• Barry Langford, Chair of the Columbia College Criminal Justice program. Langford has taught at the school since 1994.
• Aaron Hedlund,  economics professor at the University of Missouri and visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis.
• Nicole Volkert, former prosecutor and municipal judge. Volkert has served both Monroe and Montgomery Counties and a legal advisor to the Columbia Police Department
• Jennifer Bukowski, a criminal defense attorney with over ten years of experience. Nicole founded the Bukowsky Law Firm seven years ago after serving as a public defender for three years.
• Eric Schmitt, Treasurer of the State of Missouri, elected in 2016. Previously, Eric served in the Missouri State Senate

The 90-minute presentation was packed with information. Panelists discussed criminal justice theory, the process and players from arrest to parole, over-criminalization, and the deleterious role of fees and fines, along with possible reforms. Some of the latter the Show-Me Institute has discussed before, including the cost of incarceration overall and reforms such as Raise the Age and reducing mandatory minimums. Panelists even pointed out the positive effects that education choice can have on incarceration likelihood.

The entire presentation is now available online (click above). The Show-Me Institute is grateful to everyone who participated.

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It should be noted that this shortfall is not a result of legislators in Jefferson City cutting funding. This is prospective students freely deciding that they don’t want to spend their college years as Missouri Tigers and taking their money somewhere else. That should terrify administrators in Columbia. Will Mizzou go the way of other brands scorned by the marketplace, like Kodak, Pontiac, or Ask Jeeves?

Mizzou desperately needs to get its house in order. Most importantly, it needs an administration that realizes that protests on university campuses have been happening for decades.  In most cases, there is some element of truth to the protestors’ grievances, but it soon gets wrapped up in the narcissism and self-righteousness of 18-22 year olds.  The job of administrators is to separate the wheat from the chaff. They must address the real issues that are affecting students without losing sight of the fact that it is college kids making the demands.

Mizzou’s administration completely failed in this regard. The kernel of truth in the protestors’ anger is that far too few students of color are meeting with success on Mizzou’s campus.  This is undeniably true.  While African-Americans make up around 12% of Missouri’s population, they make up only 7% of Mizzou’s.  They are disproportionally enrolled in remedial classes, and drop out at higher rates than other students.  This is cause for concern, and something that the administration needs to address.

That entirely appropriate issue got wrapped into a series of out-there “demands,” including requiring that the former University of Missouri system president pen a handwritten note admitting his white privilege, and calling for the hiring of legions of staff across a variety of departments to provide services for minority students, but providing absolutely zero advice on how to pay for all of it. That is the chaff.

If the university does not have leadership that knows the difference between the two, or is incapable of dealing with substantive issues without being derailed by ridiculous ones, a loss of 25% of enrollment is just the start. And they shouldn’t expect the state to bail them out.

It appears that nearly everyone involved in this imbroglio has lost sight of the fundamental fact that the University of Missouri is paid for in large part by the citizens of Missouri.  Many of these people did not attend, will never attend, nor will ever have any of their children or grandchildren attend the university. University students, faculty, and administrators are asking the single mom in Cape Girardeau who is struggling to get by working two jobs to pay for their wants and desires. Just because they go to, or work at, Mizzou does not mean that they have a claim to that woman’s money.

We support Mizzou (and all of our other state universities) because they provide a service to our state; they educate our citizens and do research that improves our world.  If they’re not doing either of those things, they aren’t entitled to a dime.

Hopefully this enrollment nosedive serves as a wakeup call to the Mizzou community.  A strong flagship university can be an asset to its state and citizens.  Mizzou has a long way to go in proving that it is ready to resume that role.

The post Reaping the Whirlwind in Columbia appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

State Representative Chris Kelly and State Senator Kurt Schaefer discussed the state of the state at the Show-Me Forum in Columbia on Monday, February 6. Both agree Missouri doesn’t have enough revenues, but Rep. Kelly insists the shortfall shouldn’t come from education.

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Watch the entire speech, including Roper’s warnings about government spending and the federal deficit.

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“To play for a million dollars, I’d rather stay with my private business and share more time with my family,” he said. “Thank God I’m well off financially and my money is well invested.”

Now, many people will look at this and see an example of an overpaid sports star, greedily seeking an ever larger pile of money, but I think it nicely illustrates two economic concepts: diminishing marginal utility and opportunity cost. Playing Major League Baseball is a major time commitment (162 regular season games per year, 81 of them on the road), and, according to his statement, his next-most-valued use of that time is spending time with his family in Colombia, so giving up family time was his opportunity cost to earn those huge salaries. However, Renteria has earned many millions of dollars over the years, and apparently he has invested it wisely, so each additional $1 million is worth far less to him than the first million he made. As his baseball salary dwindles, the amount of time he has left to spend with his family is also shrinking, so that good is becoming ever more valuable. Whereas $1 million was easily worth the opportunity cost for a childless and dramatically poorer Renteria in the early nineties, it’s simply not worth the effort now that he is financially comfortable with a family to tend to.

In a similar fashion, income taxes artificially encourage people with the means to opt out of the labor market to consume more leisure. There’s nothing wrong with that choice, but, as a consequence, society will be a little poorer without the wealth that this labor would have created. Consequently, we should minimize the distortionary effects of taxes by keeping them low and let markets signal what people need and want through prices.

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To bring a potential 120 new jobs to Columbia, the state has presented 3M with a $4.27 million package of incentives. Most of that will come in the form of tax credits; about $1 million is grant money.

My intention is not to fault individuals and companies for taking advantage of the resources that are available to them. Instead, I argue that taxpayer monies should be put toward the best uses, and I have difficulty believing that concentrating the benefits on the favored few and diffusing the costs on the rest is an optimal strategy.

Considering only the amount expended via tax credits, the state government is spending $27,250 per job (plus dead-weight loss). When the grant money is included, the state is spending $35,583.33 per job. Is this level of subsidy the best use of taxpayer monies, particularly at a time when the state government has decided to make cuts to other services, like education and public safety?

Subsidizing select businesses and industries is an admission by the state government that the cost of doing business is too high in Missouri. As an unfortunate consequence, the businesses and individuals that remain in the tax base are left to pick up the tab, which makes it even harder for them to compete. Instead of distorting the playing field with generous incentive packages, the state government should focus on providing a favorable business climate for all individuals, businesses, and industries, not just a select few.

Given its long history of layoffs in the Columbia region, how can government officials be certain that this company will actually deliver on the 120 jobs that it promised? Companies in other states have failed to deliver on the jobs promised in exchange for receiving taxpayer monies, and it is likely that the same may happen in Missouri.

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Ricky Gurley has opened up his firm’s private investigative files on a Sept. 28, 2009, incident in which police said area car salesman David Riley, 31, tried to rob an undercover police officer at a gas station and then resisted arrest.

The case concluded Aug. 9 in the 13th Circuit Court of Boone County when Riley took a plea deal of two years in prison for a felony charge of resisting arrest. […]

According to video recordings and witness statements, Riley, along with local woman Desiree Kemp went to buy beer at the Ultra Mart at 2102 Paris Road. Riley and Kemp were leaving the store when Columbia Police Department Officer Chris Hessenflow started watching Riley. Hessenflow was working undercover with a teenager to see if the gas station was selling alcohol to minors.

Video surveillance from the convenience store, provided by Gurley, shows Riley standing at the passenger door of his car as Hessenflow walks toward the entrance of the store. When Riley noticed Hessenflow looking at him, police said Riley cussed at the officer and demanded his wallet — a claim Gurley said is ridiculous.

“How do you rob a guy from 15 feet away?” Gurley said. “What do you say: ‘Throw me your wallet’?”

The store’s surveillance video shows Hessenflow drawing his gun on Riley. Then, Riley gets on his knees with his hands behind his back, facing away from Hessenflow.

Although the video is partly obscured, Hessenflow can be seen kicking Riley to the ground. That, Gurley said, led an angered Riley to resist arrest when more officers arrived on the scene. Gurley also said Riley was not handcuffed soon enough; handcuffs could have prevented at least some of Riley’s resistance to officers, as well as some of his injuries.

The justice of the arresting officer’s actions hinges on three questions, in my mind. Did Riley demand the officer’s wallet? Did the officer identify himself as a police officer when he pulled his gun? Did the officer use excessive force to restrain Riley?

I strongly recommend that you watch the video for yourself and read Gurley’s two blog posts on the topic, so you can make an informed judgment of evidence on your own, but, to me, the hardest question to answer is the first one. Both Riley and Kemp maintain that Riley said something antagonistic — not a demand for the officer’s wallet, although the officer could have misheard him. As to the second question, however, three witnesses claim that the officer did not identify himself as a member of the police force: Riley, Kemp, and Kendrick Hardrick, who is wearing a bright blue jacket in the surveillance video. Finally, as far as I’m concerned, kicking a man in the torso when he is already on the ground qualifies as excessive force in almost all circumstances. Unless the officer can show evidence that Riley was an imminent threat at that point, he acted inappropriately.

There is probably more evidence from this story yet to surface, and it deserves further investigation.

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What these activists are saying is that with a clean energy bill, we will get the same amount of energy, but it will take 36,000 more workers to create it, which means much higher energy costs. An economy is more efficient when it employs fewer resources (e.g., energy, labor, and steel) to make the same amount of a good or service, but the economic argument these activists are trying to advance is that we can get rich by doing less with more.

There are environmental arguments for supporting clean energy, and some of those may have merit. If you want to advance those arguments, there is a productive discussion to be had, but this jobs argument is completely specious and should be buried once and for all.

The post The Jobs Fallacy appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Voucher schemes are running in several different countries without ill-effects for social cohesion; those that use a lottery to hand out vouchers offer proof that recipients get a better education than those that do not.

The article cites studies of choice-based programs in Sweden, Colombia, and the U.S.

One argument that has been raised against tuition tax credits in MIssouri is that choice leaves disadvantaged children behind or doesn’t work for everyone. These studies of voucher programs prove this wrong. Choice works in different places and different circumstances. Public schools, on the other hand, often work well for children who live in affluent neighborhoods but fail children in inner cities–like in Saint Louis. 

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