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.
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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."
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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"No Child Left Behind" Requires School Choice
That's the conclusion of this paper (pdf) from the Independence Institute.
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Violate the Constitution. After all, it's for Education!
In Nevada, the legislature approved a budget (by majority vote) but not the tax increases (which require a supermajority, thanks to a referrendum enacted a few years ago.) The governor (a Republican) wants tax increases so badly he sues the legislature (with the teachers union chiming in, of course). The Supreme Court of the state sides with the governor and the union, and orders the legislature to raise taxes. That's right, a court sets aside not only a law enacted by the voters, but decides what the level of taxation should be. This is self-government?

Today, Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund weighs in on the possible political fall-out of this controversy. What's even more revealing, though, is the response to Fund's article. (OpinionJournal pieces feature reader responses as well.) Here is, in its entirety, the response of Steven Platzer, a leftist from Chicago whose comments often appear on the response pages:

Boy do those politicians have a lot of nerve, thinking they have a inescapable responsibility to see to it that the children of their state get a half-way decent education. Don't they understand that in our new compassionate America we can't expect the citizenry of our states to pay for that.

Which politicians does Platzer speak about? Perhaps the judges?
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Banning Cell Phones is an Overreach
Let's make it a trifecta for auto-related stories today. (I have had, I should point out, not a single speeding ticket in my life.) A state legislator in Wisconsin wants the Badger State to join New York state in banning cell phones use while driving. The National Conference of State Legislators says that 42 states are considering some sort of ban. Of course, such a ban is an overreach, and would be based (as many bad laws are) on a recent tragedy (in which someone was killed on the road by another driver who couldn't get off the phone.) Sometimes using a phone poses a serious challenge to driving, but many times, it doens't. I'm with the AAA of Wisconsin on this one--there are already laws dealing with inattentive driving. If need be, use those laws rather than take on 147 million cell phone customers across the country.
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Another Reason for Electronic Tolling
In another automotive/road story, today's Daily Herald of suburban Chicago says that the Illinois State Highway Authority has already chased down people 50+ violators: people who have passed through tollway booths (many are unmanned, or even without gates) without paying. Now they're going down the food chain, pursuing people with as few as 5 violations. (The toll authority, presumably, has gotten much better at managing and reviewing its extensive video archive of tollboth transactions.)

There is a due process concern in this. The Herald qauotes one defense attorney as saying "You only have 18 months to file DUI charges, but you can go two years back for a 50-cent toll?"

Overall, though I'm glad that the authority is finally making enforcement stick. The system is based on the principle of user-pays, and, well, everyone who uses it should pay. But anyone who lives in metro Chicago (or those who drive through on a regular basis) ought to be using electronic tolling (the version there is called I-PASS), which goes a long way to eliminating the bottlenecks of tollbooths.
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"It's not a Remedial Program. It's a Revenue-Generating Program."
In an effort to maintain college scholarships for the middle class, Michigan's legislature has passed (and the governor is expected to sign) two measures that should increase the state's take by $65 to $75 million a year. The first lowers the legal standard for drunk driving from 0.10 to 0.08 blood alcohol content (BAC). This comes after lobbying from the neo-prohibitionist group MADD, and ore importantly, threats from the feds to withhold highway money (which the feds collect and then send back to the state) for highway construction. (So much for federalism, again.)

A second measure levies a number of new (or higher) fees for driving licences for those with specified violations. Those with 7 or more points face another $100 fee come renewal time, with another $50 for each point. The fine for driving without a license, or without proof of insurance goes to $150. (Driving 9 miles over the speed limit--which would put you in the slow lane in many of the highways outside Chicago, and, I suspect, in Michigan as well--is punished by 2 points.)

According to the Detroit News,

Lawmakers who championed the bill said their main goal was to cut the toll inflicted by drivers with bad records, who are involved in one of every six traffic deaths in the state.

Michigan's crackdown was patterned on a system launched 20 years ago in New Jersey. But officials there said the system wasn't meant to make the roads safer, and they haven't studied whether it has helped cut down the number of fatal crashes.

"It's not a remedial program," said David Weinstein, a spokesman for New Jersey's Motor Vehicle Commission, which administers the program. "It's a revenue-generating program. It wasn't designed with the idea of making bad drivers good or getting bad drivers off the road, although that is a byproduct in some instances."

I'm no apologist for reckless drivers (they get higher fines under the measure, too, as they should). But here again, we see the growing appetite of government justified in the name of public safety. When it comes to speed (and I'm actually drive on the slower side), it isn't absolute speed that causes a problem, it's mixing 45mph slowpokes with 85mph racers. For some views on motor vehicle laws that are contrary to what you will find at MADD, AAA, and such, check out the National Motorists Association.
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Sweet Mystery of Penumbras
The U.S. Supreme Court criticized for using pop sociology in deciding socially-charged cases, such as Roe v. Wade (abortion) and Lawrence v. Texas (sodomy). Thanks to a pointer from The Corner in National Review, I take a valuable lesson in history, law, and the intellectual arrogance of a certain U.S. Supreme Court justice. In 1985, the Court ruled that Long Island sound is not part of the high seas, because Long Island is not .... an island. What is amusing (and appalling) about the decision is Harry Blackmun's attempt to survey the literature in geology. As an article in Newsday points out through their interviews with geologists, he gets it all wrong. Blackmun, of course, is the man who wrote the opinion in Roe v. Wade (which even pro-choice advocates concede is a horribly drafted piece of work), bypassing 2,000 years of Christian history and reaching to ancient civilizations for moral and legal guidance. [Thanks, Norm, for digging out the URL from NRO on this.]
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Last Call for Philip Morris?
I've never been a smoker, but even tobacco companies ought to be given due process and subject to sane laws. One of the latest chapters in the campaign against Big Tobacco (driven by money more than health concerns) was a $10 billion judgment against Philip levied by a Madison County (Ill.) court. The judge then ordered the company to post a $12 billion appeals bond--which the company says it can't afford. Greg Blankenship, director of the Illinois Policy Institute, captures the lunacy of the lawsuits in his blog, A New Can of Worms:

Companies that employ people with families should not have to face a bankruptcy judge so they can afford to get their day in court. The tort system in this country cost every man woman and child in this country $721 in 2001 and that cost is expected to rise to $1,000 over the next two years. Surely, that meets the definition of a regressive tax. Where are the liberals? Oh, yeah, they're the one's earning a living off the settlement money by telling us how we can't eat oreos, anymore.

I share Greg's idea that there is a silver lining in bankruptcy--it would disrupt the plans of thousands of state officials across the country, people who were planning to feast off the fruits of what what was, face it, an act of legal extortion (the tobacco settlement.) They would have to get in line with all the other creditors. But what a horrible precedent also.
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Day Care Downer
According to two new reports on day care, children "who spend long hours in child care may experience more stress and are at increased risk of becoming overly aggressive and developing other behavior problems." The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, a branch of the National Institutes of Health, is responsible for one study, which found that children who spent more time in day care had more difficulty getting along with others.

The other study, from Institute of Child Development of the University of Minnesota, found the children in day care exhibited higher levels of a hormone associated with stress.

There are many possible jumping points for public policy, but here's one: at the least, in tax policy we should not be favoring intitutional care over home care.
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You've Got Cheap Booze in Pennsylvania
The sale of alcoholic drinks is one of the most bizarre areas of commerce today, mostly because it is a highly-regulated business. There is plenty of opportunity for corruption (Sun-Times columnist John Kass, for example, has frequently suggested that some payoff was in mind when Jesse Jackson's family got an Anheuser-Busch distributorship). And there is some strange logic going on: In one northwestern Wisconsin town, I could not buy a six-pack at a grocery store, but I would (I think) have been able to buy all the booze I wanted if I stopped in at a bar. Is drinking and driving the compelling state interest here? Some states have been nakedly protectionist, barring online sales of wine from out of state vineyards, while allowing sales from in-state wineries.

Even more bizarre are state-owned stores. In some number of states, if you want some tequila, you need to purchase it from the state.. Now, many people have moral reservations about gambling and drinking alcoholic beverages; others don't. But why should the state be the monopoly provider of either?

One reason, obviously, is money. Stateline.org reports that Pennsylvania officials are trying to repackage some of their wares and make some other changes in order to entice state residents from buying their hooch within the Keystone State. Apparently, the prices at the stores run by the state's Liquor Control Board are too high, sending people into neighboring states. It's nice to know, I guess, that some government officials recognize the role of price competition.

By the way, the Independent Institute (Oakland, Calif.) has a new book on the subject of state regulation of these products. It's called Strange Brew. I haven't read it, but it looks interesting.
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Conceal OK, Carry Not
The Wisconsin Supreme Court has said that while you can't carry a conceal weapon in public, you can have one on your property. Good to know that they are in minimal compliance with the Second Amendment.

The case stems from a shopkeeper, a "victim of numerous robberries" who carried a handgun in his pocket while working at his grocery store. Police busted him during a stop to check on his operating license. (Checking an operating license? Isn't that the job of someone in the commerce department?)

In the majority opinion, the court ruled that "If the constitutional right to keep and bear arms is to mean anything, it must, as a general matter, permit a person to possess, carry and sometimes conceal arms to maintain the security of his private residence or privately operated business." But Wisconsin, the Journal-Sentinel reports, remains one of six states barring residents from carrying concealed weapons.
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Flower Power Along Illinois Roads
Illinois, like most states, overgrew its government during the 1990s, and paid the price in budget shortfalls when revenues fell flat. So the latest initiative of the new governor is ... planting flowers along interstate roads.

The state already spends $1 million a year on landscaping around roads. Estimates of the new push for flowers run from $1 to $2 million. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, first lady Patti "Blagojevich said her new program will be worth the relatively small cost because it will draw tourist dollars and cut back on mowing."

Perhaps it will save some money on mowing costs, but certainly not the entire amount. As for tourism? "Hey Honey, let's go to Illinois this year for vacation. I hear they have a nice set of petunias at mile marker 89."

UPDATE: Lest Illinois residents think they can save tax money and still have prettied-up roadsides by doing the plantings themselves, they best consider whether they would fare the fate of some people in western Canada, where unionized government workers see voluntary action as a threat to their jobs--and are willing to threaten peaceful citizens to take their own initiative.
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Michigan Dreamin'
Proving that there's nothing so popular as an unforceable law, Michigan has recently enacted a law against spamming. "The new law will require spammers to use the subject line "ADV:" as the first four characters to notify recipients of the advertising nature of the message," says the Detroit News.

Given the fact that so much spam starts overseas, or at least outside of Michigan, it's hard to see this as little more than a feel-good policy, a statement to beleagured computer users that "we're from the government, and we're here to help you."

UPDATE: A reader has told me that Illinois has enacted a similar measure. His comment: "What a joke." Indeed. The solutions to spam are going to be technical (better methods of filtering email, good online habits) and dollar-oriented (don't buy from spammers.)
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"We're Going Paperless."
Michigan's governor and legislature have hammered out a new budget deal. It includes $36 million for "laptop computers for all sixth-graders," says the Detroit News.

Republicans are allegedly the party of small government, but this initiative was spearheaded by the party's Speaker of the House, Rick Johnson. The paper quotes him as saying that after this purchase, "middle schools to go essentially paperless... this will truly make Michigan the technology state."

Two words: paperless office.

Right.

Too bad they didn't use the money for something that would truly help the cause of education, such as finding a way to implement a pay system that rewards teachers for competence, not years of service.
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Victories for the Moment--or Long Term?
Writing on the pages of OpinionJournal.com, Brendan Miniter comments on President Bush's recent trip to Africa. In an oblique way, Miniter says that it was the president's Christian faith that drives his interest in Africa: Christians want to help Africa; Bush is a Christian; therefore, Bush wants the U.S. government to help Africa.

Africa certainly needs help, but how much of that can actually come from the U.S. government--given the billions of dollars in wasted foreign aid over the years--is uncertain. (Government money tends to corrupt, especially the government-to-governmnent kind.)

Here's the part I found most interesting in Miniter's essay:

"Mr. Bush famously thanked Jesus on the campaign trail in 2000 for helping him get his life in order by quitting drinking in the 1980s. And now he's using the bully pulpit and the power of the presidency not so much to shrink the power and scope of government as to reorient its policies toward Christian, conservative principles."

Indeed, the Bush Administration is proving to be as prone to bloating government ("No Child Left Behind," prescription drug benefits for Medicare, etc.) as its predecessor.

Christians may take courage from the fact that one of their own is in office. Yes, they can be glad that they can trust his personal qualities. And yes, they can be glad that he's taking efforts to reduce discrimination against faith-based initiatives that line up for federal cash. But what happens after he leaves office? Merely reorienting the policies of the federal state is not enough, for they will again be reoriented, in a less friendly direction, after he leaves office. If, as is likely, the eight years of a Bush Administration expands the federal government at the current clip, the effects of a few years of friendly policies won't set much of a precedent. They will instead be merely a case of moving one group from the back of the line to the front--and then back again. Better to starve the beast over a grossly overreaching federal government than to engage in a futile attempt tame it. (The same applies to governments at other levels, by the way.)
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Don't Kill the Wonder Drug Machine
The Family Research Council, in its daily "Washington Update," provides as good of a summary of the case against the case against pharmaceutical companies as I've ever seen.

The U.S. dominates the world in the production of new wonder drugs because our free market system allows manufacturers to recover the staggering costs of research and development. Other countries with socialized medicine schemes support little or no pharmaceutical industry because price-controls make it impossible for companies to recover R&D costs. It's true that Canadians benefit from cheaper drugs because of government price controls, but they would not have new drugs at any price were it not for the research and development carried out by U.S. firms. H.R. 2427 would allow American-made drugs to be re-imported from Canada under that country's government-run price control system. In effect we would import price controls along with cheaper drugs (another step toward socialized medicine in America). While this might appear attractive in the short term - after all, who opposes cheaper drugs? - in the long run U.S. drug companies would be pressured to lower domestic prices to conform to the cheaper re-imports from Canada. This would, in turn, reduce the profits needed to fund research into new treatments. Let's not kill the goose that is laying golden eggs.

Everything else is elaboration on what should be--but sadly, isn't--obvious.
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Will Union's Choice for Governor Deny Choice to Families?
Milwaukee has had a school choice program for about a decade. Selected families get a voucher to take to schools operated by governments, or by private organizations. The Wisconsin Education Association Council, of course, hates that idea. So the Milwaukee program has a cap--participation in the program is limited to 15 percent of the enrollment of the Milwaukee Public Schools.

The Republican-controlled General Assembly would like to lift that cap. Governor Jim Doyle, a Democrat, has not come out and said that he will veto the budget measure lifting the cap, but it's likely that he will. Why? The WEAC was a critical to Doyle's recent election. Their other top agenda item: "ending a 10-year-old system of controls on school spending that has limited teachers' pay raises." Of course. Corral students into a lousy system, and get a pay raise to boot. If they succeed, though, watch for another pay raise demand, by stealth: smaller class sizes.
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If Gang Members Use 'Em, Ban 'Em
The City of Chicago is often a source of amusement and silly thinking. Alderman Billy Ocasio wants to ban the use of motorized scooters. The popularity of scooters, of course, comes and goes through the years. Some new versions are motorized, and are used by gangbangers. One woman told the Chicago Sun-Times, "I'm worried that pedestrians will get hit and that gang-bangers are using them to get around to do their crime." Of course, assault of any form is a serious crime. But attempting to ban something merely because it is a tool of crime is, to say the least, overreaching. Criminals use not only scooters, but shoes, belts, and (the clean ones anyway) detergent soap. Maybe we should ban the use of these tools of crime as well?
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Which Measures Excellence: Performance or Credentials?
Which measures excellence: performance or credentials? It seems like a question with an obvious answer. But if you said "performance," you got a red mark from the teachers unions, which have almost uniformly staked the professional bonafides of their members on credentials (certification) rather than on performance (success in elevating student achievement). In fact, the NEA and AFT suggest that what policy makers should focus on are inputs to the education system, rather than outputs (student performance). Can you imagine a private sector who thinks that way lasting very long? ("Well, boss, yes, one-third of our products are defective, but by golly, all of our line workers have a college degree!")

Teacher unions love to focus on inputs, all of which increase their pay and make their work easier: smaller classes, more time for lesson preps, and so forth. One near sancrosanct credential is certification by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS). According to stateline.org, 48 of the 50 states offer some incentives for teachers to get certified by the NBPTS. What kind of incentives? Higher pay, for one: $6,000 in Mississippi and $7,500 in South Carolina, for example. To make the deal even sweeter, many states even underwrite the roughly $2,500 tuition for the program required to get board certified. In Oklahoma (and perhaps other states), teachers get reimbursement even if they do not finish the program. Talk about accountability.

Here's the kicker: the case that board certification means higher-quality teachers is vastly overstated. An upcoming study from the Mackinac Center for Public Policy lays out a better way to ensure better teachers: expand methods of alternative certification, institute merit pay, evaluate teachers by their value-added (based on gains in student achievement) and give principles flexibility in hiring and firing teachers. Such a system would help purge government-operated schools of teachers who haven't updated their lesson plan in a decade (you've had several of those? Join the club), and reward the efforts of those who work hard and excel in teaching, paying them on performance rather than limiting them to an amount specified by time in service.
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Hate Speech 3: Governor Lets Residents Die by Drowning
Secondhand, from Jay Nordlinger on National Review:

I was reading about Mitt Romney and his sons, and their rescue of some distressed boaters in New Hampshire. The Massachusetts governor (a Republican) was at his vacation home there. After news of this action was reported, a Democratic state senator in Massachusetts (Jay Kaufman) said, "There are lots of people drowning in the Commonwealth right now who would certainly welcome rescue." Ah. A spokeswoman for the state's Democratic party — Jane Lane (how poetic) — said, "Mitt Romney only chooses to run for office from Massachusetts — he doesn't vacation here."

"He doesn't vacation" here is a legitimate (though parochial) dig. But suggesting that one's political opponent is letting people die is over the top. Then again, it's not new. (Remember when Reagan "caused" AIDS?)
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Hate Speech (2): Republicans Want the Swastika
From the Washington Times: MIAMI BEACH, Fla. — Republicans appeal "to the dark underside of American culture, to that minority of Americans who reject democracy and equality," NAACP Chairman Julian Bond said yesterday at the civil rights group's 94th annual convention. "They preach racial neutrality and practice racial division ... their idea of reparations is to give war criminal Jefferson Davis a pardon," Mr. Bond said during his welcoming remarks. "Their idea of equal rights is the American flag and Confederate swastika flying side by side."
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TABOR Works to Limit Government Spending Growth
Various measures have been tried to restrain the growth of government spending. Perhaps the best such measure is TABOR (Taxpayers Bill of Rights), a name given to a measure in Colorado. The Independence Institute offers a review of TABOR, and gives it high marks.
- Over five years, TABOR has resulted in state tax refunds of $800 per capita
- Before TABOR, Colorado state revenues and spending grew well over twice the population-plus-inflation growth.
- After TABOR was put in place, state spending, revenues, and population growth were pretty much equal--meaning that government grew to the extent needed to serve an expanding population--but no more.
- Without TABOR, government jobs grew faster than private sector jobs. With TABOR, it's been reversed; the growth sector is the private sector (as it should be.)

Every once in a while, it's nice to get encouraging words.
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Hate Speech (1): Tax Cuts Cause Teenage Jumper's Death
St. Paul Pioneer-Press columnist, Nick Coleman, commenting on the death of a teenager who disregarded the warning of a city worker while goofing around too close to a cliff overlooking the Mississippi River: "Maybe after 10 years of politicians doing anything and everything to avoid tax hikes, there isn't any money to keep kids off cliffs in this city." The "kid" in this case was 16, by the way.
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Clowning Around with Taxpayer Money
The Circus World Museum is a quasi-state agency based in Baraboo, Wisconsin. Every year, it conducts a parade in Milwaukee. The most recent private sector underwriter of the parade has signaled it will pull out, leaving the Museum in need of new funding. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Museum officials said they will ask the governor and legislature for $1.5 million in taxpayer funds.

A co-chairman of the parade says: "The state of Wisconsin needs this parade, and it needs the Circus World Museum." If state officials fall for this, they're a bunch of clowns.
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What Would Jesus Drive? An SUV
A few months ago, multiple busybodies started a campaign to hound people into giving up their SUVs. One group, seeing the "What Would Jesus Do?" trinkets and doodads that have infected parts of the Church, sought to put a religious cast on the issue, rephrasing the question "What Would Jesus Drive?" (Hmm. Jesus walked everywhere he went, or at most, took a donkey, from what I recall of the gospels. Does this mean that we abandon the internal combustion engine today? Oops. Sorry for giving them THAT idea.)

Now, the Detroit Free Press says, a group touting SUVs as a combination of "Safety, Utility, and Versatility" has put together a new ad campaign: What would Jesus (Rivera) Drive? Rivera, whereabouts unknown, is featured in the ads running in Detroit, LA, and Washington. Ask a silly question, get a silly answer.
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"Security" justifies any number of things
Chicago's mayor, Richard Daley (no, not that one, his son) is making progress on his long-held plans to turn Meigs Field--an airport on the Chicago waterfront--into a park. It's always struck me as a wrongheaded plan, for several reasons. One, the city already has some great waterfront parks; another is not necessary. Two, though it's small, Meigs provides some tiny amount of traffic relief for already crowded airports in Chicago. Three, the plan strikes me as enacting public policy on the aesthetic plans of one man alone.

Finally, I had ever so faint dreams of taking off from Meigs someday. The magnificent skyline on one side, a great lake (literally) on the other. Apparently, I'm not the only one with this thought; I once read that a popular flight simulator for the PC once featured Meigs as the home airport.

Meigs, however, was merely another casualty of 9/11, which gave Daley another rationalization for closing the field: security. Seems like there would have been another way of dealing with security (thorough background checks, etc.) if that was really a concern.
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