Listen In on Thursday Morning

Posted on by Dave Roland

I’ll be a guest on Charlie Brennan’s morning show on KMOX tomorrow from around 9:30–10:00 a.m. What will I be discussing? I’m glad you asked. …

Although we haven’t yet discussed it on the blog, I hope that all of our readers are aware that the St. Louis Police arrested Gustavo Rendon, husband of the president of the North Side Community Benefits Alliance. Why? Because he was distributing fliers that opposed the NorthSide redevelopment project recently approved by the city. Even worse, he just happened to be doing so outside the church of Alderwoman April Ford-Griffin, a staunch supporter of the project. So, two police officers arrived, threatened to put his kids in foster care if he didn’t stop distributing the fliers, then arrested him.

The charge? Affixing advertisements to private property.

Fortunately, the city attorneys quickly realized that the ordinance under which they arrested him didn’t, you know, prohibit what he was doing. And even if it had prohibited distributing fliers that communicated purely political ideas, the ordinance probably would have been unconstitutional anyway. So, today they announced that they were dropping the charges.

The bigger problem, which I hope to address with Mr. Brennan, is that Mr. Rendon’s arrest is suggestive of a much larger problem: powerful people trying to stop citizens from having their say on important public issues. In this case, it was police officers arresting someone for communicating opposition to a redevelopment project. In Jim Roos’ case, a city agency is trying to destroy a sign calling for an end to eminent domain abuse. In the Northeast Ambulance and Fire Protection District, officials tried to fine and ban from future meetings certain taxpayers who protested the district’s insane spending. And, of course, the Missouri Municipal League is using taxpayer money for a lawsuit with the primary goal of keeping off the ballot a constitutional amendment that would go a long way toward ending eminent domain abuse in the state — because they know it will pass if citizens are allowed to vote!

So, like I said, tune in tomorrow morning as Charlie Brennan and I discuss these issues. Who knows, there might even be some interesting surprises involved. And, if you can’t listen to tomorrow’s show, keep an eye on the Policy Pulse website, where Audrey Spalding is continuing to do excellent work reporting on abuses of taxpayer money and government authority.

Thinking Rationally About Rationing

Posted on by Christine Harbin

Last month, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force revised its guideline on mammograms, advising that women should wait until age 50 to get one. Last year, the same organization made a similar recommendation for prostate cancer screening in men — namely, that men 75 years and older should not get screened.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal explains the group’s reasoning:

The task force said the new guidelines strike a better balance between the benefits of early cancer detection and the unnecessary anxiety and extra costs associated with false positives, which sometimes result from the tests.

The task force is doing the responsible thing, in my opinion. When we spend taxpayer dollars on keeping people alive, we should perform cost-benefit analyses like we would for any other transaction. If the amount that the United States would spend on nationwide testing is greater than the societal benefit that such testing brings, then it shouldn’t provide the funding. Medical services like prostate cancer screening and mammograms have more societal cost than societal benefit. The tests result in false positives, unnecessary anxiety, and overtreatment. According to an analysis published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, between 1986 and 2005, widespread prostate cancer screening resulted in 1.3 million additional diagnoses, but only 56,000 deaths were prevented.

This reminds me of an episode of This American Life that I heard in October, “More is Less,” that explored why costs are rising in the American health care system. In “Act Two. Every CAT Scan has Nine Lives,” it proposes that patients are responsible for rising costs because they demand more tests than is socially optimal. When the government gets involved, doctors can effectively forget about the idea of consulting with their patients in accordance to their individual needs and to make decisions. (The Show-Me Institute study by Arduin, Laffer & Moore Econometrics, “The Prognosis for National Health Insurance: A Missouri Perspective,” communicated this same concept: Patients will over-consume health care services when they are removed from the transaction — i.e., the health care “wedge.”)

Taxpayers should want the United States to perform these cost-benefit analyses; otherwise, their money is spent thoughtlessly and irresponsibly. The United States spends literally billions of tax dollars on end-of-life care for non-productive octogenarians, during which time they do little besides collect additional Social Security checks. Researchers at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice discovered that total Medicare spending during the last two years of life ranges from an average of $53,432 per patient at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., to $93,842 at U.C.L.A. Medical Center. Approximately 27 percent of Medicare’s annual $327 billion budget is spent on patients in their final year of life.

That’s $88.29 billion! That’s 0.6 percent of GDP! That’s 19.4 percent of the budget deficit!

The United States would see a greater return on investment if it gave that money back to taxpayers, or spent it on alternative health care services, such as buying prenatal vitamins for low-income populations.

Paranthetically, I want to point out that the guidelines issued by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force are normative and non-binding. The panel isn’t banning anything. A person can get a mammogram or a PSA test at any age if she or he has both the desire and the ability to pay for them, either via insurance or out of pocket.

Your Assignment: Help the Federal Government

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

This St. Louis Post-Dispatch article about the Census in Schools Program mentions lesson plans provided by the federal government:

Gateway, like 118,000 schools nationwide, will get lesson plans provided by the Census Bureau in subjects such as math and social studies that puts into context the importance of the census, mandated by the U.S. Constitution.

In case you’re confused by that sentence, please note that the Constitution mandates the Census, not the lesson plans.

Official government lesson plans can cause controversy, as they did when the Education Department distributed brainstorming assignments about ways to help the president. To find out whether the Census Bureau lessons contained similar content, I headed to the Census Bureau’s website for teachers and read the teaching guides.

The bureau’s graphic artist must have been working furiously for the past decade, because the 2010 lesson plans are much more colorful and attractive than the ones from 2000. (Just kidding about the artist. It looks like that work was done by Scholastic.) Most pages in the guides are unobjectionable worksheets that teach how to read a map. One of the high school handouts actually pokes fun at the idea of teaching the Census. It shows a cartoon of a student raising his hand and asking, “Does being in a large family mean I get extra credit?”

What’s troubling is that each guide requires students to help the Census Bureau do its job. For example, a lesson for fifth- and sixth-graders tells students:

Create a multimedia campaign to get the word out about the importance of the 2010 Census. Follow the directions below to complete your campaign.

It’s bad enough asking students to imagine how they would help the Census Bureau, and these guides go further, making it clear that students are expected to act on whatever plans they come up with in class.

Another worksheet instructs third- and fourth-graders to interview their parents and ask whether they participated in the Census in the past. And younger students are supposed to conduct a mock census of their stuffed animals, with parental participation. These activities are thinly veiled attempts to change families’ attitudes toward the Census.

Schoolchildren are not Census workers in training (unless they attend the fabled public service academy) and they shouldn’t have to act as Census apprentices to get a good grade. If the Census Bureau wants to involve students in campaigns, that should be a voluntary, after-school activity.

The Census Bureau lesson plans probably won’t receive the same degree of attention as the lessons plans that preceded the presidential address. But any time the federal government promotes a curriculum, it’s worth evaluating it closely.

Farm to School: Large Expenditures for a Little Lesson

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

School districts in Minnesota are paying more for food produced in their state — up to twice what they would pay if they bought it from other places. The districts say there’s a didactic purpose:

But the expense is worth it, partly because serving local food is a good way to teach kids where their meals come from, said Wendy Knight, the district’s coordinator of food and nutrition services.

For Knight, the disconnect between modern kids and farms was illustrated last month by a small boy who drew a picture of the grass-fed beef hotdogs.

“He drew a picture of a hotdog eating grass,” she said.

That’s a cute story, but a poor basis for policy. Purchasing food in Minnesota doesn’t give the boy any information about hot dogs. Food from his home state doesn’t look any different from food grown somewhere else. To enlighten him, his teacher could read him a book about where food comes from, show a video on the topic, or help his class research food on the Internet. Those activities would teach students where their food comes from, and would serve as an effective and cheap alternative to wasteful local food policies.

Besides, all little kids have mistaken ideas, if not about hot dogs, then about other things. We can’t write policies to set every five-year-old straight. When a child says something silly, it should go into a home movie, not the state statutes.

“We’ve Got a Lot of Great People Who Live in Houses With Carports”

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

The Maryland Heights Planning and Zoning Commission sounds just a little bit defensive about the city’s ban on new carports:

“We’re not saying anything against anyone who lives in a house with a carport,” said Chuck Caverly, vice chairman of the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission, which recommended the change.

Is Maryland Heights targeting carports because they’re a danger to public peace or safety? No, some people just don’t think they look very nice.

Maryland Heights is not achieving an aesthetic ideal with this new law, either. Existing carports are grandfathered in, so people will continue to see them in the city. The law will prevent some people from building the new carports they want, while other carports remain visible for years to come.

Babysitting Is Legal in Michigan ? Up to $600

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

When I blogged about Michigan’s bill to exempt babysitters from daycare regulations, I didn’t know it imposed a $600 limit. The bill has been signed into law, and babysitters are free to watch kids in peace — as long as they earn less than that amount in a year.

A teenager who watches kids one night a week for $50 would exceed that limit, so I’d say Michigan’s daycare regulations still apply to way too many people.

Paved With Good Intentions?

Posted on by Caitlin Hartsell

Combest linked today to a Missourinet article about a decline in the state’s transportation funding:

State Transportation Director Pete Rahn has warned lawmakers that transportation funding will soon drop from $1.5 billion dollars to $421 million, which would end the ramped up construction the past few years which has vastly improved Missouri roads and bridges.

The article talks about proposals to address the decreased budget with more taxes, specifically targeting Missouri’s gas tax, which is lower than in all of our neighboring states — except for Oklahoma, which has the same 17-cent tax. A reliance on gas tax increases can only do so much, however. After all, as the article mentions, new cars are becoming more fuel efficient, and raising the gas tax only accelerates a switch to more fuel-efficient cars, decreasing the budget further.

Instead of taxes, what about tolls? The Show-Me Institute published a policy study last year about privately funding roads. It’s a model that has worked in Europe, and in other parts of the United States. The Skyway in Chicago is a good example of a public highway being successfully transferred to private ownership. A 99-year lease shifted a large cost from the government to a private company, and the people are paying directly for their travel on that road, rather than having to pay a flat fee regardless of their usage.

Maintenance of roads is expensive, but also potentially lucrative for a private company. The profit motive incentivizes companies to attract customers by maintaining the roads and keeping road closures to a minimum; so, a private company almost certainly wouldn’t entirely shut down a highway for two years to do roadwork. Rather than increasing taxes, Missouri should be transferring its expensive public roads to private companies that have a a financial stake in keeping the traffic flowing.

Happiness Is a Truck-Only Lane in Your Side-View Mirror

Posted on by David Stokes

The Warrensburg Daily Star-Journal weighed in with its position on truck-only lanes for Missouri. Its editorial view is really that truck-only lanes are worth considering and could be good for Missouri, but the paper didn’t stake out a strong view either way. The editorial is mildly disappointing, because although it mentions how the Kansas City Star has called for the use of toll roads (as have I), it then says that toll roads “aren’t perfect,” but never tells us what it views as the problems or weaknesses of toll roads. But the good news is that the paper is at least writing in positive terms about truck-only lanes, provided a fair financing system can be found.

Of course, a great financing system could pretty obviously be enacted simply by making the trucks that use the roads pay the tolls to finance the roads. For that matter, the entire highway should be tolled so that we all pay for whichever system we choose to use. I have no problem with gas taxes, and raising the gas tax to pay for highways is far preferable to raising the general sales tax. But using the gas tax as a financing system for truck-only lanes would make the people who drive only on local roads pay just as much for the highway as truckers and long-distance commuters would.

I won’t go into the extreme detail of how we fund transportation in Missouri, but we pay for our roads in many different ways. The people who primarily use local roads pay for them through gas, sales, and property taxes. Tolling the highway would be the fairest and most efficient way to make sure that the people who use the highway — especially people and truckers from out of state — pay for their use of the asset. Passenger cars and, I presume, trucks with enormous gas tanks can quite easily make it across Missouri without filling up and thereby paying gax taxes within Missouri. Currently, many people and trucks driving across the state intentionally stop and fill up while in Missouri because of the low gas taxes here. However, if we pay for a new I-70 and a new I-44 with increased gas taxes (which, again, isn’t the worst idea), we can expect some of the current fill-ups to be redirected across state lines.

Tolling the highway, and eliminating gas taxes for the drivers who pay the tolls, is the best way to fund the changes. Fears of diverting trucks to lesser highways are overblown, especially if trucks are allowed to double-rig in the truck-only lanes, and the toll itself isn’t set too high. The goal is to bring in enough funding to build and maintain the road, not earn a profit.

Thanks to Combest for the link.

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