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    • Editor

    World leaders at NATO Summit must ask, as The Caravan did: Can the Afghan war be won?

    | May 17, 2012 | 11:28 pm

    As world leaders gather in Chicago this weekend for the NATO Summit, one item will dominate the agenda: NATO’s involvement in Afghanistan. Among those in attendance will be President Obama, who will seek commitments of funds and troops from NATO allies to support the precarious transition of military leadership in the country to Afghan national security forces. These negotiations take place in the shadow of one persistent question: Can this war be won? Or is it time to acknowledge that this war cannot be brought to any meaningful conclusion let alone a victorious one? Last month, senior fellows Fouad Ajami and Charlie Hill convened a roundtable of eight thinkers and scholars on this vital question at Hoover’s online symposium on the contemporary dilemmas of the Greater Middle East, The Caravan. For a better understanding of the backdrop of this NATO Summit, continue reading below or here (to jump to the full symposium on the Afghan war).

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    • The Caravan

    Can the Afghan war be won?

    | April 16, 2012 | 7:00 am

    The Caravan project of the Working Group on Islamism and the International Order has put together a round table about the vital question of America’s options in Afghanistan.

    This is now America’s longest war, yet it has been so sparsely debated of late.  Can this war be won?  Have there been gains worthy of the sacrifices in blood and treasure incurred by the United States and its allies?  Or is it time to acknowledge that this war cannot be brought to any meaningful conclusion let alone a victorious one?

    Eight thinkers and scholars have taken part in this.  There is H.R. McMaster – brigadier general in the U.S. Army, until recently he served as Commander of Combined Joint Task Force Shafafiyat (Transparency) in Kabul, Afghanistan; Leon Wieseltier -Literary Editor of The New Republic; Ms. Clare Lockhart – co-founder and CEO of the Institute for State Effectiveness, she lived in Afghanistan for several years, contributing to the design of nationwide programs as adviser to the Afghan government; Joel Rayburn – Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army and a senior military fellow at the National Defense University; Professor Tom Henriksen, Professor Russell Berman, Professor Charles Hill and Professor Fouad Ajami – senior fellows at The Hoover Institution.

    If you are interested in traveling to our previous destinations, be sure to visit the Caravan (or subscribe to the RSS feed) to survey our journey into the ordeal of Syria, now nearly a full year into a terrible struggle between a dictatorial regime and a rebellion determined to overthrow it, where we asked – ‘What Can Be Done?’

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    • Jeremy Carl

    In Kentucky, Tea Party Stereotypes Collide with Reality

    | May 18, 2012 | 8:34 am

    In many ways, Thomas Massie, a Republican congressional candidate in Kentucky’s heavily Republican 4th district, which holds its primary election on Tuesday, probably fits the liberal—and media–  stereotype of a Tea Party candidate.  He lives in rural Kentucky on a farm and speaks with an accent that quickly reveals his small-town Kentucky roots.  He is the incumbent Judge-Executive (county executive) in his native Lewis County, a rural area of 14,000 whose county seat, Vanceburg, where Massie grew up, has less than 2,000 people.  The closest city in his Kentucky census area is  Maysville, a town of less than 10,000 almost one hour’s drive away.

    Unsurprisingly for someone who grew up in very rural Kentucky, Massie is a gun-rights enthusiast, who has had a concealed-carry permit for a decade and enjoys hunting and target practice with his four kids.  Married to his high school sweetheart, he is  strongly pro-life, he’s anti-bailout, anti-stimulus, supports aggressive use of domestic energy resources.  His  anti-Washington, anti-establishment rhetoric mirrors that of Kentucky Senator  and Tea Party champion Rand Paul, for whose campaign he volunteered.

    So far, so typical, according to the liberal’s tea party boilerplate.  But there is much more to Massie’s story.  Massie, son of a beer distributor, left Vanceburg after high school when he enrolled as a student at MIT where he became known for his inventive genius, standing out even amongst some of the most outstanding young engineers in the country. Alex Slocum, a long-time MIT engineering professor and a mentor to Massie during his college days, calls him “brilliant” “driven” and “honest”.  In 1995 he won MIT’s Lemelson Prize (and $30,000) as MIT’s outstanding student innovator, an impressive achievement at a campus where some of America’s best young engineers work all hours developing breakthrough technologies in every field.

    Click here to read more.

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    • Kori Schake

    Would You Loan This Man $200 Billion?

    | May 17, 2012 | 9:00 pm

    Alexis Tsipras won the Greek elections.  His Coalition of the Radical Left garnered the most votes, and his insistence that the leaders of Greece’s mainstream parties sign a “letter of repentance” for agreeing to the EU bailout prevented formation of a government, necessitating yet another round of elections June 17th.  Nine hundred billion dollars was withdrawn from Greek banks on Monday alone; its credit has been further downgraded “further into junk territory” (as the Wall Street Journal so nicely termed it) in anticipation of Greece abandoning or being forced out of the European Monetary Union.

    His party is committed to abrogating the deal whereby Greece reduces its sovereign debt in return for liquidity to get it through near term spending needs.  Near term, in the case of Greek indebtedness, extends to other European countries underwriting Greek debt for the coming decade, including another $220 billion Greece needs by the end of June.

    Greece’s leading politician tried his hand at foreign policy yesterday, threatening his lenders with default unless they relax their conditions for Greece to cut its spending and retire its debt.  Tsipras essentially told the Wall Street Journal that unless the EU continued to give Greece money without strings attached, Greece would bring down the entire European banking system.

    Specifically, he said “whatever we do, things will be difficult. But it will also be difficult at the same time for all of Europe because the euro will collapse.”  It merits recalling that Greece got into this mess because the government committed fraud by knowingly masking its debts.  Even if Greece proceeds with the stark program of spending reductions agreed to with the EU, Greece’s debt will only be reduced to 120% of GDP by 2020.

    Click here to read more.

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    • Editor

    The Omnibus

    | May 17, 2012 | 5:15 pm
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    • Bill Whalen

    California’s Ballots: If’s, And’s…and Butts

    | May 17, 2012 | 12:24 pm

    I just voted in California’s June 5 primary.

    No, that’s not a typo.

    About 58% of all primary ballots in the Golden State pending election are so-called “vote by mail”, a fancier way of saying “absentee ballot”. Call it California’s special way of decision-making, with a Netflix twist.

    A scintillating ballot, it’s not. The Republican presidential race is long over; Dianne Feinstein’s quest for a fifth U.S. Senate win has all the drama of an old-style Soviet election.

    Still, there’s a stopping point on the ballot that says oodles about the voters’ zeitgeist: Proposition 28 & 29.

    Let’s take them, in numerical order.

    Prop 28 would alter California’s term-limits law. Instead of the current 14-year limit (at max, three two-year terms in the State Assembly and two four-year stints in the State Senate), the new limit would be 12 years in the State Legislature.

    Click here to read more.

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    • Editor

    The Omnibus

    | May 16, 2012 | 3:15 pm

    California Edition

    • Speaking of tax reform for economic growth and steadier state revenues in California — from The Wall Street Journal archives – and worth going back to read: economists Michael Boskin & John Cogan on “How California Can Get Its Groove Back.”

     

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    • Editor

    The Omnibus

    | May 15, 2012 | 5:49 pm
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    • Editor

    Data Matters: G-7 GDP growth since summer 2009

    | May 15, 2012 | 4:44 pm

    Here is the second installment in our new series Data Matters.

    Following last week’s inaugural post of data from John Cogan, this week Edward Lazear, a Hoover Senior Fellow, Stanford Professor of Economics, and former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, offers us a comparative assessment of U.S. economic growth since the summer of 2009. The chart shows average GDP growth in the G-7 countries, including the Q1 2012 preliminary figures.

    Since we began to emerge from the economic wreckage of the Financial Crisis, the U.S. has experienced stronger economic growth than France, Italy, Japan, and the U.K. But economic growth in Germany and Canada has outstripped growth in the U.S. The pattern in the data is materially the same if we move our end point back to Q4 2011.

    The potential for a stronger economic recovery demonstrated by two of our peers supports a reassessment of the U.S. government’s response to the Financial Crisis and economic policy actions over the last three years.

    With Data Matters, we highlight data relevant to public policy that Hoover fellows are using in their research. We feature original data, data from another source that Hoover fellows are presenting in a new way, or data that fellows find helpful in shaping their own thinking.

    Sign up for the Advancing a Free Society RSS feed to follow our data stream.

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    • Editor

    The Omnibus

    | May 14, 2012 | 5:23 pm
    • In case you missed it: Brigadier General H. R. McMaster, a Hoover fellow, profiled in The Wall Street Journal‘s Weekend Interview.

     

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    • Bill Whalen

    Big Blue State…Big Red Numbers

    | May 14, 2012 | 1:08 pm

    Maybe someone forgot to carry the number . . .

    Or, the state’s Department of Finance misplaced the decimal point in doing its budget math . . .

    Or . . .

    California’s economy really is this wretched, its governor wasn’t terribly honest with the revenue projections he offered back in January, and the feds and the courts are doing their darnedest to complicate matters.

    Such is the very sorry state of the State of California, now that Gov. Jerry Brown has unveiled the state budget’s “May Revise” – one featuring a deficit sinkhole that’s spread from $9 billion to a walloping $16 billion in just four months’ time, plus the threat of additional spending cuts (here’s a pdf of the gory details).

    Why the $7 billion accounting error?

    Three culprits: (a) Brown over-estimated tax revenues by $4.3 billion; (b) the federal government and courts blocked $1.7 billion in cuts California wanted to make; (c) the state’s on the hook to spend more on its schools thanks to a messy voter-approved law.

    Now that Brown’s updated the state’s finances, look for three California storylines in the weeks and months ahead:

    Click here to read more.

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    • James Ceaser

    Obama, Romney, and Equality

    | May 14, 2012 | 6:00 am

    If the test of a clever orator is the ability to sell two incompatible positions at the same time, President Obama must already rank as one of the most adept rhetoricians in American history. The President steadfastly disavows any intent to foment division between economic classes, even as he works at every step to denounce the wealthy. At Osawatomie, Kansas last December, in what was billed as an historic speech on his governing philosophy, Obama insisted “this isn’t about class warfare,” and then went on immediately to attack “the breathtaking greed of a few” and “mortgage lenders that tricked families into buying homes.”

    These lines were a throwback to the class rhetoric not only of Theodore Roosevelt, whose speech President Obama was channeling, but also of cousin Franklin, who fulminated in his First Inaugural against “the unscrupulous money changers [who] stand indicted in the court of public opinion.” These attacks are ostensibly not on the rich themselves, but on the undeserving rich. These poor souls were formerly characterized mostly by their practices and disposition (unscrupulousness and greed) and their occupation (finance). President Obama has added a political dimension: refusing to buckle to his idea of paying a “fair share.” The good or deserving rich, by contrast, are those like Warren Buffet, George Clooney, and Jon Corzine, who abhor the Bush tax cuts.

    In the selection of Mitt Romney as the Republican nominee President Obama has found a target too rich to pass up.

    Click here to read more.

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    • Bill Whalen

    Purple States, Purple Reign for Romney?

    | May 11, 2012 | 11:47 am

    As far as shock polls go, put this one somewhere between strong jolt and solid zap.

    Rasmussen Reports’ daily tracking survey of the presidential race for Friday has President Obama losing to Mitt Romney, 50%-43% (4% would vote for a third-party candidate; 3% are undecided).

    It’s the first time Romney’s reached 50% in Rasmussen’s polls. It also comes on the heels of statistical evidence of eroding consumer confidence and, of course, the big political news of the week – Obama not surprisingly but at long last coming out in favor of same-sex marriage.

    A few words of caution about dancing around this May poll: it’s a long way to November.

    Take the 2004 race, for example. As you’ll see here, George W. Bush and John Kerry swapped the lead until October, when Bush finally achieved separation.

    As for his father, in May 1992 Gallup had the president race at George H.W. Bush 35%, Ross Perot 30%, and Bill Clinton at 29%. You probably know how that one turned out.

    Click here to read more.

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    • Editor

    The Omnibus

    | May 10, 2012 | 5:41 pm
    • Hoover fellows take over the WSJ‘s Op-Ed page and have a few things to say about European political economy – Robert J. Barro here and Josef Joffe here.
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    • Kori Schake

    Caveat Inauguror

    | May 10, 2012 | 10:10 am

    The government of China has just given yet another reason investors should be wary of operating in the Chinese market.  The Chinese Ministry of Finance has announced regulations, requiring western auditing firms to give control to local partners by the end of 2012, effectively ending the independence of firms operating in the Chinese market.

    This comes on the heels of several high-profile cases of accounting fraud in recent years, and the Securities and Exchange Commission charging accounting firm Deloitte for refusing to hand over documents in a fraud case of a Chinese firm listed in the U.S. (Deloitte claims it would violate Chinese law to do so).  The Finance Ministry’s action will be read as validating concerns about the opaque and often corrupt practices of Chinese firms.

    Given the collusion of Chinese government and business, both through state-owned firms and politicized decisions on everything from bank lending to police investigations, the regulatory take-over of auditing firms bodes ill for investors getting reliable information on the business practices of companies in which they take an interest.

    Academics and politicians often marvel at what French Finance Minister (and later President) Valery Giscard d’Estaing called the “exorbitant privilege” that accrues to the United States by the U.S. dollar being the world’s major holding currency.  And it is a privilege, often undeserved by us, as now, when our government proves unwilling to make sensible choices about economic fundamentals such as debt reduction.  But it merits remembering that American dominance is not alone a function of American choices.  It also results from the choices of others.

    For all the talk of a rising China, they are making quite a number of choices that will keep the dollar a safe harbor of value and call into question the reliability of information so important to encourage investment.  China may not rise either so far or so fast as predicted unless they reform the crony authoritarianism that looks to be the hallmark of their economic model.

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    • Editor

    The Omnibus

    | May 09, 2012 | 3:34 pm
    • Where did all the workers go? Senior Fellow and former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors Edward Lazear on CNBC.
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    • Bill Whalen

    Obama, Somewhere Over the Rainbow

    | May 09, 2012 | 2:30 pm

    Ordinarily, there wouldn’t be much to this column – at least, as far as North Carolina is concerned.

    On Tuesday, Tar Heel voters approved a ballot measure that added a marriage amendment to its constitution. While North Carolina already bans same-sex marriage, the vote likely means civil unions and other forms of domestic partnership likely will go unrecognized as well.

    That North Carolina would choose to do this isn’t earth-shattering news. Thirty other states have opted for the same policy course.

    Likewise, it’s not a surprise that the measure received about 60% of the vote in Tuesday’s light-turnout primary.

    For all the talk of North Carolina representing a purplish “New South” (Obama carried it by 14,000 votes out of 4.3 million cast in 2008), it’s still a socially conservative state. The moral of this ballot fight: Chelsea Clinton (she wrote a letter denouncing the ballot measure) is no match, on his home turf, for the Rev. Billy Graham (who appeared in a signed newspaper ad statewide supporting Amendment One).

    So much for politics as usual.

    Click here to read more.

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    • Editor

    The Omnibus

    | May 08, 2012 | 3:51 pm
    • Today, John Taylor testified before the House Domestic Monetary Policy subcommittee during hearings on six proposed bills to reform the Fed. His written testimony. Also Taylor’s thoughts about the hearings at his blog Economics One.
    • Behind the curtain at Massachusetts schools, which are lauded as some of the finest in the nation. Paul Peterson on why all is not as it seems – and how bright kids suffer.

     

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    • Editor

    Data Matters: A Tale of Two Budgets – Obama & Ryan

    | May 08, 2012 | 3:41 pm

    Today, we add a new weekly feature to Advancing a Free Society. Each week, usually on a Monday, we will highlight data relevant to public policy that Hoover fellows are using in their research.

    Our inaugural data post is a graph generated by John F. Cogan, the Leonard and Shirley Ely Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor in the Public Policy Program at Stanford University. The graph shows federal government outlays as a percent of GDP from 1994 to 2022. The graph presents historical outlays and the striking contrast between two different future scenarios: one that follows the Obama administration’s budget and the other that follows the budget path that would be created under Paul Ryan’s plan.

    Sign up for the Advancing a Free Society RSS feed to follow our data stream.

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    • Editor

    Pennsylvania Governor names Hoover’s Kiron Skinner to Advisory Commission

    | May 08, 2012 | 2:51 pm

    HARRISBURG, Pa., May 7, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ – In recognition of Pennsylvania’s more than 1.4 million African American citizens, Governor Tom Corbett today named distinguished community leaders to serve on the Governor’s Advisory Commission on African American Affairs.

    “The history of African Americans in Pennsylvania reflects a diverse and unique blend of cultural, social and economic influences which have had and continue to have a beneficial impact on life in the commonwealth,” Corbett said.

    The commission advises and makes recommendations to the governor on policies, procedures, legislation, and regulations that affect the African American community. It works to articulate and address the unique needs and issues of concerns of the African American community.

    The following individuals have been named as commission members:

    Otto Banks, Dauphin County
    Wayne Barnett, Philadelphia County
    Rev. James Breese, Luzerne County
    Fred Clark, Dauphin County
    Elizabeth Dennis, Allegheny County
    Evan Frazier, Allegheny County
    Maurice Goodman, Philadelphia County
    Rev. Terrence Griffith, Philadelphia County
    Cathy Hardaway, Lackawanna County
    Rodney Little, Philadelphia County
    Sara Lomax Reese, Montgomery County
    Marcia Perry, Dauphin County
    Rev. Michael Robinson, Delaware County
    Dr. Kiron Skinner, Allegheny County
    Ronald Steele, Erie County
    Karen Stokes, Philadelphia County (Chair)
    Bishop A.E. Sullivan Jr., Dauphin County
    Floyd Titus, Allegheny County

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    • Editor

    The Omnibus

    | May 07, 2012 | 3:00 pm
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