Workforce Central Florida, a government agency, is spending $73,000 to give away 6,000 capes and some cardboard cutouts.
January 2012
In March, the National Association of Realtors released the 2011 Community Preference Survey. Some greeniac urbanists are touting the survey results as evidence that smart-growth ideology is starting to align with Americans’ preferences for housing. For instance, the 2011 survey finds that 19 percent of Americans wish to live in dense central cities, up from 13 percent in 2004 when the survey was first conducted. Richard Florida declares victory. I remain unimpressed, and even generally pro-smart-growth urbanists are noting the contradictory stated preferences of survey respondents.
There is good reason to be generally skeptical of supposed evidence for or against a given position that is obtained through surveys. Talk is cheap. Action, on the other hand, is a far better measure of an individual’s preferences — in this case, a snapshot inventory of where people actually choose to live. According to the most recent American Housing Survey from the Census Bureau (an imperfect comparison, yes, but an interesting one), 29 percent of occupied housing units were located in central cities in 2009 (27.3 percent of occupied housing units were located in cities with at least 100,000 residents). I have yet to see anyone seize on the apparent disparity between the two reports and claim that this is evidence that many current residents of dense cities would rather live in less dense suburban, small town, or rural settings.
There has been a disturbing rash of stories lately about air traffic controllers sleeping on the job. Fortunately, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is on the case. The FAA will implement new regulations this week requiring more time off between shifts and tighter restrictions on late-night shifts for traffic controllers.
This illustrates why air traffic control is simply too important an issue to leave to the free market. Lives are literally at stake every day. These sleeping-on-the-job stories are a classic example of market failure. It is time to put the government in charge of air traffic control and take it out of the hands of greedy capitalists.
Labor unions of late have been fighting an uphill battle in public perception, attempting to justify the significance of unions for the middle class and American workers. This attempt has been futile. The labor movement has tried to team up with community organizers, environmentalists, and other left-leaning causes to call attention to itself and gain nationwide support. However, the actions of union officials consistently prove otherwise. The recent complaint of union officials in Seattle emphasizes why labor unions are not only detrimental to communities, while illustrating the hypocrisy of their coalitions.
Cleanscapes, a private trash-collection company, offered its services free of charge to the city of Seattle to clean the Westlake Park. The altruistic offer was met with firm opposition by local union officials of state workers. This should seem out of character for unions, considering the recent publicizing of coalitions with Rainbow/PUSH and the Blue-Green Alliance. These coalitions are supposed to highlight how unions help build stronger and cleaner communities.
Dmitri Iglitzin, attorney for Local 1239, Public Service and Industrial Employees union, said, “This is an effort by a commercial company to move in on a potential city contract.”
When did government contracts become specifically designated for unions?
The union in a letter to the city pointed out the notorious pattern of acts by Cleanscapes,
“The union points to a pattern of CleanScapes offering to donate to the city services such as snow removal and the deployment of speed-watch trailers, without public notice or bids.”
This is news. I did not know it was necessary to bid on a contract when you are offering a free service.
The president of Cleanscapes, Chris Martin, started his company because he was sick of his community being littered with trash and becoming a seedy area of town. Martin described it as, “Litter, cigarette butts and overflowing garbage cans marred Occidental Park. Dumpsters in alleys attracted rats and adults engaged in inappropriate behavior.”
Standard and Poor’s decision to warn of a possible downgrade in America’s debt rating — described as a “stark warning” by the Financial Times — is a welcome reminder that there is more at stake in the current spending battle in Washington than political careers. Normally that is not the case. This nation is resilient and has proved able to survive virtually everything politicians have thrown at it — wars, inflation, and even the New Deal. The current obsession with high spending (as much a Republican initiative as a Democrat one) however threatens that resiliency to the point of fracture.
Simply put, America has three choices: continue as at present with high spending and middling taxes, grow government by high spending financed by high taxes, or shrink government to low spending and so reduce taxes. The current battle over the last two options is so bitter and partisan, and the country is so divided on the issue, that the normal expectation would be stalemate and a continuance of the status quo. The S&P warning should signal to the politicians and the public that, in this case, that cannot be allowed to happen. Down that road lies a bankrupt nation.
So the battle in Washington must continue, and be fought to a decisive end. We should be clear, however, where the president and the Democrats want to take us. They want to make the U.S. into just another European country, with high levels of publicly-provided social services maintained by excessive taxes on the wealth-producing class. Vast numbers would be dependent for their livelihood — either via welfare or employment — on a government that exists as a gigantic money-go-round. This cartoon ably sums up the proposal (hat tip: Dan Mitchell):
For a detailed dissection of the Obama “deficit reduction plan,” see Keith Hennessey.
The alternative is a return to smaller government. The Republicans have traditionally talked a good game on this, but been terrible at delivery, as exemplified by their profligate spending over the past decade or more. There are signs that this is turning round, but the proof of the pudding remains in the eating. They need to realize that if they fail now, America will either go bust or be transformed into a social democracy, and the great American experiment will slowly grind to a halt.
Small government’s time has come. It is our only hope.
The tax code is now 72,536 pages long.
It wasn’t always that way; take a look at this chart by Cato’s Chris Edwards. The years aren’t evenly spaced, so the actual slope of page growth is different than it looks in the chart. But you get the point.
The 2011 edition of Wayne Crews’ “Ten Thousand Commandments” was released today. The annual study gives a big-picture view of the regulatory state. You can read it here. Some of the main findings:
- Federal regulations cost $1.75 trillion per year. That’s equivalent to about half of federal spending. Government’s cost is actually about 50 percent bigger than most people think.
- Agencies issued 3,752 final rules in 2010. At that pace, a new rule comes into effect every two hours or so.
- Another 4,225 rules are in the pipeline right now.
- The Federal Register hit an all-time high 81,405 pages in 2010.
- Economically significant regulations are way up. These are defined as rules that have over $100 million of economic impact. There were 224 in 2010. That’s a 22 percent increase over 2009′s 184.
Wayne and other CEI scholars will have a lot more to say about regulations and how to reform them in the coming weeks; keep an ear out.
In the ongoing copyright debates, areas of common ground are seemingly few and far between. It’s easy to forget that not all approaches to combating copyright infringement are mired in controversy. One belief that unites many stakeholders across the spectrum is that more efforts are needed to educate Internet users about copyright. The Internet has spawned legions of amateur content creators, but not all of the content that’s being created is original. Indeed, a great deal of online copyright infringement owes to widespread ignorance of copyright law and its penalties.
For its part, Google yesterday unveiled “Copyright School” for YouTube users. As Justin Green explains on the official YouTube blog, users whose accounts have been suspended for allegedly uploading infringing content will be required to watch this video and then correctly answer questions about it before their account will be reinstated:
Of course, boiling down the basics of copyright into a four and a half minute video is not an easy task, to put it mildly. (The authoritative treatment of copyright law, Nimmer on Copyright, fills an 11-volume treatise.) Copyright geeks and fans of “remix culture” will appreciate that Google’s video touches on fair use and includes links to in-depth resources for users to learn more about copyright. It will be interesting to see how Google’s effort influences the behavior of YouTube users and the incidence of repeat infringement.
Elizabeth Brubaker describes why the institutions of private property are needed to defend nature, and why modern control policies that undermine them contribute to pollution and environmental destruction.
Our policy task today is to discover, legitimize and extend those private property institutions that can achieve and heighten environmental progress and expand environmental amenities. Today’s policies, in contrast, demean and abandon those essential institutions and traditions, and make enemies out of those who otherwise would be enlisted in the goals of ecological improvement. The entire book Property Rights in the Defence of Nature is available online.
Liberal economist Peter Diamond is likely to be confirmed to a powerful position, despite issues far more severe than those that blocked the confirmations of highly-respected conservatives. It smacks of a big double standard.
Diamond was nominated to one of the most powerful positions in the land — the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, which sets monetary policy. (The Fed is now printing hundreds of billions of dollars to buy up government debt and inflate the money supply, in a controversial policy known as “quantitative easing” or QE2, which some economists have predicted will lead to substantial inflation.)
By law, the Board is supposed to be balanced regionally, but it isn’t: its members come almost entirely from the East and West Coast. So does Diamond, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He has lived in Massachusetts since 1960.
The Obama administration nominated Diamond for a seat on the Board representing a district in the Midwest, claiming he is from Chicago because he has lectured at Northwestern University. But as economist Mark Calabria notes, Diamond is really from Massachusetts, which already has a representative on the Fed (Fed Board member Dan Tarullo). That violates Section 10-1 of the Federal Reserve Act, which says a new Fed member may not come from a district that already has a representative. If Diamond is confirmed, every single member of the Fed’s Board will come from a coastal state, and none from America’s heartland.
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