Illinois Freeloads off Pharmacists
Here's another reason why Medicaid needs reforming: it's gotten to large that it is threatening the livelihood of small business owners.

According to the Springfield Journal-Register, the state of Illinois has $2 billion-plus in outstanding Medicaid bills, going back to March. The Journal-Register tells the story of a Springfield-area pharmacist, John Watt, who has been an unwilling banker to the state. The state is now in arrears to the tune of $200,000. He has had to take out loans and even a second mortage on his house to keep his business afloat--now that he's floating money to the state--and has had to stop taking new Medicaid patients.

Drug chain giant Walgreens, meanwhile, says that the state owes that company "tens and tens of millions of dollars."

(Thanks to Greg Blankenship of A New Can of Worms for the pointer.)

Labels: Medicaid

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In the Land of Tax-and-Spenders
The National Conference of State Legislators is a group of state legislators across the country. It's also the home of spend-happy legislators, as David Hogberg relates in his travelogue to the group's annual meeting last week. Fiscal problems were discussed as a "revenue problem," not a "spending problem," even though, during the last fiscal year, state spending increased 1.7 percent--outstripping revenue growth of 0.7 percent. Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, was, according to Hogberg, booed and hissed when he suggested that states cut spending. And we call these people "honorable"? (permalink)

Schools Slowly Responding to Education Reporting Requirements
Under the federal No Child Left Behind act, states are supposed to prepare lists of how well (or not) their schools are doing in helping students achive educational targets. Many schools have yet to submit data, but the results so far aren't pretty. In California, 70 percent of schools will not make "adequately yearly progress." Education, by constitutional rights, should not be a concern of the federal government. But perhaps some good can come out of this law yet if it highlights the inadequacies of the current government-operated monopoly system and paves the way for increased school choice.

Labels: Education, School choice

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Some People LIKE Spam
Some people like Spam--especially the inhabitants of Austin, Minnesota, the home of the Hormel company, which makes the meat product known as Spam (capitalize that S!). Hormel is suing a software company that uses the word "spam" in its name. (permalink)

Milwaukee Mayor May Take Over Schools
A candidate for Milwaukee's mayoral office thinks that the next mayor ought to take over the Milwaukee Public Schools. Advocates cite the experience of Chicago. (Detroit had a state takeover a few years ago.) The Mackinac Center for Public Policy, by the way, cautions policy makers to not over-estimate the benefits of mayoral takeover. In brief, they find that the financial progress of the mayoral takeover has been significant, but educational progress has not. In other words, changing one government office for another may improve fiscal performance, but won't change the fundamental problem of having a government monopoly.

Labels: Education

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Moving to Downtown Detroit?
Yes, it's true, people are moving to downtown Detroit--that once-great city that has turned into in recent decades, with middle-class flight, a race-baiting and corrupt Coleman administration, dismal public schools, and shoddy public services.

The numbers aren't great--roughly 7,000 people live in downtown Detroit, short of the 10,000 generally required to support a shopping mall. The Detroit News highlights new residences in the city (mostly lofts), but there are less than 500 so far this year. Still, for Detroit, that's pretty good. The city is using low-interest loans to attract developers. An even better approach would be to curb its unions (get workers to actually ... work), adopt an aggressive crime-fighting strategy (along the lines of NYC under Guiliani), free up money (perhaps through increased use of privatization and load-shedding) to repair its crumbling infrastructure, and press the state to allow a voucher system for education to attract families with children.

Over at the Detroit Free Press, Tom Walsh reminds us of how far the city has fallen. From 1970 to 2000, the city lost 37 percent of its population, the percentage of residents filing city income tax returns dropped even more -- by over half -- meaning that a shrinking population was increasingly filled with non-workers (income tax? No wonder why people are leaving.)

By the way, Urban Futures, a project of the Reason Public Policy Institute, is a great place to get ideas for making urban areas more liveable.

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I Can't Confess to Drunk Driving; I'm too Drunk
Some criminal convictions come from confessions, but sometimes the confession itself is the source of a legal finding of not guilty. Today's OpinionJournal.Com tells this bizarre story from norway:

An Oslo man picked up for drunk driving had a blood-alcohol level of 2.59. (The legal limit in most U.S. states is 0.8 or 1.0, but in Norway it's a shockingly low 0.2.) "A level of 2.0," note the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, "is reckoned to be when signs of alcohol poisoning arise, and the subject exhibits a total loss of control."

It should have been an open-and-shut case, especially since the guy confessed to driving drunk. But he told a newspaper: "I was both drunk and hung over when I was questioned. I signed a confession to get out of an uncomfortable situation. Later I withdrew the confession." A court threw out the charges, agreeing with the man that his confession to drunk driving was invalid because he was too drunk to make it. A defense like this would never fly in Saudi Arabia.

Though the Journal labels this story "Not Guilty by Reason of Intoxication," an alternative title may be "I'm too drunk to confess to drunk driving." (permalink)

Is a Drivers License Without a Photo the Real Thing?
Doubtless you've read about the Florida woman who wants to get a drivers license with a photo that shows only her eyes peeking out from behind a face covering. Apparently it's still up in the air in Minnesota, where officials want--and got tentative approval--to put the expiration date of foreign visas on licenses. (permalink)

Medical Malpractice Reform
According to Stateline.org, 34 state's legislures have debated medical malpractice reform this year.

Says one analyst, "Doctors were bailing out, trauma centers were closing, OB-GYNs stopped accepting new patients in certain parts of the country and women couldn’t find a doctor to deliver their babies." Proponents of reform want to enact something similar to a California provision that limits the amount of damages that can be awarded for "pain and suffering."

Overlawyered.com, meanwhile, reports that medical malpractice insurance rates have risen largely as a result of rising legal jackpots. For further reading on the issue, read that site's bad medicine archive. (permalink)

Mental Health Treatment--or Jail?
Macomb County, Michigan (near Detroit) will start screening its jail population for the mentally ill. The idea is to get them into treatment instead of jail. Could be worth trying elsewhere, if they go forward with this. (permalink)

Lead Paint Poisoning: The Latest Fishing Expedition
The City of Milwaukee blames two companies for poisoning children, and wants $85 milion from them to pay for cleanup. Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Timothy G. Dugan has dismissed the city's lawsuit. Dugan agreed with the contention of the defendents, who argued that the city failed to show that their products had caused the damage--or was even applied to any of the houses that the city has treated.

The federal government banned lead in paint in 1978, and most companies stopped using it by 1955. But as Steven Malanga has written, you've got to follow the money--to the trial attorneys--to find the origins of lead lawsuits. (permalink)

Turning Air Traffic Controll over to Private Companies
The Chicago-area Daily Herald, "U.S. House and Senate negotiators have agreed on language that would allow about 70 smaller airports nationwide - including DuPage, Palwaukee and Aurora - to hire private air traffic controllers." (DuPage county airport, and perhaps the others as well, is a case of wasteful public spending, but that's another day.) The National Air Traffic Controllers Association (the union of federal employees who do most of the air traffic control work) are, of course, alarmed. Meanwhile, Robert Poole of the Reason Public Policy Institute, observes that other countries have successfully used privatization, and encourages the U.S. to do the same.

Labels: Transportation

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The Mentally Ill are the Most Free. Or maybe not.
Over the last 40 years, we've seen various restrictions on freedoms, such as seatbelt laws, the almost complete dissolution of freedom of association, and restrictions on property use, to name a few. (A large area in which freedom has increased greatly--and not always profitably--has been in areas involving sex. Divorce, despite its devastating effects on children, is commonplace, and unstigmatized; abortion is a form of family planning.)

But one group of people has seen a dramatic increase in personal freedom: the severely mentally ill. Sally Satel & Mary Zdanowicz review the recently published report of the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, and find much lacking.

Satel and Zdanowicz are dissatisfied with public policy's treatment--or lack of treatment--of those people who don't admit they need treatment. Many of them need institutional treatment, but institutionalization was thrown out the window when "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" came along (if not before). Federal monies that would normally flow to hospitals, for example, are not available for hospitals with a large number of mental patients.

Freedom is wonderful, but as the authors point out, severely mentally ill people are not free people. If there was ever a case for state-sponsored coercion, this is it. The authors note that treatment, when ordered by a civil court, can do wonders for the ill, and society as well. "For instance, in New York, of those placed in six months of assisted outpatient treatment, 77 percent fewer were hospitalized, 85 percent fewer experienced homelessness, 83 percent fewer were arrested, and 85 percent fewer were incarcerated."

Instead, however, mental health policy has pursued an almost-total path towards deinstitutionalization--something appropriate for many patients, but not all. The deinstitutionalization of the most severely ill has not done them any good, and it hasn't helped the cause of mental health treatment either. For as Satel and Zdanowicz argue, it is the dangerous and hallucinating people on the street--turned out of treatment by the dogma of deinstitutionalization--who present the picture of mental illness to the public. Given that public face, no wonder why the mentally ill as a whole are underserved.

By the way, a more extended treatment of the subject, read Failing the Mentally Ill from City Journal, one of the finest public policy magazines around. (permalink)

A Free-Market Case for Drug Importation?
Ed Crane and Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute make an argument that free markets would be advanced by lifting the ban on re-importation of prescription drugs. In their scenario, pharmaceutical companies would have to respond by raising prices in Europe, giving governments the choice between having no drugs at all, or raising prices. Facing that choice, Crane and Pilon believe, governments in Europe (which have been freeriding off of American consumers) will destroy their own price controls.

I'm not convinced, but I am glad to see that there may be some good out of this yet. (permalink)

Sierra Club Takes Aim at Consumer Choice
The Sierra Club has launched a campaign against General Motor's Hummer. I wouldn't want to spend that much money on a vehicle that large. But apparently, there's money to be made by ridiculing the choices that other people make. (permalink)

Malianged Merchandiser Brings Jobs, Choices to Distressed Neighborhood
Wal-Mart has, in the words of the suburban Chicago Daily Herald, been attacked by critics who allege that it "drives local stores out of business, brings in low-paying jobs, and eats up green space." (Here is but one web site that comes up when you google "Stop Wal-Mart")

The giant retailer has announced plans to create a 150,000 square foot store on the west side of Chicago. Currently, the site is home of an empty factory. The store, which will sell general merchandise but not groceries, should bring 100 to 200 construction jobs, and 250 retail ones.

So what does the local politician have to say about this? Is she worried about the big box store "invading" her neighborhood? Hardly.

Emma Mitts, the city council representative for the area, said Wal-Mart would bring in much-needed shopping options and jobs for her constituents.

She dismissed concerns about Wal-Mart driving out other businesses and taking away jobs.

"That's unlikely if we don't have jobs for them to take away," she said in a telephone interview. "So many of our young and seniors who want to work aren't able to find employment."

A big box store may not be your ideal place to shop (and I usually find other stores more appealing than Wal-Mart). But as I have written for the Illinois Policy Institute, government should grant no favors to these stores--nor put any special impediments in their way. Let the shopping public vote with its dollars. (permalink)

Prisoners Feel the Heat
Prison isn't always the nicest place to be--it is meant to be punishment, after all. (It's also a social service ward and other things as well, several of them contradictory). But outside of Phoenix, being in jail means living in tents and going without air conditioning. Here's a story about life on the hot cots, which compares life under the law and life in the military.

About 2,000 inmates living in a barbed-wire-surrounded tent encampment at the Maricopa County Jail have been given permission to strip down to their government-issued pink boxer shorts.

On Wednesday, hundreds of men wearing boxers were either curled up on their bunk beds or chatted in the tents, which reached 138 degrees inside the week before. Many were also swathed in wet, pink towels as sweat collected on their chests and dripped down to their pink socks.

"It feels like you are in a furnace," said James Zanzo't, an inmate who has lived in the tents for 1 1/2 years. "It's inhumane."

Joe Arpaio, the tough-guy sheriff who created the tent city and long ago started making his prisoners wear pink, is not sympathetic. He said Wednesday that he told the inmates: "It's 120 degrees in Iraq and the soldiers are living in tents and they didn't commit any crimes, so shut your mouths."

Thanks to OpinionJournal for the link. (permalink)

Fewer Choices=More Choices. I guess.
U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) wants the U.S. government to get more deeply involved in marketing decisions involving automobiles. (He wants the CAFE standards from 27mpg to 40, by law, by the year 2015.) If that makes any sense, consider the following. William McNary, co-director of something called "Citizen Action Illinois," praised the proposal--which will force Americans into smaller, lighter, and less powerful vehicles--by saying "We will give American consumers more and better choices (in vehicles)." As Sam Kazman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute points out, CAFE kills. And as I pointed out in an essay for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, increased energy efficiency does nothing to decrease actual energy--in this case, petroleum--use. (permalink)

News Flash! Imprisoned Criminals Can't Victimize Society
The Washington Post comes out with this headline: "Number Of Prisoners Rises as Crime Drops." How about, oh, "Crime Drops as Number of Prisoners Rise"?

Just thinking about it. (permalink)

Drugs on the Mind
In my junior high "health" class, we were, in those pre-DARE days, warned that drugs could cause damage to the body and mind. You could get hurt, for example, if you were around someone who, after sniffing glue, started feeling a bit punchy, literally.

Fast forward through the years, and we find that drugs, again, are causing trouble. Except this time it's not speed, pot, or heroin that are causing trouble, it's lipitor, vioxx, and a host of other drugs sold by America's pharmaceutical companies. It's causing people to be inconsistent, and ask for unjustified demands.

To take just one example, Congress is considering a bill that would allow pharmacies, wholesalers, and individuals import prescription drugs from 25 countries. The main sponsor, Rep. Gil Gutknecht (R-Minn.), says that "If we're going to have a prescription-drug benefit [in Medicare] we ought to have a way to control these outrageous prices."

Controlling prices ... This is something you would expect to hear from a statist such as Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) Yet Gutknecht is no statist. His lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union is 95 percent. From the far-left Americans for Democratic Action, Gutknecht received a 0 percentage rating in 2002.

Gutknecht claims that his measure is all about harnessing the power of markets to make drugs more affordable. This is false on several levels. He claims that a ban on importation of prescription drugs is an anti-market measure that needs to be lifted. But prescription drugs would hardly be a free marketplace should imports be allowed. FDA approval is required, costing years and millions of dollars of lawyering--and this on top of the normal costs of research and development.

And of course, Canada and other countries that proponents of importation look to are hardly champions of free markets. They practice price controls. Gutknecht denies this, saying that "Other countries do not have price controls. They set reimbursement rates. Manufacturers can set the retail price higher if they wish. Which they do as often as they do not. " But for countries that have, for the most part, one purchaser of health care, the result is a monopoly purchasing situation. And when that buyer is the government, the result is ... price controls.

Price controls have decimated the pharmaceutical industry in Europe. Why would we want to follow that example? Getting healthy can be expensive, granted. But as the old saying goes, consider the alternative.

Health care requires a lot of fixing. Back-door price controls (letting Canada et al. set prices for drugs that Americans payu) is not a way of fixing it. (permalink)

Costs of "Smart Growth" Measures
Citing the costs of both money and local authority, a group of legislators in Wisconsin are trying to enact a repeal of that state's "Smart Growth" laws. This bears watching. "Planning" is a good thing, especially if done by individuals or companies. But planning for an entire state or town is foolish. Not only does it sound bad ("five years plans" were the tradition of the Soviet Union), but it's impossible to anticipate the wants and needs of thousands or millions of citizens.

Businesses make their plans are the peril of their employees and stockholders, but would-be customers can always refuse to cooperate. It's harder to not cooperate with government planners, though.

Business planners can recognize the errors of their ways and change tracks; it's much harder to undo harmful government plans. (Think of all those "temporary" tax increases out there.)

Finally, business planners who make mistakes can be removed from office, making it unlikely they will cause damage to their company again. Government planners, however, seldom lose their jobs or offices, thus reducing the cost (to the planners) of unwise plans.

Yes, some planning should take place--anticipating where the next road should be, for example--but "smart growth" plans are too often not an attempt to react to anticipated public choices, but to shape them into what they "should" be. (permalink)

Community Colleges to Raise Fees, Cut Expenses
The Detroit News reports that budget cuts from the state government budget mean that many of Michigan's community colleges will have to raise tuition and cut spending. One way to improve the operating budgets of community colleges would be to improve K-12 education; remedial education costs the country at least $16 billion a year. In Michigan (and probably other states as well), one-third of the students who graduate from high school have deficient skills in basic academic subjects--meaning that they will need to be tended to in colleges, especially community colleges.

Labels: Education

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Goldberg on Berkeley Study of Conservatives
Jonah Goldberg, editor of National Review Online, has a cranky response to Berkeley study that, among other things, lumps together Reagan, Hitler, and Mussilini as "right wing conservatives."

The authors of the study say they are building on a literature of research into the psychology of conservativism, and that similar studies of liberalism are few and far between. What is strange is what gets studied--"there's very little data on people who like to have cereal and orange juice in the morning," but plenty of studies on sociopaths, for example. So the implication of all those studies on conservatism, Goldberg infers, is that conservatives are just plain nuts.

Another charge that Goldberg levies is that the study doesn't tell us much unique about conservatives after all.

Virtually all of the characteristics the authors attribute to the right can be equally laid at the feet of the left. If you think left-wingers have a high tolerance for ambiguity, tell one it's not clear that Head Start does any good at all. ... I've just watched my wife spend a year debating Title IX please don't tell me that feminists have a rich love of exchange and a gift for understanding nuance.

"Fear and aggression," allegedly qualities of the right, are found in the un-conservative campaigns against genetically-modified foods, and globalization. And of course, it's "liberalism" that is "conservative" in this country, fighting off attempts to update the current methods of funding education (taxpayer-paid, government-operated local school monopolies), retirement (the current generation-to-retired generation transfer scheme of social security), and health care (third-party payers), among other policy areas.

Finally, conservatism, as a motivating political force, has very different agendas throughout the world. For example, "A Saudi conservative wants to maintain State control of the economy, scoffs at civil liberties and wants to spread Wahhabbi Islam around the globe." When was the last time you head an American conservative call for women to be denied the right to drive?

There's plenty more to say on this, but for now I will close with a final thought from Goldberg: "So, yes, conservatism is a temperament, but it is also an ideology. And that ideology is not dependent on the need for "cognitive closure" or a "fear of ambiguity" at all. In fact, most conservative thinkers see their project completely differently. The threat they see is from a statist elite which seeks to impose uniformity and cookie-cutter banality across the society. Conservatism, as Russell Kirk noted, is marked by an "Affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of human existence." Indeed, if these authors had spent a bit more time reading Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind, they wouldn't have bollixed up their own depiction of the conservative mind so badly." (permalink)

"Corner" Readers on the Berkeley Study of Conservatives
National Review was done this weekend, so I wasn't able to collect some thoughts from there. Now that it's working again, here are some items I have pulled from "The Corner," the group blog of the magazine.

A grad student in social cognition argues that the context-dependent nature of "conservatism" (is means different things in different countries and times) makes it a poor candidate for meta-analysis. He blames, appropriately enough, a psychological concept for the researcher's inability to accept this fact.

conservative. This fallacy is natural enough. Social psychology speaks of an outgroup homogeneity effect, whereby people think that the members of their own group (the 'ingroup') are different from each other but that people in an outgroup are similar. E.g., 'there is variability among us gentiles, but jews are all the same.'

Dr. Carole Bandy, a professor who studies social cognition--and who, presumably, has tenure--attacks the validity of the study.

The Berkeley authors have started from the work of Adorno in the 1950s on authoritarianism. This work has been heavily criticized, as the authors admit on the first page, as being heavily value-laden. Validity is the chief difficulty with value-laden research and it is not an incidental side issue in research. It is the very foundation.

She then goes on to say that the Berkeley researchers use weak methods, and in her concluding remarks, asserts that the actual scale items used in the study have an obvious bias.

Finally, a newly minted Ph.D. in clinical psychology takes up the atmosphere of academic psychology rather than the Berkeley study itself. In his field, the writer tells National Review, "conservatism is indeed viewed as synonymous with "mean-spirited, homophobic, misogynist, hate-mongering troglodyte."

In my own experience with academics who have studied foreign leaders through the lens of social psychology, leaders who viewed the world "simplistically"--a bad thing, by the way--were overwhelmingly "conservative." (permalink)

Can a City Exclude Non-Residents from Its Parks?
Grosse Point, an exclusive suburb of Detroit, has city parks, as most cities do. Apparently, it has tried to exclude non-residents from using its parks. The Michigan Tax Tribunal has ruled against the city, saying that it must open the its parks to "the public"--anyone who wants to use then, in effect, since the city makes no property tax payments. The Detroit News offers a survey of reader responses today.

I haven't read the original story, and this is the first I have heard of this particular case--though not of the complaint. If a city is concerned that its facilities are burdened from use by outsiders, or if it wants to make sure that only the people who pay for a facility use it, then maybe they ought to find a way of charging user fees. (permalink)

Is the American Dream Good Policy?
It's almost the end of the day and I haven't posted anything. That's due, in large part, because I spent most of the day working on the house. It's days like these which make me wish I had kept a copy of an article I once read questioning the high value that U.S. policy places on people owning houses. (This is carried out not only through the home mortage interest deduction on income taxes, but also through the government sponsored enterprises of Fannie Mae and her sisters, which serve to further boost house ownership.)

The point of the missing essay, as best I can remember, is that time and money, both being limited, may sometimes be best spent on activities other than mowing the lawn, pulling weeds, trimming shrubs, painting walls, and any of the multiple maintenance tasks involved in owning a house. I don't know I agree with the author (since I remember only a portion of the article), but I sometimes think of that article whenever I find myself in a long fix-up day around the house. (permalink)

Sloppy Psychoanalysis from a Distance
The old line was that while liberals have no head, and conservatives have no heart, it turns out that conservatives have no (sound) head, either. At least that's the buzz about a study (pdf) published in the journal "Psychology Bulletin" (2003, v 129, no 3, 339-375), published by the American Psychological Association. The concluding abstract of the article states that "the core ideology of conservatism stresses resistence to change and justification of inequality and is motivated by needs that vary situationally and dispositionally to manage uncertainty and threat."

To quote one of the people mentioned in the study (conservative writer George F. Will), well.

What to make of this?

An article in the Daily Californian (published at the Univeristy of California, Berkeley, home of two of the four authors of the study) noted that some people had sent letters to the study authors complaining about a "comparison in the press release grouping conservatives like former President Ronald Reagan and radio host Rush Limbaugh with Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini." Ya don't say?

And again, quoting the Californian, "The study also raised questions when the press release compared authoritarian leftist leaders like Joseph Stalin, Fidel Castro and Nikita Khrushchev with conservatives. " (I thought conservatives were the ones who practiced guilt-by-association. McCarthyism, you see. Perhaps the authors are conservatives?).

Not surprisingly, the Californian notes that Berkeley removed a link to the press release that announced the study.

In the last day or so, the folks over at National Review have been digging into the study. Jonah Goldberg came out with an op-ed on the study today, and readers of "the Corner" (the magazine's blog of staff and invited writers), several of them psychologoy students, have offered critiques of the study. Since the National Review server is currently offline for some reason, I will add a few comments.

- The study said that conservatism is an ideology, yet what it studied was pscyhological temperment. Not the same thing. On the one hand, it's understandable that the authors studied the psychological underpinnings of an important movement. On the other hand, it's simply untrue to think of it only as a temperment.

- What do conservatives want to conserve? Affirmative action? Government that shows no sign of shrinking from its near-record place in American life?

- Liberals are subject to many of the traits studied in the test.

- The study is a meta-analysis, which means that is particularly prone to problems of validity. (The Corner is good on this).

More later. (permalink)

Let Mary Take Care of Your Child--and Let Jane Pay Taxes to Cover Costs
In Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich signed legislation that makes it easier for people to get taxpayer-funded day care. Calling "early childhood education" an issue of civil rights, fairness, and equality, the governor approved of the legislation, which "is the first step in a three-year plan to make preschool available to every at-risk 3- and 4-year-old in the state." (Starting schooling at age 5 isn't soon enough, apparently.)

The paper quotes a Head Start teacher (i.e., someone on the government payroll) as saying "You can't expect parents to improve themselves if every time they get a raise they won't qualify for welfare." Why not? I imagine that most people think that "improving themselves" would include getting off of welfare. Apparently not. (permalink)

Democratic Governor in Wisconsin Blasts Republican Predecessors on Taxes
While Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle enacted a large tax increase on property, he (rightly) blasted his Republican predecessors for poor budget choices. The new budget cuts state spending (and 2,292 state jobs). It does not raise state income, sales or corporate taxes, though it does raise tuition, fees, and removes a property tax cap.

According to the Journal-Sentinel of Milwaukee, "Doyle said he had to slash state spending brutally because former Republican governors and legislators refused to balance the budget and made the deficit worse by spending all future revenue, including one-time income from selling tobacco settlement payments from cigarette manufacturers." Despite the reputation of former governor, Tommy Thompson, as a tax-cutter, Wisconsin ranks 14th in the country in terms of total tax burden per capita, according to the Tax Foundation. (permalink)

Teacher Unions Win Big in Wisconsin, Family Choice Suffers
It's payback time! The Wisconsin teachers union backed Democratic candidate Jim Doyle for governor last year, and yesterday, he paid them back, putting his veto on a measure to expand the school choice voucher program, which is currently limited to 15 percent of the enrollment of the Milwaukee Public Schools.

Labels: Education, School choice

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Word of the Day
This from an email friend of mine ...

Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with. (permalink)

Library Porn Controvery May Renew Local Independence
In an editorial today, the Detroit News applauds the Plymouth, Michigan library system for deciding against using internet filters on public computers. "Let the federal money go," says the library director. "The federal money we would receive would not cover the costs to change the policy."

The News says that "there are substantial First Amendment issues involved in censoring computers used by adults." Well. Filters in libraries do not forbid the production of porn or anything else, nor do they restrict the viewing habits of anyone in their own home, so it's hard to say that this is censorship. Or at the least, censorship that is anything new.

When a librarian declines to stock ... to make up a title, "The Joy of Sex with Barnyard Animals" on the shelves, it's called editorial judgment. Why does it become censorship if the library installs a filter that blocks the presentation of a similarly-themed web site in the library?

In any case, the News is correct citing one good effect of libraries reacting in the same way as the Plymouth library: we may yet learn self-reliance at the local level, rather than depending on federal funding (and accepting federal strings that inevitably come along.) (permalink)

Connerly Not All Alone in Move To Abolish Place of Race
Ward Connerly, of the American Civil Rights Institute, has decided to launch a campaign to place an anti-racialist constitutional amendment in the Michigan state constitution. He is set to get an agreement with a firm to start collecting the necessary petition signatures. According to the Detroit Free Press, he has collected roughly two dozen state legislators to take his side. Naturally, the Democrats, the official party of grievances and affirmative action, will oppose such a measure, but it's uncertain how many Republicans--ever fearful of being labeled racists--will sign on. (permalink)

Don't Steal, the Government Hates the Competition
You've heard the cynical remark,"don't steal, the government hates the competition"? Well, at least one element of government hates competition: government-school employees, as represented by their unions. The Wisconsin Education Association Council is set to file suit to block two new charter schools from opening in the state.

Labels: Charter schools, Education

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Why Not Cut Wasteful Spending Now?
Illinois's governor, Rod Blagojevich, has said "We think there's plenty more to cut" in the state budget. The Daily Herald also notes that he is confident that should a new budget gap emerge, more waste can be cut. "I think there's a lot of that in government, and we just want to find that and root it out."

So why hasn't he done more of it to date? Says the Herald, "The governor also has emphasized on the trip that he was elected to be governor, not the state's top accountant, and doesn't want other parts of his job to be lost in the budget glare." I suppose that means more symbolic ribbon cuttings and listening tours? (permalink)

If Somone Swears and No One Listens, is it Still a Profanity?
In the suburban Chicago village of Lisle, a park district employee made a recorded message about the department's events. Apparently flustered about something, he said "Oh, damn," which made it onto the tape. That was a month go, and just now the district is hearing about it. Either profanity is so ingrained in public life that it didn't sufficiently bother anyone who called, or nobody called in the first place. Neither is a good sign. (permalink)

Tax Increases, Program Cuts
Stateline.Org has another article of interest today, surveying a report by the National Conference of State Legislators. Of the states, 31 have made program cuts while 17 have raised taxes (two are still wrangling over budgets and thus were not included in the report). Collectively, all states have overrun their budgets by 10 percent, resulting in an initial budget gap of over $78 billion. Oklahoma Sen. Angela Monson (D) detects a philosophical change towards using more fees, to charge people for the cost of services they actually use. (permalink)

Legitimizing Spam
Thirty-five states have passed laws regulating or attempting to ban spam. But all they've done, perhaps, is legitize the practice. As quoted by an article in StateLine.org, a Chicago-based law professor says "What most of the state statutes do is legitimize spam as long as you don’t also commit fraud.” Delaware has an "opt-in" law, the kind favored by folks who think that legislation is the answer to this problem. But the state has yet to prosecute a single person under its measure. (permalink)

Affordable Housing
Guest appearance by Adrian Moore (ok, his mass email) from the Reason Public Policy Institute, on a new study concerning the price of housing.

In "The Impact of Building Restrictions on Housing Affordability [pdf file]," the authors argue that in the most of the country housing prices are very close to construction costs. Where prices are high relative to construction costs, economic analysis shows that the major culprit is restrictive zoning. They also point out that many popular policies, like “smart growth” policies to increase density, affordable housing mandates, and subsidies, don’t do much to help. Attacking zoning and other regulations on housing is the best way to make homes more affordable.

RPPI, by the way, has their own compilation of studies on housing, zoning, land use and sprawl that are worth a look. (permalink)

Dams if You Do, Damned if You Don't
The Army Corps may or may not have done its job right over the years. As it is, farmers and barge operators have come to expect certain water levels, maintained by the use of the Corps' system of dams and locks. In fact, a federal court judge in Nebraska has ruled that the Corps must maintain water levels high enough to make navigation possible.

Now, groups has come along preferring the shoveltail swallow (or whatever) have persuaded another federal judge that the Corps must lower water levels on the Missouri river, to encourage nesting areas. The Kansas City Star quotes a Justice Department official: "These orders are mutually exclusive, and the corps can't comply with both." (permalink)

County Freezes Pay
Members of the Waukesha County board in suburban Milwaukee vote to freeze their pay for the next two years. It's not going to save the taxpayers much--$26,000 over the next two years--but the symbolism of restraint is commendable. As corporations are suspending matching funds to employee 401k accounts, raising copays on health insurance, suspending raises or even cutting pay, some politicians understand that enriching themselves isn't the best thing to do right now.

Labels: Health care, Public employee pensions

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Government Jobs Cut
Yes, it does happen. Illinois is cutting down some jobs in the offices of the attorney general and secretary of state, among others. Of course, this being Illinois, you can't help be wonder about the political and patronage calculations going on behind the scene. Greg Blankenship, a Springfield-based blogger of Illinois politics, has not been impressed with the protestations of the State Treasurer, and argues that governor "Hot Rod" may upset enough people that he may actually bring about some policy changes in the state. The Land of Lincoln does need a shakeup in its political debates, which are not based in policy as much as which set of party hacks will be able to stuff their wallets (or enjoy the perks of office) next time around. (permalink)

ET is for Aliens
ET, of course, was an alien. Now, ET may be for aliens. The federal government is using Michigan as a test ground for using electronic tethering as a way to monitor illegal aliens who are awaiting deportation hearings. These electronic bracelets, which lets someone else monitor a person's movements within a specified area, are popular for certain prisoners who are nearing the end of their sentences. It make make some sense to apply this technique to aliens, rather than enduring the expenses of putting them in prisons, which tend to be much more costly (on the order of 10 times much, from what I remember from past research.) (permalink)

Speed Traps or Revenue Traps?
The Michigan legislature decided to meet its budget crunch (in part) by increasing fees on motorists who violate traffic laws. A scholar at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy gives plenty of reasons why this may not be a good idea, including the fact that it could corrupt police departments and clog court dockets. (permalink)

Toy Cop Cars
Today's Wall Street Journal (online subscription required) reports on seatbelt enforcement in the state of Washington.

The average rate of usage in the state of Washington is 93 percent; in King County (Seattle), the number is 95 percent. Nationally, it's 75 percent. So it's not as if there are a lot of people not wearing seatbelts. Still, the state prompts local police departments to do more, offering grants of up to $1,000. The most amusing (?) incentive is a miniature model police car "for officers who wrote more than 40 seat-belt tickets during a three-month period."

With anything as intrusive as primary seatbelt laws and as silly as toy cop cars, you'd expect the federal government to be involved. And they are. Prodding the states into more aggressive enforcment is Jeffrey Runge, the administrator of NHTSA.

Of the 42,850 people who died in traffic accidents last year, 19,103 were not wearing seatbelts. Some of those 19,103 would be alive had they been wearing seatbelts. But not all, for 23,747 people were wearing seatblets--and still died. Seatbelts are no guarantee of survival.

NHSTA estimates that on a national basis, 4,200 lives would be saved if seatbelt usage increased to 90 percent from 75. That's less than one in five of beltless fatalities. In other words, the easy gains have already been achieved--some through law enforcement, most (I hope) from people realizing that a seatbelt is better than nothing, and that driving without out is, well, stupid.

Still, NHTSA and state governments, prodded by the feds and others, keep moving towards primary seatbelt laws, and belt-only enforcement.

A resident of Washington organized a petition drive (since failed) to repeal that state's primary enforcement law when he learned that some police officers could get toy cop cars for hauling in a fixed number of tickets, or faced quotas for citations or traffic stops for seat belt laws.

Of the 50 states, 18 have a primary law; 31 have a secondary law, and 1--New Hampshire has no seatbelt law. (Cynics may remark that New Hampshire's state motto should be "Live Free and Die.") (permalink)

ACLU: Pro-Troll League?
A man and his girlfriend are claiming a constitutional right to be trolls--that is, live underneath a bridge. Naturally, the ACLU is involved. (permalink)

New Screening Facility at Minneapolis Airport Caught in Bureaucratic Tussle
Remember when airport security was so important that it had to be taken away from airlines, airports, and security contractor? Congress gave it to federal government workers (who, incidently are unionized and thus more difficult to fire in case of incompetence.)

The St. Paul Pioneer-Press reports that the Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC) has delayed a decision to build a new facility for baggage screening. It's projected to cost $60 million. MAC and Twin Cities-based Northwest Airlines say that since security is now a federal function, no local funds should be used. (permalink)

Music to Conduct War By
I don't deal much with foreign policy on this blog, but from the desire to have a focus. Still, it's worth taking an occasional detour, like today.

The folks over at The Corner blog of National Review are conducting, a contest, of sorts, to see who can come up with the song most appropriate to the deaths of Uday Hussein and his brother Qusay Hussein

Here are the entries so far:

Another One Bites the Dust, by Queen
Burning Down the House, by Talking Heads
Highway to Hell, AC/DC (permalink)

Logs, Specks, Eyes, and Conflicts of Interest
Writing in National Review, James Justin Wilson charges the head of the American Conservative Union with betraying conservative principles for the sake of the clients of his lobbying firm. It's a good story of the perils of mixing policy and profit. (permalink)

Democrats for School Choice
Well, at least one. Sen. Diane Feinstein writes in the Washington Post today that she is inclined to let Mayor Anthony Williams conduct a voucher program for (some) students in the District of Columbia. Since DC is ultimately governed by Congress, what the senator from California thinks about vouchers has some importance. She recites the miserable statistics--$10,852 per pupil spending each year results in 10 percent of fourth graders reading at "proficiency"--and suggests that a mayor ought to be free to experiment. But as results in Cleveland and Milwaukee have shown, school choice is an "experiment" only in the sense that it isn't widely used. But it works, and should work again in DC, if Congress and President Bush can come to an agreement on a school choice program.

Labels: Education, School choice

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Read My Lips: No New Prisons
In brief, that's the message of Wisconsin's governor Jim Doyle.

Doyle objects to "incarceration without rehabilitation," and on the surface, it's hard to disagree with him. It would be great if prisoners were rehabilitated. Some nonprofit groups, such as Prison Fellowship, do a good job of helping prisoners straighten out. But it's a choice that each prisoner must make, and it's unrealistic, and dangerous, to forswear any new prisons. There are, however, several ways of improving prison functions while reducing costs, such as contracting out selected operations (food service, education) or even the entire operations of a prison. There are planey of ways to try to reduce recividism, such as expanding work programs (to teach discipline and give inmates a skill they can use outside) and bringing in nonprofits such as Prison Fellowship. The state should also look at how many prisoners are taking up cell space as a result of minor drug crimes, or, the latest craze in criminal justice, white collar crimes. Prison ought to be (largely) reserved for those who threaten public safety through acts of violence. (permalink)

Uncle Sugar Comes Through
Detroit Free Press columnist Chris Christoff evaluates the recently concluded budget battle in Michigan. The result is that Governor Jennifer "Granholm will soon become the first Democratic governor in the United States to finish next year's budget and wipe out a deficit without a general tax increase."

It would have been great if the politicos had used this occasion to implement some fundamental reforms in state government, along the lines advocated by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. But that--or perhaps a tax increase--was headed off by an infusion of cash from the feds. Says Christoff, "It can't be overstated how much the $700-million windfall from Congress contributed to the peaceful, early end to the budget debate."

State employee unions now have a choice: accept $250 million in wage concessions, or layoffs. The harm that will befall state employees in either case--lower salaries, or trying to cover the work of those laid off--is yet another reason why selective pruning of government functions would have been even better than increasing fines for traffic violations (the Republican response) or depending on a bailout from Washington (the bipartisan response). (permalink)

Surcharge for "The Rich" at U Cal Berkeley?
The University of California-Berkeley is floating a proposal to levy a surcharge on families with incomes exceeding $90,000 a year. As Powerlineblog.com notes, students will know right away what sort of lessons they will encounter in college--and their parents certainly will, as well. (permalink)

Mental Health Treatment by Government
The Detroit News has a several-part series on state and county mental health systems. As you would expect, they are stories filled with sadness. One man, for example, was refused treatment by a county agency after his house burned to the ground. He was no longer a county resident, someone reasoned. Some state-run hospitals have been closed--a good thing, in general--but private hospitals and community service programs have not yet expanded to pick up the slack.

Though it is a few years old, this study from the Reason Public Policy Institute is a good place to start in looking for non-state run alternatives for mental health treatment. Having visited two people who have spent weeks, if not months, in one of Michigan's state-run hospitals, I can only say that successful reform can't come quickly enough. (permalink)

Heads Up on Head Start
Congress is considering a pilot program that would let some states, under a pilot program, take over the federally-run Head Start programs in their states. "Child advocacy groups" (wow, who can oppose them, eh?) fret that states won't have the same high standards.

The Heritage Foundation notes that academic gains that are achieved with Head Start disappear after a few years under the current system, and lauds the Bush proposal to add an academic component to the program.

That may be better than the status quo. But then again, the constitutional authority for state capitals--let alone Washington DC--to be involved in childrearing is rather thin, at best. (permalink)

Conceal-Carry Bill Introduced in Wisconsin
Legislation establishing a process to issue conceal carry permits, under which county sheriffs would issue licenses to carry concealed weapons to state residents 21 and older who pass criminal background checks (and a safety training class as well), has been introduced in the Wisconsin legislature. This follows a ruling from that state's supreme court that "he state constitution guarantees homeowners and shopkeepers the right to carry concealed weapons on their own property, and the justices' call for a permit system." The governor is opposed to the measure, but the court called on the legislature to establish a permit system of some sort, in light of its ruling. As the National Center for Policy Analysis points out, crime has declined in right-to-carry states. (permalink)

The Importance of Restraining Spending Growth
States that raise taxes suffer economically; those that keep government spending under control prosper. That's the message from a report from the National Taxpayers Union. It looks at states during the early 1990s (the last tiem there was a serious shortfall in state taxes), so see which raised taxes to meet budget shortfalls, and which didn't. Those who raised taxes had lower growth in employment, income, and population in the subsequent years. (permalink)

Credits in ... for the Movies
According to the suburban Chicago Daily Herald, Illinois will soon "give companies a 25 percent tax credit on the first $25,000 in wages paid to each Illinois resident on a production. The productions would have to be at least 30 minutes long and employ at least $100,000 in state labor." This comes even as the state has shut down some tax credits for other businesses.

You ought to be in pictures.

Aside from the troubling idea of favoritism and bad timing (given the state's budget woes), it's not at all clear that having a film crew in town is even an economic plus. Says the Herald, "The suburbs have been the setting for many Hollywood productions, but officials say it is difficult to gauge the economic impact." The paper quotes officials from towns that have hosted big-budget movies. Says the village manager of West Dundee: ""The impact on the economy is difficult to gauge in dollars and cents."

The president of the chamber of commerce in Geneva adds ""It was a big movie with big stars so you would expect some follow-up. I'm not sure there was any subsequent benefit from it. I think maybe we hoped people would come to see where the movie was shot, but we haven't been inundated with requests for information." (permalink)

Michigan Democrat Does Good
As noted before--here, here, and here--some of the biggest tax-and-spending governors are Republicans. This is true even for governors (such as Ohio's Taft) with Republican majorities in the statehouse.

On the other hand, Jennifer Granholm, the first Democrat to serve as Michigan's governor since the early 1980s, has just agreed to a budget that includes no general fund tax increases. On the other hand, it does include stiff increases in penalties for traffic violations, which means that taxpayer advocates ought to do some due diligence to make sure that the volume of traffic stops doesn't increase dramatically in a revenue-enhancing move. (permalink)

Gas Prices Pumped Up by Federal Fiat
Easy prediction: Next year, petroleum companies will be badmouthed for high gas prices.

The Detroit News gives one reason why gas prices will go up: new EPA rules on sulphur content in gasoline. This is expected to limit the supply of fuel by driving some smaller refineries out of business. Econ 101: Less supply, same demand, higher prices. (permalink)

Another Month, another Athlete Charged with Crime
Ho-hum. Another pro athlete is charged with a crime, and the news is even filling up the air on ESPN, even as I would like to check out the happenings at the British Open and the Tour de France.

This is not to dismiss the seriousness of crime--law enforcement is one of the primary responsibilities of government, victims of crime deserve sympathy, and criminals should receive due process. But a single crime is not "news" meriting wall-to-wall coverage unless it involves some violation of the public trust. And by "public trust," I don't mean "has a lot of fans." Then again, a world of people earnestly discussing politics and policy all the time would be terribly boring. (permalink)

Hate Speech 4: Tax-Cutters are Terrorists
Minnesota Public Radio does a report on the Taxpayers League, a group dedicated to lowering taxes. Here's how one person responded.

"Tax" is not a dirty word. We all benefit from better roads, schools, parks, etc. The Taxpayer League, in my opinion, is a borderline terrorist group. They do not care one bit about the facts. They only care about winning. They are one step away from using violence to achieve their end.

So what do we call genuine terrorists? (permalink)

Private Toll Roads May Be Safer
Out of Control, a blog run by some folks with the Reason Public Policy Institute, notes the vast disparity between travel deaths on the roads last year (42,815) and on commercial aircraft (0). One possible way to increase traffic safety is to rely more on toll roads.

Why? Toll operating companies must offer an atractive product--smoothly flowing traffic--or people will go with other alternatives. The company that manages a toll road in California has a team of servicemen who will tow a car, bring gas, or take other steps to keep the traffic moving. Traffic that moves at a consistent speed is safer than traffic that varies a lot.

Labels: Transportation

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Let the Federal Money Go
That's the conclusion that some library administrators in Michigan seem to be coming to, in the wake of a Supreme Court decision that lets Congress require libraries to install porn-blocking filters as a condition of getting federal funds. (Why should Congress be in the business of funding local libraries in the first place?)

"Let's let the federal money go," said one library director. Now if we can just get cities, schools, states, businessess and individuals to say the same thing (and also reduce taxes by a similar amount), then we'd have a federal government that stays within its constitutional limits. (permalink)

Federal Ed Officials Knocking on State Doors
The "No Child Left Behind" act requires states to ensure that all government teachers are "highly qualified." A "highly qualified" teacher has majored in the subject area, passed a state test, or do additional academic course work. I would guess that most already-in-service teachers are going to try to get by with some test. (Certification tests are already ridiculously easy in some states.)

Stateline.org says that the feds are watching the states, and will send experts to various states (unidentified) that are not on track to meet the federal requirements by the school year that begins in 2005.

According to this story, no more than 55 percent of the secondary teachers in this country are "highly qualfied" by the standards of the federal law--standards that are probably, in practice, lower than they should be. Only 32 states require would-be teachers to demonstrate subject area knowledge, and even then, the required scores are low. Finally, on a note that bears ill for the future of federalism, the amount of dollars coming through the education bureaucracy in Washington DC used to be 7 percent of education funding; just two-plus years into the Bush-Cheney administration, it's up to 9 percent. Or perhaps I should have said the Bush-Kennedy administration, given the role the senator from the Bay State had in NCLB. (permalink)

"No Child Left Behind" Requires School Choice
That's the conclusion of this paper (pdf) from the