NSA Snooping: a Majority of Americans Believe What?

By
David Kirby

Yesterday, the Washington Post and the Pew Research Center released a joint poll that purportedly showed that “a large majority of Americans” believe the federal government should focus on “investigating possible terrorist threats even if personal privacy is compromised.”

But a careful look at the poll shows citizens are far less sanguine about surrendering their privacy rights, as the facts continue to be revealed.

Pollsters faced a difficult challenge—to accurately capture public opinion during a complex and evolving story. Recall, on Wednesday of last week, the story was about the NSA tracking Verizon phone records. So the pollsters drew up a perfectly reasonable and balanced question:

As you may know, it has been reported that the National Security Agency has been getting secret court orders to track telephone call records of MILLIONS of Americans in an effort to investigate terrorism. Would you consider this access to telephone call records an acceptable or unacceptable way for the federal government to investigate terrorism?

Fifty-six percent found this “acceptable.” Thus, the “majority of Americans” lead in the Washington Post.

However, on Thursday, the Washington Post revealed explosive details about the massive data-collection program PRISM—and the public was alerted that the NSA was not just collecting phone records, but email, Facebook, and other online records. So the pollsters quickly drew up a new question, asked starting Friday, from June 7-9:

Do you think the U.S. government should be able to monitor everyone’s email and other online activities if officials say this might prevent future terrorist attacks?

Fifty-two percent—a majority—said “no.” So Americans feel differently about the story based on the facts on Wednesday, when the story was about tracking “telephone calls,” and facts on Thursday, when the story was about monitoring all “email and other online activity.”

The Washington Post could have fairly gone with a story that a majority of Americans do not agree that the federal government should monitor everyone’s email and online communication, even if it might prevent future terrorist attacks.

Unfortunately, that’s not the story that the Washington Post went with. Subsequent media coverage of the Post-Pew poll has neglected this nuance and cemented this misinterpretation of what “majority of Americans” believe.

A more reasonable interpretation of the Post-Pew poll is that citizens’ views seem to be changing as more details are revealed about the massive extent of the NSA snooping program. Indeed, most citizens have not been following this story as closely with only 48 percent report following thing “very closely” or “fairly closely.”

I’ll be watching eagerly to see what the next polls find out about that ever elusive “majority of Americans.”

Topics: 
Law and Civil Liberties, Telecom, Internet & Information Policy

Plaintiffs Ask Court to Block IRS’s Illegal ObamaCare Taxes this Year

By
Michael F. Cannon

I have blogged about the Internal Revenue Service’s attempt to tax, borrow, and spend $800 billion contrary to the clear language of ObamaCare, and how both Oklahoma (in Pruitt v. Sebelius) and a group of individuals and small businesses (in Halbig v. Sebelius) have filed suit to block this raw power grab. The Congressional Research Service writes that these challenges “could be a major obstacle to the implementation of [ObamaCare].” George Mason University law professor Michael Greve writes:

This is huge: all of Obamacare hangs on the outcome…If successful…[either] case will bring Obamacare’s Exchange engine to a screeching halt…In short, this is for all the marbles.

Last week, the Halbig plaintiffs asked the U.S. district court for the District of Columbia to speed things up. Though the IRS doesn’t have to respond to the Halbig complaint until July, the plaintiffs filed a motion for summary judgment asking the court to rule on the case before the end of 2013. According to the plaintiffs:

Plaintiffs need a determination on the merits far enough in advance of January 1, 2014, to allow them to conform their behavior to the law. Because the validity of the regulation turns on a purely legal question and the administrative record is closed, Plaintiffs are moving for summary judgment now, and hope thereby to avoid the need to litigate a motion for preliminary injunction or temporary restraining order at the eleventh hour.

The plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment cites my paper (with Jonathan Adler), “Taxation Without Representation: The Illegal IRS Rule to Expand Tax Credits Under the PPACA.”

On June 17, one week from today, Cato will host a policy forum on Halbig v. Sebelius featuring plaintiffs’ counsel Michael Carvin and other luminaries. Register here.

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Health Care, Regulatory Studies, Tax and Budget Policy

US Carbon Dioxide Emissions Fall as Global Emissions Rise

By
Paul C. "Chip" Knappenberger

A new report from the International Energy Agency is sparking headlines across the media. “Global carbon dioxide emissions soared to record high in 2012” proclaimed USA Today; The Weather Channel led “Carbon dioxide emissions rose to record high in 2012”; and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer added “The world pumped a record amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in 2012.”

The figure below (taken from the IEA summary) provides the rest of the story.

It shows a breakdown of the change in carbon dioxide emissions from 2011 to 2012 from various regions of the globe.

 

Notice that the U.S. is far and away the leader in reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, while China primarily is responsible for pushing global CO2 emissions higher. In fact, CO2 emissions growth in China more than offsets all the CO2 savings that we have achieved in the U.S.

This will happen for the foreseeable future. Domestic actions to reduce carbon dioxide emissions will not produce a decline in the overall atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration.  The best we can hope to achieve is to slow the rate of growth of the atmospheric concentration—an effect that we can only achieve until our emissions are reduced to zero. The resulting climate impact is small and transient.

And before anyone goes and getting too uppity about the effectiveness of “green” measures in the U.S., the primary reason for the U.S. emissions decline is the result of new technologies from the fossil fuel industry that are leading to cheap coal being displaced by even cheaper natural gas for the generation of electricity. As luck would have it, the chemistry works out that that burning natural gas produces the same amount of energy for only about half of the CO2 emissions that burning coal does.

A new report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that as a result of these new technologies (e.g., hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling), globally, the technologically recoverable reserves of natural gas are nearly 50% greater than prior to their development.

Currently, the U.S. is the leader in the deployment of these technologies, and the effects are obvious (as seen in the figure above).  If and when more countries start to employ such technologies to recover natural gas, perhaps the growth in global carbon dioxide emissions will begin to slow (as compared to current projections).

Considering that possibility, along with the new, lower estimates for how sensitive the global average temperature is to carbon dioxide emissions, and the case for alarming climate change (and a carbon tax to try to mitigate it) is fading fast.

Topics: 
Energy and Environment

Larry Summers Redefines Balanced Budgets as Stimulus and Big Deficits as Austerity

By
Alan Reynolds

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, in June 4 testimony before the Senate Budget Committee, offers a scatter diagram which allegedly shows “that countries that pursued harsher austerity policies in recent years also had lower real GDP growth.”  He acknowledges, but does not adequately explain, that the causality may well be backwards: Bond markets would not allow countries in severe economic distress (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) to continue financing deficits at the peak levels of 2010.

Summers defines “austerity” as the three-year change (regardless of the level) from 2010 to 2013 in cyclically-adjusted “primary” deficits (excluding interest expense) as a percent of potential GDP.  His scatter diagram then compares those changes to average real GDP growth from 2010 to 2013, using unexplained estimates for 2013.

Measuring fiscal stimulus by the change in budget deficits means several countries with little or no budget deficit in both 2010 and 2013 appear as employing the most “fiscal stimulus” in Summers’ graph. Sweden’s deficit is estimated at 0.1 percent of GDP for 2013, according to The Economist, and was literally zero in 2010.  Keeping the budget balanced puts Sweden on the admirable left side of Summers’ diagram – the side ostensibly choosing growth rather than austerity.  Germany is another country Summers counts as avoiding austerity, even though Germany’s brief cyclically-adjusted deficit of 3.5 percent of GDP in 2010 was cut to zero in 2012-2013.

When it comes to real GDP Growth, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Slovak Republic and South Korea appear near the top of Summers’ graph.  It is revealing that Hong Kong is also far to the left on the pro-growth side of the austerity axis.  This may appear paradoxical since Hong Kong ran budget surpluses in 7 of the past 8 years, and will do so again in 2013. No amount of cyclical adjusting could turn chronic surpluses into deficits.  Simply because Hong Kong has not switched from a big deficit to a smaller one, that alone suffices to place it among the least “austere” economies on list.  Similarly, South Korea’s budget surplus is estimated at 1.3-1.4 percent of GDP in both 2010 and 2013, according to the OECD, but keeping the budget in surplus between those years counts as stimulative policy in Summers’ reckoning.

Read the rest of this post »

Topics: 
Government and Politics, International Economics and Development, Tax and Budget Policy

Common Core Deceive-and-Denigrate Campaign Continues

By
Neal McCluskey

I’ve written a lot recently about the untoward tactics being employed by supporters of the Common Core national curriculum standards. I’m afraid little seems to be changing, as illustrated by two new bits of evidence.

The first is a survey in Tennessee by the Core-supporting State Collaborative on Reforming Education. The survey – which has gotten significant coverage across the Volunteer State – supposedly shows that Tennesseans just love the Common Core. As the Knoxville News succinctly put it in its headline, “3 in 4 Tennesseans Favor Common Core Standards.” The article goes on to report that “after hearing a brief description about the standards, about 76 percent of voters support their implementation, with 44 percent ‘strongly’ favoring them.”

Well, that seems like an open-and-shut case for the Common…wait a minute. What was that “description” respondents heard?

Checking out the brief summary SCORE put out about its survey, it appears to be the following (see note 1):

Now, just so everyone taking this survey has the same information, let me tell you some more about these Common Core State Standards. These new standards were developed by states and have been set to internationally competitive levels in English and math. This means that students may be more challenged by the material they study, and the tests they take will measure more advanced concepts and require students to show their work. Knowing this, do you favor or oppose implementing these new Common Core State Standards?

Really? “Just so everyone…has the same information”? Gimme a break.

This is, of course, a classic loaded question designed to get a positive response. How many people are going to oppose “internationally competitive” standards by which children will be “challenged”? Forget that curriculum experts hardly all agree with this assertion. Then, it says that the standards were “developed by states” when, in fact, they were not: the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers are not states. Finally, it completely ignores that the federal government coerced state adoption of the Core – the main concern of the Core’s most vocal opponents – and did so before the final standards had even been published. If you’re going to include highly dubious assertions, and exclude crucial concerns, you might as well just say “the Common Core is terrific, has no down sides, and will be great for your kids. Now, do you favor or oppose terrific standards that will surely help your children?”

Alas, this is not new. It’s a standard, pro-Core question.

In other news, Delaware Governor Jack Markell (D) took to the pages of the Washington Post today to defend the Common Core against a Post report on Tea Party opposition to the Core. Alas, it was a typical defense, based as much on smearing Core opponents, and ignoring crucial federal involvement, as discussing the Core’s merits.

Markell starts with a straw man, citing the Post article as saying that Tea Party people argue that the Common Core was developed by the Feds. No such assertion appears in the article. Markell then suggests that Common Core was controlled by “state leaders” without saying who they were, perhaps because the NGA and CCSSO employees in charge of the effort were not “state leaders.” Moreover, he implies that somehow for standards to be high, and our nation internationally competitive, standards must be national. He offers no meaningful arguments for these things, and ignores the significant empirical evidence against such superficial assumptions.

Perhaps the most egregious – but typical – of his piece’s failings are two. The first is the absence of any mention of Race to the Top or NCLB waivers (not to mention federal funding and selection of national tests) that are the concrete federal actions that utterly justify anyone’s worries about federal control. They are also just the kinds of actions supporters asked for. And the second? Smearing the Tea Party as “fringe” kooks who, it is implied, only peddle myths.

Given what we’re seeing from many Core supporters, that last bit is ironic, isn’t it?

Topics: 
Education and Child Policy

Happy Birthday Nat Hentoff!

By
Tim Lynch

Cato Senior Fellow Nat Hentoff turns 88 today. 

John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, recently had some high praise for our colleague:

I’ve had the privilege of working with some remarkable individuals in my lifetime—celebrities, politicians, writers, artists, musicians, journalists, people whose names are legendary and others whose impact, no less significant, was only felt by a small few—yet for sheer nerve, integrity, tenacity, vision and a love of America that has weathered the best and worst this nation has had to offer, no one can match Nat Hentoff.

Even at the ripe age of 88, Hentoff is a radical in the best sense of the word, a feisty, fiercely loyal, inveterate freedom fighter and warrior journalist with a deep-seated intolerance of injustice and a well-deserved reputation for being one of the nation’s most respected, controversial and uncompromising writers.

Armed with a keen understanding of the law and an enviable way with words, brandishing a rapier wit and teeming with moral outrage, Nat has never been one to back down from a fight, and there have been many over the course of his lifetime—one marked by controversy and fueled by his passion for the protection of civil liberties and human rights. …

A self-described uncategorizable libertarian, Hentoff adds he is also a “Jewish atheist, civil libertarian, pro-lifer.” Born in Boston on June 10, 1925, Hentoff received a B.A. with honors from Northeastern University and did graduate work at Harvard. From 1953 to 1957, he was associate editor of Down Beat magazine. He went on to write many books on jazz, biographies and novels, including children’s books. His articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Commonwealth, the New Republic, the Atlantic and the New Yorker, where he was a staff writer for more than 25 years. In 1980, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Education and an American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award for his coverage of the law and criminal justice in his columns. In 1985, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Laws by Northeastern University. For 50 years, Hentoff wrote a weekly column for the Village Voice. When that position was terminated on December 31, 2008, Hentoff joined the Cato Institute as a Senior Fellow.

Read the whole thing.

Just a few days before Glenn Greenwald broke the explosive story about NSA surveillance, Hentoff was already complimenting Greenwald for his work defending free speech and a free press:

What all of this comes down to, as it may affect future administrations as well as generations of Americans, has been precisely underlined by Glenn Greenwald, an incisive journalist who would have given James Madison hope for the First Amendment’s future.

Writing about how “media outlets and journalists have finally awakened to the serious threat posed by the Obama administration to press freedoms, whistle blowing and transparency,” the question now, Greenwald demands, is:

“What, if anything, will they (journalists) do to defend the press freedoms they claim to value? … Thwarting government attacks like these … requires a real adversary posture, renouncing their subservience to government interests and fear of alienating official sources.

Hentoff discusses the NSA story here.

And beyond his work on civil liberties, Hentoff still finds time to review jazz music for the Wall Street Journal.  Last month, Hentoff had this article about Joe Alterman.

Topics: 
Law and Civil Liberties

Government’s Legal Arguments Shrivel on the Vine

By
Ilya Shapiro

Yet again the unanimous Supreme Court has slapped down a government attempt to deprive property owners of their civil rights.  What was at stake in Horne v. Dept. of Agriculture wasn’t even the property – raisins! – but the mere ability to challenge the government’s desire to take that property without meaningful judicial review.

Nobody should have to suffer a needless, Rube Goldberg-style litigation process to vindicate their constitutional rights. Yet that’s exactly what the U.S. Department of Agriculture sought to impose on raisin farmers Marvin and Laura Horne when they protested the enforcement of a USDA “marketing order” that demanded that the Hornes turn over 47% of their crop without compensation.

These New Deal-era regulations are bad enough – forcing raisin “handlers” to turn over some of their crop to the government so it can control raisin supply and price – but here the government kept throwing up obstacles to the Hornes’ attempts to assert that they shouldn’t legally be subject to them.  The government demanded about $650,000 from the Hornes and didn’t want to give them a day in court until they paid the money and jumped through assorted administrative hoops.

The Supreme Court correctly rejected that absurd position and reversed the California-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that upheld it, reinforcing the line drawn by five other circuit courts.  “In the case of an administrative enforcement proceeding,” Justice Thomas wrote on all his colleagues’ behalf, “when a party raises a constitutional defense to an assessed fine, it would make little sense to require the party to pay the fine in one proceeding and then turn around and sue for recovery of that same money in another.”

Indeed, there’s no reason to treat Fifth Amendment takings claims any differently than lawsuits against government violations of other constitutional provisions.

Here’s more background on the case and Cato’s amicus brief.

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Law and Civil Liberties, Regulatory Studies

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