@habragg asks, “If it’s never been below ‘elevated,’ is it really elevated?”

G‑20 Summit Agrees to International Spending Plan

The Washington Post reports, “Leaders from more than 20 major nations including the United States decided Thursday to make available an additional $1 trillion for the world economy through the International Monetary Fund and other institutions as part of a broad package of measures to overcome the global financial crisis.”

Cato scholars Richard W. Rahn, Daniel J. Ikenson and Ian Vásquez commented on the London-based meeting:

Rahn: “President Obama of the U.S. and Prime Minister Brown of the U.K. will be pressing for more so-called stimulus spending by other nations, despite the fact that the historical evidence shows that big increases in government spending are more likely to be damaging and slow down recovery than they are to promote vigorous economic expansion and job creation.”

Vásquez: “The push by some countries for massive increases in spending to address the global financial crisis smacks of political and bureaucratic opportunism. A prime example is Washington’s call to substantially increase the resources of the International Financial Institutions… There is no reason to think that massive increases of the IFIs’ funds will not worsen, rather than improve, their record or the accountability of the aid agencies and borrower governments.”

Ikenson: “Certainly it is crucial to avoid protectionist policies that clog the arteries of economic recovery and help nobody but politicians. But it is also important to keep things in perspective: the world is not on the brink of a global trade war, as some have suggested.”

Ikenson appeared on CNBC this week to push for a reduction of trade barriers in international markets.

With fears mounting over a global shift toward protectionism, Cato senior fellow Tom Palmer and the Atlas Economic Research Foundation are circulating a petition against restrictive trade measures.

Obama Administration Forces Out GM CEO

President Obama took an unprecedented step toward greater control of a private corporation after forcing General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner to leave the company. The New York Post reports “the administration threatened to withhold bailout money from the company if he didn’t.”

Writing for the Washington Post, trade analyst Dan Ikenson explained why the government is responsible for any GM failure from now on:

President Obama’s newly discovered prudence with taxpayer money and his tough-love approach to GM and Chrysler would both have more credibility if he hadn’t demanded Rick Wagoner’s resignation, as well. By imposing operational conditions normally reserved for boards of directors, the administration is now bound to the infamous “Pottery Barn” rule: you break it, you buy it. If things go further south, the government is now complicit.

Wagoner’s replacement, Fritz Henderson, said Tuesday that after receiving billions of taxpayer dollars, the company is considering bankruptcy as an option. Cato scholars recommended bankruptcy months ago:

Dan Ikenson, November 21, 2008: “Bailing out Detroit is unnecessary. After all, this is why we have the bankruptcy process. If companies in Chapter 11 can be salvaged, a bankruptcy judge will help them find the way. In the case of the Big Three, a bankruptcy process would almost certainly require them to dissolve their current union contracts. Revamping their labor structures is the single most important change that GM, Ford, and Chrysler could make — and yet it is the one change that many pro-bailout Democrats wish to ignore.”

Daniel J. Mitchell, November 13, 2008: “Advocates oftentimes admit that bailouts are not good policy, but they invariably argue that short-term considerations should trump long-term sensible policy. Their biggest assertion is that a bailout is necessary to prevent bankruptcy, and that avoiding this result is critical to prevent catastrophe. But Chapter 11 protection may be precisely what is needed to put American auto companies back on the path to profitability. Bankruptcy laws specifically are designed to give companies an opportunity — under court supervision — to reduce costs and streamline operations.”

Dan Ikenson, December 5, 2008: “The best solution is to allow the bankruptcy process to work. It will be needed. There are going to be jobs lost, but there is really nothing policymakers can do about that without exacerbating problems elsewhere. The numbers won’t be as dire as the Big Three have been projecting.”

Cato Links

• Is Portugal an example for the future of drug policy? Cato released a new case study this week by Salon writer Glenn Greenwald entitled, “Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies.”

• As the North Atlantic Treaty Organization celebrates its 60th birthday, there are signs of mounting trouble within the alliance and increasing reasons to doubt the organization’s relevance regarding the foreign policy challenges of the 21st century. In a new study, Cato scholar Ted Galen Carpenter argues that NATO’s time is up.

• Should immigration agents target businesses knowingly hiring illegal immigrants? Cato scholar Jim Harper weighs in on a Fox News debate.

• Cato scholar Gene Healy warns, “Beware of the Cult of Obama,” in this week’s Washington Examiner column.

• Sign up today for Cato University 2009: Economic Crisis, War, and the Rise of the State.

The latest federal study of the D.C. voucher program finds that voucher students have pulled significantly ahead of their public school peers in reading and perform at least as well as public school students in math. It also reports that the average tuition at the voucher schools is $6,620. That is ONE QUARTER what the District of Columbia spends per pupil on education ($26,555), according to the District’s own fiscal year 2009 budget.

Better results at a quarter the cost. And Democrats in Congress have sunset its funding and are trying to kill it. Shame on them.

If President Obama believes his own rhetoric on the need for greater efficiency in government education spending and for improved educational opportunities, he should work with the members of his own party to continue and grow this program.

Thanks to ever-improving technology, we have a record of what can happen when Americans try to assert their rights against government officials.

The video is a bit ponderous, but when they play the tape of TSA agents interrogating a young political activist who wishes to exercise his right to remain silent, it’s riveting and offensive.

(HT RedState and @JonHenke)

The Wall Street Journal reports,

While Congress has been flaying companies for giving out bonuses while on the government dole, lawmakers have a longstanding tradition of rewarding their own employees with extra cash — also courtesy of taxpayers.

And at the very time that Congress was mishandling the financial crisis and trying to direct popular outrage at Wall Street, not Washington, the bonuses were getting bigger:

Capitol Hill bonuses in 2008 were among the highest in years, according to LegiStorm, an organization that tracks payroll data. The average House aide earned 17% more in the fourth quarter of the year, when the bonuses were paid, than in previous quarters, according to the data.

LegiStorm is a pretty scary website for congressional staff members and privacy advocates. It makes readily available not just staffers’ salaries but their financial disclosure forms, including their spouses’ sources of income, as the Washington Post reported this week. I used LegiStorm myself (or technically interns Schuyler Daum and Jonathan Slemrod did) to write about how the Republicans shoveled bonus money to their staff members before they lost control of committee budgets after the 2006 election. Now that bonuses have become a focus of outrage, maybe Congress should impose 90 percent clawbacks on the bonuses of congressional staffers — and bonuses to other federal employees. After all, they’ve mismanaged the government’s finances far worse than AIG employees mismanaged that company.

The New York Civil Liberties Union has issued an impressive report calling for the repeal of the REAL ID Act.

“No Freedom Without Privacy: The REAL ID Act’s Assault on Americans’ Everyday Life” is a thorough look at the federal government’s national ID law, which states have refused to implement.

Less than a year ago, when it was clear that no state would be in compliance with the national ID law by the May 2008 deadline, then-DHS secretary Michael Chertoff granted waivers until December of this year, even to states that have statutorily barred themselves from complying. One of those states was South Carolina, whose governor Mark Sanford (R) has been a leading REAL ID opponent. The report cites him favorably for that.

Last year, bills to repeal the national ID law were introduced in both the Senate and House. With President Bush sure to veto, and Secretary Chertoff sure to demagogue a REAL ID repeal, the bills did not move. The political dynamics have changed since then, of course.

“Though the Real ID Act is not a household name,” the report says, “it is a central component of the Bush Administration’s assault on Americans’ liberty and privacy rights, and one that if not repealed now would forever change the fabric of American life.”

In its finite wisdom, the federal government often doubles down on bad policies, but the REAL ID Act is ripe for repeal. The law can’t be fixed, and there is no such thing as an acceptable national ID card.

People who don’t know me well don’t realize I’m not American. I have no accent, am among the most patriotic people you could meet, went to college and law school here, interned for a senator, clerked for a federal judge, worked on a presidential campaign, spent time in Iraq, and speak and write about the U.S. Constitution for a living. I was born in Russia, however, and immigrated to Canada with my parents when I was little. “We took a wrong turn at the St. Lawrence Seaway,” I like to joke.

The upshot is that, much as I’ve wanted to be American since about age eight — when I discovered that the U.S. governing ethos was “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” while Canada’s is “peace, order, and good government” — I am a Canadian citizen. And, because of this country’s perverted immigration system, none of the time I’ve spent in the United States (my entire adult life save a 10-month masters program in London) got me any closer to the unrestricted right to live and work here (a “green card”). 

Don’t worry, I’ve always been legal, through a combination of student, training, and professional visas, but those were always tied to the school or employer, hindering the types of professional activities I could engage in hanging a sword of Damocles over my life. If I lost my job — as so many lawyers have, for example, in this economy — I would have to leave the country where about 95% of my personal and professional network is located.

When I came to Cato, the opportunity presented itself to finally be able to petition for a green card. (I’ll spare you the overly technical and exceedingly frustrating details.) Along the way, I even got a certificate saying that the U.S. government — or at least the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (what used to be the I.N.S.) — considered me an “alien of exceptional ability.” I didn’t let this go to my head; when lawyers and bureaucrats come up with a term of art, it means less in real life than, say, one of you readers emailing me that you liked something I blogged here.

Anyhow, not expecting any action on my green card petition for at least another year (based on the processing times posted at the USCIS website), last night I came home to an unmarked envelope in my mailbox. It was my green card! — complete with a little pamphlet welcoming me to America.

This is quite literally the key to the rest of my life in this wonderful country. Those who know me well know how huge a deal this is for me personally, how long it has taken, and how many arbitrary and capricious obstacles our immigration non-policy places in the way of “skilled workers.” (Three years ago I attracted media attention during the Senate immigration debate with the soundbite, “if this reform goes through, I’m giving up law and taking up gardening.”)

I’ve been very fortunate in the opportunities I’ve had and the people I’ve met — including, in significant part, through the big-tent movement for liberty — and I am eternally grateful that this day has finally arrived. Believe me that I will never take for granted the great privilege that is permanent residence in the United States. My sincere hope is that America remains a beacon of liberty and that shining city on a hill.

I may well blog or write more about this in the future, but for more on my personal story, see, e.g., here, here, and here. More importantly, check out Cato’s excellent immigration work here.