The WikiLeaks doc drop (part 1)

I find it amusing that Fox News yesterday featured stories about how it is participating in a suit (with Bloomberg) to get the Federal Reserve to release information about the specific banks bailed out or bolstered with money from the Fed and to what extent, while the WSJ ran a piece today about why the Fed should release this information. Yet Fox News and the WSJ are both terribly upset that WikiLeaks released raw reports on actions in Afghanistan. I'm all for releasing both kinds of information; government in general operates too much in the dark, relatively free of scrutiny from the people who are forced to fund it and on whose behalf it supposedly operates. In a decent society government would have almost no secrets. The fact that it has operated so secretly for so long -- and sold various portions of the population on the notion that such secrecy is essential and actually in the interest of those being blindfolded -- obviates any realistic notion of government transparency and breeds a culture of cover-up and eventual corruption.

One can see some rationale for secrecy. The Fed and its partisans will argue that if we knew which banks had been bolstered we might lose confidence in some of them and a bank run might even ensue. Keepers of military secrets will argue that letting loose of secrecy gives our enemies insight into how we operate and in some cases might reveal the names of people who cooperate with the U.S. and might therefore be targeted by insurgents and other bad guys.

Neither rationale holds up against the desirability of people knowing what their government is doing "on their behalf." In a sensible market weak players would be capable of being identified and would pay the price for their poor decisions rather than being bailed out in secrecy, making for a system in which there would be more incentives to make good decisions. In the military, it's often enough the case that our adversaries ((which we seem to create systematically; apparently governments need enemies to thrive) know full well what our government is up to, and the only people in the dark are Americans. Even here, however, secrecy is overrated; it is more often used to cover up embarrassments than to serve anything remotely resembling "national security," that catch-all concept so capable of covering a multitude of sins. In both cases we are talking more about history than about current operations. How long should government be allowed to keep its activities secret? Forever?

I haven't read more than a few of the WikiLeaks papers in question -- too much else to do -- but I've read a few along with news summaries of what's there, about which I'll have more to say in a future post.

Soft-pedaling George Shultz and the drug war

I've been meaning to get to this piece by the WSJ's Mary Anastasia O'Grady for some time. I'm not sure whether to be amused, dismayed or encouraged. She interviewed George Shultz, Reagan's Secretary of State, a longtime Hoover fellow and now co-chair of something called the North American Forum. Much of the column discussed the problem of violence in Mexico related to Mexican president Calderon's decisions to take the drug-war rhetoric seriously and use the military to make war on the cartels. Mary introduces Shultz's perspective:

"He has long harbored skepticism about interdiction as a solution to drug abuse in the U.S."

"Long harbored skepticism about interdiction"???!!! He has been on the record for about 20 years as opposing the drug war -- all of it, including heroin and the hard drugs -- as staunchly as Milton Friedman did (I'm sure Milton influenced him, as he did almost everyone he had even a passing acquaintance with). The drug war has failed because it tried to repeal the laws of supply and demand. It's time to end it -- perhaps gradually, accompanied by honest dissuasives about the dangers of certain drugs -- but with its utter elimination as the goal. I quizzed Shultz about some of these issues when I spent my week as a Hoover media fellow. And surely Mary Anastasia O'Grady knows this.

Yet newspaper opinion pages have their cultures, and I suspect the Journal's is not quite ready for a full-fledged denunciation of the drug war by one of their own -- a guest column, perhaps, "balanced" by a screed from a drug warrior, but not by one of their own. The tender eyes of Journal readers are presumably only ready for gentle hints regarding "skepticism about interdiction," not for being reminded that the sainted President Reagan's trusted Secretary of State, one of Reaganite conservatism's revered Wise Men, would end the drug war tomorrow (or at least institute liberalizations leading to that end.

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if Mary herself is as ready to end the drug war as any rabid libertarian, but is trying to introduce the idea indirectly and obliquely, doing as much as the Journal will let her get way with. I don't know this, but I wouldn't be surprised.

The culture is shifting on this issue.

Sending out a nestling

Well, she's hardly a naif and she's certainly intellectually tough. Alyssia Finley got through four years at Stanford as a libertarian not only willing but eager to speak up, and to write articles for the paper deploring the politically correct climate on campus. She interned with us at the Register editorial page for a couple of summers and has submitted columns from campus during the school year. She's a fine, pungent writer and a clear thinker unlikely to back down from anybody. We've come to like her very much.

Anyway, yesterday we had a little party to wish her well in her next adventure in life. She's been hired by the Wall Street Journal editorial page to be (I'm pretty sure this is right) an assistant OpinionJournal.com editor. So it's off to New York City Sunday for her. We had cake from Zov's and wished her well. I hope she has a great time and takes the place by storm.