ScaifeNet because we can't let Soros have all the fun...

If at first you don’t succeed, change the message. That’s the lesson learned when it comes to the new trillion dollar health law passed this spring.

One of the central advocacy groups who pushed for the Obamacare recently held a confidential ”messaging” conference call with the progressive movement where they revealed the results of extensive polling on the new law. Remember when the left was confident their controversial health care vote would soon be cheered by the public? The thinking was that Jane and John Doe simply needed more time to understand the two and half thousand page bill, because the year-long health care debate wasn’t enough time for them to get a grasp on it.

The left might not want to hold their breath while waiting for the public to applaud their bill. That’s because the people know this bill better than progressives do. In fact, just yesterday the Kaiser Health Tracking Poll reported that favorability of the bill dropped to 43% in August. The professional left has now realized this and thus the reason for the advocacy group’s hush-hush “messaging” call.

It’s important to note what the left was told on the call not to say when speaking to Americans: “Don’t say the law will reduce costs and deficits.”

Read that again.

We were repeatedly promised that one of the best parts of this bill was that it would lower the national debt in the long term. It doesn’t take a health policy expert or an economist to understand why this can’t be. A simple logic test will do: how can we put 16 million more people on Medicaid and yet save money?

Answer: we can’t. Americans old and young knew it all along, while the left hoped they would forget thanks to a marketing blitz after the bill passed that was on par with the ‘85 Bears defense. Look for progressives to audible away from this deeply unpopular piece of legislation this fall and talk about something – anything – but their landmark health care bill.

The problems with the fundamental structure of the new health care law are obvious.  First, the primary vehicle for increased coverage is Medicaid expansion.  Sixteen million individuals, 650,000 in Illinois, will be forced onto Medicaid, the joint federal-state partnership to cover low-income individuals.  These individuals will have trouble finding access to physicians and services and will be forced to seek care in prohibitively expensive emergency departments, increasing the cost of care to the federal government, states and privately-insured individuals.  This coverage expansion will not guarantee access to quality health care services.

Next, the federal government will provide $200 billion in annual subsidies for individuals to purchase insurance.  The funding comes from cuts to Medicare that will create problems in access to hospitals similar to those recently observed by physicians, according to Medicare’s own actuaries.  Additional funding will come from taxing individuals’ health insurance for the first time in history, but not until 2018. Instead of reforming the system, bending the health care cost curve and making health care more affordable to individuals, families and small-businesses, the left shifted costs onto the federal government and away from care for seniors. This approach is short-sighted and will continue to strain the budgets of individuals and families, and – to a greater extent – state and federal governments.

What’s needed is not a new message, but rather an incremental approach focused on lowering health care costs. We should expand health savings accounts, the fastest growing insurance coverage option for Americans, which have proven successful in both the public and private sectors. Forcing insurance companies to compete across state lines will help lower costs as well, and my AARP-endorsed bill to reduce fraud, waste and abuse in Medicare is a no-brainer.

PS:  I also keep a daily record on Twitter (#218hcr) and my website, Roskam.house.gov, about the many reasons we need to repeal this flawed healthcare bill and replace it with commonsense reforms that lower costs first and foremost, thereby making insurance more affordable for people to purchase.

Rep. Peter Roskam (R) represents the Sixth District of Illinois.

The views expressed by guest bloggers on the Foundry do not necessarily reflect the views of the Heritage Foundation.

Diane Katz, an accomplished policy analyst from Detroit, has joined The Heritage Foundation as a research fellow in regulatory policy.

According to a new Pew Hispanic Center report, illegal immigration has dropped by almost two-thirds in the past ten years. The numbers increased, but slowed from 2000 to 2007, while the numbers dropped by 300,000 from 2007-2009.

This is not a surprising trend. The Department of Homeland Security announced in early 2010 that the illegal population in the United States had dropped from 11.6 to 10.8 million from 2008-2009. The fledgling economy coupled with the institution of increased enforcement efforts during the Bush years have pushed illegals inside the United States to go home, while encouraging those thinking of entering illegally to think again.

The real message to these statistics, however, isn’t just that the population numbers are going down but that this data undermines a key argument of amnesty advocates. The amnesty crowd has built its case for “earned legalization” (aka amnesty) on the premise that the immigrant community inside the U.S. was largely immobile and highly rooted here, and that even with increased pressure through immigration enforcement, there was little likelihood that they would return to their home countries. They take it one step further and assert that the only solution is to let illegals have a path to citizenship.

With 300,000 individuals leaving in a period of two short years as a result of the economy and increased enforcement (enforcement that even the Obama Department of Homeland Security has touted as a success story), it is a tough-sell to say that the only option left is an amnesty. In fact, as opposed to enforcement, amnesty would make problems worse by simply encouraging more illegal immigration.

Despite real evidence that enforcement and economic disincentives have a major impact on illegal populations, the Obama White House has taken steps as of late to decrease, rather than increase enforcement. Changes to the 287(g) program that trained state and local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration law, an inherent border security policy, and the all out abandonment of several worksite enforcement policies, coupled with an assault on Arizona’s immigration law were bad enough. But now the Administration has taken to dismiss deportation cases against non-criminal illegal immigrants, allowing them to stay in the United States.

As my colleague Matt Mayer points out, “Instead of constantly seeking ways to evade, skirt, and ignore the immigration laws that are on the books, the Obama Administration needs to simply execute the laws—as is its constitutional duty—while looking to solve the immigration problem in a way that discourages more illegal immigration, maintains security, and promotes the economy.”

Last week, a New Yorker article described David and Charles Koch's generous philanthropy toward free-market think tanks as a product of pro-corporate economic self-interest. But if that were really true, as Tim Carney points out, then they would not fund...

Following the Civil War, the Republican Party won elections by characterizing their opponents as the party responsible for the conflict. These fear tactics carried the GOP to several successes over the course of about 20 years.

This election strategy is still alive and well today. Now, it’s liberals who are “waving the bloody shirt,” this time through wild exaggerations of conservatives’ plans for Social Security reform.

This is nothing new. The Wall Street Journal, in an article detailing this “Social Security Bait and Switch,” writes that scare tactics centered around the threat of terminating Social Security “have been regular campaign themes since FDR.” Were President Reagan alive today, he may even utter again his famous campaign retort: There they go again.

The left is using Social Security as a central attack against opponents, claiming that conservatives are intent on “privatizing” Social Security if they gain back control of Congress. There is a huge flaw with this approach.

By demonizing conservatives, President Obama and company are making it ever less likely that the President’s deficit commission will successfully reach a consensus—as they were tasked by the President to do—on a strategy for reform. If their tactic works, that momentary short-term gain will come at the cost of untold billions in additional deficits as the chance to fix Social Security is significantly delayed.

The Wall Street Journal writes: “The irony is that the fiscal condition of Social Security could be substantially improved simply by readjusting its actuarial formulas to slow the growth rate of benefits. But Republicans are unlikely to sign on even to that if they’re going to be demonized for such a modest ‘cut’ anyway, much less endorse a reform like raising the future retirement age. Mr. Obama says he wants to cut a deal, but encouraging Democrats this year to box themselves in against any change will make serious reforms that much harder next year.”

Some liberals have expressed opposition to any changes whatsoever to Social Security, further antagonizing reform efforts. In an editorial, e21, a think tank that focuses on economic policy, writes, “Given that Social Security’s fiscal imbalance has been well documented by everyone from the Congressional Budget Office to the General Accounting Office to the program’s own actuaries and trustees, [Social Security reform] would seem to be a rational step to take. But once again, a cacophony of voices has arisen to argue that nothing about Social Security warrants changing any time soon.”

By attacking any changes at all to Social Security, liberals are increasingly backing themselves into a corner, a position that will make it exceedingly difficult to act on much-needed reform.

As November approaches, Obamacare’s defenders are quite plainly desperate. They see public opinion solidly against them, and a devastating election fast approaching. Their latest gambit to protect what was jammed through Congress in March is to claim that repeal would be so costly to the federal budget that it would be impossible to pass, even with overwhelming popular support. That’s the spin some on the left put on a recent letter from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID).

But unfortunately for these advocates, that’s not what the CBO letter says. CBO’s message to Senator Crapo actually just states what is already obvious: If an effort were made to repeal just the Medicare cuts in the new law, it would, on paper, increase Medicare spending, and thus the federal budget deficit, by about $450 billion over ten years. Moreover, enacting a real “doc fix” to avoid deep and unrealistic cuts in Medicare physician fees will cost another $300 billion or so over the coming decade.

What this communication from CBO actually confirms, however, is that, contrary to White House assertions, Obamacare is a budget buster of the highest order. The claim that it would reduce the budget deficit over the coming decade has always rested on a series of gimmicks, implausible assumptions, and sleights-of-hand that have been exposed repeatedly over the past year, most especially by Rep. Paul Ryan in the presence of President Obama. Among the most egregious deceptions is the double-counting of cuts in Medicare’s reimbursement rates for hospitals and other providers of care — cuts so deep that they would push Medicare’s rates below those paid by Medicaid by the end of the decade.

Even if these cuts were realistic — which they aren’t — they can’t both be used to pay for a new entitlement and to improve Medicare’s solvency, as the White House claims. The same money simply can’t be spent twice. Moreover, this money is almost certainly never going to materialize anyway because, as Medicare’s chief actuary has warned repeatedly, they would seriously reduce access to care for seniors by driving hospitals and physicians out of the program. It is all but inevitable, therefore, that Congress will step in at some point to reverse the “cuts,” and probably sooner rather than later. When that happens, it will only confirm what’s already abundantly clear — that these unsustainable payment reductions should never have been allowed to grease the way for a permanent and massively expensive entitlement program.

Indeed, contrary to latest spin from the left, not only would repeal not bust the budget, it would in fact produce a budgetary windfall of such enormous size that it could pay for a sensible reform of American health care and for deficit reduction too.

The centerpiece of Obamacare is the largest expansion of entitlement spending in a generation. CBO estimates that the new law will add 35 million people to the federal government’s health-entitlement rolls by decade’s end — and that’s almost certainly a lowball estimate. Gross federal spending for this added entitlement burden, plus various other spending provisions in the bill, is expected to reach $233 billion in 2019 alone, and then grow at a rate of about 7 percent annually every year thereafter. That means Obamacare’s spending will total at least $3.4 trillion over its second decade, on top of the $1.1 trillion it will cost between now and 2019. And it’s likely to be much more than that when more realistic assumptions about employer dumping of coverage are factored into the estimates.

So that’s at least $4.5 trillion in federal spending that would be avoided over the next 20 years if Congress moved ahead with repeal. Even in Washington that’s a lot of money. So much in fact that it should be more than enough to gut Obamacare’s most egregious tax hikes and spending “offsets” while still paying for a sensible reform of American health care that actually cuts costs and covers more people. And even after enacting this kind of “replacement” program, there should still be something left over to put a real dent in the massive deficits projected to occur under the Obama budget plan.

A couple of weeks ago, the Left’s message gurus put out the word to Democratic candidates to abandon talk of the supposed cost-cutting that would occur under Obamacare.

They now understand that the public has not, and will not, buy the argument that a government takeover of American health care will somehow lower costs. Americans have long understood that Obamacare is a massive new spending commitment, piled on top of the unaffordable ones already on the federal books. That’s a recipe for financial disaster, not deficit cutting. The solution is repeal coupled with a reform that puts consumers, not the government, in charge of controlling costs. That’s the way to fix health care — and the budget too. And, yes, it can be done.

Cross-posted at Critical Condition.

Bjorn Lomborg wins a prize for having the most misrepresented position on climate change. In a recent interview with The Guardian, Lomborg reveals he believes that climate change is a problem. The Guardian refers to this as an “apparent U-turn.” It might appear to be a U-turn, but it isn’t.

In his book Cool It!, Lomborg states that “global warming is real and man-made. It will have a serious impact on humans and the environment toward the end of this century.” But he remained a global warming skeptic because he didn’t believe the damage would be catastrophic or that capping CO2 emissions was an effective policy for addressing the world’s problems. He still believes that global warming is a problem and he still believes that capping CO2 is not a solution. Neither his detractors nor many of his supporters heard that first part. Those who claim a U-turn still don’t hear the second part.

What has changed is that the Copenhagen Consensus (a handful of economists who rank how they would spend $100 billion addressing the world’s problems) no longer ranks climate change dead last among the world’s priorities.

While Lomborg previously felt that adaptation alone was the better strategy (and that rich countries should help poor countries adapt), the latest gathering of Copenhagen economists is apparently promoting a mix that includes adaptation, some geo-engineering ideas, and subsidizing new energy technologies. But global warming is still not the top problem.

Lomborg advocates a more thoughtful approach to global warming. From The Guardian: “After the analyses, five economists were asked to rank the 15 possible policies which emerged. Current policies to cut carbon emissions through taxes—of which Lomborg has long been critical—were ranked largely at the bottom of four of the lists. At the top were more direct public investment in research and development rather than spending money on low carbon energy now, and climate engineering.”

That is, Lomborg still opposes the strategy of Kyoto, Lieberman–Warner, Waxman–Markey, and Kerry–Boxer—he says “no” to punitive energy taxes or carbon caps.
The biggest change in the new Copenhagen Consensus isn’t that Lomborg thinks global warming is a problem (that’s not new) but that he has doubled the ante on his thought experiment—the economists are now to imagine they have $100 billion to spend instead of the previous $50 billion. While Lomborg is provocative and a lightning rod, he hasn’t made a U-turn.

The FCC’s plans for regulating the Internet through “neutrality” regulation—once considered on a fast track—was sidetracked once again yesterday as the agency announced a new round of public comments on possible regulation. It is one more twist in the drama that net neutrality has become, at least for those who see administrative procedure as exciting.

It’s a welcome twist, affording an opportunity to more fully consider some key dangers of regulation. At the same time, the delay underscores the difficulty that regulation supporters face in putting together a plan for controlling the Internet.

The agency had been expected to act this month to reclassify broadband Internet service as a “telecommunications” service, allowing it to regulate the industry. But that was before Google and Verizon—arguably the leading industry supporter and opponent, respectively, of neutrality—announced a compromise plan. The plan would allow for some regulation of Internet service providers but specifically exempt wireless service and “managed” services (such as Internet-based video services and phone services) from the rules.

The plan actually looked a lot like the FCC’s original outline for regulation. Nevertheless, the proposal was attacked by many hard-core supporters of regulation, such as Free Press and MoveOn.org, for not going far enough. In their view, Google had sold out. “Google is evil” (mocking Google’s corporate motto “Don’t be evil”) became a mantra, repeated by these groups and on left-wing blogs throughout the cybersphere.

Faced with this growing civil war between Google and its former allies in the pro-regulation camp, FCC chairman Julius Genachowski had little choice but to step back.

This does not mean Genachowski is giving up on regulation (despite scattered reports to the contrary). The specific questions to be addressed in the new round of comments—whether to impose mandates on highly competitive wireless industry and on investment-intensive managed services—are of course important. But they concern only how far regulation should go, not whether it should go. A market-based approach, apparently, is still not an option.

But the delay does underscore the problem faced by the chairman in getting the rules adopted. With the hard left insisting on an extreme version of regulation, it will be difficult for Genachowski to assemble a winning coalition for any regulatory plan. The end result may be no new regulation at all.

That’s a policy failure we could live with.

North Korea’s status as an international pariah is richly deserved. The country is a proliferator of nuclear technology having helped build a Syrian nuclear site that was destroyed by Israel and is believed to be assisting Burma in its own clandestine nuclear program. North Korea successfully detonated two nuclear devices on October 9, 2006, and May 25, 2009 and the U.S. believes North Korea has enough plutonium for at least half a dozen nuclear weapons. The regime has been striving to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering these weapons by testing its long-range Taepodong-2 missiles twice in recent years. In its pursuit of these nuclear and missile capabilities, North Korea has violated numerous United Nations Security Council resolutions. Most recently, North Korea stands accused of sinking a South Korean ship.

Efforts to negotiate and engage with the North Korean government over these issues by the current and past U.S. administrations have encountered repeated disappointment. To its credit, the Obama administration has resisted calls to engage in a new round of bilateral negotiations with North Korea until Pyongyang provides tangible evidence of the resumption of efforts to completely and verifiably abandon its nuclear weapons programs. In response to North Korea’s attack on the South Korean naval ship as well as its continuing violation of U.N. resolutions and international law, the U.S. recently announced new economic and financial sanctions on Pyongyang.

Meanwhile, Japan and South Korea are ill disposed to resuming the six-party talks given North Korea’s provocations.

But North Korea can count on at least one ally. As reported by FoxNews, “the United Nations is laying plans to spend more than $290 million on a welter of programs in the communist state.” The chief U.N. organizations involved in this effort are: United Nations Development Program (UNDP), UNICEF, the World Food Program (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO). This effort continues a tendency in the United Nations to lend support to the world’s most repressive regimes.

A recalcitrant and unrepentant North Korean regime should not be rewarded in this way. There is little doubt about the suffering of the North Korean people. However, it is the repressive policies of the North Korean government that have most directly contributed to the country’s humanitarian crisis by constraining internal and external trade and inhibiting private production.

Under the right circumstances humanitarian assistance could help alleviate the suffering in North Korea, but thus far the regime has refused to meet those standards fully. The North Korean government has agreed to only minimal changes sufficient to give U.N. agencies an excuse to resume operations. The tight control the North Korean government retains on its citizens and over the in-country activities of non-governmental organizations and international organizations providing humanitarian and development assistance make U.N. financial lifelines far more likely to benefit the regime than the North Korean people.

The U.S. and South Korea contribute to sit on the executive boards of the UNDP and UNICEF. Japan and the U.S. contribute to and sit on the Executive Boards of the WFP and WHO. If these countries truly want to apply pressure to North Korea, they should demand that these organizations curtail or suspend their North Korea programs until rigorous, transparent monitoring standards and delivery verification are implemented for U.N. assistance and Pyongyang complies with Security Council resolutions and ends its nuclear program.

Does Sharia law allow a husband to rape his wife, even in America? A New Jersey trial judge thought so. In a recently overturned case, a “trial judge found as a fact that defendant committed conduct that constituted a sexual assault” but did not hold the defendant liable because the defendant believed he was exercising his rights over the victim. Fortunately, a New Jersey appellate court reversed the trial judge. But make no mistake about it: this is no isolated incident. We will see more cases here in the United States where others attempt to impose Sharia law, under the guise of First Amendment protections, as a defense against crimes and other civil violations.

In S.D. v. M.J.R., the plaintiff, a Moroccan Muslim woman, lived with her Moroccan Muslim husband in New Jersey. She was repeatedly beaten and raped by her husband over the course of several weeks. While the plaintiff was being treated for her injuries at a hospital, a police detective interviewed her and took photographs of her injuries. Those photographs depicted injuries to plaintiff’s breasts, thighs and arm, bruised lips, eyes and right check. Further investigation established there were blood stains on the pillow and sheets of plaintiff’s bed.

The wife sought a permanent restraining order, and a New Jersey trial judge held a hearing in order to decide whether to issue the order. Evidence at trial established, among other things, that the husband told his wife, “You must do whatever I tell you to do. I want to hurt your flesh” and “this is according to our religion. You are my wife, I c[an] do anything to you.” The police detective testified about her findings, and some of the photographs were entered into evidence.

The defendant’s Imam testified that a wife must comply with her husband’s sexual demands and he refused to answer whether, under Islamic law, a husband must stop his sexual advances on his wife if she says “no.”

The trial judge found that most of the criminal acts were indeed proved, but nonetheless denied the permanent retraining order. This judge held that the defendant could not be held responsible for the violent sexual assaults of his wife because he did not have the specific intent to sexually assault his wife, and because his actions were “consistent with his [religious] practices.” In other words, the judge refused to issue the permanent restraining order because under Sharia law, this Muslim husband had a “right” to rape his wife.

Besides the fact that the ruling is wrong as a legal matter, and offensive beyond words, it goes to the heart of the controversy about the insidious spread of Sharia law—the goal of radical Islamic extremists. Fortunately, the New Jersey appellate court refused to tolerate the trial judge’s “mistaken” and unsustainable decision. The appellate court chastised the trial judge’s ruling, holding among other things that he held an “unnecessarily dismissive view of defendant’s acts of domestic violence,” and that his views of the facts in the case “may have been colored by his perception that…they were culturally acceptable and thus not actionable – -a view we soundly reject.” Although appellate courts typically defer to findings of fact by trial judges, under the circumstances, this appellate court correctly refused to do so, and reversed the trial court and ordered the permanent restraining order to issue.

The truth is that imposition of Sharia law in the United States, especially when mixed with a perverted sense of political correctness, poses a danger to civil society. Just last year, a Muslim man in Buffalo, New York beheaded his wife in what appeared to be an honor killing, again using his faith to justify his actions. It is doubtful that the domestic violence and rape in this recently overturned case will be the last Americans see of Sharia being impermissibly used to justify brutal acts on our soil. As former Assistant Secretary of Defense Frank Gaffney wrote recently:

Sharia is no less toxic when it comes to the sorts of democratic government and civil liberties guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. According to this legal code of Saudi Arabia and Iran, only Allah can make laws, and only a theocrat can properly administer them, ultimately on a global basis.

The trial opinion in this case shows that, indeed, the global reach of Sharia law is expanding. The trial court allowed the testimony of an Imam to be entered so that his account of Sharia’s standards could supercede the standards set by the New Jersey legislature. This is not just about cultural defenses, which by themselves are not proper under United States law, but about giving up control of the law to a religious code citizens of this country have no control over, a theocratic code world famous for its antidemocratic, sexist nature and its human rights abuses.

So-called “cultural defenses” have existed in other contexts for a long while and, for the most part, such defenses have been rejected. As a domestic violence prosecutor in San Diego, I ran across a case where the accused was charged with assault for punching his girlfriend, and the defense wanted to introduce an expert in Latin cultures. The expert was to testify that in Latin culture, it is acceptable for a man to strike “his woman” as punishment as long as it doesn’t cause serious lasting injury. This was rejected outright by the court, as it should have been. These attempts are not uncommon, but the cultural relativism they espouse is different than the more dangerous trend here.

In S.D. v. M.J.R., the husband’s defense for sexually assaulting his wife was not just another attempt to erode the protection of our own social mores. The specific threat that comes from attempting to establish Sharia law in the United States is that justification for doing so has been couched in the protections of the First Amendment. As noted by the appeals court in its decision overturning what amounted to the replacement of New Jersey’s rape law with Sharia, “the judge determined to except [the] defendant from the operation of the State’s statutes as the result of his religious beliefs.” Doing so was contrary to several Supreme Court decisions, which hold that an individual’s responsibility to obey generally applicable law—particularly those that regulate socially harmful conduct—cannot be made contingent up on his or her religious beliefs.

The U.S. Constitution cannot and should not be used to subvert legislatures and allow brutes such as the husband in this case to harm others simply because their actions are legal under Sharia law. It was impermissible for the trial court to act as it did in this case, and the appellate judges very correctly overturned the ruling below. This is not the last we will hear of such attempts, however, as Sharia-loving extremists are determined to establish an Islamic Caliphate around the world, especially in America. As Andy McCarthy has written, “Our enemies are those who want Sharia to supplant American law and Western culture.” We cannot allow that to happen.

The Values Voter Summit, September 17-19 in Washington, DC, is a premier event where prominent conservatives come together to discuss important issues in America (click here to sign-up). As a cosponsor, Heritage is proud to have many of our policy experts featured on the schedule. Highlights include:

• A Constitution Day discussion on our founding principles with Matthew Spalding, author of We Still Hold These Truths.

• An education panel moderated by Lindsey Burke, featuring a screening of Let Me Rise.

• A panel on the interdependence of social and economic conservative viewpoints and Indivisible moderated by Jennifer Marshall.

• A conversation on the definition of marriage with Chuck Donovan.

• An analysis of the real cost of illegal immigration with Robert Rector.

Heritage will also be exhibiting at the Values Voter Summit, providing guests access to key materials and products at our booth.

In addition to Heritage experts, the event will showcase speakers such as Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA), and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN). View the complete schedule here.

Don’t miss out! Register today at ValuesVoterSummit.org.

Back-to-school season can be emotional for parents.  As Johnny enters a new grade level, it’s one more reminder that not too many Septembers from now it will be time to help him move into the dorm, not just pack his lunch for the day. Parents can, understandably, feel a little sentimental and sad about their children growing up too fast.

But that emotion pales in comparison to the angst parents feel about who their child’s teacher will be. A good teacher can make a dramatic difference in a child’s life. A good teacher begins to open the world’s wide horizon for a child, shedding light into the child’s small sphere of reference. A good teacher grounds a child in solid knowledge and builds understanding, equipping him with the tools of learning. A good teacher builds a child’s confidence to expand his learning and explore his world.

On the other hand, an apathetic teacher who takes little interest in her subject or her students’ lives can stifle children’s innate spirit of learning—or worse, create an aversion to education. The course of a student’s life often depends largely on his teachers.

Yet, as important as this their influence is, most Americans have no say in choosing their child’s teacher. Parents don’t have a choice when it comes to their child’s education, despite the fact their tax dollars pay for the public schools, and their children’s futures are at stake.

Parents in Los Angeles are getting some new transparency about their children’s schools this week.  The Los Angeles Times recently released the names of 6,000 elementary teachers and data showing how much each teacher’s students improved on standardized tests.

The strong message is that public schools and their teachers should be accountable to parents and other taxpayers. That’s a stark contrast to the status quo, in which education policy is most responsive to decisions of those who hold the government purse strings and the power of union collective bargaining.

The L.A. Times’ release of the evaluation data has education unions fuming.  Their ostensible criticism is that the method used to compare the scores is questionable.  But their historical reluctance to embrace accountability to parents suggests other motives.

Measures like those in L.A. that increase transparency and accountability to parents are positive developments and welcome alternatives to initiatives like the national standards that the Obama administration is promoting. With hardly any public debate, states are signing on to the plan that will make schools more accountable to bureaucrats in Washington, and decrease their responsiveness to the parents whose children they teach.

Ultimately policy needs to go beyond just informing parents about their children’s education. Parents should have the power to act on that information by choosing a school that meets their child’s unique learning needs. That’s the ultimate educational accountability.

That’s why it’s so disappointing that the Obama administration and Congress have failed to support the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, which provides scholarships to about 1,500 low-income students in the nation’s capital. Unions oppose the scholarships, even though they help needy children escape ineffective and often dangerous schools in Washington, D.C.

We can and should expect more of American education. Empowering parents is the most pressing education reform. Just ask the millions of American waving goodbye to their children this morning, hoping they’ll hear this afternoon how much they’ve learned from their teachers today.

Quick Hits:

• One hundred and nine employees of the Ohio Education Association are striking against the union.
• Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) is pushing for a waiver for Oregon from Obamacare’s individual mandate.
• According to the Pew Hispanic Center, the number of illegal immigrants in the United States, after peaking at 12 million in 2007, fell to about 11.1 million in 2009, the first clear decline in two decades.
• Thanks to the state’s immigration enforcement laws, the number of illegal immigrants in Arizona is down much more sharply than in the rest of the country.
• Departing White House chief economist Christina Romer urged Congress to pass more economic stimulus at a National Press Club event yesterday.

Unions have been a familiar part of American working life for more than 70 years. Less familiar is the state of the union movement today: More union members now work for the government than for private employers. The above-market salaries and benefits that government employees receive are paid for by taxpayers. So, the union movement that began as a campaign to improve working conditions and salaries for workers in the private sector, now pushes for ever-higher taxes to increase the generous compensation that government employees enjoy. Heritage Foundation labor policy expert James Sherk details the changes in the union movement, and explains how Congress can react to this new reality.

“If you like your health care plan you can keep it.”  This was a mantra from President Obama throughout the health care debate.  The President also promised that his health care overhaul would not affect seniors’ benefits.

But, despite all the promises, a new report from Avalere Health shows that, in addition to the upheaval caused by Obamacare, the Medicare bureaucracy is taking administrative steps to change the Medicare drug program that will have adverse impact on seniors’ choices.  Millions of seniors will have to switch their prescription drug plans due to changes within Medicare.  Avalere is a private research firm founded by a former budget official from the Clinton Administration.

Its analysis shows that more than 3 million seniors—roughly 20 percent of those enrolled in stand-alone drug plans—won’t be able to keep their current plan.  According to the AP’s Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, some of seniors’ drug plans will be eliminated as “Medicare tries to winnow down duplicative and confusing coverage, in order to offer consumers more meaningful choices.”

But what ‘more meaningful choice’ really means is fewer choices.  And for many seniors who like their current prescription drug coverage, it will mean making a new choice altogether, whether they want to or not.

According to Bonnie Washington, one of Avalere’s senior analysts, “those who have to change plans could experience some disruption and inconvenience.”

Medicare officials tried to pooh-pooh the study.  Said Deputy Administrator Jonathan Blum: “Anybody who is producing that kind of analysis is simply guessing.”  However, Avalere claims that it used Medicare’s own specifications to produce its findings.

The extent to which the change will disrupt seniors’ drug benefits will depend on Medicare’s strategy for implementing the transition.  But what is crystal clear is that a transition will be necessary.  If Medicare eliminates coverage options, seniors will inevitably have to change their drug plans—not withstanding presidential promises to the contrary.

This post was co-authored by Margot Crouch.

On August 5, more than a dozen Somali-Americans, variously located across several states, were arrested on charges related to providing material support to the terrorist organization al-Shabaab.

The arrests of these individuals represents the latest in a string of incidents in which U.S. citizens, or foreign nationals living within the United States, have been arrested for terror-related crimes ranging from fundraising to collusion and murder. Their collaboration with others seeking to wage jihad against the United States hastens the difficulties faced by domestic agencies tasked with protecting the American homeland.

Since 9/11, dozens of American-born and naturalized U.S. citizens have been arrested or implicated in activities linked to Islamic fundamentalism. Some of these incidents have received broad coverage, such as the tragic Fort Hood shooting; however, most have remained elusive to the public. Despite the paucity of attention paid to domestic radicalization, this phenomenon represents a significant threat to both national security and American interests abroad.

The Somali-Americans arrested are accused of conspiring to provide financial and logistical support to al-Shabaab, a Somali-based terrorist organization committed to overthrowing the Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG). While the central focus of al-Shabaab has been to effectuate regime change within Somalia, the danger it poses toward American interests should not be ignored.  A brief look into al-Shabaab’s history and recent activities underscore why dismissing as insignificant the Somali-based terror group may be misguided.

Al-Shabaab emerged as an autonomous organization in 2007, following the overthrow of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), under whose framework much of central and southern Somalia was controlled before being replaced by the TFG. As the ICU splintered, its more militant elements formed alternate factions whose objectives were often homogeneous; namely, continuing the fight against the TFG and its regional sponsors. In maintaining its aggressive ambitions against the TFG, al-Shabaab’s focus was initially to promote Islamic nationalism and to ascend Sharia law into the forefront of Somali culture; however, the scope of their objectives have begun to evolve.

In recent times, al-Shabaab has taken a turn toward more pan-Islamic endeavors, formally aligning itself with al-Qaeda earlier this year. In a media statement released in January, al-Shabaab leaders proclaimed that the “jihad of the Horn of Africa must be combined with the international jihad led by the al-Qaeda network.”

With simultaneous suicide bombings in the Ugandan capital of Kampala, al-Shabaab demonstrated the expansionist nature of their terror capabilities. The collaboration with al-Qaeda only enhances the possibility that their respective goals may intersect, producing an extended framework of terror organizations that increasingly places U.S. interests and national security within their crosshairs.

Now that expansive framework appears to be more than speculative. U.S. officials believe that al-Shabaab has been directly collaborating with al-Qaeda affiliates in both Yemen and Pakistan. This reality presents a disturbingly relevant terror network focusing the endeavors of al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and others in a concentrated effort to attack American interests.

While the locus of events perpetrated by al-Shabaab have remained largely foreign, many disturbing incidents at home have underscored the dangers posed by Islamist organizations and their influence on domestic radicalization. The aforementioned arrests linked to al-Shabaab, spread widely across the United States, only represent the latest in a string of domestic arrests tied to the Somali terror network.

In June 2010, two New Jersey men were arrested on charges of attempting to join al-Shabaab and waging war against American forces in the region. Mohamed Alessa, 20, and Carlos “Omar” Almonte, 24, were apprehended as they attempted to board separate flights bound for Egypt. Although not of Somali descent, their arrests were the culmination of a yearlong investigation that uncovered their apparent sympathies with both the aspirations of al-Shabaab and the larger Islamist jihad against America.

Just over one month later, Virginia-born Zachary Chesser was arrested and accused of attempting to join the al-Shabaab terror network. Ostensibly bound for al-Shabaab training camps, Chesser was apprehended by the FBI as he prepared to board a flight bound for Uganda. According to an affidavit filed in federal court, Chesser had intentions of joining with the terror group and participating in jihad as a “foreign fighter.”

The increased radicalization of young Muslims within the United States, coupled with the ease in which foreign terrorists can use technological means to both incite and collude with domestic sympathizers, should be recognized as a pressing, and increasingly significant, danger to national security.

As the interests of myriad terror organizations continue to intersect, and their collective influence on the radicalization of a domestic audience rises, threats to American interests at home will only increase. The recent arrests of over a dozen Somali-Americans linked to the al-Shabaab terror network only portend a glimpse of the difficulties yet to come in protecting the American homeland.

Scott Erickson has worked in the field of law enforcement for the past decade and holds both his B.S. and M.S. in Criminal Justice Studies. He is contributor to The Daily Caller.

The views expressed by guest bloggers on the Foundry do not necessarily reflect the views of the Heritage Foundation.

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In the latest anti-Western rant, the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has blamed the United States and the West for once again thwarting bilateral relations with Russia by deploying missile defense in Europe and “lying” about NATO enlargement. However, his statements are clearly political propaganda intended for internal consumption and distort the reality of events. Yet they raise questions regarding Russia’s commitment to President Barak Obama’s “reset” policy and broader Russian integration with the West.

For example, Putin has chosen to criticize the current missile defense plan of the Obama Administration. “We had just come to terms that there would be no missiles [NATO missile defense systems] in Poland…but it was suddenly announced that the same [missile defense system deployment] was planned for other European countries,” Putin stated.

However, Russia can hardly feign surprise. Nor this is “the same” system. The missile defense plans differ in technology but not in the purpose: to counter limited short- and intermediate-range ballistic missile threats from Iran. Moreover, neither the old Bush-era missile defense system called “Third Site” or the new “Phased Adaptive” system could counter an attack from the massive Russian heavy intercontinental-range ballistic missile arsenal, nor would they have the adequate range to reach Russia’s missile sites and flight trajectories.

The Russians believe and have publicly stated that the treaty imposes significant limitations on U.S. ballistic missile defenses. The Russian unilateral statement to the treaty is clear: Moscow will withdraw from the treaty if there is any “qualitative” or “quantitative” change to American missile defenses. By this statement, the Russians are effectively forcing the U.S. to choose between improving its missile defenses and keeping the treaty intact. Also troubling, the Administration has refused to share the negotiating record of the treaty with U.S. Senate, leaving many to believe that negotiators gave the Russians private assurances on limits to U.S. missile defenses. It is also worth pointing out that the Administration promised domestically not to limit ballistic missile defenses on numerous occasions.

Putin’s anti-NATO rant is even more bizarre. In his statement, “at time of the withdrawal from East Europe, the NATO secretary general promised the USSR it could be confident that NATO would not expand over its current boundaries,” Putin completely disregards the fact that there was never a written agreement between Russia and NATO members on this important subject. As a lawyer, Putin surely knows better.

Membership in NATO has always been a decision of sovereign nation-states. It is independent of Russia or the NATO Secretary General’s will, and is in accordance with international law. Moreover, NATO expansion has been a major success story for the alliance as it has played a crucial role in stabilizing and reforming large parts of Europe devastated from decades of Nazi and Soviet rule. In addition, Russia and NATO are engaging in a twenty year long cooperation, including the NATO-Russia Council. With both Russia and NATO recognizing that membership is not in the cards at this stage, accusations about the lack of cooperation from the West are completely unjustified.

Russia, instead, is voicing revisionist sentiments with regard to European and Eurasian security. In Europe, Russia wants to scramble time-tested frameworks, including NATO and OSCE, to launch new security architecture.

In Eurasia, Moscow is using its entire geopolitical toolbox such as diplomacy (including recognition of the self-proclaimed republics), strategic-information operations, arms sales, status-of-forces agreements, base construction, and even regime change, to secure its “sphere of privileged interests” and to shift the balance of power in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Russia continues to be in violation of the Paris-brokered ceasefire agreement it signed with Georgia in August 2008, which stipulates that its military must pull back to its pre-war positions (status quo ante bellum).

By all appearances there is an internal Russian political angle to the timing and the tone of Putin’s statement, one that is a poke in the eye of Medvedev-Obama’s “reset” policy. Russia will hold presidential elections in 2012 and Putin is clearly running. He is playing to the anti-Western sentiments held by the Russian elites. Putin himself has aired these sentiments, despite chummy relations with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and French president Nicolas Sarkozy (who also brokered the Georgian peace agreement). And last but not least, anti-Western xenophobia justifies the continuation of domestic authoritarian policies.

Instead of engaging in hostile rhetoric, Russia and the United States should cooperate on the key issues currently threatening the international community, e.g., Iran’s nuclear weapon program and the threat of Islamic radicalism—both challenges close to, or inside, the Russian borders. If the Kremlin rejects U.S. overtures and inflames anti-Americanism in Russia, the United States and Russia will face a continuation of friction and bickering neither of which are in either side’s interest. And regardless of the Russian opposition, the U.S. and its allies should vigorously pursue their interests in Eastern Europe and Eurasia.

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The EPA recently proposed a new grading requirement for new car stickers. The A–D grading system would rank cars according to their fuel efficiency and carbon dioxide emissions to help consumers make better choices. In the new grading scheme, the Ford Focus gets a B and the Toyota Prius gets an A–. What does this tell consumers? As it turns out, not much.

Already on the new car sticker are two more useful bits of information. The first is the EPA’s estimate of annual fuel cost. For the Focus it is $1,435 per year, and for the Prius it is $804 per year. The second bit of information is the price of the car. Though critical to virtually every consumer, the EPA gives no weight at all to the purchase cost in its grading system. If it did, the grades would be different.

According to Edmunds.com the expected price, net of discounts, in Washington, D.C., is $14,731 for a Focus SE and $22,451 for the base model Prius. Financing these cars for five years at 5 percent gives a monthly payment of $278 for the Focus and $424 for the Prius. The difference in cost works out to about $1,750 more per year for the Prius. Since the Prius saves only $631 in gasoline per year, the Prius costs the consumer $1,121 more per year.

But, some would complain, this does not take into account the external cost of the carbon dioxide emissions as they warm the world. Without getting into the global warming debate, we note that those who are worried about carbon dioxide emissions and who make estimates of the costs get values of between about $5 and $30 per ton. Since the EPA estimates that driving a Focus emits 2.9 tons per year more than driving a Prius, the additional carbon dioxide has a cost of $14.50 to $90.00 per year. Even with this bit of environmental bookkeeping, the Prius is still over a $1,000 per year more costly.

According to the EPA, its new scheme is necessary because the information on fuel use is too difficult for consumers to understand. That seems a very dubious proposition. But suppose the EPA has a target audience too dimwitted to determine whether or not $1,435 is more than $804. It is unlikely this group would be better able to compare prices or to calculate differences in monthly payments. If the EPA is trying to help these consumers, the grading system flunks spectacularly, as it can give a higher grade to worse deal.

If, on the other hand, the EPA grading scheme is intended to funnel consumers to the preferred choices of environmental wonks, it makes perfect sense.

Both the Bush and Obama Administrations implemented tougher fuel efficiency standards for vehicles with the message that more stringent regulations will reduce carbon dioxide and save consumers money because they’ll be purchasing less gas. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recently announced fleet-wide requirements of 34.1 miles per gallon in 2016 for all automakers in the U.S.

Now, are the agencies trying to guilt you into buying a hybrid? The Wall Street Journal reports:

The government proposed labeling each new passenger vehicle with a letter grade from A to D based on its fuel efficiency and emissions, part of a broader effort by the Obama administration to promote electric cars and other advanced-technology vehicles.

Currently, the labels must show how many miles per gallon a car gets and its estimated annual fuel cost. Under the proposed changes, a new label design would carry a large letter grade assigned by regulators.

Under the system, the only cars that would receive an A-plus, A or A-minus would be electrics and plug-in hybrids, the government said. Many compact and midsize vehicles would get Bs, while bigger and more powerful models such as sport-utility vehicles and pickup trucks would get Cs or C-minuses because they burn more petroleum and pump out more carbon dioxide, officials said.

The proposal is unnecessary and degrading to consumers who already have the information they need to purchase the vehicles they desire. Consumers have different preferences and different needs and take a number of variables into account when buying a car. Size, safety, miles-per-gallon, costs of repairs, location, and price (among others) all play important roles, and each carries a different weight per individual. Should the EPA and NHTSA arbitrarily assign grades to all these factors? There’s also a conflict-of-interest issue that arises: Should these regulatory agencies be picking winners and losers among the models and manufacturers they regulate?

So why the obnoxious letter grade? Just as no child wants to come home with a report card full of C’s, consumers could feel guilty rolling out of a dealership with a C-minus SUV. Dave McCurdy, president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said, “The proposed letter grade falls short because it is imbued with school-yard memories of passing and failing.”

Unfortunately for automakers, more stringent fuel efficiency regulations do not come with guaranteed consumer demand for those vehicles. Gloria Bergquist, also from the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said, “We have a hill to climb, and it’s steep, so we will need consumers to buy our fuel-efficient technologies in large numbers to meet this new national standard.”

Bob Lutz, vice chairman of GM, echoed Berguist’s remarks, saying, “We’ll have to force a lot of hybrids, which people may or may not pay for.” Consumers have a wide variety of choices when it comes to purchasing a vehicle; clearly, a number of smaller, fuel-efficient cars exist on the market today—including a growing number of hybrid vehicles. Yet Jake Fisher, senior automotive engineer at Consumer Reports, asserted, “Performance hybrids and mild hybrids haven’t gained any traction in the market.” The EPA and NHTSA’s lettering system is an attempt to persuade reluctant consumers into buying those vehicles.

Another problem is that advertising the cost savings from increased fuel efficiency relies only on government numbers. While the Obama Administration acknowledges higher sticker prices for vehicles, they may underestimate those increases. Last year, President Obama said consumers would be better off paying $1,300 more for a new car because they will save $2,800 through better gas mileage. However, some estimates place the price hikes much higher. Sandra Stojkovski of See More Systems, which specializes in systems engineering, “projects the sticker of a compact car will go up $1,800 to $2,000. The price of a mid-sized car is likely to increase $4,500 to $6,000, she says. Outfitting a full-sized pickup with a diesel, rather than a gasoline-powered V-8, and other new equipment could cost $9,000.” One should also consider the energy electricity used and output of emissions when charging an electric vehicle.

Consumers already have access to the miles-per-gallon numbers, which is much less arbitrary than any grading system. They can do without the Hester Prynne–style marking.