Read story here.

But will it stick? And will it matter?

I never thought I would see the day, but I’ve been charged with “drooling” over a Democratic candidate’s policy position. I guess it’s true, and I guess I am that big of a nerd. I do some additional Spitzer-drooling on NRO this morning.

Sara Mead over at The Quick and The Ed says she can’t get excited about education tax credits like me and Ryan at Edspresso – no drooling from her. The primary problem comes down to this:

“If you’re a moderate on these issues, you should actually find tax credits more troubling than straight-out vouchers, mainly because tax credits for private education have even less public accountability for how public funds are used than do vouchers.”

But the thing is, school choice through tax credits provides an education system more accountable to parents and the public than charters, voucher, or anything else.

Personal-use tax credits allow parents to spend their own money on schools that they choose … and school accountability to parents is the most effective kind of accountability. Donation tax credits let people choose the kinds of Scholarship Granting Organizations they think do the best job educating lower-income children. In both cases, the people with the most interest in holding schools accountable for results are the ones with the power to actually hold them accountable – parents and the people funding the schools.

On top of this direct accountability to parents and the public, families and communities can choose the kind of school that works best for them, without making other people who disagree with their preferences pay for it. As it stands, we have to duke it out in the political and legal sphere over issues like separate but equal schooling for girls and boys. Some people want it, some don’t. Right now, it’s winner-takes-all, loser-tough-luck. Shouldn’t these decisions be ones for the parents, not the courts, the state, or the school district? And shouldn’t people who think same-sex education is wrong be able to withhold their support from it?

Education tax credits let individuals, families, and communities support the kind of educational environment they think works best. What’s wrong with diversity and freedom? Personally, those are the kinds of principles that get me drooling.

With 103 American fatalities, October was the fourth-bloodiest month since the beginning of the Iraq War. But the focus on the number of battle deaths may understate the true costs of the war for the American soldier. Due to innovations in battlefield medicine, we’re getting much better at saving soldiers’ lives. In WWII, 30 percent of those injured in combat died. In Vietnam–and even in the Gulf War–it was 24 percent. Now it’s around 10 percent. That is unquestionably a positive development. But it also means that many of those we save are horribly maimed. As this article from the New England Journal of Medicine describes:

One airman with devastating injuries from a mortar attack outside Balad on September 11, 2004, was on an operating table at Walter Reed just 36 hours later. In extremis from bilateral thigh injuries, abdominal wounds, shrapnel in the right hand, and facial injuries, he was taken from the field to the nearby 31st CSH in Balad. Bleeding was controlled, volume resuscitation begun, a guillotine amputation at the thigh performed. He underwent a laparotomy with diverting colostomy. His abdomen was left open, with a clear plastic bag as covering. He was then taken to Landstuhl by an Air Force Critical Care Transport team. When he arrived in Germany, Army surgeons determined that he would require more than 30 days’ recovery, if he made it at all. Therefore, although resuscitation was continued and a further washout performed, he was sent on to Walter Reed. There, after weeks in intensive care and multiple operations, he did survive. This is itself remarkable. Injuries like his were unsurvivable in previous wars. The cost, however, can be high. The airman lost one leg above the knee, the other in a hip disarticulation, his right hand, and part of his face. How he and others like him will be able to live and function remains an open question.…

[F]or many new problems, the answers remain unclear. Early in the war, for example, Kevlar vests proved dramatically effective in preventing torso injuries. Surgeons, however, now find that IEDs are causing blast injuries that extend upward under the armor and inward through axillary vents. Blast injuries are also producing an unprecedented burden of what orthopedists term “mangled extremities” — limbs with severe soft-tissue, bone, and often vascular injuries. These can be devastating, potentially mortal injuries, and whether to amputate is one of the most difficult decisions in orthopedic surgery. Military surgeons have relied on civilian trauma criteria to guide their choices, but those criteria have not proved reliable in this war. Possibly because the limb injuries are more extreme or more often combined with injuries to other organs, attempts to salvage limbs following the criteria have frequently failed, with life-threatening blood loss, ischemia, and sepsis.

Even with all the efforts made to save limbs, “the amputation rate in Iraq is double that of previous wars,” as the LA Times reported earlier this year, in its three-part series on wounded American soldiers. 

That war is a bloody business is hardly a novel point. And, of course, it is not by itself an argument against any particular war. If these men incurred similar injuries charging Al Qaeda positions at Tora Bora, that would have been terrible, but far easier to justify. However, it is becoming increasingly hard to justify the costs of our open-ended commitment in Iraq, where our mission becomes ever murkier, and victory, however defined, continues to recede over the horizon.

…Gunpowder Treason and plot

I know of no reason why the Gunpowder Treason

Should ever be forgot. 

Wondering how to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day this Sunday? Here’s my recommendation.

…at Jason Shafrin’s quite good Healthcare Economist blog.

In a speech in Indiana last week, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Michael Johanns reminded his farm-sector audience that U.S. farmers have perhaps never had it so good:

“For the last three years in a row, farm net worth has grown by an amazing, if not eye-popping, $90 billion per year, and we expect the same to be true in 2006. Farm equity, ladies and gentlemen, well, it’s at a record high today: just an unbelievable $1.6 trillion. And we expect the debt-to-asset ratio, by the end of the year, to be the lowest in 45 years.”

So can somebody explain to me again why the federal government subsidizes and protects American farmers at a cost to American taxpayers and consumers of $40 billion a year?

I had to do a double take of the by-line of an unabashedly pro-capitalism op-ed (subscription required) in today’s Wall Street Journal. Yes, indeed, that was Sen. Chuck Schumer (D‑NY) who co-authored a piece with New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg on the need to rethink stifling regulation of America’s financial services industries, and to consider tort reform.

Lamenting the relative decline of NYC as the world’s financial capital, Schumer and Bloomberg identify stifling regulation and frivolous law suits in the United States as major factors contributing to London’s and Hong Kong’s relative ascent as premiere locations for initial public offerings in recent years. Among the facts they cite is that in 2005, only one out of the top 24 IPO’s was registered in the United States, while four were registered in London. Moreover, “next year more money will be raised through IPOs in Hong Kong than in either London or New York.”

Schumer and Bloomberg cite regulatory costs that are 15 times higher in the United States than in Britain, an adversarial relationship between “tough cop” regulators and business in the United States, and the surging costs of securities-related class action suits as key factors driving business away from New York’s financial houses. The auditing expenses associated with the requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley are deemed to have grown “beyond anything Congress had anticipated.”

These are indeed serious problems, but it’s hard not to laugh about the irony. Schumer’s never met a regulation he didn’t like. He’s never been a friend of business. Of course he voted for Sarbanes-Oxley, along with all of his colleagues in the Senate, but he also led the charge against Kelloggs, General Mills, and the other cereal companies in the 1990s, when the price of Lucky Charms became unacceptably high to him. Just last summer, Schumer urged federal regulators to examine the behavior of oil companies to make sure they weren’t holding back production. And Schumer has been quick to ascend the podium to decry America’s growing trade deficit, urging, at times, government intervention to “correct” that growing problem.

That Schumer is suddenly opposed to stifling regulation and is saying things that are sure to upset the trial lawyers is welcome news. But it is likely just a fleeting flirtation with enlightenment. Let’s see what happens when someone points out to the Senator that New York’s capacity to attract IPOs, and the foreign investment that follows, is more a cause of the U.S. trade deficit than any “unfair trade” practices he assails. Which cause will he champion then?