… on IdeaChan​nel​.tv.

Say what you will about Newt Gingrich, but he has that rare political gift: he sounds captivating and forceful even while talking complete dreck. I witnessed that up close a couple of years ago when I crashed a meeting of conservative activists, and saw Gingrich take the floor to urge everyone to get behind the president’s prescription-drug bill. Given that the plan represented the greatest expansion of the welfare state since the Great Society, you’d think this would be a tough sell. But to hear Gingrich tell it, signing onto the president’s bill would be a stroke of genius for limited government activists. The bill would cause a “plate-tectonic shift in the continental architecture of the modern welfare state.” Or something. I didn’t understand what that meant then and I still don’t. Yet so confident was the pitch, so bold the hand gestures, that Gingrich probably convinced a few people who knew better. 

Those talents were on display again yesterday morning, when the former Speaker appeared on Meet the Press to play coy about his presidential aspirations. He may or may not be running; but as always, he’s pushing Big Ideas. Among the highlights: “The only exit strategy in Iraq is victory.” That’s right: and the only treatment for cancer is remission. To be fair, Gingrich did go into a little more detail on how we win. It had something to do with FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps. 

He also talked a bit about his latest passion: creating some kind of bipartisan debate or series of debates that would in turn create “a wave of new ideas, a wave of new solutions. And see how that ferments.” Apparently, the catchphrase for this crusade is “Real change requires real change.” Which is less a slogan than a mind-blowing zen koan. 

Host Tim Russert pressed Gingrich to explain his remarks in Manchester, NH a couple of weeks ago, where, as the featured speaker at the “Nackey S. Loeb First Amendment award” dinner, Gingrich called for rethinking the First Amendment. On Meet the Press, Gingrich wouldn’t back down:

FMR. REP. GINGRICH: You close down any Web site that is jihadist.

MR. RUSSERT: But who makes that judgment?

FMR. REP. GINGRICH: Look, I—you can appoint three federal judges if you want to and say, “Review this stuff and tell us which ones to close down.” I would just like to have them be federal judges who’ve served in combat.

Now depending on the details, this could mean a major overhaul of First Amendment doctrine in the areas of incitement and prior restraint. But put that aside. “Three federal judges who’ve served in combat?” What does that have to do with anything? Is this a legal question or a military one? What a stunningly illiberal non sequitur. 

And on it went, for more than half the program. A half an hour of that sort of thing, and you’re almost ready to put up with Tom Friedman’s soundbitten wisdom in the “roundtable” portion of the program. Did you know that in Iraq, “the shortest distance between two points isn’t a straight line?”

This morning the U.S. Commerce Department reported another record deficit in the America’s broadest trade account with the rest of the world. In the July-September quarter of 2006, the U.S. current account deficit reached $225 billion, another record. The current account is the broadest measure of America’s international commerce, comprising not only trade in goods and services but also income flows from foreign investment and unilateral transfers such as foreign aid worker remittances.

The report is bound to throw more fuel on the debate over U.S. trade policy. Here’s how the Associated Press described the political fallout from the latest trade numbers:

“Democrats, who took over control of the House and Senate in the November elections, attacked President Bush’s trade policies, charging that the administration has run up record deficits for five straight years by failing to protect U.S. workers from unfair foreign trade practices.” 

To all this hand-wringing about the trade deficit, I say, “Bah Humbug.” The trade deficit itself tells us very little about the success or failure of U.S. trade policy. It is largely driven by differing rates of savings and investment in the United States and our major trading partners. (Check out http://​www​.free​trade​.org for the details.)

Obsession with the trade deficit also obscures the real story behind this morning’s trade numbers: Both our imports and exports are rising at a healthy rate.

Compared to the third quarter of last year, U.S. imports of goods and services from the rest of the world are up 12.7 percent while our exports are up an even steeper 14.1 percent. America’s total two-way trade with the world, including income from investments, is up a spectacular 16.4 percent from a year ago. Imports, exports and investment income have all reached record levels.

The bottom line: Despite the complaints of politicians, Americans have never earned or spent a higher share of their income in the global economy than we do today. We are voting with our dollars every day for more trade and globalization.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has given notice in the Federal Register that it would like to receive comments on, among other things, a recommendation by the American Health Information Community (AHIC), a chartered federal advisory committee, to advance the development of electronic health records (EHR).

The recommendations suggest a nationwide approach to developing digital and interoperable health IT systems. (“Request for Information (RFI): Improving Health and Accelerating Personalized Health Care Through Health Information Technology and Genomic Information in Population — and Community — Based Health Care Delivery Systems.” 71 FR 64282 (Nov. 1, 2006). Comment period closes Jan. 2, 2007.)

There is no doubt that the sharing of healthcare information can be in a patient’s best interest and contribute to the facility and accuracy with which the healthcare system cares for patients. Nevertheless, healthcare information should remain as much as possible within a patient’s own control. Healthcare institutions may wish to establish shared databases, but the government should not mandate or suggest that the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations or states mandate integrated data networks.

The U.S. healthcare system is suffering from a serious trust crisis and mandating the collection of medical data may very well add to that crisis. Many people associate data collection with criminal data bases and fear the misuse of widely available data. The perception of possible misuse, regardless of how real or unreal that perception may be, is going to create mistrust and suspicion of everyone involved in the data collection process. 

In addition to the publicly perceived dangers of such a system, there is at least one just as efficient, but much less costly, alternative: Digital healthcare memory, or “data sticks,” could provide each patient with his or her own personal database. A patient’s memory stick could be plugged into any doctor’s or hospital’s computer, making the patient’s medical records available everywhere in the world, not just within a national network of hospitals. This simple and relatively inexpensive solution would leave a person’s medical records completely in his or her own control, allowing the person to decide when, where, and to whom to disclose such personal information.

At least one company, PinnacleCare, provides such data collection as part of its comprehensive range of patient support services. There is no reason why hospitals, as a customer service, couldn’t provide such data downloads as part of their services. Physicians and hospitals already photocopy records for patients, so why not simply provide digital downloading of such records instead? 

Digital records are easily updated and transported. Patients, if they chose to do so, could wear their medical data stick on a lanyard, carry it in their wallet, leave it at home, or lock it in a safe. The choice of what to do with a person’s personal medical data and how to protect it would rest with the patient. 

Such a solution would be simple, cheaper and make personal medical more readily available to a wider range of practitioners — all without risking further erosion of patient trust in the healthcare system.

Reihan Salam comments on Alan Reynolds’ important op-ed in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal:

Anyway, even if Reynolds is right and we haven’t actually seen as big an increase in inequality as most observers believe, we still have a powerful perception that is driving political outcomes, including the drift of centrist Democrats away from pro-market policies. Merely pointing out that the statistics are somehow misleading (an important and valuable contribution if it’s true) won’t change that. So even if Reynolds is right, the political question — what do we do next? — remains an open question.

I find this a puzzling statement. The “powerful perception” of outsized increases in inequality is driven in large measure by the drumbeat of media rhetoric played to the time of misread inequality stats. If correcting that mistake cannot change the false perception driving political outcomes, then what can?

If Reihan believes, as I do, that Reynolds is right, then he ought to use his voice as a political commentator to help try to correct the misperception. If the correct belief about inequality becomes more widespread, then inequality will be seen as less of a problem and demand for policies meant to “fix it” will start to dry up. Then, maybe, what we do next won’t be misguided or counterproductive.

A banner headline and photo in the Business section of the Washington Post show former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling reporting to prison to begin serving a 24-year term for fraud and conspiracy. (Note that federal sentences don’t allow for much parole; Skilling must serve at least 85 percent of his sentence.) Sidebars depict other jailed corporate executives: Bernard Ebbers of WorldCom, 25 years; Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco, 8 to 25 years; John Rigas of Adelphia, 15 years (being appealed).

On the same page, another story reports:

Three years ago, Fannie Mae assured lawmakers that it had the required capital to cope with a broad variety of business setbacks.

Since 1992, “Fannie Mae has met or exceeded our capital requirements in every year,” Franklin D. Raines, then its chief executive, testified in September 2003. “Indeed, we are one of the best-capitalized financial institutions in the world, when compared to the risk of our business.”

As it turns out, the assurance was false.

Will Raines and other executives face lengthy jail terms for their repeated and massive accounting misrepresentations, which resulted in multi-million-dollar bonuses for the executives? It doesn’t look likely. Criminal charges against the company itself have been ruled out. The government may seek to recover millions of dollars from executives who received massive bonuses on the basis of the manipulated earnings statements, but there seem to be no plans to pursue criminal prosecution of these sophisticated Washington insiders.

There may well be good legal reasons why Enron and WorldCom executives were guilty of crimes punishable by 25 years in jail, while Fannie Mae executives were guilty only of outrageous behavior. But one can’t help wondering if the difference is related to yet another tiny story in the Post’s Business section on the same day: “Fannie Breaks Record On Lobbying Outlay.”

Some background on the fundamental problems with Fannie Mae and other government-sponsored enterprises here.

How close are we to enjoying truly free educational marketplaces in this country? Not very, according to our newly released Cato Education Market Index (CEMI).

Well over a year in the making, CEMI measures how closely existing school systems resemble free markets and rates education policy proposals on their conduciveness to the rise of markets. The verdict? No state in the nation even comes close. The two top scoring states, Wisconsin and Connecticut, tied with a score of 26 out of 100. 

Why is Wisconsin — with its vouchers, charter schools, and public school choice — rated so low? Why is Connecticut — which lacks vouchers and has few charter schools — rated the same?

The answer to the first question is that Wisconsin’s voucher program enrolls only about 1 percent of the state’s students, while its charter schools only enroll about 3 percent. These numbers are too low to have a significant impact on the level of education market activity statewide. And public school choice just isn’t close to real market activity because public schools are too standardized by state and disctict policies and regulations, can’t be operated for profit, don’t charge tuition, and neither open nor close exclusively in response to consumer demand.

Connecticut has among the most public school choice and the least intrusive public school regulation in the country, along with a truly free private education sector that is larger than the national average. But private schools serve only 11 percent of the state’s population, so it, too, only rates a 26.

Anyone interested in how the numbers were crunched can have a look the paper linked to above. The brave of heart may also want to dig into the uber-Excel spreadsheet that contains all the input data (100 data points per state), the calculations, and the tabulated results.

The full technical report contains regression analyses showing that higher CEMI ratings are correlated with both higher test scores and higher graduation rates.

Brief explanations of all the state ratings can be found here.