cato thoughts of late

Kill NCLB, school reforms

Subsidies for OPEC. (or a fool and his money are soon parted)

I have little to add. The second one with the underwriting of anti-terrorism/war/etc costs for various OPEC nations is probably a vital concern. Historically speaking, countries tend to align with others for trade or security reasons. That's fine. The problem arises when either 1) the security danger is unilaterally increased by the policies of the weaker party knowing the costs will be paid by others (Israel is a possible example here) or 2) the security danger is increased by the policies of the weaker party doing things which directly endanger others (ie state-sponsored terrorism). In those cases, it's best to find new allies or new trade partners. And it would be better if we didn't appear to be begging for oil every time we meet with the Saudis. Perhaps the smart play would be to ask them to increase their defense investments or counter-terrorism efforts. That won't happen unless America can secure some other country or source for domestic energy needs or allies who are willing to offset our costs for keeping the region relatively secure (sort of).

For the first, I'm long in advocating doing public policies that have shown themselves to work either here or elsewhere.. in that case school funding and choice driven by parents (and not local teachers unions or local school boards). Silly neo-cons keep screwing up these good ideas by trying to inject religious schools as a choice, funded by public monies.. no thank you. So instead we're trying to create a standardized uniform society through education... which last I checked resulted in things like Mao's cultural revolution (and millions of dead and imprisoned Chinese) or WW2. In a diverse culture with a global free market, I would think the smart play is on spreading out our choices and assets and accounting for reasonable differences in the quality and style of education people desire and need, not creating useless and evasive standards.