Will Collecting Racial Data of Motorists Lead to De-Policing?
Starting in the new year, police in Illinois will be required to record the race and sex of every motorist they stop. The goal is to track the extent of "racial profiling" among police.

As this story in the Chicago Sun-Times says, however, "Two suburban departments that have been reporting such data to the U.S. Justice Department for several years both have experienced decreases in traffic citations."

This has lead some concerns that the extra hassle will lead to de-policing, or fewer stops.

UPDATE: Arab and Hispanic activists complain about the new law. No, they don't mind being counted. They're afraid that they won't be counted.

"You can't tell whether Arab-Americans are being profiled if we're counted with whites," said [Rouhay] Shalabi, president of the Chicago-based Arab American Bar Association. "Ideally, there should be another box ... to be more specific."

The days when rock singer Bob Seger complained that government and corporate forms were making him Feel Like a Number have long passed us. (permalink)

Policy Issues for 2004
Also from the NCSL: a list of the top 10 issues likely to dominate state policy debates in the new year. Among the issues are state budgets, responding to the No Child Left Behind Act, the cry for cheap prescription drugs, and the role of incarceration in criminal justice. (permalink)

There Ought to Be a Law
Be careful what you wish for. The National Conference of State Legislatures says that 21 states will enact 500 new laws on January 1, 2004. A few are good, many bad, and most will have unintended consequences. (permalink)

Crime Pays
According to the Detroit News, The Citizens Alliance on Prisons & Public Spending says that Michigan ought to be paroling more prisoners than it does.

Among the facts noted in the story:

• 5 percent of the state's budget is spent on prisons


• They employ one out of every three Michigan state employees


• Of 50,000 prisoners, 17,000 are eligible for parole


• Over 3,600 prisoners are there because they violated a technical rule concerning their parole, which may be something as simple as missing an appointment.


• Prior to get-tough reforms enacted in 1992, 68 percent of prisoners were paroled at the earliest possible date. That number is now 48 percent.


• Parole for violent criminals has decreased from 1990 to 2000 (61 to 35 percent), while the percentage of sex offenders paroled dropped from 46 percent to 10 percent.

The story points out a need for matching judicial expectations with parole board practices. It points to an anonymous survey of circuit court judges, and found that "Of the 95 judges who anonymously responded, two-thirds said the prospect of parole for deserving defendants was a factor in their imposing life sentences. A majority said they thought the defendants would be released in 10, 12 or 15 years."

So much "life" sentences. Granted, some lifers may not deserve life, but in that case, their stated sentences ought to reflect that fact.

In the abstract, spending money on prisons is a good use of taxpayer money: criminal justice goes to the core of the state's function. Once we wander into the details, though, things get murkier: should drug use result in prison time? Should parole never be an option? When should a prisoner be paroled? Should taxpayers hold criminals in prison decades after their crime, when they are old and fragile, unlikely to commit crime, but likely to impose huge costs for health care? Are we spending too much, or too little on prisons? Money isn't free, and the costs and benefits must be carefully weighed--if they can be measured.

Compounding the problem of knowing when to release a prisoner is the fact that "rehabilitation" seldom works, if prompted by the outside. The most certain route to change is through a religious commitment--hardly the thing that government should, or even can bring about.

I will close with another excerpt from the article:
"They [members of the parole board] are ducking their responsibility and not making judgments at all, and just not releasing people," said Frank Eaman, a Harper Woods lawyer who has successfully challenged the board's actions in court to gain the release of a client. "It's just easier to pass on people. Inevitably, somebody is going to get out of prison and commit a crime, and the parole board doesn't want to be blamed for anything. The easiest way is to never let anyone out." (permalink)

Minnesota Makes Small Move Towards Toll Roads
According to a report by Minnesota Public Radio (link is likely to decay soon), "Gov. Tim Pawlenty says his administration is moving forward with plans to build toll lanes in the metro area."

Sounds like a plan. With state taxes already among the highest in the country, there's little room for raising taxes to pay for road expansion. Unfortunately, there is often little room for new lanes themselves.

Labels: Transportation

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Moments in the History of the U.S. Postal Service
I got someone else's mail today. Now, I know that's nothing usual. Periodically, for example, I have throughout my life gotten mail addressed to the previous occupant of my apartment or house--or if not that person, the occupant before that.

But today's mail takes this misdirection one step forward. Mr. A. wrote Mr. B. a letter and dropped it in the mail. It ended up in my mailbox. Checking the return address and the destination address with Mapquest, I find that A and B live about 2 miles away from each other--and 12 miles from me.

Now again, routing an item through a far-away destination is not unusual, either: FedEx packages from A to B would probably go through Memphis. But they wouldn't end up in, say, Montgomery. (permalink)

Yet Another Reason for School Choice: Gifted Minority Students are Left Behind
Today's Wall Street Journal (paid subscription required) says that the No Child Left Behind Act may be leaving behind some children after all: gifted students.

NCLB distributes federal money to schools based on how well they raise the academic performance of the lowest achievers, in all identified racial subgroups. A school of underachievers that raises performance gets a lot of money; one with already satisfactory performance gets none.

Responding to this incentive, states are shifting money meant to attract and develop gifted and talented students to efforts to raise the lowest performers.

From some point of justice, this is fine. But lost are children such as seven-year old Devion Ross. He was the only African-American child in his Springfield, Ill. Elementary school to qualify for the gifted program. But the school dropped the program after the state dropped its funding to focus on the incentives offered by NCLB. As a result, "Devion now daydreams in the back of his second-grade class." He's the typical smart kid who is doing poorly in school because he isn't challenged.

Devion's parents can't afford to send him to a better school, since their household income is $12,000. If, on the other hand, they were given a voucher or refundable tax credit, they could find another (private) school for him. Thanks to the publicity of the Journal article, Devion will be able to transfer to a magnet school (which is already overcrowded). Other kids won't be so lucky. At a time when minority children are underrepresented in gifted and talented programs, that's a shame.

Labels: Education, School choice

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Democracy and Football
How is the method of determining the national championship of big-time college football like republican government? Jeffrey H. Anderson explains why.

By using both expert opinion (computer models that focus on win-loss records) and popular opinion (surveys of football coaches and sports writers, which are in theory more subjective), the BCS ranking system steers a middle ground between majority and elite rule. Anderson, a professor of political science at the Air Force Academy, runs one of the seven computers used in the BCS.

Even if you're not a football fan, the controversy over which teams should meet which for a championship game (and more importantly, how they are determined) shows how political and popular culture are intertwined. (permalink)

Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas to all readers. New additions to the PolicyGuy blog will probably not return until Monday, December 29. (permalink)

Will Online Transactions Lead to Workforce Reductions at the DMV?
The Detroit Free Press has an almost entirely upbeat profile of Michigan's Secretary of State, Terri Lynn Land.

Land, in her first term, would like to modernize the department, which has 173 branch offices across the state. Plans include evening hours and taking credit cards for payment. An effort to modernize the workforce--by instituting flex time--has floundered in the wake of the budget crunch and employee concessions.

Online transactions are up 17 percent already. But a spokesman says to workers, don't worry about your jobs. "Our workload isn't decreasing. We need all the people that we've got."

Oh? Perhaps that is true now. Should it advance far enough, automation may render some employees, in the English phrase, redundant. Land probably can't say that just yet, for political reasons.

She has also saved the state $2 million by proposing the cancellation of the Republican Party. Sure, that helps the top of her ticket (Land is a Republican). But it also brings up the question: shouldn't the costs of the primaries be covered by the parties anyway? Unlike the general election, primary elections do not actually select which candidate will be in office. (permalink)

HHS on Drug Reimportation Plan: No Way
HHS has told Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich that his plan to encourage the importation of drugs from Canada is going nowhere. Chip Taylor has the details from the New York Times.

The Chicago Sun-Times features some choice words from an FDA spokesman:

"Just because some elected officials says that language exists does not make that true, just as having elected officials saying certain kinds of drugs are safe does not make that true."

"Importation is a gimmick and it is not a solution to a difficult problem." (permalink)

The Party of incumbents
Writing for the Wall Street Journal, John Fund asks "Will conservatives benefit from safe Republican control?"

The answer: no.

Gerrymandering-politicians have so many tools at their disposal that less than 10 percent of next year's Congressional races -- 38 out of 435 -- will be "remotely up for grabs."

The result: the Republican party will control the U.S. House for the rest of the decade. (There could, of course, be a reverse image of the 1994 elections, which swept Republicans into power, should there be some major Republican gaffe.) Will this make any difference in policy? Probably not, if the first three years of the G.W. Bush presidency is any guide: domestic spending increasing at a faster rate than during the Clinton years, the largest single expansion of entitlements ever, with the new Medicare prescription drug bill, and a president who hasn't found his veto pen.

All this leads Journal reader Keith Terranova to ask a powerful question: "The record of the Republican Congress, to which Mr. Fund referred, led me to think why liberal Democrats became the party of big government. Was it philosophy only, or did their hold of majority status lead them that way."

The possible implications are many, ranging from term limits to supermajority votes to simply waiting for a fiscal meltdown (see: California.) (permalink)

Illinois Says: Give Us Cheap Drugs
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) will ask the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for permission to import drugs from Canada. According to the New York Times, "While government officials elsewhere, including in New Hampshire, have announced that they will simply forge ahead and assist people in buying drugs from Canada, Mr. Blagojevich says he will not break the law." A spokesman for Blagojevich says that the recent Medicare bill gives HHS Secretary Thompson authority to grant the request.

The Times says that Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn.) is working with Blagojevich to plan a workshop on the issue during the already-scheduled National Governors Association meeting on F ebruary 24.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal warns that such programs "could open up the states and municipalities to private legal action, particularly if any patients involved claim they were harmed by the Canadian imports."

Showing the political values of the "let's import price-controlled drugs" issue, the governor of New Hampshire is planning a link on his web page that will take visitors to a new state program to promote imports from Canada. Minnesota has sent inspectors to visit Canadian pharmacies. The Journal reports that director of that state's department of human services as saying that he "planned to move ahead with the Web site even without federal permission."

(Hmm. Who would have thought? Illinois will be the state of clean government, while Minnesota, with the reverse image, will be the one to break federal law.)

Officials in New Hampshire and Boston are going to join the gang of scofflaws, reports the Chicago Sun-Times.

West Virginia hopes that its local pharmacies will engage Canadian pharmacies; Vermont may have its employees sign up with a pharmacy benefits manager in Canada.

In a wonderful turn of irony (on several levels), some pharmacies in Canada fret that they may run out of prescription drugs.

UPDATE: Chip Taylor points out that exporting to the U.S. has been a controversy in Manitoba, Canada. One concern: a shortage of pharmacists. (permalink)

Happy Holidays Merry Christmas
Today's Wall Street Journal takes on the ultra-secularist grinches who are "trying their best to strip from our public squares any hint of what most Americans will actually be celebrating come Christmas morn." The latest tactic: renaming Christmas trees as "holiday trees." Not having an established church is fine, and solidly grounded in the Constitution. But the matter has gone to absurd lengths. As the Journal says, "Somehow we doubt that this is what Thomas Jefferson had in mind with his wall of separation."

The change in attitudes is remarkable, even in my relatively short lifetime. I've never been a big fan of Christmas trees. For various reasons there's been a tree in my house a grand total of once in my adult life. Still, the change troubles me, and I was taken aback when a family member mentioned that she was going to buy a "holiday tree."

And which holiday would that be, dear?

I am safe in assuming she has neither Kwanza nor Hanukkah in mind, leaving us with, yup, Christmas.

The Journal lays some of the blame for language-scrubbing at the feet of the Supreme Court, which has in recent years gotten into such debates as how many faux candy canes must be present to legitimize the display of a creche in a public square. But even more blame must be pinned to ordinary folks, who have been too willing to let the Supremes be, well, Supreme in matters of social morality and cultural expectations. While Christmas has religious origins, it is hardly a purely religious season. So calling simply using its name is hardly a threat to democracy.

Besides, the current fad of substituting "Holiday" for "Christmas" won't last long. For as the Journal concludes, the secular-at-all-costs crowd won't be happy in any case. The word "holiday" originates in the words "holy day."

So before we are reduced to saying "Have a day," say it loud and say it proud: Merry Christmas. (permalink)

Who's a Terrorist Now?
Citing security concerns, the City of Chicago has told a 76-year old woman that her 22 Christmas seasons as a volunteer pianist at Midway airport are not good enough. She's been relocated from the food court to the baggage claim area.

Tribune columnist John Kass weighs in with this observation: "Airline travelers passing through Chicago are often under the mistaken impression that the airports are about planes. But airports are actually machines that print money for friends of City Hall."

"Phyllis," the volunteer pianist, doesn't turn money for anyone other than charities. But her (and their) take has plummeted dramatically since she has been moved to an area from which people just want to move out.

The city says that Phyllis can't play in the food court because only ticketed passengers can be there. Kass asks why they can't just give her a different clearance; the feds are OK with that, he says. (permalink)

Education Standards in Illinois
The Chicago Public Schools started a standards-based reform effort last year, an effort which includes grading schools. The feds have also gotten into the business with the No Child Left Behind Act, and the two programs are causing some confusion and controversy.

Says the Chicago Sun-Times, "Under the federal system, 83 percent of Chicago schools aren't making the grade." The comparable number under the CPS system is 53 percent. So some schools that would be penalized under the federal law are getting bonuses under the CPS plan. Not surprisingly, one principal, whose school received a CPS bonus even though it falls on the NCLB watch list, says of the CPS plan: "It's absolutely more humane."

Meanwhile, the Daily Herald reviews the government-run schools in northeastern Illinois and finds that " if the 100 percent standard were applied today, judging solely by the school's composite reading score, only one of 560 schools in the six-county suburban area would pass."

This has lead many school officials to say that the standards are unrealistic. But federal SecEd Rod Paige says that this merely reflects "soft bigotry" of low expectations. He points to Hillcrest Elementary in Elgin Area School District U-46. There, the percentage of students who met the standards for math was 28 percent; now, it's 96.

Meanwhile, the Chicago Tribune finds that government-run elementary schools in the state have, as a whole, improved their performance, with high schools declining.

Labels: Education

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Government Employee Health Insurance vs. Community Mental Health Treatment
A tight budget in Gogebic County, Michigan, is pitting health insurance coverage of county workers with mental health treatment for county residents.

No, the county is not planning to cut its budget dramatically. In fact, the budget grows faster than inflation (just over 3.25 percent). But funding for Gogebic Community Mental Health has been cut 44 percent from last year (from $90,000 to $50,000). Meanwhile, spending on health insurance for county employees has gone up $125,000.

Health is a good thing, and if people want to spend more money on it as their incomes rise, so much the better. But health insurance premiums have seen double-digit increases in recent years, in part because the incentives are all wrong. When insurance costs are borne primarily by a third party (in this story, the county as employer), there's no reason for the end user (the insured) to be a smart shopper, and costs soar.

Now, I don't know much about the Gogebic County budget, nor do I know any of the County employees. But I suspect that the County could be spending less money on insurance and more money on treating the mentally ill if its employee insurance plans were less in the traditional mode and more in the direction of individual responsibility. Something along the lines of Health Savings Accounts could be just what the doctor ordered.

Labels: Health care

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He's Number 6: Another Illinois Governor Indicted
George Ryan (R), former governor of Illinois, was indicted the other day on charges of political corruption. Said U. S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald (no relation to lame duck U.S. Senator Peter Fitzgerald), ""What we're alleging in the indictment basically is that the state of Illinois was for sale, for friends and family at times."

Ryan's attorney shows that he's planning on cashing in on the acclaim the guv has received in some circles for throwing a wrench into the death penalty process in the state. (In an 11th-hour move, Ryan commuted the sentences of all death row inmates.)

All this makes me glad that I didn't vote for Ryan when I had the chance. I disagreed with his policy stands, thought his political strategy was poor (he tried to run to the cultural left of his Democratic opponent in the gubernatorial election), and simply felt uncomfortable voting for him.

Ryan is the sixth governor in Illinois history to face criminal charges. The Chicago Tribune (registration required) offers a review of the state's sordid political history.

Sigh. There is nothing new under the sun. (permalink)

Do Tax Hikes Save Jobs? Government Jobs, At Least
Chip Taylor comments on a study from the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. Michigan government must erase a tax deficit by raising taxes or cutting spending (or, of course, a combination). The Upjohn researchers say that raising taxes is better, because it results in a smaller number of jobs lost.

There's one thing to note about this study, though, and that's where the jobs tend to be lost. With spending cuts, it's in the state employee workforce; with tax increases, it's private sector jobs that are lost.

Pretty obvious, you say? Well, read Chip Taylor, who offers the breakdown of job losses by sector (private, public, goods, services). Quite interesting.

As he says, "Any questions about why government employees favor tax hikes? Anybody? Anybody?" (permalink)

School Choice Works
In 1998, Arizona created a tax credit of $500 for donations to organizations that offer scholarships for school tuition. Since the, 47 organizations have received over $83 million on donations.

The Goldwater Institute has recently published several new reports on the effects of school choice. One assesses the effects of the tax credit program. It finds that when students stop attending government-operated schools, the expenses those schools must bear is lowered, which goes a low way towards offsetting the revenue loss to the treasury of the tax credits. A second concludes that parents who take advantage of these scholarships are, not surprisingly, highly satisfied with the schooling their children are getting.

Labels: Education, School choice

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The Silver Lining in the Medicare Cloud
The recently passed Medicare bill is by and large bad policy. It expands a health care welfare state that is already headed for fiscal disaster, and threatens the vitality of the pharmaceutical industry for good measure.

That being said, the bill does have some good measures concerning Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). They operate similar to Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs), but with several advantages. Most importantly, eligibility is greatly expanded, to include just about everyone under 65. This should go a long ways to guaranteeing a critical mass that will attract more insurers to offer policies and related products. Greg Scandlen of the Galen Institute offers a brief review of why "the new Medicare bill stands a good chance of revitalizing America's currently crumbling healthcare system." (permalink)

End of Term Limits?
In Michigan, Rep. John Pappageorge wants voters to repeal term limits. Detroit Free Press columnist Dawson Bell is not impressed: "like so many of his colleagues, when it comes to term limits, Pappageorge is delusional."

The Cato Institute has published several studies on the subject of term limits, and has reasonably positive words to say about them. Term limits tend to weaken legislative leadership and the importance of seniority. They also tend to make races for office more competitive and open up office to women and some minorities. (permalink)

Congratulations to U.S. Forces
Not much time to add a comment here, and you've read the news elsewhere. But the capture of Saddam Hussein is such good news that it's worth mentioning. Good morning, free world! (permalink)

How Taxing is Your State?
If you want to know how your state matches up with others in its tax burden, a good place to start looking is the Tax Foundation.

There are various ways to slice and dice tax information, and the results can be surprising. New York and Connecticut have reputations of being high-tax states, of course. But in what state, would you guess, are residents most heavily burdened when you compare total state and local spending with personal income? The answer: Maine. But that state drops to number 9 in the ranking when federal taxes are thrown into the mix. Why? The "progressive" nature of the federal tax system penalizes prosperity. Since other states are more prosperous than Maine, they jump up on the list of most heavily taxed states. (permalink)

Michigan Tax Cut Delay Could Cost Jobs
According to an economic model used by the Mackinac Center, delaying a long-planned cut in Michigan's income tax could cost the state nearly 3,000 jobs it would otherwise have. (permalink)

Sharks in the Delivery Room
In an editorial today, the Wall Street Journal speaks well of tort reform in Texas. Earlier this year, the paper says, the state limited non-economic damages in lawsuits. Texas Medical Liability Trust, which insures 42 percent of all Texas doctors, says it will lower premiums for malpractice insurance by 12 percent on January 1. Insurance companies that left the state have talked of returning. Nationally, obstetricians have been especially hard hit by rising malpractice costs; in 150 counties in Texas (out of 254) there is no obstetrician. Perhaps some will return if the cost of doing business goes down. (permalink)

"This is Socialism."
Illinois Lt. Governor Pat Quinn is sending out his staff to each of the state's 102 counties, asking them to place an advisory question on the Fall 2004 ballot.

The Daily Herald describes the plan this way: "Quinn is hoping for an advisory referendum seeking to double the state income tax for people making more than $250,000 and then splitting that money evenly between schools and homeowners." Homeowners would get a check for roughly $210 each year, while government-owned schools would get another $1.2 billion annually.

While a few board members suggested that this was a move to prod a discussion on school finance, one went straight for the philosophy of progressive taxation. "So basically this a redistribution of wealth. This is socialism," said John Noverini, a Republican from Carpentersville.

It also sounds suspiciously like a vote-buying scheme: "raise taxes on those guys, and you get the goodies." (permalink)

Student Debt: Credit Cards and Other Loans

Blogger just ate my words. Don't you just hate it when that happens?

Here's a shorter version of what disappeared into the ether. It's possible to get an abortion as a minor. It's possible, at age 18, to risk one's life as a member of the armed forces. But the attorney general of Minnesota thinks that the state ought to tell a college student what the limit on his credit card should be.

One could argue that credit card issuers prey on young adults, causing them to run up terrible debts for worthless purchases. Of course, one could also argue that the state itself takes students to a similar end through the higher education system, which too often features high fees (driven by too many staff who don't teach) and coursework of dubious quality, financed, on the student's part, by loans that will take years to pay off. (permalink)

Self-Defeating Virtue
Oklahoma has produced two of the best advocates of a smaller federal government, JC Watts and Tom Coburn. Both have voluntarily term-limited themselves.

Today's Wall Street Journal had a review of Coburn's book, "Breach of Trust." Coburn, a physician, says "Power is like morphine. It dulls the senses, impairs judgment, and leads politicians to make choices that damage their own character and the machinery of democracy." Coburn retired after a mere three terms, because, as the Journal says, he feared contracting "Potomac Fever."

If the adage "knowledge is power" holds true in legislatures, Coburn's story illustrates one problem facing advocates a more modest government. A longer history in the legislature gives a member more contacts, more history to draw on, a greater knowledge of procedures, and so on. In short, your chances of "getting something done" (good or bad) increases--all other things equal--the longer you are in office.

But the longer you are in office, the greater chance you run of being infected with the Power Virus, and thus harming the cause you meant, at the beginning to advance. (In the view of some newspaper editorialists, this is known as "growing in office.")

So the limited-government movement ought to be self-consciously term-limited. In that situation, though, its legislative adherents will, on the whole, be less skilled in the game than those who would ever increase the size and scope of government.

Those who favor political society, rather than the civil society, as the solution to many ills (real and imagined), which is why they tend to oppose term limits. (permalink)

Clowning Around with Tax Dollars
Wisconsin is home to the circus; perhaps that's why some legislators are treating tax dollars as funny money, available to pass out in the name of fun.

The Circus World Museum in Baraboo is bankrupt, and there is a proposal to give it $1.5 million a year in taxpayer money. It's being sold as a smart management move, of course: "We will not allow one of the major tourist attractions in the State of Wisconsin to go under and cost the state as much as $75 million in tourist dollars annually," said four legislators, Republicans all.

Let's see. There are millions of dollars put into the economy by SC Johnson, Harley-Davidson, SC Johnson, and auto manufacturing plants. State dollars for them, too? I've been a tourist in Wisconsin, and have stopped at McDonalds a few times. How about some green for the golden arches? (permalink)

Milwaukee Takes a Dump, Again
In Milwaukee, "An estimated 40 million gallons of partially treated sewage was dumped into Lake Michigan" during a heavy rain. This is hardly the first time something like this has happened, though apparently it's fairly unusual in December. (permalink)

Smoking Ban Defeated in DC
The right to do something stupid is still alive in Washington DC. And I'm not talking about yet another federal study on, say, why rats have sex.

The DC city council has turned back a proposal to ban smoking in bars and restaurants. Critical to the decision, a moderate Republican who "suddenly discovered her inner Ayn Rand" (What an interesting turn or phrase) and started poking holes in the arguments in favor of the ban.

For example, "When antismoking activists claimed that most bar patrons wanted smoke-free environments, she told them to 'put your money where your mouth is' -- go into business themselves and capitalize on that demand." (permalink)

Courage = Raising Taxes?
Colorado's Taxpayer's Bill of Rights (TABOR) is a constitutional amendment that requires governments to get voter approval for any new tax increases. It also limits increases in tax revenue to an amount equal to inflation plus population growth. (Anything above that must be refunded.)

Call it the battle of the think tanks. The Independence Institute sings the praises of TABOR, while The Bell Policy Center wants to undo much of it.

Also giving TABOR a bad rap was Governing magazine, in its February "Performance Report" on the states. So concentrated is the report on making life easier for budget officials that it gives only lip service to the possibility that state budget woes are due to excessive growth in spending. While it concedes that selling voters on program cuts can be hard, the word "courageous" is limited to those who seek to increase tax rates.

More courageous, perhaps, is the elected official who is willing to explain why it may be time for civil society to take back some of the responsibilities now assumed by government. Contrary to what President Bush has said (I'm paraphrasing from memory), it's bad policy to assume that when somebody hurts, government must act. (permalink)

Taxed to Talk
My sister-in-law pointed out something interesting about her cell phone bill: it's very highly taxed. Here's the breakdown:

• Cost of service--$100 (actually, $99.99, but let's round up.)
• Government-required fees and taxes: $20.34.


• Tax rate: 20 percent.

And to think that plain old sales tax is usually 4-9 percent (depending on your jurisdiction), while the lowest federal income tax is in the mid-teens.

I imagine that landline service is also very highly taxed--which is why governments would love to tax VOIP (Internet-based phone calls). (permalink)

Technology Impairing Competition in Politics
The Christian Science Monitor discusses gerrymandering, or the drawing of legislative districts for political advantage. It's a bipartisan game with a long history. But advanced software and data mining techniques have made an uncertain "art" into an engineering trick. The result? Elections whose results are increasingly known in advance. (permalink)

How Reliable are School Testing Results?
There are, in the main, two ways to reform schooling. One is to increase parental choice through tuition tax credits, vouchers, open enrollment, and the like. The other is to stay within the local-monopoly (your child's school is determined by where you live) model and increase the use of standardized tests.

The No Child Left Behind act relies heavily on the latter approach, and that's got some schools concerned. Says the Chicago Sun-Times, "Schools across the region say state test data coming out next week is riddled with errors, including some that could ultimately lead to sanctions under the federal No Child Left Behind law."

The Tribune (registration required) says that the errors have "forced the Illinois State Board of Education to consider allowing individual schools to make last-minute changes to the data--10 days before the information is supposed to be made public." Most of the difficulty appears to relate to students opting not to participate in the racial identity game. (NCLB penalizes schools for achievement discrepancies among specified racial or ethnic groups.)

Labels: Education, School choice

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Death Penalty Gets Attention in Minnesota
The recent disappearance (and likely kidnapping and murder) of a college student has revived suggestions, by Governor Tim Pawlenty, that Minnesota bring back the death penalty, which it abolished in 1911.

The fellows at Powerlineblog (attorneys all) defend the idea. They take a local newspaper columnist to task for comparing Pawlenty to the leader of a lynch mob. The final thought: "Capital punishment is one way of making sure that some vicious criminals never have the opportunity to find another victim."

And from a related post:
"The infrequency and delays with which the death penalty is applied necessarily make arguments about deterrence -- other than the ontologically certain deterrence achieved as to the particular offender in a given case -- difficult to resolve." (permalink)

In Defense of TABOR
Colorado has one of the strongest measures to restrain excessive growth in government spending. It's called TABOR, or Taxpayers Bill of Rights. It's been under attack, and John Caldara, president of the Independence Institute, has a reply to the critics. (permalink)

Trial Lawyers Inc.
The Manhattan Institute has a website devoted to the issue of tort reform as well as the effects that trial lawyers are having on business and public policy. It has some interesting stats on the first page. Fees going to trial lawyers exceed 2 percent of GDP. Wow! (permalink)

In Praise of Cartoons
This is going a bit (ok, a lot) from the emphasis of this blog, but hey, it's Saturday, so here goes ....

It's been said that in comedy, you can get away with saying things that you can't say in other situations, and that animated shows (cartoons) get away with what could never be portrayed in sitcoms.

Jonah Goldberg argued a few years ago that The Simpsons is "possibly the most intelligent, funny, and even politically satisfying TV show ever." It is, he says, a program that is both political and funny--and, surprisingly, is both simultaneously.

Part of the show's attraction is that "its satire spares nothing and no one," taking cracks at Republicans and Democrats alike. This evenhandedness, says Goldberg, is novel, contributing to the show's appeal. (Surely liberal pieties are prone for satirization as well as conservative ones.) He contrasts the show's serious treatment of social topics (immigration, gay rights, fundamentalism) with the nihilism of Seinfeld, which is by some accounts the best comedy ever.

Goldberg, writing for a conservative publication, invokes, of all people, an English professor, to argue that "The Simpsons celebrates many, if not most, of the best conservative principles: the primacy of family, skepticism about political authority, distrust of abstractions."

Meanwhile, Brian Anderson, writing for City Journal, praises South Park for its anti-liberal jabs. Though the show is vulgar, he says that "conservative critics should pay closer attention to what South Park so irreverently jeers at and mocks." He singles out episodes that ridicule" multicultural sentimentality about holistic medicine," multiculturalism in general (in some aspects, life in the third world is inferior to life in America), and "effort to draw the mantle of civil liberties over behavior once deemed criminal, pathological, or immoral" (pedophilia).

Now if I could just find comparable treatment of King of the Hill, we'd have a trio of animated analysis here. (permalink)

College Football Traditions
Time for a little diversion. Today's the last day of the regular season for college football season. In honor of that, I wish to highlight some fine stories on "page 2" of ESPN.Com. Various contributors to the site offer their take on the "temples," and traditions of college football.

This is what I like about college football--so many traditions. They provide a rallying point for thousands (and often millions) of people for a relatively harmless interest. (A few people do go off the deep end, as with every activity.) So here's an incomplete roundup of football experience, as reported by ESPN.

One correspondent gets to run with the Buffalo--all 1,300 pounds--at Colorado and goes for a helicopter ride with four Army cadets. They jump out of the chopper and parachute onto the 50 yard line, to present the ball to the refs.

Florida A&M is not known as a football powerhouse, but Kieran Darcy lauds the Marching 100, the university's marching band known for introducing innovations copied by other bands. (One trend I don't find too encouraging: playing more and more pop music.) The story is a good reminder of what you miss by not being in the stands. I often wish that the talking heads during halftime shows on TV would be replaced by a few cameras focused on the band.

Louisiana State University (LSU) features a tiger with a $2 million home. The stadium is known as "Death Valley," which leads to this observation:

If the tiger's future cage isn't a 'Sign of the Apocalypse,' you should be able to see one from the historic, 92,000-seat Tiger Stadium, otherwise known as Death Valley. I know this because there is a 25-yard-long sign that reads, "Welcome to Death Valley'' mounted below the pressbox. Those are the little touches at which LSU excels. Most schools wouldn't even put up such a name. Others would just say, "Death Valley" and leave it at that. But not LSU. Here, it's "Welcome to Death Valley." That's beautiful. It's like descending into Hell and finding a sign that reads, "Satan Invites You to Enjoy Eternal Damnation."

One writer says that
Nebraska fans are uncommonly helpful during pre-game festivities. "This being Nebraska, everyone is invited to stop by, especially opposing fans."

Notre Dame has "Touchdown Jesus," the mural on the library wall that faces the stadium. No wonder, then, that "For a sports fan, visiting Notre Dame for a football weekend is like a pilgrimage."

Ohio State fans cheer the "dotting of the I" in the band's "Script Ohio" at the beginning of each game. "The most famous of the Buckeye rituals is the marching band's spelling of "Ohio" and the dotting of the letter "i" by a carefully-selected sousaphone player. When I got the assignment to come cover the Ohio State experience, the first thing I did was call and ask whether it would be possible to dot the "i" at an upcoming game. Jessica called back right away, excited that I was coming, but firm on the question of the "i."

"I'm afraid that would be impossible," she said. "It's a very special honor; it's a sacred thing."

Traditions at Oklahoma [sorry, I forgot to include a link first time around, and now I can't find it] include the Ruf/Neks, a spirit team with shotguns, the Cecil Car, a 1923 Model T driven to every game. Oddly enough, the most tradition that is perhaps most well-known, at least to national TV audiences, the Sooner Schooner (a
covered wagon) is the most recent.

South Carolina has a relatively recent tradition: tailgating in spruced-up railroad cabooses. Might as well do something to add to tradition; the football program doesn't bring much to the table.

Texas A&M has so many different traditions, it is like a parallel universe, incomprehensible to the outsider.

"So what's to make of all these rituals? Aggies preach about the love, loyalty and pride they have for their school. If you're an insider -- a fanatic member of the maroon-clad Aggie clan -- you think the traditions are spectacular. You think it fosters a unique sense of belonging, a feeling of one with the football team, the corps, the student body and the yell leaders. You think this is what college sports is all about.

But if you're an outsider (or a Longhorn), you can't help but think it's overdone. You peek in the bookstore and see children's books titled "Reveille's 12 Days of Christmas," and you grow skeptical. You hear that the Aggies never lose (they were either outscored or ran out of time) and laugh. And you see the yell leaders running around in their auto-mechanic jumpsuits without any skirt-wearing female sidekicks, and you wonder how A&M missed the "21st Century" memo.

The author sums it up with a quote from an Aggie senior: "I guess in order to understand, you have to be an Aggie."

The University of Washington gets credit for having the best pre-game food: fresh salmon, crab, berry cobbler, and a microbrew. (permalink)

Drug Reimportation Forum
The Heartland Institute has posted remarks from it forum on the policy and health dangers of drug reimportation.

State Senator Steve Rauschenberger warns against public officials who find that "the solutions to their problems are somehow vested in multimillion-dollar companies that are obeying the law." He points out that Illinois already helps seniors (with a household income of up to $25,000) buy drugs. He calls for tort reform, utilization review, and other alternatives to importing prescription drugs from countries that practice price controls.

Robert Goldberg of the Manhattan Institute warns that all legalizing reimportation "will do is shift the profits of this vast, criminal, illegal, and unsafe enterprise from overseas into the United States." He also argues that many Canadian drugs don't actually come from Canada, and are in fact not regulated by Health Canada.

Steven J. Entin, of the Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation says that the response to concerns over drug affordability are not to reduce the price of all drugs, but to give income support (much like food stamps) to the poor. "What do you think would happen if we tried to help the poor buy food by telling the grocery stores they would have to sell everything at 30 percent off; or if we told the farmers they would get only half of what they now get for corn and wheat and soybeans? Many farmers would go broke."

State Rep. Chris Lauzen take a contrarian view. "We are here to ask them to sell their drugs to us, their fellow U.S. citizens, for what they are selling to Canadian citizens."

Grace-Marie Turner, of the Galen Institute, emphasizes the safety issue. Do we really want to multiply the security threat to the U.S. drug supply? The FDA has its hands full protecting our domestic drug supply even without opening the border to 26 other countries, including countries we know harbor people who want to do harm to the citizens of the United States."

Joe Bast, of The Heartland Institute, summarizes the various arguments for and against importation.

Other speakers include Sean Heather, of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, David Miller of the Illinois Biotechnology Industry Organization, and John Graham, of the Fraser Institute (Canada). (permalink)

Why Political Parties Do Nothing About Affirmative Action
Ward Connerly, head of the American Civil Rights Institute, is leading the charge to place a measure on affirmative action on the Michigan ballot in November 2004. Like ballot questions in Washington, California, and other states, the measure would bar the public use of affirmative action (read: require governments to treat each person equally, regardless of race or color.)

It will take roughly $500,000 to get the 320,000 petition signatures required to place a measure on the ballot. But that's the only way the measure can become law, since both major parties fear putting it to an up-or-down vote. Democrats fear they will lose (up to two-thirds of those residents surveyed say the support putting an end to affirmative action in government policy). Republicans fear that a public vote on the measure will produce a backlash against them at the polls.

Meanwhile, the Detroit News provides a profile of an anti-anti-affirmative action group that hopes to thwart Connerly's plans. It consists of true believers and businesses who hope to stave off attacks from the preferences crowd. (permalink)

Where's a Smoke-Filled Room When You Want One?
Busybodies are hard at work throughout Illinois, trying to enact smoking bans. Now, I find smoking to be an obnoxous habit, and I am mildly allergic to cigarette smoke. But if you won't like the smell of smoke in a restaurant, here's a clue: Don't go there, to work or to eat.

But of course such bans are merely an extension of the "rights" culture. "I don't like smoke. I want to control your restaurant, and decide how it will be operated. It's my right to have a smoke-free meal in your establishment." (permalink)

You'll Shoot Your Eye Out
Jack Mabley of the Daily Herald reports that police in Glenview, Ill., have responded to 24 reports of kids carrying guns around. (Whether or not they have actually used them against a person is another story.) Actually, these aren't real guns, but "realistic-looking guns," the headline of Mabley's column calls them "toy guns." And they're not "assault rifles," we're talking about either. They're more like BB guns.

Still, that's not enough for Mabley, who says there is "no excuse" for these items to be sold. (A sporting goods story reports they are big sellers.)

So much for gun control being limited to the city of Chicago, when suburbanites are fearful of BB guns. Blame it on paranoia, rooted in the mass public's unfamiliarity with guns.

In the classic film A Christmas Story, a young boy is constantly warned that if he gets his prized BB gun for Christmas, "you'll shoot your eye out." No such thing happens, of course. But the film points out one truth--people are not stupid. They know that even BB guns carry risks. But risk alone is no reason to ban the sale of anything. If that was the case, we wouldn't have cars. (permalink)

Michigan House Washes Hands of Detroit Schools
The State of Michigan took over the Detroit Public Schools. Now it's ready to give it back to Detroit--either through an elected board, or to the mayor.

Among the interesting items in this story: "the Health Department and the district will sign a memorandum of understanding to ensure that all school kitchens are up to code."

Now what was that about school breakfasts again? Imagine if this was happening in a privately owned restaurant: how long would it be in business?

Labels: Education

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Prices Affect Health Care Decisions. Of Course.
A study in the New England Journal of Medicine, summarized ever-so-briefly in the Chicago Sun-Times, reports that when it comes to health care, prices do make a difference. The study looked at two large companies that went to a tiered co-payment schedule. Under this arrangement, employees have the lowest co-pay for prescription drugs, more for drugs on a company formulary, and even more for drugs not on the formulary. The findings: some people stopped taking some of the drugs altogether.

I suppose this is vindication of sorts, for those who think (as I do) that health care costs ought to be more visible. People do respond to incentives. That's the clear message of this experiment.

This may be spun by opponents of Medical Savings Accounts as a cautionary tale: "See, see, when people have a financial stake in their own health care, they won't take care of themselves as they ought to. They will even stop taking drugs they should be taking."

That would be the wrong lesson. Of course there are financial incentives in health care, and few people get everything they want or even need. But right now, the economic constraints are not visible; rationing is not self-selected by consumers, but done less visibly by government officials, hospital staff, insurance company technicians, corporate benefits managers, and the like. The problem with the companies examined in the study is not that financial incentives were visible to employees (they were--for drugs), but they are not even more clearly seen. It's time to expand the use of low-cost, high-deductible insurance to cover only catastrophic events, as well as things such as Medical Savings Accounts and Health Reimbursement Arrangements to address less costly expenditures.

Labels: Health care

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Welfare for All!
Attention taxpayers across the country: Chicago alderman Patrick O'Connor wants you to pay for the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to go into the breakfast business.

Here's the reasoning.
1. It's bad for to be fat.
2. Lots of kids in the CPS fat. They're fat because they snack throughout the school day.
3. They snack because they don't eat breakfast. (Often implied in calls for free meals at schools: families are too poor to feed their kids. So where do the kids get money for vending machine food?)
4. The CPS does serve breakfast to some kids, but it ought to expand that task to everyone.

Says the Chicago Sun-Times [ellipses in original] "A lot of children don't participate because . . . there's a stigma attached or they're not there in time," O'Connor said, arguing that much of the tab for an expanded breakfast program would be picked up by the federal government."

But the story also contains this interesting comment from a pediatrician: ""Thirty years ago, 66 percent of children walked to school. Today, only 3 percent do." Wonder if government policy has anything to do with that. Ya think?

Labels: Education

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Illinois Business Climate: Fair or Foul?
So how has Gov. Rod Blagojevich been as an overseer of the Illinois Economy? The president of the state's Chamber of Commerce finds at least one thing to praise: "I can't recall any previous administration actually putting out an agenda they can be held accountable for. I think that's positive. Now we've got to reserve judgment on whether it's image and PR or whether it's real."

To his credit, the governor has not raised sales or income taxes. But he has been part of an effort (successful) to raise the minimum wage, a job-killing action. And he has also "raised scores of business fees and increased taxes for some industries." Remember the principle: you get more of what you subsidize, and less of what you tax. More business taxes, less business.

The governor's staff defends his record, arguing, as this AP story in the Daily Herald summarizes them , "taxes and fees are comparable to other large, industrial states."

Perhaps. But have they noticed that jobs and people have been moving to lower-taxed states such as Colorado and Nevada, and that they are fighting a decades-long population shift to the sunbelt? (permalink)

Laboratories of Democracy
You've heard the expression that the states are "laboratories of democracy." A couple of years ago, Michael S. Greve explored the origin of that phrase. As coined by Justice Louis D. Brandeis, it "had almost nothing to do with federalism and everything to do with his commitment to scientific socialism." Rather than encourage experimentation in the states, the view of jurisprudence inherent in Brandeis' remarks hinders it.

(Thanks to Ramesh Ponnuru who mentioned this in "The Corner" of National Review during an ongoing debate over a federal marriage amendment.] (permalink)

Right Hand, Left Hand
Writing in the Weekly Standard, Irwin M. Stelzer provides a quick review of the legal and business challenges of obesity. Companies such as McDonalds and PepsiCo are under fire from trial lawyers, and the FDA may step in to require more extensive product labeling. State legislatures are considering a number of regulations. But Stelzer ends the article with a reminder of how government policy works at cross-purposes.

"Whether FDA regulation will stem the tide of legislation--150 bills are now in the hoppers of state legislatures, most of them to control foods distributed in schools--is uncertain. But no matter what the regulators or the states do, the federal government is unlikely to stop subsidizing the production of sugar, corn, and other fattening food products. After all, it has always subsidized tobacco growers." (permalink)

Dumping on Michigan
Some Michigan residents feel dumped on--literally. Some 20 percent of landfill trash last year came from "foreign" sources--other states, as well as Canada.

"Because of free trade agreements and interstate commerce rules, lawmakers can't ban trash from Canada or other states," the Freep says. (permalink)

Create Your Own Job
Steve Lowe was a supervisor in Snap-on tool factory in the southeastern Illinois town of Mr. Carmel. The factory closed, and declined an offer to take a similar job at another company site out of state. With few employers in this town of 8,000, he decided to become his own boss, and opened up a car wash.

As the Daily Herald puts it, "He'll have to polish a lot more to replace the $68,000 salary he lost when he was laid off in October, but he's not complaining." Lowe is now alone, of course. "[The] picture isn't all bleak, experts agree. Smaller manufacturers are growing," in downstate Illinois and elsewhere.

This story provides a small example of a broader trend: a greater number of people are taking on self-employment. In an article published yesterday, the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) observed that "The Self-Employed Boost U.S. Economic Recovery."

According to the WSJ, self-employment has risen by 400,000 in the last year, though "it has been hard to tell whether these new self-employed workers were really profiting from their ventures, or whether they were just biding their time during a period of painful unemployment."

Investment guru Kenneth Safian ran some numbers, and found that proprietor income was up 8.6 percent, compared with only 2.3 percent for people on company payrolls. His conclusion: we are "becoming more entrepreneurial." The political implication of this growth: unemployment may not be as big of a problem as official statistics indicate, since there is a lag between business formation and employment surveys.

The Journal suggests that one reason for the surge in self-employment income is the continued practice of outsourcing: what was once done by employees is now farmed out to freelancers, some of whom used to be employees of the same firm.

This isn't the first recovery in which self-employment income has outpaced corporate income. But it's a good sign--not only could it be a leading indicator of an economic uptick, but there could be significant implications for public policy. It could, for example, lead to greater acceptance of the inevitable--using market-based investments to shore up Social Security--as well as market-friendly policy in general. While large businesses can saddle up to big government to squash the competition, smaller firms are generally more favorably disposed to economic freedom. A push for that from a growing number of self-employed would be good for all of us. (permalink)

In a TIF over funding
Tax-increment financing (TIF) is one of those policies that sounds good, but is problematic. It offers tax relief for a specific area, for a period of time, for certain purposes. Tax cuts are great. We should have more. But TIFs are subject to the problem of hypotheticals--would this development, here, happen without this particular tax cut? They are also prone to political favoritism and abuse of eminent domain. This article about a proposed TIF in Springfield, Illinois, offers a quick intro to the topic. (permalink)

Sunday: Two Temples, Same God
Ever see a football player point a finger to the sky after a touchdown, as if to draw attention to God? The Detroit News has a story on religious athletes.

Best quote: Jason Hanson, kicker (and a very good one at that) for the Detroit Lions: "In the context of who God roots for, I have no idea."

(OK, so this isn't exactly policy-related, but still, interesting, given the role of the two temples--church, and the sports stadium--in American life.) (permalink)

Are Social Studies Neglected?
Barely one quarter of Michigan students meet the bar on standardized tests of social studies. According to the Freep, social studies teachers cite the emphasis on reading and math--through the No Child Left Behind Act--as the culprit.

They also cite the fact that social studies tests are not required to win Michigan Merit Award scholarships for college. Students aren't dumb: they follow the incentives (money).

But the neglect of social studies is nothing new. Social studies was my favorite subject in K-12, but with one or two exceptions, the teachers I had were mediocre. Junior-year history was simply a rehash of an 8th-grade class: a waste of time. (permalink)

Lost Inventory
A writer to the Detroit Free Press asks about the distances used on road signs ("33 miles to Pontiac: does that mean to the city limits, or to the center of the city?"). Columnist Matt Helms says "the Michigan Department of Transportation didn't immediately have available a list of signs to check out and see exactly which spot in Pontiac was used for the 33-miles sign."

This is not the most pressing policy issue, by any means, but it points out what may be a management problem. Shouldn't the Department of Transportation know where all of its signs are? With bar coding placed on every item in a supermarket, and the growth of radio ID tags and GPS technology, it would seem that the state ought to know where its property is "immediately."

Labels: Transportation

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Slippery Slopes
The Ironwood Daily Globe, in the Lake Superior snowbelt area, reports that Wisconsin has cut the hours its road-clearing crews will operate. The result could be a "long, accident-filled winter."

I may be guilty of special pleading--I would, after all, like to do some driving in Wisconsin this season. But shouldn't clearing the roads be one of the primary responsibilities of the government? Granted, it may not be exempt from some cost-cutting measures, but with the state poised to take on any number of other projects--including a $3 million "Hmong cultural center"--there are still yet other ways to balance the budget.

(Governor Doyle vetoed the appropriation for the Hmong center, but apparently he objected only to the procedure used to bring about the funding, not actually having state taxpayers pick up the tab.)

Labels: Transportation

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Post-Thanksgiving Thoughts
Hope you all had a fine Thanksgiving holiday, as I did.

It's a cliche to "give thanks." But to whom? I read once that a child came home from school, announcing that Thanksgiving Day occurred for the first time when the Pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians.

If you look into the history of the day, it's obvious that there is a strong element of gratitude to God. That's still appropriate. But giving thanks to other people is not wrong, either, for the Lord works in many ways, including through the institutions of good government, family, and fellowship. (permalink)