Police Split on Red Light Cameras

Posted on by Phil Eckelkamp

A recent article by Jo Mannies in the St. Louis Beacon (link via John O’Combest) reports:

The executive board of the Missouri Police Chiefs Association says it has officially endorsed red-light cameras “as part of a comprehensive traffic safety enforcement toolbox that should remain available to reduce deaths and injuries on our roads.”

This stance runs counter to that of the St. Louis Police Officers Association, which came out earlier this month against the cameras.

I would really like to see why the state’s police chiefs believe red-light cameras are actually a safety tool, despite the contrary conclusions of several studies. Either way, it is a very interesting split among the people enforcing the tickets. We’ll be sure to keep you updated on any and all movement that we see on this issue.

Missouri Beer Challenge (March Madness Style)

Posted on by Phil Eckelkamp

Something fun for a Monday morning …

My buddy Mike Sweeney, over at STL Hops, is having a “Best Missouri Craft Beer Challenge.” It’s a bracketed tournament that is set up like much like the March Madness tournament, in which you vote for one beer over another and whichever one has the most votes moves on to the next round.  Currently, they are on Round 3, so get over there and vote.

My personal pick to go all the way is the O’Fallon 5-Day IPA. The site attracts a large proportion of hopheads (fans of the ingredient that bitters the beer — not dope smokers), so that bodes well for O’Fallon. Plus, I always favor the underdog, and since they are a 52 seed out of 64, you can’t get much more underdog than that.

As long as a pumpkin beer doesn’t win, I will consider it a valid tournament. Enjoy.

A Novel Way to Meet the Demand for Teachers

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

School districts eager to fill gaping shortages of math and science teachers might consider hiring teachers who have earned alternative certification, which usually means a modified certification process involving more hands-on experience and abbreviated theory coursework. However, some districts are going further off the beaten path in their search for new teachers. This article in the L.A. Times focuses on California public school districts’ recruitment efforts in the Philippines. The districts bring the teachers to the United States on three-year visas, train them in the intricacies of California public school culture, and then let them teach.

It’s interesting that states are so set on the requirements for a teaching license that they would rather hire people from the other side of the world who meet those requirements than scientists in the U.S. who know their subject but haven’t taken education courses.

Some will object: Don’t the education credentials ensure that teachers will be able to relate to students and teach effectively? Not always. The L.A. Times article notes that the teachers met all California requirements, but had difficulty adjusting to U.S. schools. They were used to classroom procedures in the Philippines, where students are deferential to authority and risk getting kicked out of class for missing a homework assignment. Their education course credits hadn’t prepared them for the culture shock, and I doubt the crash course on life in the United States helped anyone adapt quickly enough.

Bringing foreign teachers here could be beneficial to everyone involved, if the districts support the teachers throughout their stay as they face the challenges of teaching in our public schools. I hope states will also realize how many potential teachers are already here, familiar with our culture, and barred from teaching only by bureaucratic regulations.

Thank You to the Cape Girardeau County Pachyderm Club

Posted on by David Stokes

I just want to send a quick, bloggy thank you to the Cape Girardeau County Pachyderm Club for having me as their monthly speaker last night. I greatly enjoyed the trip down to Cape, and the talk and discussion with everyone. I learned a great deal from listening to others talk about the interactions between Cape Girardeau city and Jackson, the two towns that make up the substantial majority of the county.

There is a state law authorizing the two towns to share sales tax revenues on certain projects, pretty much like the Saint Louis County sales-tax pool. However, the two cities have yet to utilize that law. Over time, I hope they find ways to do that and share other resources to benefit all their taxpayers. So, thanks to Evan for inviting me to speak, and to everyone in the club for giving me an opportunity to talk about our work here at the Show-Me Institute.

(This is a good time to remind Democratic Party–affiliated clubs that representatives of the Show-Me Institute would be delighted to come speak to your groups, as well.)

Asian Education

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

Two Million Minutes has done a good job of drawing attention to educational disparities around the world. I’ve been somewhat annoyed with it, though, for its lack of ideas on how to solve America’s education problems. For example, it’s true that many Asian students spend more time than their American peers on schoolwork. But if the typical U.S. school is doing a bad job, surely adding an hour or two onto the school day isn’t going to transform them into high-quality institutions overnight. Then this morning I read the Two Million Minutes blog and was very pleasantly surprised:

President Obama is correct–there is a remarkable amount of innovation and success taking place in American education–most of it outside of the public school system.

At last, Two Million Minutes recognizes that there are different kinds of schools in the United States, and some are doing well. It goes on to discuss successful private schools and charter schools. (One minor point: charter schools are public schools too. They just face different rules and incentives from traditional public schools.)

Two Millions Minutes has posted some videos of young students learning Mandarin Chinese and Spanish at the Renaissance School in Florida. This private school’s curriculum looks impressive: accelerated math, lots of foreign language time, clear goals for science and history. It even has its own blog with links to articles about U.S. and Asian education.

However, there is a downside of the focus on Asian education. Asian educational programs are great, if that’s what parents want. We need to concentrate on creating an education market full of innovative choices — not on requiring everyone to learn two languages and algebra by fourth grade. As an illustration of the dangers of obsessing over achievement, look at this news story, linked to from the Renaissance School blog. It’s about a father who wants his daughter to go live with people who are more intellectual than he and his wife are, all for the sake of better mental cultivation. I think that’s even more bizarre than Nadya Suleman.

Red Fish, Blue Fish

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

We’re all familiar with Missouri’s sales tax holiday, but did you know there’s also a fishing permit holiday? This year, it will take place on June 6 and 7. This is from the Missouri Department of Conservation:

Maybe you’ve never fished before, and you’re not sure if it’s right for you. Or perhaps you fished when you were a kid but never have time any more. You just want one day when you can take the family out to the lake and enjoy nature together. Free Fishing Days are your chance to sample the action without having to invest in a fishing permit.

They can put it that way because people are so nostalgic about fishing. Imagine if they wrote a similar press release for the sales tax holiday: “Maybe you haven’t bought a box of pencils in a long time, or you want to look for notebooks with your family. Perhaps you just want a day to wander around Office Max and enjoy the printer cartridges. The sales tax holiday is your opportunity to have fun with stationary supplies without investing in the sales tax.”

How crazy is it that you need a license to fish? I can understand needing a license to do people’s nails at the mall (just kidding, I actually can’t understand that either) but to fish? Some license requirements are ostensibly in place to protect whomever you interact with on the job. That reasoning doesn’t work for fishing. People get their fishing license and then they go kill fish. And fishing is a quiet, sedentary activity that doesn’t pose risks to other people. I guess if they litter the ground with broken hooks that would be a problem, but paying a fee doesn’t prevent that, and we already have laws against littering anyway.

The fishing license is just a tax, like a sales tax on fishing. It funds some good programs at the Department of Conservation. To me it seems strange to tax some nature activities like fishing, and not others, like looking at a beautiful sunset. (I know, there’s no way to tax that.) I would prefer the Department of Conservation get its revenue from general taxes and not all these little arbitrary licenses and fees and hoops people have to jump through.

And just as I’m opposed to sales tax holidays, I think the state should reconsider the free fishing days. If your tax is worthwhile, leave it in place and leave it alone. Don’t divert resources from their most efficient uses. Fishing is part of the economy too!

Inspiring Story From New Hampshire in the Wall Street Journal

Posted on by David Stokes

How angry would you be if the following scenario played out where you lived?

First, you build a successful society based on the ideas of individualism, liberty, and personal responsibility. Nearby, a group of people builds a different society based on high taxes, communal values, general leftism, etc. Your individualistic society succeeds so well that many people from the communitarian society move there to escape the taxes, welfare, groupthink, etc. All of this is fine until the next thing happens, which is that the number of these people who have moved in grows large enough to take over and enact their own laws. And they proceed to make your society much more like the one they moved from. They moved to your society because it worked better than theirs, then reshape your successful society to be more like their failed society, which they left precisely because it was failing.

This, essentially, is what has happened in New Hampshire during the past 20 years — allowing some room for hyperbole in the above scenario. (It is hard to argue that Boston is really “failing.”) The Wall Street Journal has a great article about this today, using the issue of seat belt laws as an entry point to the wider debate of personal freedom in New Hampshire. (Thanks to my brother, Mike, for sending me the link.)

The story inspired me because it is great to see people fighting to preserve their liberties. It is also depressing, because I can only imagine how angry I would be at the people who moved to New Hampshire from Massachusetts, only to make their new home more like Massachusetts.

But I don’t have to totally imagine this, because I am more familiar with New Hampshire than most Missourians are. The girl I dated during much of college was from New Hampshire, and her family members were long time New Hampshirites and rock-ribbed Republicans. I can remember visiting her family on holiday weekends and watching her dad getting mad at whoever was hosting Crossfire, probably Michael Kinsley at that time (early ’90s). So, this post is for him. I can imagine you appearing at one of the hearings mentioned in the WSJ, and being this person:

“Will you require helmets in cars next?” a protester shouted to Rep. Kelly, the bill’s sponsor.

Then again, for all I know, her entire family could be committed leftists by now, given that I haven’t talked to her in at least 10 years. Actually, I just hope her dad is still alive, because I am gonna feel really bad about sending him a shout-out if he isn’t. …

Law of Unintended Consequences

Posted on by Ryan Davisson

Cigarette companies recently began exhibiting a textbook example of the adverse secondary effects of tax hikes. In light of the federal tax increase set to take place in two weeks, tobacco manufacturers Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds quietly raised their prices to just about what price they would be once the federal tax actually takes effect. The article indicates that some unnamed analysts have speculated that “the companies raised prices early to get people used to the new tax and to compensate for an expected drop in sales.”

It is unclear whether this price increase is a temporary measure that the companies intend to drop on April 1, when the government begins its new tax collection and would otherwise drive effective prices still higher — then lament about what it was like, for a short time, to earn like the U.S. government.

Dave Gets His Wish, on a Small Scale

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

Dave Stokes has blogged recently about the need to cut the size of the public sector workforce. I hope he’ll be happy to see this post by Kavita Kumar at The Grade. The news is that the University of Missouri Press is laying off seven of its 18 employees, with the goal of eventually getting by without the $450,000 that the state bestows on it each year. This is the Press’ official explanation for the decision:

“Out [sic] goal is to be fiscally independent, and we are developing a plan that will reduce our dependence on state funding while at the same time making our operations more efficient to better serve our authors and customers,” said Dwight Browne, interim director of the press, in a statement.

It looks like a smart move to me. I can’t imagine what would justify spending tax dollars on an academic press. The Press’ desire to streamline operations is laudable, a case of a state-funded organization acting like a private-sector company and taking economic realities into account. Little cuts like this one can add up and make a difference in shrinking the public sector.

Of course, this is also a very tough time to be without a job, and I wish the laid-off employees success in their search for work.

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