WSJ.com - The NEA's Latest Trick

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: The NEA's Latest Trick

Public school teachers are supposed to teach kids to read, so it would be nice if their unions could master the same skill. In a recent letter to Senators, the National Education Association claims Washington, D.C.'s Opportunity Scholarships aren't working, ignoring a recent evaluation showing the opposite.

President Obama pledged to support whatever works in schools, ideology notwithstanding. But neither he nor Mr. Duncan have dared to speak truth to the power of the NEA. Military families can join urban parents on the list of those who matter less to the NEA than does maintaining the failed status quo.

 

WSJ.com - Too Big to Fail, or Succeed

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: Too Big to Fail, or Succeed

In a speech at the White House yesterday, President Barack Obama outlined what he envisions for future regulation of the financial system. He called his plan "a new foundation for sustained economic growth . . . a transformation on a scale not seen since the reforms that followed the Great Depression." Indeed it is.

His plan, if adopted, will fundamentally change the nature of our financial system and economy. The underlying concerns and assumptions are clear, and they are made clearer by considering other ways that his administration has dealt with the consequences of competition -- particularly the faux bankruptcies of General Motors and Chrysler and the impending change in antitrust policy. Although the president said in his speech that he supports free markets, these initiatives confirm that the administration fears the "creative destruction" that free markets produce, preferring stability over innovation, competition and change.

In AIG, GM, Chrysler, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac we can see the future that the administration envisions for our economy -- a sclerotic and unchanging structure of big companies working with, protected by, and relying on big government.

 

 

WSJ.com - 'The Fear Is Gone'

Wow.

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: 'The Fear Is Gone'

 

Voices from Iran.

The following are firsthand accounts that were solicited by Journal assistant editorial features editor Bari Weiss. Some were translated from Farsi. Surnames have been omitted to protect the writers.

 

We reformists have no radio, no newspaper, and no television. All our Internet sites are filtered, as well as social networks such as Facebook. Text messaging and mobile communication were also cut off during the demonstrations. And yet we had hundreds of thousands, if not millions.

The state-run TV station has announced that riot police will severely punish anybody that demonstrates. Ahmadinejad called the opposition a bunch of insignificant dirt who try to make the taste of victory bitter to the nation. But his remark was answered by the largest demonstrations ever.

Older people compared Monday's gathering to the demonstrations of 1979 which marked the downfall of the Shah's regime. They even said that this event was larger.

Democracy is a long way ahead. I may not be alive to see that day. With eyes full of tears in these early hours of June 16, I glorify the courage of those who have already been killed. I hope that the blood of these martyrs will make every one of us more committed to freedom, to democracy and to human rights.

 

WSJ.com - Health Reform and Competitiveness

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: Health Reform and Competitiveness

Employers may write the checks to the insurance companies, but workers still pay for the coverage they get from those employers. The total cost of an employee is what matters to businesses, and fringe benefits are as much a part of compensation as cash wages. When health costs rise, firms don't become less competitive, as if insurance were lopped out of profits. Instead, nonhealth compensation drops. Or wages rise more slowly than they otherwise would.

A recent study from none other than the White House Council of Economic Advisers notes exactly this point: If medical spending continues to accelerate, it expects take-home pay to stagnate.

It's certainly true that the U.S. employer-based insurance system can dampen entrepreneurial spirits. There's the "job lock" phenomenon, in which employees fear leaving a less productive job because they're afraid to lose their health benefits. Another problem is that insurance costs more for small groups than the large risk pools that big corporations assemble, meaning that it's harder to form new businesses that can offer policies. But all this is really an argument for developing the individual health insurance market, where policies would follow workers, not jobs.

 

WSJ.com - How Safeway Is Cutting Health-Care Costs

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: How Safeway Is Cutting Health-Care Costs*

 

Market-based solutions can reduce the national health-care bill by 40%.

 

At Safeway we believe that well-designed health-care reform, utilizing market-based solutions, can ultimately reduce our nation's health-care bill by 40%. The key to achieving these savings is health-care plans that reward healthy behavior. As a self-insured employer, Safeway designed just such a plan in 2005 and has made continuous improvements each year. The results have been remarkable.

Safeway's plan capitalizes on two key insights gained in 2005. The first is that 70% of all health-care costs are the direct result of behavior. The second insight, which is well understood by the providers of health care, is that 74% of all costs are confined to four chronic conditions (cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity). Furthermore, 80% of cardiovascular disease and diabetes is preventable, 60% of cancers are preventable, and more than 90% of obesity is preventable.

As much as we would like to take credit for being a health-care innovator, Safeway has done nothing more than borrow from the well-tested automobile insurance model. For decades, driving behavior has been correlated with accident risk and has therefore translated into premium differences among drivers. Stated somewhat differently, the auto-insurance industry has long recognized the role of personal responsibility. As a result, bad behaviors (like speeding, tickets for failure to follow the rules of the road, and frequency of accidents) are considered when establishing insurance premiums. Bad driver premiums are not subsidized by the good driver premiums.

 

 

WSJ.com - Obama's Voodoo Health Economics

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: Obama's Voodoo Health Economics

 

On Monday President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers released a report called "The Economic Case for Health Care Reform." The report argues that Americans must curb their consumption of medical care in order to avoid soaring federal deficits, unsustainable burdens on family budgets, and damage to the economy. All of these claims are untrue.

In truth, Medicare can be fixed without subjecting the nation to medical scarcity. Telling all Americans they have to cut back on health care because Medicare is fiscally unsound is like ordering all Americans to go on diets because the food stamp program is in trouble.

It would be safer to reduce government's share of the health-care bill rather than lowering the standard of care for everyone and depressing the nation's largest industry.

Two-thirds of annual health spending increases are the result of the rapid development and use of new medications and devices, according to the CBO. But, as the CBO reminds us, these innovations "permit the treatment of previously untreatable conditions." If you had a heart attack in the 1980s and made it to the hospital you had only a 60% chance of living a year. Now your chance is over 90%. No one wants 1980s medicine at 1980s prices. And in 10 years, no one will want 2009 care.

 

 

WSJ.com - What I Saw at Tiananmen

For those who don’t remember, and even for those who do.  Today is the 20^th anniversary.

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: What I Saw at Tiananmen

It's now 20 years since I ran through a cross-fire of tracer bullets, heading into Beijing's Tiananmen Square in the early hours of June 4 to witness the end of the uprising in which millions of Chinese, in the spring of 1989, peacefully seized control of their own capital and demanded democracy.

In a long career as a reporter, which has included both tanks and gunfire elsewhere, there is no story I have covered that has been more haunting, inspiring and important than that Tiananmen uprising. And there is no story that, in its plotline, has been more heartbreaking.

 

WSJ.com - School Reforms on the Brink

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: School Reforms on the Brink

The education establishment and its political allies employ multiple methods to keep kids trapped in rotten schools. One tactic is to use control of school boards to prevent or limit the creation of charter schools. Another is to smother existing voucher programs with rules and red tape. Real world examples are currently playing out in Milwaukee and New York City.

The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program provides vouchers for some 20,000 low-income, mostly minority children to attend private schools. Because the 20-year-old program polls above 60% with voters, and even higher among minorities, killing it outright would be unpopular. Instead, Democratic Governor Jim Doyle wants to reduce funding and pass "reforms" designed to regulate the program to death. The goal is to discourage private schools from enrolling voucher students and thus force kids to return to unionized public schools.

The great moral outrage of our time is the way the public schools establishment puts its interests ahead of children, trying to kill every school choice program whatever its success. Genuine reformers should be shouting from the rooftops.

 

WSJ.com - The End of the Affair

Not much news here, but an interesting historical commentary for anyone still in love with cars.

 

WSJ.com - The End of the Affair

 

The fate of Detroit isn’t a matter of economics. It’s a tragic romance, whose magic was killed by bureaucrats, bad taste and busybodies. P.J. O’Rourke on why Americans fell out of love with the automobile.

 

The fate of Detroit isn’t a matter of financial crisis, foreign competition, corporate greed, union intransigence, energy costs or measuring the shoe size of the footprints in the carbon. It’s a tragic romance—unleashed passions, titanic clashes, lost love and wild horses.

 

The American automobile is—that is, was—never a product of Japanese-style industrialism. America’s steel, coal, beer, beaver pelts and PCs may have come from our business plutocracy, but American cars have been manufactured mostly by romantic fools.

America’s romantic foolishness with cars is finished, however, or nearly so. In the far boondocks a few good old boys haven’t got the memo and still tear up the back roads. Doubtless the Department of Transportation is even now calculating a way to tap federal stimulus funds for mandatory OnStar installations to locate and subdue these reprobates.

 

WSJ.com - Why Government Can't Run a Business

WSJ.com - Opinion: Why Government Can't Run a Business

The Obama administration is bent on becoming a major player in -- if not taking over entirely -- America's health-care, automobile and banking industries. Before that happens, it might be a good idea to look at the government's track record in running economic enterprises. It is terrible.

There are a number of reasons why this is inherently so. Among them are:
1) Governments are run by politicians, not businessmen. Politicians can only make political decisions, not economic ones. They are, after all, first and foremost in the re-election business. 

2) Politicians need headlines. And this means they have a deep need to do something ("Sen. Snoot Moves on Widget Crisis!"), even when doing nothing would be the better option. Markets will always deal efficiently with gluts and shortages, but letting the market work doesn't produce favorable headlines and, indeed, often produces the opposite ("Sen. Snoot Fails to Move on Widget Crisis!").

3) Governments use other people's money. Corporations play with their own money.   

4) Government does not tolerate competition. 

5) Government enterprises are almost always monopolies and thus do not face competition at all. But competition is exactly what makes capitalism so successful an economic system. The lack of it has always doomed socialist economies.

Cost cutting is alien to the culture of all bureaucracies. Indeed, when cost cutting is inescapable, bureaucracies often make cuts that will produce maximum public inconvenience, generating political pressure to reverse the cuts.

6) Successful corporations are run by benevolent despots. The CEO of a corporation has the power to manage effectively...  But American government was designed by the Founding Fathers to be inefficient, and inefficient it most certainly is. 

7) Government is regulated by government. 

It is government's job to make and enforce the rules that allow a civilized society to flourish. But it has a dismal record of regulating itself. 

WSJ.com - How Washington Rations

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: How Washington Rations

A case study in 'cost-control.'

The problem is that what "works best" isn't the same for everyone. While not painless or risk free, virtual colonoscopy might be better for some patients -- especially among seniors who are infirm or because the presence of other diseases puts them at risk for complications. Ideally doctors would decide with their patients. But Medicare instead made the hard-and-fast choice that it was cheaper to cut it off for all beneficiaries. If some patients are worse off, well, too bad.

Medicare is already the country's largest purchaser of health care. Private carriers generally adopt its rates and policies, and the virtual colonoscopy decision may run this technology out of the marketplace. Now multiply that by the new "public option" that Democrats favor, which would transfer millions of patients to a new insurance program managed by the federal government. Washington's utilitarian judgments about costs would reshape the practice of medicine.

…scarcity forces choices. As the Medicare trustees note in their report, the tax increases necessary to fund merely the current benefit schedule for the elderly would cripple the economy. The far more expensive public option will not turn into a pumpkin when cost savings do not materialize. At that point, government will clamp down with price controls in the form of lines and rock-bottom reimbursement rates.

 

 

WSJ.com - Earmark Nation

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: Earmark Nation

 

The Founders never imagined spending such vast sums.

Mocking this presumed hypocrisy is good sport, but the Murtha example deserves a closer look. You just might find that you are staring at a Pogo problem: We have met the enemy, and he is us.

When we speak of public corruption, we normally mean an official has been convicted of breaking a law. The bad pols did it. We are at the point, though, where it is hard to say that the corruptions of government are only about the politicians.

Murtha may be right. We are all earmarkers now.

We the people have concluded that if we don't use the Honorable John or Nancy or Ted in Congress to get our piece of it, someone else will get it.

For the longest time, we were able to believe that these corruptions were the inevitable but petty price of politics. But I agree with John Murtha. It isn't petty anymore. It isn't just about amusing "pet projects." The whole system has become an earmark. The politicians have been shaping the system so that more and more people have to buy in to the earmark philosophy -- we pay, they decide -- or get left out.

Barack Obama isn't a reformer. He's the president of Earmark Nation. We are about to enact the Obama federal health-insurance entitlement, which on top of all the other entitlements and their limitless liabilities will require pulling trillions of dollars more into the federal budget. Whatever nominal public good this is supposed to achieve, it means that they, these 535 pols, most of them gerrymandered for life, will decide in perpetuity the details of how to dole it out.

 

WSJ.com - Chrysler and the Rule of Law

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: Chrysler and the Rule of Law

The rule of law, not of men -- an ideal tracing back to the ancient Greeks and well-known to our Founding Fathers -- is the animating principle of the American experiment. While the rest of the world in 1787 was governed by the whims of kings and dukes, the U.S. Constitution was established to circumscribe arbitrary government power. It would do so by establishing clear rules, equally applied to the powerful and the weak.

Fleecing lenders to pay off politically powerful interests, or governmental threats to reputation and business from a failure to toe a political line? We might expect this behavior from a Hugo Chávez. But it would never happen here, right?

Until Chrysler.

By stepping over the bright line between the rule of law and the arbitrary behavior of men, President Obama may have created a thousand new failing businesses. That is, businesses that might have received financing before but that now will not, since lenders face the potential of future government confiscation. In other words, Mr. Obama may have helped save the jobs of thousands of union workers whose dues, in part, engineered his election. But what about the untold number of job losses in the future caused by trampling the sanctity of contracts today?

The value of the rule of law is not merely a matter of economic efficiency. It also provides a bulwark against arbitrary governmental action taken at the behest of politically influential interests at the expense of the politically unpopular.

 

WSJ.com - How ObamaCare Will Affect Your Doctor

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: How ObamaCare Will Affect Your Doctor

Republicans and Democrats agree that the government's Medicare scheme for compensating doctors is deeply flawed. Yet Mr. Obama's plan for a centrally managed government insurance program exacerbates Medicare's problems by redistributing even more income away from lower-paid primary care providers and misaligning doctors' financial incentives.

Like Medicare, the "public option" will control spending by using its purchasing clout and political leverage to dictate low prices to doctors. (Medicare pays doctors 20% to 30% less than private plans, on average.) While the public option is meant for the uninsured, employers will realize it's easier -- and cheaper -- to move employees into the government plan than continue workplace coverage.

The 60% of doctors who are self-employed will be hardest hit. That includes specialists, such as dermatologists and surgeons, who see a lot of private patients. But it also includes tens of thousands of primary-care doctors, the very physicians the Obama administration says need the most help.

Doctors will consolidate into larger practices to spread overhead costs, and they'll cram more patients into tight schedules to make up in volume what's lost in margin. Visits will be shortened and new appointments harder to secure.

There are measures available that could fix structural flaws in our delivery system and make coverage more affordable without top-down controls set in Washington. The surest way to intensify flaws in the delivery of health care is to extend a Medicare-like "public option" into more corners of the private market. More government control of doctors and their reimbursement schemes will only create more problems.

 

WSJ.com - What a Mom Wants

I’m not commenting here, just passing along an article that made me raise my eyebrows…

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: What a Mom Wants

The study's authors, W. Bradford Wilcox and Steven L. Nock, expressed surprise at finding that even self-described feminist women are happiest when their husbands do most of the breadwinning. Though the study resulted in a great deal of clamor among commentators who objected to its seemingly outdated conclusions, it differs little from the work of many evolutionary psychologists. David Buss, one of the founders of the field, conducted the largest investigation to date into the subject of human mating. After studying more than 10,000 subjects in 37 countries in the late 1980s, Mr. Buss and his team found that "women more than men in all 37 cultures valued mates with good financial prospects…."

Of course, this is one of those observations likely to elicit a "well, no kidding" from average people. The idea that most moms would rather not work full time and that most wives want their husbands to provide for their families is news only in the news business. Yet Capitol Hill continues to focus on women's employment. The House added a section to the Troubled Asset Relief Program that creates an "Office of Minority and Women Inclusion" to, among other things, ensure that companies receiving TARP money maintain an adequate (though unspecified) percentage of female workers.

If our media and our government really want to show support to mothers, they might consider actually listening to them. What they're saying is quite clear: If you want to help us, help the men we're married to.

 

WSJ.com - The Real Culture War Is Over Capitalism

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: The Real Culture War Is Over Capitalism

There is a major cultural schism developing in America. But it's not over abortion, same-sex marriage or home schooling, as important as these issues are. The new divide centers on free enterprise -- the principle at the core of American culture.

Despite President Barack Obama's early personal popularity, we can see the beginnings of this schism in the "tea parties" that have sprung up around the country. In these grass-roots protests, hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans have joined together to make public their opposition to government deficits, unaccountable bureaucratic power, and a sense that the government is too willing to prop up those who engaged in corporate malfeasance and mortgage fraud.

Still, the tea parties are not based on the cold wonkery of budget data. They are based on an "ethical populism." The protesters are homeowners who didn't walk away from their mortgages, small business owners who don't want corporate welfare and bankers who kept their heads during the frenzy and don't need bailouts. They were the people who were doing the important things right -- and who are now watching elected politicians reward those who did the important things wrong.

 

 

WSJ.com - The Truth About Cars and Trucks

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: The Truth About Cars and Trucks

Nearly 25 years ago, a Los Angeles Times reporter innocently and accurately invoked the "M" word in describing the domestic auto sector, noting that the arrival of Japanese auto plants was "threatening the UAW's traditional monopoly on labor in the domestic auto industry."

The erosion of the Big Three's market share since then has really been the erosion of the market for monopoly labor-produced cars. The UAW standard tactic, "pattern bargaining," which it pursues without embarrassment, would have gotten Bill Gates thrown in jail under the antitrust laws.

For more than 40 years, a 25% tariff has kept out foreign-built pickup trucks even as a studied loophole was created in fuel-economy regulations to let the Big Three develop a lucrative, protected niche in the "passenger truck" business.

This became the long-running unwritten deal. This was Washington's real auto policy.

For three decades, the Big Three were able to survive precisely because they skimped on quality and features in the money-losing sedans they were required under Congress's fuel economy rules to build in high-cost UAW factories. In return, Washington compensated them with the hothouse, politically protected opportunity to profit from pickups and SUVs.

Doesn't sound much like what you hear incessantly from your Congressman, about how Detroit's problems are all due to management "incompetence" in deciding to build "gas guzzling" SUVs, does it?

 

WSJ.com - Teach for (Some of) America

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: Teach for (Some of) America

Here's a quiz: Which of the following rejected more than 30,000 of the nation's top college seniors this month and put hundreds more on a waitlist? a) Harvard Law School; b) Goldman Sachs; or c) Teach for America.

If you've spent time on university campuses lately, you probably know the answer. Teach for America -- the privately funded program that sends college grads into America's poorest school districts for two years -- received 35,000 applications this year, up 42% from 2008. More than 11% of Ivy League seniors applied, including 35% of African-American seniors at Harvard. Teach for America has been gaining applicants since it was founded in 1990, but its popularity has exploded this year amid a tight job market.

So poor urban and rural school districts must be rejoicing, right? Hardly. Union and bureaucratic opposition is so strong that Teach for America is allotted a mere 3,800 teaching slots nationwide, or a little more than one in 10 of this year's applicants.

 

Here’s an Extra on Education:

WSJ.com - Opinion: The Union War on Charter Schools

 

On education policy, appeasement is about as ineffective as it is in foreign affairs. Many proponents of school choice, especially Democrats, have tried to appease teachers unions by limiting their support to charter schools while opposing private school vouchers. They hope that by sacrificing vouchers, the unions will spare charter schools from political destruction.

 

But these reformers are starting to learn that appeasement on vouchers only whets unions appetites for eliminating all meaningful types of choice. With voucher programs facing termination in Washington, D.C., and heavy regulation in Milwaukee, the teachers unions have now set their sights on charter schools. Despite their proclamations about supporting charters, the actions of unions and their allies in state and national politics belie their rhetoric.

 

Unions are also seeking to strangle charter schools with red tape. New York already has the "card check" unionization procedure for teachers that replaces secret ballots with public arm-twisting. And the teachers unions appear to have collected enough cards to unionize the teachers at two highly successful charter schools in New York City. If unions force charters to enter into collective bargaining, one can only imagine how those schools will be able to maintain the flexible work rules that allow them to succeed.

 

 

WSJ.com - The Case for a Federalism Amendment

WSJ.com - Opinion: The Case for a Federalism Amendment

...to restore balance between federal and state power and better protect individual liberty, the repeal of the income tax amendment could be folded into a new "Federalism Amendment" like this:

Section 1: Congress shall have power to regulate or prohibit any activity between one state and another, or with foreign nations, provided that no regulation or prohibition shall infringe any enumerated or unenumerated right, privilege or immunity recognized by this Constitution.

Section 2: Nothing in this article, or the eighth section of article I, shall be construed to authorize Congress to regulate or prohibit any activity that takes place wholly within a single state, regardless of its effects outside the state or whether it employs instrumentalities therefrom; but Congress may define and punish offenses constituting acts of war or violent insurrection against the United States.

Section 3: The power of Congress to appropriate any funds shall be limited to carrying into execution the powers enumerated by this Constitution and vested in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof; or to satisfy any current obligation of the United States to any person living at the time of the ratification of this article.

Section 4: The 16th article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed, effective five years from the date of the ratification of this article.

Section 5: The judicial power of the United States to enforce this article includes but is not limited to the power to nullify any prohibition or unreasonable regulation of a rightful exercise of liberty. The words of this article, and any other provision of this Constitution, shall be interpreted according to their public meaning at the time of their enactment.

Except for its expansion of Congressional power in Section 1, this proposed amendment is entirely consistent with the original meaning of the Constitution. It merely clarifies the boundary between federal and state powers, and reaffirms the power of courts to police this boundary and protect individual liberty.

WSJ.com - Obama and the 'Amnesty' Trap

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: Obama and the 'Amnesty' Trap

If Mr. Obama wants to be more successful than the previous administration when it tried to reform immigration, he should avoid getting bogged down in a debate over "amnesty."

The reality is that the 1986 amnesty was never going to solve the problem, because it didn't address the root cause. Illegal immigration to the U.S. is primarily a function of too many foreigners chasing too few visas. Some 400,000 people enter the country illegally each year -- a direct consequence of the fact that our current policy is to make available only 5,000 visas annually for low-skilled workers. If policy makers want to reduce the number of illegal entries, the most sensible and humane course is to provide more legal ways for people to come.

It's unfortunate that the "no amnesty" crowd has been able to suck up so much oxygen in this debate. Immigration hysterics on talk radio and cable news have used the term effectively to end conversations. And restrictionists in Congress have used it as a political slogan to block reform. But from a public-policy perspective, the fate of the 12 million illegals already here is largely a side issue, a problem that will solve itself over time if we get the other reforms right.

 

 

WSJ.com - Pirates Vs. the Rest of Us

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: Pirates Vs. the Rest of Us

 

But that pirate assault on an American-flagged ship, its captain's bravery, and his rescue by one U.S. Navy ship should be seen for what it is: A metaphor of the world as it is today. It is a world awash in pirates.

 

Some are small pirates like the Somalis, but many others are big pirates. They live in North Korea, Iran and in al Qaeda's hideouts along Pakistan's northwest frontier. They are Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Janjaweed in Darfur. Pirates strap themselves with dynamite to smash the routines of daily life in crowded town squares. Hugo Chavez is the pirate king of Latin America. There are others.

 

Each wants to replace our system of laws, rules, institutions and sovereignty with their disorder. Then disorder becomes normal.

 

We need to understand that these are not just security threats but a systemic threat. Each weakly answered pirate affront erodes the public's confidence in the West's promise of an ordered world.

 

 

Tax 2-fer for in Honor of Tax Day

Tomorrow is April 15th, or Tax Day.  If you're not out protesting excess taxation at the many nationwide "tea parties" tomorrow, then you may enjoy reading up on current tax problems and proposed solutions.

 

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: We Still Need a Simpler Tax Code

 

Every year taxpayers and elected officials complain about the tax law's complexity. But despite the exasperation, no significant simplification has occurred since the landmark Tax Reform Act of 1986. To the contrary, each new tax proposal is layered onto the existing code, rendering it more complex with every new act.

 

If tax compliance were an industry, it would be one of the largest in the United States. To consume 7.6 billion hours, such a "tax compliance industry" would require the equivalent of 3.8 million full-time workers.

 

Tax simplification would benefit all Americans, regardless of political party.

 

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: Everyone Should Pay Income Taxes

The president says he wants the wealthy to pay their "fair share." Who can argue with that? But he never defines what that means. Is it fair for 10% to pay 70% of the income tax? Does he believe they should pay 75%, or 95%, or does fairness mean they should pay it all? It's clever politics to speak like that, but it is risky policy.

Mr. Obama is adding to this trend with his "Make Work Pay" tax cut that means almost 50% of the country will no longer pay any income taxes, up from a little over 40% today. A certain amount of income redistribution in a capitalistic society is healthy, but this goes too far.

It's time to create an Economic Growth Code whose purpose is to fix and grow the economy, not redistribute massive amounts of wealth. A new tax code that creates growth and reforms our entitlement system is the only way to dig our way out of the hole we're in.

Under an Economic Growth Code, everyone in American would pay income taxes -- everyone. Such a system would be designed to foster broad-based growth for all, in contrast to the loophole-ridden system we have today. Not only is the current code flawed from top to bottom, it is used by politicians to divide the public along class lines and fails to promote prosperity.

 

WSJ.com - Will Islam Return Obama's 'Respect'?

WSJ.com - Opinion: Will Islam Return Obama's 'Respect'?

The subject of this column is the status of minority faith groups, mostly Christian, living inside Islamic countries. That status is poor. In some cases it verges on extinction, after centuries of coexistence with Islam. So it is useful to review what Mr. Obama said of his goals for living with Islam:

"I know that the trust that binds the United States and Turkey has been strained, and I know that strain is shared in many places where the Muslim faith is practiced. So let me say this as clearly as I can: The United States is not, and will never be, at war with Islam. . . .

"We seek broader engagement based on mutual interest and mutual respect. We will listen carefully, we will bridge misunderstandings, and we will seek common ground. We will be respectful, even when we do not agree. We will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith. . . . Many other Americans have Muslims in their families or have lived in a Muslim-majority country. I know, because I am one of them."

This is an eloquent description of ecumenical civility. In reality, the experience of Arab Christians living now amid majority Islamic populations is often repression, arrest, imprisonment and death.

WSJ.com - Aid Keeps Latin America Poor

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: Aid Keeps Latin America Poor

Latin America remains poor and backward not despite multilateral "assistance" but, in a large part, because of it.

Bauer spent a lifetime studying development. In 1972 he published "Dissent on Development" sharply criticizing aid for its focus on "symptoms and effects" of poverty while "divert[ing] attention from the determinants of development." For Bauer, foreign aid was not just a waste of money; it worked against getting things right in those areas that really matter to progress. Those "determinants" are now widely acknowledged, even by researchers at the World Bank. They produce an annual "Doing Business" survey that looks at the regulatory burden in 181 countries and points out the critical link between economically free people and prosperity.

It is obvious that economic liberty and property rights are the key drivers of development, and that there is no correlation between the volume of foreign aid a country receives and its respect for these values.

WSJ.com - Democrats and Poor Kids

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: Democrats and Poor Kids

Education Secretary Arne Duncan did a public service last week when he visited New York City and spoke up for charter schools and mayoral control of education. That was the reformer talking. The status quo Mr. Duncan was on display last month when he let Congress kill a District of Columbia voucher program even as he was sitting on evidence of its success.

Mr. Duncan's help in New York is in stark contrast to his department's decision to sit on a performance review of the D.C. voucher program while Congress debated its future in March. The latest annual evaluation was finally released Friday, and it shows measurable academic gains. The Opportunity Scholarship Program provides $7,500 vouchers to 1,700 low-income families in D.C. to send their children to private schools. Ninety-nine percent of the children are black or Hispanic, and there are more than four applicants for each scholarship.

The 2008 report demonstrated progress among certain subgroups of children but not everyone. This year's report shows statistically significant academic gains for the entire voucher-receiving population.

Opponents of school choice for poor children have long claimed they'd support vouchers if there was evidence that they work. While running for President last year, Mr. Obama told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that if he saw more proof that they were successful, he would "not allow my predisposition to stand in the way of making sure that our kids can learn . . . You do what works for the kids." Except, apparently, when what works is opposed by unions.