Post-Dispatch Up and Gets Free-Market on Us …

Posted on by David Stokes

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial board is certainly capable of surprises, and this morning’s editorial about Amtrak is one such instance. I don’t have much to add; mostly, I just wanted to highlight it here because, you know, we get a lot more traffic than some old dead-tree newspaper. As they put it:

As to the rest of it, that should be Amtrak’s problem, not the taxpayers’. Taxpayers already are paying 80 percent of the cost of hauling an Amtrak passenger across the state. That’s enough. Outside of the crowded eastern corridor, passenger trains no longer make economic sense.

Facts are facts, unfortunate as they may be to someone who loves trains, like I do. It would be fabulous to somehow fix the problems and allow Amtrak to be on time with its trains, but I don’t see why taxpayers, rather than riders, should fund those fixes. It’s hard enough to argue in favor of keeping the subsidy at the current level, as the romantic in me supports, but increasing it would be wholly irresponsible.

’47 Cheval Blanc … to Your Doorstep!

Posted on by Nicholas Loyal

Amazon.com, the world’s largest Internet retailer, recently
announced its intention to sell wine through its online marketplace, a venture
that is sure to bring good, cheap wine to the masses and establish the
Seattle-based company as one of the country’s largest wine retailers. This
fact is great news for oenophiles in Missouri,
as the states’ direct-shipment laws allow for any out-of-state retailer or
manufacturer to ship up to two cases of wine per month to any customer without
restriction (and more if a special excise license is procured, which it almost
certainly will be).

However, what if wine just seems a little too “fancy” for
your next adventure across the Lake of the Ozarks Community Bridge to a certain section of Camden County, and you don’t want to deal with the hassle of
visiting your neighborhood gas station/pharmacy/liquor store/grocery store to
pick up a few cans of Missouri’s official beverage? Can’t it just be delivered to your home?

Actually, no. Anheuser-Busch (along with every other brewery
and distillery in the state) cannot ship directly to consumers. The reason
for this happens to be the same reason that people in Kansas and Utah won’t be able to take advantage of Amazon’s most recent business venture: After
prohibition, almost all states in the union moved to what is now known as the
three-tier distribution system, composed of manufacturers, distributors, and
retailers of alcoholic beverages. This system was designed to ease the states
back into alcohol consumption, and to further regulate companies like A-B.
However, its separation has led to the notion that producers cannot sell
directly to consumers. In Kansas,
this means that wine can’t be delivered directly to your home. In Missouri (thanks to the
input of a remarkably powerful wine lobby) it can, but you still have to buy
your beer at the store, because the beer lobby is more concerned with other things. This isn’t a big deal if you want to get a Budweiser,
but if you’re in Kansas City and you want to sample the latest Schlafly Reserve, or you’re stuck in Saint Louis without a
special kind of Boulevard, you’re out of luck.

The only solution to this problem? Eliminate the three-tier
system and allow manufacturers to sell directly to customers. This will keep
prices down for consumers and allow for more freedom for direct-delivery
purchases, for both beer and for wine. I really doubt anyone at A-B would be
sad if they were able to sell direct, both because revenue would skyrocket and
because no midlevel jobs would be lost — distributors of A-B products are all
monopolistic in their sale of the company’s products as is. Meanwhile, all of Missouri’s smaller
breweries would no doubt see an increase in business as their distribution
areas grew. How can this not be a good thing?

Kansas City Considers Regional Jail: Bad News for Criminals, Good News for Taxpayers

Posted on by David Stokes

There’s an interesting article in the Star today about the proposal for a shared, regionally built jail for the Kansas City area. I think this is a great idea and an opportunity for shared investment. Regional jails have worked very well in Saint Louis County and city. The county jail in St. Louis, which was initially paid for by the county via a bond issue but is used by all the municipalities, has worked out great. In St. Louis city, there are two jails. The new city jail is just for the city itself, although I think the feds pay to house some prisoners there on a temporary basis. But the lower-security city workhouse up on Hall Street houses low-risk prisoners who can’t pay their fines or restitutions from others counties, too, and that works out well for the city’s finances.

Jails are one of the few areas where I would generally be against privatization — although some services within jails should certainly be outsourced and privatized, such as the pharmacy. Consolidation is the key to efficient use of tax dollars for jails, and it’s great that the Kansas City area may be moving in that direction. Just as St. Louis County put its jail right next to its other government buildings, I think Kansas City should build a 20-story art deco jail right next to City Hall and the courthouse. Now, that would be sweet.

Prudence and the Columbia School Board

Posted on by Dave Roland

Thanks to Janese Heavin’s excellent coverage on her Class Notes blog, I’ve been keeping an eye on the drama surrounding the Columbia School Board’s pursuit of an 11-percent increase in the district’s school tax levy. Much of the controversy has been rooted in the fact that the school board drew $10.3 million from its reserves to pay first-year salaries for 70 newly-hired positions, knowing that the salaries could not be sustained without an increase in the levy.

But the whole story took a rather baffling twist with remarks made by one of the school board’s members at a recent forum for school board candidates:

“We didn’t think it would be prudent to come to taxpayers and ask for
an increase with” $36 million “in reserves,” he told about 20 attendees
at an NAACP-sponsored forum for school board candidates. “We spent them
down purposefully. We did that with the full understanding that we
would have to make decisions about how to cut costs or seek a levy. …
It was a prudent decision to spend down reserves first.”

This is a classic case of the "better to ask forgiveness than permission" mentality. The school board knew that Columbia’s taxpayers would not willingly shoulder an additional tax burden, so they hired first — hoping the move would force taxpayers to accept an increase in taxes. With the hires made and the new personnel already present in the schools, the board was betting that the citizens would not call its bluff.

As appalling as this tactic is, there is a rather mystifying point that also needs to be highlighted: Columbia’s School Board, surprisingly, seems to be quite good about meeting its budget on a year-to-year basis. The district has ended nine of the last 10 years with a surplus, building its reserve from about 13 percent in ’96?’97 to nearly 25 percent before last year’s $10.3-million hiring spree. To be sure, the budget itself is bloated by certain unnecessary expenditures, but I would be thrilled if other public school districts consistently kept within their budgets. April’s election in Columbia will tell us whether the city’s voters are sufficiently impressed with the school board’s stewardship that they’ll overlook the shady planning of the board members.

Sales Tax Holidays ? Ineffective Economic Medicine

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

An editorial in the Southeast Missourian (link via Combest) compares the proposed sales tax holiday to cough syrup:

A statewide proposal to create a sales-tax holiday in late June to stimulate the economy is drawing criticism. You might compare the idea to taking cough syrup; it may not taste very good to some, but overall it will leave the economy feeling better.

This is an apt comparison, although not for the reason given in the editorial. Cough syrup temporarily makes you feel better, but it just masks a symptom; it doesn’t make your cold go away or improve your health in general. Likewise, a sales tax holiday appears to help the economy for a few days, but without doing any long-term good.

(Deadbeat) Deer Hunter

Posted on by Nicholas Loyal

I’d like to apologize for the title, first off, as I really don’t like the word "deadbeat" — but the pun was too good to pass up.

The State of Illinois, as reported by this article in the Post-Dispatch, recently enacted a new policy that refuses to grant hunting or fishing licenses to fathers who are behind on child-support payments. As the article plainly explains:

A $14,000 child support check was handed Rachel Miller because the father of her two sons likes to hunt white-tail deer.

Apparently, though, the individuals who have been forced to make that choice aren’t too happy about the fact that the government is getting more involved with their affairs:

[The father] isn’t happy about the turn of events. He says the way the state works now, they’re in control of way too many things.

Child support, like most topics in family law, is a touchy subject. And while I agree that there should be some government impetus toward parental responsibility (if for no other reason than fathers should take care of their children, rather than passing that burden on to the state) I feel like options such as paycheck garnishment often go too far in restricting the freedoms of "deadbeat dads," who are not always as much to blame for an unfortunate family situation as the mother — but who still get stuck with the bill for children they’re often not allowed to see.

But that’s not what we’re talking about here.

If you want to make a claim against the fishing license, fine. But I think it’s pretty apparent that the State of Illinois is justified in restricting who runs around in the woods and shoots off a firearm or bow. Unless you’re hunting for food for the children who you owe child support to, the state should be able to restrict the activity of recreational hunting as a motivation for fathers to fulfill their lawful financial obligations.

This isn’t an issue of "oh, they can afford a hunting license, so they should be able to afford child support," because that’s a ridiculous comparison. A deer license in Illinois for 2008 costs $15, while child support payments are often in the thousands of dollars per month. This is a carrot and stick issue. Hunters want to hunt, but they need to tend to responsibilities before they can play.

Or, they could just take their children hunting with them … which might have solved the whole problem in the first place. Just a thought.

Red-Light Camera Reviews Are In!

Posted on by David Stokes

There is such a thing as too much milk, even if it does a blog good, so I’ll move on to another topic. The Post-Dispatch has an article about a city reviewing the results of its use of red-light cameras to improve safety make money. At the very least, we can credit the St. Peters Police Department for taking a hard look at the results of the cameras, and for trying to ensure the owner is also the driver. And while they point to a reduction in accidents at intersections, they admit they can’t credit it to the cameras — and also that they have no measure of the increased rear-end collisions at the same places. From the article (emphasis added in all excerpts):

But there was a piece of good news. The number of traffic crashes in St. Peters dropped 34 percent between 2005 and 2007 — though the report acknowledged that attributing the decline solely to red light cameras is problematic.

"While experiencing a reduction in crashes both citywide and at the target sites, the impact of red light photo enforcement on driver behavior may be difficult, if not impossible, to quantify," the report said.

Some studies have found that while red light cameras can help reduce side crashes, they can increase the number of rear-end accidents, as drivers slam on their brakes to keep from setting off the cameras.

Townsend said St. Peters has yet to determine whether the number of rear-end accidents has gone up.

In fact, the cameras do increase rear-end collisions — as several studies have shown. I don’t think anyone would deny that an increase in people covering their faces as they go through intersections is a bad thing. This can’t help but lead to an increase in accidents of just about any type, from front-end collisions to Dukes of Hazzard–style river jumping:

Police refer to them as "duckers" — drivers who try to shield their faces from red light cameras as they run signals at intersections watched 24/7 by electronic traffic enforcers.

The city of St. Louis maintains no such pretense of making sure the owner is the actual driver, nor do officials even pretend to care about anything other than raising revenue:

[T]he city of St. Louis is pulling in substantial revenue. Of nearly $2 million in total ticket revenue in the past year, the city has kept about $1.6 million, said Ron Smith, the city’s operations director.

Cameras in St. Louis don’t take pictures of drivers’ faces, so the city does not have the problem with duckers that St. Peters faces.

To be fair, if you go to court in the city and swear under penalty of perjury that you were not the driver, you can get the ticket dismissed. The best thing about people in local government is being able to watch your neighbors work to build a better community, and dedicate large amounts of time and effort to their city. The worst thing about some (not all, just some) of the people in local government is that they are all about the immediate and local issues, and have no knowledge of — or, more likely, just don’t care about — broader issues, like how red-light cameras and eminent domain abuse take away our liberty, piece by piece. (In the case of cameras, its the liberty to be presumed innocent that’s under assault, among other things.) So I hope we see an end to red-light cameras sometime soon.

Why Buy the Milk if You Can’t Tell Whether It’s Hormone-Free?

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

My colleagues have done an excellent job of demonstrating the unconstitutionality and general craziness of the proposal to forbid labeling milk "hormone free." I’d like to point out that if we follow this line of reasoning, we’ll have to change the labels on all other breakfast foods, too:

  • Cereal will no longer be labeled as "crunchy" or "crispy," because that implies other cereals are soggy.

  • Eggs will no longer be labeled "free-range," because that implies some hens are raised in tight spaces.

  • No more golden delicious apples, because that implies other apples are not tasty.

  • No more "I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter," because that implies you could believe that other butter substitutes are just substitutes.

In short, this proposal is just as bad as the FDA’s idea to forbid labeling suncreens above SPF 30, because it implies that the higher SPF sunscreens offer more protection … even though they do.

Support Us

The work of the Show-Me Institute would not be possible without the generous support of people who are inspired by the vision of liberty and free enterprise. We hope you will join our efforts and become a Show-Me Institute sponsor.

Donate
Man on Horse Charging