Americans are forever debating the best boundary between the domain of government authority and our personal authority. It is an important discussion, which should continue forever. Many but not all of the issues discussed have to do with the balance between security (protecting us from attack, disease, hunger, etc.) and liberty (leaving us free to hold our own religious and political beliefs, and set our own personal goals, make our own decisions, etc.). Many of the considerations in these discussions revolve around the relative advantage and efficiency of the government, or entrepreneurs, or ourselves —which can do something better (set standards, build bridges, build rockets, develop and implement more efficient sources of energy, cure cancer, develop better telephones, put on a play, etc). An important class of considerations concerns the risks of granting the government powers that can potentially be abused. Edward Snowden has certainly made us think about some of these risks. I urge you to reread my earlier blog on this subject: https://wcoats.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/protecting-our-civil-liberties/.
Four recent examples of the government’s abuse of power suggest that it is sliding into increasingly dangerous habits. I optimistically count on the good sense of you all to push the pendulum in the other direction.
The Common Core. The effectiveness of any undertaking should be measured by its output – its result. In the critically important area of education, data on what we spend on education tells us nothing about whether the money was well spent. Expenditures measure inputs not outputs. In order to determine whether children have learned what we think they should have learned, we test them. Some tests are better than others, of course, but there is value (at the very least to parents trying to decide where to live) in being able to measure the quality of teaching in one area with that in another, and common, standard tests are one of the ways of doing so. Different localities may have different ideas about what they want their kids to learn, but otherwise it is helpful to be able to compare how much kids learn on average in different schools, communities, and states. It would also be of concern if the skills and knowledge one area aims for are very different from those sought in another area of the same country, as there are a core of values and shared knowledge necessary to preserving a peaceful, flourishing society within a nation, to preserving a shared sense of nationhood. For an immigrant nation like the United States, this is especially important.
These are the considerations that led Bill Gates to finance the development of the common core of knowledge expected for each grade level and the standard examinations to test their achievement. I strongly support the desirability and value of this goal. But what is the role and scope for experimentation in approaches to effectively teaching what we think our kids need to learn? Though it is a little disturbing to use our kids as guinea pigs, it is better to do so one school or school district at a time rather than experiment with the entire nation (which eliminates the possibility of comparisons between approaches). Many educational fads have proven to be misguided and have done great damage (look-see reading methods, the elimination of groups of different ability within one class, etc.) More over, it is essential that parents have a choice of what school and approach to send their kids to. Such School Choice and the variety of approaches offered allow limited experimentation while preserving social peace (each family is free to make their own choices) at the same time. Still, there is a minimum standard core of values and knowledge we rightly expect every child (our future citizens and voters) to have if we are to preserve the values on which the country was founded and has so successfully operated for over two hundred years.
These somewhat conflicting objectives cannot be resolved easily. There is a balance between individual choices and the minimum common values needed to live peacefully together. The search for the best balance is facilitated by keeping most education decisions local and close to the families for which it is most important. We are suffering from Ronald Reagan’s failure to deliver on his promise to abolish the Department of Education (a department of the federal government, which has no constitutional role in education). I think that a Common Core of educational achievements is desirable but that they must be voluntarily adopted by each school district and state. The process of discussion between districts and states will improve the standards that most choose to adopt.
If you think that the federal government leaves this choice to the states (where it has constitutionally been placed), think again. The federal government both penalizes and rewards (subsidizes) states in order to pressure them into adopting the standards promoted by the federal government. It should not.
Lois Lerner’s missing emails
It is not surprising that government officials and bureaucrats sometimes let their own political, religious, or cultural views influence their performance of their official duties. After all, they are human like the rest of us. Thus where we have given a responsibility to government, and collecting taxes is a proper and necessary function of government, it is important to impose strong checks and balances against the abuse of such powers. The misuse of the IRS to punish political enemies is a disturbing abuse of government power, reminiscent of Richard Nixon’s enemies list. But such things happen from time to time under every administration. What is much more disturbing is the failure of this administration to take all reasonable measures to punish those responsible. The missing IRS emails subpoenaed by Congress (like all government agencies, the IRS had contracted a company to back up its emails) are reminiscent of the missing 18 minutes of Nixon’s White House tapes. Ms. Lerner and others involved should be in jail.
The Redskin’s name
I am not a Native American and thus have no idea why some of them consider the name of our football team, “The Washington Redskins”, offensive. Negro’s (aka African-Americans) are regularly referred to as “blacks” without apparent offense. In my opinion, ethnic groups should be free to inform the rest of us what they prefer to be called, and out of respect I am happy to oblige (though it is a bit annoying when they change their preferred designation every decade or so). But this should be none of the government’s business. Social conventions of good manners should be communicated to the government, not the other way around. But our government seems to be imposing its views on such private matters more and more these days. Upon visiting ground zero (the monuments constructed where the Twin Towers used to stand in New York City) a few weeks ago, I was very offended by a sign with a details list of how to behave while in the area. I didn’t object to the substance of the behavior demanded, but to the presumption of the government of the need to do so.
Last week the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office canceled the Washington Redskins’ trademark on the grounds that federal trademark law does not permit registration of trademarks that “may disparage” individuals or groups. In its announcement the Office stated: “that these registrations must be canceled because they were disparaging to Native Americans.” We will need to pay more attention in the future to the social/religious views of those we elect to office in the expectation that they will be increasingly imposing those views on society. This is not where we should want to go. “The-patent-office-goes-out-of-bounds-in-redskins-trademark-case”
Operation Choke Point
Imposing the government’s views on how we should behave takes a frightening leap forward with Operation Choke Point. As reported in The Economist: “a scathing report released on May 29th by a congressional committee… claims the operation was designed to strangle legitimate businesses that the government objects to for ideological reasons, such as payday lenders or gun dealers. The method is to deny them access to banks and payment systems, by prosecuting payment firms that abet suspect transactions…. The congressional report raises an even more vexing question: whether Operation Choke Point ‘inappropriately demands that bankers act as the moral arbiters and policemen of the commercial world’. The banks’ own legal travails suggest they are not obvious candidates for the job.” “Anti-fraud push accused of turning bankers into unaccountable cops”
I find this totally unjustified intrusion into private affairs deeply disturbing. We should push back hard. I would not be surprised, and would be quite pleased to see the rest of the world push back against similar U.S. bullying of foreign banks via its Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and long running Anti Money Laundering (AML) campaign. Via FATCA and in total disregard for the laws of other countries, the U.S. is extorting foreign banks to share private depositor information and undertake costly vetting not only of their customers but of their customers’ customers. “Big-banks-are-cutting-customers-and-retreating-markets” This is imposing large costs on banks, which are increasingly refusing to deal with American customers rather than incur those costs. To the extent this concerns compliance with tax obligations, the United States needs to fix its impossible and dysfunctional income tax codes (individual and corporate) rather than bully the rest of the world. “The principles of tax reform” This is not a promising trend.
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Bravo Warren!
Mike