The Gaza Aid Package: Time to Rethink U.S. Foreign Assistance to the Palestinians

The Gaza Aid Package: Time to Rethink U.S. Foreign Assistance to the Palestinians. By James Phillips
Heritage, March 9, 2009
WebMemo #2333

Full article w/references here

The Obama Administration has announced a huge aid package of $900 million to help ease the humanitarian plight of Palestinians in Gaza and to shore up the bankrupt Palestinian Authority (PA). This surge of soft power is aimed at strengthening Palestinian moderates and helping to clear the way for revived Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. But as long as Hamas remains free to rain rockets down on Israel, these ambitions remain little more than wishful thinking.

Since the 1993 Oslo peace accords, the U.S. has showered $2.2 billion in bilateral aid on the Palestinians, in addition to more than $3.4 billion for humanitarian aid funneled to the Palestinians through dysfunctional U.N. organizations since 1950. This aid has:

• Subsidized the welfare of Palestinian refugees;
• Contributed to a culture of victimization and shrill anti-Israeli and anti-Western radicalism; and
• Freed up some Palestinian groups to focus on destroying Israel rather than on providing for and advancing the long-term interests of the Palestinian people.

Given the searing economic crisis that the United States presently faces, the Obama Administration should:

• Significantly reduce these overly ambitious aid goals;
• Halt the funding of U.N. agencies that do not adequately screen their workers for terrorist connections or permit external audits; and
• Tighten restrictions on the disbursement of aid to ensure that the aid will not be diverted for hostile purposes.

A Soft-Headed Soft Power Approach to Middle East Peace

Last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the Obama Administration's pledge of $900 million in aid at an international donors conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. The aid package includes $300 million for humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza, $200 million in budget support for the PA, and $400 million to support the PA's Palestinian Reform and Development Plan in the West Bank.

The Obama Administration maintains that this massive aid package will not end up in the pockets of Hamas and other terrorist groups. It plans to funnel assistance through the PA, NGOs, and U.N. agencies. But the PA remains a weak and problematic institution hobbled by corruption, despite recent reforms. And U.N. agencies often have their own agenda as well as an anti-American and anti-Israeli tilt.

The largest U.N. body involved with facilitating aid to the Palestinians is the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), a notoriously opaque and dysfunctional institution that has been infiltrated by Hamas supporters and other Palestinian radicals.[1]Even though it receives over a third of a billion dollars in international funding every year, and despite recurrent reports of inefficiency and corruption, UNRWA is not externally or publicly audited. Such lack of accountability is particularly troubling for an organization that has been chronically dogged by controversy.

There are numerous reports documenting that UNRWA has been infiltrated by Hamas terrorists. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), at least 16 UNRWA staff had been detained by Israeli authorities for security-related crimes, and three had been convicted in military courts of terrorism-related activities.[2]UNRWA's leadership has admitted in the past that Hamas, which the U.S. government has designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, has been able to infiltrate the U.N. agency. Peter Hansen, then-commissioner-general of UNRWA, sparked a political storm in 2004 when he remarked in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that "I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll, and I don't see that as a crime. Hamas, as a political organization, does not mean that every member is a militant, and we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another."[3]

Specific examples of radicals working for UNRWA are readily available. For instance, Said Sayyam, the Hamas minister of interior, worked as a teacher at UNRWA schools in Gaza, while the headmaster of another UNRWA school, Awas al-Qiq, was the leader of a cell that build rockets for the Islamic Jihad terrorist group. Several other UNRWA employees left their jobs to run in the 2006 Palestinian elections as Hamas candidates. Despite the fact that the United States is the biggest single donor to UNRWA, that agency continues to resist reform and refuses external audits of its operations. Incredibly, the UNRWA Web site that includes information on its "Special Gaza Appeal" instructs donors to send money through the Commercial Bank of Syria, which has been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for money laundering and suspected involvement in moving money to terrorist groups.[4] Clearly, the UNRWA bureaucracy takes an extremely lax attitude on fighting terrorism and should not be trusted to handle aid provided by the U.S. government.


No Taxpayer Subsidies for Terrorist Groups

Given the penetration of UNRWA and other NGOs by terrorist groups, the United States must be absolutely sure that its aid does not end up being diverted. Congressman Mark Kirk (R-IL) has warned that "to route $900 million to this area, and let's say that Hamas was only able to steal 10 percent of that, we would still become Hamas's second-largest funder after Iran."[5]

Congress needs to scrutinize the Obama Administration's aid plans to make sure that there is absolutely no chance that funds provided by American taxpayers end up being pocketed by members of terrorist groups--a development that would violate section 301c of the Foreign Assistance Act. The Senate should pull funding for UNRWA and the Palestinian Authority from the $410 billion spending bill currently before Congress. And both houses of Congress should hold hearings and exercise their oversight powers to make sure that future aid to the Palestinians is dispensed on a more modest scale via closely vetted NGOs, not through corrupted U.N. bodies operating at cross-purposes with U.S. foreign policy goals.

James Phillips is Senior Research Fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation.

Another Semi-Defense of, Ahem, Tim Geithner

Another Semi-Defense of, Ahem, Tim Geithner. By Noam Scheiber
The New Republic,

It is, to massively understate the point, not exactly popular to defend Tim Geithner these days. And I certainly have concerns about what he's up to, and the direction the financial rescue is headed. But I think it's worth making at least one broad point on the guy's behalf. (God knows he could use it. When was the last time SNL not only parodied a Treasury secretary, but did it in a sketch that was funny?)

At the risk of sounding trite, I'd just say it's pretty easy for me and other commentators to insist that some form of nationalization is the only possible solution to the bank crisis. I happen to honestly think it is, as do many others. But it costs us nothing to say. We wouldn't have to deal with the logistical, political, and managerial nightmare of pulling it off, during which time thousands upon thousands of things could go wrong. And if some subset of those things did go wrong, we wouldn't be in charge of wading through the wreckage. If you were, your calculus would almost certainly be different from the guy who tosses off a few sentences and hits "publish" on his blog--sometimes before taking a shower in the morning. (That would be, uh, me.)

I couldn't help thinking this when I read Alan Blinder's column in Saturday's Times. Blinder ticked off some of the potential hitches with nationalization, including these:

First and foremost, the Swedish government had to deal with only a handful of banks; we have more than 8,300. Numbers matter, because deciding where to draw the nationalization line isn’t easy. Presumably, no one wants to nationalize all the banks, thousands of which are healthy. But where do you stop, once you start?

Suppose we nationalized four banks. Bank Five would then find itself at a severe disadvantage in competing for funds with the government-backed quartet. Forced to pay higher interest rates to attract depositors and other creditors, its profitability would suffer. Soon, Bank Five might start looking like a candidate for nationalization, too — followed by Banks Six, Seven and so on. ...

As stock traders began to contemplate the nationalization of Banks Five, Six and Seven, their share prices would tank, and short-sellers might consign the companies to an early grave.

Now, I have some ideas about why these fears are overblown, and how you could defuse them. (Transparency on the bank's balance sheets would be a good place to start, so people knew which banks were bona fide nationalization candidates.) But, if you're the guy who has to make the call--and deal with the s**tstorm that erupts if those fears turn out to be right, are you really going to take the word of a handful of bloggers and columnists? Even the top academic economists in the world? Paul Krugman has some great points in response to Blinder. But, if I'm Geithner, and I'm staring at such enormous downside risks, even an outsider as sharp as Krugman isn't going to set my mind at ease.

Don't get me wrong. At some point Geithner's going to have to do something truly comprehensive. And if he doesn't, or that something fails, he will rightly be blamed. And the longer he puts it off, the more likely failure becomes (all things being equal).

Also, as I've said before, I'm really glad people like Krugman are out there keeping the administration honest in the meantime.

I'd only caution against assuming the people at Treasury must be idiots if they can't see what looks obvious to you and me. It's just not so simple.

--Noam Scheiber

WaPo: State Sec Clinton undercuts own human rights reporting

Some Friends. WaPo Editorial
Hillary Rodham Clinton undercuts the State Department's own human rights reporting.
WaPo, Tuesday, March 10, 2009; A12

SECRETARY OF STATE Hillary Rodham Clinton continues to devalue and undermine the U.S. diplomatic tradition of human rights advocacy. On her first foreign trip, to Asia, she was dismissive about raising human rights concerns with China's communist government, saying "those issues can't interfere" with economic, security or environmental matters. In last week's visit to the Middle East and Europe, she undercut the State Department's own reporting regarding two problematic American allies: Egypt and Turkey.

According to State's latest report on Egypt, issued Feb. 25, "the government's respect for human rights remained poor" during 2008 "and serious abuses continued in many areas." It cited torture by security forces and a decline in freedom of the press, association and religion. Ms. Clinton was asked about those conclusions during an interview she gave to the al-Arabiya satellite network in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Her reply contained no expression of concern about the deteriorating situation. "We issue these reports on every country," she said. "We hope that it will be taken in the spirit in which it is offered, that we all have room for improvement."

Ms. Clinton was then asked whether there would be any connection between the report and a prospective invitation to President Hosni Mubarak to visit Washington. "It is not in any way connected," she replied, adding: "I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family. So I hope to see him often here in Egypt and in the United States." Ms. Clinton's words will be treasured by al-Qaeda recruiters and anti-American propagandists throughout the Middle East. She appears oblivious to how offensive such statements are to the millions of Egyptians who loathe Mr. Mubarak's oppressive government and blame the United States for propping it up.

The new secretary of state delivered a similar shock in Turkey to liberal supporters of press freedom, now under siege by the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. According to the State Department report, "senior government officials, including Prime Minister Erdogan, made statements during the year strongly criticizing the press and media business figures, particularly following the publishing of reports on alleged corruption . . . connected to the ruling party." That was an understatement: In fact, Mr. Erdogan's government has mounted an ugly campaign against one of Turkey's largest media conglomerates, presenting it with a $500 million tax bill in a maneuver that has been compared to Russia's treatment of independent media.

Ms. Clinton was asked by a Turkish journalist what she told Mr. Erdogan when he complained about the State Department report. She answered: "Well, my reaction was that we put out this report every year, and I fully understand . . . no politician ever likes the press criticizing them." "Overall," she concluded, "we think that Turkey has made tremendous progress in freedom of speech and freedom of religion and human rights, and we're proud of that."

In fact, as the State Department has documented, Turkey is retreating on freedom of speech. In Egypt, the human rights situation also is getting worse rather than better. By minimizing those facts, Ms. Clinton is doing a disservice to her own department -- and sending a message to rulers around the world that their abuses won't be taken seriously by this U.S. administration.

Jinpa: It's Not Hard for China to Satisfy Tibet - We are seeking autonomy, not independence

It's Not Hard for China to Satisfy Tibet. By Thupten Jinpa
We are seeking autonomy, not independence.
WSJ, Mar 10, 2009

Today, Tibetans all over the world -- at least, those outside their homeland -- will mark the 50th anniversary of the Lhasa uprising of 1959. That event culminated in the flight of the Dalai Lama and thousands of Tibetans into exile in India.

This year's commemoration must invoke somber reflection on the part of all stakeholders. Fifty years is a long time. China's great revolutionary leaders who were active in 1959 -- Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping -- have long since gone. Many of the older generation of Tibetans who fled Tibet in the wake of the 1959 uprising, including my own parents, also are no more. Yet for Tibetans the tragic legacy of the 1950s still lives on, most painfully in the continued separation of the Tibetan people from our beloved Dalai Lama.

Surely the time has come to close this sad chapter, to resolve the longstanding dispute, and to allow the reunion of the Tibetan people with their cherished leader. Last year's disturbances across the Tibetan areas brought attention to the depth of the Tibetan dissatisfaction with the status quo. Similarly, the widespread protests against the Olympic torch relay in many cities across the world -- Asia, Europe and North America -- conveyed the wish of so many people in the outside world to see the Tibetan issue resolved.

Why is the Tibet question so intractable that no leader in Beijing has managed to resolve it so far? First there is the complexity of history, with claims and counterclaims pertaining to the ownership of Tibet. Second, in dealing with the Tibetans, Beijing is confronted with a people whose sense of a united nationhood stretches back at least as far as the seventh century. During that period, China's Tang emperor was compelled to offer a princess as a bride to the Tibetan Emperor Songtsen Gampo. With a language, culture and origin myths of their own, the Tibetans have a powerful sense of their distinction and a deep historical consciousness. These are aspects of the Tibetan identity that will continue to be passed from generation to generation, regardless of the political contingencies of a given period.

Yet now is the best time in a long time to achieve a just solution. During Mao's era, one might argue, the People's Republic of China had to spend much of its time addressing problems arising from its birth and growth into a modern nation. Deng's priority was to take China through a careful transition into an effective market economy. Perhaps neither felt he could afford to give the Tibetan issue the commitment and attention necessary for its successful resolution. Today, China is an increasingly confident nation gradually emerging as an important global power, which, given its antiquity, size and economy, is its rightful place. So Beijing today is well-placed to resolve the longstanding issue of Tibet.

What then might be the best way to proceed? For both sides, there is not much to gain from invoking history to contest the legitimacy of each other's claims. For the Tibetans, the facts on the ground are such that, whether we like it or not, today Tibet is part of China. Tibetans need to understand that any proposed settlement that fails to respect the territorial integrity of modern China will be unacceptable to any government in Beijing.

Beijing, meanwhile, needs to recognize the legitimacy of the Tibetan people's aspiration to protect the integrity of our language, culture and identity. Although Beijing recognizes Tibetan language and culture formally, policies in Tibet still undermine the survival of that identity. Beijing could allow Tibetan to be the language of primary education as well as introducing it in the governmental and public services in the Tibetan-speaking areas. Greater religious freedom is also crucial, including allowing Tibetans to again display images of the Dalai Lama in their homes. Beijing must also ensure that the demography on the Tibetan plateau is not threatened in a manner that makes the survival of the Tibetans as a people impossible. These steps could go a long way toward assuring Tibetans that China acknowledges and respects their distinctiveness.

If these basic premises are honored on both sides, all other issues will be details. This is exactly the principle upon which the Dalai Lama's efforts over the last three decades are based. This also appears to be the spirit behind Deng's now famous statement, made to the Dalai Lama's envoy, that "except for Tibet's independence everything can be discussed."

Beijing has already nominally accepted this solution by designating the Tibetan areas as the Tibet Autonomous Region, Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture and Tibetan Autonomous Counties in other provinces like Gansu, Sichuan and Qinghai. It needs only to implement fully the letter of its own laws. The Tibetan side has also been ready to work from this premise. In October, at the eighth round of meetings since renewed contacts began in 2001 between Beijing and the Dalai Lama's representatives, the Dalai Lama's side offered a substantive proposal entitled Memorandum on Genuine Autonomy for the Tibetan People, which envisioned how such an arrangement could be implemented. At an important subsequent gathering in Dharamsala, the Tibetan exile representatives reaffirmed their full support to the Dalai Lama's approach.

Beijing now has the opportunity to exercise magnanimity and bring this sad chapter on Tibet to a dignified close. Failure to reach a solution while the Dalai Lama is alive will only serve to make the dispute even more intractable. The legitimacy of Beijing's rule in Tibet may be questioned for many more decades to come.

Mr. Jinpa is the principal translator for the Dalai Lama.

Conservative view: "Global Warming: The President Politicizes Stem-Cell Research - Taxpayers have a right to be left out of it

The President Politicizes Stem-Cell Research. By Robert P George and Eric Cohen
Taxpayers have a right to be left out of it.
WSJ, Mar 10, 2009

Yesterday President Barack Obama issued an executive order that authorizes expanded federal funding for research using stem cells produced by destroying human embryos. The announcement was classic Obama: advancing radical policies while seeming calm and moderate, and preaching the gospel of civility while accusing those who disagree with the policies of being "divisive" and even "politicizing science."

Mr. Obama's executive order overturned an attempt by President George W. Bush in 2001 to do justice to both the promise of stem-cell science and the demands of ethics. The Bush policy was to allow the government to fund research on existing embryonic stem-cell lines, where the embryos in question had already been destroyed. But it would not fund, or in any way incentivize, the ongoing destruction of human embryos.

For years, this policy was attacked by advocates of embryo-destructive research. Mr. Bush and the "religious right" were depicted as antiscience villains and embryonic stem-cell scientists and their allies were seen as the beleaguered saviors of the sick. In reality, Mr. Bush's policy was one of moderation. It did not ban new embryo-destructive research (the president had no power to do that), and it did not fund new embryo-destructive research.

"Moderate" Mr. Obama's policy is not. It will promote a whole new industry of embryo creation and destruction, including the creation of human embryos by cloning for research in which they are destroyed. It forces American taxpayers, including those who see the deliberate taking of human life in the embryonic stage as profoundly unjust, to be complicit in this practice.

Mr. Obama made a big point in his speech of claiming to bring integrity back to science policy, and his desire to remove the previous administration's ideological agenda from scientific decision-making. This claim of taking science out of politics is false and misguided on two counts.

First, the Obama policy is itself blatantly political. It is red meat to his Bush-hating base, yet pays no more than lip service to recent scientific breakthroughs that make possible the production of cells that are biologically equivalent to embryonic stem cells without the need to create or kill human embryos. Inexplicably -- apart from political motivations -- Mr. Obama revoked not only the Bush restrictions on embryo destructive research funding, but also the 2007 executive order that encourages the National Institutes of Health to explore non-embryo-destructive sources of stem cells.

Second and more fundamentally, the claim about taking politics out of science is in the deepest sense antidemocratic. The question of whether to destroy human embryos for research purposes is not fundamentally a scientific question; it is a moral and civic question about the proper uses, ambitions and limits of science. It is a question about how we will treat members of the human family at the very dawn of life; about our willingness to seek alternative paths to medical progress that respect human dignity.

For those who believe in the highest ideals of deliberative democracy, and those who believe we mistreat the most vulnerable human lives at our own moral peril, Mr. Obama's claim of "taking politics out of science" should be lamented, not celebrated.

In the years ahead, the stem-cell debate will surely continue -- raising as it does big questions about the meaning of human equality at the edges of human life, about the relationship between science and politics, and about how we govern ourselves when it comes to morally charged issues of public policy on which reasonable people happen to disagree. We can only hope, in the years ahead, that scientific creativity will make embryo destruction unnecessary and that as a society we will not pave the way to the brave new world with the best medical intentions.

Mr. George is professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton and co-author of "Embryo: A Defense of Human Life" (Doubleday, 2008). Mr. Cohen is editor-at-large of The New Atlantis and author of "In the Shadow of Progress: Being Human in the Age of Technology" (Encounter, 2008).

WaPo: President Obama lifts the limits on federally funded research but puts off key moral questions

Stem Cell Questions. WaPo Editorial
President Obama lifts the limits on federally funded research but puts off key moral questions.
WaPo, Tuesday, March 10, 2009; A12

PRESIDENT OBAMA did the right thing yesterday when he reversed President George W. Bush's limitations on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. The potential for cures and treatments of debilitating diseases with these versatile cells is enormous. But this type of experimentation is thick with ethical and moral questions, many of which Mr. Obama put off answering.

"We will develop strict guidelines, which we will rigorously enforce, because we cannot ever tolerate misuse or abuse," the president said yesterday at the White House. But he offered little indication of where he would draw those lines. In effect since August 2001, Mr. Bush's limits were offered as a compromise between the needs of scientists and the moral and ethical convictions of those troubled by the stem cell extraction process that destroys the embryos. Mr. Bush permitted federal funding of experimentation, but only on stem cell lines that existed at the time of his announcement. In practice, those 21 viable stem cell lines proved too few, and many scientists said the restrictions were holding back research. The breakthrough in 2007 that made human skin cells function like embryonic stem cells has great potential. But there are still questions about the efficacy of that approach. Mr. Obama says he wants all types of experimentation in this arena to be done "responsibly."

Mr. Obama will allow federal funding to be used for stem cell research on lines derived from embryos since 2001 and into the future. He has directed the National Institutes of Health to devise within 120 days the guidelines that will regulate how this research is conducted. But will research be performed only on stem cell lines grown from the thousands of frozen embryos in fertility clinics that have been slated for destruction? Mr. Obama didn't say. The 1995 legislation known as the Dickey-Wicker Amendment bans federal money from being used to create or destroy human embryos for research, but not research on stem cells from such embryos once they have been created.

Aside from saying, "As a person of faith, I believe we are called to care for each other and work to ease human suffering," the president has not given a hint as to where he stands on some thorny questions. Should Dickey-Wicker be repealed? He leaves it up to Congress to decide that. Where does he stand on growing human embryos for experimentation in general and using them for stem cells in particular? It's unclear.

The White House said that Mr. Obama doesn't want to prejudge the NIH guidelines but that this will not be the last we'll hear from Mr. Obama on this subject. We hope not. Some of these ethical questions need to be dealt with in the political arena, and not just by scientists.

Executive order on human embyonic stem cells

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
_________________________________________
For Immediate Release
March 9, 2009
EXECUTIVE ORDER
- - - - - - -
REMOVING BARRIERS TO RESPONSIBLE SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH INVOLVING HUMAN STEM CELLS

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Policy. Research involving human embryonic stem cells and human non-embryonic stem cells has the potential to lead to better understanding and treatment of many disabling diseases and conditions. Advances over the past decade in this promising scientific field have been encouraging, leading to broad agreement in the scientific community that the research should be supported by Federal funds.

For the past 8 years, the authority of the Department of Health and Human Services, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to fund and conduct human embryonic stem cell research has been limited by Presidential actions. The purpose of this order is to remove these limitations on scientific inquiry, to expand NIH support for the exploration of human stem cell research, and in so doing to enhance the contribution of America's scientists to important new discoveries and new therapies for the benefit of humankind.

Sec. 2. Research. The Secretary of Health and Human Services (Secretary), through the Director of NIH, may support and conduct responsible, scientifically worthy human stem cell research, including human embryonic stem cell research, to the extent permitted by law.

Sec. 3. Guidance. Within 120 days from the date of this order, the Secretary, through the Director of NIH, shall review existing NIH guidance and other widely recognized guidelines on human stem cell research, including provisions establishing appropriate safeguards, and issue new NIH guidance on such research that is consistent with this order. The Secretary, through NIH, shall review and update such guidance periodically, as appropriate.

Sec. 4. General Provisions. (a) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(b) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i) authority granted by law to an executive department, agency, or the head thereof; or
(ii) functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity, by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

Sec. 5. Revocations. (a) The Presidential statement of August 9, 2001, limiting Federal funding for research involving human embryonic stem cells, shall have no further effect as a statement of governmental policy.

(b) Executive Order 13435 of June 20, 2007, which supplements the August 9, 2001, statement on human embryonic stem cell research, is revoked.

BARACK OBAMA
THE WHITE HOUSE,
March 9, 2009.

Obama's National Intelligence Crackpot - What does the Jewish lobby have to do with China's dissidents

Obama's National Intelligence Crackpot, by Bret Stephens
What does the Jewish lobby have to do with China's dissidents
WSJ, Mar 10, 2009

On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal published a letter from 17 U.S. ambassadors defending the appointment of Charles Freeman to chair the National Intelligence Council. The same day, the leaders of the 1989 protests that led to the massacre at Beijing's Tiananmen Square wrote Barack Obama "to convey our intense dismay at your selection" of Mr. Freeman.

If moral weight could be measured on a zero to 100 scale, the signatories of the latter letter, some of whom spent years in Chinese jails, would probably find themselves in the upper 90s. Where Mr. Freeman and his defenders stand on this scale is something readers can decide for themselves.

So what do Chinese democracy activists have against Mr. Freeman, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia? As it turns out, they are all, apparently, part-and-parcel of the Israel Lobby.

In a recent article about Mr. Freeman's nomination in the Huffington Post, M.J. Rosenberg of the left-wing Israel Policy Forum writes that "Everyone involved in the anti-Freeman effort are staunch allies of the lobby." Of course: Only the most fervid Likudnik mandarins could object to Mr. Freeman's 2006 characterization of Mao Zedong as a man who, for all his flaws, had a "brilliance of . . . personality [that] illuminated the farthest corners of his country and inspired many would-be revolutionaries and romantics beyond it." It also takes a Shanghai Zionist to demur from Mr. Freeman's characterization of the Chinese leadership's response to the "mob scene" at Tiananmen as "a monument to overly cautious behavior on the part of the leadership."

Mr. Freeman knows China well: He served as a translator during Richard Nixon's historic 1972 visit to Beijing. More recently, Mr. Freeman served on the advisory board of CNOOC, the Chinese state-owned oil giant. Is this also a qualification to lead the NIC?
But the Far East is by no means Mr. Freeman's only area of expertise. For many years he has led the Middle East Policy Council, generously funded by Saudi money. It's a generosity Mr. Freeman has amply repaid.

Thus, recalling Mr. Freeman's special pleading on behalf of Riyadh during his stint as ambassador in the early '90s, former Secretary of State James Baker called it "a classic case of clientitis from one of our best diplomats." Mr. Freeman has also been quoted as saying "It is widely charged in the United States that Saudi Arabian education teaches hateful and evil things. I do not think this is the case." Yet according to a 2006 report in the Washington Post, an eighth grade Saudi textbook contains the line, "They are the Jews, whom God has cursed and with whom He is so angry that He will never again be satisfied." Maybe Mr. Freeman was unaware of this. Or maybe he doesn't consider it particularly evil and hateful.

Whatever the case, Mr. Freeman has been among the Kingdom's most devoted fans, going so far as to suggest that King Abdullah "is very rapidly becoming Abdullah the Great." No sycophancy there.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Freeman was a ferocious critic of the war on terror. Not surprising, either, was his opinion about what started it: "We have paid heavily and often in treasure in the past for our unflinching support and unstinting subsidies of Israel's approach to managing its relations with the Arabs," he said in 2006. "Five years ago we began to pay with the blood of our citizens here at home."

This is not a particularly original argument, although in Mr. Freeman's case it becomes a kind of monomania, in which Israel is always the warmonger, always slapping away Arab hands extended in peace. Say what you will about this depiction of reality, there's also a peculiar psychology at work.

Then again, as Middle East scholar Martin Kramer points out, Mr. Freeman's recent views on the causes of 9/11 contradict his view from 1998, when he insisted that al Qaeda's "campaign of violence against the United States has nothing to do with Israel." What changed? Mr. Kramer thinks Mr. Freeman was merely following the lead of his benefactor, Citibank shareholder Prince Al-Waleed, who opined that 9/11 was all about U.S. support for Israel, not what the Kingdom teaches about the infidels.

Is Mr. Freeman merely a shill? That seems unfair, even if it's hard to square his remorseless "realism" in matters Chinese with the touching solicitude he feels for Israel's victims (who, by his count, must be numbered in the tens of millions). James Fallows of the Atlantic has argued that Mr. Freeman's "contrarian inclination" would serve him well in the NIC post. But the line between contrarian and crackpot is a thin one, and knowing the difference between the two is a main task of intelligence.

Adm. Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence who asked Mr. Freeman to serve, is testifying today in Congress. Somebody should ask him if any of Mr. Freeman's views quoted above meet the definition of "crackpot," and, if not, why?

The Obama administration is already losing control of the narrative: The "good war" is well on its way to becoming another bad war

The Not-So-Great Game. By Thomas Donnelly, Raphael Cohen, Tim Sullivan
The Weekly Standard, March 16, 2009

In between his many appearances touting the stimulus package and the restructuring of the nation's financial institutions, housing markets, and automobile industry, Barack Obama made his first serious decision as America's commander in chief on February 17. He ordered an additional 17,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. In all likelihood, it's just the first installment of an Afghan "surge"--the U.S. and NATO commander in Kabul, General David McKiernan, has been asking for at least 30,000 more troops--but it raises four important questions.

First and foremost, will Obama rally Americans to support another long-running counterinsurgency effort? Despite his campaign rhetoric about Afghanistan being the "right war," Obama has been remarkably passive in setting the course of Afghan policy since taking office. If there's one lesson of the Bush years that Obama should not ignore it's that you cannot delegate war policy. You can't be just a "decider."

The White House has, moreover, been downplaying military issues at every turn. The troop deployment announcement was made by press release. Obama's Sort-of State of the Union address made only passing reference to war policy--other than the decision to close the Guantánamo detention facility. The president has been entirely diffident about discharging what the press release described as his most "solemn duty as President" in a "situation [that] demands urgent attention and swift action."

The Obama administration is already losing control of the narrative: The "good war" is well on its way to becoming another bad war. The tropes of the Afghanistan-as-the-graveyard-of-empires and Vietnam-revisited are back. In recent months, predictions of quagmire have moved from the Joe Klein fringe to the Evan Thomas mainstream. Newsweek's February 21 cover story, headlined "Could Afghanistan Be Obama's Vietnam?" reflects the emerging establishment consensus. According to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, only one third of Americans said U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan should be increased. The same number believe levels should be reduced. Only Obama can reconcile Americans to the realities of the Afghanistan war, explaining that success is hard but not impossible. Even the most insightful counterinsurgency strategy will demand patience--time probably matters much more than troop levels.

Second, the president needs to better control his "Team of Rivals." It is a military truism that strategic clarity depends upon a well-defined decisionmaking process, on a "unity of command." This principle is absent in the present Afghanistan policy. To a certain extent, this is inherent to coalition warfare: General McKiernan as International Security Assistance Force commander reports to both NATO and to U.S. Central Command. Likewise, his subordinate commanders--be they British, German, Canadian--report to at least two bosses.

But Obama is making the muddle worse. Afghanistan policy is the product of a horse-by-committee termed "the Interagency." The president, members of his cabinet, the national security adviser and his staff, generals and viceroys, and a burgeoning number of bureaucrats all take part and bring divergent personal or institutional biases with them. Interagency policy reflects the State Department's desires to do traditional diplomacy, the Pentagon's concerns about force structure and "balancing risk," the intelligence and special operations operatives charged with prosecuting the global war on terrorism, the charter of development agencies to alleviate poverty, and so on. No one in Washington is, as yet, responsible for winning the war.

And these structural problems are hugely exacerbated by the herd of elephantine egos and personalities engaged. There are at least three four-star officers with different agendas: McKiernan, CENTCOM chief General David Petraeus, and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The civilian side is even worse. Aside from the president himself, who has occasionally quipped that he's smarter than any of his advisers, there are the two poles of the new secretary of state and the old the secretary of defense. There's the national security adviser, Jim Jones, a former four-star general himself, who recently sounded like another four-star NSA, Alexander Haig, when he boasted to the Washington Post that he was in charge at the White House (even though Jones was in Munich at the time).

The Obama administration is also keen on ministers plenipotentiary and special envoys, with the new U.S. Special Envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, being the most special of all. He stands outside the traditional bureaucratic structures, and the great danger is that he will have lots of power but not so much responsibility. Foreign governments--Germany and Britain among them--remember the way in which Holbrooke dominated policymaking during the Balkans wars of the 1990s and want their own Holbrooke-equivalents in Afghanistan, if only to keep tabs on what the American is up to.

This multipolar decisionmaking world is a recipe for competition and confusion. There are at least three Afghanistan reviews underway: at the NSC by Bush-holdover "war czar" General Douglas Lute, at CENTCOM by Petraeus and many of the counterinsurgency experts who designed the Iraq surge, and by Mullen and the Joint Chiefs. These reviews, in turn, are to be reviewed by Bruce Riedel, a scholar at the Brookings Institution now working--at least temporarily--for Jones and the NSC. Whether he will bring clarity instead of further confusion is unclear; Riedel has written that he believes that settling the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is a key to success in Afghanistan and the war on terror.

Third, the administration needs to better define or, better yet, drop entirely the idea of "AfPak." This is the neologism for an emerging strain of conventional wisdom suggesting that for the United States to succeed in Afghanistan, it must first address the problems in the Pakistani border regions.

While there is no denying that the flow of weapons, resources, and fighters across the border into Afghanistan has complicated the U.S. mission there, Pakistan itself presents a range of strategic challenges of which the violence and extremism in its volatile tribal regions are only a symptom. As a nuclear-armed state with a weak civilian government, a politically powerful but malfunctioning military, and a population prone to extremism, Pakistan is strategically far more important to the United States than Afghanistan. The administration cannot afford to shape its policy toward Pakistan based simply upon the effects it hopes to achieve in Afghanistan; it must instead tackle Pakistan qua Pakistan, even as it pursues a comprehensive strategy for its neighbor. "AfPak" thinking will be wrongheaded about both countries.

Even if U.S. forces were able to stem entirely the flow of weapons and fighters, we would still have a robust indigenous Afghan insurgency on our hands. In the Pashtun belts of southern Afghanistan, in particular, much of the manpower behind the insurgency comes from local militants. The presence of criminal organizations and tribal militias throughout the country further complicates this volatile brew.

Conversely, the most immediate problems of Pakistan aren't confined to the border areas. The growing violence and extremism in the country's vast lawless territories aren't simply a problem for U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, they are a fundamental threat to Pakistan's survival, as militants move closer to the country's population centers. Thus far, the Pakistani government's responses have been haphazard and appear increasingly desperate. Over the past two years, the Pakistani army has been repeatedly defeated in conventional fights, by Taliban forces. The recent peace deal brokered by local officials and Taliban leaders in the Swat valley is further indication of the government's shrinking writ and testimony to the unpleasant military facts on the ground. The so-called "Malakand Accords" legitimate the rule of sharia law and de facto Taliban government in the region in return for a cease-fire among the roughly 2,000 fighters loyal to Taliban leader Maulana Fazlullah.

Much of Pakistan's dysfunction stems from the military's outsize role in governance and civil society. American engagement with the Pakistani army cannot simply be tactical or operational; it must be strategic and institutional. In the near term, the United States must discourage the Pakistani army from its heavy-handed counterinsurgency tactics and preference for conventional firepower. But the reason that the Pakistani army retains its conventional focus is that it remains a force whose structures and existence are justified by the threat of war with India. These problems--fear of India and the distorted societal role of the army--are larger and deeper problems that dwarf the problems of the border areas.

No matter the outcome in Afghanistan, the problems in Pakistan will persist. The United States, therefore, must be careful not to view its interests in the country simply through the lens of the Afghan conflict. Which leads to our fourth question.

Does the Obama administration have a coherent strategy for the whole region of which Afghanistan is just a part? This is an urgent need, reflected in the dangerous state of U.S. and NATO lines of communication. Several weeks ago, insurgents destroyed a key bridge in the Khyber Pass, the most important supply route from Pakistan into Afghanistan. A bombing in Pakistan also destroyed a group of vehicles due to be shipped north. Then the government of -Kyrgyzstan, thanks to a not-so-subtle bribe from the Russians, announced that it will no longer allow the United States to use the critical air base at Manas. The Kyrgyz have long been trying to raise the rent on Manas, but the U.S. government appears to have been neglectful of the issue, allowing the Russians to make mischief.

We may be able to offer a larger bribe and reclaim Manas, although General Petraeus also recently visited Uzbekistan, where we first had basing rights until we were thrown out for calling attention to the brutalities of the Uzbek regime toward its own people. Add in Iran's desire to create a sphere of influence for itself in western Afghanistan and India's growing concerns about attacks from terror groups based in Pakistan, and the need for a more comprehensive U.S. strategy becomes even more apparent.

It's time for the president to provide political leadership and the strategic clarity for his "right war" and for this dangerous region. Thus far, he's been absent without leave.

Thomas Donnelly is a resident fellow at AEI.

Who Pays for Cap and Trade? Hint: They were promised a tax cut

Who Pays for Cap and Trade? WSJ Editorial
Hint: They were promised a tax cut during the Obama campaign.
WSJ, Mar 09, 2009

Cap and trade is the tax that dare not speak its name, and Democrats are hoping in particular that no one notices who would pay for their climate ambitions. With President Obama depending on vast new carbon revenues in his budget and Congress promising a bill by May, perhaps Americans would like to know the deeply unequal ways that climate costs would be distributed across regions and income groups.

Politicians love cap and trade because they can claim to be taxing "polluters," not workers. Hardly. Once the government creates a scarce new commodity -- in this case the right to emit carbon -- and then mandates that businesses buy it, the costs would inevitably be passed on to all consumers in the form of higher prices. Stating the obvious, Peter Orszag -- now Mr. Obama's budget director -- told Congress last year that "Those price increases are essential to the success of a cap-and-trade program."

Hit hardest would be the "95% of working families" Mr. Obama keeps mentioning, usually omitting that his no-new-taxes pledge comes with the caveat "unless you use energy." Putting a price on carbon is regressive by definition because poor and middle-income households spend more of their paychecks on things like gas to drive to work, groceries or home heating.

The Congressional Budget Office -- Mr. Orszag's former roost -- estimates that the price hikes from a 15% cut in emissions would cost the average household in the bottom-income quintile about 3.3% of its after-tax income every year. That's about $680, not including the costs of reduced employment and output. The three middle quintiles would see their paychecks cut between $880 and $1,500, or 2.9% to 2.7% of income. The rich would pay 1.7%. Cap and trade is the ideal policy for every Beltway analyst who thinks the tax code is too progressive (all five of them).

But the greatest inequities are geographic and would be imposed on the parts of the U.S. that rely most on manufacturing or fossil fuels -- particularly coal, which generates most power in the Midwest, Southern and Plains states. It's no coincidence that the liberals most invested in cap and trade -- Barbara Boxer, Henry Waxman, Ed Markey -- come from California or the Northeast.

Coal provides more than half of U.S. electricity, and 25 states get more than 50% of their electricity from conventional coal-fired generation. In Ohio, it totals 86%, according to the Energy Information Administration. Ratepayers in Indiana (94%), Missouri (85%), New Mexico (80%), Pennsylvania (56%), West Virginia (98%) and Wyoming (95%) are going to get soaked.

Another way to think about it is in terms of per capita greenhouse-gas emissions. California is the No. 2 carbon emitter in the country but also has a large economy and population. So the average Californian only had a carbon footprint of about 12 tons of CO2-equivalent in 2005, according to the World Resource Institute's Climate Analysis Indicators, which integrates all government data. The situation is very different in Wyoming and North Dakota -- paging Senators Mike Enzi and Kent Conrad -- where every person was responsible for 154 and 95 tons, respectively. See the nearby chart for cap and trade's biggest state winners and losers.

[graph in original article]

Democrats say they'll allow some of this ocean of new cap-and-trade revenue to trickle back down to the public. In his budget, Mr. Obama wants to recycle $525 billion through the "making work pay" tax credit that goes to many people who don't pay income taxes. But $400 for individuals and $800 for families still doesn't offset carbon's income raid, especially in states with higher carbon use.

All the more so because the Administration is lowballing its cap-and-trade tax estimates. Its stated goal is to reduce emissions 14% below 2005 levels by 2020, which assuming that four-fifths of emissions are covered (excluding agriculture, for instance), works out to about $13 or $14 per ton of CO2. When CBO scored a similar bill last year, it expected prices to start at $23 and rise to $44 by 2018. CBO also projected the total value of the allowances at $902 billion over the first decade, which is some $256 billion more than the Administration's estimate.

We asked the White House budget office for the assumptions behind its revenue estimates, but a spokesman said the Administration doesn't have a formal proposal and will work with Congress and "stakeholders" to shape one. We were also pointed to recent comments by Mr. Orszag that he was "sure there will be enough there to finance the things that we have identified" and maybe "additional money" too. In other words, Mr. Obama expects a much larger tax increase than even he is willing to admit.

Those "stakeholders" are going to need some very large bribes, starting with the regions that stand to lose the most. Led by Michigan's Debbie Stabenow, 15 Senate Democrats have already formed a "gang" demanding that "consumers and workers in all regions of the U.S. are protected from undue hardship." In practice, this would mean corporate welfare for carbon-heavy businesses.

And of course Congress is its own "stakeholder." An economy-wide tax under the cover of saving the environment is the best political moneymaker since the income tax. Obama officials are already telling the press, sotto voce, that climate revenues might fund universal health care and other new social spending. No doubt they would, and when they did Mr. Obama's cap-and-trade rebates would become even smaller.

Cap and trade, in other words, is a scheme to redistribute income and wealth -- but in a very curious way. It takes from the working class and gives to the affluent; takes from Miami, Ohio, and gives to Miami, Florida; and takes from an industrial America that is already struggling and gives to rich Silicon Valley and Wall Street "green tech" investors who know how to leverage the political class.

Brookings: Where Were the Watchdogs? Systemic Risk and the Breakdown of Financial Governance

Where Were the Watchdogs? Systemic Risk and the Breakdown of Financial Governance. By Robert E. Litan
Brookings, Mar 09, 2009 > Testimony, Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Mar 04, 2009

March 04, 2009 — Mr. Chairman, Senator Collins, and other members of this Committee: Thank you for asking me to testify today on what could not be a more important issue facing the country in the wake of the current financial and economic crisis -- how our policies and institutions can do a better job in the future of reducing systemic risk in the financial system.

Specifically, I will address and answer the questions posed in your invitation:

• Do we need a systemic risk regulator (SRR)? Yes.
• Can the monitoring and response to systemic risks be accomplished within our existing regulatory structure, specifically by the Federal Reserve, or by some new entity? Ideally, I would like to see all federal financial regulatory activities consolidated in two agencies, a financial solvency regulator and a federal consumer protection regulator, with systemic risk responsibilities being assigned to the solvency regulator. As a second-best option, I would give clear systemic risk oversight authority to the Fed, an option which is better than either creating a new agency just for systemic risk or regulating through a “college” of existing financial regulators.
• If a systemic risk regulator is to be authorized, what should be its mandate? The SRR should have oversight of all systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs), although the nature and details of this oversight should take account of the differences in types of such institutions (banks, large insurers, hedge funds, private equity funds, and financial conglomerates). The SRR (or existing financial regulators should no systemic risk regulator be designated) should also regularly analyze and report to Congress on the systemic risks confronting the financial system.
• There are legitimate challenges associated with assigning any agency the awesome responsibility for reducing systemic risk. But after surveying the alternatives, I have concluded that policy makers have no other choice. As long as there are financial institutions whose failure could lead to calamitous financial and economic consequences, and thus invite all-but-certain federal rescue efforts if the threat of failure is real, then we must have some arm of the federal government oversee systemic risk and do the best we can to make that oversight work.
• Finally, while the United States should continue to cooperate with governments of other countries, notably through the G-20 process, in reforming financial systems, we should not wait for international agreements to be in place before we get our own financial house in order.

In reaching these conclusions, I draw on several recent reports I have prepared over the past year with colleagues at the Brookings Institution, and which are available on the Brookings website, and on highly useful conversations with my colleagues and grantees of the Kauffman Foundation and with other financial policy experts.

I advance the views I express here with humility. Although I have spent most of my professional career studying the financial industry, the magnitude of recent events is so far beyond anything I could have imagined several years ago that I – and I believe all of us, if we are honest – cannot be fully confident that the “fixes”, both in the short and long run, that we discuss and that the Congress and our regulators eventually adopt will be ideal and immutable. We should all be open to making mid-course corrections, as events continue to unfold, as we learn more, and reflect on what we have learned.

Read the full testimony » (pdf)

Czech President Vaclav Klaus on capitalism, collectivism, global warming, the price of water

No Debate. By Vaclav Klaus
Czech President Václav Klaus on why the discussion about global warming is a monologue
WSJ, Mar 09, 2009

For Václav Klaus, the inconvenient truth is this: Global warming is far from being proved, and the problem is that everybody has jumped on the bandwagon before any real debate has taken place.

Mr. Klaus won his second five-year term as president of the Czech Republic in February 2008. He studied at the Prague School of Economics, where he currently holds a professorship in finance.

Mr. Klaus talked to Robert Thomson, managing editor of The Wall Street Journal. Here are edited excerpts of their discussion.


Listening in Frustration

ROBERT THOMSON: Mr. President, obviously during the dark days of communism, America was a beacon for you and many other people in Central and Eastern Europe. What are your impressions of contemporary America?
VÁCLAV KLAUS: Sitting here in this room in the last two hours and the coming from, first Europe, and, second, from a former communist country where I spent most of my life, I almost don't believe my eyes to see how much you believe in government and how much you don't believe in the market.

This is for me a shocking experience. And I have to say that very loudly. As a professor of economics, I have my theoretical arguments about the impossibility of running the economy from above.

As a person who spent almost 50 years of his life in a communist country, I know how crazy it is to introduce schemes like the cap and trade and similar ideas, how devastating and damaging for the economy all those ideas really are. So I'm rather frustrated. It seems to me that to fight for freedom, free markets, is still the task of today, even if we hoped almost 20 years ago in the moment of the fall of communism that it was over.

This is the same in Europe these days. There is one EU summit after another one weekend after another, there is a summit trying to find solutions. But I don't think that this solution will come from the government.

MR. THOMSON: Now, you're also well known for your views on the environment. Are you concerned more about the environmental debate or the lack of debate that seems to be implicit in some people's approach to the environment?

MR. KLAUS: I'm afraid that a serious debate about that issue has not yet started. What we witnessed are monologues, a conference of believers in global warming. The debate has not yet started. Nevertheless, I'm afraid the politicians have already accepted this idea, understood that it's a good political project, and now the things are moving in a way which I consider extremely dangerous. And I know that not only politicians, the businesspeople discovered that it's very attractive investments to get taxpayers' money and to start doing some things. So this is another problem.

But I would like to make one thing clear, let's really differentiate the protection of the environment from the debate about global warming and decarbonizing the economy. I am not against the protection of the environment. I am against global-warming alarmism. Those are conceptually, structurally, two totally different issues.

MR. THOMSON: But a person could argue, "Look, frankly, you've lost the debate on global warming. And what you're doing now is just blaming political correctness for your inability to win an argument you've already lost."

MR. KLAUS: To win an argument you must have a potential place to argue, but I am afraid it does not exist anymore. And to speak about the scientific consensus about global warming, it's not true. To speak about a very strong relationship between carbon dioxide and the temperature in the world, again, not true. And I am really frustrated, I must say.


The Price of Water

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I have great respect for your work in promoting freedom. And at the heart of the current situation regarding climate change, I'd like to compare it to the water-scarcity issue that you identified in California. At our breakout session this morning, I think we pretty much reached a unanimous conclusion that one of the causes is a failure to price water appropriately. It's priced below market. Isn't that a failure in terms of dealing with the environment overall, a failure to price environmental goods?

MR. KLAUS: Well, of course, as an economist, I am aware of the externalities. I am aware of various cases of market failure. Nevertheless, I am first convinced that the government failure is incomparably bigger than any imaginable market failure in history.

With regard to the question of water, I think it's rather difficult to introduce the real market in the case of water. I wouldn't mind doing it in some respect. We are used to doing it differently, without paying attention to the real cost of water. It was a mistake, definitely so. I wouldn't be against, not rationing water, but introducing some sort of market mechanism in consuming water and then paying for that.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'm an environmentalist. But I want to applaud your willingness to take on and to try to separate the sometimes frustratingly intertwined topics of climate change or, say, global warming, versus environmental conservation. The Amazon rainforest, for instance, we're looking the equivalent of about 180 football fields every three minutes in deforestation. And that's not a sustainable model in my opinion. Can you comment on what it means to help conservation without overheating the argument around carbon?

MR. KLAUS: Well, there are several points. The first one, I thank you for stressing the difference between protection of the environment and global-warming alarmism and decarbonization of the economy. Those are two separate issues. By the way, communism is the nonexistence of real economic prices on the one hand, and state ownership, no private ownership, was a disaster for the environment. Everyone knows that. So we solved the environmental issues in our country in the moment of the fall of communism. By reintroducing normal prices, which give you the real scarcity of one thing or another, plus by introducing private property forced the solution for the environmental protection in general. This is my very strong, strong belief. The policy, the government policy for the environment, was not secondary but much lower importance as compared to those two systemic changes, prices and property rights.

Second, thank you for differentiating conservationism from environmentalism. Environmentalism is really a doctrine, religion, ideology, which has no connection to climatology or environment or anything else.

Then you mentioned the Brazilian forests. Well, tragic problem. Nevertheless, I think that the real stimulus for deforestation in many developing countries, including Brazil, was the crazy idea of biofuels. And those ideas came from the environmentalists. Now, they discovered it was a wrong idea, so they tried to pretend that they forgot the idea. So I'm afraid the deforestation in Brazil and the environmentalism is deeply, negatively connected.

State Sec Clinton to Announce this Year's International Women of Courage Awards

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to Announce the International Women of Courage Awards
Bureau of Public AffairsOffice of the Spokesman
Washington, DC, March 9, 2009

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will announce this year’s recipients of the Secretary of State’s Award for International Women of Courage. The awards ceremony will take place on March 11 at 4 p.m. in the Benjamin Franklin Room of the U.S. Department of State.

The annual Award for International Women of Courage recognizes women around the globe who have shown exceptional courage and leadership in advocating for human rights and women’s equality. This is the only Department of State award that pays tribute to outstanding women leaders worldwide. This year, the Secretary of State will pay tribute to honorees representing Afghanistan, Guatemala, Iraq, Malaysia, Niger, Russia, Uzbekistan, and Yemen.

The Awards Ceremony will be pool press coverage for cameras and open for writers and still photographers.

Final access time for writers and stills: 3:30 p.m. from the 23rd Street entrance.

Media representatives may attend this event upon presentation of one of the following: (1) A U.S. Government-issued identification card (Department of State, White House, Congress, Department of Defense or Foreign Press Center), (2) a media-issued photo identification card, or (3) a letter from their employer on letterhead verifying their employment as a journalist, accompanied by an official photo identification card (driver's license, passport). Press should allow adequate time to process through security and to be in the briefing room 10 minutes prior to the briefing.

PRN: 196

Last week's Supreme Court drug ruling will cost lives - Wyeth v Levine

The Supreme Court and the Tyranny of Lawyers. By Gordon Crovitz
Last week's drug ruling will cost lives.
WSJ, Mar 09, 2009

Every era of change has holdouts. As the Industrial Age began, the Luddites smashed newfangled mechanized looms. They understood that automation would let more people enter the textile industry, and that low competitive prices would replace their high fixed prices. At one point in the early 1800s, there were more British soldiers fighting the Luddites than there were fighting Napoleon. Our Information Age has its own antitechnology, antimarket Luddites, as the Supreme Court reminded us in a loom-smashing opinion last week.

At one level, Wyeth v. Levine is just another lawsuit with a silly result. The Food and Drug Administration had required Wyeth to distribute carefully worded warnings with its antinausea drug. The FDA told Wyeth to warn that "under no circumstances should Phenergan Injection be given by intra-arterial injection." The warning label also included, in uppercase letters: INADVERTENT INTRA-ARTERIAL INJECTION CAN RESULT IN GANGRENE OF THE AFFECTED EXTREMITY. Tragically, a physician's assistant in Vermont ignored the clear warnings and injected the drug into the arm of Diana Levine, who then developed gangrene and lost the arm. She sued the hospital, successfully. But she also sued Wyeth.

The legal issue was whether the medical experts at the FDA had pre-empted state lawsuits by mandating clear warnings. A majority of justices said that such implied pre-emption could not block lawsuits. The case would have been different if Congress had specifically pre-empted state drug lawsuits. The simple lesson businesspeople took was that the drug maker could not have done anything to avoid being sued. This logic leads to every drug (and ladder, hammer and toaster) having to carry 50 different warnings, one for each state, updated by local juries from time to time.

More broadly, this case is Exhibit A for how our legalistic culture puts a drag on the innovation, transparency and risk-taking that our new era champions. The result will be higher hurdles for funding to start health companies. There will be less research and development for new drugs, at a time when genome and other path-breaking information should be breaking important new ground, curing people, and helping drive the economy. Prices for drugs will rise to cover future jury verdicts. Defensive medicine already accounts for 30% of doctor bills, an amount equal to the cost of covering the 50 million Americans without health insurance.

As legal reformer Philip Howard has pointed out, one reason for excesses in the legal system is that what worked in the Industrial Age no longer works in our less standardized era. "The idea of organizing how to do things," Mr. Howard wrote in his recent book, "Life Without Lawyers," grew out of the need to set up assembly lines and to regulate complex systems and industries. But "today we assume unquestioningly that any activity will be more effective if we detail in advance how to get the job done." Mr. Howard also noted that lowered standards for litigation mean that people are now more free to sue.

"These two great currents of social organization -- prescribing rules to specify how to do things and affording individual rights to invoke a legal proceeding -- now sweep us along through our day like a mighty river, causing us to cling to legal logic for ordinary daily choices," he wrote. "To stay afloat, we must constantly be prepared to answer this question: Can you show this was done properly?" Instead of risk-taking and personal accountability, we have what Mr. Howard called a "moving mudbank comprised of accumulating bureaucracy and whatever claims people unilaterally choose to assert."

There are signs that the Industrial Age is yielding to the Information Age. In Britain, Parliament passed a law in 2006 authorizing judges to consider whether allowing a particular lawsuit to go ahead could "firstly, prevent a desirable activity from being undertaken at all, to a particular extent or in a particular way; or, secondly, discourage persons from undertaking functions in connection with a desirable activity."

This law blocks lawsuits that challenge potentially risky but desirable activities, from school outings to scientific innovation. It also liberates British judges to think about the real-world impact of lawsuits.

Just as jokes about life in the Soviet Union marked the end of the empire, humor in the U.S. suggests that it's time for common sense to replace the tyranny of legalism. The annual Wacky Warning Label Contest winners include a label on a baby stroller warning, "Remove child before folding"; a carpentry electric drill cautioning, "This product not intended for use as a dental drill"; and a brass fishing lure with a three-pronged hook on the end warning, "Harmful if swallowed."

Popular acceptance that one era has passed and another has begun is not enough to establish a clear demarcation. But as the example of the earlier battle against the Luddites shows, it's at least a start.

In Defense of Obamanomics

In Defense of Obamanomics. By Laura D Tyson
History shows that the president's tax plans are consistent with strong economic growth.
WSJ, Mar 09, 2009

If leadership is defined as recognizing a crisis, addressing its challenges, and setting new directions while remaining true to one's values, then Barack Obama is already demonstrating his strengths as a leader. He has inherited an economic crisis worse than any the nation has experienced since the Great Depression. Within fewer than 50 days in office he has signed a historic stimulus package to bolster demand and create 3.5 million jobs. Governors, business leaders and economists from both the left and the right have applauded the stimulus. Friday's distressing employment numbers indicate that much more may be needed.

President Obama has also proposed a 10-year budget that is faithful to the progressive vision he articulated during his campaign. His budget includes significant investments in health care, energy, the environment and education, and a tax cut for the middle class. It also calls for higher taxes on the top 3% of income earners to finance his priorities and reduce the deficit. Not surprisingly, a budget plan this ambitious is triggering strong and well-organized opposition on numerous fronts.

The opposition begins, predictably, with taxes, so it is important to understand the major tax changes President Obama is proposing and their underlying rationale. President Bush's tax cuts are scheduled to expire at the end of 2010. At that time, assuming the economy has entered a recovery, President Obama's budget will restore the top two marginal income tax rates to their 1990s levels of 36% and 39.6% for individuals earning more than $200,000 and couples earning more than $250,000. These changes will affect only the top 3% of taxpayers, the group that has enjoyed the largest gains in income and wealth over the last decade. In addition, for these taxpayers the tax rate on capital gains will increase to 20%, the lowest rate in the 1990s and the rate President Bush proposed in 2001, and the tax rate on dividends will increase to 20%, a rate lower than the rate of the 1990s and nearly 40% lower than that proposed by President Bush in 2001.

Critics charge that President Obama's tax rates for high-income earners will strangle small business and stifle economic growth. Such claims are misguided or disingenuous. A full 97% of small businesses will see their rates unchanged or enjoy additional tax benefits under the Obama plan. And the strong expansion of the 1900s proves that the tax rates on income, capital gains and dividends in the Obama budget will support rapid economic growth and substantial income gains at the top. Moreover, the higher tax revenues resulting from these rates will reduce the deficit by about $750 billion, bringing it down to an average of 3.9% of GDP over the next 10 years and to 3.1% of GDP by the end of the decade. This compares to an average deficit of 3.6% of GDP between 1982 and 1997, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average increased by 835%.

In addition, the president proposes to limit the deductions for dependents, charitable contributions and other expenses to 28%, the top rate for such deductions under Ronald Reagan. Some critics claim this is class warfare. But why should a family in a higher tax bracket get a bigger break on expenses than a middle-class family? And restoring this limit to its Reagan level will raise enough revenue to cover about half of the $634 billion reserve President Obama needs to finance health-care reform with the other half coming from savings in health spending. These savings include competitive bidding in order to reduce Medicare payments to private insurance plans, increasing the Medicaid rebate for brand-name drugs, and strengthening Medicare pay-for-performance incentives for hospitals.

Those who stand to lose from these changes are already protesting. But like the 28% limit on deductions, these savings are fair and reasonable ways to finance the twin goals of achieving universal health-care coverage and moderating the growth of health-care spending. The rising cost of health care per patient not just for Medicare and Medicaid but throughout the health-care system is the principal driver of the government's long-term deficit and debt problems. For more than 40 years, this cost has grown much faster than the overall economy and if the current rate continues, by 2050 Medicare and Medicaid will account for about 20% of GDP, and the national debt will soar to 300% of GDP. These are unsustainable outcomes. Health-care costs must be contained through significant investments in health information technologies, disease management techniques, and wellness and prevention programs. And these investments must begin now. The stimulus package contains over $20 billion for such investments and they are major priorities in the budget.

Reducing the nation's dependence on foreign oil and cutting carbon emissions are also priorities, supported by overwhelming scientific evidence on the risks and costs of climate change. Economists agree that establishing a price for carbon emissions either through a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system is essential to achieving these goals. The Obama administration has opted for the latter. The system will impose a limit on the amount of carbon that businesses are allowed to emit each year. Firms will be required to purchase permits from the federal government through an auction and will then be free to buy and sell them.

Critics of a cap-and-trade system are correct when they claim it will raise the prices of goods and services whose production and use emit carbon. That's exactly the point: Higher prices are necessary to encourage energy efficiency and the development of renewable energy, to discourage carbon emissions, and to reduce the societal costs of global warming. The Obama auction plan will also generate substantial government revenues, about 80% of which will be used for financing a refundable tax credit of up to $400 for individuals and up to $800 for families. The result will be tax cuts for 95% of working Americans. The remaining 20% of the auction revenue will be used to finance investments in energy efficiency, clean energy and smart-grid technologies.

Even the investments in education contained in the Obama budget will galvanize critics. Some will oppose the expansion of the federal government's funding for early childhood education despite evidence that it is among the best investments the government can make not only for children but for the economy as a whole.

Others will oppose expanding the tax credit for college tuition to $2,500 a year and making it permanent and partially refundable; increasing the Pell Grant to $5,500 a year; and eliminating subsidies to banks participating in the student-loan program, cutting $50 billion from the 10-year deficit. But, again, the returns to higher education are substantial for both the individual and the overall economy. Too many American students are forced to forego these returns because they cannot afford a college education, with deleterious effects on the nation's competitiveness.

The president's budget is progressive and ambitious. It will not, however, explode the size of government as some critics warn. If the economy recovers as projected, over the next decade taxes as a share of GDP at around 19% will be lower than they were during the second half of the 1990s, government spending as a share of GDP at around 22.5% will be about where it was under Reagan, and nondefense discretionary spending at around 3.6% of GDP will fall to its lowest level since that data was first collected in 1962.

The real risk lies in the possibility that the economy's recovery starts later and is much weaker than the economic assumptions in the budget. In this case, by no means remote, President Obama will have to adjust his plans while remaining true to his values. In a very few days in office, he has already demonstrated that he has the leadership skills to rise to the challenge.

Ms. Tyson is a professor of business and public policy at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. She served as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers and as the National Economic Adviser under President Clinton. She is a member of President Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

John Yoo: Yes, We Did Plan for Mumbai-Style Attacks in the U.S.

Yes, We Did Plan for Mumbai-Style Attacks in the U.S. By John Yoo
WSJ, Monday, March 9, 2009

Suppose al Qaeda branched out from crashing airliners into American cities. Using small arms, explosives, or biological, chemical or nuclear weapons they could seize control of apartment buildings, stadiums, ships, trains or buses. As in the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, texting and mobile email would make it easy to coordinate simultaneous assaults in a single city.

In the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, strikes on New York City and Washington, D.C., these were hypotheticals no more. They became real scenarios for which responsible civilian and military leaders had to plan. The possibility of such attacks raised difficult, fundamental questions of constitutional law, because they might require domestic military operations against an enemy for the first time since the Civil War. Could our armed forces monitor traffic in a city where terrorists were preparing to strike, search for cells using surveillance technology, or use force against a hijacked vessel or building?

While our military put al Qaeda on the run, it was the duty of the government to plan for worst-case scenarios.

In these extraordinary circumstances, while our military put al Qaeda on the run, it was the duty of the government to plan for worst-case scenarios--even if, thankfully, those circumstances never materialized. This was not reckless. It was prudent and responsible. While government officials worked tirelessly to prevent the next attack, lawyers, of which I was one, provided advice on unprecedented questions under the most severe time pressures.

Judging from the media coverage of Justice Department memos from those days--released this week by the Obama administration--this careful contingency planning amounted to a secret plot to overthrow the Constitution and strip Americans of their rights. As the New York Times has it, Bush lawyers "rush into sweeping away this country's most cherished rights." "Irresponsible," harrumphed former Clinton administration Justice Department officials.

According to these critics, the overthrow of constitutional government in the United States began with a 37-page memo, confidentially issued on Oct. 23, 2001, which concluded that the September 11 attacks triggered the government's war powers and allowed the president to use force to counter force. Alexander Hamilton saw things differently than critics of the Bush administration. He wrote in Federalist 74: "The direction of war implies the direction of the common strength, and the power of directing and employing the common strength forms a usual and essential part in the definition of the executive authority."

Congress agreed with Hamilton. Restrictions on deploying the military for domestic law enforcement (originally passed to end Reconstruction in the South) did not apply to self-defense of the nation. Congress blessed military action on Sept. 18, 2001, when it authorized President Bush "to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons" connected to the September 11 attacks, "in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States." Passed as the sound of Air Force combat air patrols flew over the Capitol, Congress must have understood that its words included stopping domestic attacks, since the hijacked airliners of 9/11 took off and crashed on American soil.

The government faced another fundamental question, which we addressed in our memo. Does the Fourth Amendment's requirement of a search warrant based on probable cause regulate the use of the military against terrorists on our soil. In portraying our answer, the media has quoted a single out-of-context sentence from our analysis: "First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully."

This line deliberately misrepresents the memo. The sentence only summarized a 1931 holding of the Supreme Court in the case of Near v. Minnesota concerning press freedom: "When a nation is at war many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight and no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right." The Court continued: "No one would question but that a government might prevent actual obstruction to its recruiting service or the publication of the sailing dates of transports or the number and location of troops."

Our memo had nothing to do with the First Amendment. It only referred to the case to show that constitutional rights apply differently during the exigencies of warfare than during peacetime. The 1931 case bolstered a point that the Supreme Court recognized in 2000 in Indianapolis v. Edmond, striking down random traffic stops to search for illegal drugs. "The Fourth Amendment would almost certainly permit an appropriately tailored roadblock set up to thwart an imminent terrorist attack," the Court wrote. Courts have understood that law-enforcement standards could not govern military operations against wartime enemies. They have rejected, to take one example, claims that the Constitution required compensation for the destruction of oil facilities before the invading Japanese in World War II.

Imposing Fourth Amendment standards on military action would have made the Civil War unwinnable--combat occurred wholly on U.S. territory and enemy soldiers were American citizens. The military does not have the time to obtain warrants before soldiers fire upon enemy targets and personnel; the battlefield does not provide the luxury to collect evidence needed to meet probable cause standards in civilian courts. Even if the Fourth Amendment applied, we believed that courts would judge military action under a standard of "reasonableness"--as they might review a police officer who fires in self-defense--rather than demand a warrant to use military force to stop a terror attack.

In releasing these memos, the Obama administration may be attempting to appease its antiwar base--which won't bother to read the memos in full--or trying to look good for the chattering classes.

But if the administration chooses to seriously pursue those officials who were charged with preparing for the unthinkable, today's intelligence and military officials will no doubt hesitate to fully prepare for those contingencies in the future. President Obama has said he wants to "look forward" rather than "backwards." If so, he should not restore risk aversion as the guiding principle of our counterterrorism strategy.

John Yoo is a visiting fellow at AEI.

90 Percent Tax Rate Proposed

90 Percent Tax Rate Proposed, by Hans Bader
Open Market/CEI, March 07, 2009 @ 11:14 am

Excerpts:

Congressman Jerry McNerney (D-California) has advocated raising marginal tax rates to 90 percent. Such a tax increase on the wealthy would be necessary, but not sufficient, to pay for the vast spending increases proposed by the Obama Administration, if it is to keep its promise not to raise taxes on those making less than $250,000 per year. Indeed, it would not raise enough money, since there simply are not enough wealthy people to pay for all the proposed spending.

In the National Journal, the disillusioned centrist Stuart Taylor, who once praised Obama, notes that Obama’s budget projections are based on bogus accounting, and would result in mushrooming deficits as far as the eye can see unless taxes are raised radically. Obama, he writes, “has been deceptive in basing his deficit projections on phantom expenditure cuts and wildly optimistic revenue estimates.” Moreover,

“The numbers don’t add up — and still won’t if and when, as seems almost certain, Obama ratchets up his so-far-fairly-modest new taxes on the top 2 percent. ‘A tax policy that confiscated 100 percent of the taxable income of everyone in America earning over $500,000 in 2006 would only have given Congress an extra $1.3 trillion in revenue,’ according to a February 27 editorial in The Wall Street Journal. ‘That’s less than half the 2006 federal budget of $2.7 trillion and looks tiny compared to the more than $4 trillion Congress will spend in fiscal 2010. Even taking every taxable ‘dime’ of everyone earning more than $75,000 in 2006 would have barely yielded enough to cover that $4 trillion.’

As for the budget’s $2 trillion in projected net “savings,” Obama’s budget director, Peter Orszag, admitted in testimony on Tuesday under questioning by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., that $1.6 trillion comes from phantom cuts of the money that would be needed to sustain the troop surge in Iraq for another decade — money that nobody ever intended to spend.

Other supposed savings — especially from Medicare — seem unlikely to materialize absent benefit cuts, which Obama has not proposed. And the cost of any health care legislation — to be drafted largely by a Congress that is allergic to the kind of cost-cutting necessary to make universal care sustainable — is likely to be two or three times the $634 billion over 10 years that Obama has budgeted.”

‘Manchurian Candidate’ Starts War on Business: Kevin Hassett

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_hassett&sid=amhpOT5rlR1Y

March 9 (Bloomberg) -- Back in the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson gave us the War on Poverty. In the 1970s, Richard Nixon launched the War on Drugs. Now that we have seen President Barack Obama’s first-year legislative agenda, we know what kind of a war he intends to wage.

It is no wonder that markets are imploding around us. Obama is giving us the War on Business.

Imagine that some hypothetical enemy state spent years preparing a “Manchurian Candidate” to destroy the U.S. economy once elected. What policies might that leader pursue?

He might discourage private capital from entering the financial sector by instructing his Treasury secretary to repeatedly promise a brilliant rescue plan, but never actually have one. Private firms, spooked by the thought of what government might do, would shy away from transactions altogether. If the secretary were smooth and played rope-a-dope long enough, the whole financial sector would be gone before voters could demand action.

Another diabolical idea would be to significantly increase taxes on whatever firms are still standing. That would require subterfuge, since increasing tax rates would be too obvious. Our Manchurian Candidate would have plenty of sophisticated ideas on changing the rules to get more revenue without increasing rates, such as auctioning off “permits.”

These steps would create near-term distress. If our Manchurian Candidate leader really wanted to knock the country down for good, he would have to provide insurance against any long-run recovery.

There are two steps to accomplish that.

Discourage Innovation

First, one way the economy might finally take off is for some entrepreneur to invent an amazing new product that launches something on the scale of the dot-com boom. If you want to destroy an economy, you have to persuade those innovators not even to try.

Second, you need to initiate entitlement programs that are difficult to change once enacted. These programs should transfer assets away from productive areas of the economy as efficiently as possible. Ideally, the government will have no choice but to increase taxes sharply in the future to pay for new entitlements.

A leader who pulled off all that might be able to finish off the country.

Let’s see how Obama’s plan compares with our nightmare scenario.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has been so slow to act that even liberal economist and commentator Paul Krugman is criticizing the administration for “dithering.” It has gotten so bad that the Intrade prediction market now has a future on whether Geithner is gone by year’s end. It currently puts the chance of that at about 20 percent.

No More Deferral

On the tax hike, Obama’s proposed 2010 budget quite ominously signaled that he intends to end or significantly amend the U.S. practice of allowing U.S. multinationals to defer U.S. taxes on income that they earn abroad.

Currently, the U.S. has the second-highest corporate tax on Earth. U.S. firms can compete in Europe by opening a subsidiary in a low-tax country and locating the profits there. Since the high U.S. tax applies only when the money is mailed home, and firms can let the money sit abroad for as long as they want, the big disadvantage of the high rate is muted significantly.

End that deferral opportunity and U.S. firms will no longer be able to compete, given their huge tax disadvantage. With foreign tax rates so low now, it is even possible that the end of deferral could lead to the extinction of the U.S. corporation.

If any firms are to remain, they will be festooned with massive carbon-permit expenses because of Obama’s new cap-and- trade program.

Importing Drugs

Obama’s attack on intellectual property is evident in his aggressive stance against U.S. pharmaceutical companies in the budget. He would force drug companies to pay higher “rebate” fees to Medicaid, and he included wording that suggests Americans will soon be able to import drugs from foreign countries. The stock prices of drug companies, predictably, tanked when his budget plan was released.

Obama will allow cheap and potentially counterfeit substitutes into the country and will set the U.S. price for drugs equal to the lowest price that any foreign government is able to coerce from our drugmakers.

Given this, why would anyone invest money in a risky new cancer trial, or bother inventing some other new thing that the government could expropriate as soon as it decides to?

Finally, Obama has set aside $634 billion to establish a health-reform reserve fund, a major first step in creating a universal health-care system. If you want to have health care for everyone, you have to give it to many people for free. Once we start doing that, we will never stop, at least until the government runs out of money.

It’s clear that President Obama wants the best for our country. That makes it all the more puzzling that he would legislate like a Manchurian Candidate.

(Kevin Hassett, director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, is a Bloomberg News columnist. He was an adviser to Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona in the 2008 presidential election. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Kevin Hassett at khassett@aei.org

Belief in conspiracy theories and government cover-ups

Are Americans Superstitious? By Karlyn Bowman
A small number of survey questions point to something worrisome: a belief in conspiracy theories and government cover-ups.
AEI, Monday, March 9, 2009

Officially, the term "ides" refers to the 15th day of certain months in the old Roman calendar. But March 15 has a special, inopportune significance--as every reader of Julius Caesar knows.
In an attempt to quantify how superstitious Americans are, pollsters have explored our beliefs about prophecies like the soothsayer's warning about Caesar's imminent death. They've also studied what we think about all things supernatural and fantastical.

Gallup began a battery of questions this way: "Some people are superstitious and try to behave in such a way as to avoid bad luck or jinxing themselves, and others are not. How superstitious are you?" One percent of respondents admitted to being very superstitious, 24% somewhat so, 28% not very and 47% not at all.

The follow-up questions revealed that around a quarter of us are superstitious about knocking on wood, 13% about a black cat crossing a path, 12% about walking under a ladder, 11% about breaking a mirror, 9% about the number 13--and 9% of respondents believed that speaking ill of a person makes it come true.

A small collection of questions on paranormal phenomena exist in the survey archives. Again, turning to Gallup's findings, 63% of respondents to one poll indicated they believe in déjà vu.
In questions asked in 1996 and then a decade later, slightly more than four in 10 believed in ESP, around 30% in telepathy and about a quarter in clairvoyance. Sixty percent said they had had the feeling of déjà vu, and 18% in another question said they had felt they were in touch with someone who had already died.

In November, Harris updated a broader question about "various things some people believe in." Substantial majorities believed in God (80%), miracles (75%) and heaven (73%)--to name just a few of the religious items the polling firm included. But significant numbers also believed in ghosts (44%) and witches (31%). The responses have held steady since Harris first asked the questions in 2005.

In a Gallup question, a third said houses could be haunted, 16% said they had been in such a house and 9% said they had been in the presence of a ghost.

Just 31% told Harris interviewers they believed in astrology, but in answer to a National Opinion Research Center question, a much larger proportion, 57%, admitted having read a horoscope or personal astrology report. Thirty-one percent said they thought astrology was "very" or "sort of" scientific. Seventeen percent told Gallup surveyors they had consulted a psychic or fortune teller.

Responding to a question from Yankelovich, a third said they believed intelligent beings from other planets have visited the U.S. In Harris' survey, 36% of people surveyed believed in UFOs, 25% weren't sure and 39% didn't believe.

These beliefs seem relatively harmless in the grand scheme of things--but a small number of survey questions point to something more worrisome: a belief in conspiracy theories and government cover-ups.

Sixty percent or more of respondents in six surveys taken by different polling organizations between 1988 and 2003 believe there was an official cover-up to keep the public from learning the truth about John F. Kennedy's assassination. Eighteen percent answered a Scripps Howard and Ohio University question from 1997 saying they thought it was very likely the government had been involved in the assassination of JFK, and another third found this somewhat likely.

After the Air Force issued a report in 1997 saying people who reported seeing UFOs and bodies of aliens in Roswell, N.M., actually saw the remains of weather balloons that were part of military experiments, nearly four in 10 told Fox News/Opinion Dynamics pollsters that the Air Force was covering up the UFO crash. A third told Gallup aliens had actually landed.

Further, nearly half of that poll's respondents say the government covered up information about the Waco, Texas, fire in 1993, in which 74 people died, and about the real cause of TWA Flight 80's crash over the Atlantic in 1996. In two other polls, 9 and 4% said the federal government bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City in order to blame extremist groups.

These deep suspicions--and the others many Americans hold--may reflect historical concern about federal government power. But, especially around the Ides of March, they are unsettling nonetheless.

Karlyn Bowman is a senior fellow at AEI.