We will not have a good accounting for a while. But the fact that many large banks have repaid their TARP injections does not mean TARP ended up costing little:

For all the focus on the historic federal rescue of the banking industry, it is the government’s decision to seize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in September 2008 that is likely to cost taxpayers the most money. So far the tab stands at $145.9 billion, and it grows with every foreclosure of a three-bedroom home with a two-car garage one hour from Phoenix. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that the final bill could reach $389 billion.

The other factor to consider is the Fed’s policy over the past year-and-a-half of selling short-term debt and buying long-term debt. This has played a big role in restoring bank profits. But when the Fed eventually reverses this policy, the “inflation tax” generated will be another way that taxpayers get the bill for TARP.

I am not a fan of Arizona’s new immigration policy. But I also think the federal government should worry about its own immigration policies and let Arizona makes its own mistakes. Apparently, that is not going to happen:

The Obama administration has decided to file suit to block a new Arizona law aimed at deporting illegal immigrants, thrusting itself into the fierce national debate over how the United States enforces immigration policies.

This is going to get worse before it gets better!

Death row inmate Ronnie Lee Gardner died in a barrage of bullets early Friday as Utah carried out its first firing squad execution in 14 years.

Gardner was strapped into a chair, a black hood was fastened around his head, and a team of five marksmen aimed their guns at a white target pinned to his chest.

He was pronounced dead at 12:17 a.m. A corrections officials had put the time of death was 12:20 a.m. before correcting it.

Gardner was allowed to choose between the firing squad and lethal injection because he was sentenced to death before Utah eliminated the firing squad as an option in 2004. He told his lawyer he did it because he preferred it – not because he wanted the controversy surrounding the execution to draw attention to his case or embarrass the state.

I take no stand on firing squads versus lethal injections, but I oppose the death penalty.  From LAZ:

Death penalty supporters rely on three arguments. First, that the possibility of capital punishment deters crime by increasing the expected punishment that confronts rational, forward-looking murderers. Second, that executing criminals convicted of the most serious crimes is cheaper than incarcerating them for life. Third, that murderers deserve to die.

None of these arguments is persuasive. Decades of social science research finds little evidence that the death penalty deters murder. Some murderers are not forward looking (e.g., perpetrators of crimes of passion), and forward-looking murderers correctly believe their chances of being executed, even if arrested and convicted, are low and will only occur years or decades after conviction. The monetary savings from use of the death penalty are overstated, since fighting appeals from death row prisoners is costly. Moral considerations do not resolve the issue because many people believe it is wrong for the state to take a life, no matter how heinous the crime.

 The death penalty, moreover, has unintended consequences. Capital punishment eliminates the possibility of correcting mistakes. This is not an enormous effect if most convicted murderers are guilty, but everyone benefits from correcting the mistakes that do occur. As with gun control, the death penalty is a distraction. Society wastes substantial energy arguing about the death penalty rather than focusing on policies that would actually reduce crime, such as ending drug prohibition, legalizing prostitution, and improving educational outcomes.

The Senate is moving closer to passing legislation that would require states to grant public-safety employees, including police, firefighters and emergency medical workers, the right to collectively bargain over hours and wages.

The bill, known as the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act, would mainly affect about 20 states that don’t grant collective-bargaining rights statewide for public-safety workers or that prohibit such bargaining. State and municipal associations, as well as business groups, oppose it, saying it will lead to higher labor costs and taxes, at a time of budget deficits.

This is wrong at two levels.

Government’s responsibility when it operates fire or police departments is to provide an appropriate level of service at the lowest cost. By protecting unions, this law will raise the cost of firemen and police, making it more difficult to provide that level of service and reducing public safety.

And whatever the merits of union protections for public safety employees, this is a state or local matter. The federal government has no reason to intervene.

So this is nothing but an attempt by the Democrats in Congress to solidify their political support from unions.

At forbes.com.

See here for an interesting article about Ted Olson, the conservative legal icon who is leading the fight to legalize gay marriage in California (jointly with David Boies, a liberal legal icon).

I agree with Olson and Boies. If the government supplies and enforces a particular legal contract – marriage – it must do so equally for same- and opposite-sex couples unless it has compelling evidence that same-sex marriage harms an innocent third party (e.g., children).  No such evidence exists.

Libertarians can reasonably argue, of course, that government should not be in the marriage business at all; that would be fine with me. But until this happens, same-sex marriage should legal.

From an e-mail:

I am from a small border town on the Rio Grande.

I think this Libertarian foolishness about legalizing marijuana and narcotic substances is very unwise.

 I know that legalizing these compounds would not increase their use in the slightest and would end the crime associated with its illegality.

 But the economy in my Town is highly dependent on drug trafficking. I venture that 75-85% of our local economy depends on this commerce – half involving the local expenditures of the traffickers and the other half, the federal expenditures attempting to interdict them. The  remainder of the federal money spent here is spent in pursuit of undocumented aliens.

 Brownsville is poor in natural resources and we have always depended on smuggling here. We were the chief port of exit for cotton bound to Europe that financed the Confederacy when Lincoln blockaded other Southern ports.

So lets have no more of these radical ideas please.

The writer is joking, right?

The staff of Normandy Crossing Elementary School outside Houston eagerly awaited the results of state achievement tests this spring. For the principal and assistant principal, high scores could buoy their careers at a time when success is increasingly measured by such tests. For fifth-grade math and science teachers, the rewards were more tangible: a bonus of $2,850.

But when the results came back, some seemed too good to be true. Indeed, after an investigation by the Galena Park Independent School District, the principal, assistant principal and three teachers resigned May 24 in a scandal over test tampering.

This story illustrates one problem with No Child Left Behind and other government accountability systems. Schools should be accountable, but to parents and students, not government. The way to promote true accountability is vouchers and charters. NCLB crowds out support for these approaches by appearing to “do something.”

My thoughts, in the Room for Debate section of the New York Times.

The UN has just voted to impose new sanctions on Iran:

The United States, moving firmly away from the Obama administration’s previous emphasis on wooing Iran, pushed through a new round of United Nations sanctions against the nation on Wednesday, taking aim at its military in yet another attempt to pressure Tehran over its nuclear program.

I guess they have not read this story, which appeared a few days ago:

On Jan. 24, 2009, a rusting freighter flying a Hong Kong flag dropped anchor in the South African port of Durban. The stop was not on the ship’s customary route, and it stayed only an hour, just long enough to pick up its clandestine cargo: a Bladerunner 51 speedboat that could be armed with torpedoes and used as a fast-attack craft in the Persian Gulf.

The name painted on the ship’s side as it left Durban and made for the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas was the Diplomat, and its papers showed that it was owned by a company called Starry Shine Ltd. Both the name and provenance were of recent vintage. Six months earlier, the Diplomat had been the Iran Mufateh, part of a fleet owned by the state-owned Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, known as Irisl.

Within months of the Durban episode, the United States government put out word that Irisl had renamed the ship and set up Starry Shine to evade American export controls aimed at preventing Iran from obtaining military-use technology like the Bladerunner 51.

By that time, though, the freighter had yet another name: the Amplify. Last spotted by an electronic tracking system this April in Karachi, Pakistan, the Amplify was under new management and had a mysterious new owner.

But only on paper.

The Mufateh-Diplomat-Amplify is part of a great disappearing act, in which Irisl, under pressure from American and other sanctions, has been obscuring the true ownership of its vessels in a web of shell companies stretching across Europe and Asia, a New York Times examination of Irisl’s actions shows.

My guess is that the world can do nothing to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons short of invasion. I am not recommending that, however.  I think we just live with the threat that a nuclear Iran poses.