After Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab failed to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day, the Transportation Security Administration issued a directive requiring airlines to immediately make major changes in their operations.
Whether TSA's actions were legal (or should have been illegal) is an interesting question. What is more immediately interesting is that the directive itself implies a higher concern about the appearance of safety than safety itself. Nothing in the directive would have prevented Abdulmutallab from bombing Flight 253 or prevent a similarly equipped terrorist from blowing up an airliner tomorrow.
The federal government's reported figures for jobs "created or saved" by the "stimulus" bill (formally the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, or "ARRA") are now known to be wrong. The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, which oversees these figures, apparently has decided not to correct them.
A scandal has erupted over the federal government's reporting of the number of jobs created or saved by the "stimulus" bill (formally the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009).
This scandal would have been avoided if the government had complied with the Information Quality Act.
Wall Street Journal aviation columnist Scott McCartney reports that the Transportation Security Administration's recent efforts to expand its domain into general law enforcement has encountered legal obstacles. More...
On July 2, Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano signed into law a bill that tightens an existing statutory definition for felonious "aggravated taking identity of another person" and establishes a new statutory regime that will sanction employers who violate federal immigration law after January 1, 2008. The bill passed the State House of Representatives 47-11 and the State Senate 20-4. More...
We
recently posted times on various
States' efforts to indirectly regulate immigration by
supplementing federal immigration law (e.g., Oklahoma), or
alternatively, to refuse to leverage State or local resources to
enforce these laws (e.g., Illinois). We also looked at New York
Governor
Spitzer's September change in driver license policy that enabled
illegal aliens to obtain valid driver licenses. We concluded that,
whatever
its merits as a policy, this did not appear to be a significant change
from current practice because New York State's proof of identity
standards would remain unchanged.
Spitzer's
policy change stirred considerable controversy, so we went back to
examine the issue in greater detail. Recently, Spitzer revised New York
State driver license policy in a very significant way, and a comparison
of the two policies reveals much more about how New York is addressing
immigration issues. More...
On October 10, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer issued a preliminary injunction barring the Department of Homeland Security from implementing a regulation it issued in August that tightened up existing practice in the enforcement of 1986 federal immigration law. The case provides a lesson in administrative procedure -- particularly, how an agency's failure to take obscure procedures seriously can backfire. More...
Washington Post staff writer Anthony Fiaola has a Page One commentary on actions State and local governments have taken or are considering to regulate immigration within their borders. Fiaola's article contains mostly unattributed opinions (e.g., "some see obstacles"; "some observers fear"; "some observers are alarmed"; "others argue"; "others assert") and few facts or analysis. Because he is the Post's New York City bureau chief and not a beat reporter on immigration issues, he is especially prone to reporting error. We correct his more obvious mistakes. More...
Regulation is widely understood as a tax on the activity or person being regulated. Where these activities repair genuine market failures, benefits from regulation may result. If there are benefits from, say, automobile safety regulation, one would expect the beneficiaries to be persons who otherwise would have been killed or injured at the pre-regulatory safety level.
But what about the costs of regulation? Who bears them? More...
On August 4, the federal Transportation Security Administration will permit butane lighters in carry on baggage. Why is TSA allowing them now? Why were they banned in the first place?
Earlier today we posted a comment on the comprehensive immigration bill that was negotiated by the Bush administration and selected Members of Congress. A Google News search yields over 3,000 hits, but the bill itself has not been published for public review. That makes regulatory analysis impossible, yet advocates were seeking passage this week.
Through the courtesy of Wall Street Journal reporter John Fund, who published a commentary this morning on the bill and unearthed the text, we now have a copy of the discussion draft of the bill.
Readers should beware: the text is 326 pages. More...
Over the weekend it was announced that the Bush administration and a bipartisan group of senators and congressmen had reached agreement on the details of a comprehensive immigration reform bill. Proponents said they wanted a Senate vote by Tuesday. More...
The classic risk management problem consists of making decisions under uncertainty. Any decision, no matter how carefully considered and well informed, can err in either of two ways:
By failing to prevent a risk from occurring
By preventing a risk through the creation of a different risk
Sandra Bell illuminates this problem in the case of Islamic terrorism in the UK. Bell is director of the Homeland Security & Resilience Department at the Royal United Services Institute in Whitehall. More...
The Associated Press is reporting on the Department of Homeland Security's Automated Targeting System (ATS), which assigns international airline passengers "risk scores."
All international airline passengers do not pose an equal terrorism threat. In principle, risk scores help allocate scarce homeland security resources on more serious threats. as with all scoring systems, risk scores provide rankings that are categorical (e.g., "low," medium, "high") or ordinal (e.g., 1 to 100 points). Errors will occur. For example:
Some travelers will be ranked riskier than they really are ("false positives")
Some travelers wll be ranked less risky that they really are ("false negatives")
Rankings may be systematically biased.
Privacy advocates generally object to all such systems unless, at a minimum, travelers can learn their ranking and protest errors. If such an appeal process could be devised (and for sake of argument, imagine that it was costless to implement), it almost certainly would solve error type #1, do nothing to solve error type #2, and increase error type #3. Those who believe their risk has been overstated will petition for correction, but those whose risks have been understated will not. The database will consist of two groups: (1) Those whose risks are accurately estimated and (2) those whose risks are underestimated. More...
Harvard economics professor and former Bush administration chief economist Gregory Mankiw says in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) that Congress should raise the gas tax.
With the midterm election around the corner, here's a wacky idea you won't often hear from our elected leaders: We should raise the tax on gasoline. Not quickly, but substantially. I would like to see Congress increase the gas tax by $1 per gallon, phased in gradually by 10 cents per year over the next decade.
He gives seven arguments for his proposed $1 per gallon increase in the gas tax: (1) carbon dioxide abatement, (2) reducing road congestion, (3) relief from counterproductive regulations, (4) balancing the federal budget, (5) burden-sharing with oil producers such as Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, (6) a preference for consumption over income taxes, and (7) enhanced national security.
Which of these arguments stands up to elementary economic scrutiny?
