The Foundry

In a startlingly blunt manner, French President Nicolas Sarkozy today demanded that the United Nations be reformed and argued that key international issues could not be resolved by negotiations among 192 U.N. member countries. According to the AFP account, Sarkozy announced that “The UN is absolutely indispensable and yet at the same time, it’s not working … I am certain that we need to reform the United Nations, otherwise the United Nations will end up in an impasse.”

He went on to criticize the practice of negotiating agreements among all member states simultaneously – the default process at the U.N. – wondering “who can believe that this can work?” He concluded that a better strategy would be for a “representative” group of countries to do the essential haggling. This makes eminent sense if the “representative” group of countries is composed of those that are going to be expected to bear the burden of whatever is being negotiated. The fundamental flaw of including all countries in U.N. negotiations is the tendency of a majority of countries to seek agreements that garner benefits to themselves and shift the lion’s share of costs to a relative few countries. All too often the U.S. is among the few.

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Toyota has seen better months than February when the automaker recalled millions of vehicles amidst a sticky pedal and unintended acceleration problem that led to sales decline of 8.7 percent. To win back the consumer, Toyota offered incentives including extended warrantees, auto maintenance plans and zero percent financing, and it appears to be working as Toyota sales in the United States are up 47 percent for the first 8 days of March compared to last year.

David Strickland, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), spoke in front of Congress today and told the Energy and Commerce subcommittee his agency did its job in handling the recall: “I don’t see Toyota as an indicative example of failure. I see it as NHTSA doing its job. I think Toyota and the wide-ranging recalls that it’s executed, that’s the kind of response I would want as an administrator.”

Strickland also told Members that his agency would look more thoroughly into electronic throttle technologies as some lawmakers are calling for federal standards for data recorders on automobiles – similar to a black box on an airplane. But just how dangerous was it to drive around in a recalled Toyota? Statistically speaking, not very says Carnegie Mellon Professor and risk expert Paul Fischbeck. He calculated the unintended acceleration increased the risk of driving only 2 percent. To put this in perspective Fischbeck said,

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Knowing what we know now, would the U.S. be able to stop another attack like that of Christmas Day 2009? This is certainly the question on the minds of many Americans today.  It is also one that Jamie McIntyre, veteran journalist and blogger for Military.com, had the opportunity to ask of Rand Beers, Under Secretary for National Protection and Programs Directorate from DHS, at a Heritage Foundation National Security Bloggers Luncheon.

Mr. Beers’ response can be seen here at LineOfDeparture.com thanks to a video posted by Jamie on his blog. However, to summarize the answer, Mr. Beer’s explains that while “Murphy’s law is alive and well…. the probability is considerably higher.” Continue reading...

After enacting 93,000 earmarks at a cost of $200 billion over the past decade, lawmakers are finally taking the first steps to rein them in. First, House Democrats hinted they may announce a moratorium on earmarks to for-profit companies (while retaining them for non-profit organizations and state and local governments).

Then, not be outdone, the House Republican conference today announced that they will not seek any earmarks in this year’s budget.

This is a strong positive development. Earmarks distribute government grants by politics rather than by merit. Instead of submitting a strong application to a federal agency, grant-seekers are often forced to hire lobbyists and make campaign donations. This corrupting process has resulted in multiple federal investigations, one of which concluded with a Member of Congress going to prison.

Reducing earmarks will not directly reduce the amount of money available for grantees. Instead, it will empower federal agencies to select grantees through a merit-based application process. For other programs, it means more funding will instead be distributed to state and local governments, who can better decide where to repair a road or how to revitalize a neighborhood than politicians in Washington D.C. Continue reading...

President Barack Obama announced Monday that $900 million in federal grants in the proposed FY 2011 budget would be available to school districts and administrators who work to transform roughly 5,000 failing school across the nation. While the proposal encourages transformation of the few thousand schools that produce half of America’s yearly 1.2 million high school dropouts, the reliance on federal government resources and direction to rescue America’s educational system falls short of true reform.

The President’s proposal, detailed in a subsequent press release, encourages early intervention programs for students at risk of dropping out and an emphasis on college readiness programs like advanced placement courses and dual enrollment. Specific accountability measures include replacing the management and half the teaching staff of a low-performing school, closing the school, restarting a school under a charter’s management, or transforming a school through increased teacher training and support. The President went on to emphasize the role of government in reforming failing schools, while noting the part parents, teachers, and the community can play in education America’s students. He stated: Continue reading...

No greater dilemma faced the Colombian political system in recent months than the issue of presidential re-election.  Should a constitutional referendum be held to allow a popular, extremely effective leader to run, and likely win, a third term as president? For many Colombians, President Alvaro Uribe had become the indispensable leader.

Yet, across the political spectrum, many friends of Colombia worried about the impact of such concentrated power on the congress and judiciary.  A third term for Uribe would damage democratic belief in the alterability of executive power and resemble what  authoritarian populist Hugo Chavez is doing to destroy democracy in Venezuela.

On February 27, the Colombian Supreme Court rejected the holding of a referendum. Continue reading...

Discussion of Chinese investment in the United States usually focuses on U.S. government bonds held by China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE). While SAFE directs the majority of Chinese investment in the United States, including all China’s bond purchases, it plays very little role in non-bond investment. The China Investment Corporation (CIC) is the sovereign wealth fund responsible for allocating a portion of China’s foreign exchange reserves through non-bond investments. Indeed, CIC activities have accounted for more than 80% of Chinese non-bond investment in the U.S. since it was established in 2007. Continue reading...

President Obama has received criticism from yet another Supreme Court justice concerning his inappropriate and unprecedented chastisement of the Court during the State of the Union address.  Obama criticized the Court’s recent campaign finance opinion while six of the justices sat before him, obviously unable to respond to the criticism during the address.

Tuesday, Chief Justice John Roberts told a group of University of Alabama law students that the State of the Union has “degenerated into a political pep rally” and, like his colleague Justice Thomas did just days after the event, questioned whether justices should attend at all. Continue reading...

After President Barack Obama nominated Eric Holder to be Attorney General, the Senate Judiciary Committee sent Holder a questionnaire that required him to provide copies of any briefs he had filed with the Supreme Court. Holder told the Senate he had participated in a total of five such briefs and that none of them dealt with terrorism-related issues. But as National Review Online has now confirmed, that was false. Specifically, Holder signed his name to an amicus brief arguing that President Bush lacked the authority to indefinitely detain Jose Padilla as an enemy combatant. That brief asserts:

[We] recognize that these limitations might impede the investigation of a terrorist offense in some circumstances. It is conceivable that, in some hypothetical situation, despite the array of powers described above, the government might be unable to detain a dangerous terrorist or to interrogate him or her effectively. But this is an inherent consequence of the limitation of Executive power. No doubt many other steps could be taken that would increase our security, and could enable us to prevent terrorist attacks that might otherwise occur. But our Nation has always been prepared to accept some risk as the price of guaranteeing that the Executive does not have arbitrary power to imprison citizens.

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The alphabet is expensive. The Obama administration’s FY 2011 budget includes $9.3 billion in new spending on an Early Learning Challenge Fund, a new federal preschool program contained within the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA). The SAFRA, a higher education bill, has passed the House and is awaiting action in the Senate.

Heritage education policy expert Lindsey Burke outlines current federal spending on preschool programs and illustrates that further federal involvement in early childhood education is unnecessary. Burke points out:

The ultimate goal of the myriad early education bills is to guarantee access to publicly subsidized preschool for all families.…But statistics show that most American children already have access to preschool: More than 80 percent of four-year-old children are enrolled in a preschool program; enrollment of three-year-olds and four-year-olds has increased fivefold since 1964. Moreover, the federal government already provides preschool subsidies to low-income children…turning another benefit for universal preschool into a new subsidy for middle-class and upper-income children.

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