On June 18th, the Chicago Tribune reported that Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack "vetoed a measure that would have restricted government's ability to use eminent domain to boost economic development." But backers of such limits were not too happy.

Brian Walker of Essex, Iowa, was quoted as saying, "Under current [Iowa] eminent domain laws, cities can manipulate regulations to suit their purposes under the guise of public use and then take land and give it to other private entities."

"I worry that the expansion of eminent domain laws will have a negative effect on the economy," said Amy Zolotow an assistant intern researcher at Western Illinois University. "Expansion of these laws could pave the way for development projects that would trample the rights of property owners."

"This law would simply make those trying to confiscate private property prove that they need it," said Rick Tuttle of Peru, Iowa.

Care to re-think your actions governor?

Posted by John Skorburg at 04:06 PM | Permalink

Prof. William Allen of Michigan State University spoke to participants in the Booker T. Washington 150th Anniversary Celebration at Chicago's Metropolitan Club on June 6, 2006. Allen discussed the merits of a national apology for slavery.

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 01:24 PM | Permalink

Steven Titch is probably too modest to boast about his own work, but he's written an excellent op-ed on net neutrality that's been picked up by the San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 09:44 AM | Permalink

America’s interstate highway system is celebrating its 50th anniversary. It is hard to imagine an infrastructure project that has provided greater economic and social returns. The interstate system has been instrumental in the widespread affluence that has occurred since it was established in 1956. At the same time, the interstate highways system has saved hundreds of thousands of lives and millions of injuries.

Background: America has grown up with the interstate highway system, which is now celebrating its 50th anniversary. The system was originally the dream of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who drew his own concept of the sea-to-sea and border-to-border routes in the late 1930s. World War II and the recovery were to put the system on hold for another two decades. It fell to President Dwight D. Eisenhower to deliver on FDR’s dream, with the able help others in the United States Congress, especially Senator Albert Gore, Sr., father of former Vice President Al Gore. Vice-President Gore himself lavished admiring praise on the interstates and their impacts in addressing the 40th anniversary celebration on the Ellipse, near the White House, in 1996.

An Update: Ten years ago, Jean Love and I produced a research report that assessed the contribution of the interstate system The Interstate System at 40 Years. The report has been enormously popular, with more than 250,000 downloads over the past 10 years.

More than 40,000 Miles Completed: The interstate highway system’s original design called for more than 40,000 miles of route, nearly all of which was completed. The only major intercity segment not completed was where it was needed the most --- a segment between the two closest larger urban areas in the nation --- New York and Philadelphia, as the state of New Jersey cancelled the route out of ideological ignorance. Their reward is one of the nation’s most congested corridors.

The Interstates have Saved Lives: The interstate highway system has saved many lives. Based upon our research 10 years ago, it seems likely that at least 250,000 more people would have died on the nation’s roadways if the interstates had not been built. It is also likely that more than 15,000,000 injuries have been avoided. The much safer interstates are a principal reasons that annual roadway fatalities in the United States have barely changed since near 1956 levels, while roadway travel has tripled.

The Interstate System has Enhanced Mobility and Productivity: The interstate system has done much to bring the nation together. It has substantially reduced automobile travel times and made it possible for people to get, relatively quickly, to places that a declining passenger train system either forgot or served so slowly that many trips were simply not made. In speeding up traffic, the interstate system improved the competitiveness of the nation’s freight system, which has played a major role in keeping the United States a low cost economy where incomes go further. Consumers have benefited, but so also have the freight railways, which have become more competitive in response. The result is that freight rail in the United States has the second highest market share in the high-income world, trailing only Canada, and carry four times Europe’s share.

With Suburbs, Democratizing Prosperity: Not only has the nation become closer together, but also incomes have risen substantially. The nation’s per capita income has risen to three times that of 50 years ago, after adjustment for inflation.

The cost reductions and business efficiencies from the interstate system, combined with the middle income wealth that has been created by what would otherwise have been impossible levels of home ownership in the suburbs have been principal contributors to this economic advance. Over the past 50 years, the interstate highway system, along with the suburbs that preceded and followed them, have led to an unprecedented democratization of prosperity. Similar trends, though later, have occurred with the freeway systems and suburban development in Western Europe, Canada, Australia and even Japan.

A Bargain: The interstate highway system has been a bargain. In 2006 dollars, the total cost was $425 billion. More money has been wasted on transit than that. This is not value on the value of transit; it is rather that transit’s cost escalation above inflation since 1970 has been approximately the same as the cost of the interstate system. The difference in return has been enormous. By some accounts, the interstates have returned $6 for every $1 spent. By definition, the money spent to finance transit’s cost escalation above inflation has produced $0 for each $1 spent (normalized for the modest ridership increase).

Challenges: Nonetheless, the nation’s interstate highways and the additional state and locally sponsored freeways and expressways are severely challenged, as roadway demand keeps rising. The obvious solution would be to build more roads and expand others. However, the conventional wisdom in urban planning believes that, somehow, if congestion just gets bad enough, people will get out of their cars and ride transit. This lunacy fails to recognize that transit is not available for many urban trips and where it is, the additional time necessary to take it would reduce productivity and result in economic losses.

The Return of Reason: However, even some of the anti-highway interests are being brought back to reality by the consequences of their policies. In anti-freeway Portland, the planning agency has issued a report calling for expansion of roadways because the area is losing employers to areas that do not have its severe traffic congestion. Even across the border, in Vancouver, BC, business organizations are calling for substantial roadway capacity improvements as they wrestle with the fact that the area is becoming less competitive because of its anti-highway policies.

The “Spread” of the Interstates: Most high-income nations have followed the United States in developing a national freeway system. Western Europe is now cris-crossed by a dense freeway network. Japan has a national system and is building a new freeway parallel to the present Tokyo-Osaka route. Hong Kong has not only the highest population density in the world, but also the highest freeway density.

The Future of the Interstates: It can only be hoped that the “scales will fall from the eyes” of policy makers so that the interstates can play as important a role in expanding prosperity and facilitating economic growth as they have in the past.

Posted by Wendell Cox at 10:09 PM | Permalink

I read about this study in the Tribune last week, but will still link to the Washington Post version. The study is on social isolation and is being reported under the headline "Social Isolation Growing in the U.S., Study Says." It's claims, if true are definitely interesting and perhaps disturbing> But I would invite everyone to read the whole study for themselves before coming to any conclusions. To my mind there are plenty of caveats to be had.

For one, the study does not measure changes in what people consider "important matters." This gets at the heart of the central claim of the study that fewer people feel they have people with which they discuss important matters than 20 years ago. The study admits this weakness, noting " [other] studies agree that important matters vary dramatically from respondent to respondent."

It is no secret that our social fabric has become considerably more casual in the past twenty years. What was considered important discussion then could very well be considered idle talk now. For instance, for my parents discussing one's personal finances was a social taboo, but my generation is much more comfortable with it, and is therefore less likely to consider them "important." The same goes for sex.

It should be pointed out that the study should account for intragenerational changes to some degree given the sample can be weighted for demographic. Intergenerational changes are much more difficult to measure.

Moreover, even if the isolation is a real phenomenon, there is still a question of whether or not people on the whole experience the change negatively. There were some social bonds that 20 years ago it was unacceptable to break, despite the bonds being burdensome and miserable.

Indeed, some evidence for this view is that "important" relationships have fallen in number but not in quality. The relationships people are having are just a deep as they were 20 years ago. In fact we get together slightly more frequently and maintain our friendships slightly longer than we did then. This seems to contradict the notion that there's a definite toward overall isolation taking place.

All this is not to say that the study has not illuminated some important trend that we should discuss, only that we should keep that discussion within an overall context.

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 12:56 PM | Permalink

Propaganda alert!

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 02:24 PM | Permalink

The Brookings Institution has just released a study showing a decline in middle income families and neighborhoods in US metropolitan areas between 1970 and 2000. Reading the press clippings and the report, it would be easy to get the impression that there is a disappearing middle class in US metropolitan areas. Things are not so simple.

1. Use of Unrepresentative Geography Produces Unreliable Results: The Brookings report uses “primary metropolitan statistical areas” (PMSA’s) in some cases. For example, the Orange County, California PMSA is separate from Los Angeles PMSA. Yet they are clearly in the same metropolitan area. A visitor crossing from one side of Valley Home Avenue to the other, for example, would not know they were leaving the Los Angeles PMSA and entering the Orange County PMSA unless there was a sign. The urbanization is continuous. Use of the Los Angeles PMSA data, or any other PMSA data for that matter produces results that do not reflect genuine metropolitan area data (it also skews the data toward the “declining middle class thesis). Because of this, the Bureau of the Census had a consolidated metropolitan area classificiation, not used by Brookings, but which was representative of genuine metropolitan areas (The Bureau of the Census has since discontinued the use of PMSAs). The developing suburbs of Los Angeles during between 1970 and 2000 were generally outside the PMSA, as was also the case in the New York PMSA, and others. Thus, as populations grew and new middle income households took up residence in their own homes, they were generally outside the core PMSA’s. What this means is that the PMSA data is largely meaningless and even misleading. This is not a minor problem. Nearly 40 of the 100 areas reported upon by Brookings are PMSA’s and are unrepresentative of their larger metropolitan areas.

2. Positive Trends are Largely Ignored : Brookings fails to highlight important positive results among its findings, such as the two points below.

a). More Higher Income Families: The middle-income losses were not only to lower income categories, but also to higher income categories. Nearly 60 percent of the households leaving the middle-class moved into higher income classifications.

b). More Higher Income Neighborhoods: Similarly, approximately 55 percent of the neighborhoods that left the middle-income category moved into higher income classifications.

These may be notable achievements given the high rate of low-income immigration that has occurred over the same period. None of this is to suggest that Nirvana has been achieved. However, the positive deserves as much play as the negative.

3). Not All Census Tracts are the Same: Using census tracts to count the number of middle income neighborhoods can be misleading. Not all census tracts have the same number of households, so that changes in the number of neighborhoods considered to be middle-income cannot be determined from census tract data. For example, in St. Louis, the suburban counties, where all the growth has occurred, have 60 percent more households, on average than the census tracts in the declining city of St. Louis. As middle-income people move to the suburbs, they move into census tracts with larger populations, meaning that there will be a necessary reduction in the number of middle-income census tracts, or neighborhoods, as Brookings calls them. The St. Louis pattern may or may not be typical. However, what is certain is that counting unequal things can produce invalid results.

The conclusion is that the Brookings research method cannot produce reliable results on middle-income trends in metropolitan areas, positive or negative.

Posted by Wendell Cox at 12:39 PM | Permalink

A study published by the Montreal Economic Institute notes the potential for improved competitiveness for the Montreal metropolitan area Housing and Transportation in Montreal – How suburbanization is improving the region’s competitiveness (also available in French: Transport et logement à Montréal – Comment le développement de la banlieue rend la métropole plus compétitive .

Montreal’s advantages are that it has not adopted the anti-suburban (so-called “smart growth”) land rationing policies that have destroyed housing affordability in urban areas like Portland, Vancouver and Sydney, nor the related anti-highway policies. The recent adoption of similar policies in Toronto are likely to raise housing prices substantially, worsen already severe traffic congestion and could drive people and business to the Montreal area. Canada’s National Post published an op-ed by Cox on June 22 Montreal's expansion strategy will keep its economy competitive .

Posted by Wendell Cox at 09:13 AM | Permalink

An op-ed New Urbanism=New Feudalism in Canada’s National Post decries adoption of what it calls Toronto’s “new fuedalism” urban policy, which proponents call “new urbanism” or “smart growth.” Peter Shawn Taylor notes that the program “is a deliberate strategy to curb suburban growth and force more people into downtown high-rise apartments -- thus frustrating the hopes and dreams of many young potential homebuyers across Southern Ontario.” He also notes that the policies will lead to “greater income stratification,” an inevitable outcome of a land rationing system that forces up the price of housing in relation to incomes. The plan would impose densities double that of the ville de Paris according to Taylor. the National Post is Canada's second largest national newspaper. The previous day the paper featured an op-ed by Wendell Cox How Toronto's Policies Improve Montreal's Competitiveness outlining the potential opportunities that the Toronto program provides to Montreal, which has far less restrictive land use and transportation policies

Posted by Wendell Cox at 08:44 AM | Permalink

Libertarians love to talk about the minimum wage. There are many reasons for this, one being that minimum wage is perhaps the most obvious example of a price control in our nation's policy black bag. This makes it a favorite punching bag on which we demonstrate our economic kung fu. The argument is so clear and so rational. Government sets the price of labor and the result is a shortage of minimum wage jobs and more unemployment. Boom Shakalaka! Don Boudreaux does it better than I do.

But nevertheless this argument doesn't compel everyone. Even after explaining that raising the minimum wage helps some people (the employed) at the expense of others (the now unemployed) many still ardently support the policy. They assume that employers really are not so burdened by a dollor or two an hour that they would actually make due with fewer employees. And indeed many employers will choose instead to raise their prices, which of course has the same effect because it takes money out of the economy that would otherwise be used on other goods, goods not dependent on minimum wage labor. And consumers will tend to buy les fast food at the higher prices which will lead to less profit ... and fewer jobs.

But still they persist. Which makes me wonder whether or not we should continue fighting this battle. Is the marginal damage done by raising the minimum wage less than the marginal damage done by some other program we're not arguing about, say the drug war or social security? Would our time be better spent arguing over something else? Maybe? Maybe not?

Furthermore, there is another argument about minimum wage that is slightly more compelling but never raised by libertarians. Even if we concede there is some marginal value to raising the minimum wage, the question still remains whether this adjustment should take place the federal level. Anyone who has ever moved from the country to the city (or vice versa) knows there are drastic differences in wage levels. The minimum wage in Chicago is effectively $8.00 an hour ... not because of regulation but rather the market. In Arkansas (where I'm from) it is significantly lower. But so is the cost of living.

To have some sort of blanket minimum wage for a country as diverse as this one seems to be an act of absurd over-simplification that could only exist in a culture that no longer recognizes the distinction between community and nation.

The advantage of this argumentative strategy is that it focuses on the locus of decision making and power rather than the issue itself. Thoughts?

UPDATE: Will at Cato points out another issue at play here. Despite all the moral posturing on this issue from the left, the reality is that minimum wage rates are usually raised once the market has actually driven wages up. Their a way for politicians to capitalize on something they had nothing to do with.

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 09:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Robert Enlow, executive director of the Friedman Foundation gives an overview of the school choice movement from "40,000 feet." Enlow spoke to the Illinois School Choice Initiative on Thursday June 15.

In 1996, Robert C. Enlow joined the newly established Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation. Initially, Robert worked as the Foundation's Fundraiser and Projects Coordinator. In 1999, he was promoted to Vice President, Programs and Public Relations, where responsibilities include program management and development and media relations. In December 2003, Robert became the executive director of the Foundation overseeing development, program and communications activities.

Robert's editorials and quotes have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Manchester Union-Leader, Human Events, Indianapolis Star, San Francisco Examiner, Miami Herald, Arizona Republic, National Review, Indianapolis Business Journal and Evansville Courier. He also serves as a regular guest on local, regional and national talk radio shows. In addition, Robert has testified before several legislatures across the country and most recently before a U.S. Senate subcommittee.

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 02:20 PM | Permalink

Bill Frist has proposed a few budgetary reforms under a plan he's calling the "Stop-Over Spending Act." Included are three provisions: (1) Line-item veto, (2) A two-year budget cycle, and (3) statutory limits on discretionary spending.

My initial thoughts are as follows, in reverse order:

First, limits on discretionary spending are grand. I would never oppose them in a million years. But while discretionary spending is the most politically unpopular, it's not the spending that's going to bankrupt us. The growing burden of large entitlement programs like medicare, medicaid, and social security are a much bigger long term threat to solvency. But that being noted, we should enthusiastically welcome discretionary reform.

Second, on the two year budget cycle I have to punt to Instapundit.

As for the line-item veto, the libertarian in me is extremely worried about giving the executive that much power. The imperial presidency put in place by FDR and grown steadily by every president since is not necessarily a good development. Turning over a line-item veto, and effectively the entire budget, would make it even worse. If we must give the presidency more power in order to reform the budgetary process, I'm far more supportive (in theory) of the Balanced Budget Veto, which would give the president line-item powers only in the event Congress delivers to his desk an unbalanced budget. In this case, since there is no Balanced Budget Amendment, we should call it a "Spending Cap Veto" and use it to restrict the president's line-item veto to instances in which Congress fails to adhere to discretionary spending limitations. As always, your thoughts are welcome.

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 09:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (18)

So we can sue the Fed ... like this guy suing the state of Texas.

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 08:49 AM | Permalink

AP reports that the GAO has found that a huge amount of the federal tax money spent for victims of last year's hurricanes was misspent, or as we normal people say, stolen:

Houston divorce lawyer Mark Lipkin says he can't recall anyone paying for his services with a FEMA debit card, but congressional investigators say one of his clients did just that.

The $1,000 payment was just one example cited in an audit that concluded that up to $1.4 billion -- perhaps as much as 16 percent of the billions of dollars in assistance expended after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita -- was spent for bogus reasons.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency also was hoodwinked to pay for season football tickets, a tropical vacation and a sex change operation, the audit found. Prison inmates, a supposed victim who used a New Orleans cemetery for a home address and a person who spent 70 days at a Hawaiian hotel all were able to get taxpayer help, according to evidence that gives a new black eye to the nation's disaster relief agency.

Some of the thievery was amazingly frivolous and appalling, according to the audit, the AP story reported:

* An all-inclusive, one-week Caribbean vacation in the Punta Cana resort in the Dominican Republic.

* Five season tickets to New Orleans Saints professional football games.

* Adult erotica products in Houston and "Girls Gone Wild" videos in Santa Monica, Calif.

* Dom Perignon champagne and other alcoholic beverages in San Antonio.

If you are at all surprised at this, I can direct you to some oceanfront land in Alabama you can have for a bargain price.

Posted by Sam Karnick at 03:10 PM | Permalink

The Sci-Fi Channel is running a program this evening that begs the question: what's more likely alien invasion or robot revolution? I'll take my chances with alien invasion. The odds are in our favor right? Given the amount of space/time in the universe, it's only a matter of time before some advanced alien civilization bulldozes the galaxy to make way for an intergalactic tollway right?

The Sci-Fi Channel Program was accompanied by a poll that found:

Approximately one-quarter of Americans have a strong "doomsday" outlook and strongly agree with the following statements: "I fear for the future of mankind," and, "Life as we know it could come to an abrupt end any day."

What's scarier, doomsday scenarios or the fact that so many people walk around with such a sense of doom?

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 02:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Doing business in Philadelphia will get cheaper over the next three years, according to MSNBC, thanks to City Council's unanimous adoption of a budget proposal by Mayor John F. Street on May 25.
The mayor's plan accelerates cuts to the gross receipts portion of Philadelphia's business privilege tax, adopted along with the city's $3.7 billion budget for fiscal 2007, will lower the current 0.19 percent rate to 0.1415 percent in 2008.
Report co-author Donald Fuga said,"The city itself isn't killing people, but our state taxes, corporate net taxes, are very, very high."
The entire article can be found at http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13269191/

Posted by John Skorburg at 04:01 PM | Permalink

Joseph L. Bast, President of The Heartland Institute, debates Global
Warming and Gore's new documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" on Chicago Tonight with Carol Marin.




MP3 File

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 03:59 PM | Permalink

Just a few months ago, network neutrality was a fairly esoteric subject confined mostly to technology sites like this one.

Overnight, it seems, calls for enforced network neutrality reached a fever pitch and are finding their way onto editorial pages and political Web sites everywhere.

MoveOn.org is convinced that without network neutrality, the end of the Internet is at hand. Popular musicians like Moby and Michael Stipe have lent their voices to the cause, exhorted breathlessly at www.savetheinternet.com. Now Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) has introduced legislation that would impose a network neutrality scheme on service providers. Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wants to make it an antitrust violation to set preferential rates for Internet services.

A network neutrality policy would prevent the nation’s broadband service providers, namely the telephone and cable companies like AT&T and Comcast, and Internet service providers (ISPs) like EarthLink and AOL, from selectively blocking customer access to Web sites and Web-based applications, such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). It would also require these companies to treat all digital information the same way as it moves across their networks. So-called Internet “toll lanes” would be prohibited. Service providers would not be allowed to charge an added fee to enhance or guarantee the quality of content of an application a third party wants to provide.

“Broadband network owners should not be able to determine who can and who cannot offer services over broadband networks or over the Internet,” Markey said May 2 upon introducing his Network Neutrality Act of 2006. “In order to prevent the warping of the World Wide Web into a system of ‘tiered service,’ the legislation will prevent broadband providers from charging new bottleneck fees for enhanced quality of service or the prioritization of bits.”

Unfortunately Markey, Moby, and other supporters of network neutrality display a terrible misunderstanding of both Internet business models and the growing sophistication of integrated applications using these broadband pipes.

First, none of the large phone companies or cable companies or Internet service providers has ever made it a policy to block access to Web sites or any third party Web application. It happened once, when Madison River Communications, a small ISP in North Carolina, tried to block Vonage. The ISP was fined by the FCC and ordered to stop.

The second aspect of net neutrality, which demands phone and cable companies treat all data the same as it crosses their networks, is disingenuous. It sounds fair, but the problem is, we’re at a point where there are Web applications and content that need to be treated differently in order to work properly for the user. It isn’t so much about slow and fast lanes as it is about who pays the cost of the management and optimization these sophisticated applications will require.

Phone and cable companies have said the costs should be paid by Google, eBay, Amazon.com, and the major Hollywood studios—the folks that are going to create these management strains to begin with. That rather logical proposition is giving Markey, Moby, and MoveOn.org fits.

Instead, they are siding with Google and the other big Web content and applications companies who, under a network neutrality regime, would be able to avoid responsibility for the added costs of providing their bandwidth-intensive services—on which they aim to make sizable profits. This is supposed to be fair and egalitarian?

What service providers want to offer third-party applications providers is more like “good, better and best.” Network neutrality, however, insists on a zero-sum view. Better quality for one means worse quality for another. But that’s silly. For example, overnight delivery recognizes the mission-critical needs of some shipments. Yet overnight delivery does not diminish standard three-day service. The same shipper, in fact, may use both services, depending on specific requirements. If we were to apply the principle of “neutrality” in package delivery, it wouldn’t change three-day service. All it would do is lock it in and prohibit anything faster.

When Disney/Pixar wants to use the Internet to deliver Cars in high-definition, six-channel stereo DVD quality, there’s a lot of “care and feeding” needed as those enormous video, audio, and control codes cross the networks. They require a higher level of real time, error-free transmission. If service providers can’t recover this cost from content providers, they must spread it among all users. It means one-hour-a-day surfers pay the cost of servicing 24/7 bandwidth maniacs. In the worst case, service providers will offer little or no quality enhancement to applications at all.

It’s difficult to see how this policy will, in the words of Markey, “imperil economic growth, innovation, job creation, and First Amendment freedom of expression.”

Quite the contrary, network neutrality will present those very threats. Users will be locked into a mediocre Internet marked by bandwidth congestion and poor performance as ordinary Web sites compete with bandwidth-rich applications for bandwidth capacity. The whole broadband experience will be diminished because there will be no economic means to manage bandwidth use.

Congress needs to grasp the implication of enshrining network neutrality into law. Companies like Google should stop fomenting the hysterical rhetoric about how network neutrality will save the democratic principles of the Internet and think about how a law banning “prioritization of bits” will affect its plan to push the envelope on the provision of premium, advertiser-supported Web services. Network neutrality amounts to significant government interference in the market for management of sophisticated bandwidth services and applications. It’s based on wrong perceptions and wrong assumptions ... and, if it goes through, it is going to be bad for everyone.

Posted by Steven Titch at 09:10 AM | Permalink

Dennis Byrne is a Chicago writer and newspaper columnist.

Here’s a lesson in how bad public policy spreads, until it becomes the law of the land.

The bad policy being: A plan that was designed to offer parents more “choice” in educating their children, actually turned into a state-concocted straightjacket requiring that some kids be bused across town, because they were the wrong race.

The bad policy started its cross-country tour a few years ago when a Washington state Supreme Court justice decided that kids have to learn that we live in a “diverse” society, and they had better snap to it.

Ruling in a Seattle case that involved assigning schools to students by race, Tom Chambers concluded: “In a society such as ours, it is not enough that the Rs are being taught properly, for there are other vital considerations. The children must learn to respect and live with one another in multiracial and multicultural communities, and the earlier they do so, the better.”

And so, a couple hundred students were taken from the schools nearest their homes, despite their parents’ objections, and shipped away. The students, of course, were white, and several of them ended up in a school that was 90 percent black, which, the judge obviously believed, was good for all of us.

Good for all of us because the courts have found in this uprooting a “compelling state interest,” which has become the increasingly standard excuse for any court-imposed policy that tramples on individuals for some vaguely defined purpose. As a parent would tell a child who doesn’t quite understand why he has to do something: “Because. It’s good for you.”

Like it supposedly was good for Kathleen Brose’s daughter, whose daughter was denied enrollment to her neighborhood Ballard High School because she was white.

So, here begins the journey that could make this ruling the law of the land. The parents—correctly—appealed and it ultimately ended up before the U.S. appeals court, which upheld the policy because it served, well, a compelling state interest.

That logic now will be put to the test by the U.S. Supreme Court, which on Monday [June 5], decided to hear this and another important racial assignment case pertaining to primary and secondary schools. The high court three years ago ruled that race, indeed, could be one factor, in public university admissions, as part of an effort to achieve diversity.

If it were the same court, the betting might be that the court would extend the rule, as it now applies to young adults, to young children, to justify their being bused away from their home schools. But, it’s a more conservative court, and if the country gets lucky, it not only will refuse to apply the logic to grammar schools, but find a way to chip away at the college-level precedent. If it doesn’t, the danger is that this attack on parental rights hatched in the minds of a few Seattle ideologues will become the law of the land.

The irony is that the school policy was implemented in 1998 in the name of giving the parents the choice of sending their children to any school in their district. When there were more applicants than slots available, and the school is not defined as “racially balanced,” race comes in as one the “tiebreakers.” Lose the tiebreaker, and off you go, including, theoretically at least, children in kindergarten.

As Chambers explained: This is what’s best for us and our children if we are to learn how to get along with each other. Yet, I doubt that’s the outcome. Yanking people back and forth has a way of making them angry. Telling parents, who may have moved to a neighborhood because of its schools, that their children have to go elsewhere, to a school that perhaps isn’t as good, for the sake of good race relations is sure to stir up deep-seated resentment. Especially when those who resist the policy put themselves in the undeserved position of appearing racist.

Here’s another irony: The legal battle goes on, even through Seattle dropped the plan a couple of years ago. "The district has not been using it for several years now, and the result is the schools are still diverse," said Harry Korrell, an attorney representing Parents Involved in Community Schools, which filed the original lawsuit.

Brose, the president of the group, is resolved to protect the rest of us against this lunacy. Even though her daughter has graduated from high school years ago, she told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: “I started it; I’m going to finish it.”

Equally determined is the other side, which includes the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Urban League, which will file legal briefs in support of the district.

Saying the main question is whether “we are going to have diverse and desegregated schools,” Aaron Caplan, an ACLU staff attorney, told the paper: "Seattle Public Schools isn't denying anyone access to a public-school education."

Those of us who were around for the desegregation battles of the 1950s and ‘60s find the remark chilling. Hard core segregationists, defending the racist doctrine of “separate but equal” said the same thing. “Heck, we’re not denying anyone an education; we’re just telling them where they have to go to get it.”

Posted by Dennis Byrne at 02:11 PM | Permalink

As I wrote in “The Dangers of Dictating Procurement,” the Massachusetts Information Technology Department (ITD) has made it policy that it will no longer procure software that does not support open standards. The effect of this rule, declared last fall by Peter Quinn, the state’s then-chief information officer, effectively knocks Microsoft out of any future bidding for Massachusetts business, a prospect that has much of the technical elite cheering.

That’s because a major competitor to Microsoft Office is OpenOffice.org. OpenOffice is open source software that supports an open standard called OpenDocument Format (ODF). It has been incorporated into software products from Microsoft competitors, such as Sun Microsystems StarOffice.

Last fall, it looked like Microsoft was indeed going down in the Bay State. Today, have a few drinks with an open source geek and he’ll tell you, perhaps not in so many words, that while Microsoft’s response to the Massachusetts directive was a clumsy swing resulting in a slow grounder to the right side of the infield—the ODF team has Bill Buckner at first base.

Much of the controversy about the Massachusetts directive centers on the replacement of Microsoft Office with OpenOffice.org. Unlike Linux, which is a leaner, more elegant operating system than Windows, especially for servers; or Mozilla Firefox, which has had none of the security problems of Explorer, Office is a strong and popular product. It may be expensive, but users like it. It’s highly debatable whether a state government, which has fiduciary responsibilities to taxpayers, should be using its resources and purchasing power to provide the necessary traction for Microsoft competitors that they can’t get in the marketplace.

That’s not to say OpenOffice.org and ODF don't have points in their favor. For one, since it's open source, it's cheaper than MS Office (although I discuss cost of ownership issues regarding open source software in "Dangers"). More than that, when it came to document creation and storage, the Massachusetts ITD had a legitimate requirement—it wanted to be sure documents created and stored in 2007 were readable by software in 2010, 2020, 2050 and on into the future. Microsoft Office, being built on a proprietary format, could not guarantee that. Heck, current versions of MS Office can’t open documents created in early versions. Massachusetts felt that the only way to guarantee future compatibility was to demand that vendors conform to an open standard. What’s more, ODF uses Extensible Mark-Up Language (XML), which is much more robust than Microsoft’s binary format in the way it can make applications within the suite work together. Microsoft users will have to wait until the latest release, Office 2007, due out later this year, to get the XML document extensions.

Had the ITD focused on its specific user requirements, it would have had much stronger case. Instead, it allowed the issue to be hijacked by the rabid anti-Microsoft set, who were not shy about turning the directive into a drive to replace Microsoft at any cost, just to see if it could be done in an IT operation the size of Massachusetts’. This scared lawmakers. Pulling the plug on Microsoft would cost the state millions in the short term for future benefits that were, at best, vague. It also scared taxpayers, most of whom had never heard of ODF, and finally, state employees, who, at the end of the day, weren’t sure if they wanted to give up Word, Excel and PowerPoint for a product few others use. Pro-ODF pieces with titles like “OpenOffice is 10 years behind MS Office? That’s Fine” didn’t help either.

Microsoft has said the ITD policy is anticompetitive because the rule, in essence, singles it out alone. Critics dismissed this as whining. Support open standards, they told the software giant, and you’ll be welcome to bid for Massachusetts business. While Microsoft still says it will not support ODF, last November, it submitted a rival version, Open XML, to the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA) for possible adoption as an open standard. ECMA in May released a first draft.

Moreover, Tom Trimarco, Massachusetts Secretary of Finance and Administration, has indicated that the Microsoft version would be an acceptable alternative, should it be standardized. The resulting reaction from the ODF side amounts to “an open-standard-is-an-open-standard-only when we say it is.”

Although ECMA has existed since 1961 and has developed a number a communications, computer language and media standards that have been adopted by the International Standards Organization (ISO), it’s not good enough for some.

“Only after a specification has been approved by a broadly supported standards body -- one that demonstrates acceptable levels of openness by being available to all competing products -- should the [Massachusetts] consider including that open standard as one of its own,” Carl Cargill, director of corporate standards at Sun, wrote in a letter to Trimarco.

Andy Updegrove, a more level-headed open source advocate, in blogging on Open XML, pretty much admits that, open standards or not, the goal of the Massachusetts ODF effort isn’t about choosing what’s best for the state as it is about enforcing a pocket industrial policy.

“While I'm not a programmer, what version 1.3 of XML Open indicates to me is that the specification may be fine (and even perhaps very good) for making it possible for end users and external developers to do more with Office documents, but it may be useless for creating true competition in the marketplace - which presumably is exactly what is intended,” Updegrove writes.

I’m sure Updegrove would disagree, but it’s not the government’s role to handicap competitors—it’s a gross disservice to the citizens who expect their state executives to make purchases responsibly and fairly, and not to engage in adventures in procurement for their own sake. The Massachusetts directive is a bad idea because it intentionally stacks the deck principally on the basis of market share. This is all the more clear now that Microsoft has moved toward open standards—and eventual compliance in Massachusetts--yet calls continue for its exclusion. The cost of such a move has officials such as Trimarco rethinking the wisdom of attempting to ban Microsoft, especially as the ITD policy appears more arbitrary with each day. Finally, while other states, not to mention several countries, are watching to see how Massachusetts fares, there’s noticeable reluctance to follow the state’s lead.

With top state officials hedging and Microsoft shifting toward open standards, the controversy over the ITD directive may be moot by the time it takes effect in January. How things go from here are up to the zealots. They can make this discussion about the merits of ODF, and its long-term value to Massachusetts, or they can continue their wild-eyed crusade against Microsoft. They have a better chance at winning if they take the first approach. But up in Massachusetts, 2004 notwithstanding, it’s a tradition to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Just remember Bill Buckner.

Posted by Steven Titch at 04:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (26) | TrackBacks (0)

In an interesting twist which may ultimately separate those taking an ideological ride on the global warming issue from those engaged in serious scientific disputation, physics professor and author Dr. Gregory Benford offered his first public statement on an anything-but-Manhattan-Project to save the planet at the Skeptics Society Conference in Pasadena this Weekend.

Benford seems to accept the possibility that anthropogenic carbon emissions could trigger a climactic tripping point, e.g. interruption of the gulf stream in the Atlantic. But rather than urging an all out effort to shrink the human atmospheric-carbon footprint, he and "the guys", an informal group of scientists from Livermore National Labs and Stanford, propose relatively low tech and low expense experiments at changing the climate "on purpose instead of by mistake".

One proposed experiment is the suspension of 1 micron designer particles some 80,000 feet above earth in the stratosphere that would reflect UV rays into space, reducing warming and the harm of UV rays to plants and animals while maintaining robust photosynthesis fueled by the visible spectrum and thus capitalizing on increased atmospheric CO2.

This idea exploits our expanding understanding of the climate system and the hypothesis of scientists that the marked cooling in the middle of the last century was the product of sulphate aerosol pollution.

Benford doesn't propose this with the hubris of someone who knows it will work, but rather suggests that if we understand climate well enough to predict that global warming will be a problem, then we understand it well enough to address the problem by direct means. "The guys" propose a test over the arctic where the atmospheric circulation patterns would tend to confine the deployed particles and the effect should be readily measurable.

Benford's ideas will certainly test more than just climate sensitivity to stratospheric aerosols. They will severely test the mettle of those who claim to have no ideological dog in the global warming debate. If you don't hate industry and human development and the free markets that best enable these phenomenon, but you are just worried that warming may be an unintended consequence of this otherwise salutary trend, then you would want hundreds of Gregg Benfords toiling to manage the climate. Benford wants to put this particulate shield and other technologies on the shelf quickly and cheaply so they are ready to be used in the event of any clear precursors to the scarier scenarios touted by some as the inevitable result of a warming climate.

Of course for those who promote concern over climate change as a surrogate for energy rationing and wealth redistribution, Benford's proposals represent a worst case scenario (even worse then melting glaciers). The idea that man could manage the climate consciously to avoid catastrophe without drastically altering energy use does not fit in their prescriptions.

It is certainly fair to apply skepticism to the notion that a couple of scientists have already sat down and come up with a cheap (maybe a billion dollars a year) solution to global warming. But if activists loudly reject Benford's proposals on ethical rather than scientific grounds, it will be clear they are ideologues and not dispassionate researchers. As some scientists stain a microscope slide to make parts of the image more distinguishable from one another, Benford offers an unprecedented opportunity to see whether science or ideology is driving the current 'consensus' on climate change.

Posted by Brian Bishop at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (25) | TrackBacks (0)

In a day of debate on Saturday that was bookended by Tapio Schneider, a Caltech climate researcher, and Michael Crichton, whose high profile State of Fear contends that the catastrophic risk associated with climate change is overstated, there weren't winners and losers. It is, after all, hard to expect an eclectic day of exchanging ideas on the environment to end 25 years of debate (or is it 2500 years) over what direction climate is taking and why. But the day did help to crystalize where exactly the scientific and policy differences lie.

Schneider gave an understated but unyielding case for anthropogenic global warming as posing a serious problem. He refused to rise to the bait offered by some questioners to predict catastrophic glacier melt but probably overstated consensus on modeled climate sensitivity to increasing CO2 concentrations.

Crichton circled the global climate change issue so central to his recent novel by asking whether skepticism had ever truly been a force in contemporary American intellectualism, implying rather that skepticism had failed in the face of progressively endorsed policies. He cited such commonly accepted shibboleths as the eugenics implicit in sterilization of the "feeble minded", roundly endorsed by the US Supreme Court in Buck v Bell and continuing as California state policy through 1964.

His obvious import was the demonstration of a case in which a scientific and cultural consensus endorsing this practice of half a century represented civilization losing its skeptical edge. It is certainly fair to wonder if the same is true in the global warming debate. In the end he briefly summarized that there is no disagreement that CO2 concentrations are increasing as a result of human activiy, and there is no disagreement that the globe has warmed slightly this century - "depending on who you listen to between .6 and one degree [fahrenheit]". The disagreement is over the sensitivity of the climate to atmospheric CO2, the argument is over just how many watts per square meter this phenomenon really adds to energy balance.

For all his unsensational ways, Dr. Schneider tended to represent this phenomenon as fully understood and a piece of data, rather than a modeled conclusion. Schneider maintained that the uncertainties reside in modeling feedback from the the CO2 induced changes, e.g., cloud formation and albedo (reflectivity) changes associated with changes in ice covered surface area.

It would indeed have been useful to extend the debate in this area, but while the conference didn't propose to have answered the question, it did help to focus on a fundamental area of disagreement between skeptics and promoters of global warming. And it fairly raised the question of whether those who claim a skeptical nature are truly applying that trait to this debate.

Posted by Brian Bishop at 08:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

Claims of transit ridership increases greater than autos rely on
"apples to oranges" comparisons calculated from an unrepresentative
base year.

Calls to "Dump the Pump" and use transit to avoid higher gas
prices are baseless rhetoric. The reality is transit is not available
for most urban trips and cannot be made available at a price society
can afford.

The Public Purpose #89

Posted by Wendell Cox at 10:09 AM | Permalink

If you ever find yourself think "Maybe the debate over global warming really is over" just come on back to FTH and dig up this entry. Andrew Revkin, writing for NYT, reports today that three papers published in the journal Nature are detailing new information about the earth's climate history:

The first detailed analysis of an extraordinary climatic and biological record from the seabed near the North Pole shows that 55 million years ago the Arctic Ocean was much warmer than scientists imagined--a Floridian year-round average of 74 degrees Fahrenheit

How are they going to pin that one on SUVs?

Previous computer simulations did not suggest an ancient Arctic that was nearly so warm, the authors said. So the simulations must have missed elements that lead to greater warming.

But the simulations predicting ice from Greenland stopping the flow of the North Atlantic Current, those simulations must be right? Right?

"Something extra happens when you push the world into a warmer world, and we just don't understand what it is," said one lead author, Henk Brinkhuis, an expert on ancient Arctic ecology at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands.

So there's something our simulations miss, but we know that something has to do with "push[ing] the world into a warmer world." I'm confused.

The new analysis confirms that the Arctic Ocean warmed remarkably 55 million years ago, which is when many scientists say that the extraordinary planetwide warm-up called the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum must have been caused by an enormous burst of greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide. But no one has found a clear cause for the gas discharge.

And it couldn't have been man made. But just in case you were starting to have doubts about this man-made climate change, Revkin reminds us:

Almost all climate experts agree that the present-day greenhouse gas buildup is predominantly a result of emissions from smokestacks, tailpipes and burning forests ... Experts not connected with the studies say they support the idea that it is greenhouse gases that largely determine the extent of warming or cooling

But why did Revkin have to quote experts not connected with the study? What about the experts connected with the study? After all, those are the experts the article is about, Right?

Finally, buried deep in the article is an image the alarmists don't want you to have in your head.

Another discovery was found in layers from 49 million years ago, when conditions suddenly fostered the summer growth of mats of an ancient cousin of the azolla duckweed often seen in ponds.

Vegetation in the artic, how awful and unnatural. Seriously though, this climate science stuff is very complex, full of "extra" stuff our simulations don't account for. I'm sure glad Al Gore has concluded the debate ... I was starting to get overwhelmed by the ubiquity of inconclusion.

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 09:08 AM | Permalink