Latest Threat to Democracy: "God Bless America"
A letter-writer to today's Minneapolis Star-Tribune has a complaint about the Minnesota Twins. No, it's not their lousy record of late. It's that they play "God Bless America" at the start of the game. (Quite a contrast from attitudes shortly after 9/11, doncha think?) Even worse, they also play "Proud to be an American."

Can you hear the jackboots coming? Actually, Jerry Gale can. "It's too much like the Nazi Olympics in 1936."

Sounds like he ought to be running for president. We need a few more bozos in contention, just to keep it fun.
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Be Wary of Surveys
GolfDigest.com conducted an "survey" of its readers. I put the word survey in quotes; I can't tell if this was an online querry (in general, notoriously inaccurate) or scientifically rigorous. Still. there's a broader point to be made here.

Golf Digest asked "How would you rate your own pace of play" on the course? Here are the percentages:
FAST: 58
AVERAGE: 34
SLOW: 5

The next question was "How would you rate most golfer's pace of play?" Take a look at these:
FAST: 2
AVERAGE: 42
SLOW: 56

Now, as a struggling hacker, I am probably on the slow side. It's harder to keep pace if you making par on a hole is a cause for celebration.

Again, I don't think this was a scientific survey, but there's an obvious observation here: it's always the other guy. Policy makers ought to spend more time with their convictions and less time trying to reading public opinion.
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Made Deficit, Will Travel
In the face of the State of Michigan's $1.6 billion deficit, state employees are being asked (unsuccessfully, I suspect) to make concessions, aid to local governments is being cut, and various groups of people are making do without. So what are legislators doing? Traveling to "choice spots" in Michigan (Mackinac Island) and throughout the country.

According to a Detroit News article, "Legislators say networking and brainstorming with colleagues from other states is an essential part of the job."

Sure, travel is useful, not only for vacation, but for work. But travel is one of the first areas that gets squeezed in the corporate world. Looks like it's one of the last in the world of state government.
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Court: Violate the Constitution in Order to Spend More
One can argue that much government spending violates the constitution. For example, a close reading of the U.S. Constitution would whack away about 70 percent (I'm guessing here) of federal spending, by eliminating most federal functions aside from patent law, military defense, the U.S. mint, a diplomatic corps, and a few other activities.

Everything else--almost all of the alphabet soup of federal agencies--can be said to be unconstitutional because it violates the spirit of the Constitution, which offers a limited vision of what government should do. (Such violations, to the extent that a legal case is made on their behalf, are based on an expansive reading of the "general welfare" clause.)

But there's another way in which government spending can be unconstitutional, and that is if spending programs and tax systems are enacted in violation of procedural rules. Procedure's important? Certainly. Think of "Miranda Rights," for example: you have to follow procedure, even if you're the cops.

In Nevada, the legislature has not passed a budget by the procedurally required two-thirds vote. Even though this requirement is in the state's constitution, the Nevada Supreme Court has told the legislature to ignore the constitution and ignore the 2/3 requirement. The Volokh Conspiracy has a good rundown of this shameful act, and goes so far as to suggest that impeachment of the judges on the supreme court can be justified. (Thanks to National Review for pointing this out.)
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Sprawl, Sprawl, Sprawl, Sprawl
The U.S. Census Bureau is out with a new release on the nation's shifting demographics. If you've read much about demographics, you'll not be surprised to learn that the top five growing cities during the time 2000-2002 were in Arizona and Nevada.

The Bureau also notes that Joliet, Ill., is the 10th-fastest growing incorporated area, growing at a clip of 11.4 percent. This provides the suburban Chicago-based Daily Herald a chance to trot out the bogeyman of "Sprawl" with this headline: "Suburb's Sprawl Gaining Speed."

While the Census Bureau says that the City of Chicago lost population during the last two years, "The fastest-growing areas of the state in 2002 were towns anywhere from 20 to 40 miles from downtown Chicago." It notes that other cities near Joliet, including Romeoville (13.5 percent), Plainfield, and Oswego grew by double-digit figures in the time July 2001 to July 2002.

Why the growth in this areas, which involve over an hour's commute to the Chicago Loop?
- Some people value the opportunity to get some "country living" far from the urban core.

- Cheaper land prices mean, as one house-shopper put it, "you can get something new out here for the price of what's old where we live now" (in a closer-in suburb). A sales rep for a developer, quoted in the article, "barely had time to gasp between phone calls and visitors streaming in to see model homes that range from about $130,000 to $158,000." In the closer-in suburb in which I lived during four years, that kind of money will buy a condo (and perhaps only a one-bedroom one at that), not a house.

Of course, an article about population growth can't ignore the professional fretters. The "village planner" for Plainfield says ""We see growth generally as a good thing as long as it's done as smart growth." Ah smart growth! That nebulous term that is a rallying cry for a motley collection of big city mayors who hate to lose population (and power), anti-auto cranks, environmentalists who prefer to use land for birds rather than people, and romantics wishing to re-create the mythical "community" of early 20th-century living, complete with boulevards, street cars, and large front porches. (Oddly enough, this last group wishes to re-establish a pattern of living that was the "suburban sprawl" of its day.)

The village planner of Plainfield defines "smart growth" as "working with developers to make sure Plainfield, Will County's oldest community, does not lose its identity to development." Hmm. Who defines a "community's identity"--a centralized planner, or the voluntary interactions of its residents? Apparently, the thinking goes, the top down approach is best.

The article also argues that another contributing factor to growth on the metro fringe is that "Interstate highways and suburban rail lines make it easy to commute to work." That depends on what your definition of "easy commute" is. Since my wife wanted to live and work in the 'burbs, not the city, I spent 2 hours and 40 minutes commuting each day. Granted, taking Metra (the regional rail line) was cheaper than driving and parking, and much less nerve-racking.

But as even the Daily Herald article notes, jobs, not just people, are moving to the suburbs. This means that as facilitators of "sprawl," highways (and where they exist, commuter rail lines) are fairly small. The Buckeye Institute, based in Columbus, O (which has itself seen a fair amount of "sprawl"), demolishes the "highways cause sprawl" argument in this study. A brief commentary based on the study is here, and the press release is here.
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Radio Station Must Play Dixie Chicks, But Can't Broadcast Ad of My Political Opponent: John McCain
If any speech should be protected, it's political speech. Yet the latest "campaign finance reform" law, courtesy of (among others) John McCain, muzzles political speech. Thanks to today's OpinionJournal, though (selected "Best of the Web" and scroll down to the section marked: Mandatory 'Free Speech'), we learn that the senator has a new-found concern for censorsorship--at least in the case of mega-media starlets.

John McCain and various Democratic senators are standing up for the Dixie Chicks. Yesterday the Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing on media consolidation, and the senators heard from the head of Cumulus Media Inc., which for 30 days banned its country stations (though not its top 40 ones) from playing Chicks tunes because one Chick had sparked an uproar by making a rude comment about President Bush during a concert overseas. The Baltimore Sun reports: "It's a strong argument about what media concentration has the possibility of doing," McCain told Cumulus Chairman Lewis W. Dickey Jr. "If someone else offends you, and you decide to censor those people, my friend, the erosion of our 1st Amendment is in progress."

OpinionJournal provides this comment: "Mr. Dickey later admitted he would not repeat the move in light of the committee's criticism."

Yeow! At least McCain is consistent, restricting free speech all around. First, he muzzles the freedom of would-be opponents to finance advertisements critical of him (the truest definition of censorship). Now, he's gone after the right of a private broadcaster to exercise editorial and business judgement about what music it will play. In either case, there's one arbiter of what's acceptable and what's not: John McCain.
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Roads, not Trails
Bike trails are a great example of the "nice, but does government need to do this" category. In DuPage County (west suburban Chicago), the county board voted to spend $189,000 on the Southern DuPage County Regional Trail, a bike trail.

Money for the trails comes (in part) from local gas taxes. Do bicycles tooling around on crushed limestone paths take cars off the road? Not when there's this little thing called "winter" that lasts for, four months of the year.

DuPage County has traditionally been a Republican bastion (when a single Democrat won an election a few years ago to the county board--whose members number somewhere in the 12-16 range--it was big news.) But the votes at county board meetings sometimes have a unanimity that rivals elections in communist nations. So hats off to the lone commissioner, James Zay, who voted against this latest expenditure.

"Right now, things are tight, and we can use the money in better ways," he told his colleagues. "Paths and trails are a good thing, but when we have a tight budget we need to prioritize."

The trail system has been a pet project of the powerful chairman of the board, so Zay's plea went unheeded. ""I'm committed to the system," said Chairman Robert Schillerstrom. "I'm committed to providing recreation opportunities to the people of DuPage County." And if the county doesn't provide those opportunities ...?

On a personal note ... I used to ride some of these trails. I may agree with Zay, but if the money has already been spent, not using the trails accomplished no political purpose.

One day, while riding, I noticed a sign, near a trailhead, that gave me pause. It told me that some of the funds for this trail had come from a Community Development Block Grant from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. DuPage is one of the 30 wealthiest counties in the entire country. Why should it be either (a) siphoning money away fromother counties, or (b) letting Washington process and then return (minus overhead) some of its money for a bike trail?
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Is it a Tax or a Fee? Michigan Cities Raise Prices
Facing reductions in grant money from the state, several cities in southeast Michigan are increasing fees. That's not necessarily bad.

Though some folks may call these tax increases, some of the higher fees reflect a 'pay as you go' philosophy that has its place in funding government services. The Huron-Clinton Metroparks system, for example, is raising park entrance fees for the first time in 10 years; annual passes will now be $20, instead of $15, while daily passes go from $2 to $4. Plymouth is increasing the fee for each bag of garbage from $1 to $1.50. In both cases, the increase is tied to the amount of services demanded. (Actually, Plymouth ought to embrace the logic of fee-for-service, and get out of the trash business entirely. Let private companies do it.)

On the other hand, some fees give lie to the notion that fees are only for voluntary transactions. Dearborn Heights, for example, charges a fee .... for processing tax payments!
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No Criminal Laws = No Criminals
Stop sending so many people to jail, and crime will fall. That's the logic of an LA Times article reviewed by George Neumayr.

Granted, I haven't read the original piece. But if Neumayr accurately relays the healine--"Message From Oakland: How 'get tough laws' victimized a fragile city",--then there's something funny going down at the left coast times. (Probably similar to the NY Times, which ran, supposedly, a headline to the effect that "Crime is down, but imprisonment is up." Duh!)

There is a grain of truth in the LA Times article. People do learn more about criminal activity while in jail, and some crimes are best punished through alternative sentencing rather than time in the state pen. Meanwhile, state officials ought to open the door to non-profit, outside groups that want to offer religiously-based programs designed to help prisoners make the transition to life beyond bars. One such program, the InnerChange Freedom Initiative, received high marks from a study (PDF format) produced by the Manhattan Institute.
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Boring Middle-Aged Guys for the Second Amendment
News Flash! Advocates of greater personal liberty and responsibility are not Rambo-wannabees, militia members suffering from testosterone poisoning.

That's one message from a profile in the St. Paul Pioneer-Press about Joe Olson, author of Minnesota's conceal-carry law. Olson, we learn, is "a self-described 'short, balding tax attorney'" from the suburbs who likes to tinker with an old sports car, lives near a golf course, and is a faculty member the left-leaning Hamline University School of Law. As reporter Tim Nelson put it, "The man who put Minnesota's new handgun permit law on the books doesn't drape ammo belts around his shoulders, clench daggers in his teeth or paint his face with camouflage."

Who woulda thunk it?

So why did Nelson and his paper think it newsworthy that an advocate of gun rights--part of the Bill of Rights--is a plain-vanilla guy? Either they think that such people are normally beyond the pale, or believe that this is what their readers think. Neither is encouraging.

But wait, there's more amazing news about Olson, the would-be gun nut. His law school students have described him as "open-minded." Imagine. A professor who actually judges his students by the quality of their work rather than their ideology. There are a few leftist profs who ought to be told about this.
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Teach Your Children Well
Minnesota recently liberalized its handgun permit law, making it easier for law-abiding citizens to legally pack heat. (In more populated urban areas, the process is now easier; in less populated rural areas, it now actually costs more, with a higher fee and a new training requirement thrown in). This has, of course, resulted in some hysterics and exaggerated claims. I heard a radio commentator mention the following story: A woman stands up at a meeting in a prosperous, relatively crime-free suburb, and laments the new law. She says, in effect, "My 5 year old child says that guns will be on the street, and that she's scared, and that she wants to live to enter kindgergarten. Why can't the legislators understand what my 5 year old knows?"

Maybe it's because they are not naive little children, with their knowledge limited only to what their mommies tell them?
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"Bring it on." Why Not Say It?
President Bush has been criticized for saying to those attacking American troops in Iraq, "Bring it on." Al Sharpton (why are we taking him seriously?) compared Bush to a gang leader. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) called Bush's remarks "cocky" and "unwise." Richard Gephardt, the man who would-have-been Speaker of the House, says that it was phony, macho rhetoric."

Let's take stock here. The (allegedly) fourth-largest military in the world (Iraq's) defeated in less time than it takes to conduct the NBA playoffs. Bush is the Commander in Chief of the largest, best trained, best equipped military in the world. Fighting forces are composed largely of "cocky" "macho" young men, and their commander says to the world "Think your tough? My boys are tougher." What's the problem? The purpose of the U.S. military is to defend America, and itself--not win popularity contests. Or have some segments of our society forgotten that?
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Judicial Activism was Required--Once
Syndicated columnist, Charles Krauthammer does a fine job of briefly discussing the political problem of judicial activism, in light of the recent Supreme Court decisions. In brief, it promotes social unrest by taking issues out of the political arena--where people feel free to speak their mind and participate in our political system--and settles them (more or less) in a process that resembles the "arbitrariness of Iran's Council of Guardians." (How else to explain the fact that decisions of the Court often turn on what one justice-Sandra Day O'Connor--has to say, especially when her opinions turn this way and then another?)

In a column reprinted in the Detroit News, Krauthammer reminds us of why judicial activism was justified in ending legal segregation--and why it's not legitimate today.

Though he supports legal abortion, he calls the means used to bring that about--the Roe v. Wade decision-- an "act of judicial usurpation that deserves repeal." He also would, had he been a legislator, voted to repeal anti-sodomy laws, but also says that "it was not the court's place to do the people's work when it struck down all such laws."

But anyone who calls for "judicial minimalism," as Krauthammer has, is subject to the spurious charge of being a segregationist. You see, segregationists fought against judicial activism; judicial activism was on the side of the angels; therefore, judicial activism is a good thing.

Krauthammer agrees that segregation did call for judicial activism--yet argues that this does not establish it as a norm.

The argument against judicial activism is that it impedes, overrides and in effect destroys normal democratic practice. But in the segregated South there was no normal democratic practice. Blacks were disenfranchised. They could not undo the injustice by legislative means because they had been deprived of those very means.

It was a Catch-22. That's why the court had to intervene. That's why the court was right to intervene. It did not mint new rights; it extended to African-Americans the normal rights of democratic participation.

[snip]
This restoration of fundamental democratic practice simply does not apply to the cases in question today: abortion, affirmative action and gay rights. No one here is barred from participating in the political process.

A good concise statement of the problem.
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Self-Government Requires Character
As radio commentator Paul Harvey likes to say, "self-government won't work without self-discipline." Having completed a long trip home a short time ago, I haven't the energy to fully develop the argument. As St. Paul Pionner Press columnist Laura Billings explains, though, effective government requires a modicum of social decency--something that was in short supply during a July 4 fireworks display.

A crowd had gathered on a lake to observe the fireworks, and somewhere on Lake Minnetonka, some men got into an altercation, and one ended up dead. That's bad, but the story gets worse.

a hundred or more Lake Minnetonka boaters refused to cooperate with sheriff's deputies trying to recover the body of a 31-year-old homicide victim, because they didn't want to give up the good view of the evening's fireworks displays.

She blames this on a " tide of selfishness and self-absorption." Perhaps so. But I wonder how long before someone repeats this line and adds "as exemplifiedby the call for cutting government services rather than raising taxes."
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I am the Lorax
Remember the children's story "The Lorax," which pitted evil man versus the noble Lorax (an undetermined creature) who proclaimed "I speak for the trees?" Well, perhaps the Lorax is really Eleanor Himmelfarb, a suburban Chicago woman. She recently donated conservation easements on her property (thus prohibiting development, forever) to a county agency known as the forest preserve district.

Fearing that a chunk of the county, currently occuped by 4 and 5-acre lots, would be subdivided, Himmelfarb took the action hoping to inspire her neighbors to do the same. What's noteworthy is her rationale for doing so. As she was quoted by the Daily Herald,

"I know the houses that will go in behind me don't belong in the woods," she said. "They're going to intrude on the landscape. That's what's grating. The trees are what's important."

Now, I enjoy a good forest (especially if it happens to border a lake), but there seems to be something askew in the priorities here. And I thought that people--whose needs include housing--were important, not "the landscape."
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