China crosses Obama’s cyber ‘red line’

Remember how President Obama failed to enforce his “red line” in Syria? Well, it’s happening again — this time in cyberspace.

On April 1, Obama drew a cyber “red line” in the sand when he signed an executive order authorizing sanctions against individuals or entities who carry out cyberattacks or cyberespionage against the United States. “Starting today,” Obama declared, “we’re giving notice to those who pose significant threats to our security or economy by damaging our critical infrastructure, disrupting or hijacking our computer networks, or stealing the trade secrets of American companies or the personal information of American citizens for profit.”

A senior administration official told The Post that the new order would put our enemies in cyberspace on notice that “if you think you can just hide behind borders . . . that’s just not going to be the case. . . . [W]e can hit where it hurts in terms of a financial impact.” The order authorizes the treasury secretary to freeze financial assets, bar commercial transactions and impose a visa ban on those involved in significant cyberattacks.

“As of today, the United States has a new tool to protect our nation, our companies, and our citizens ,” Obama declared, “and in the days and years ahead, we will use it.”

Except he’s not using it. In the days after he spoke those words, the United States discovered that Chinese government hackers had broken into the computer networks of the Office of Personnel Management — stealing the personnel records of as many as 18 million Americans.

Experts told me it was the most devastating cyberattack in the history of our country. One retired four-star general and cybersecurity expert described the OPM hack as a “Cyber 9/11.”

So how has the Obama administration responded? Did it follow through on Obama’s threat and impose sanctions on those responsible? Not even close. For weeks, the administration would not even acknowledge that China was behind the attack. Then, last Thursday, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper finally admitted China was to blame, telling an intelligence conference “You have to kind of salute the Chinese for what they did.”

Salute them? No, you don’t. You have to sanction the Chinese for what they did.

The OPM breach is catastrophic, both for our national security and for the individuals whose information has been compromised. China has stolen the personal data on countless Americans with top-secret security clearances. The regime in Beijing now possesses their Social Security and passport numbers; the names and addresses of relatives; every place they have ever lived, worked or went to school; details of their military service (including whether they worked in intelligence); all the people they “know well,” including their “foreign contacts,” and details on their “foreign activities” and “foreign travel”; all the details of their “psychological and emotional health,” including any mental health treatment; any police records “regardless of whether the record . . . has been sealed, expunged, or otherwise stricken from the court record, or dismissed”; details of any “illegal use of drugs and drug activity” and “use of alcohol”; as well as detailed financial records, including any past bankruptcies and “non-criminal court actions.” In other words, Beijing now possesses everything a foreign intelligence service could possibly need to blackmail those holding some of the United States’ most sensitive secrets.

Not only can this information be used to undermine national security, it can also be used to retaliate against those who criticized China — for example, people working for U.S. government “freedom radio” stations, such as Radio Free Asia, who use aliases to protect themselves and their relatives back home. Beijing now may have the real identities of those broadcasters and those of their family members in China.

Stolen OPM data reportedly has been found for sale on the “dark net ” — the online network used by criminals and terrorists across the globe. This is unsurprising, considering that the Obama administration discovered the breach in April but did not announce it until June 4 — giving cybercriminals a running head start to exploit stolen data while keeping those affected in the dark. And what is the administration doing now to protect those whose personal information they failed to protect? They are offering — get this — 18 months of “free” credit monitoring service and identity theft insurance. Eighteen months? The loss of personal information lasts a lifetime — and sometimes longer for family members and others whose personal information was included in the stolen data.

The failure to protect this information is appalling. But the failure to respond to an attack of this magnitude is inexcusable. In April, Obama warned that “from now on” his administration would “go after bad actors” who carry out cyberattacks on the United States. China responded by launching the most audacious attack in history.

 So, Mr. President, what are you going to do about it?

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Monday evening links

1. Chart of the Day I (above). The median sales price of an existing home in May at $228,700 was just $1,700 (and 0.74%) below the all-time peak price of $230,400 in July 2006.

2. Chart of the Day II (above). Based on new data from the EIA, US net petroleum imports fell to 26.2% this year through May, which was the lowest dependence on foreign sources of petroleum since 1971 when the country’s net imports were 24.3%.  Carpe oleum.

3. Hedge Funds vs. Blindfolded Monkeys. “The average hedge fund has produced a worse investment performance in the first half of this year than a portfolio consisting of a savings account at your local bank and a random collection of stocks picked by a blindfolded monkey,” according to Brett Arends writing for MarketWatch (“How hedge-fund geniuses got beaten by monkeys — again“).

4. Take the U.S. Citizenship Test: Get 15 or more correct answers out of 25 to pass this basic US citizen test.

5. Map of the Day (above). Including the US, there are now 23 countries in the world where gay marriage is legal nationwide.

6. History of same-sex marriage in the United States in one animated GIF map (above).

7. Landmark Win For Economic Liberty: The Texas Supreme Court struck down the state’s useless eyebrow threading licensing requirements (6-3), thanks to the Institute for Justice (the nation’s only libertarian, civil liberties, public interest law firm) which helped five eyebrow threaders successfully sue the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation for violating the state constitution by attempting to lock the entrepreneurs out of their jobs with expensive and irrelevant state licensing requirements designed specifically for cosmetologists (and not eyebrow threaders). Thanks IJ for another successful victory defending the economic liberty of entrepreneurs and small businesses in America, we’ll all a little more free today thanks to your tenacious legal advocacy.

8. Another Victory for Freedom: Effective July 1, adult possession of weeds and home cultivation of weeds will be legal in the state of Oregon. The voter-approved initiative permits adults 21 and older in Oregon to grow up to four weed plants and keep up to eight ounces of weeds at home, and possess one ounce of weeds in public.

9. Quotation of the Day on the Drug War, from Don Winslow writing for CNN (“America’s war on drugs is empowering Mexico’s drug cartels“):

So we’re winning the war on marijuana along the Mexican border — costing the violent sociopaths of the cartels millions of dollars — by legalizing it. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the cartels have responded to this loss by shipping more coke, meth and especially heroin. The heroin epidemic in the Northeast is mostly supplied by the Sinaloa cartel, by far the dominant drug trafficking organization in Mexico today. Addicts who were using prescription opiates are turning to Mexican heroin because it’s cheaper.

So after four decades of the war on drugs, we’ve cut marijuana imports almost in half within the last two years by legalizing it, while the heroin, coke and meth just keep coming. In essence, when we stop fighting, we win. When we keep fighting, the cartels win.

10. Diversity at Facebook. Everybody is now reporting that Facebook’s latest employee diversity report reveals that it has made “very little, or no progress” over the last year, see a bunch of those reports here. Let me translate what I think the mainstream media means by no diversity “progress” at Facebook: The company hasn’t been engaging in the politically correct amount of discrimination against Asians, especially Asian men, in favor of giving preferential hiring treatment for blacks, Hispanics and women.

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Medicaid provider taxes: Closing a loophole

Brill explains how federally sanctioned state Medicaid provider taxes operate and affect federal Medicaid spending. He proposes that Congress prohibit these taxes and either put the federal savings back into Medicaid or use them to reduce federal healthcare taxes.

This article will be posted on Monday, July 13. Tax Notes subscribers can access the article here.

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Iran Talks: The final countdown?

The deadline for a nuclear deal with Iran is fast approaching while rumors swirl of a possible extension. At the same time, Iran has made clear its anti-American agenda and its designs for the Middle East. It has neither stopped its support of terrorist proxies such as Hezbollah, nor has it shown any sign of curtailing its nuclear ambitions. What will be the impact of a nuclear agreement with Iran? AEI experts are available to comment on the effects of such a deal.

Former long-time Senate Committee on Foreign Relations senior professional staff member and AEI Senior Vice President of Foreign & Defense Policy Studies Danielle Pletka:

For many who watch the Iranian nuclear weapons program and the ongoing negotiations, there has been no recovery from the jaw dropping moments of recent weeks when the United States conceded every single substantive demand that has been made of the Iranian regime. Possible military dimensions of the program? No worries. Inspections? No problem. Cooperation with the IAEA? Whatever. The reality is that there are no negotiations going on with Iran. We are simply arguing over the terms of our surrender.

Iran and rogue regime expert Michael Rubin:

Simply put, once administrations begin high-profile diplomacy, they too often will concede anything to keep hope alive. Tehran, like Pyongyang and Kandahar before it, senses desperation and understands the American political calendar. It knows if it digs in its heels, the White House will take a bad agreement over no agreement, regardless of Congressional unease. In effect, Obama and Kerry have become gamblers willing to risk everything just for one more pull of the slot machine lever. Unfortunately, when desperation trumps dispassion, the house—in the Islamic Republic of Iran—will always win.

Read Rubin’s full piece, “America’s ‘insane’ Iran approach.”

Former DoD analyst Matthew McInnis:

Expect the United States, its international partners and Iran to continuing haggling over a nuclear deal’s terms and implementation for months and years to come, even if some kind of comprehensive agreement is announced this month (or later in 2015). Congress must play a crucial role in helping to enforce the agreement and to prepare sufficient penalties for violations.

There are no indications Iran will restrain its proxies, allies and terrorist organizations – or stem its human rights abuses at home – if we get a nuclear deal. On the contrary, I expect more repression at home and more aggressive actions by Iran in the region, at least at first.

To arrange an interview with AEI Iran expert, or for other media inquiries, please contact AEI Media Services at mediaservices@aei.org or 202.862.5829.

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Improving mobility for our kids: Starting early is key

Intergenerational mobility provides a measure of how well children are faring relative to their parents. What are the chances that a child born to parents in the bottom quintile will move to the top of the income distribution? Is the child in a higher income quintile relative to the parents, or other peers? These comparisons are typically done around the age of 30 because income at 30 is a strong predictor of earnings for the rest of one’s life. However, a growing body of evidence suggests that the trajectory of a child’s life may be determined to a large extent at much younger ages, perhaps at five years old or even younger. Lifetime success may be influenced by factors beyond children’s control, such as whether they are brought up in a two-parent or single parent household, whether their parents have high incomes or low incomes, whether their home life was stable or stressful, and which neighborhoods they grew up in. It turns out that all of these factors matter tremendously in how they will fare at age 30.

Robert Putnam’s book “Our Kids” highlights the stark contrast in life experiences between children growing up in wealthy households with two highly-educated parents and children growing up in poorer households that often have only one less-educated parent. Putnam’s book collects anecdotal evidence through interviews and surveys of people around the country. While there is no one statistical database that would capture all of these effects, it is clear that what matters for children’s mobility is parent’s income, family structure and geography. Here are the numbers.

Parental Input: Money

Let’s look first at child poverty. According to 2013 data from the Census Bureau, twenty percent of children under the age of six live in poverty. For children living with single mothers, the poverty rate was 55 percent, markedly higher than the 10 percent rate for children living in married-couple households. Children growing up with single mothers have access to far fewer resources and opportunities than children living with high income, married-couple parents. A 2014 report from the USDA shows that a typical husband-wife family spends 50 percent more on child-related expenditures compared to a single parent family. Moreover, this gap holds among children of all ages. As an example, for children 5 years of age, a husband-wife couple with one child spends an average of $16,210 on child-related expenses whereas a single parent household spends only $11,620. The gap is wider for larger family sizes.

Parental Input: Education and Time

Women are the primary caregivers for children, on average. The American Time Use Survey shows that women spend almost twice as much time on childcare activities compared to men. This is particularly true when children are under the age of six. These involve physical care activities, education, reading to, playing with and traveling with children. All parental inputs matter for children, but the time use data suggest that the mother’s educational background and the amount of time she devotes to her children could be even more important for children’s development.

This is a particularly relevant finding in light of America’s changing family structures and the rise in homes headed by single mothers. As mentioned before, the poverty rate for single mother households is more than five times that for families headed by a married parent and the rise in single mothers explains much of the rise in poverty in recent decades. However, aside from income, another area of concern is often the lack of education and time spent with children. As I have written earlier, single mothers typically have low levels of education. Studies show that if a single mother is poor and has no college education, the children are disadvantaged when it comes to readiness for starting school. Further, single mothers are more likely to work non-standard schedules. This likely leaves them little time to provide the same investments in their children as married mothers do. This is documented by Sara McLanahan, who shows that children born to more educated women are gaining resources while those born to the least-educated are losing them.

Neighborhoods

Aside from parental inputs, geography matters as well. Individuals who live in high-poverty areas experience much worse outcomes than those who live in lower-poverty neighborhoods. Communities with greater residential segregation, poor quality schools, and high teenage pregnancy and high school drop-out rates offer reduced upward mobility. The longer the time children spend in such areas, the less likely they are to complete high school and the worse their long-term outcomes will likely be.

Impact on Mobility via Test Scores and College Attendance

All these factors impact children’s achievement in school and over their lifetimes. A recent study shows that the difference in test scores between children from high and low income families is roughly 30 to 40 percent larger among children born in 2001 than among those born in 1976. This gap exists immediately when the children begin kindergarten and persists as children get older. As per the study’s authors, this gap is likely driven by increasing parental investment in children’s cognitive development, rather than income inequality per se, since the same income difference now corresponds to a 30 to 60 percent larger gap in achievement than it did in the 1970s.

Susan Dynarski writes that a child born into a poor family has only a 9 percent chance of getting a college degree but the odds are 54 percent for a child in a high income family. Moreover, boys in single parent households were significantly less likely to go to college. Chetty et al. document that high income households are significantly more likely to have kids going to college than low-income kids. This obviously matters for lifetime earnings since National Center for Education Statistics estimate that workers without a bachelor’s degree earn about $20,000 less on average than those with a bachelor’s degree.

The evidence is clear. To improve economic mobility for future generations, we need to start early. Adding resources to poor households by expanding programs like the EITC that encourage work would not only help the parents but also the children. Research finds that the EITC expansion in the Tax Reform Act of 1986 significantly increased labor force participation, especially among less-educated single mothers. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, Dahl and Lochner found that a $1,000 increase in income as a result of the EITC raises children’s combined math and reading test scores in the short-run. In addition, I have written earlier about considering ways to fund maternity leave through using existing child related tax credits. This would encourage labor force participation for women and allow them to invest in their long-term career. Finally, experimenting with measures to allow families to move to neighborhoods with better opportunities and environments is critical as well. Research shows that when families move from high-poverty areas into lower-poverty areas using housing vouchers, this significantly improves children’s college attendance rates and lifetime earnings, provided this happens early in life.

If we want our young adults to realize the American Dream, we need to start the hard work now when they are kids.

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Infographic: Polls on patriotism

As we prepare to celebrate Independence Day with songs of national celebration, flags waving in the breeze, parades, and family gatherings, polls reveal Americans’ strong love of country.

For more polls on patriotism, see the AEI Public Opinion Study.

Infographic by Olivier Ballou and Eleanor O’Neil.

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AEI Public Opinion Study: Polls on patriotism

Read the PDF

How proud are Americans of their country? As Independence Day approaches, this AEI Public Opinion Study focuses on patriotism in the United States, examining Americans’ self-professed patriotism, how people describe others’ patriotism, and reasons people are proud of the US. This study also looks at how patriotism in the United States compares to patriotism in other countries.

• Most are patriotic: A majority of Americans consistently say they are patriotic. In a February 2014 Pew Research Center that asked people how well the term “a patriotic person” described them on a scale of 1 to 10—with 10 being absolutely perfect and 1 totally wrong—65 percent said 8 to 10. In National Opinion Research Center’s 2014 General Social Survey, 67 percent said they were very proud of being American.
• Points of pride: Sixty-six percent said they were very proud of America’s armed forces in the 2014 General Social Survey, the top response of the 10 categories included in the question. Fifty-three percent said they were very proud of America’s history, and 46 percent said they were very proud of its scientific and technological achievements.
• Love (and criticism) of country: In a May 2015 CBS News/New York Times survey, 63 percent said things in this country have pretty seriously gotten off track. Despite this criticism, 85 percent said they loved America in a February 2015 Economist/YouGov online survey, and, in a March 2015 Fox News survey, 83 percent said the United States is the best country in the world to live in.
• US patriotism in context: In the most recent multicountry World Values Survey, Qatar ranked highest in self-expressed patriotism, with 98 percent of its citizens saying they were “very” proud to be citizens of that country. In comparison, 56 percent of Americans said they were very proud to be American citizens, locating our country more than midway down in this category.

See the infographic on polls on patriotism:

Polls on Patriotism

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‘Our Kids': Will the next generation of Americans enjoy the American Dream

At AEI’s recent event, “The American dream in crisis,” Robert Putnam, Charles Murray, and William Julius Wilson discussed problems brought to light in Putnam’s new book, “Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis.” The book expounds upon several alarming trends – the widening income gap, growing class segregation, and the disappearance of working-class communities – and investigates their implications for America’s children.

Putnam’s presentation highlighted several startling class-based disparities in children’s upbringings, cited historical trends in income inequality and other potentially-related variables, and suggested ways to revitalize the American dream.

“Increasingly the most important decision a child will make is choosing their parents, and that is fundamentally un-American,” Putnam observed. Class disparities in children’s environments, communities, and opportunities are present at birth and take effect during childhood. Possibly the most dire consequence of these disparities, according to Putnam, is the fact that poor children have no safety nets. By contrast, potentially life-shattering blunders become harmless learning experiences for wealthy kids, thanks to their highly-invested support networks.

In Putnam’s view, America is in a second Gilded Age, and today’s upper class, like that of the 1890s, must experience a “civic reawakening.” To illustrate this point, he presented a chart showing that after the first Gilded Age, social capital, philanthropy, economic equality, and political consensus increased until the mid-1960s. According to Putnam, the establishment of public high schools sparked these upward trends by diminishing educational inequalities and jumpstarting economic productivity.

In hopes of reviving those positive trends, Putnam proposed what he calls “purple policies,” which combine conservative and liberal ideas. With the goal of reviving equal opportunity, Putnam advocates for the careful development and reform of programs such as early childhood education, apprenticeships, tutoring, community colleges, and parent coaching.

While Murray agreed with Putnam’s observations, he questioned the efficacy of “purple policies.” Citing a study in Nature, Murray said that factors such as family income, parenting style, and education account for a limited amount of variance in outcomes like cognitive ability. Genes predict these outcomes more accurately.

According to Murray, declines in inter-class marriage are creating an ability gap that exacerbates the opportunity gap. Children’s emotional intelligence, IQ, and overall success, Murray said, are highly correlated with each other and with parental IQ. The complication of “assorted mating” suggests that Putnam’s solutions may not suffice. “I hope for a better outcome,” said Murray. “I do not expect it.”

Wilson drew attention to another complication: race. According to his 1980 book, “The Declining Significance of Race,” economic class predicts life trajectory with greater accuracy than race. This statement is even truer today, said Wilson, and according to a study that compared intra-racial income gaps, the divide between rich and poor is widest among African Americans.

Putnam concluded, “There’s a core of things we could all agree on that would make things better.” We may not know what caused the American dream’s malaise. We may disagree as to the proper cure. But we can agree that an alive-and-well American dream guarantees our kids an equal chance at success.

Shutterstock.com

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Gay marriage: Too soon or at last

Congratulations to the gay-rights community for its victory in Obergefell v. Hodges. Anyone familiar with liberty’s history in our country knew that the American people, sooner or later, would reach this point. But with unprecedented speed (President Obama campaigned in 2008 against gay marriage), gays won a sweeping right to marriage equality thanks to a 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court.

While many will welcome the ends, we may all come to regret the means. Taken together with this term’s other blockbuster case, King v. Burwell, which upheld Obamacare’s health-insurance subsidies, Obergefell only accelerates the loss of democratic self-government to a slim majority of the nine unelected justices of the Supreme Court.

No one can seriously claim that the framers of our Constitution or of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees both due process and the equal protection of the laws, understood gays to have a right to marriage. Our Constitution sets out certain core rights necessary for self government – free speech, criminal justice rules, for example – and requires all officials of the three branches of government, and indeed states as well, to devote their fullest efforts to protection of these rights.

But for everything else, our Constitution relies on the political process for decisions. For select national issues such as defense or interstate commerce, we turn to our elected representatives in Washington. Our federal system reserves most other questions in life, such as crime, family law, property, contracts, and accidents, to the states.

Elected officials do not just set tax rates, establish militaries, or build roads. They also create rights and establish entitlements. Some of our nation’s most central rights, such as Social Security or the ban on workplace discrimination, did not come as gifts from the Supreme Court. Instead, these policies came after years of rough-and-tumble politics and represented a broad social consensus.

Obergefell short-circuits the political process. Instead of campaigning to persuade majorities in each of the 50 states, as they had done in some states, gay-marriage advocates only had to persuade five justices to impose a single rule on the nation. While many may welcome Obergefell’s result, its method takes a fundamental question away from the realm of democratic self-government and transfers it into the hands of five men and women who never stand for election and hold their jobs for life.

Indeed, the political nature of Obergefell becomes readily apparent in the contradictory, vague logic of the majority opinion by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. The holding fits within none of the established precedents governing the due-process and equal-protection clauses. Kennedy says marriage is a fundamental right, but he concedes that American society had long understood that right to be only between a man and a woman. He suggests the right to equality may require gay marriage, but gays do not receive the heightened constitutional protection reserved for racial and religious minorities.

Kennedy could have recognized that gays should receive the same protections against discrimination as gender, but he could not, because recognizing sexual orientation as a protected class might open up a Pandora’s box of new constitutional claims by every self-defined group.

Some will respond that society was moving in the direction of gay marriage anyway and that the court was following the popular will. If that is the case, then the court should allow the political process to work. Justices have no special expertise in divining the wishes of the American people. Indeed, as Justice Antonin Scalia noted in dissent, the justices are a strange bunch. They mostly hail from the same regions of the country, went to the same schools, hold similar religious beliefs, and have the same professional backgrounds. An isolated, expert Supreme Court makes perfect sense when the Constitution defends minority rights against the oppressions of the majority, but it makes no sense when settling policy reserved for democratic politics.

In fact, judicial seizure of an issue from the political process may make the consensus in favor of gay marriage less settled. Take abortion, for example. In the years leading to Roe v. Wade, states had been liberalizing their abortion laws. Roe prevents political resolution of the abortion issue and leads to constant efforts to narrow or reverse abortion rights through litigation, not political persuasion.

Gay marriage will remain subject in the future to the whim of a fifth justice who might choose to side with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel A. Alito Jr. If gay marriage had resulted from the decisions of the majorities in each of the 50 states, it would be far more difficult, if not virtually impossible, to reverse. While the end of segregation by Brown v. Board of Education provides an all-important counterexample, legal historians today are coming to believe that racial equality accelerated far faster thanks to Congress’ passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Unfortunately, the court does not limit its dismissal of democracy to gay rights, but even extends it into less momentous questions of the running of the welfare state.

In King v. Burwell, which involved issues of political significance, but of no constitutional moment, the justices again displayed their suspicion of politics. In King, plaintiffs challenged the Obama administration’s nationwide grant of subsidies for the purchase of health insurance. According to its plain text, the Affordable Care Act extended the tax credit only to those who purchase a policy on an “exchange established by the state.” Even though the act defined state to include only the 50 states and the District of Columbia, but not the federal government, the Obama administration granted tax credits to buyers in states with no exchanges. Thirty-six states refused to set up insurance marketplaces, leaving only an exchange run by the Obama administration as an option.

The ACA’s plain meaning may well have stalled Obamacare by making health insurance unaffordable in the states without tax credits, but still requiring that everyone purchase it (an unconstitutional use of federal power upheld, unfortunately, three years ago by Roberts’ fifth vote). This tough result emerged from the political process in Congress. It may have been a mistake, a wrong decision, or a ham-handed move to force states into signing up with Obamacare. If Congress made a poor choice, it was up to Congress to fix it, or for the voters to replace their representatives in Washington.

But instead of allowing the political process to run its normal course, the Supreme Court decided to rewrite Obamacare. On behalf of a six-justice majority, Roberts concluded that Congress could not possibly have intended such a draconian limit on tax credits. It must have meant to give the subsidy to everyone, because that would have made for a more effective overhaul of the health-care system. In other words, the court ignored the plain text of the law passed by Congress to write a better one. The justices may have better legal talents than the average legislator, but our Constitution does not give them the responsibility to make the compromises and judgments reserved to the legislative process.

Sadly, Roberts penned the central dissent in Obergefell on the ground that the majority was rewriting the Constitution. “Under the Constitution,” he wrote, “judges have power to say what the law is, not what it should be.” But if he wonders where his colleagues got the idea to assume the power of a supra-legislature, he need only look at his own opinion in King v. Burwell. This fault, however, is not his own, or in his stars, but is common to a court that is slowly, but surely, taking away the right of our democracy to govern itself.

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Do conservatives have anything to say about cities?

Democrats do better electorally where it’s crowded, Republicans where it’s less so. The greater the population density, the bluer a state, region, or city. And that’s too bad, argue Michael Hendrix and Andrew Evans in National Affairs, because “the result of this electoral reality is that Republicans rarely control the levers of power in some of the areas with the most people and greatest economic vitality.”

A more important result is that one-party, Democratic dominance means these cities are often closed to disruptive forces that could help them more fully unleash their economic potential:

As a result of decades of Democratic governance and misplaced priorities, however, American cities do not offer the opportunities for success and growth that they should, especially for those looking to climb the socio-economic ladder. In many cases, city governments are utterly dysfunctional. And the reason for this dysfunction is that our cities are too often closed — closed to businesses and closed to outsiders. For the middle class and those striving to make it up the ladder, the taxes, housing, and other costs leave cities simply too expensive to afford — especially with a family. Excessive regulation makes it difficult, if not downright impossible, to get the permits necessary to start a business. Cronyism and a lack of transparency make it difficult to know whether anyone is trying to fix the situation. The reality is that American cities — with their insufficient affordability and poor governance — suffer from a profound lack of opportunity and a surplus of problems.

Cities are important, both for the millions who live in them and the economic growth they generate for the nation as a whole. “Cities,” says Richard Florida, “spur the mixing and mingling of talented people that lead to technological inventions and the formation of entrepreneurial enterprises.” And when that mixing process is working right, everyone benefits. Research from Enrico Moretti has found that for each new innovation-job in a city, five additional jobs are created. “For each new software designer hired at Twitter in San Francisco, there are five new job openings for baristas, personal trainers, therapists and taxi drivers, ” Moretti wrote in the Wall Street Journal back in 2013.

Hendrix and Evans wants to deregulate cities to open them up to new workers, to new entrepreneurs big and small, and to more transparency and accountability. They want to make it easier to build housing, get a business permit, see online what your city government is up to. “Since cities are closed, conservatives should seek to make them open,” Hendrix and Evans write. That word, “open,” is an important one, argues Scott Beyer of the Market Urbanism blog in post about the the Hendrix and Evans essay, because it inverts political stereotypes. Beyer:

At the national level, Democrats are portrayed as the open and tolerant ones, and Republicans as the reactionary ones trying to uphold the status quo. These distinctions have been established largely because of the parties’ differing approach to social issues. But this is hardly applicable to cities, where issues are rooted more in economics and quality-of-life. A large number of urbanites—whether they want to call themselves liberals, progressives, or Democrats—are in fact quite reactionary themselves, a point emphasized by the authors. Housing regulations have been used by the urban left to restrict new construction, as if city neighborhoods are gated country clubs that should never allow change or new people. The liberal business elite have fortified the business permitting process so much that, in many cities, it is nearly-impossible for competing entrepreneurs to enter basic professions like hair-styling. And to carve out a voting bloc, the left has defended unionized public monopolies that deliver services at far higher cost, and less efficiency, than is necessary.

Some some possible elements of an urban agenda that come to mind: housing deregulation, charter schools, prison reform, occupational licensing reform, expanded income supports …

By the way, a few other posts on the housing issue:

— We need to make it easier for US workers to get to where the good jobs are

— That Financial Times study on US income inequality and housing totally misses the point

— Some smart thoughts on housing, jobs, and economic growth

— How government housing policy worsens inequality and harms economic growth

— Venture capitalist Sam Altman of Y Combinator on how to boost US innovation and growth

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