totalitarianism today

Is Zionism racist? If you live in NYC, you can find out.

Todd Seavey, master of "conservatism for punks", gives New Yorkers something to do on Wednesday, June 3rd at 8 pm. For details on the debate, "Is Zionism Racism?" hosted at the Lolita Bar, as well as a lovely photo of Dr. Spock, try this link.

Japanese pregnant dolls from the 19th century + links.

Data.gov

Madoff victim map mashup

Global Terrorism Database

D2G2 (beta)

"The pro-life delusion" by David Frum

FBI infiltrates Iowa city protest group

War games with the press

Afghanistan as "Bible blitzkreig"

The autistic way of laughing

Sen. Tom Coburn bemoans "beach pork"

Born-again virgins in Iran

The video-game martyrs

Afghan women need investors

19th-century pregnant dolls from Japan

Accountable Recovery

Broken Government

Where the TARP money has gone

The 13 people who made torture possible

Just when you thought police couldn't get more powerful.

A recent monograph published by the RAND Corporation makes the case for the creation of a 6,000 person Stability Police Force in the United States. Since the authors maintain that "security requires a mix of military and police forces to deal with a range of threats from insurgents to criminal organizations", the proposed SFB would represent a new, highly-evolved species of storm trooper:

Establishing security is the sine qua non of stability operations, since it is a prerequisite for reconstruction and development..... This research examines the creation of a high-end police force, which the authors call a Stability Police Force (SPF). The study considers what size force is necessary, how responsive it needs to be, where in the government it might be located, what capabilities it should have, how it could be staffed, and its cost. This monograph also considers several options for locating this force within the U.S. government, including the U.S. Marshals Service, the U.S. Secret Service, the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) in the Department of State, and the U.S. Army's Military Police. The authors conclude that an SPF containing 6,000 people — created in the U.S. Marshals Service and staffed by a “hybrid option,” in which SPF members are federal police officers seconded to federal, state, and local police agencies when not deployed — would be the most effective of the options considered. The SPF would be able to deploy in 30 days. The cost for this option would be $637.3 million annually, in FY2007 dollars.

Since RAND's appeal tend to range bipartisan, I would not be surprised to find that members of the Obama administration are attracted to this new police specie. Unfortunately, the creation of such a police force would further reinforce and institutionalize the US regime-change paradigm developed by the Bush administration. Why make bad policy permanent? Shouldn't we just count our losses and move on?

Why my friend at Deloitte and Tuche is not worried about losing her job.

Prior to listing the top 100 government defense contractors, Washington Technology adds an interesting subtitle "Companies evolve as government priorities change". Public choice economists have long observed the ways in which markets will change to accommodate the preferences of the country's most powerful consumer, namely, the government. Certainly the tremendous increase in military expenditures and the drastic economic stimulus packages have stimulated more than just the economy. 

What the government spending spree has also stimulated is the profitability of rent-seeking behavior. If bailing out banks and businesses has acquired the status of a "national interest", then it might just be more profitable for banks and businesses to court the government's money over the citizen consumer's. With the power to tax and print and now even bail out, the US government should be at the top of every entrepreneur's most wanted customer list. 

The truth is that entrepreneurs have always (and will always) seek government money or legislation that will benefit their corner of the market. There should be nothing surprising about human nature at this point. Two quick and easy examples of real-time contemporary public choice problems and rent-seeking behaviors: 

• Everyone's favorite aging environmentalist, T. Boone Pickens (a.k.a. king of the windmill infomercials) has a vested interest in taking energy production in a new direction. 
• "Lockheed Martin spent nearly twice as much on lobbying during the first quarter of 2009 as it did during the previous three months as it aggressively campaigned to save key weapons programs ahead of a budget shakeup in April. Lockheed — the Pentagon’s biggest contractor by sales — spent $6.41 million during the first quarter, up 97% from the prior quarter’s $3.26 million". (Hat tip with curtsey to The Public Choice Capitalist). 

For more resources on public choice, public spending, rent-seeking, and why the Brothers Grimm wrote such grotesque fairy tales, see the following: "War as Rent-Seeking: A Public Choice Perspective on the Pacific War" + Stimulus Watch, we can now sip a soda while seeing taxpayer dollars "at work" + "The Fundamentals of Rent-Seeking" by Gordon Tullock + "Origins of State Electric Utility Regulation: Was it protection of quasi-rents not creation of monopoly rents" from Knowledge Problem + A rent-seeking experiment + The Travis Monitor's interesting "Transformation Agenda for the Right"

Ernest Hemingway: Soviet spy or punch-drunk fan of intrigue?

Was Ernest Hemingway a spy for the Soviet Union? Considering that he lived in Cuba, did he have special ties to the KGB? A few gentlemen at National Review Online have scoured the Soviet archives, published a book, and enjoy sharing their opinions on the matter:

White assuredly was a Soviet source, but any link with Soviet intelligence Hemingway might have had through White would have been indirect and unknowing. What has not been previously known, however, is that Hemingway had been in direct contact with Soviet intelligence before leaving for China. Moscow Center received a report from Jacob Golos, the KGB’s liaison with the CPUSA, stating: “A few days ago I found out that Ernest Hemingway is traveling to China via the Soviet Union. He may apply for an entry visa to the Soviet Union. He was in New York for only one day and I couldn’t meet with him. I arranged with him that our people will meet with him in China and show him the stamps that he gave us. We must attempt to meet with him in China or the Soviet Union by using the password that was arranged with him previously. I am sure that he will cooperate with us and will do everything he can.” Golos didn’t state who arranged the password and picked up the stamps that Hemingway handed over. (One possibility would be John Herrmann, an old Hemingway drinking buddy and friend who had himself worked for the CPUSA underground in Washington for several years in the 1930s.) 

Although there is no evidence that Hemingway did any actual work for the KGB, his brushes with the clandestine world were apparently intoxicating. He remained infatuated with espionage for the next several years. Upon returning to Cuba, he organized a crew of his drinking and fishing pals and former Spanish Civil War veterans to spy on pro-German elements on the island, even obtaining some funds from the American ambassador to pay for the operation. Later derisively named “the Crook Factory” by Gellhorn, this motley crew outfitted a fishing boat with light weapons and trawled offshore looking for U-boats. While it afforded the writer an opportunity to indulge in fantasies that he was a secret operative, J. Edgar Hoover (then supervising American intelligence in Central and South America) was not impressed, telling subordinates that Hemingway was “the last man, in my estimation, to be used in any such capacity.”

So alcohol and guns were not Hemingway's only obsessions. It seems he also enjoyed the exciting world of espionage and intrigue, which would put him in good company with the reigning conspiracy-intrigue king, Mr. Michael Ledeen. More on Ledeen later...

Where rape is concerned, old habits die hard.

Among the list of crimes against individuals and human dignity, one of the oldest and most popular is the act of rape. Out of the countries who keep track of rape crimes, the United States has the highest rape rate-- a rate 4 times higher than that of Germany, 13 times higher than that of England, and 20 times higher than that of Japan. Some statistics might be in order to give us a little perspective on rape:

• Only 16% of rapes and sexual assaults are reported to the police (Rape in America: A Report to the Nation. 1992).
• In 1995 there were 97,460 rapes reported to law enforcement officials. At a 16% reporting rate, this means that there were actually closer to 649,733 rapes in the United States. Along the same lines, the number of rapes reported in New York state in 1996 was 20,911. At a 16% reporting rate, this means the actual number of rapes was closer to 139,406. (Computerized Criminal History, Feb. 1998)
• The rate of false reports of rape is approximately 2 - 3% which is no different than that for other crimes. This is different than the 8% of reports which are unfounded. This means that in 8% of the rape cases reported the investigators or prosecutors deemed that the case was not prosecutable for any number of reasons. Only 2 - 3% of the reports however were fabricated stories.
• 1 in 3 sexual assault victims are under the age of 12 (Snyder & Sickmund, 1999) and convicted rape and sexual assault offenders report that 2/3 of their victims were under the age of 18.
• Among victims age 18 - 29, two thirds had a prior relationship with the rapist. (National Crime Victimization Survey, Criminal Victimization, 1996)
• 36% women who are injured during a rape require medical attention (National Violence Against Women Survey, Nov.1998).
• 25 - 45% of rape survivors suffer from non-genital trauma, 19 - 22% suffer from genital trauma, up to 40% obtain STDs and 1 - 5% become pregnant as a result of the rape.
• There are an estimated 32,000 rape related pregnancies in the United States annually. (Holmes, 1996)
• Sexual assault survivors' visits to their physicians increase by 18% the year of the assault, 56% the year after and 31% the second year after the assault. (Koss, 1993)
• The consequences of rape are not always physical though, and are not always immediate. 80% of rape victims will suffer from chronic physical or psychological conditions over time. (Strategies for the Treatment and Prevention of Sexual Assault. 1995)
• Rape survivors are also 13 times more likely to attempt suicide than not crime victims and 6 times more likely than victims of other crimes. (Rape in America: A Report to the Nation, 1992)
• 26% of women with bulimia nervosa were raped at some point in their lives.
• The mental health costs of sexual assault victims are very high, studies have shown that 25 - 50% of rape and child sexual abuse victims receive some sort of mental health treatment as a result of the victimization. (Miller, 1996)
• Overall, rape has the highest annual victim cost of any crime. The annual victim costs are $127 billion (excluding child sex abuse cases). This is followed by assault at $93 billion per year, murder (excluding arson and drunk driving) at $61 billion and child abuse at $56 billion per year. (Miller, 1996)

According to The Response to Rape report, less than half of those arrested for rape in the US are convicted-- 54% of all rape prosecutions end in either dismissal or acquittal. The conviction rate for those arrested for murder is 69% and all other felons is 54%. 21% of convicted rapists are never sentenced to jail or prison time, and 24% receive time in local jail which means that they spend an average of less than 11 months behind bars. Rape in the US poses less of a threat to individual life and public order than selling marijuana. In fact, rape might be the crime of choice for those hoping to inflict maximal damage with minimal legal repercussion.

In Great Britain, the statistics on criminal prosecution of rape are even more disappointing. In fact, the British government "estimates that as many as 95% of rapes are never reported to the police at all." One of the reasons for this extremely low percentage of rape reporting is the low percentage of convictions in rape cases.

Of the rapes that were reported from 2007 to 2008, only 6.5% resulted in a conviction, compared with 34% of criminal cases in general. The majority of convictions for rape resulted from an admission of guilt by the defendant, whereas less than one quarter of all those charged with rape were convicted following a successful trial.

The low probability of conviction is arguably a disincentivizing factor which mitigates against seeking justice for many rape victims. It seems that Western governments have become so eager to protect the possible "victims" of false allegations that protecting women from rape is no longer the purpose of criminal statues on rape. Under such circumstances, the undignified and monstrous assault of rape deserves a re-iteration.  

Situations of war, where rape is often perceived as another "weapon", highlight the stark, disgusting character of rape crimes in an instructive manner. Recent allegations of rape against American troops in the Middle East serve as a reminder that using rape as a weapon is not limited to Bosnians or Serbs, but rather exists a province of all armed gentlemen in any uniform. A man who is capable of rape is capable of great cruelty that is not limited to sexual cruelty.

Steven Dale Green, a 24-year old American soldier in Iraq, raped his 14-year old Iraqi victim with relish. Two weeks ago, Green was convicted of raping the girl and then killing her and her family near Bagdhad, where he and his unit were serving in 2006. According to an article in Al-Jazeera:

 The jury of nine women and three men could not decide after two days of deliberations if Green should

 be executed or given life without parole, so the life sentence prevailed. Judge Thomas Russell of the Kentucky district court said on Thursday that he would formally sentence Green on September 4. Prosecutors said Green was the ringleader of a group of five soldiers who plotted to invade the home of the family of four to rape the girl. They said he later bragged about the crime, saying what he had done was "awesome". 

Green, 19 at the time of the crime, was described as the trigger-man in the group who donned black "ninja" outfits and raped Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi and shot her, her father, mother and six-year-old sister. The soldiers later set fire to the girl's body to try to cover up the crime. The rape-murders took place after the soldiers drank whiskey, played cards, and plotted the attack in Mahmudiya, 30km south of the Iraqi capital, the court heard. 

Three of the four other soldiers pleaded guilty in the attack and the fourth was convicted, all in military courts martial. They were sentenced to between five and 100 years, but could be paroled much sooner. Green was tried in federal court as a civilian on murder, rape and obstruction of justice charges because his arrest came after he was discharged from the army for a "personality disorder". The defence team acknowledged that he took part in the killings but argued that he should be spared the death penalty.

You see, as it turns out, Steven Green was a victim too. Granted, Abeer and her family were victims, but you can't overlook the ways in which Steven Green was "victimized" by his family and by his country. 

During the trial Green was depicted as a victim of a bad childhood and combat stress after the death of close colleagues in the combat zone south of Baghdad. "Steven Green was responsible [for the rape and murders] but the United States of America failed Steven Green," Scott Wendelsdorf, a defence lawyer, told the jury in his final submission. "And it failed a lot of soldiers in Iraq. And that wouldn't amount to a hill of beans if it were not the United States of America now seeking to put Steven Green to death." As representatives of the Iraqi family openly wept in court, Green smiled slightly when the jury gave its decision. His father, John Green, said the result was "the better of two bad choices, but the better one by far". The ex-soldier's brother, Doug, added that "it's the only appropriate verdict" given the choices. "I have mixed emotions about it, but I do think it will allow him to have some semblance of a life and I'm very grateful for that.

At least one of the "victims" of this sad tragedy will have a chance to "have some semblance of a life"...Unfortunately, the most celebrated "victim" is the rapist himself. Reading the court transcripts is somewhat confusing because little Abeer and the members of her family are also depicted "victims", thus forcing Steven Green to share his title. 

Abeer's two brothers, Mohammed and Ahmed, were at school when the killings occurred, so fortunately, they were not "victims" of this rape-murder. According to news reports, "Mohammed and Ahmed returned from school the afternoon of the attack to find smoke billowing from the windows. After going to their uncle's home, they returned to the house to find their father shot in the head, mother shot in the chest, Hadeel shot in the face and Abeer's remains burning."

Private Green's "go gettum" approach had been observed by journalists and peers prior to the murders. In fact, war correspondent Andrew Tilghman interviewed Private Green while researching the Sunni insurgency in 2006. Tilghman's article is not for the faint-of-heart or ethically-promiscuous, as it reveals Private Green's "go gettum" attitude extended to the thrill of the kill:

“I came over here because I wanted to kill people.” Over a mess-tent dinner of turkey cutlets, the bony-faced 21-year-old private from West Texas looked right at me as he talked about killing Iraqis with casual indifference. It was February, and we were at his small patrol base about 20 miles south of Baghdad. "The truth is, it wasn't all I thought it was cracked up to be. I mean, I thought killing somebody would be this life-changing experience. And then I did it, and I was like, 'All right, whatever.' " He shrugged. "I shot a guy who wouldn't stop when we were out at a traffic checkpoint and it was like nothing," he went on. "Over here, killing people is like squashing an ant. I mean, you kill somebody and it's like 'All right, let's go get some pizza.'"

Tilghman did not see Private Green's comments as unusual given the context. The truth is that the context of war does not leave much space for respecting individual lives or individual rights. Yet that should in no way excuse the criminal behaviors of former military personnel. Private Green's frustrations with his experience in Iraq nestled comfortably with Tilghman's overall impression of the attitude of American soldiers in Iraq at the time:

Green had been in country only four months at that point, a volunteer in a war he now saw as pointless. "I gotta be here for a year and there ain't [expletive] I can do about it," he said. "I just want to go home alive. I don't give a [expletive] about the whole Iraq thing. I don't care. 

"See, this war is different from all the ones that our fathers and grandfathers fought. Those wars were for something. This war is for nothing." A couple of days later, I ran into Green again, and he invited me to join him and another soldier in a visit to the makeshift tearoom run by the Iraqi soldiers who share the base with the American troops. It was after dusk, and the three of us walked across a pitch-black landing zone and into a small plywood-lined room where a couple of dozen barefoot Iraqi soldiers were sitting around watching a local news channel. 

"Hey, shlonek ," Green said, offering a casual Arabic greeting with a smile and a sweeping wave as he stepped up to the bar. He handed over a U.S. dollar in exchange for three Styrofoam cups of syrupy brown tea. Green knew a few words of Arabic, and along with bits of broken English, some hand gestures and smiles, he joked around with the Iraqis as he sipped their tea. Most U.S. soldiers didn't hang out on this side of the base with the Iraqis. I asked Green whether he went there a lot. He did, he said, because he liked to get away from the Americans "who are always telling me what to do."

"These guys are cool," he said, referring to the Iraqis. "But," he added with a shrug, "I wouldn't really care if all these guys got waxed." As we talked, Green complained about his frustration with the Army brass that urged young soldiers to exercise caution even in the most terrifying and life-threatening circumstances. "We're out here getting attacked all the time and we're in trouble when somebody accidentally gets shot?" he said, referring to infantrymen like himself throughout Iraq. "We're pawns for the [expletive] politicians, for people that don't give a [expletive] about us and don't know anything about what it's like to be out here on the line."

Green's annoyance with the nature of the war in Iraq, as well as the hierarchical nature of military life in general, do not explain why Green needed to shoot the family of a child as his buddies took turns raping her, and then proceed to take his turn with the child before shooting her in the head and burning her body. The disorganized and sloppy execution of the war in Iraq also does not excuse Green's buddy and fellow rapist, Jesse Spielman for expressing his hate towards most Iraqis, including children, "thinking that if they weren't insurgents already, they would grow up to be." One of Spielman's friends said that on the day before the rape and murders, Spielman and Cortez (another rapist-in-arms) "beat the crap" out of some Iraqis who had fired shots at them on patrol. Spielman apparently screamed, "I ------- hate you", as he kicked them in the face.

Of course, Iraqis are angry at the American court's reluctance to impose the death penalty in what would surely have been a capital case had its victims been the members of an American family. The Green case continues to threaten agreements between the US and Iraqi governments, since Iraqis now reasonably believe that American troops are capable of atrocity. Verdict forms from the jury do not disclose the jury's final vote on whether Green should have received the death penalty, but the forms do show that "jurors unanimously found that the prosecution had proved each of 10 aggravating factors that suggested the death penalty was the appropriate punishment". Men with guns who have been known to enjoy a rape or two certainly inspire fear in an unarmed populace. (If you are interested in learning more about the facts of this case, by far the most exhaustive and thorough account of what happened to Abeer and her family is available here.)

In Green's case, the crimes went to trial because there was clear physical evidence of guilt in multiple murders. But most rapes in war-time scenarios are not taken very seriously; an injured, violated female is not very compelling when surrounded by the corpses of war victims. In fact, the very concept of "crime" is suspect and confusing to a soldier who is struggling to follow orders while protecting his own life. One could argue that the moral gray zone of war creates certain habits of mind (i.e. justifies certain behaviors and actions) which are difficult to re-integrate into civilian life. Even when the war is over, maybe the hate for the enemy is not. Even when the guns are silent, the perceptions which make rape a habit of war remain engraved on the mind. It is not easy to change a mindset forged by the trauma of war. 

Nicholas D. Kristoff recently observed that even after wars end, "mass rape persists". In the case of Liberia, where the war has been over for more than a decade, the men who fought in that war to defend their county, their freedom, their way of life still seem to view women and sex as a weapon in the civilian context. Old habits of mind die hard. Kristoff describes the situation in post-war Liberia:

Somehow mass rape survived the end of the war; it has been easier to get men to relinquish their guns than their sense of sexual entitlement. So the security guard at Jackie’s school, a man in his 50s, took the little girl to the beach where, she said, he stripped her and raped her. Finally, he ran off as she lay bleeding and sobbing on the sand. “I couldn’t walk well, so they took me to hospital,” Jackie told me. 

It was worse than that: She was hemorrhaging, and the hospital couldn’t stop it. So Jackie was rushed in critical condition to Monrovia’s largest hospital, where she spent weeks recovering. Jackie is now in a shelter for survivors of sexual violence — and what staggered me is that so many of the girls are pre-teens. A 3-year-old survivor has just moved out, but Jackie jumps rope with girls aged 8 to 11. 

Of course, children are raped everywhere, but what is happening in Liberia is different. The war seems to have shattered norms and trained some men to think that when they want sex, they need simply to overpower a girl. Or at school, girls sometimes find that to get good grades, they must have sex with their teachers.

I wish I could articulate a solution to the current problem of rape in both civilian and military contexts. Unfortunately, there is no simple tweaking of criminal law, no educational abstinence program, no easy answer in a crime which begins with a sick and twisted perception of the female sex-- a crime that begins in the mind and ends in the social and physical annihilation of a woman. 

Perhaps if George Bush's cronies had used some of the money for those Faith-Based Initiatives to mount large-scale, substantive campaigns against rape, the coming generation would imbibe a stronger sense of moral repugnance to the humiliation and abuse of females. In fact, I cannot find a single bit of information about whether any Faith-based Initiative funding was allocated to Christian groups seeking to assist victims of rape. Pace Bushites, abstinence education and pro-life campaigns cannot be counted as social assistance for rape victims. 

Correction.

Just a correction on the post, "A new blog chronicling the images of totalitarianism". I listed the blog's author as "El Compadre" when his actual nom de guerre is "El Campanero". 

What we knew... or what we know but fail to accept.

Reading What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder, and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany over my extended Memorial Day road trip was edifying and quite depressing. As an oral history, the methodology employed by authors Eric A. Johnson and Karl-Heinz Reuband-- from the specific semantic choices in survey questions to the analysis of social networks in distributing credible information-- adds a strong statistical sifting component to what might otherwise be just a book of interviews with Jewish survivors and Germans living under National Socialism.

This book is a sturdy resource for those studying the way in which individuals and social groups deal with cognitive dissonance in cases of demicide and mass murder. In historical studies of the Shoah, scholars have a hard time accounting for the "lack of knowledge" on the part of both Germans and Jews about the mass extermination of Jews under Hitler's regime. For example, many of the German soldiers on the Eastern front who could not have avoided being involved in the implementation of the Final Solution still claim in interviews that they were not aware of the mass extermination of Jews as a specific goal of the Nazi leadership. Many Germans watched Jews being carted away yet still refused to believe that their government could do something so horrible-- so they stuck to the "labor camp" explanations. Or the Nazi government's claims that stories of Jewish mass killing were just "atrocity propaganda" generated by the enemy Allies. 

One particularly interesting observation made towards the end the book (on page 375, to be exact) caught my attention for a good part of the drive through Kentucky.

Whereas some might expect that people who were better educated would have become better informed about the Holocaust, our evidence shows that this is not the case. In fact, as the survey evidence... indicates, there was no correlation between the survey respondents' level of education and their awareness of the mass murder of Jews. Thus people who had only a primary school education were just as likely to have found out about the mass murder as those who graduated from secondary schools or even universities. This finding indicates that information about the Holocaust spread widely among people from all socioeconomic backgrounds just as it did among people from all communities across the map of Germany.

What, then, did those who claim to have known about the mass murder of Jews have in common? 

What appeared to matter most in differentiating those who came to know about the mass murder and those who did not was how an individual was politically disposed to the Nazi regime and the personal experiences one had.

Fans of National Socialism, ordinary Germans, the majority of Catholics, Protestants, and clergymen-- even those who were not anti-Semites in the strict sense-- refused to believe that their government could be capable of such monstrosity. We might do well to learn from their mistakes and remember that trusting governments (or accepting their more dubious explanations without critical inquiry) brands us with the guilt of those who quite simply looked away and kept pretending. 

Singapore, sci-fi, the Taliban, Nobel Prizes, etc.

How Muhammed Yunus inspired the young founders of MicroPlace.

Why a Nobel Prize in economics says nothing about personal integrity or financial acumen.

Is Chief Justice John Roberts the Supreme Court's "stealth hard-liner"?

The 10 greatest libertarian science fiction stories (via Amy Sturgis at HNN).

Singapore might be the "best guide" for the new Guantanamo.

The Romanian government can't seem to make its teachers happy.

Nicolas Lezard describes "the last outpost of Bohemia".

The wife of Kiev's mayor recently received a message from God about the upcoming elections.

Google's Eric Schmidt tells newspaper owners and editors "they need to be more innovative".

Our putative enemies, the Taleban, are currently using weapons supplied by the US Army. 

The market for school choice in DC, and how government influences outcomes.

The neighborhoods of Southeast Washington, D.C., are among the poorest in the city. There, the grocery stores, banks, restaurants, and other institutions that suburbanites take for granted have long been in short supply. In recent years, things have started looking "brighter", thanks to a little assistance from the good guys on the Hill:

A brand new, government-subsidized shopping center recently opened on Alabama Avenue, providing one of the few full-service grocery stores in the area, along with a new sit-down restaurant and mainstream bank branch. But reformers are finding that such initiatives won’t fix decades of market dysfunction overnight. Not far from the new Super Giant grocery store and Wachovia Bank are older businesses that continue to draw a steady stream of customers—corner stores that sell little fresh food, fast-food outlets that serve meals low in nutritional value, and tax preparation firms and check-cashing outlets that charge high fees. Markets are complicated, and improving them requires more than just creating incentives for new providers to set up shop.

This is equally true in the market for public education. The growing charter school movement has spurred the creation of new education organizations like the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), which recently opened a shiny, new 85,000-square-foot facility four miles north of the Super Giant. KIPP has become a national model of high-quality, urban education, posting impressive achievement gains with low-income student populations. Sixty-six new KIPP schools have opened in 19 states and the District of Columbia in the last 15 years. KIPP is what school choice proponents claimed would happen with market-based reforms in education: entrepreneurial educators successfully teaching the students who need help the most.

But KIPP is an outlier among its peers—many other charter schools in the district have been unable to achieve such impressive results. Just around the corner from KIPP, a recently restructured charter school shares space with a church in a small, unimposing brick building. Over the door hangs an easy to miss sign with the school's new name—The Howard Road Academy of Excellence. The previous charter school occupying the space gave up its charter after the D.C. Public Charter School Board threatened to shut it down due to financial mismanagement. That school also posted some of the lowest student-achievement scores in the city, with just 13 percent of students scoring proficient on the city test. Its failure serves as a warning to those relying on the free market alone to improve education in low-income, urban neighborhoods.

And while choice advocates predicted that the increased competition from charter schools would produce substantial improvements among nearby traditional public schools, this often has not been the case. Despite the fact that over 20 percent of the public schools in the neighborhoods surrounding KIPP are charter schools, the traditional public schools in the area still post some of the lowest student-achievement results in the city. Government programs that bring in private sector firms like Giant or nonprofits like KIPP can increase the supply of market options in low-income communities. But such subsidies will not, in and of themselves, ensure that all of those options will be high-quality. Nor will they guarantee that consumers will make good choices and utilize the newer, better options that come along. Functioning, well-designed markets improve higher-quality supply and higher-quality demand.

You can read the totality of Erin Dillon's report here. Unfortunately, Dillon assumes that the best and the brightest must be government planned. While she is willing to sanction private "ownership" of businesses, she ultimately believes that their success is a result of government assistance. The market for schools, unfortunately, might be a market in which the complicated public-private relations engendered by school choice prove Dillon's assumptions right.