Your Tax Money Is in the Toilet (Literally)

Posted on by David Stokes

One of my favorite U.S senators, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, has included a couple of Missouri pork/earmark/stimulus projects in his recent list of the 100 most wasteful stimulus projects in America. Today’s Springfield News-Leader has a story about spending a half-million federal dollars to replace 25 bathrooms in Mark Twain National Forest.

There were other questionable spending decisions in Missouri:

Coburn’s report also questions the need to spend $2.9 million to build a new visitor center at the Mingo National Wildlife Refuge near Poplar Bluff, $940,000 for solar power generation at a fish hatchery in Neosho and $500,000 in federal stimulus money to help defray costs for Missouri fish farmers.

It appears that Missouri’s fish farmers did quite well with the stimulus package, receiving two of the top 100 disbursements in Coburn’s list. They must have one heck of a lobbyist.

I have to admit, the new bathrooms look very nice. And I would have no problem with replacing a few of the old ones to make them accessible to the disabled. But do people really need 25 brand-new, nice toilets in the forest? Isn’t “roughing it” sort of the point of going to the Mark Twain National Forest?

The article reports that the contract was bid out, but I have to wonder exactly how high of a profit margin the contractors are getting. According to the article:

The original bid sought replacement of 22 toilets, but three more were added at no extra cost after park officials had a miscount of how many outhouses needed replaced, Cliff said.

That must have been one hell of a profit margin on the original bid, if the contractors are able to say they’ll gladly do 25 instead of 22 for the same amount of money. So, is this an example of wasteful government spending? I think the only appropriate answer is: “Does a bear s$*! in the woods?”

Thanks to Combest for the link.

Conflicting Headlines

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

Combest lists some headlines related to the auto task force. Here’s one:

Auto jobs task force finalizing recommendations

And here’s another:

Auto task force begins analysis

So which is it? Are they getting started, or are they putting on the finishing touches? Maybe they just work really quickly.

Given that state planning of industries is economically disastrous, I hope they drag it out as long as possible. This shouldn’t be completed in a day.

CREDO Charter Study: Missouri an Outlier

Posted on by Josh Smith

The St. Louis Beacon and Kansas City Star both have stories about a recent study from Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes that analyzes charter school performance nationwide, with specific results for Missouri. The news is not all good. According to the report, Missouri is one of only five states to show significantly higher learning rates in charter schools than in traditional public schools. According to the Beacon:

In other findings about Missouri, the report found that:

  • In general, new charter school students experience an initial drop in both reading and math compared to their counterparts in traditional public schools, but they experience no significant drop in reading and math in later years in charter schools.

  • In general, blacks and Hispanics in charter schools achieve significantly more in reading and math compared to their counterparts in public schools.

  • Poor students in charter schools perform significantly worse in both reading and math than their counterparts in traditional public schools.

  • Both special education students and English language learners receive no significant advantages from attending charter schools compared to their counterparts in traditional public schools.

So, according to this report, children in Missouri who attend charter schools experience an initial drop in reading and math, but later, reports the Star, “a Missouri student attending a charter school could expect to learn ‘significantly more in reading and math than they would if they went to a traditional public school in the same community.'”

This study is another data point to add to the case for charters. Nationwide, however, the study found that many individual charter students fared worse than comparable students in traditional schools.

The beauty of charter schools is that they are not all one beast. They offer a variety of options for different types of students, and students with different needs. Let’s relish the bad results as a learning opportunity for other charters, now and in the future, and relish the good results here in Missouri as a sign that charter schools offer a viable alternative to troubled traditional public schools.

I leave you with a statement from The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, quoted in another article about the CREDO study:

“The CREDO report confirms what several other studies previously indicated: in states and communities where there are high standards for school quality and authorizers are performing their duties well, students in public charter schools are making solid academic progress. Where large numbers of schools have been created without a rigorous application process and adequate authorizer oversight, the results are unsatisfactory,” said Nelson Smith, president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

“We are encouraged by the ground-breaking results being achieved by many public charter schools across the country,” said Smith. “However, if high-quality performance is to become the norm for public charter schools, we need to ramp up our efforts to replicate what’s working as well as enhance our work to ‘remove the barriers to exit’ and make it easier to close chronically low-performing charters.”

The “Fair Tax” Rally In Columbia

Posted on by David Stokes

That twittering blogger himself, Mr. Combest, linked to a number of articles about the “Fair Tax” rally in Columbia this past weekend. I commend all the participants in the rally for getting out and fighting for a better tax system for our state’s economic growth. For an article about the proposal written by Dr. Rik Hafer — an economics professor with Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and a research fellow with the Show-Me Institute — check here.

Post-Dispatch Discusses Privatization of Police

Posted on by David Stokes

There was an excellent article in Sunday’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch about the heavy use of, and recent controversies over, taxpayer-funded private security forces in the city of St. Louis. It is fairly common for neighborhood business groups to initiate property taxes on themselves, and inevitably their customers, in order to pay for extra security forces that augment the police department. Some don’t think that this should be allowed:

Alderman Charles Quincy Troupe, whose 1st Ward includes some of the city’s poorest and most crime-rattled blocks, called the concept illegal, and unfair to those who can’t afford it.

He thinks money from special tax districts should go to the Police Department for use citywide.

“It’s morally wrong to say this community is going to have adequate police protection and the other community perishes because it doesn’t,” he said.

I don’t agree with the alderman on that, but we do agree on one thing: Personal security is not just the job of the police; it is also an individual responsibility, and people have a right to use the tools they need to protect themselves, their families, and their businesses.

I am certainly not going to defend the heavy use of force by security guards in this case, as detailed in the article, even if most of the guards were off-duty policemen. However, I really don’t see the problem with off-duty policeman working as security guards. Cops are never really off duty — that is why they are required to carry sidearms even when out of uniform. If an off-duty cop is cashing a check when the bank gets robbed, that officer is not allowed to try to sneak out quietly and let the on-duty police handle everything when they arrive. So, because they are always expected to be serving and protecting, I see no problem with them getting paid to do so as part of a second job.

Others find it strange:

“I’ve never heard of police going off the job and then being hired to carry out their public function in a private setting,” said Charles P. Nemeth, director of graduate legal programs at California University of Pennsylvania in Pittsburgh, and author of “Private Security and the Law.”

I see nothing wrong with it, nor do I see anything wrong with businesses choosing to tax themselves to pay for additional security.

There is also a licensing aspect to this story: The police board stripped the security company’s owner (who was also a police officer in his own right) of his city security license, although he can still own and operate the company.

I don’t know whether the off-duty city police also need to be licensed as security guards, or whether that requirement is reserved for people performing security work who are not also off-duty city police.

When it comes to the question of exercising the power to detain people, as seen in the article, I don’t have a problem with the idea that government should require some level of security guard licensing (for guards who aren’t also cops, of course). There are many worse examples of unnecesary licensing in the city.

Why You Should Wear a Color Other Than Purple Today

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

Missouri’s Department of Health is calling on everyone to wear purple today to protest senior citizen abuse (thanks to Combest for the link):

Monday is the fourth annual World Elder Abuse Awareness Day. Activities are planned across the world to demonstrate the need for efforts to prevent it. Senior services department Director Margaret Donnelly says that wearing purple will help raise awareness about elderly abuse.

State encouragement of protests goes beyond state symbols and endorsements because it tries to change behavior. (Recognizing official state animals is an improper use of government, but at least it doesn’t lead to any action.) Even if you don’t think protesting senior abuse is something to get upset over — after all, everyone agrees abuse is bad — you should still be worried that the state will next sanction more-controversial protests. From there, it’s just a small step to officially opposing unpopular demonstrations.

The state should absolutely investigate and prosecute abuse. But protesting abuse and deciding what color to wear should be left to the private sector, without state influence one way or the other.

School Choice Garners Increasing Support From All Political Quarters

Posted on by Eric D. Dixon

Here’s another piece of evidence that school choice has become, more than ever, an issue favored by people of all ideological stripes. Juan Rangel, CEO of Chicago’s United Neighborhood Organization, has an article in the Huffington Post arguing in favor of using stimulus funds to expand charter schools:

Governments should devote stimulus funds to charter school expansion and encourage public private partnerships to ensure efficient use of the funds. Charter schools have illustrated the ability to improve the quality of education in the communities they serve. Yet, across the nation, these schools struggle to finance new construction or capital improvements.

I’d rather that the current federal stimulus program didn’t exist at all — the best thing government officials could do to jump start the economy would be to cut both spending and taxes to the bone — but as long as the spending is going to happen, providing kids an escape route from failing public schools is a pretty good cause.

Increasing Affordability Key to Increasing Health Care Access

Posted on by Abhi Sivasailam

For anyone with time to spare, I highly recommend an article by eminent surgeon and recent MacArthur “Genius” Atul Gawande over at the New Yorker (it’s more than 6,000 words and eight pages long — enjoy!).

Gawande discusses the sobering data on our national health care spending, investigates the sources of skyrocketing costs, and sketches some general solutions that the public should keep in mind. Primarily, Gawande argues against the overutilization of medicine, and the excessive use of medical services.

When comparing areas of differing average health care costs, he found that areas of high Medicaid per-patient spending utilized, on average, 20 percent more diagnostic tests. Ironically, the data suggests no positive correlation between spending and quality of care, and even implies that average quality of care per several metrics decreases as per-patient spending rises!

Gawande further suggests that the current structure of incentives for doctors, one based on quantity as opposed to quality, is non-conducive to sustainable costs. He writes:

Providing health care is like building a house. The task requires experts, expensive equipment and materials, and a huge amount of coördination. Imagine that, instead of paying a contractor to pull a team together and keep them on track, you paid an electrician for every outlet he recommends, a plumber for every faucet, and a carpenter for every cabinet. Would you be surprised if you got a house with a thousand outlets, faucets, and cabinets, at three times the cost you expected, and the whole thing fell apart a couple of years later?

Gawande looks to successful, low-cost cities and care networks such as the Mayo Clinic for answers, and he advocates increased cooperation among the community of care providers to best provide transparent, accountable care.

Only so much space is afforded me here, so I will leave you to read the article and simply note that, as the nation descends into a pivotal debate over health care plans, HMOs, doctors, legislators, and common citizens should look beyond “public vs. private vs. co-op.” Rather, what matters most at this juncture  is not who pays (although that’s certainly important), but how much they pay. After all, the first step to making health care more accessible is to render it more affordable.

L.A. Times Charter School Debate

Posted on by Eric D. Dixon

For the past few days, the L.A. Times has run a three–part debate about charter schools. It’s written in a point-counterpoint format by Lisa Snell, director of education and child welfare at the Reason Foundation, and Ralph E. Shaffer, professor emeritus of history at Cal Poly Pomona.

Be sure to read each of the three installments:

This is the kind of debate that’s actually worth having — one that relies on data and careful argumentation, rather than bluster and hand-waving.

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