Out of Control

In poverty:

Detroit has surpassed Cleveland as the nation's most impoverished big city, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey.

Survey figures released Tuesday show 33.6 percent -- or more than one-third -- of Detroit's residents lived at or below the federal poverty line in 2004, the largest percentage of any U.S. city of 250,000 or more people.

The top five were Detroit; El Paso, Texas (28.8 percent); Miami (28.3 percent); Newark, N.J. (28.1 percent); and Atlanta (27.8 percent).

Michigan’s unemployment rate of 7 percent was also the highest among the 50 states.

Some vigilant local political types see this as an opportunity to make a bad situation worse:

The Michigan Democratic Party used the survey's release to encourage the Republican-controlled Legislature to act on a recommendation from Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm to increase the state's hourly minimum wage to $7.15 from the current federal level of $5.15.

Article here.

Might be a good time to point to this recent NBER study, which examines the closely related issue of living wage laws:

Living wage campaigns have succeeded in about 100 jurisdictions in the United States but have also been unsuccessful in numerous cities. These unsuccessful campaigns provide a better control group or counterfactual for estimating the effects of living wage laws than the broader set of all cities without a law, and also permit the separate estimation of the effects of living wage laws and living wage campaigns. We find that living wage laws raise wages of low-wage workers but reduce employment among the least-skilled, especially when the laws cover business assistance recipients or are accompanied by similar laws in nearby cities.

And check out some interesting observations from someone who pays many of his employees minimum wage. He points to four examples of what happens when lawmakers raise the minimum wage.

1. The jobs just go away.
2. The jobs gets outsourced to contractors.
3. The jobs get automated away.
4. Prices go up.

Flashback: When Cleveland was poorest.

Can’t we at least agree that destruction is bad?

Russell Roberts on post-Katrina punditry.

Here’s John Tierney:

Judgment Day has arrived in California, but not exactly as prophesied. The ones sitting on the right-hand side are the sinners.

They're stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic while the righteous fly past them in the far left lanes. Those freeway lanes used to be reserved for car pools, but they've just been opened to a new group: those of us virtuous enough to drive the right hybrids.

I'm not a good enough person yet to own a hybrid, but I've been passing for one. I rented a Toyota Prius for the pleasure of cruising the car pool lanes and parking free at meters, another perk available here in Los Angeles. I've enjoyed it all, especially the envious looks from guys in S.U.V.'s, and I can understand why hybrid drivers in other states and cities are clamoring for similar privileges.

But even if these new privileges put more fuel-efficient cars on the road, I'm afraid the net effect will be dirtier air and more gasoline consumption.

Read more here.

More on hybrids, here, here, and here—including another righteous nugget:

Marketing consultant Art Spinella notes that hybrid buyers in focus groups fixate on the Prius "because of its unique design and will candidly admit that they expect to receive some acclaim from friends, relatives, co-workers for their concern about the environment and/or fuel efficiency."

A bit of investigative reporting from Marcha Richards at the Evergreen Freedom Foundation:

Peninsula public school teachers Brenda and David Aston were featured on the front page of the August 17, 2005, edition of The Peninsula Gateway, picketing school district officials for higher pay. They held signs reading "Our family qualifies for W.I.C. and subsidized health care" and "Ask me about Job #2."

. . . According to data provided by the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, Brenda and David Aston each earned base teaching salaries of $45,169 this year (2004-05). In addition, both had supplemental contracts with the district, from which they earned $3,599 and $4,546 respectively. On top of that, Brenda's benefits package (health insurance, etc.) was worth $11,232 and David's was worth $11,319.

Thanks again to Joanne. Who notes:

Together they earned just under $100,000 a year, not including income from the husband's second job as an evidence custodian for a local police department. The family does not qualify for WIC -- the cut-off for a couple with four children is less than half their pay -- or subsidized health care.

Bush isn’t big on restraining spending. Turns out he’s not big on restraining regulations either.

According to an annual report issued jointly by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and the Weidenbaum Center at Washington University in St. Louis:

The FY 2006 Budget requests that Congress allocate $41.4 billion for regulatory activities, up from $39.5 billion in 2005. This reflects a 4.8 percent increase in outlays directed at writing, administering, and enforcing federal regulations. The regulators' budget is growing at a faster rate than other nondiscretionary spending, which the President's budget held to only 2.1 percent in 2006. Since 2000, the regulators' budget has grown an amazing 46 percent, after adjusting for inflation.

Article here.

From today's Denver Post: If you are not satisfied with your current school district, build a new one.

Rather than waiting for a troubled school district to fix itself, nearly a dozen housing developers in Aurora are taking matters into their own hands, proposing a network of specialized schools - maybe even their own district - to lure tens of thousands of suburban homeowners.

And while most of the developers say it would be nice to cooperate with Aurora Public Schools in this venture, they're fully prepared to take this as far as they need to get what they want - including creating a charter school district.

Via education blogger extraordinaire, Joanne Jacobs.

Recently the LA Center for Economic Development released this report which, among other things, discusses the disconnect between the business and political classes in California.

The authors suggest that state and local political leaders seem to be preoccupied with tangential, attention-grabbing issues, and fumble when it comes to fixing big problems, like lousy schools, mounting congestion, and unfriendly business climates.

Two recently proposed bills seem to make the authors’ point:

Concerned that intense competition among nail salons has prompted some businesses to cut corners on health standards, state officials may require salons to post citations on their windows similar to restaurant letter grades.

The rules, contained in a bill that has passed the Assembly and goes before the state Senate Appropriations Committee in the next week, come after three mycobacterial outbreaks at salons in Northern California infected more than 200 people over the last few years.

Its author, Assemblyman Leland Yee (D-San Francisco), said the legislation was aimed at cracking down on salons that don't follow state safety standards for manicure equipment. The bill would require more stringent rules for disinfecting those items and disposing of water from spas where customers soak their hands and feet.

Article here.

A bill banning Internet hunting, a practice the author called "pay-for-view slaughter," was sent to the governor's desk Monday by California lawmakers.

The measure by Sen. Debra Bowen, D-Redondo Beach, was given final approval by the state Senate, which voted 27-5 to approve Assembly amendments to the bill.

The bill would make it a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine to use the Internet to hunt animals. The measure also would ban businesses that offer Internet hunting and prohibit the importation of animals killed via the Internet.

Article here.

China, infamous for cracking down on Internet content it doesn’t care for, has a new, much discussed target, Furong Jiejie, aka Sister Furong.

In late July, authorities told the country's top blog host to move Furong-related content to low-profile parts of the site. Her pictures can still be found online, but links to them and chatrooms about her have disappeared from the front pages of major Web portals.

And after blanket coverage earlier this year, newspapers, magazines and television have recently given almost no time to Sister Furong, who originally came from a rural area of central Shaanxi province.

Meanwhile, in America:

Social conservatives helped to re-elect President Bush last year. Now his administration is returning the favor with a crackdown on sexually explicit material.

As usual, the Internet is in the political crosshairs. The Family Research Council recently demanded that the Bush administration do something about the .xxx domain--a zone reserved for adult content and set for final approval this month.

The administration was happy to oblige. Michael Gallagher, assistant secretary at the Commerce Department, asked for .xxx to be put on hold. Now its future is uncertain.

The same pattern is repeating elsewhere in the administration. When Bush needed to appoint a successor to Michael Powell, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, the president could have chosen someone to relax Powell's "indecency" crackdown.

Instead, Bush chose Kevin Martin, who holds even more expansive views of what's indecent than his predecessor did. Martin voted against airing "Saving Private Ryan" on broadcast TV …

Congress is becoming just as censorial. One example is a proposed tax on adult Web sites. Another is a bill approved by the House of Representatives that would boost fines for broadcast "indecency" from $32,000 to $500,000 and punish stations with possible loss of their broadcast license.

Now the Senate is talking about expanding that idea to cable, satellite and the Internet. "We ought to find some way to say, 'Here is a block of channels, whether it's delivered by broadband, by VoIP, by whatever it is, to a home, that is clear of the stuff you don't want your children to see,'" Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, told reporters in March. (VoIP stands for voice over Internet protocol.)

Chinese censorship article here. American version here.

An Atlanta suburb’s 30-year struggle for independence is over. Sandy Springs (population 87,000) is now free from the bureaucracy of the ATL, free to try a new model:

And when leaders asked themselves what kind of government best suited them, a clear vision emerged: as little government as possible.

So when the city of Sandy Springs opens for business Jan. 1, private corporations may be called in to manage storm water programs, street maintenance, building inspections, human resources, accounting — in other words, nearly everything except police, fire and emergency services. The city, one community leader said, will add personnel only when it becomes clear that it is necessary.

And what's this?

Sandy Springs' leaders also have reached out to the Reason Public Policy Institute, a California think tank that promotes privatization. Geoffrey F. Segal, who recently visited Sandy Springs, said the budding city's ability to experiment "truly is unique."

"You can imagine these kinds of discussions taking place when this country was forming," said Segal, the institute's director of privatization and government reform policy. "If a year from now, 70 or 80% of functions [in Sandy Springs] are being handled by private contractors, maybe it shows other cities that it can be done and they don't need the bells and the whistles."

Sandy Springs was impressed with Westin, Florida:

a community of 65,000 in Broward County with a $100-million annual budget and three city employees.

Weston was not conceived of as an experiment in minimum government, but after it incorporated in 1996, planners recognized the appeal of contracting for services, City Manager John R. Flint said.

"It all fell into place," Flint said. "We're not going to have any employees. We're not going to build a city hall, and no one is going to build an empire ..."

The idea might have wider appeal:

[S]everal communities around Sandy Springs are watching the process, attracted by the idea of keeping tax revenues closer to home.

And now for the obligatory dose of hyperbole:

State Sen. Vincent D. Fort, a Democrat who represents Fulton County, predicted that Sandy Springs would be the first in a series of suburbs to gain autonomy, and that the shift would force county planners to gradually eliminate social services like libraries or Meals on Wheels.

"You're going to have this different tax distribution that is going to have an impact," Fort said. "That's nothing but apartheid."

Efficient city services = Apartheid? Really?

The system of apartheid was enforced by a series of laws passed in the 1950s: the Group Areas Act of 1950 assigned races to different residential and business sections in urban areas, and the Land Acts of 1954 and 1955 restricted nonwhite residence to specific areas. These laws further restricted the already limited right of black Africans to own land, entrenching the white minority's control of over 80 percent of South African land. In addition, other laws prohibited most social contacts between the races; enforced the segregation of public facilities and the separation of educational standards; created race-specific job categories; restricted the powers of nonwhite unions; and curbed nonwhite participation in government.

More here.

Back to reality. How might Sandy Springs affect the Free State Project?

This is a great story. A great example of how real improvements in people's lives come simply from allowing opportunities.

On this dry mountaintop, 36-year-old Bekowe Skhakhane does even the simplest tasks the hard way. Fetching water from the river takes four hours a day. To cook, she gathers sticks and musters a fire. Light comes from candles. But when Ms. Skhakhane wants to talk to her husband, who works in a steel factory 250 miles away in Johannesburg, she does what many in more developed regions do: she takes out her mobile phone.

. . .

Africa's cellphone boom has taken the industry by surprise. Africans have never been rabid telephone users; even Mongolians have twice as many land lines per person. And with most Africans living on $2 a day or less, they were supposed to be too poor to justify corporate investments in cellular networks far outside the more prosperous cities and towns.

But when African nations began to privatize their telephone monopolies in the mid-1990's, and fiercely competitive operators began to sell air time in smaller, cheaper units, cellphone use exploded.

. . .

This press release from the Alliance for School Choice shows how big a year 2005 was for the expansion of school choice. It is pretty impressive when you look at it all together.

BACK TO SCHOOL: MORE CHILDREN THAN EVER WILL PARTICIPATE IN PRIVATE SCHOOL CHOICE PROGRAMS

"In terms of the number of children and programs, 2005 has been the most successful year ever for school choice, despite the powerful forces blocking the exit doors from failing schools. Still, we need to accelerate the gains so that all children have access to high-quality education," declared Clint Bolick, president and general counsel of the Alliance for School Choice, the Phoenix-based organization that leads the national effort to support school choice programs to expand opportunities for economically or otherwise disadvantaged schoolchildren.

Washoe County, NV, where Reno is located, is going to court in its attempt to use eminent domain to seize a gigantic ranch near the city to preserve it for open space.

Story here.

“This is really the last of the large ranches near town that has not been developed with houses,” Chapman said, arguing the land should be protected as open space and parkland providing access to the forested mountains to the west.

. . .

The action, criticized at the time as “galloping socialism” by Evans Creek representatives, came after talks on the county’s possible acquisition of the ranch stalled amid huge disagreement over the land’s value.

A climate scientist resigned from a Bush administration science advisory team after the process became blatantly political.

Story here.

Ken Green, formerly with Reason, now at the Environmental Literacy Council, discovered this a few years ago when he was one of the scientists on the IPCC review panel. See his comments on the politication of climate science reports here and here. And see Reason's Ron Bailey here, here, and here.

In a similar vein to the previous post:

The Wall Street Journal
August 25, 2005

Packing a Punch

Mr. Moe, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of the
Institution's Koret Task Force on K-12 education, is the William
Bennett Munro Professor of Political Science at Stanford and chair of
its political science department.

Bill McGowan, the AngryEconomist, asks, and answers, the question "If this isn't greed . . . what is? How Public Employees Unions Can't See the Forest for the Trees".

. . .

Let us be clear: the largest problem with public employee unions is
not the pay they get for their employees, but the benefits. Raising
current salaries substantially across a huge employee base is always
difficult in private business, and even more so in the public arena.
This is why AFSME, the CTA and other public employee unions have
focused most of their negotiating on benefits, whose costs are long
term and permanent. The problem is that the unions have been too
successful. In one Southern California county, executive level
employees get to retire at 100 percent of salary after a mere 20 years
on the job. Worse, they also get to "bank" vacation time and receive a
cash payout when they retire. Already granted a generous six weeks per
year, it is no surprise that many county employees leave with a bonus
check equal to almost a year's worth of "banked" vacation.

A long-term study of public education finds a trend of diverting a
larger percentage of education revenue to salaries and benefits
coincided roughly with the passage of Proposition 13 here in
California. From about 1980 onward, school districts increasingly cut
capital budgets for things like new schools and maintenance in favor
of funding current demands for salaries and benefits. Interestingly
enough, the same trend appears nationally at about the same time, so
Proposition 13 is not solely to blame. In essence, nationwide the
teacher's unions were eating their seed corn, counting on the
taxpayers to bail them out later when the inevitable crisis arrived.
That many of our schools are falling down now, 20 years after this
systematic neglect began, is no surprise.
. . .

Want to walk on the wild side? Expand your horizons? Get a little freaky? Just check out the latest offerings from European libraries:

If you find yourself in Malmo, Sweden, and happen to see a homosexual, an imam and a gypsy walk into a bar, it's not a joke. These are just some of the people who can be borrowed -- yes, borrowed -- from the local library for a 45-minute chat in a nearby pub as part of an effort to fight discrimination.

Ullah Brohed pioneered the "Living Library" project earlier this month. "You sometimes hear people's prejudices and you realize that they are just uninformed," she says. And since a library exists to educate, she decided to give Swedish bigots the opportunity to come face to face with the prejudice of their choice. The Malmo library also offers a Danish man (since some Swedes and Danes don't get along too well) and, to our great embarrassment, even a journalist. "Maybe not all journalists are know-it-all and sensationalist," Ms. Brohed says.

Inspired by this example, a library in the Dutch city of Almelo plans to start its own human lending program next month. "The customers can rent a veiled Muslim woman and finally ask her all the questions they would never dare to ask if they met her on the street," says the director, Jan Krol. Of course, Mr. Krol must adopt his offerings to local tastes. So apart from the usual suspects -- a gay man, a Muslim and a gypsy -- there will also be a politician, a hard-drug user, a gay woman and a German (that World War II episode).

Given the daily reports of widespread anti-Americanism in Europe, we are surprised that neither Mr. Krol nor Ms. Brohed has a Yank in stock. Should Americans ever become available in libraries in, say, Paris or Berlin, even Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder could check them out.

We should be encouraging this in America, particularly the rent-a-politican. The less time they're in city hall, the state legislature, or the executive mansion, the less chance they have to pass laws or spend our money.

And what a potential goldmine for local library systems. We might be able to slash public library budgets if we let them charge a modest fee for this kind of offering. Throw in a barista and you'll give Starbucks a run for its money.

And just think of what we could offer here in the US to spice things up...drag queens, gangsters, Trekkies, reality TV has-beens, pop-megastars-turned-curiousities, NYC cabbies, Branch Davidians...perhaps even the dreaded (but so misunderstood) libertarian.

(hat tip: Peter Gordon)

Looks like new urbanism has some competition: new ruralism...

[The St. Joe Company], Florida's largest private landowner, is pushing "new ruralism," a concept it hopes will entice city and suburban dwellers who are weary of civilization and long to own a tractor, a pickup truck, or at least a kayak and a few large dogs.

At developments called RiverCamps, where homes in a design proudly called "Cracker Modern" will sit on lots of up to four acres lots near marshes, creeks and conservation areas, "camp masters" will tutor residents in bird watching and flats fishing and organize "owl prowls" and "star parties." At WhiteFence Farms, on 5- to 20-acre lots near fields and ponds, "farmhands" will gas up an owner's tractor and help mow the meadow. A third category, Florida Ranches, will have up to 150 acres and cater to hunters.

Recent sales of RiverCamps on Crooked Creek, the first project under way, average $342,900 for the land alone. Projects farther inland will most likely cost far less per acre.

The idea is a corporate reinvention of new urbanism, an antisprawl movement that advocates compact, old-fashioned towns where residents can commune in parks, shops and restaurants within walking distance of their homes. Instead of connecting with neighbors, new ruralism promotes connecting with the land - though these cabins in the woods come with wireless Internet access and porches with screens that unfurl by remote control.

The target market is people 42 to 60 who, tired of coastal hurricane threats or the beach scene in general, want something more like Walden Pond or Walton's Mountain. Most are expected to use these ranches, camps and farms as second homes, though a surprising number of prospective buyers want full-time rusticity, St. Joe executives said.

One new rural homebuyer explains the market appeal:

Deborah Dudley, a lawyer who is trading her home in nearby Rosemary Beach for one here at RiverCamps on Crooked Creek, said beach towns had grown too crowded with commercial distractions.

"You lose the whole basic feel of the land," Ms. Dudley said. "I don't want to use the word 'backwater,' that sounds too negative, but RiverCamps has this whole underpinning of past Florida - a rural history."

Ms. Dudley said she wanted to emulate Florida's early rural settlers, known as crackers, who, wrote a British traveler in 1857, "lived among the pines, raised a few hogs and cows, grew a little patch of corn, and just barely survived." Yet Ms. Dudley said she also expected the comforts that cracker settlers sorely lacked.

"Absolutely I want that privacy and those woods," she said. "Yet at the same time, I want to be able to invite a neighbor over for a glass of wine and I want a nice kitchen with a Sub-Zero refrigerator."

Is this a great country or what?

This week a DEA administrative law judge began hearings on an application to establish a private, independent source of marijuana for research purposes. Currently the only legal source in the U.S. is the National Institute on Drug Abuse …

For more, see this post by Jacob Sullum.

Tory Gattis of the excellent blog Houston Strategies makes a great point about the push against backyards in favor of communal open space, a sentiment prevalent in smart growth and new urbanist schemas. Here's the whole thing (links omitted):

At David Crossley's Livable Houston meeting yesterday at HGAC, David introduced us to a century-old conceptual model of an "ideal" garden city. The essence of the concept is to replace lots of small parcels of open space - essentially peoples' yards - by combining them into large blocks of parks, greenbelts, wilderness and farmland, while people would live in moderately high-density urban/town cores. The benefits are lots of large, accessible green spaces while making pedestrian and transit-based trips easier (because of the residential and commercial density).

While an interesting concept, I think it runs up against some very powerful desires people have for their own private backyards over public parks:

• Safe place for the kids to play unsupervised
• Makes owning a dog much less hassle (almost a quarter of all households)
• Substantially fewer homeless and panhandlers
• Backdoor accessibility
• Privacy
• Customizable to personal tastes (pool, hot tub, deck, fountains, plants, hammock, etc.)
• Gardening is one of the most popular hobbies in the world (ironic that the widespread desire to garden would work against a "garden city")

As they would say in the marketing biz, the backyard is a product with a "compelling value proposition", which is probably why people are buying so many of them (aka "the suburbs"). Sure, there are plenty of people who consider a yard one big maintenance nightmare, and they're good candidates for high-density urban living with nice nearby parks (clearly a growing sentiment). But you have to wonder what the realistic long-term market share trends are.

I'd say that the ubiqitous presence of kids and dogs in the modern American family places a natural limit on the market demand for yard-less living. Personally, I've never been a big fan of having a yard to maintain, despite the pleasure I derive from amateur gardening. But having a kid instantly changed that appeal for me. While it's always fun to hop in the car to hit a local playground, I often think that it would be nice to just shuffle my daughter out the back door to hit the backyard swingset, followed by some splashing with the garden hose. Same thing with messy paints -- much more difficult in an apartment. These may seem like trivial matters, but these are precisely the kinds of intangibles that drive homebuying decisions, once you get past the basics like number of bedrooms and baths, kitchen quality, etc.

The Onion explains here.

A hundred years ago, when Louisiana was still literally in the dark, residents of Lafayette banded together to build a city-owned electric utility where once there was little more than swampland. Today, at the dawn of the 21st century, it is hatching plans to lay out its own state-of-the-art fiber-optic broadband network.

This time, the city's futuristic ambitions are challenged not by the rigors of geography but by obstacles of business: specifically, telecommunications giant BellSouth and cable provider Cox Communications, which claimed the region as their own years ago. But the historic coastal community, known for its eclectic culture and rhythmic zydeco music, is not about to abandon the pioneering spirit that begat its visionary reputation.

After a legal skirmish earlier this year, the two sides are preparing for a citywide election slated for mid-July that will decide the issue.

Of course this issue is surfacing all over the nation:

CNET News.com has created an interactive municipal broadband legislative map that details the major battlegrounds on the issue. At stake is the fate of high-speed Internet access for millions of Americans, hinging on a fundamental question of civics and economics--whether the government or private industries should take the leading role in building out what's considered this generation's critical infrastructure challenge.

Whole article here. Well worth reading.

First D.C., now the world:

Representatives from some 900 unions said on Tuesday they would start organising workers in several countries to pressure multinational companies like retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc. for better benefits and wages.

"We're trying to use globalisation to raise working standards," Stephen Lerner, a director with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), said on the sidelines of an international union convention held in Chicago.

Good news Mr. Lerner--globalization is already raising working standards and living standards.

Here’s Johan Norberg:

Take just about any statistic, any indicator of living standards in the world, and you can see the progress that has been made over the exact period that worries globalization critics. In the last 30 years we’ve seen chronic hunger and the extent of child labor being halved. In the last 40 years, we’ve seen life expectancy going up to 64 years in developing countries. We’ve seen literacy levels approaching the maximum in most countries in the world. According to World Bank statistics, 200 million people have left absolute poverty -- defined as living on the equivalent of less than $1 a day -- over the past 20 years. What’s more, the most progress is found in the countries that increased trade and contacts with the outside world.

Reason interview with Norberg here.

Wal-Mart article here.

Surprise! India's reign as the world's "Outsourcing King" may be slipping, even with its rock-bottom call center costs.

A new report from market research firm Gartner, Inc. warns that a labor crunch and rising wages could erode as much as 45 percent of India's market share by 2007.

All this talk of India being the “Outsourcing King” can be a bit misleading. It may be true when taking a global perspective, but for U.S. companies, India isn't king.

As Adrian and I point out in this report, America’s most common outsourcing destination is … America. The vast majority of outsourcing done by U.S. companies (or governments for that matter) stays within our borders.

When U.S. companies look to other nation’s, Canada is the top destination (Table 8), then the U.K, then Japan. India is 8th, tied with Australia (where are all those panicky cover stories about job-stealing Aussies?).

Back to the Garner report:

[The] report cautions that a host of emerging countries such as the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Eastern European nations including Hungary and Poland, are also starting to challenge India's leadership in offshore business process outsourcing (BPO.)

…

India can't afford to rest on its laurels, said Sujay Chohan, one of the authors of the Gartner report and vice president and research director of offshore business process outsourcing with Gartner in New Delhi.

Unless India devises a long-term roadmap to improve infrastructure and consistently grow its skilled labor force, he said India will see some of its offshore BPO clients shift business elsewhere.

"Although India's infrastructure is improving, it is not keeping pace with the rapid growth of the industry," the report said.

That sounds familiar.

Article here.

Lenovo Group, the Chinese company that bought IBM's personal computer business in May, wants the state and Durham to put together an incentive package worth about $14 million to keep the company and its 1,800 workers in the Research Triangle Park area. Documents obtained by The Herald-Sun say Lenovo, which is operating temporarily out of IBM buildings, wants to build a $75 million campus and is looking at sites in Durham and Wake counties. The company estimates that it would add 400 new workers by 2009.

More here.

Here’s the NY Times’ John Tierney:

I don't share Matthew Simmons's angst, but I admire his style. He is that rare doomsayer who puts his money where his doom is.

After reading his prediction, quoted Sunday in the cover story of The New York Times Magazine, that oil prices will soar into the triple digits, I called to ask if he'd back his prophecy with cash. Without a second's hesitation, he agreed to bet me $5,000.

More here.

For more on Julian Simon’s famous bet, go here.

And for more clear thinking on gas prices, see Lynne Kiesling.

At Drew University a cigarette smoking student sparked a fire that spread through a dormitory. No one was injured but it was enough for school officials to ban smoking in dorms. It also led to much “I told you so” posturing by state legislators who just passed a statewide ban on smoking in college residence halls:

With Drew as his backdrop, acting Gov. Richard Codey will sign the measure into law on Monday giving all public and private universities 60 days to comply.

…

New Jersey's law is considered the toughest in the nation because it includes private, as well as public, universities. Other states, like Connecticut and Wisconsin, have legislated smoking bans that affect only public university residence halls.

But after examining the Drew fire a bit more closely it appears that the blaze was sparked less by smoking than by stupidity. Officials say the fire

was caused by an ash that fell from a student's cigarette onto spilled lighter fluid.

Smoking near spilled lighter fluid? Seems like Drew’s admissions policy needs more tightening than its smoking policy.

Article here;via Sploid.

Armed with a tape measure, Sophia Jennings keeps her eyes open for overgrown weeds and the owners of the yards that have them.

Jennings, a Baltimore County code enforcement officer, checks on residents who are not in compliance with rules about overgrown lawns.

In most area jurisdictions, letting grass grow more than a foot high, or 8 inches in Baltimore city, is against the law.

In some jurisdictions, the grass "cops" come in the form of code enforcement officers. In others, public works officials or environmental health workers are assigned to the task.

"We actually have a grass ruler," said Tommie Houck, chief of zoning enforcement for Harford County.

If residents don’t cut their grass themselves officials send out crews armed with lawnmowers to do the job. The cost of the cut can run into the hundreds of dollars and is passed on to the property owners.

Article here; via Fark.

For on this sort of thing, go here.

Rent it out:

If you happened to be at a Hooter's in Pittsburgh recently and saw a waitress with a large temporary tattoo on her forehead, you have Alex Fisher to thank for it. Fisher is the brain behind Lease Your Body, a Miami start-up aiming to make a mint by hooking up good-looking people willing to rent out space on their bodies with advertisers in search of a way to get some attention.

And Sarah Dee, the Hooter's waitress, is serving as a one-woman spokeswoman for the company.

…

Since its launch in March, Lease Your Body has had more than 2,500 people sign up wanting to participate in the program. Each is willing to rent out space on one of six body parts--neck, forehead, upper arm, forearm, hand, stomach or lower back--for rates from $100 up to $5,000, Fisher said.

"To get $5,000, there are certain factors," he said. "Being attractive would help--having an outgoing personality and being in the right place at the right time."

Stories like this usually generate some hand wringing from folks who say our society is already overrun with ads. Yet the forehead ad isn’t a whole lot different than, say, wearing a Nike hat or t-shirt. And there’s an obvious difference that would seem to make the Nike t-shirt more offensive to the ad weary among us—the guy wearing the Nike shirt not only doesn’t get paid, he actually pays Nike to advertise its brand.

Those who follow pro beach volleyball might also be less scandalized. After all, vollyballers often adorn their skin with ads. And one more reason to avoid getting too worked up over this:

Fisher, 23, admitted he has yet to sign any contracts with advertisers. Thus, Dee, who he selected because of her "good attitude," has been walking around the Steel City advertising for Lease Your Body and not any third-party company.

Whole story here.

The latest report on Houston's Metro ridership doesn't look good:

The [Houston] Metropolitan Transit Authority's ridership and fare revenues are down again, despite a booming light rail operation and healthy commuter bus service.

Excuse my interruption, but keep in mind the adjectives used here -- "booming light rail" and "healthy commuter bus service" -- as you read on. They seem a tad strong to me, but readers can decide for themselves. The article continues...

But Metro President and CEO Frank Wilson told board members Thursday, "We've stemmed the declining tide."

Wilson passed out a quarterly report that says total bus and rail ridership for the nine months through June was 6.5 percent higher than a year earlier. A footnote, however, explains that the numbers are adjusted.

Unadjusted and more recent counts show total ridership for October through July was actually down 1.5 percent, driven by a 9 percent drop in the local bus component that serves many poorer neighborhoods in the inner city -- the core mission of public transit.

Jim Archer, Metro's manager of service evaluation, said the raw fiscal 2004 numbers are misleading because of two unusual events that will not be repeated: The agency cut 37 poorly performing bus routes and changed numerous others to connect better with the new light rail line and avoid duplicating service.

Both of these sharply reduced ridership in fiscal 2005, but because they were one-time impacts, he said, Metro deducted the estimated lost ridership from the actual counts for fiscal 2004 and compared the 2005 numbers to the reduced figure.

"We're trying to show the board what's really happening out on the street today," said Metro spokesman George Smalley. "That allowed us to compare real apples to real apples."

But Metro's route changes can't explain why local bus boardings have fallen each year since 1999, dragging overall ridership down with them until fiscal year 2004, when it rose 3 percent.

Archer blames the bus problems largely on construction of MetroRail and transit streets in downtown and Midtown that forced many route changes, which typically cause some riders to fall away. Then came the 9/11 attacks and the Enron debacle, which had sharp impacts on downtown trolley ridership, he said.

Some of Metro's critics accuse the agency of building rail and catering to commuters while shortchanging those who depend on local buses to get to work, the doctor or the grocery store.

"They promised 50 percent more bus routes, but they don't say that. They just say the people voted for rail," said bus rider Mark Smith.

"Metro could have crisscrossed the county with buses for what it will cost to build the rail system."

Of course that's true, but buses just don't have the same allure as an expensive system of shiny, new rail cars.

And the ridership numbers may actually be overstated due to Metro's method of counting riders:

Light rail critic Tom Bazan contends that Metro's actual ridership is even lower than the unadjusted counts.

Bazan reasons that changing so many bus routes to connect with rail had the side effect of inflating the numbers by forcing bus riders to transfer to light rail to reach their destinations.

Because Metro has no practical way to count actual riders, it instead keeps track of boardings — usually expressed on an average weekday basis and counted by electronic devices on buses and trains. A single trip involving transfers, like Villanueva's journey to work, is counted as several boardings.

On a related note, be sure to check out local blogger Anne Linehan's deconstruction of this story...it's well worth a read.

Amid all the talk of housing bubbles in the media lately, it's nice to see the Christian Science Monitor pick up on the impact of regulation on housing prices. So when will the bubble burst?

Harvard University economist Edward Glaeser reserves judgment.

"It could happen," he says. "But I don't know."

His relative calm stems from research with two other economists indicating that the main reason house prices have flown aloft in the past 20 or 30 years, particularly on the two coasts, is the increasing difficulty in getting regulatory approval to build new homes.

That situation won't change anytime soon. Last week, the Census Bureau reported the July annual rate of housing starts as barely exceeding 2 million. That sounds like a lot, but the rate of growth in overall housing has fallen. In a sample of 120 metropolitan areas, the housing stock expanded 40 percent in the 1950s. In the 1990s, it rose only 14 percent. Further, housing growth in that decade was just about 7 percent in San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles, notes Mr. Glaeser.

Cities have changed from "urban growth machines to homeowners' cooperatives," he notes. Developers probably are less able to "bribe" or otherwise get city officials to grant them zoning changes or permits for unpopular new housing. More affluent, more educated residents use their political clout to block such developments, which could damage their own house values or the beauty and convenience of their district.

In what Princeton University economist Paul Krugman has called the "flatland" (the Midwest), it is easier for builders to turn farms into housing than in the "zoned zone" (heavily zoned areas on the coasts), where it is generally hard to obtain land to build on. So home prices are far lower in flatland.

Nonetheless, the "man-made scarcity" of new and old housing has been spreading, Glaeser finds. That said, what else can homebuyers do but bid home prices up?

"Bubbles in housing would have a lot of trouble existing if it weren't for limits on residential construction," Glaeser adds.

For more on Glaeser's work, see here and here.

Next on the regulatory hit-list...swing-sets:

Once rickety, aluminum, and usually on sale for a few hundred bucks, the backyard swing set has gone the way of the SUV and the suburban home. That is, huge.

That means an equally sizable dilemma for village officials trying to label them.

Are they a toddler's toy or neighbor's nightmare? Are they collapsible play things or permanent structures flouting village code?

"We didn't do this to offend anyone. We did it for our children," said Karen Barry, recently cited for the enormous swing set that sits about 5 feet in from her property line. Although Barry was not fined, village code says all permanent structures have to be set back at least 10 feet.

She and her husband are now seeking a variance so they can keep the swing set.

. . . .

The Barrys said they aren't the only family in Royal Palm Beach with a sizable swing set, and it appears the village hasn't enforced this particular ordinance in some time. So, why is this swing set being singled out now?

"There's 40 swing sets in the neighborhood," Raymond Barry countered. "Twenty-eight, in my opinion, are in violation."

Bill Morris, the village's planning and zoning director, said his office is going to conduct a swing-set survey next week in Madison Green - checking to see how many swing sets are teetering on property lines.

When people envision their tax dollars being spent on public-sector activities, I'd suspect that few ever imagine that those activities could include swing-set surveys by their local planning department. And the idea of applying to the same department for a variance for a swing set is similarly nonsensical, but apparently fully within the realm of possibility.

One trend: California’s carpool lanes are filling up and slowing down.

Another trend: Californians are buying hybrid cars as fast as manufactures can make them.

Now a new law grants certain hybrid owners access to carpool lanes, even if they’re driving alone:

California hybrid car owners, already leveraging super-efficient gas mileage during a time of $3-a-gallon unleaded, are flooding the state with more than 1,000 requests a day for permits that will allow them to zip into carpool lanes even if they drive solo.

More than 12,000 people have applied for the special permits since they became available Aug. 10, said Bill Branch, a spokesman for the Department of Motor Vehicles. So far, about 1,500 stickers have been sent out.
…

The Department of Motor Vehicles estimates that about 65,670 hybrids are eligible in California ...

Something’s gotta give:

There are concerns, however, about whether the carpool lanes will become too crowded. The law allows the DMV to issue 75,000 permits, but it allows the program to be suspended after 50,000 are issued, depending on congestion in the high-occupancy vehicle lanes. That will be determined by state and federal officials.

What’s going to happen when carpool lanes are just as sluggish as the regular lanes? Will officials really try to get between hybrid owners and this new perk?

Stay tuned.

Whole article here.

Just six months into his term as Governor, Mitch Daniels issued his first (of likely many) update on his administration's efforts to improve efficiency and effectiveness.

To date, more than $150 million has been saved! Quite an accomplishment. While there are several large projects, and many more on the way, it's clear that 'no cut is too small' to report...and that they really start adding up to real money. Some of my favorites:

INDOT has transitioned from a yearly State road map to a two year map which saves tax payers $175,000 every two years.

The Department of Agriculture ceased operating a Bed and Breakfast with annual savings of $100,000.

Bureau of Motor Vehicles canceled the practice of purchasing bottled water for its home office and branches, resulting in annual savings of
$35,000.

The Department of Labor ceased the practice of allowing 11 employees that live in counties adjacent to Marion County to work from home (involved paying a multitude of additional expenses including home internet access, long distance phone calls, and mileage reimbursement to drive downtown for meetings). This move will increase employee accountability while saving the Department $30,000 annually.

The Hoosier Lottery redesigned their bi-monthly, full color newsletter to retailers to a black and white monthly publication
at a savings of $21,670 annually.

A new report from an economic consultant estimates the true cost of preventing global warming, and prepare yourself for some sticker shock:

Preventing global warming would cost the world economy a devastating $18 trillion (£9.9 trillion) even under the most conservative assumptions, a report out this week will warn.

The cost, equivalent to 45 per cent of world gross domestic product for a year, is much greater than any conceivable benefit, according to the report from top economic consultants Lombard Street Research.

Charles Dumas, author of the study, said: "This is orders of magnitude greater than the cost of dealing with higher sea levels and freak weather, net of land gains in Canada, Siberia and other cold areas in thousands of square miles."

The costing is based on the assumption that cutting global warming would require reducing the world's consumption of oil and energy, and that this in turn would reduce global growth by 0.5 percentage points a year for five years. The $18 trillion figure is the net present value of that reduction. Growth is then assumed to get back to its long-term rate, an estimate which the author says is very conservative and probably hugely underplays the true cost of attempting to deal with climate change.

. . . .

No serious economic cost-benefit analysis will ever recommend taking the radical steps required to prevent global warming, the Lombard Street Research study says.

Dumas said: "The proposed Kyoto treaty limits would in no way prevent global warming. In reality, nobody seriously proposes a cure for global warming, because adequate measures would cause economic catastrophe and probably world war."

No wonder that the world's top economists ranked Kyoto and other climate change measures at the bottom of the list of solutions to the world's most pressing issues.

(via JunkScience.com)

Ranchers 1 - Enviros 0:

Jim Chilton is one of hundreds of ranchers targeted by environmental groups for allegedly allowing cattle to despoil the West's backcountry. Now Mr. Chilton is showing ranchers how to turn the tables on the green groups by using their own playbook.

The Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson is known for its lawsuits against ranching practices -- and for its methods of posting photos on the Internet that it says depict land destruction. So when the Center came after Mr. Chilton, he struck back with a defamation suit in Arizona Superior Court in Tucson last year.

He produced his own photos of lands the group claimed he spoiled in order to argue that their photos had exaggerated the damage. He snapped one photo, for example, of a hillside featured on the Center's Web site to show that what looked like barren earth was just a tiny patch surrounded by lush grass.

After a jury trial this year, Mr. Chilton was awarded $600,000, including $500,000 in punitive damages against the environmental group. "I had to decide whether I was a cowboy or a wimp," Mr. Chilton says. "I decided to be a cowboy...and not ignore people saying bad things about my ranch." The Center denies wrongdoing and has appealed the decision.

We've reported here, here and here about the fight in Colorado over the Taxpayer Bill of Rights. News today, suggests that we're winning:

They won’t say so publicly, but Colorado Gov. Bill Owens and other backers of Referenda C and D on this fall’s election ballot must feel, deep in their heart of hearts, that the chances of successful passage of the two questions are about as likely as the Colorado Rockies winning the World Series in 2006. Both are theoretically possible, at least in the context of a redefinition of the conventional understanding of “long shot.”

London’s congestion pricing scheme—big success or “mini Concorde”?

Interesting analysis here.

Following up on my post from the other day, another batch of federal employees have won a public-private job competition:

A team of technology workers at the Office of Personnel Management held on to their jobs in the agency's 15th public-private competition by agreeing to cut back on overtime, agency officials announced Thursday.

The 52 IT specialists, based in Macon, Ga., proposed a 40 percent cut in overtime expenses, said Ronald Flom, OPM's deputy associate director for contracting, facilities and administrative services, in the announcement. OPM expects to save $9.9 million during the next five years by going with the in-house team's plan. Of that, $900,000 will come from the overtime reductions.

Employees at the personnel agency have prevailed in 13 out of 15 public-private competitions held since the Bush administration introduced the competitive sourcing initiative. "The record of OPM keeping jobs in-house ... is excellent and confirms the fairness of the process," Flom said.

E&E TV's On Point recently aired a debate between Institute for Justice lead attorney Scott Bullock and American Planning Association executive director Paul Farmer on the Supreme Court's Kelo vs. New London decision on eminent domain. Here's an excerpt:

[Host] Brian Stempeck: Paul, what's your reaction to the case? The American Planning Association was one of the groups that sided with the city of New London. Is what Scott's saying true? Could a shopping mall developer, can they now come in and take over a church?

Paul Farmer: I don't think what he's saying is true at all. I think that it's a vast overstatement of what the Supreme Court said. I think you need to read the majority decision. We don't believe it changed anything. People's property was no more at risk the day after the decision than the day before the decision. This is something that's gone back 200 years in practice. It's gone back in legal precedent for over a hundred years. The court had been ruling that property could be taken for economic development purposes long before they ruled that it could be taken in conditions of blight, which was 1954 in Berman v. Parker. The economic development cases go back way before that. We believe, and we said this in our friend of the court brief that this really is an issue that ought to be decided at the state level and the local level and we see that activity going on now. The Supreme Court simply said they weren't going to intervene so that federal courts became the places where these decisions were made. These decisions ought to be left close to home, close to the voters. We believe that a very robust citizen participation process is the best safeguard to see that any governmental authority is used correctly and we believe that's the case with eminent domain. We don't think that we need sweeping new laws. We didn't need a sweeping new law from the Supreme Court. We didn't get it. We do believe that many state laws can be improved. We did a lot of work for seven years looking at state enabling laws in a whole variety of ways and that information is free and available on the Web. We think there's some states that have very good state enabling laws regarding the use of eminent domain and that power. We think there are many that could be improved. So we stand ready to assist in a reasoned discussion of how to improve those.

Brian Stempeck: Scott, the city's basic argument in this case was that this is an area that's pretty underprivileged economically. The unemployment in the area was twice the average of the rest of the city. Why shouldn't city planners have the right to go in there and say we have a new development that's going to add a thousand new jobs? What's wrong with that argument?

Scott Bullock: Well it's fundamentally un-American for the government to take property from one private owner and hand it over to another private owner just because the government happens to prefer that new owner and thinks that new owner would make more productive use of the land than the current owners would. There's nothing wrong with governments using whatever incentives they wish to encourage economic development and that's a policy choice that cities can make and choose to make. But when eminent domain is involved there are specific limitations upon that in the Constitution. The Constitution says very clearly private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation. So there's a constitutional limit. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court did not apply at that constitutional limit. That's why it's now up to state courts, why it's up to state legislators to do this. You know the ironic thing about the situation in new London, and it's true in many of these projects, New London has ample land available in the Fort Trumbull area to do development projects. They have twice the land area available now to do development projects than New York has to rebuild the World Trade Center. The people who live there have about an acre and a half total of land. They can do development, but they can still respect the rights of these people and that's true in just about every situation I've seen.

You can watch the debate here, or view the transcript here.

This recent editorial from the Statesman Journal deserves a bit of a fisking:

Way back in 1973, a bunch of Oregonians got together with a common goal: save farmland and stop urban sprawl.

They came from different parts of the state, different occupations and different political parties. But they shared a common understanding: The environment of this state is what shapes us as Oregonians.

These visionary individuals created Senate Bill 100, the most effective and resilient land-use program in the United States. The program's No. 1 goal was citizen involvement, and thousands of Oregonians helped cities, counties and the state design and implement the land-use rules.

Minor quibble, but was the goal to save farmland and stop sprawl, or citizen involvement? I'd argue the former, but give the Statesman Journal credit for trying to pull as many heartstrings as possible. They're laying it on so thick that you can almost touch S.B. 100's noble intentions.

For all the good that law did, it never escaped its persistent foes. Legislature after Legislature fended off attempts to emasculate the land-use program. Last fall, it was the people who surrendered.

I guess that one man's "surrender" is another man's stand for protecting private property rights.

By a stunningly wide margin, Oregonians embraced Measure 37 and jilted decades of consistent land-use planning. The measure places local and state governments in a bind: Either allow many property owners to do whatever they wish with their land or pay them not to.

Outright deception here...M37 doesn't allow property owners to do "whatever they wish;" it allows them some reprieve when regulations not in existence at the time of purchase are subsequently adopted that decrease the value of the property. Only in the social engineer's mind does that equal a free-for-all.

Oregonians' approval of Measure 37 did more than chop local land-use ordinances into pieces. The measure stunned the nation, stalling efforts elsewhere to rein in sprawl.

Dramatic hyperbole, anyone? Read this recent Washington Policy Center analysis of M37 implementation, which argues that it hasn't produced anywhere near the catastrophe that detractors have claimed.

And how exactly did M37 stall anti-sprawl efforts elsewhere? Unless M37 somehow placed handcuffs on the planning profession nationally (and it didn't), then the anti-sprawl train is still chugging forward.

This background illustrates why one of the 2005 Legislature's most important acts was the establishment of a task force. Ten people will conduct the first comprehensive, objective view of the land-use system since it was created 32 years ago. Before court cases and civic inaction destroy the land-use program, the task force must recommend how to restructure it and make it relevant to contemporary life.

Finally, some sanity. It's about time that someone stepped back and took a look at Oregon's dinosaur planning system. Let's hope that this task force does not just become an echo chamber designed to tinker around the edges.

Democratic Gov. Ted Kulongoski pushed for review. Like the legendary Republican Tom McCall, Kulongoski is equally at home in the small towns and deserts of Eastern Oregon and the urban centers and coastal towns of Western Oregon.

Working with Republicans and Democrats, McCall prodded the 1973 Legislature into protecting both the environment and the economy. In his opening address to that Legislature, McCall said, "There is a shameless threat to our environment and to the whole quality of life, an unfettered despoiling of the land. Sagebrush subdivisions, coastal 'condomania,' and the ravenous rampage of suburbia in the Willamette Valley all threaten to mock Oregon's status as the environmental model for the nation. We are dismayed that we have not stopped misuse of the land, our most valuable finite natural resource."

Over time, that model land-use program became mired in regulations. Rank-and-file Oregonians lost touch with it, except when it blocked the sale or development of their property. Seemingly thoughtful regulations wound up allowing development on some prime farmland instead of steering housing to low-value hillsides.

You mean good intentions don't automatically lead to good policy outcomes? Could this actually be an acknowledgement that the planning system has become a bloated, over-regulatory bureacratic structure unresponsive to citizens and a vehicle for massive social engineering?

Despite the program's many imperfections, Oregon was more successful than any other state in containing sprawl and maintaining farmland. Because of land-use regulations, commute times are shorter than in many regions and the air quality is better. In the Portland area, an unusually high percentage of residents are able to walk, bicycle or take public transit to work. Almost every Oregonian is only minutes away from a beautiful, restful rural setting. And according to one survey after another, Oregon has retained a national reputation for being hospitable to businesses.

Well, that's certainly one rosy view. But here's a counter.

Yet Oregonians agree less and less on what constitutes responsible, reasonable land-use regulation. Disputes range from the location of Abiqua School and Court Street Christian Church in the Salem area to the placement of Wal-Marts in Southern Oregon.

The dilemma is that Oregonians profess love for the land and the water but also respect personal rights.

Back in 1973, Oregonians didn't always agree, but they shared more of a common ground. The new task force is a critical step in helping us find that ground again.

Hopefully this is correct. Oregonians are obviously displeased with a planning system that has grown increasingly unwieldy, so a return to the drawing board wouldn't be a bad idea. But don't underestimate the resistance among true believers...Oregon's planning is the holy grail for most urban planners, the standard by which all others are judged, so don't think that they'll let it be tweaked without a fight.

One last thought...I think it's useful to recall the recent words of Richard Carson, former Portland Metro head, about Measure 37:

Certainly there is a lot of hand wringing and wailing by Oregon planners these days. But the one thing you won’t hear is anyone acknowledging that planning caused this revolt. Indeed, in typical response, the planning profession simply says, "The voters just didn’t understand. If only we could have explained it to them." I have been a professional planner for over 25 years and I hear that refrain a lot.

Why is it is never a failure on our part as planners to understand what citizens really want? Why is it always a failure on the citizens’ part to understand what a wonderful gift we are giving them? Do we not understand that we are guilty of the sin of pride and the ballot measure was the price of our prejudice? Why do we continue to believe that the voters aren’t capable of making intelligent decisions?

As a professional planner of almost 30 years, I am ready to say "mea culpa." But then I have written numerous essays that foreshadowed this day. I have railed against the sins of centralized planning, social engineering and faux citizen involvement. This is especially true about the grand Oregon "experiment" that in time became institutionalized into a monolithic and unresponsive planning bureaucracy.

It seems Vancouver, Canada is not immune to the failings of planning seen in the US. This article explains how Vancouver is becoming condos only at the expense of solid economic development. As I explained in my piece about economic development a few months ago, street culture and vibrancy should not be confused with economic development. Vancouver appears to be thriving when tourists visit and wander around downtown, but it turns out appearances can be deceving according to the author.

Paradise, yes, but because of short-sighted urban planning, downtown Vancouver may be becoming a fool's paradise. This is because people are coming to live and play here, but not to work. Director of central area planning Larry Beasley confirmed in a recent interview that no new office tower has started construction or even been proposed by developers for our downtown core in the new century.

It seems by legislating land uses through zoning, Vancouver is now complaining they have no office space downtown and are losing a lot of tax base. Where are the office space and tenants headed? The suburbs, ironically. The author states:

Why has our land-use policy which, by definition, plans for future needs as well as current demand, not left more dedicated office tower sites in reserve where business actually wants them – west of Granville? There is only one phrase to describe the extent of the 1991 re-zonings, and the way they have been managed since – bad urban planning.

Why is the solution to failed government intervention always more government intervention? Is there really a "good" urban planning? Actually, yes, it's called the land market which would have likely mixed in office towers amidst residential condos downtown.

Space Adventures of Arlington, Virginia has sealed the deal on an exclusive marketing partnership with the Tokyo-based travel agency, JTB Corporation.

The agreement announced today opens wide the door for the Japanese to buy commercial treks into space and related experiences from Space Adventures.


JTB will market a wide array of programs available from Space Adventures, including the recently announced Deep Space Expeditions (DSE-Alpha) mission to the Moon -- the first in a series of lunar missions being offered. That mission could liftoff as early as 2008, according to a Space Adventures press statement.


The cost of trekking to the Moon, rounding it, and heading back to Earth is priced at a “circum-spectacular” cost of $100 million a seat, in U.S. dollars. Two commercial seats per would be available. More good news: A third seat is occupied by a pilot cosmonaut.

More here.

Meanwhile:

NASA’s next space shuttle will likely launch in March 2006 and not be the Atlantis orbiter as previously planned, space agency officials said Thursday.

More here.

For more on space tourism, go here.

Rarely has so much transit silliness been packed into one paragraph:

Just as the city’s traffic seems to be getting worse by the hour, the landslide [landslide?] election of Antonio Villaraigosa comes along to fortuitously scramble the ideological lines of the transit debate. Now, finally, after decades of balking, Los Angeles might have a shot at building the subway system it needs. Endorsed by many of the key subway opponents, including Waxman and Yaroslavsky, Villaraigosa talked of a “subway to the sea” during the campaign and staked a big chunk of his political capital on a promise to expand the rail system. “It would be the most utilized subway in the nation, maybe the world,” the mayor recently said. “It would also be the most cost-effective public-transportation project in America.” Villaraigosa took the first step by assuming the helm of the MTA. Now, the question is whether he will have the clout to move the political mountains required to get Los Angeles the transit system it deserves.

The whole interesting, yet somewhat misleading, piece is here.

Go to A Stitch in Haste.

Jobseekers in Oakland aren’t paying much attention to the likes of Rev. Michael Pfleger who’s suggested that the Biggest Box offers slave jobs:

For all the criticism that Wal-Mart receives for its low wages and minimal health benefits, the retail giant says more than 11,000 people in the Bay Area are clamoring to get a job at its new Oakland store. The country's largest employer plans to welcome customers into its 148, 000-square-foot store on Edgewater Drive next Wednesday, and it says it already has filled 350 of its 400 openings. Wal-Mart has accepted more than 11,000 applications from Bay Area job seekers, marking the largest volume of interest it has received at any of its Northern California stores, said Wal-Mart spokeswoman Cynthia Lin.

No surprise that union folks aren’t pleased about this:

"Wal-Mart is one of the largest employers in the world -- they have to be a model for the society they are promoting," said Wendell Chin, coalition director for the Central Labor Council of Alameda County. "If they don't provide a decent lifestyle, it's scary." … Chin said jobs at Wal-Mart are a dead-end cycle that keeps people in poverty.

"I think this is a good place to work," said Brown, 52, who dropped off his application on Tuesday for an overnight maintenance position. "It seems like everybody gets along well with everybody." Brown has been looking for a job for six months. He said he could live with the wages that Wal-Mart is offering.

"It's best to accept what you can get," he said. "You start low and aim high. First you gotta get your foot in the door."

Some others who aren’t too worried about Chin’s “dead-end cycle”:

"I needed a job ASAP, and they had their doors open," said Virginia Ford, 19, of Oakland, who had applied for 25 jobs in three months before she landed one as a cashier at Wal-Mart in Oakland on Tuesday.

…

Yolanda Williams, 48, of Oakland, started her job at the store five weeks ago, helping to set it up. On Tuesday, she was setting up the lingerie department, which she heads as a manager.

Williams previously worked as a senior computer operator for the city of Oakland and a cook at the city's jail before it closed. She said she is happy to be working for Wal-Mart.

"I felt I was lucky because I've never been a manager in retail," she said.

Lisa Jackson, 34, a Wal-Mart employee for nine years, working as a cashier, truck unloader and overnight stock clerk, is now a manager of the electronics department at the new Oakland store.

"I love my job," Jackson said. "I like the people, and I love what I do."

Article here.

For more recent Wal-Mart news, go here and here.

Here’s Ron Bailey:

Activists around the world chant the slogan that "water is a human right." Yet more than a billion poor people in the world today lack access to safe drinking water. Twelve million of them die each year from drinking disease-contaminated water. Among things that would most benefit the world, safe, clean drinking water is clearly a high priority, as pointed out by the Copenhagen Consensus organized by skeptical environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg in 2004. …

[Swedish analyst Fredrik] Segerfeldt shows that even imperfect privatization efforts have already successfully connected millions of poor people to relatively inexpensive water where government-funded efforts have failed. For example, before privatization in 1989, only 20 percent of urban dwellers the African nation of Guinea had access to safe drinking water; by 2001 70 percent did. The price of piped water increased from 15 cents per cubic meter to almost $1, but as Segerfeldt correctly notes, "before privatization the majority of Guineans had no access to mains water at all. They do now.

Whole thing here.

Here’s Segerfeldt on World Water Day.

And this study examines water privatization in Argentina:

[C]hild mortality fell 8 percent in the areas that privatized their water services and that the effect was largest (26 percent) in the poorest areas.

For more on water privatization, go here.

Sort of:

Military exercises are boosting biodiversity, according to a study of land used for US training manoeuvres in Germany. Such land has more endangered species than nearby national parks.

The land is uncultivated, but also churned up by tank tracks and explosions. This creates habitat both for species that prefer pristine lands and those that require disturbed ground, explains ecologist Steven Warren of Colorado State University in Fort Collins.

Military land can host more species than agricultural land, Warren told a meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Montreal. What's more, its biodiversity can also exceed that of natural parks, where species that need disturbance cannot get a foothold.

Warren and his colleague Reiner Büttner of the Institute of Botany and Landscape Ecology in Hemhofen, Germany, surveyed two US military bases at Grafenwoehr and Hohenfels in the southern state of Bavaria. Although the bases represent less than 1% of the state's area, they contain 22% of its endangered species, Warren told the meeting. The national parks cover a similar area but host fewer endangered plants and animals, Warren says.
…
Warren and Büttner studied several species to try and understand the benefits of military ground. One, the natterjack toad, breeds in water-filled ruts created by tank tracks, they found.

The tendency when setting aside a nature reserve is to prevent disturbances such as periodic flooding, says Warren. But this can inadvertently remove some habitats.

"[Tanks] replace to some degree the processes that have been stopped," Warren says. The same goes for fires caused by bombing. "We've trained generations of people that fire is bad," he says, "but in fact it's crucial for ecosystems."

Might this study make it’s way into a Rummy press conference?

Article here.

Of course, there are plenty of examples where man disrupts nature and nature flourishes anyway. Nothing’s exploding, but in Prudhoe Bay the caribou don’t seem to mind the Alaskan pipeline.

And here’s Jane Shaw of PERC on wildlife in suburbia:

A decade ago, who would have thought that New Jersey would host a black bear hunt--the first in 33 years? Or that Virginia, whose population of bald eagles was once down to 32 breeding pairs, would have 329 known active bald eagle nests? Who would have expected Metropolitan Home magazine to be advising its readers about ornamental grasses to keep away white-tailed deer, now found in the millions around the country?

Such incidents illustrate a transformed America. This nation, often condemned for being crowded, paved over, and studded with nature-strangli