I’m Thinking of a State …

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

An op-ed in the Lake Sun Leader imagines a better Missouri:

Imagine businesses operating as responsible partners in making Missouri a leader, again, in areas such as research and development, in manufacturing, in education and not just in the service industries which pay the lowest wages with the fewest, if any, benefits.

Instead, one by one, Missouri manufacturers go overseas for cheap labor, including the pencil factory in Versailles.

The op-ed makes demands on so many fronts — taxes on businesses, health insurance, education ("Imagine that there is no brain drain from our universities") — that not only is the imagined state far from the current reality in Missouri, but it doesn’t describe anywhere else either. There are always trade-offs, and no state has a perfect record on all issues. You can’t burden businesses with high taxes to pay for everyone’s health care, then expect them to pour money into research and development at the same time. And when your entire population is educated at a state-of-the-art university, it won’t want to sit around making pencils in a factory.

Books are Burning

Posted on by Eric D. Dixon

The Post-Dispatch reports that a used book store owner in Kansas City, unable to unload his thousands of warehoused books, has taken to burning them:

Ranging from best-sellers such as Tom Clancy’s "The Hunt for Red October" and Tom Wolfe’s "Bonfire of the Vanities," to obscure titles like a bound report from the Fourth Pan-American Conference held in Buenos Aires in 1910 and a textbook on beginning Polish, the books won’t sell. Wayne said even local libraries and thrift stores have told him they’re full.

Last week, Wayne began putting them to the torch, tossing scores of books into a burning cauldron to protest what he sees as society’s diminishing support for the printed word.

"This is the funeral pyre for thought in America today," Wayne told spectators outside his bookstore as he lit the first batch of books.

The fire blazed for about 50 minutes before the Kansas City Fire Department put it out because Wayne didn’t have a burning permit.

Wayne said he will get a permit for next time. He said he envisions monthly bonfires until his supply — estimated at 20,000 books — is exhausted.

Now, I was raised in a family in which books were practically sacred. Whenever my dad lent a book to someone, he’d be sure to quip: "If there’s a fire, rescue the book first. Then go back for your family." He’s also fond of his T-shirt with the Erasmus quote: "When I get a little money, I buy books. And if there is any left over, I buy food." When I moved here to the St. Louis area in April, I brought more books with me than anything else, no matter how you measure it — weight, volume, mass, um … surface area. My car was loaded down with dead trees.

So this story cuts me to the core. This guy owns the books, so he can do with them what he wants, as far as I’m concerned, but I wish I could rescue them all. Although I’ve never had a pet, I think this must be what animal-lovers feel when they visit the pound and see all the animals waiting to be put down — wishing they could take them all home, where they’d be safe.

I think I need to buy more shelves.

We Have a Nominee for Worst Proposal of 2007…

Posted on by David Stokes

O’Fallon, MO, is seeking to annex the Busch Wildlife Area. This would put one of the state’s parkland and wildlife jewels under the zoning control of an aggressively expanding suburb. This is a truly horrible proposal. The city officials have stated that they have no intention of changing the use of the land, and I believe them, but their promises now could easily be changed by new leadership after future elections.  How could anyone even fathom giving control of this land over to a municipality instead of the State Department of Conservation?

I would feel better about the statement by O’Fallon Mayor Donna Morrow that she is opposed to this if she didn’t also say she was unaware it was being proposed in the first place. It seems the bureaucrats might have just a little too much power in O’Fallon. I have had the great pleasure of going to the Busch Wildlife Area. My friend, Willis Corbett (scroll down), took me out there to participate in a Pointer and Setter competition a few years back, which was two hours of the most wonderful horseback riding of my life.

The good news is that ideas this bad are usually stopped when common-sense Missourians realize what is being proposed. The Great Rivers Habitat Alliance, supported by the Busch family, is strongly opposed.  They have done incredible work over the past decade in St. Charles County. St. Charles County Councilman Joe Brazil, who represents the area, is also opposed, and states:

"There should be a state law prohibiting municipal governments from taking county or state parks of more than 100 acres."

The only thing he is wrong about is that the law should apply to parks of any size, not just 100 acres.  The State Department of Conservation is much better equipped and prepared to manage our park system than any local municipality. The land should remain unincorportated to best honor the gift of the Busch family.

Missouri … The State That Takes Your Property!

Posted on by Maurice Harris

In today’s St. Louis Business Journal, an article points out that Missouri is failing in pursuing comprehensive eminent domain reform. The Castle Coalition gave Missouri a D in its effort to stop eminent domain — especially government-sanctioned eminent domain on the local level:

House Bill 1944, effective last August, which specified that property
cannot be condemned "solely" for economic development and ends the
prior practice of letting private developers initiate condemnations on
their own behalf, continues to allow government agencies to take
private property for the use of other private parties for any other
justification. The new law "continues to let cities condemn whole
neighborhoods as ‘blighted’ based on vague, subjective factors,"
according to the report, such as "inadequate street layout," "unsafe
conditions" and "obsolete platting."

The weakness of HB 1944 was pointed out by Tim Lee and Shaida Dezfuli last year. Hopefully, this rating would put lawmakers on notice to pass tougher legislation when they convene in January for the regular session. Also, this should be a wake-up call for local residents in cities across the state who are concerned about protecting their own property. The state of Missouri should feel shamed for not standing for property owners in this state and leaving them at the mercy of developers!

MO HealthNet could save money!

Posted on by Maurice Harris

An article in MissouriNet today discusses the new MO HealthNet plan and the challenges it still faces:

MO Health Net, SB 577,
is the ambitious replacement for Missouri’s Medicaid program. "We’re
busily working on our timelines and the various steps that we will have
to take to make MO Health Net happen," says Deborah Scott, director of
the Department of Social Services. The MO Health Net bill gives the
department much flexibility in hammering out the details of the bill.
It does include, though, an Oversight Committee to watch its
development and provide input, something Scott says she welcomes.

Overall, the bill is a step in the right direction to control the rising cost of Medicaid that is a large part of the state budget and costing Missouri taxpayers more every year. In the FY 2008 budget, Medicaid would cost the state more than $150 million dollars. The governor hopes that putting the focus on prevention of health problems and early health screenings would prevent more money being spent to treat people who waited until the last minute to be diagnosed and treated for illnesses they have. In conjunction with HB 818, this is a step in the right direction in improving health care access to Missourians of all income levels.

How High is the Bar?

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

The New York Times reports on state education standards and discusses the disparities between them:

For example, an eighth grader in Tennessee can meet that state’s standards for math proficiency with a state test score that is the equivalent of a 230 on the national test. But in Missouri, an eighth grader would need the equivalent of a 311.

The fact that Missouri’s standards are tougher than those promulgated by some other states is often mentioned by opponents of school reform, It was also brought up in the adequacy lawsuit this year when the state argued that pouring huge amounts of money at school districts wouldn’t make everyone proficient.

Are Missouri’s standards too tough? Yes and no. It’s not realistic to expect 100 percent of kids to meet any standard. But compared to Asian countries, our standards are very low. The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study website shows that in math, U.S. eighth-grade students are far behind their peers in Singapore, Korea, China, Japan, and several other countries.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing if Americans specialize in skills other than math while foreigners become engineers. But the comparison shows that our idea of a high standard is not really very high.

Why I Am Happy and Optimistic Despite Ethanol Subsidies and Bad Laws

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

An editorial in the Columbia Daily Tribune deplores a new rule requiring ethanol to be mixed in with gasoline starting in 2008:

This unholy interference in the free marketplace was promoted by Gov. Matt Blunt and eagerly engineered by corn growers and ethanol plant promoters, Democrats and Republicans alike. As a result, already the price of corn has doubled and millions of gallons of new refinery production are coming on line, all because big government suddenly got bigger.

This is a bad law, but fortunately it will someday be obsolete. As scientists study energy, they come up with new fuels and technologies that are safer, cheaper, and more efficient. Eventually we’ll have better ways of powering cars than burning gasoline or ethanol. We might even have better vehicles than cars. So, I’m not going to let this law disturb my long-term happiness and optimism. This requirement will eventually look as funny as those laws about not tying your horse to a lamppost.

Coverage in the Business Journal

Posted on by Eric D. Dixon

The latest issue of St. Louis Business Journal has an op-ed by Show-Me Institute research fellow R.W. Hafer. An excerpt:

Have you ever tried to get through downtown St. Louis during rush hour? How about before or after a Cards game? If you have, you know it can take quite some time to get from one side of the Mississippi to the other. A stalled car or accident snarls traffic for miles. This type of experience may have you agreeing with proposals to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on a new bridge connecting Missouri and Illinois. Before committing taxpayer funds, however, we should rethink the situation. Do we really need that new bridge?

The full text of the article on the Business Journal site is available only to subscribers, but if you sneak over to our own site you just might find what you’re looking for there. Go ahead. I won’t tell anyone.

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