8 September 2009
Today’s Tabbloid
PERSONAL NEWS FOR lgn@limitedgovernmentnetwork.com
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
Medium Tobacco Fights Back
[Cato at Liberty]
SEP 07, 2009 08:40P.M.
The New York Times has an editorial today titled “Big Tobacco Fights
Back,” criticizing tobacco companies’ lawsuit against new advertising
restrictions. Repeatedly, the Times attributes the lawsuit to “the
[tobacco] industry.”
But as my former Cato colleague Jacob Grier notes, the biggest tobacco
company (Philip Morris) is on the Times’s side in opposing the lawsuit.
So wouldn’t it make more sense to title the editorial “Medium-Size
Tobacco Fights Back”?
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
Staid Speech Is Cold Comfort
[Cato at Liberty]
SEP 07, 2009 08:39P.M.
After all of the rancor last week over his planned back-to-school address,
it was predictable that in the end President Obama would offer a largely
non-controversial speech about working hard and staying in school. If he
sticks to the text released today, that is pretty much what he will do.
Unfortunately, whether or not that was his original intent – and no one
knows for sure but the President and his advisors – many Obama
supporters will likely use the relatively staid final product as grounds to
smear people concerned about the speech as right-wing kooks or out-of-
control partisans. At the very least, such an outcome would be in keeping
with a lot of the email I’ve gotten since the story first broke. But it will
miss several critical points:
• No matter how innocuous the content of the speech, this could
certainly be an address with very political goals, intended to cast
the President in the warm glow of a man who just cares about kids.
From kissing babies, to photo-op reading sessions featuring cute
tikes on classroom floors, this could be just another instance of the
old practice of using children as props for political gain. And how
presumptuous of the president to make himself – rather than the
children, their teachers, and their schools – the center of attention
on what is the first day of school for millions of kids. Finally, add
the parts of the speech that sound like the President patting
1
himself on the back for overcoming difficulties as a youth, and the
speech could easily have political aims.
• Many people feared, thanks to politically and ideologically
suggestive lesson guides created by the U.S. Department of
Education, that the speech would be an effort at indoctrination.
Critically, it was only after very loud, initial outrage that the
Department made changes to the guides and the White House
announced it would release the text of the speech ahead of time.
Yet administration defenders act like everyone knew from the
outset that the speech would just be about working hard and
staying in school. And who knows what the speech might have
looked like had there not been so negative an initial reaction.
• Despite its generally innocuous tone, the speech does contain some
controversial political and ideological assertions, including that
“setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and
turning around schools” is the job of the federal government. Also,
the things the President highlights as worthy aspirations are
disproportionately government and non-profit work. And then
there’s this self-aggrandizing assertion: “Your families, your
teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have
the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working
hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment
and computers you need to learn.”
• Ultimately, no matter what happens now that the speech has been
published, one thing cannot be ignored or spun: When government
controls education, wrenching political and social conflict is
inevitable. Americans are very diverse – ideologically, ethnically,
morally, religiously – but they all have to support a single system of
government schools. As a result, they are constantly forced to fight
to have their values and desires respected, and the losers inevitably
have their liberty infringed. In this case, reasonable people who
want their children to hear the President must fight it out with
equally reasonable people who do not want their children to watch
the speech in school. It’s a situation completely at odds with a free
society, but as we have seen not just with the current conflict, but
seemingly endless battles over history textbooks, the teaching of
human origins, sex education, and on and on, it is inevitable when
government runs the schools. Which is why the most important
lesson to be learned from this presidential-address donnybrook is
that Americans need educational freedom. We need universal
school choice or crippling conflicts like this will keep on coming,
liberty will continue to be compromised, and our society will be
ripped farther and farther apart.
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR lgn@limitedgovernmentnetwork.com
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
China Moving Wrong Way on
Internet Freedom [Cato at
Liberty]
SEP 07, 2009 08:38P.M.
While the growth of the market in China has helped open up personal
space and limit control of individual lives, the Beijing authorities
still attempt to limit freedom of expression. The Internet continues to
be a prime target.
Reports the New York Times:
News Web sites in China, complying with secret government
orders, are requiring that new users log on under their true
identities to post comments, a shift in policy that the
country’s Internet users and media have fiercely opposed in
the past.Until recently, users could weigh in on news items on
many of the affected sites more anonymously, often without
registering at all, though the sites were obligated to screen all
posts, and the posts could still be traced via Internet protocol
addresses.
But in early August, without notification of a change, news
portals like Sina, Netease, Sohu and scores of other sites
began asking unregistered users to sign in under their real
names and identification numbers, said top editors at two of
the major portals affected. A Sina staff member also
confirmed the change.
The editors said the sites were putting into effect a
confidential directive issued in late July by the State Council
Information Office, one of the main government bodies
responsible for supervising the Internet in China.
If the government of the People’s Republic of China hopes to become an
increasingly important international power, it should begin trusting its
people to take on greater responsibility in deciding their own affairs. The
justifications offered for the Communist Party’s monopoly of power are
only going to grow more threadbare and unsustainable over time.
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8 September 2009
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
The Libertarian Vote in Virginia
[Cato at Liberty]
SEP 07, 2009 10:28A.M.
In Sunday’s Washington Post, Frank B. Atkinson says that this fall’s
gubernatorial race in Virginia will depend on
the all-important independent voters — the
disproportionately moderate, young, prosperous, suburban
and libertarian-leaning people who typically decide Virginia
contests.
Background on the libertarian vote here.
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
Green Jobs Campaign Is
Nonsense Anyway [Tax
Foundation]
SEP 07, 2009 12:00A.M.
The entire flap over White House green jobs “czar” Van Jones is a
political one, but there is the more important economic question of why
is there such an emphasis on “green jobs” in the first place.
“Green jobs” are not a benefit from fighting climate change; they are
actually a cost. If it takes 20 people to produce a given amount of energy
in a green manner whereas it took only 2 people to produce a given
amount of energy in a dirty manner, society is worse off, not better off (if
you ignore the benefits to the environment).
The benefits to the environment is the real issue here, not some shuffling
of jobs between “dirty” and “clean” industries. If global warming is truly
a problem and there is a link between it and carbon emissions, then a
carbon tax or a well-designed cap-and-trade system should be
implemented to improve societal well-being. Otherwise, such policies
would make society worse off even if jobs labeled green were created as
substitutes for dirty jobs.
Green jobs are merely a means that self-interested economic actors
would use as an input in maximizing their well-being subject to some
new constraint (i.e. environmental policy) imposed by government. In
other words, under a well-designed cap-and-trade policy or a carbon tax,
profit-maximizing firms would be induced to produce products in a way
that would impose a smaller carbon footprint (and in the process create
“green jobs”).
Finally, some critics of cap-and-trade or carbon taxes argue that such a
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR lgn@limitedgovernmentnetwork.com 8 September 2009

tax would decrease economic well-being. But that’s not the case if there
is truly the negative externality from carbon emissions. That’s because
the social costs of the current equilibrium exceed the private costs, and if
a cap-and-trade system was well-designed or a pure carbon tax was
imposed at the correct level, social welfare (broadly defined) would
increase. It would not decrease despite what loss in GDP or jobs statistics
are thrown out there.

The relevant issue is not jobs numbers (whether they come from
supporters or critics of environmental policies). From a public interest
perspective, it can be summed up in two general questions: (1) What are
the external costs of carbon emissions imposed on society? (2) Can the
U.S. government be trusted to improve social well-being (on net) given
both the “global” free-riding problem and the problem with
administrative costs?