I do not think we should intervene:

1. We do not know if intervention will change the outcome;

2. We do not know if a government established by the rebels will be an improvement;

3. We do not how long or how expensive the “appropriate” intervention will turn out to be.

4. We do not know how the rebels will regard foreign “aggression” or how Khaddafi will spin our intervention to his advantage.

It is good to see that Republicans and Democrats are devoting their time to matters of national importance:

Within the war between Republicans and Democrats over the federal spending rages an affray over disposable forks.

Under the tutelage of Representative Nancy Pelosi during the years when Democrats ran the House, her party moved to “green” the Capitol with several initiatives, including obligating the food vendor for the three main House cafeterias to provide compostable cups and utensils. But the newly empowered House Republicans have ended the program, and thus plastic forks and Styrofoam cups have returned.

The move enraged many Democrats, who argue that the House is now doing something bad for the environment and retrograde. …

Republicans counter that the composting program cost too much, had limited environmental benefits and that the compostable utensils were a bad deal for diners anyway, because they could not stand up to hot soup and the heartier salad fixings.

The recents events in Japan have, predictably, unleashed a new debate over the risks of nuclear power, with strong opinions on both sides.

I am not remotely qualified to judge whether the damaged Japanese reactors pose significant risks, but one point about nuclear power is beyond dispute: it always receives substantial subsidy from government. This consists of both direct payments toward the costs of building plants, along with insurance against full liability for accidents.

So a simple way to evaluate competing claims over safety is to eliminate both kinds of subsidy and find out whether the private sector really think nuclear power is profitable, if investors bear all construction and insurance costs.

See here.

My first trip to a former Soviet-bloc country.

I am not convinced that Scott Walker’s approach in Wisconsin was either good policy or good politics, even though I am no fan of public sector unions.

On the economics:  The reduction in collective bargaining rights for public sector workers does not, by itself, guarantee any improvement in the budget.  Unions can still hang tough and fight for huge wage increases – over which they retain collective bargaining rights – rather than for health and pension benefits – over which they have lost such rights.  More broadly, the compensation packages that public sector unions can negotiate depend mainly on public opinion, not formal bargaining rights.

On the politics:  Whatever the merits of Walker’s position, it is easily portrayed as harsh and excessive; it can readily be spun as venom against unions, rather than balanced concern over deficits.

I think Walker would have gained more, at least in the longer term, by simply adopting a calm but firm position on reduced public sector compensation. Everyone understands that state budgets are out of balance, so the claim that public sector workers need to share in the adjustment would strike most of the electorate as reasonable.

Illinois became the 16th state to ban capital punishment as Gov. Pat Quinn on Wednesday signed an abolition bill that the state legislature passed in January.

“Since our experience has shown that there is no way to design a perfect death penalty system, free from the numerous flaws that can lead to wrongful convictions or discriminatory treatment, I have concluded that the proper course of action is to abolish it,” Mr. Quinn said in a statement.

I support the Illinois decision, although my justification would be somewhat different.

Any system of punishment makes mistakes; this fact, by itself, does not determine value of the death penalty.

But decades of social science research has failed to uncover a convincing impact of the death penalty in deterring crime. So, if capital punishment does not generate its main desired outcome, and it raises the costs of any mistakes made by the criminal justice system, then the case for this approach is weak.

In addition, capital punishment may increase criminal justice expenditure because of the endless appeals in death penalty cases. Incarcerating someone for life is also costly, so the net difference is not obvious.  But any budgetary benefit of the death penalty is probably modest and might even be negative.

The most interesting of the controversial comments made by (now former) NPR executive Ron Schiller is not this one:

The Tea Party is fanatically involved in people’s personal lives and very fundamental Christian — I wouldn’t even call it Christian. It’s this weird evangelical kind of move.

Nor this one:

Tea Party people aren’t just Islamaphobic, but really xenophobic, I mean basically they are, they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it’s scary. They’re seriously racist, racist people.

Rather, it is this one:

NPR would be better off in the long run without federal funding.

That comment is dead on.  If NPR were a private entity, with no government support or special treatment, it would be free to be as controversial as it wants.  It is the government funding that makes the Schiller incident, or the Juan Williams incident, matters of major controversy.

NPR does lots of great stuff. They can survive easily without government funds.  If NPR really wants to promote the mission that most of its employees and listeners share, it should begging to give back its government funding.

From the IHS video library:

At WashingtonPost.com.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS37SNYjg8w

(For the record: This is not meant as an endorsement of a gold standard!  More on that in a few weeks.)