Short news and commentary
IT'S OVERSPENDING, STUPID
John Kerry has blamed George Bush's tax cuts for today's federal deficit, and proposed their repeal as a centerpiece of his economic strategy. Exactly how much of today's federal deficit would be eliminated by reversing the various Bush reforms? The Tax Foundation recently used the Congressional Budget Office economic model to make careful estimates.
First, economists from the Tax Foundation calculated what would happen if today's top two tax rates of 35 percent and 33 percent were restored to their pre-Bush levels of 39.6 percent and 36 percent. To this they added the money that would be raised in those brackets by once again allowing full double taxation of dividends. The total effect: This year's deficit would be reduced from $477 billion to $450 billion.
Second, the economists assumed that the rest of George Bush's capital gains and dividend income tax reductions would be eliminated. This further reduced next year's deficit--to $430 billion.
That exhausted all the tax cuts that could conceivably be described as benefiting primarily "the rich."
Next, the economists determined how much would be saved by returning all other tax brackets to their pre-Bush levels, including elimination of the reduced 10 percent rate Bush set up for low-income Americans. While this would cut into the earnings of many working and middle-class families, it would trim the deficit to a cumulative total of $360 billion.
Then the study authors restored the marriage penalty, repealed the increase of the child credit from $500 to $1,000, and eliminated the other remaining Bush reforms. (This would really lacerate middle- and working-class families.) Grand total effect: The 2004 deficit would end up at $313 billion.
In other words, even if every single one of George Bush's tax reductions were reversed, the deficit would only be cut by one third. Clearly, then, something else is driving today's growth of the federal deficit. That "something" is runaway spending.
What would John Kerry do about that? And what does George Bush propose?
TRIUMPH TO TRAGEDY ON RACE
We've just marked the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the defining legal decision of the past century, in which the Supreme Court ruled school segregation by race to be un-Constitutional. Ten years later, with the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Congress solidified the basic principle of Brown: a prohibition of all racial discrimination by government.
The history of race law since then has been one of breathtaking judicial misbehavior. The end of segregation and prohibition of official racial discrimination soon came to be seen by activists not as a triumph, but as an obstacle. Race activists pressed the nation to move from prohibiting segregation to compelling integration. In 1968 the Supreme Court granted their wish in Green v. County School Board, which required government race discrimination in order to mix the races.
This violated Title IV of the Civil Rights Act, which specifically warns that "'desegregation' shall not mean the assignment of students to public schools in order to overcome racial imbalance." No matter. The Court required busing to undo residential racial concentration and create near-perfect racial balance in the giant Charlotte-Mecklenberg, North Carolina school district.
The Court similarly converted the prohibition of race discrimination in employment in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act into a requirement of discrimination--by prohibiting employers from using ordinary employment criteria, such as level of education, if the result disqualified blacks. In the 1978 Bakke decision, and just recently in the University of Michigan Law School case, the Supreme Court next decided that the prohibition of race discrimination by institutions receiving federal funds, as spelled out in the Civil Rights Act's Title VI, was not violated by race discrimination in school admission.
The great achievement of Brown v. Board of Education was that it inspired a moral and legal crusade to remove the evil of race discrimination from all aspects of government and public life. Its ultimate effect, however, was so greatly to increase the power and prestige of the Supreme Court as to permit it to press other, much less justifiable, crusades. The disastrous results of forced school integration have been to waste money (over $2 billion in Kansas City, Missouri alone), drive whites out of cities, and destroy urban school districts--nearly all of which are now highly separated by race.
Education for both races has suffered. And judges are to blame.
Lino Graglia is professor of law at the University of Texas.
HYSTERICAL PRESERVATION
Each spring, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the grumpy granddaddy of America's historical preservation organizations, releases a list of America's "most endangered historical places." While 2004's list includes a few worthy sites, such as Detroit's once lovely Madison-Lenox Hotel and a Utah canyon full of Native American art, most of this year's 11-item index represents a triumph of politics over common sense and aesthetic merit.
Historic preservation itself isn't a bad idea: Americans should be thankful that citizens, governments, and organizations like the Trust saved once-endangered places like Independence Hall, Washington, D.C.'s Union Station, and even the iconic gates that led to Chicago's Union Stockyards. But the Trust now seems to view the United States as a giant museum where no builder or developer should ever change anything.
Case in point: The state of Vermont --all 9,600 square miles of it--tops the Trust's ranking of endangered places. The Trust's justification is that Wal-Mart, which has operated throughout the state for 11 years, plans to expand some of its existing locations into Supercenters that include grocery stores. According to the Trust, six new stores will utterly transform Vermont and destroy its "unique sense of place."
Even if this did happen--and the Trust provides no evidence that it would--the busybodies who compiled the list can't seem to see that the stores won't have any effect unless Vermonters vote with their pocketbooks and choose to patronize them. If they do, who is the Trust to insist that Wal-Mart is bad for Vermont?
The absurdity, unfortunately, doesn't stop at the Green Mountain State's borders. Chicago's Old Cook County Hospital is a perfectly dreadful building: a petrified wedding cake renovated piecemeal by architects who looked to Darth Vader for architectural guidance. But the Trust insists it's a "gem" worthy of multi-million dollar renovation into expensive condos.
The Trust wants to preserve Maryland tobacco-storage barns that farmers used before the state finally paid them to stop growing the devil's weed. The Trust now favors another series of cash giveaways so farmers will maintain the now-useless barns indefinitely. Manhattan's Huntington-Hartford building likewise makes the list for being an "engagingly quirky icon." Translation: The marble-faced cubic monstrosity with lollipop-shaped windows is really, really ugly.
The real ugly prize, however, has to go to Bethlehem Works, a Pennsylvania steel-making complex that's been closed since the mid 1990s. Even the Trust admits that developers would have to tear down some of its buildings, but they still demand this industrial wreck be redeveloped into a steel-making museum surrounded by new housing. How many homeowners will find abandoned factory buildings delightful neighbors?
This is not the best way to spend money, or to beautify America.
GERMANY'S HOLY RECYCLERS
In Germany, recycling has virtually been turned into a state-mandated religion. Green Party officials sprinkled throughout local government have written the hymns. Now all citizens must sing along. And the music is not easy.
All glass disposed of by Germans must be sorted into separate bins for green, brown, and clear varieties. Paper (newspapers, magazines, waste paper, paper bags, etc.) belongs in green bins. You're not to leave any plastic wrappers on boxes (which must be flattened). "Composite" materials, such as beverage cartons, go in the special yellow bin.
Biological waste like kitchen scraps, peels, leftover food, coffee grounds, and other biodegradable material must be collected--but not in plastic bags, only in paper bags (which inevitably leak). The government encourages its citizens to put this on a compost pile, but if they can't, then it goes in a gray bin--along with diapers, tissues, ash, cigarette butts. Everything in the gray bins is burned.
Wastes like old paint, disinfectants, insecticides, fluorescent light bulbs, etc. have to be brought to a special site. Old batteries are to be deposited in containers at local shopping areas.
This all takes time. It takes space. It takes energy.
Recently, further efforts were launched in Germany on behalf of this ecological religion. A 30-cent deposit was put on every can or non-refillable bottle, no matter the size. It seems that even the conscientious Germans weren't always bothering to return their cans and bottles with lower deposit levels. To get the new deposit back you have to return all bottles, with the caps, to the same store where you bought them. With the receipt! If you bought your six-pack on the road, you're out a couple of bucks.
Don't look for consistency in the application of this ecological gospel. An apple juice and mineral-water mix has a deposit, but apple juice alone doesn't. The same distinction applies for iced tea, as opposed to carbonated iced tea.
The goal in all this, says the country's Green Party environment minister, Juergen Trittin, is "to stop the advance of the can." Sales of beverages in disposable cans and bottles have dropped 60 percent since the law was passed. The push is toward bottles that are washed, refilled, and recapped. The time, labor, energy, and collection costs imposed on German consumers and merchants for bottle-recycling and can-handling is utterly ignored by advocates.
Last October, new twists in the recycling liturgy were instituted by the Environment Ministry. There are now five different systems for bottle returns. Some can be returned to participating gas stations and stores. Others require a deposit coupon. The third system is a combination of the first two, and a fourth involves the big discount stores, which sell their own brands. Small stores with less than 200 square meters of floor space need only accept the brands of cans and bottles they sell.
These niggling rules on container recycling are part of a much larger mindset. German Greens are pressing for new controls in many areas of daily life. They want a 55 mph speed limit on the autobahn, and aim to limit vehicles to around 45 mph on state and county highways, and 30 mph in cities and towns. This is too much even for left-wing chancellor and Green Party ally Gerhard Schroeder, who has suggested, "The Greens are bent on self-destruction. Speed limits are up to local governments."
Green environmental policy also includes a flat rejection of air conditioning. There is institutionalized resistance to cooling even hospitals and public transportation. Amidst last summer's European heat wave, which killed 30,000 people, German weather service meteorologist Gerd Jendritzky proclaimed that air conditioning should not be instituted--because of ecological considerations! Conceding that several hundred Germans died because of the extreme heat, Jendritzky suggested behavioral palliatives. People should "get up earlier, take deep breaths, darken rooms, and plan the day's activities so that they are not outside during the day."
When you're a zealous missionary, a few hundred dead people can easily be justified.
Jane Mack-Cozzo has lived and studied in Heidelberg, Germany.
BOUNTIES FOR TECH JOCKS!
It's draft time for the NBA, and a select few high school seniors will earn more than a
diploma. Projections of the June 24 draft show that as many as seven high school seniors will be selected in the first round. While these select few go off to fame and fortune, America will look to the remaining graduates for the skills necessary for its security and economic prosperity--which largely depend on those in the fields of science, math, and engineering--citizens who give America technical advantages over our competitors and enemies. But we will not be able to hold those advantages without effort.
America's lead in science is slipping. The number of science and engineering graduates, patents, and Nobel prizes in America has been decreasing over recent years. If this trend continues, it will directly affect our strength and security.
Instead of just pouring more money into research and development, we should focus more tightly on the individuals who will become our future scientists and engineers. If more American students passed technical classes like calculus in high school, this would lead eventually to more scientists, engineers, and mathematicians--which would translate into more patents and advanced technologies.
So how do we get more kids to succeed at subjects like calculus? How about financial incentives? If we rewarded high school students with $1,500 stipends for passing calculus, wouldn't this lead to more students with a technical background?
America probably has more teenagers today working hard to be athletes than to be scientists and engineers. Visit a local youth sporting event and see the money and passion parents pour into their child's athletic success. Our society ought to highlight and reward early success in math and science with the same flair.
Our country desperately needs to transform our education system into one that rewards success in technical fields. Such a transformation would certainly face an uphill fight from defenders of the status quo. If those defenders have a better plan for inspiring more scientists, engineers, and mathematicians, they should bring it on. Otherwise, they should accept the fact that America doesn't have enough aspiring minds seeking success in math and science--and try some creative ways of amending that.
Newt Gingrich is a senior fellow, and Mark Kester, a Navy fellow, at AEI.
NON-LEFT STUDENTS STRIKE BACK
Politically and culturally, America's college campuses are some of the least diverse places in the nation. In faculty suites and classrooms, liberal orthodoxy is the only approved view. (See concrete documentation of this phenomenon in TAE's September 2002 issue.)
Protecting dissent from left-wing worldviews on campus is no small task. The Academic Bill of Rights promoted by author David Horowitz is the latest attempt. It issues guidelines for academic freedoms that encompass hiring practices, grading policies, curriculum standards, and guest-speaker selection. One of the primary tenets of the Bill is to protect students and faculty from becoming indoctrinated by professors' personal opinions: "Intellectual independence means the protection of students--as well as faculty--from the imposition of any orthodoxy of a political, religious, or ideological nature." The Bill is intentionally devoid of all political references, merely aiming for an environment that is truly open to different ideas and viewpoints.
A group promoting the Bill of Rights, Students for Academic Freedom, claims 123 chapters at universities nationwide. It seeks to "end the political abuse of the university and to restore integrity to the academic mission as a disinterested pursuit of knowledge." Its Web site features an "Academic Bias Complaint Form" for students, and comments are categorized and published on the site.
One goal is to persuade state and national legislatures to adopt their own academic bills of rights. Legislation has been introduced in Colorado with the aim of regulating the way universities there deal with bias complaints. Up to six other states may follow Colorado's lead.
Some opponents claim there is no need for such protections. "The Academic Bill of Rights is redundant," states the American Association of University Professors. Prominent academic radical Stanley Fish of the University of Illinois at Chicago objects that "intellectual diversity is not a stand-alone academic value, no more than is free speech; either can be a help in the pursuit of truth, but neither should be identified with it."
The deepest complaint from campuses: an academic bill of rights would give governments permission to meddle with academia. Government meddling in civil society? Imagine that.
Former TAE intern Amy Thoma recently graduated from UCLA.
DRAWING FIRE
New York City's contemporary art world has seen everything this season--from a "painting" made of dead flies to footage of JFK's autopsy. But perhaps nothing puzzled Manhattan more than an exhibition last October of 45 drawings and watercolors of the war in Iraq. Created by New York painter Steve Mumford, the works were largely unsensational, politically neutral scenes he witnessed while embedded in military units. "War art fascinates me," says the lean, slightly grizzled 43 year old. "Especially images of soldiers attempting to establish some normalcy in their lives."
"I didn't want to be polemical or admiring," Mumford says, "I just depicted what I saw." But his images struck a nerve in the notoriously left-leaning art world. Although critics praised their aesthetic merits, many criticized their content. "People attacked me for being objective, and not condemning the war," recalls the artist. One critic questioned whether Mumford had succumbed to the "military logic of the embed." Another decried his attempt to turn the Iraqi "slaughterhouse" into "tastefully smeared contour studies."
In many ways, the art world's reaction to Mumford's show reflected its general perplexity toward the post-9/11 era. Artists have generally avoided addressing the topic of war, Islam, or the Middle East. Or they've been unforgivably crass: A mere seven months after the Trade Center attack, international art star Maurizio Cattalan showed a work in New York consisting of two life-sized mannequins dressed as NYPD officers, turned upside down. The artist described this as "a new icon of subversion"--as if New York City needed one.
"After paying lip service to the heroes of 9/11, the art world has reverted to impotent anti-American whining," says critic Charlie Finch, one of the art community's few hawks. The 1990s hobbyhorses of gender, race, and postmodernism that 9/11 rendered largely irrelevant to the vast majority of the country are back as obsessions. Contemporary artists have simply recused themselves from today's most pressing national dilemma.
It wasn't always like this: Goya, Manet, Picasso, and others depicted the conflicts that rent their generations. Mumford's hero is Winslow Homer, who depicted Civil War scenes for Harper's Weekly. "Artists need to get out in the world, to grapple with the difficult issues of the day," he says.
Following Homer's precedent, Mumford went to Iraq in April 2003, wandering from the southern city of Basra north to the Turkish border. To his surprise, he found the military willing to accommodate civilians seeking to travel with combat units. "In Baghdad," he recalls, "I told an officer sitting in a Bradley that I was an artist who wanted to depict military life. He said, 'Get on board,' and there I was, roaring through the city's streets."
On his second trip during the fall of 2003, and his third visit this winter, the artist managed to accompany troops throughout the Sunni Triangle, where he learned to fear ambushes and nightly mortar attacks. "To accurately depict what soldiers face in Iraq, I had to understand the dangers they experience."
As for the soldiers' reaction, "at first they thought it was weird that someone wanted to draw them--then they got used to it."
There are other artists who have recorded images from Iraq. "I see myself as a sort of warrior-poet," says Staff Sergeant Michael Fay, one of two uniformed artists in the Marines. After serving a previous 13-year enlistment, Fay re-enlisted in the Marines in 2000, at the age of 47, to be a combat artist.
The Air Force has long used civilian combat artists, primarily drawn from organizations like the U.S. Society of Illustrators. "The Air Force has taken our members to bases around the world since 1954," says director Terrence Brown. Heavy-handed patriotism is avoided, as are scenes of wartime casualties. Still, Brown adds, "the military never tells artists what to paint." So far, the Air Force has sent 12 artists to Iraq, including Dallas-based artist Daniel Hartmann, who started the painting at the bottom of this column while in Baghdad.
Like Winslow Homer, Steve Mumford is attempting to bridge the gap between illustration and fine art, real-world politics and contemporary art-world triviality, respect for the military and free expression--all the while demonstrating that a hand-crafted painting can, in many ways, record reality with more emotional accuracy than the camera. Unfortunately, this old-fashioned notion of art, his non-judgmental attitude toward war, and his willingness to take risks to record it place him distinctly outside the mainstream of today's art world.
Steven Vincent has spent many weeks reporting from Iraq over the past year.
COMMON SENSE, RIP
Today we mourn the passing
of a beloved old friend,
with us for many years,
by the name of Common Sense.
He’ll be remembered for such things as
knowing to come in out of the rain,
that the early bird gets the worm,
and that life isn’t always fair.
He lived by simple financial rules
(don’t spend more than you earn),
and sound parenting strategies
(adults are in charge, not kids).
His health began to deteriorate
when bureaucratic red tape
and overbearing regulations
began to take over.
Suddenly six-year-old boys
began to be charged
with sexual harassment
for kissing classmates.
Teens were suspended from school
for using mouthwash after lunch,
and teachers fired for
reprimanding unruly students.
Common Sense’s condition worsened
as criminals began to receive
better treatment and more rights
than their victims.
When schools were required
to get parental consent to
administer aspirin to a student,
while the same schools
were forbidden from informing parents
when a pregnant student
wanted to have an abortion.
Common Sense lost the will to live.
He finally gave up the ghost after a lady,
not realizing that steaming coffee is hot,
was awarded a huge payment
for spilling it in her lap.
Common Sense was preceded in death
by his parents: Truth and Responsibility,
his children Discretion and Trust,
and his wife, Reason.
--adapted from the Internet samizdat
