Last week, a New Yorker article described David and Charles Koch’s generous philanthropy toward free-market think tanks as a product of pro-corporate economic self-interest. But if that were really true, as Tim Carney points out, then they would not fund organizations that regularly host writers who speak out against corporate welfare—writers like Tim Carney.

“Asian-American men suffer from stomach cancer 114 percent more often than non-Hispanic white men.”

That’s one piece of evidence supposedly demonstrating that the United States comes up short on securing human rights. That’s the State Department’s story anyway, as told to the United Nations in its recent review of U.S. human rights conditions.

In case you need to know more about the State Department’s weird views of what constitutes a human right, see Roger Pilon’s column in the Philadelphia Inquirer. As Pilon points out, the United Nations recognizes two sets of human rights: one set based on equality before the law, and the other based on equality of economic and social results. Recognizing the latter set of rights as fundamental has given the regimes that kill their own citizens a political club to wield against governments that do not kill their own citizens.

Could college students not covered by their parents’ insurance plans be forced into more expensive plans by Obamacare? Colleges and universities typically offer their students low-cost health plans designed to take advantage of a university’s own health care system. And because the plans are rated for healthier college students, they are cheaper than insurance in the individual market.

But Obamacare requires all adults to purchase health insurance that meets certain standards or pay a tax penalty. The plans colleges and universities offer their students wouldn’t seem to meet those standards, and that has them scrambling to obtain a clarification from the Department of Health and Human Services. The American Council on Education sent Secretary of HHS Kathleen Sebelius a letter about the problem earlier this month. The letter points out that the law does instruct that it should not be construed as prohibiting universities from offering student health plans. But the letter also goes on to point out that the only real guarantee that student health plans won’t be affected by Obamacare would be for the Secretary to use her discretion under the law to designate student health plans as meeting “minimum essential coverage.”

There are probably lots of people who would like the option of buying less comprehensive and cheaper insurance. And not all of those people are students at institutions of higher education. Will the secretary look out for their interests, too, by making similar designations of other plans? Or perhaps it would just be easier to repeal Obamacare.

We’re looking forward to this film:

Jim Van Eerden, the producer of the film, told a group of bloggers at The Heritage Foundation today that he wants the film to help promote a national conversation about the importance of getting government spending under control. The film will release to theaters on October 15, but it will be shown in private screenings around the country throughout September. If you are interested in hosting a screening, you can find out how to do that at IWantYourMoneyScreenings.net.

In his latest column, Richard Epstein observes:

The unemployment rate is higher now than it was when the stimulus program began. The secret of our success, evidently, is that the number of unemployed did not go higher still. By dumbing down the definition of success, it becomes impossible for any stimulus program to fail, so long as there is some scenario worse than the one we had, which there always is. By that generous definition, no market has ever failed no matter how dismal its results.

The Austrian school of economics, which for decades has been doing intellectual war with the Keynesians and their pump priming prescriptions, is experiencing a revival these days. One of the key figures in that movement is George Mason University professor Peter J. Boetke who was recently profiled in the Wall Street Journal. Boetke, notes the article, has made George Mason one of the leading schools for scholars in the Austrian mold: “Roughly 75% of his students have gone on to teach economics at the college or graduate level.” Congrats on the well-deserved profile, Peter.

The article, “Spreading Hayek, Spurning Keynes,” by Kelly Evans, is available at the Wall Street Journal Web site, though unfortunately the entire article is available only to subscribers.

These data, from David Brooks’s latest column, undermine the case for even more stimulus:

According to Gary Becker of the University of Chicago, the Americans borrowed an amount equal to 6 percent of G.D.P. in an attempt to stimulate growth. The Germans spent about 1.5 percent of G.D.P. on their stimulus.

This divergence created a natural experiment. Who was right?

The early returns suggest the Germans were. The American stimulus package was supposed to create a “summer of recovery,” according to Obama administration officials. Job growth was supposed to be surging at up to 500,000 a month. Instead, the U.S. economy is scuffling along.

The German economy, on the other hand, is growing at a sizzling (and obviously unsustainable) 9 percent annual rate. Unemployment in Germany has come down to pre-crisis levels.

The editor’s note:

Among the startling facts about America’s fiscal situation are these: Federal spending has grown 62 percent faster than inflation since 2000. President Obama’s budget will double the publicly held national debt by 2020. Under current policies, by 2023 the U.S. debt held by the public will equal 100 percent of U.S. gross domestic product—perilously close to the level attained by Greece just before its debt meltdown earlier this year. Without changes in benefits, the country’s entitlement programs need an additional $63 trillion invested now in order to stay solvent for the next 75 years—equivalent to giving every person in the country a $200,000 mortgage (but no house).

We make ourselves poorer when government spends money on things that are not essential to the business of governing. But aside from the waste, there is the problem of what happens when America’s creditors lose confidence in the ability of the country to pay its debts. Herbert Stein once said, “If it can’t go on forever, it will stop.” The Greek fiscal reckoning this past spring came with deadly riots. It would be a good thing if our tide of red ink could be stopped before a similar tragedy happens in the United States. What should we do? Brian Riedl offers a five-point plan in our cover feature this issue.

In other articles, Jeffrey Cain reviews the efforts of Leftists to subvert the private, voluntary nature of American philanthropy and place it under the thumb of government. Randolph May describes the growing chasm between what the Federal Communications Commission does and what the First Amendment requires. Hans von Spakovsky reports on another growing threat to democratic accountability: the efforts of environmentalists to craft global warming policy through public-nuisance lawsuits. Cristina Goizueta and Rachel Kopec profile the Network of enlightened Women (NeW) and its great work providing a forum for conservative women on campus. And Ann Fitzgerald outlines an essential tool for any fundraising operation: the case for support.

Obamacare supporters claim that the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution does indeed give Congress the power to force everyone to buy health insurance. If that’s true then Congress really can do anything it wants and we do not have a government of limited and enumerated powers after all. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has already given an expansive interpretation of what the Commerce Clause allows Congress to do. Watch this Reason video to learn more about how the Commerce Clause has come to be regarded by some as a blank check for government regulation.  

Since 1950, state and local spending has grown twice as fast as private sector spending, according to this chart from the Mercatus Center.

“The nation doesn’t have to wait for the Obama experiment to finish to learn the outcome,” writes Amity Shlaes. In her latest column, she points out that the divergent paths of Maine and New Hampshire over the last 60 years constitute a natural experiment on whether higher levels of government spending are a boost to an economy.

A few facts from Shlaes column to consider: At the end of World War II, Maine’s economy and population were both bigger than New Hampshire’s, while the per capita incomes of the states was very close ($9,610 for Maine and $9,768 for New Hampshire). Maine passed a sales tax in 1951 and created an income tax in 1969. New Hampshire never imposed either, though it did create other taxes along the way. Today, “state and local taxes take 12.6 percent of personal income in Maine, the sixth-highest share among states. In New Hampshire state and local taxes take 8.7 percent, putting New Hampshire at 49th for tax burden.” New Hampshire’s lower tax burden allowed its economy to grow faster than Maine’s. It passed Maine in economic output in 1984, and today has an economy that is 20 percent bigger. In 2009, per capita income in Maine was $36.745, but in New Hampshire it was $42,831.

The Independent Institute will soon launch what looks like a really good tool for breaking down the cost of government into truly personal terms. MyGovCost.org (www.MyGovCost.org) is not live until August 31, but we took a sneak peak. The site tells you what your share of the cost of government activities will be over your lifetime based on your age and current salary level. It then calculates how much those taxes you are going to pay would have earned you had you been able to invest them instead in the private market. Site users can also choose particular areas of government activities to generate the comparisons. Check it out next Tuesday!

The Treasury Department reported last week that nearly half of the 1.3 million homeowners who have enrolled in the Obama administration’s mortgage relief program since 2009 have fallen out of the program. Yet, also last week, Treasury officials told a group of left wing bloggers that the program has not been a failure at all. One participant in the meeting described the presentation this way: “Officials pointed out that what may have been an agonizing process for individuals was a useful palliative for the system as a whole. Even if most [program] applicants ultimately default, the program prevented an outbreak of foreclosures exactly when the system could have handled it least.”

In other words, the point of the program was to help banks not homeowners struggling with their mortgages. But would the public have supported the program if it had been described that way all along?

At National Review, Stephen Spruiell points out that aside from wasting $50 billion of taxpayer dollars, the program actually hurt some homeowners:

The administration’s program created an incentive for underwater borrowers who weren’t yet behind on their mortgage payments to fall behind on purpose in order to qualify for a modification under HAMP. An aide to a Republican congressman tells NRO, “People who could have made their mortgage payments end up three months behind, and they can never recover from the penalties and late fees, so they end up in worse shape than if the program had never existed from the outset.”

The aide, who works on constituent issues, says, “I’ve had at least one case where the person gets a letter saying that they qualify for HAMP, and from their point of view, it would really help them out if they were able to qualify for a lower payment, but if they had to make the payment they were making, they could have done it by cutting back on other parts of their life.

“Then at the end of the process, they’re denied the modification, and they’re three months behind on their mortgage,” he says.

Why have so many been denied modifications? According to ProPublica’s Ryan Knutson, it’s because “the Treasury Department … encouraged banks to start trials quickly, causing banks to make trial offers to people without fully vetting their eligibility, and ultimately letting in many homeowners who were destined to fail.”

Ten years into Hugo Chavez’s Bolivarian revolution, Venezuela has become one of the most violent countries in the world. In fact, reports to the New York Times, Venezuela is now more violent than Iraq:

In Iraq, a country with about the same population as Venezuela, there were 4,644 civilian deaths from violence in 2009, according to Iraq Body Count; in Venezuela that year, the number of murders climbed above 16,000.

And The Economist reports:

Venezuela’s national murder rate is 75 per 100,000 people, up from 49 just four years ago, twice the rate in neighboring Colombia where guerrillas continue to wage war and an astonishing 220 per 100,000 people in Caracas, higher even than in Mexico’s drug-ridden Ciudad Juárez.

Resentment between rich and poor, fueled by the country’s poor economic performance under Chavez, is cited as one factor in the rise in violence. Another is that some of the police, receiving low salaries, have decided to supplement their incomes by engaging in crime themselves. But perhaps the figures are an even bigger indictment of Chavez’s pursuit of unchecked political power. The Times explains it this way:

The judicial system has grown increasingly politicized, losing independent judges and aligning itself more closely with Mr. Chávez’s political movement. Many experienced state employees have had to leave public service, or even the country.

More than 90 percent of murders go unsolved, without a single arrest, Mr. Briceño-León said. But cases against Mr. Chavez’s critics — including judges, dissident generals and media executives — are increasingly common.

Henrique Capriles, the governor of Miranda, a state encompassing parts of Caracas, told reporters last week that Mr. Chávez had worsened the homicide problem by cutting money for state and city governments led by political opponents and then removing thousands of guns from their police forces after losing regional elections.

On August 13, the newspaper El Nacional published a vivid photograph of corpses piling up in a Caracas morgue. Did that prompt the Chavez’s government to make safety a priority? Nope. Instead, the government issued a gag order on publishing photos depicting violence.

The book event below should be of special interest for parents contemplating the start of a new school year. Leigh Bortins explains what parents can to do ensure their kids master the essential building blocks of knowledge:

This Institute for Justice video reveals one public school in action:

Would you want a choice of schools if you were that child’s parent?

The amount of money U.S. taxpayers are forking over to the United Nations reached an all-time high in 2009, reports Brett Schaefer:

According to OMB, total U.S. contributions to the U.N. system were more than $6.347 billion in FY 2009. This is more than $1 billion more than total contributions as compiled by OMB for FY 2005, and it is indicative of the rising budgetary trends in the U.N. and the consequential demand on U.S. financial support. [Internal citations omitted.]

“Between 1993 and 2007, the number of full-time administrators per 100 students at America’s leading universities grew by 39 percent, while the number of employees engaged in teaching, research or service only grew by 18 percent,” reports Jay P. Greene:  

Inflation-adjusted spending on administration per student increased by 61 percent during the same period, while instructional spending per student rose 39 percent. Arizona State University, for example, increased the number of administrators per 100 students by 94 percent during this period while actually reducing the number of employees engaged in instruction, research and service by 2 percent. Nearly half of all full-time employees at Arizona State University are administrators.

How can that be? The answer, explains Greene, is that federal subsidies for higher education insulate students from the costs of the administrative bloat. A sector that has no cost-conscious consumers is not going to be disciplined—a lesson that probably explains some things about health care, too.

Earlier this month, 40 billionaires pledged to give at least half their fortunes to charitable causes. The givers include Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Ted Turner, and Herb and Marion Sandler. Even though liberal or leftwing priorities are predominant in this group, conservative organizations can still learn from the group by examining what makes them want to give. Victoria Hughes has examined the various pledges of the billionaires and distilled a list of 12 reasons for giving.

The Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs—Oklahoma’s free market think tank—has scored a big speaker for its annual Liberty Gala on September 15: former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. The event takes place in Tulsa (location to be determined) starting at 6 p.m. Individual tickets go on sale Monday, August 23.