Police Need Better Protocol for Dealing With Pets

Posted on by John Payne

As I noted in my discussions of the Columbia SWAT raid, police often shoot domestic animals in the course of serving warrants or even day-to-day police work. I blame this on the lack of clear police protocol for dealing with domestic animals, and a recent incident in La Grange provides us with another piece of evidence that we need more exact rules for these situations. A video of the incident is available online, but I must warn you that it shows a police officer shoot a restrained dog at the distance of about five feet. If you lack the stomach for that, here is a description from WGEM:

The video shows a LaGrange police officer shooting and killing a mixed-breed pit bull. According to police reports, the dog acted aggressive toward officers and a young child. But the owner is telling a different story.

“She was a big dog, she was playful, she liked to jump around. But she’s never acted aggressively toward anybody,” says the dog’s owner Marcus Mays.

Mary Coleman says the dog attacked her six-year-old daughter.

“I hear a big dog growling and I turn around and it was running towards us. I shut my daughter behind me and I started to yell and kick at it,” Coleman said.

It was late March when Coleman and her daughter were waiting for the bus. A dog wrestled out of its leash and came running at Coleman’s daughter. Coleman was able to fight off the dog and go back to her trailer to call police.

“It followed me down here and it started acting real calm again. I got the chain around it and fed it some dog food. That might have been the trick, feeding it dog food,” Coleman said.

According to the video, the dog looks calm as officers put a collar around its neck and only gets agitated when police use an animal restraint pole.

The video certainly does not give any indication that this is a vicious dog. At the beginning, it is leashed to a truck and when the officers try to collar it, the dog retreats instead of attacking. It’s at least possible that the dog was a danger to public safety, but given that the dog was restrained at the time, this seems like something that could be determined after a judicial hearing of some kind. Furthermore, the video does show that the police were having some difficulty taking the dog into custody, but they could have presumably tranquilized the dog instead of killing it.

This case once again highlights the importance of recording devices in holding government accountable. The proliferation of cell phone cameras and audio recorders cannot help but shine a light on unpleasant occurrences that previously would have been swept under the rug. However, unless we change the way that police deal with domestic animals, nothing will change in the long run. If we want to prevent the unnecessary shootings of family pets, localities need to start defining more precisely which conditions are necessary and sufficient for police to use lethal force against pets.

Washington Examiner on Governments Lobbying Governments

Posted on by David Stokes

The Washington Examiner has an excellent column by Timothy Carney about a subject that just drives me nuts: government using tax dollars to lobby other governments for more tax dollars. We have written about the issue of government lobbying before here at the Show-Me Institute, but I can honestly say that few things make me angrier. (Be sure to check out the comments from the last link!) From the Examiner piece:

State governments have overspent, largely on salaries that far exceed those in the private sector and benefits packages that dwarf what most Americans get. So now those governments are spending their money on powerful high-dollar lobbyists, with the paramount goal of getting access to more federal money. But the federal government is hopelessly in deficit.

The result is this: Local government officials are using your money to hire former government officials to ask current federal officials to give local governments more federal money — and future taxpayers will foot the bill for this whole racket.

Fueling the Fire

Posted on by Joseph Steelman

I guess the news has finally reached Washington. In a recent post on the Political Fix blog, Bill Lambrecht pointed out that the political heat around subsidies is increasing, and this time it is fueled by ethanol. Almost two years to the date after the Show-Me Institute’s release of its case study of the E-10 ethanol mandate in Missouri, another nonprofit research organization has published a study about the inefficiencies of federal ethanol subsidies. The Environmental Working Group‘s analysis of the ethanol subsidies concluded:

Americans have spent $17 billion since 2005 to achieve reductions in gasoline consumption that could have been achieved for free.

Today, proponents of ethanol are attempting to piggyback on the recent oil crisis in the Gulf of Mexico in order to gain support for their most recent push to increase the amount of ethanol in the U.S. gasoline supply and keep their subsidies. In a Post-Dispatch article yesterday, Jeffrey Tomich pointed out:

The ethanol industry is also lobbying Congress to extend a tax credit for blending ethanol with gasoline and maintain a tariff on imported ethanol — measures implemented years ago to help a fledgling industry grow. Both the tax credit and tariff are set to expire at the end of the year.

Letting the tax credits and tariffs expire wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Who knows, besides saving the American taxpayers $17 billion dollars, we might actually come up with an alternative energy idea that works.

Who’s Slicing My Pie?

Posted on by Joseph Steelman

Earlier this week, the Kansas City Business Journal reported:

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has signed legislation that would enhance tax benefits for the state’s higher education savings program.

On Monday, Nixon approved Senate Bill 772, which eliminates a 12-month holding period for contributions made to the Missouri Higher Education Savings Program.

Well, not exactly. This bill may indeed be an effort to promote more savings by Missouri families for their children’s future education, but it doesn’t entirely eliminate the holding period for contributions made into a Missouri 529 savings plan. Instead of providing contributors with more freedom pertaining to the control of their accounts, it allows the Missouri higher education savings program board to establish a “minimum length of time that contributions and earnings must be held by the savings program to qualify” for the state tax exemption. Eliminating the language that sets the minimum length of time at 12 months, but keeping the provision that allows the board to set minimum limits, doesn’t provide contributors with more information.

Proponents of the bill suggested that eliminating the mandate would allow the Missouri Higher Education Savings Program to be more competitive with similar programs in other states. Had the legislation eliminated a minimum holding period altogether, it may have accomplished that goal. In reality, it only muddies the water.

I am all in favor of eliminating government mandates, whether it be in health care, energy, or any other area in which the government attempts to control the market, but the removal of this language does not return the pie-slicer to the marketplace — rather, it keeps control in the hands of the people who cut the pie the first time around.

Show Me the Real Unemployment Rate

Posted on by Vince Smith

Missouri’s unemployment rate dropped two tenths of a percent from April, according to the Department of Economic Development. The drop in unemployment can be attributed to a net gain of 4,900 new jobs in this state in May. This is a good sign, but how much does it really mean?

Considering the federal government hired 7,300 temporary census workers last month, it doesn’t mean much at all. In the private sector, Missouri actually lost jobs. Employment gains in leisure, hospitality, and “other” services experienced modest gains, but other sectors saw more substantial job losses. Construction, manufacturing, professional and business services, and educational and health services all experienced job losses in Missouri last month. Not counting the newly hired and temporary census workers, Missouri actually lost 2,400 jobs.

Furthermore, some Census workers have alleged that the bureau has engaged in repeated hiring and firing in order to intentionally inflate employment numbers. A personal friend of mine who recently worked as a Census taker in the St. Louis area claims to have filled out new hire paperwork and been retrained every time he finished a neighborhood. The training of a census employee takes three or four days, so taxpayers pick up the check for the “training” — with no actual benefit to the Census efforts — every time a worker is retrained. Ultimately, special interests affect every level of government.

Show-Me Institute Free-Market Field Trip No. 1: Shoe Shines

Posted on by David Stokes

Two Show-Me Institute policy analysts, a research assistant, and two interns all head out for a free-market field trip. Shoe shines are a perfect example of how a simple exchange of money and services leaves both parties better off. The man giving the shoe shines trades some of his surplus time and effort in exchange for cash that he can use to buy many other types of goods and services that he may wish to consume. The staff trades some of their cash for a service that adds value to their shoes’ appearance, making the footwear more durable and enhancing their professional appearance.

It’s a small example, but it’s indicative of how markets work in general. The more that people engage in voluntary market transactions, the more that personal and societal wealth increases. Filmed in December 2008.

Now in Theaters: Greetings From Missouri, The Show-Me State

Posted on by Christine Harbin

The Internet is ablaze with discussion of film tax credits. The New York Times published an article about government officials denying film tax credits to films that fail to paint a state in a positive light, and Matt Welch at Reason Magazine and Joseph Henchman at the Tax Foundation have since posted substantive analyses.

According to the New York Times article:

“This film is unlikely to promote tourism in Michigan or to present or reflect Michigan in a positive light,” wrote Janet Lockwood, Michigan’s film commissioner.

Missouri may or may not officially require that films promote the state as a condition of receiving tax credits, but there seems to be a correlation. I’m reminded of a scene from Up in the Air, which cashed $4,131,011 in Missouri tax credits in 2009, when George Clooney’s character sang an ode to “historic” Lambert–St. Louis International Airport:

Are you kidding — Lambert Field? The Wright brothers flew through there. That domed main terminal is the first of its kind; it’s a precursor of everything from JFK to de Gaulle.

On one hand, officials are not saying that the movies considered in the New York Times article can’t or shouldn’t be made; instead, they’re saying that the films won’t receive subsidies. On the other hand, by placing restrictions on which genres of film that it will subsidize, the government helps to pick winners and losers within an industry that is already favored.

If a state decides to subsidize certain films and not others, it should be clear and upfront about the intention of the program. Does it exist to create jobs? Economic growth? Tourism? Positive net domestic migration? Something else? If the purpose of the film tax program is to support an infant film industry, there is no reason to dictate the terms of the presentation. (This begs a further question: Would a film that featured cannibals generate a dissimilar number of jobs and economic activity to a film that didn’t?) If the purpose is to promote the state as a tourist destination, however, officials should be up-front about their intentions.

Furthermore, the practice of approving or denying the content of a film encourages people to ask the government to affirm their preferences, much like state symbols. As communicated in the article, this can even include moral judgments:

In Florida, a recent legislative proposal to bar a special tax credit for family entertainment from films or shows that exhibit “nontraditional family values” was dropped after it was widely criticized as seeming to exclude gay characters.

The moral of the story for filmmakers? If a filmmaker wants to secure film tax credits, he or she should brown-nose bureaucrats by promoting their state.

Red Light Camera and Surveillance Camera Discussion Now Online!

Posted on by Audrey Spalding

If you missed the discussion about red light and surveillance cameras that the Show-Me Institute hosted on June 9, you can now watch the video online. Both Saint Louis city Alderman Antonio French, who represents the 21st ward, and Missouri Sen. Jim Lembke, who represents part of south Saint Louis city and south Saint Louis County, answered questions from our crack intern moderator Martha King and attendees:

Policing by Camera, a panel Q&A – Show-Me Institute
from Show-Me Institute on Vimeo.

French has spent nearly a year trying to get surveillance cameras installed in some of the high-crime areas of his ward. He maintains that the cameras will help police officers identify criminals, while deterring crime.

Lembke has argued against the use of red light cameras. The cameras, he says, violate due process because the owner of a car seen running a red light is presumed guilty — even if the camera cannot identify the driver.

If you are interested in how our local elected officials view the trade-offs between liberty and security, I encourage you to watch this video. Both the moderator and the public asked probing questions, which Lembke and French answered thoughtfully.

I hope that we can host similar, engaging discussions in the future. You can check back on this blog, join our email list, or become a fan of the Show-Me Institute to get updates about future events.

Smoke Screen Arguments

Posted on by Caitlin Hartsell

Yesterday, Martha King made a liberty-oriented argument against cigarette taxation, noting that cigarette taxes are imposed by a majority (nonsmokers) on a minority (smokers). A study in The Public Opinion Quarterly supports her conclusion; it found that where cigarette taxation is involved, individuals are self-interested. Nonsmokers favored cigarette taxes far more than smokers did. The majority choose to impose a tax on the minority, in many cases using moral or economic arguments that the use of cigarettes leads to poor outcomes.

The Daily RFT blog picked up on her post, but didn’t seemed particularly swayed by an argument for liberty. I had a conversation yesterday morning with my coworker Abhi Sivasailam, who suggested an efficiency argument against taxation, and pointed me to a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper titled “Cigarette Taxation and the Social Consequences of Smoking.” An argument that many people make in their attempts to justify cigarette taxes is that such a tax helps to internalize the additional costs of smokers — but this study concludes that the societal cost is already internalized.

From the study’s abstract:

Detailed calculations of the financial externalities of smoking indicate that the financial savings from premature mortality in terms of lower nursing home costs and retirement pensions exceed the higher medical care and life insurance costs generated. The costs of environmental tobacco smoke are highly uncertain, but of potentially substantial magnitude. Even with recognition of these costs, current cigarette taxes exceed the magnitude of the estimated net externalities.

So, if the costs of smoking are already largely internalized, imposing additional taxes on cigarettes is inefficient. It’s also worth pointing out that cigarette taxes are regressive, and any argument that holds the state should appropriate money from smokers to pay for other programs places an undue burden on a vulnerable group.

Is it horrible that people die from smoking cigarettes? Yes. Is it horrible that people die in automobile accidents? Yes, but that doesn’t constitute a rationale for taxing cars out of existence, or cupcakes, or the many other things that people use and enjoy that can also contribute to future poor health. If free, consenting adults choose to smoke, despite the known risks, it is their prerogative.

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