began his campaign for three ballot initiatives that will appear in a November 8 special election.  The governor is pushing for Propositions 74, 76, and 77.

Proposition 74 extends the tenure process for California teachers from two years to five, Prop. 76 imposes spending control on the state government, and Prop. 77 deals with the drawing of legislative districts.

California's unions are strongly objecting to the governor's proposals, but the biggest threat to unions comes from an initiative on which Schwarzenegger has not expressed an opinion--Proposition 75.  Prop. 75 is a paycheck protection measure that would prevent public sector unions from using dues for political purposes without the consent of the union member.

Free government money rarely brings out the best in people, as this NY Daily News gossip item suggests.

Profiteering ghouls have been using debit cards distributed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina - intended to buy essentials for evacuated families - in luxury-goods stores as far away as Atlanta.

"We've seen three of the cards," said a senior employee of the Louis Vuitton store at the Lenox Square Mall in affluent Buckhead, who asked not to be named. "Two I'm certain have purchased; one actually asked if she could use it in the store. This has been since Saturday."

The two shoppers used their $2000 debit cards to purchase $800 Louis Vuitton handbags. 

With all the buzz surrounding John Roberts and Hurricane Katrina, it's easy to forget that the UN General Assembly is meeting this week in New York.  It's the UN's 60th birthday, but it is the Oil-for-Food Scandal, not birthdays, that will be on the body's mind.

In today's Wall Street Journal, Joshua Muravchik looks at past reform attempts at the UN and finds that the UN is "insusceptible to effective reform."  Whatever reforms come out of this meeting "will be only the latest in an endless procession [of changes]," he writes.

Unfortunately, the US doesn't always act in ways that encourage reform.  On the NY Sun's blog Ira Stoll notes that the interest rate on the $1.2 billion loan from the US to the UN is being lowered.

The interest rate is being lowered to 5.35 percent from 5.54 percent. Why should the U.N. bother to clean up its act if the way the Bush administration reacts to all the scandals there is to lavish ever more generous terms on the organization so that its bureaucats can build themselves ever more fancy offices. Some politician out there must have the ability to make an issue of why the U.N. should get a loan at a lower rate than an average American homeowner, whose taxes are subsidizing the below-market-rate loan to the U.N.

Heritage's Ben Lieberman follows his two papers on gas prices (here and here) with a column warning against federal intervention and price fixing.

Recent gasoline-price spikes have given new meaning to the phrase "pain at the pump." And with demand from India, China and elsewhere growing, and the failure of the United States to open a single new oil refinery since the 1970s, supplies could remain tight and prices elevated for some time.

Which means lawmakers will want to show they're "doing something" and try to rein in prices.

But this would be a mistake. The answer is not to set limits on wholesale prices, as Hawaii is attempting to do, and it's certainly not to enact a system of price controls for oil and gas like the federal government did in the 1970s.

Last week in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Warren Christolon wrote on a threat to property rights in Virginia, Resource Protection Areas.  Resource Protection Areas are parcels of land near bodies of water on which development, such as fence-building, is strictly regulated.  RPAs "are really government-confiscated easements taken without compensation from home- owners under the auspices of the Virginia Chesapeake Bay Act," Christolon writes.

While not an eminent domain issue, RPAs present another challenge to property rights--that of regulatory takings.  Unlike eminent domain takings, regulatory takings do not result in the loss of property by the owner.  However, often the property is regulated in such a way that the value of the property is significantly reduced.  Compensation is not required unless the property loses all of its value.

The Kelo decision brought the tenuous nature of Americans' private property rights to the fore.  Now, as Congress prepares to hold hearings on eminent domain abuse, it's important to remember that Kelo-style eminent domain abuse is not the only threat to our private property.

With estimates of the cost of hurricane relief in the $150 billion range, there is a lot of chatter about how the government can responsibly pay for the relief effort.  Heritage's Ron Utt has proposed that Congress devote the $24 billion in pork from the highway bill to hurricane relief.  It's not a lot to ask--that members give up their prized, but unnecessary, bridges and trolley museums--but $24 billion would surely go a long way on the Gulf Coast.

Today, Veronique de Rugy digs deeper into the government's pockets and finds an additional $56 billion that can be excised from the budget. 

Can we really justify billions going to Vocational and Adult Education when so many adults and children just lost everything they owned? The work of many government employees, among them NASA workers and air traffic controllers, can be privatized, along with federal assets such as land, mineral stockpiles, and buildings. The National Endowments for the Humanities and for the Arts should be terminated. The federal government should also sell its woefully inefficient business operations, including the Postal Service, Amtrak, and electric utilities.

Cutting billions of dollars earmarked for USAID programs, such as the malaria initiatives, would also be a step in the right direction. These programs have proven to be beneficial mainly to the bureaucrats who run them. The bottom line is: there are plenty of sources of money that can be shifted to the hurricane relief effort and thus spare taxpayers from the burden of new spending.

From Heritage intern Ian Wallace:

In the New York Times, Nicholas Eberstadt attacks the government’s poverty measurement guidelines and points out that, when the poverty rate is used as a measure, the United States appears worse off today than it was when it began the so-called “war on poverty” during the Johnson Administration.

According to the latest poverty rate estimates - released by the Census Bureau on Aug. 30 - the total percentage of Americans living in poverty was higher in 2004 (12.7 percent) than in 1974 (11.2 percent). According to that same report, poverty rates for American families and children were likewise higher last year than three decades earlier.

Mr. Eberstadt has a few statistics of his own, however:

In 1972-73, for example, just 42 percent of the bottom fifth of American households owned a car; in 2003, almost three-quarters of "poverty households" had one. By 2001, only 6 percent of "poverty households" lived in "crowded" homes (more than one person per room) - down from 26 percent in 1970.

In other words, the poverty rate measures the wrong thing and promotes a wide discrepancy between reported income and outlay of income.  America has made much larger steps in the “war against poverty” than is realized using the “Broken Yardstick” poverty rate as a measure.

This would be good fodder for the Overlawyered blog: The Detroit Free Press reports that a "judge refused Thursday to order a Sterling Heights flag football league to reweigh or reinstate an 11-year-old boy who was too heavy at his official weigh-in to play for the league."  The boy exceeded the 150 pound limit the football league set for its players.  He weighed 151 pounds at his final weigh-in, down from his initial weight of 164 pounds.  The boy's attorney argued that the policy was discriminatory.

Derek Wilczynski, the family's attorney, argued that kids heavier than Kyle are playing in the league, and that the way the league applies its rules -- which include a much later weigh-in date for kids cut from tackle football leagues or school teams -- is discriminatory.

In other sports litigation, the Texas Supreme Court has ruled that playing college sports is not a constitutional right.

The New York Times weighs in on death tax repeal:

Hurricane Katrina may have cost very wealthy people a lot of money. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it may have cost their heirs a lot of money.

The cost came not from the direct effects of the disaster. It came because the hurricane's impact on the poor people who remained in New Orleans made it politically unattractive for the Senate to vote on repealing the estate tax this week.

From Heritage intern Ian Wallace:

Hawaii governor Linda Lingle was in Washington so that she could lobby the Senate on the Native Hawaiian Recognition Act.  A vote to invoke cloture on the bill was scheduled for Tuesday, but it has been postponed due to Hurricane Katrina.

A delay in a U.S. Senate vote on a bill that would grant federal recognition to Native Hawaiians is giving Hawaii's governor a chance to lobby senators who fear it could lead to Hawaii's secession from the union.

"That's a ridiculous claim and a ridiculous argument," Gov. Linda Lingle said. "We have over 500 recognized Indian tribes in America. "They don't secede. They simply get a federal recognition that allows them to avoid these kinds of lawsuits that Hawaiians have faced."

The claim, however, was not too ridiculous for Senator Akaka, the sponsor of the bill, who suggested on NPR that "outright independence" was a possibility.  Akaka, however, quickly clarified his remarks.

We've just discovered that the AEI-Brookings Joint Center has a blog, the Daily Reg-Report.  This is from a recent post:

The Arizona State University student newspaper suggests that music ought to go back to the regulatory set up of 1994, when a new agency was set up: G-Funk.

In fact, according to the article even attire was regulated. "Following the release of "Regulate...G-Funk Era" rap fans everywhere had another reason, along with "Doggystyle", for fashion statements of blue Chuck Taylors and creased khakis to become commonplace at Snoop or Warren G concerts. However, despite being Dr Dre's half brother and one of Snoop Dogg's closest friends, Warren G never officially signed to the now-infamous Death Row Records."

While some interest groups loved the Regulators Warren G and Nate Dogg, others found the Regulation burdensome. Grunge rock fan simply didn't understand why rhythm was life and life was rhythm. "Frankly, we didn't need Warren G and Nate Dogg to regulate the stealing of their property," said Nirvana fan John Eckstein.

The other posts aren't quite as fun because they deal with, well, real regulation.

The governor's race in Virginia is heating up and bloggers are getting involved, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports.  The gubernatorial match-up pits Democratic Lieutenant Governor Tim Kaine against Republican Attorney General Jerry Kilgore, with independent Russ Potts figure into the fray.

Both Kilgore and Kaine recognize the impact of blogs--Kaine's campaign runs a blog and Kilgore will answer questions tonight on another blog.

Heritage's Jim Carafano on hurricane relief:

As Congress returns to deal with this tragedy, its first priority must be to provide immediate supplemental funding to deal with the disaster. Beyond that, it needs to assess whether we are truly taking all the right steps to build an appropriate national system to respond to catastrophic disaster. The current grant system that doles out blocks of money to states with scant regard to national priorities won’t do. Today, all the fire stations in New Orleans lie under water and wreckage, as does much of the equipment they bought with federal dollars. Only a national system—capable of mustering all the local, state, federal, and private sector assets needed, built by meeting the highest national priorities first—can respond to disasters on the scale of Katrina. That is a lesson not to be forgotten.

On September 2, the anti-death tax repeal non-profit United for a Fair Economy debuted its TV spot that makes the case for the death tax. The ad features "a frivolous heiress figure who thanks Congressional Republicans for their attempts to repeal the federal estate tax ."  The recumbent heiress, London, speaks of the fortune she stands to inherit for leading a life of leisure.  You can view the ad here.

In the Boston Globe Ideas section this Sunday, Joshua Glenn wrote that the "message that the true beneficiaries of estate tax repeal would be the loathsome scions of America's wealthiest families" is the product of years of strategizing.

Indeed the Paris Hilton slur is oft-recited.  But, as Heritage's Policy Blogger points out, the Paris Hilton rhetoric

smack more of class warfare than reasonable debate, especially given the (relatively minor) sums involved and (especially great) hardships that the estate tax can cause.

As mentioned in the post below, Labor Day is popularly thought of as the end of summer and the beginning of the school year.  On the National Association of Manufacturers blog, Pat Cleary makes an addition.

Well, Labor Day is upon us. And you know what that means? The traditional end of summer, return to school and more gloom and doom from the folks over at the AFL-CIO. This has got to be the gloomiest house in town. And, it's not just the breakup that's made them gloomy. They're gloomy almost every Labor Day, wringing their hands about something. In a good economy, they can always find something to be gloomy about. It's a gift they have. Every silver lining has a cloud.

The Manhattan Institute's Nicole Gelinas had a superb piece on the hurricane recovery effort in New Orleans in yesterday's NY Sun.  A city that faced problems before the hurricane, New Orleans's recovery will be long and difficult.

How will New Orleans’s economy recover from Katrina? Apart from some pass-through oil infrastructure, the city’s economy is utterly dependent on tourism. After the city’s mainstay oil industry decamped to Texas nearly a generation ago, New Orleans didn’t do the difficult work of cutting crime, educating illiterate citizens, and attracting new industries to the city. New Orleans became merely a convention and tourism economy, selling itself to visitors to survive, and over time it has only increased its economic dependence on outsiders. The fateful error of that strategy will become clearer in the next few months. 

Sure, the feds must provide cash and resources for relief and recovery — but it’s up to New Orleans,not the feds,to dig deep within itself to rebuild its economic and social infrastructure before the tourists ever will flock back to pump cash into the city’s economy. It will take a miracle. New Orleans has experienced a steady brain drain and fiscal drain for decades, as affluent corporations and individuals have fled,leaving behind a large population of people dependent on the government. Socioeconomically, New Orleans is one of America’s last helpless cities — just at the moment when it must do all it can to help itself survive.

Monday is Labor Day.  For most Americans that means a three day weekend, which, by the way, begins in a few hours.  Designed as a day on which to honor the contributions of workers, it has come to symbolize the end of summer and the return to school.  It also marks the end of the seersucker season.

In 2005, most Americans are satisfied with their jobs, but a fifth of workers would fire their boss if given the opportunity.  And, according to polls, Americans are working for more than money--most would continue to working after winning a $10 million lottery

AEI's Karlyn Bowman has much more in her recent study on American workers.

From guestblogger Kurt Weber of the State Policy Network:

Last night my friend Alexander recounted how he had helped his friend and daughter who were on the move from the devastation in New Orleans to Georgia. Alexander used the Internet to find lodging for his friend and paid for the hotels by credit card. There will be pronouncements aplenty in the coming weeks about the amount of private charity sent to the region hit by Hurricane Katrina. However, these figures will not include the countless acts by individuals such as Alexander. This is true whenever one hears or reads about charitable giving in the U.S. Remember this point: Americans are more charitable than is “officially” reported.

Yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, former Attorney General and Heritage's Reagan Distinguished Fellow Ed Meese wrote on a property rights battle that may come before the Supreme Court.  The case is Stearns Company, Ltd. v. United States, which has been moving through the courts for over twenty years. 

Stearns concerns one of the most ancient principles in property law, that ownership includes an absolute right of access (what the law calls an "easement") and lawful use. In 1937, a Kentucky family -- owners of the Stearns company -- sold a tract of land, now part of the Daniel Boone National Forest, to the federal government. They kept the right, subject to environmental restraints, to mine the coal underneath, and the easement.

In the late 1970s, Congress banned any mining in national forests, with two exceptions: where property rights already existed and, if they did not exist, where the secretary of the interior said mines could operate anyway. When regulations were issued, technicalities excluded Stearns from claiming so-called "valid existing [property] rights." The bureaucrats told the company to ask for permission. To protect its property rights, the company sued.

The case took two decades going through the courts. Three years ago the Court of Federal Claims ruled that the government's actions constituted a taking of private property for public purposes -- and the Constitution required the property owner to be compensated. The court said that, even if permission were granted, an Interior "sign-off" was no property right. "The fact that an act of governmental grace or benefit may have returned. . . the plaintiff's right to mine does not alter the denial of [property] rights." Last year, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C. reversed the Court of Claims, a decision the full Federal Circuit Court upheld in April. In the next few weeks, the Supreme Court must decide whether or not to review that decision.

If the Akaka bill passes and Native Hawaiians are allowed to establish their own race-based government, they will be exempt from the protections of the Constitution.  They would be able to punish speech, establish a state religion, and quarter their troops--to name only a few unconstitutional possibilities.  The Native Hawaiian government could discard all constitutional principles.  After all, the law has been giving Native Hawaiian activists some problems of late.

First there was the Kamehameha schools case, now there's the problem with the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.  In Arakaki v. Lingle, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that "Hawaiian taxpayers can sue state government to challenge programs that give preference to natives of Hawaiian ancestry."  The case has been sent back to a lower court.

State tax revenue was being used by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs for programs that, as critics charged, gave "preference to natives of Hawaiian ancestry."

The Office of Hawaiian Affairs responded to decision by reaffirming the importance of the Akaka bill. 

“Today’s decision represents another serious blow to the rights of Native Hawaiians and consequently to our entire community,” said Office of Hawaiian Affairs Chairperson Haunani Apoliona. “The ruling demonstrates that the courts and their doctrines do not favor Hawaii’s native people. We can expect further lawsuits, further erosion of Hawaiian rights and seismic change in and loss of our way of life in this special place we call home. That much is absolutely clear.

“These losses and continuing legal challenges underscore the imperative need for passage of the Akaka Bill now. Only by establishing a political relationship with the United Stated can we hope to eliminate these dire threats to our existence once and for all. I would urge everyone to rise above any misgivings they have about the Akaka Bill and give it the unifies support it deserves for the future of Native Hawaiians and Hawaii.”

It should be a warning to everyone when the motivation to pass a piece of legislation is the need to circumvent the Constitution.

Stephen Moore takes a look at Steve Forbes's new book, Flat Tax Revolution, in the Wall Street Journal today.  Moore highlights a point that has been made quite often lately: that, as many countries are embracing a flat tax, the US struggles to move toward reform.

As Mr. Forbes is fond of noting in "Flat Tax Revolution," the idea he touted did take hold--just not in the U.S. Ten nations--most from the former Soviet Union, including Russia itself, with its 13% rate--have embraced a flat tax. And the economies of these countries are reaping their reward: They far outpace crusty Old Europe in GDP growth and job creation. China, Germany and Spain could be the next dominoes to fall.

Mr. Forbes argues that international competition seems to be driving the flat-tax frenzy. "Countries increasingly recognize that if they don't adopt the flat tax, they will lose jobs, capital and their own ambitious entrepreneurs to more growth friendly nations." He shows that, in virtually all the countries with a flat tax, government coffers overflow with tax receipts. These real-life examples are obviously sweet vindication for Mr. Forbes, who has often been accused of self-interestedly trying to push down tax rates on wealthy families like his own while depleting the government of the revenues needed to pay the bills.