Out of Control

Get a bunch of people to agree to spend a bunch of money on a big boondoggle. Aim high, the bigger the price tag the more your leadership skills will be praised.

Denver’s mayor, John Hickenlooper, knows the drill. He just got named to Governing magazine’s “Public Officials of the Year 2005” list:

His biggest win, by far, was last November’s vote on a regional referendum to fund what will be one of the nation’s largest mass transit systems — 119 miles of new and extended light-rail and commuter-train lines at an estimated cost of $4.7 billion, paid for by a sales tax increase across a seven-county area.

Hickenlooper’s was the most important public face of the successful campaign, but the FasTracks proposal [that’s this proposal] boasted heavy financial support from business groups, as well as the endorsement of all 32 mayors in the Denver metro area.

And not too long ago, Hickenlooper also scored a spot on Time’s “Best Mayors” list. Why? Same reason:

And in his biggest score, he won approval for a $4.7 billion mass-transit plan, which involved persuading voters, along with about a dozen mayors in seven regional counties, to back a sales-tax hike.

All those other folks who run other “Best of” lists should pay attention because Hickenlooper’s just getting warmed up. He’s supervising a “civic building boom” that includes a courthouse …

a major expansion of the Denver Art Museum, a new convention center hotel, and the recent opening of a $92 million opera house.

Governing gushes over Hickenlooper here.

Peter Gordon helpfully points out what looks to be an interesting article by Jordan Rappaport of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City that is sure to make some smart growthers -- who constantly complain that suburbs drain the life from central cities -- a bit squeemish. Here's a summary:

For more than 50 years, suburbs throughout the United States have prospered, while many of the large cities they surround have stagnated. Hence, many people perceive that cities and suburbs tend to grow at each other's expense—and thus compete for residents and jobs.

While there is some truth in this perception, it misses the fact that a metro area's cities and suburbs also depend on each other for economic growth. Cities and their suburbs share a multitude of resources, such as airports, highways, mass transit, cultural amenities, entertainment venues, air quality, potential employers, and many more. These shared resources may be even more important than the differences between cities and suburbs in determining where people live and jobs locate.

Rappaport examines the main forces that have influenced the growth of cities and suburbs over the past century. He finds that, while cities and suburbs do sometimes grow at each other's expense, more often they grow or decline together. Thus, while it may make sense for cities and their suburbs to compete along some dimensions, there are also strong incentives for the two to cooperate to make their metro areas attractive and productive places to live and work.

Download the full PDF version (181k) here.

The Wall Street Journal weighs in on tomorrow's vote on the Colorado Referenda C and D, which would take the reigns off state spending currently held in place by the state's TABOR (Taxpayer Bill of Rights) law:

Halloween arrived early in Colorado this year as supporters of a pro-tax ballot initiative rolled out scare tactics to dramatize the allegedly dire consequences of a "no" vote at the polls this Tuesday. We hope Colorado voters look to see what's hiding behind the fright costumes.

Advocates of what amounts to a $4 billion tax hike have deluged the airwaves with threats that senior citizens will go without their lunches, schools and state parks will close, college tuitions will soar, and programs to prevent poisoning, air pollution, ski lift accidents and teenage suicide will shut down. One TV ad shows the popular mayor of Denver jumping out of a plane as a metaphor for the carnage that awaits Colorado should the tax hike fail. (Miraculously, he survived.)

At stake here is the fight over the future of the famous Colorado Taxpayer Bill of Rights law, or Tabor, as it is now commonly called. Tabor was approved by voters in 1992 to end the tax and spending cycle of the 1970s and 1980s. It restricts increases in the state budget to the rate of population growth plus inflation. Any tax revenue collections above that cap are returned to taxpayers.

Some $3.3 billion, well over $1,000 per taxpayer, was returned to Coloradans in just the first five years. But when the high-tech bubble popped in 2000 and 2001, Colorado was hit hard and general fund revenues fell by 15% in two years. Now Republican Governor Bill Owens has joined hands with unions and the business community to call for a five-year "time out" on Tabor so state agencies can replenish their budgets. Taxpayer groups worry that once the state is freed from Tabor's fiscal discipline, it will never be restored.

This battle of Tabor has gained national attention because the law has become a template for at least two dozen other states seeking to restrain their own stampeding taxes. Colorado is a worthy role model: The tax cap is one of the main reasons that economists cite for the state moving to 10 percentage points above the national average in personal-income growth in the period after Tabor, from five points below it in the years before Tabor.

Despite the state's recent fiscal ills, a compelling case can be made that the automatic tax rebates in the 1990s saved it from even worse budget misery. The $3.3 billion that was returned to taxpayers would otherwise have been spent, probably on new obligations that would have created a permanently larger spending base. Jon Caldara, who is leading the "Vote No" campaign, points out that the rebates are all that "prevented us from looking like debt-ridden California in the last few years."

. . . .

We do have some sympathy for Governor Owens's argument that Tabor's limits put an extra burden on government services during economic downturns. Once revenues tumbled by 15%, it took the state three years to regain the revenues lost because Tabor ratcheted down permanently to a 15% lower revenue baseline during the recession.

However, the way to fix this is not to take a sledgehammer to the Tabor mechanism and force taxpayers to surrender billions of dollars in future tax rebates. The better answer is to negotiate an exception that protects the revenue baseline from falling so far during recessions. In our view, Mr. Owens gave away too much when he negotiated the five-year Tabor waiver, which the spenders will use as an opening for a major expansion of state government.

There's a good reason that Tabor is the taxpayer model of the nation. It has done precisely what its supporters said it would do in forcing politicians to set spending priorities the way that families and businesses do, and in requiring government to live within its means. If Coloradans abandon Tabor's discipline, even for a while, they may never get it back.

In case you missed it, be sure to check out Geoff and Adam's piece last week on Referenda C and D, as well as the Priority Colorado report from earlier this year. For more info on Ref C & D, see TaxIncrease.org.

Only on Halloween can witchcraft and tax policy converge like this:

Dutch witches are getting a tax break. A court has ruled that the cost of witchcraft lessons can be taken as a tax deduction.

Learning to cast spells and brew potions doesn't come cheap. Margarita Rongen runs the "Witches Homestead" in a northern province. Her witchcraft workshops cost more than $200 a weekend or more than $2,600 for a full course.

Rongen says she been a witch for 38 years and has a duty to pass along her knowledge. She notes her black cauldron and crystal ball stand at the ready for the next full moon.

Cobwebs cling from the wooden rafters. Dusty shelves are cluttered with glass jars of home-brewed potions, dried herbs and stone amulets. An oil cooker and a black cauldron sit in the corner, ready for the next full moon. This isn't a Halloween party, it's Margarita Rongen's year-round workshop and she is a witch - according to her tax return.

Dutch witches were guaranteed a financial treat when the Leeuwarden District Court reaffirmed their legal right to write off the costs of schooling - including in witchcraft - against their tax bills. Those costs run to thousands of dollars.

The court found on Sept. 23 that a witch can declare schooling costs if it increases the likelihood of employment and personal income.

On this day in which we annually shift our clocks back an hour, it's worth taking another look at Mackinac Center President Lawrence Reed's 2002 article examining how the shift to standardized time zones exemplified private sector initiative and innovation:

"In every city and town," historian Stewart Holbrook wrote in his 1947 book, The Story of American Railroads, "the multiplicity of time standards confused and bewildered passengers, shippers, and railway employees. Too often, errors and mistakes turned out disastrously, for railroads were now running fast trains on tight schedules; a minute or two might mean the difference between smooth operation and a collision."

. . . .

Two men in particular are credited with "inventing" standard time and the time zones that define it. Prof. C. F. Dowd, principal of Temple Grove Seminar for Young Ladies at Saratoga Springs, New York, first suggested the general concept of four or more "time belts." Later, William Frederick Allen, a railroad engineer, adapted and improved it and won acceptance for it by a crucial panel.

In 1872, railroad officials from around the country met in Missouri to arrange summer passenger schedules. To address the time problem, they formed the General Time Convention, a permanent organization to work on a solution. Allen was named secretary and immediately set to work on making Dowd's idea into a detailed proposal. In October 1883, the General Time Convention approved Allen's plan. Government was not part of the picture at all; the Dowd/Allen solution to establish standardized time zones was conceived and fine-tuned to fruition entirely by the ingenuity of private citizens. The Convention chose the date of Nov. 18, 1883 for the adoption of the new system by virtually every railroad in the country. "Railroad time" quickly became the new "local time" everywhere-or at least almost everywhere.

. . . .

Private enterprise saw a dilemma as a problem to be solved. Governments dragged their collective feet and politicized it. As Yogi Berra would say, this sounds like "déjà vu all over again."

What time is it? Thanks not to pretentious central planners but to creative entrepreneurs, no matter where you live, there's been a uniform answer to that question for about a century.

Check out the whole piece for an interesting bit of history. It presents a stark contrast to the view I highlighted in a related post earlier this spring.

This week, Ohio became the latest state to take action to limit the use of eminent domain for economic development purposes:

A bill preventing cities from seizing unblighted land for economic development through 2006 cleared the state legislature easily Wednesday, as lawmakers responded to public concern that a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision could make the practice widespread.

The bill, which cleared both the House and Senate unanimously, will go into effect as soon as it is signed by Gov. Bob Taft.

Sponsored by State Sen. Tim Grendell, a Chester Township Republican, the legislation creates a 25-person task force to review Ohio's eminent domain laws in the wake of the high court's Kelo v. New London decision. In that June 2005 ruling, the court said economic development is a viable "public purpose" under eminent domain law, even when unblighted land is being seized for development that ultimately benefits a company.

Eminent domain has traditionally been reserved for such public purposes as roads, schools, military bases, highways or parks.

Lakewood, however, gained national attention two years ago when the city threatened to take land for building upscale housing and shops. The 20-acre project, which would have wiped out 700 apartments and 55 houses, collapsed when voters narrowly barred the use of eminent domain.

See Sam Staley's discussion of the Lakewood situation here, as well as in Reason's 2005 Annual Privatization Report.

Time magazine digs into the issue.

Choice bit. . .

A study by analysts at Barclays Global Investors in San Francisco estimates that public-employee pension funds in the U.S. are short $700 billion. That's more than all state and local governments collected last year in property, sales and corporate income taxes combined.

Australian Trade Minister Mark Vaile has a cow over Euro food subsidies:

'In the European Union, farmers receive a third of their income from government subsidies. Beef and veal producers get more than 70 pct of their income from subsidies,' he said.

'A typical cow in the European Union receives a government subsidy of 2.20 US dollars a day. The cow earns more than 1.2 bln of the world's poorest people.'

…

Vaile also argued that agricultural reform would have a more significant impact on world poverty than aid and debt relief.

'It's not enough for them to provide aid and debt relief when the benefits of liberalising trade are so much greater,' he said.

Whole article here; via Sploid.

More on trade-not-aid here.

Proponents of Measure 37 (Oregon's regulatory takings measure) have filed a recall petition against Judge Mary Mertens James, who ruled the measure unconstitutional two weeks ago:

Proponents of Measure 37, a voter-approved ballot measure that allows property owners to seek waivers from land-use zoning laws or get compensated, are seeking to recall a judge who ruled that the law was unconstitutional.

Silverton businessman Tom Steffen, 37, the owner of a graphic-design company, filed the petition Wednesday with the support of the Constitution Party of Oregon.

Steffen said the move should come as no surprise to Marion County Circuit Judge Mary Mertens James, who said the law unfairly gives some people rights that others aren't entitled to, violating the equal-protection clause of the Oregon Constitution.

"If a judge is going to overturn 1.6 million Oregonians' votes, she can't be surprised there's going to be action," Steffen said.

He said his motivation for filing for James' recall was to show the state and national governments that citizens are serious about keeping judges working within the voters' will.

As Randal O'Toole notes on the American Dream Coalition blog:

Measure 37, which was passed by more than 60 percent of Oregon voters last November, provides that anyone whose property values have been reduced by land-use rules imposed since they purchased the property may apply for compensation or have the rules waived. Judge James rules that the measure was unfair because it treated people who purchased their property before the rules were passed differently from those who purchased it afterwards. Economically, there is a difference between these people: the ones who purchased it before expected to be able to use it in certain ways that were later proscribed by the rules, while the ones who purchased it afterwards did not expect to use it in such ways, and presumably paid less for the property.

Advocates of measure 37 say that the measure's different treatment of different property owners is no different than zoning's treatment of the owners of land on two different zones. Under Judge James' reasoning, all zoning and urban-growth boundaries should be ruled unconstitutional. Unfortuately, Oregon judges seem to have a strong prejudice in favor of zoning and planning and against property rights, so a ruling against zoning and urban-growth boundaries is unlikely.

Following up on yesterday's post, another reality check on smart growth and housing affordability comes courtesy of The Register-Guard:

Soaring land prices and a shrinking supply of vacant property in Eugene and Springfield are straining nonprofit agencies that build low-income housing.

Escalating real estate values coupled with constraints on growth in the metro area have made it far more difficult to find new sites for affordable housing projects, including apartment buildings, duplexes and single-family homes, the groups say.

. . . .

Some worry that people in lower income brackets are being squeezed out of Eugene as both rents and home prices escalate and no new land is added to the city's urban growth boundary.

"Eugene is very quickly on a path to becoming an unaffordable community. It's gentrifying right before our eyes," said Kent Jennings, owner of Jennings Development LLC of Eugene, which works with the nonprofit Metropolitan Affordable Housing Corp.

No one wants sprawl, Jennings said, but limits on growth drive up affordable housing costs in several ways. Bare land is at a premium and often sells for more than nonprofit developers can pay. Some are turning to land with existing houses or other improvements that can be torn down, but that, too, costs more, he said.

"If you start talking about four houses on two acres, each house has economic value," Jennings said. "You have to overlay that value on top of the value of the land."

So yet again, we see that the laws of supply and demand actually apply in the real world. And for those of us who like to have their cake and eat it too, the reality of trade-offs in life can be stark. But something in the Smart Growth Kool-Aid apparently brings about a state of denial on trade-offs; many advocates hold the paradoxical belief that you can simultaneously limit land supply and increase housing affordability. Here's a good example:

Developers and builders are putting pressure on city leaders to start the process of expanding the city's growth boundary under state land use planning rules. That would free up more land for all types of housing, at least for a while. But affordable housing advocates are wary of expanding the city's edges too much at once.

[Terry] McDonald of St. Vincent de Paul [Society of Lane County] said that, despite the limited supply of land in the metro area, he supports keeping the urban footprint tight.

"Ironically I'm my own worst enemy on that. But it makes it possible to get people who have limited ability to move around to the services they need," he said. "Urban sprawl doesn't necessarily help us."

Give McDonald credit for at least acknowledging the intellectual contradiction in his position; many in the smart growth movement see no such contradiction. But to recognize it and still continue to avert your eyes from reality is just whistling past the graveyard.

For more on SG & housing affordability, see Reason's Urban Growth and Land Use Policy resources.

One group of state workers has tentatively agreed to a new contract shifting to defined contribution pensions.

First step on the march to real pension reforms?

...but lawmakers still want to make it more difficult to achieve the President's competitive sourcing goals. From the Federal Times:

Democrat and Republican lawmakers have struck a deal to scuttle a controversial anti-outsourcing measure contained in a House-passed spending bill.

The measure, sponsored by Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., is contained in the Transportation spending bill and has prompted an administration veto threat because it would effectively stop agencies from subjecting federal jobs to possible outsourcing.

Capitol Hill, industry and union officials familiar with the negotiations say House and Senate lawmakers agreed to eject the Van Hollen measure from the House-Senate conference report and replace it with a measure considered less destructive to the Bush administration's plan to open federal jobs to possible outsourcing.

The Senate passed its version of the 2006 Transportation, Treasury and Housing and Urban Development spending bill Oct. 20, and both chambers are heading for a conference to reconcile the differences between the two versions.

House and Senate lawmakers agreed to include in the conference report a Senate-passed provision that would bar agencies from awarding more than 10 federal jobs to a contractor unless its bid is cheaper by $10 million or 10 percent — whichever is lower — below the federal team's bid.

. . .

OMB threatened a presidential veto of the Transportation bill if this Senate provision is left intact, saying it would force agencies to decide competitions based on cost only.

"By marginalizing the consideration of quality, this provision would weaken competitive sourcing as a management tool to achieve the best overall value for the taxpayer," OMB said in an Oct. 19 statement to the Senate.

See Reason's 2005 Annual Privatization Report for the latest data on the federal competitive sourcing front. With $2.5 billion in savings over the next several years, and a return of $20 for every $1 spent on competitive sourcing, the effort has generated impressive results to date. Taxpayers stand to lose if the Senate provision stays and a veto is not forthcoming.

According to Portland planners, the area's "tipping point" -- the point at which land value exceeds its improvement value -- has been achieved, thanks to the metro area's urban growth boundary. Rising suburban land values in turn spur the development of remaining underdeveloped parcels, as well as teardowns in existing neighborhoods and replacement with higher density developments. According to The Oregonian:

[W]hat appears certain is that other underdeveloped parcels left inside the region's urban growth boundary will sooner than later tip the same way as prices for land and demand for new housing continue to rise.

"There's a point where land value becomes so much greater than its improvement value," said Stephan Lashbrook, Lake Oswego's community development director. When the former exceeds the latter by enough, that's when its sale and redevelopment become almost a foregone conclusion, he said.

Plans approved in 1997 by Metro, the regional government, envisioned this phenomenon, but in a general sense. Metro's so-called functional plan sets goals for each suburb regarding how many new housing units it should be prepared to accept.

As Randal O'Toole handily reminds us, Portland planners have been less than forthright about their intentions here: the plan "envisioned this phenomenon," even as planners continue to claim that the UGB doesn't increase land & housing prices. Got to give them credit for their skill at pulling the wool over the public's eyes.

Back to the article:

The higher densities these new units will create may jam roads and increase supermarket lines, but they also promote efficiency in provision of municipal services, said Gerry Uba, Metro's project manager.

"Instead of laying a pipe two miles to connect outlying subdivisions, higher densities allow us to dramatically reduce that distance," he said. "That has a tremendous impact on costs, which translates to what we pay for housing."

Exactly...smart growth's tremendous impact on costs and housing is to make them soar.

Randal also points out another glaring piece of the article -- a discussion with a broker whose claims that their new project of 1,200 sq. ft. townhouses priced between $279,000 and $310,000 "is perfect for first-time homebuyers." What?! Maybe if your household is pulling in over $100K per year, but how many first-time homebuyers fall into that category? Don't homes under $150K sound a bit more feasible for first-timers? Here in Houston, you can pick up a brand new single-family suburban home for under $150. Randal hits it right on when he points out that less land use regulation tends to equate with regional housing affordability. Too bad that Portland planners don't get this.

(Hat tip: American Dream Coalition blog)

Paul Gilding the former executive director of Greenpeace is now running his own "eco-consulting" company. An excellent article in Forbes details his transition from fighting big business to working with them.

Gilding now concedes: "If you want to change the world change it through the market."

One example of Gilding's work includes a project with Ford where they were able to cut water usage used in manufacturing by 18 percent at a plant in Mexico. Gilding calls that 'sustainability,' I call it the profit motive. The article is right, maybe "business guys aren't so evil, after all."

Reason has been talking about this for years. Check out our environment program, New Environmentalism.

University of Illinois professor and author Robert Bruegmann had an interesting piece in the L.A. Times yesterday that debunks the myth that L.A. epitomizes urban sprawl. Here's a taste:

...[I]n fact, Los Angeles is not a particularly good example of urban sprawl. Take the part about being unplanned. The truth is that New York, Chicago and most of the older American cities had their greatest growth before there was anything resembling real public planning; the most basic American land planning tool, zoning, did not come into widespread use until the 1920s.

L.A., by contrast, was one of the country's zoning pioneers. It has had most of its growth since the 1920s, during a period when planning was already important, and particularly since World War II, when California cities have been subject to more planning than cities virtually anywhere else in the country.

Then there is the part about how the city is too dispersed. Although it is true that the Los Angeles region in its early years had widely scattered settlements, these settlements were not particularly low in density. Since World War II, moreover, the density of the Los Angeles region has climbed dramatically, while that of older cities in the North and East has plummeted. The result is that today the Los Angeles urbanized area, as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau, has just over 7,000 people per square mile — by a fair margin the densest in the United States.

Many people think that this must be a statistical trick because no part of the L.A. region could possibly be as dense as Manhattan or central Chicago. But there is no trick. Los Angeles has always had relatively small lot sizes, very little abandonment and, because of the difficulty in obtaining water, almost none of the really low-density suburban and exurban development that extends for dozens of miles in all directions outside older cities in the northern and eastern United States.

Check out the whole thing. One particularly salient point he makes is that L.A. has densified dramatically since the rise of automobility last century, and that L.A.'s legendary traffic congestion has come about not because of sprawling low-density development, but rather because of increasing density combined with a lack of new capacity.

He also takes a parting shot at sprawl critics:

Of course, none of these objections to standard wisdom are likely to sway many highbrow critics of sprawl. Their desire to see L.A. as sprawl and therefore as not truly urban is based less on rational analysis than on subjective aesthetic judgments and class resentment.

But there are major problems with their position. First, there is considerable room for doubt that sprawl is necessarily the major problem that many anti-sprawl crusaders believe it to be. But, in any case, Los Angeles is not a good model of sprawl. The urban area of New York or Boston, for example, each surrounded by a huge low-density penumbra, would make a better poster child for sprawl than the dispersed but relatively dense and compact Los Angeles.

Well put.

The Las Vegas Review Journal apparently isn't too keen on the new regional light rail system proposed by the Regional Transportation Commission, and they're not pulling any punches:

On Thursday, the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada unveiled its latest justification for a 33-mile light rail boondoggle that would span the Las Vegas Valley. The county's transit authority hailed a report from the Parsons Transportation Group that says light rail is a cost-effective way to ease traffic congestion.

Although the Parsons group was paid gobs of public money for its work, these consultants clearly didn't consider county taxpayers their clients. If they had, they might have told the RTC's empire builders the truth about light rail: It costs a fortune, it doesn't relieve congestion, it never pays for itself and it actually hurts mass transit ridership.

Don't believe it? Download Randal O'Toole's recent study, "Rail Disasters 2005" at www.reason.org/ps336.pdf.

Mr. O'Toole's research, which is based on more than 20 years of ridership and transit data, exposes light rail cheerleading as delusional.

Cities with successful bus lines get a sniff of the federal subsidies available for mass transit and want a bite. Consultants and bureaucrats provide inflated ridership estimates. Local and state governments then bury themselves in construction debt, convinced that people will abandon their vehicles for expensive, inconvenient trolley rides. When the riders don't materialize, already high fares are raised to cover operational costs and bus service is slashed. Ridership drops, and taxpayers cover the debts.

The RTC and its light rail steering committee have to come to their senses and realize that there are no light rail success stories. The proposed line from Henderson to North Las Vegas is a multi-billion-dollar white elephant that will leave valley taxpayers trampled.

Ouch. For more on the ubiquity of light rail boondoggles, be sure to check out Rail Disasters 2005 (and the 2004 report), as well as Reason's other light rail research.

Fairly or unfairly, in the Western mind Calcutta is known as the city that offered Mother Teresa a a life-time of gainful employment through its steady supply of lepers and beggars.

Well, its Communist rulers decided a few months ago to do something to shore up the city's image and attract investors: They banned hand-pulled rickshaws.

The practice of sweaty-browed, emaciated men straining every sinew to pull a human cargo turned off investors, they claimed.

That Communists should be shoving off rickshaw-pullers to pave the way for private business is ironic – not to mention dishonest given that during their five-decades of rule they have consistently condemned businesses as profiteering, blood-sucking, scum-of-the-earth whose presence was the biggest impediment to their vision of social justice.

So it is not surprising that the opposition (this is a democracy, after all) mounted a strong protest. Among the groups protesting the loudest were the environmentalists.

But why? Because the ban would deprive the poorest of the poor of their only way of earning a living? Because it would throw their families, already living hand-to-mouth, into utter destitution?

No. The ban would lead to a switch to motorized vehicles, contributing to pollution. "The annual total of pollutants would increase by 11 tons of lead, 4,000 tons of particulates, 20,000 tons of carbon monoxide and 150 tons of nitrogen," one of the enviros claimed.

For the sake of the rickshaw pullers, one hopes that the enviros prevail over the commies.

Who said two wrongs don't make a right?

We've reported about the Taxpayers Bill of Rights several times - its under serious threat from the spending lobby and now the Republican Governor of Colorado.

This just from the AP:

State agencies are recommending $256 million in budget cuts next year, including the permanent closing of 11 state parks and eliminating 210 jobs in the health department, if voters reject a measure on the Nov. 1 ballot to relax the Taxpayers' Bill of Rights, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

"I think we'll have to close community colleges and tuition will be unaffordable for the average Colorado citizen," she said.

A new study released by Reason and Americans for Prosperity has a different take. Let alone the over $400 million in savings we identified in February.

U.S. diplomats are refusing to pay an eight pound congestion charge that the city of London imposed two years ago on cars driving into central London, reports the BBC.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/4352520.stm

The diplomats claim that the charge is a tax and the Geneva Convention exempts them from all host-country taxes. The mayor of London maintains that the charge, widely popular among London residents because it has reduced congestion, is really a fee for service.

Revolting against British taxes is part of a long and venerable American tradition, of course. But the root cause of the dispute is not semantic; it is government ownership of roads. If British roads were run by private companies the charge vs. fee question would simply not arise.

So the solution? Privatize your roads, Mr. Mayor.

Posted by Shikhad, Oct. 20, 1 pm

In Canada right now the wait for health care in the nationalized system is is over 4 months! A massive increase in funding managed to decrease the wait by............wait for it...............1 day!

Well, with "free" health care, you get what you pay for. Or, actually, you don't.

Article here.

Report here.

The Amish have been forced into politics. Not by high taxes, the war in Iraq, social security reform, or even forced vaccinations. No, zoning did it.

With small farms becoming uneconomic, they have been turning their traditional skills to new trades to supplement their income. Unfortunately, zoning laws banning home-based businesses are getting in the way.

Here's the story from Geauga County, Ohio, near Cleveland. Geauga County is home to 12,000 Amish, the fourth largest community in the world.

The Associated Press reports:

In a rare foray into politics, the Amish, whose religion dictates that they keep their distance from outsiders and modern conveniences, are campaigning to eliminate a township's zoning laws on Nov. 8.

They say restrictions on the size of home-based businesses are preventing them from opening woodworking shops as they shift from agriculture. Such shops allow them to continue to work alongside their children — one of the tenets of the Amish lifestyle.

None of the neighbors objected to the proposed woodworking shop, but local zoning codes prevented the township trustees from accomodating the request. So, off to court they go.

Notably, a market-oriented approach to zoning and planning control would emphasize the impacts of development proposals on neighbors and the community, not strict adherance to rules and regulations imbedded in a land use code. Reason Foundation's policy studies on market oriented planning can be found here and here.

Many times, the reality of the zoning process runs headlong into faith, hope, and quaint ideals about the informed citizen. Many proponents of Smart Growth implicitly assume that the zoning and development approval process is forward looking and rational.

A recent rezoning in Bellbrook, Ohio is much more reflective of reality than proponents of "democractic planning" want to admit.

The city recently approved a rezoning of 52 acres a stone's throw from the downtown from agriculture to single family residential. (Why land adjacent to the downtown is still zoned "agriculture" 30 years after the city's first comprheensive plan was approved is another issue.) Developers plan to put 71 upscale homes ($400,000+) on lots in the heavily wooded area.

Dozens of citizens appeared at the public hearing, many to protest or otherwise register their disapproval. One resident opposed to the rezoning reports The Dayton Daily News

People came here because of the beauty of the area, Bellbrook resident Edna May Keider said, "and we're going to end up having nothing. You came to this community because of what it was, not what it is now.

My experience as a planning board chairman reinforced this sentiment time and time again: people were opposed to growth because they didn't want their commmunity to change.

Unfortunately, this isn't an option. Contemporary planning, particularly Smart Growth, often sells the belief that residents can somehow shape their community, or dictate how it will look and operate. But, in a nation that values freedom of choice, that can't happen. Peeople can sell and develop thier property, and the community can't determine who will live there, when, and how long.

Bellbrook City Councilman Denny Bennet was much closer to reality:

Bennett "said it was a "tough decision" for all involved. "The best thing the city can do is manage this. It's going to happen."

Fortunately, those who believe housing should be accomodated can still count, to some extent, on base interests in filling the public coffers.

Mayor Mary Graves cited the expansion of the tax base as a justification for the rezoning. "We need a tax base here and we don't have it," she said. "These will bring taxes to us."

The Nobel Prize winner and (ahem) one-time Privatization Watch contributor (see p.2 of pdf) on new Nobel winners here and on offshore outsourcing here.

Here’s an interesting bit:

One of the best known examples of outsourcing was the post-World War II New England textile industry's move to the South in response to lower wages --as always, this raised wages in the South, and the industry eventually moved on to lower-cost sources in Asia. But textiles were replaced in New England by high-tech electronic, information and bio technologies. There were huge net gains to New England, even though it lost what had once been an important industry. In 1965, Warren Buffett gained control of one of those fading textile makers in Massachusetts, called Berkshire Hathaway, and used its large but declining cash flow as a launchpad for reinvesting that cash flow in a host of famously successful new business ventures. Forty years later, his company has a market capitalization of $113 billion. The same transition is occurring today with Kmart and Sears.

Baggage and passenger screening should be shifted to individual airports, with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) retaining regulatory control. Airports would be free to use TSA-certified screening companies or to hire TSA-trained screeners. This devolution — having the federal government delegate these duties — makes sense for at least four reasons.

All four reasons and more, right here, in Bob Poole’s USA TODAY piece.

Also check out Bob’s virtual exclusive busways piece (based on this study) in tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal.

Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness — oh, and high-speed Internet access, too. Broadband Internet access is so important to Mayor Gavin Newsom that he recently declared it a “fundamental right,” one that City Hall must provide to the people of San Francisco. After the city solicited bids from two dozen companies to blanket The City with cheap and fast Internet service, Google offered to do the job for free. The tech titan plans to make money by selling ads and offering service upgrades.

Local leaders can clamor for free Wi-Fi, but enthusiasm is no substitute for expertise. We shouldn’t expect cites, many of which have trouble filling potholes, to dive into this dog-eat-dog industry and keep their heads above water.

Read the rest of my San Francisco Examiner piece here.

Wal-Mart wants to create a bank subsidiary to cut costs of processing of credit card transactions. But

Opponents believe Wal-Mart intends to use its Utah bank to place branches in its thousands of stores and offer savings accounts, auto loans and other services that would harm community banks and credit unions in the same way that hardware and grocery stores are hurt when a Wal-Mart store opens in a small town.

Wal-Mart may "be poised to disrupt an entire $120 billion industry."

OH MY GOD! COMPETITION IS COMING! CIRCLE THE WAGONS!

I could just puke. Anti-corporate fanatics never cease to amaze me with how willing they are to sacrifice the consumers they allegedly represent in their war on capitalism.

And who are their staunchest allies? The incumbent corporations who'll gladly sleep with the enemy to limit competition.

The link to the story is dead now, so here it is:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Article Last Updated: 10/18/2005 07:04 AM
The Salt Lake Tribune

Wal-Mart plan could shake up bank industry Industrial banks: Widespread opposition may nudge Congress to shut them all down
By Steven Oberbeck

Wal-Mart has a reputation for driving mom-and-pop grocery, hardware and other small stores out of business, but in Utah the retailer may be poised to disrupt an entire $120 billion industry.
Wal-Mart's bid to open an industrial bank in Utah is drawing widespread opposition from consumer and financial groups nationwide - an outcry that could persuade Congress to shut down all federally insured banks owned by stock brokerages and retailers, most of which are incorporated in Utah.
"The industrial banking industry in Utah has operated relatively quietly and out of the limelight for years," said Matthew Lee, executive director of the New York City-based Inner City Press/Fair Finance Watch consumer group. "The last thing it needed was for some retailing behemoth to come in and demand access to the same loophole that everyone else enjoys."
Utah's industrial banking industry comprises more than 30 financial institutions with assets of more $120 billion, including such companies as Target, General Electric and Volkswagen. The banks allow companies to process their own credit card transactions and loans in-house, saving them millions of dollars.
Opponents believe Wal-Mart intends to use its Utah bank to place branches in its thousands of stores and offer savings accounts, auto loans and other services that would harm community banks and credit unions in the same way that hardware and grocery stores are hurt when a Wal-Mart store opens in a small town. Wal-Mart executives claim they have no such plans and only want to save money on the 140 million credit and debit card transactions carried out at the company's stores each month.
Still, in the two months since Wal-Mart filed its banking application in Utah, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. received more than 1,100 letters commenting on the application, according to Bloomberg News. The agency typically receives fewer than a dozen comments on new bank applications.
The Utah Department of Financial Institutions, which also must approve Wal-Mart's application, has yet to open its comment period.
The popularity of industrial banks can be traced to an exemption in federal banking laws enacted by Congress in 1987 that for the first time in decades gave stock brokerages, retailers and other commercial companies an easy way to own a federally insured bank.
Prior to that time, such companies were prohibited from owning banks because, it was believed, the 1929 stock market crash was brought about in part by bankers loaning money to investors so they could buy the very stocks that banks were peddling.
Likewise, under the 1987 law, Wal-Mart and other retailers could issue credit cards and loan money to consumers who would then buy goods from their stores.
Already there are rumblings in Congress that could make any Utah-based Wal-Mart Bank a short-lived financial institution. Last month, Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa) introduced legislation that would block commercial firms such as Wal-Mart from owning industrial banks and force those who already own them to get rid of their banks within five years.
And that could impact the owners of at least a dozen industrial banks in Utah.
In addition, the Government Accountability Office released a report that recommended Congress consider strengthening the regulatory oversight of industrial banks and seriously consider whether there are any advantages to mixing banking and commerce.
"With Wal-Mart on the scene, pressure is increasing with every step for Congress to do something to rein in industrial banks," said Ron Ence, director of legislative affairs for the Independent Community Bankers of America. "Over the long run, industrial banks as we know them could very well cease to exist."
Wal-Mart executives hope it doesn't come to that.
"All we're after is a fair hearing on our bank application," Wal-Mart spokesman Marty Heires said. "And we're just going to have to wait and see how the public debate ends."
steve@sltrib.com

Former Seattle polic chief writes in the Los Angeles Times why the war on drugs is foolish and wasteful.

Planetizen has an interesting new focus piece this week that argues for the privatization of regional planning. Here's an excerpt:

Regional plans have basic flaws that prevent successful implementation. In most states, plans have little to no legal force, they can be relatively easily changed, and they must be implemented parcel-by-parcel, project-by-project. Add on top of that the fact that these plans, whose lifespan could be measured in decades, are supposed to weather political change and roller coaster funding cycles, and you can be nearly assured of their failure.

When was the last time you saw a property owner involved in a planning meeting that didn't specifically address the owner and the owner's property? The public, property owners in particular, have grown apathetic to planning. They know that a few years down the road "something" will change and any decision made today will simply be decided again later.

The lack of certainty and predictability regional plans offer is driving many property owners to find their own solutions. People today are educated and empowered as never before. Anyone with internet access can find and communicate information about issues that affect them. Satellite imagery and simple GIS capabilities are now available to nearly everyone with the ability to push a button.

In suburban Washington, D.C., property owners are forming groups to sell en masse to developers attracted to redevelopment opportunities. Not far from Atlanta, property owners created their own land use plan covering over 43,000 acres. Outside of Chicago, farmers pursue specific plans together to ease acquisition of development entitlements. Landowners and land trusts around the country are working together to protect open space and critical natural habitats and resources privately.

What is bringing these people together? With the recent resurgence of private property rights interests, one would think property owners would hold out for their own self-interest, all others be damned. In the case of land conservation, development and redevelopment, however, people are realizing that parcel and political lines fragment economic and environmental opportunities. Property owners are working together to increase their properties' value and to protect the environment.

This new involvement should be strongly encouraged. The system that discourages property owner participation must be changed. Property owners are in the best position to create, implement and manage land uses regionally. In many cases, they have lived in their area for generations and witnessed first hand the changes and deeds that made their community what it is.

Read the whole thing.

Japan's parliament Friday passed a bill authorizing the privatization of Japan Post, with its $3.1 trillion in assets.

The new law, which goes into effect in 2007, creates four separate companies to handle mail delivery, banking, insurance, and management of the nationwide post office network.

Japan is the latest nation to privatize or de-monopolize their post office. Other recent nations include: Germany, France, Denmark, and New Zealand.

Read more about the plan, the history, and potential reform in the US in Reason's Annual Privatization Report.

Via the Education Gadfly:

The Orleans Parish's school board has agreed to charter all 13 schools in the city's West Bank. Furthermore, according to the Times-Picayune, Mayor Ray Nagin has asked Governor Kathleen Blanco to "help him create a citywide charter school system." As John Maginnis, a Louisiana political commentator, writes in the Picayune, "A network of well-run, well-financed schools with motivated faculties could attract families back to the city the way the old mismanaged, bankrupt system attracted FBI agents."

In addition, Louisiana has been awarded a $20 million No Child Left Behind grant to fix existing charter schools and start new ones.

Louisiana has a weak charter school law that gives too much control to the school board. The state should consider strengthening that law and holding a competitive bid that might attract successful charter school operators to the city. The school board might consider contacting some of the growing nonprofit charter school chains in California that are fueling California's charter school growth.

More California kids attend charter schools. This is good news for kids in both the actual charter schools and the public schools that are competing with the charters.

Enrollment in California charter schools has nearly tripled over the past two years as interest among parents has gained momentum, officials said Tuesday.

A total of 212,000 students now attend 574 charter schools. The charter association reports that one in 20 public schools statewide is a public charter school.

In California approximately 5 percent of children are in charters. Parents continue to demand more options for their children and waiting lists continue to be long.

Don’t fret about housing bubbles, says Len Gilroy, there’s something more important to worry about.

Like ultra-self conscious junior high schoolers, city officials are suckers for fads. Forget addressing the core issues of local government--sewers, schools, and roads are boring! These folks want to do what’s cool.

And right now what’s cool is giving your city Wi-Fi access. Recently cities like San Francisco, Philadelphia, Portland, and Houston have said they want to do it.

And now this:

A Milwaukee firm is leading an effort to create a citywide wireless computer network, a $20 million-plus initiative that could leapfrog the city to the front of a national push to create such systems, city officials said Wednesday.

Midwest Fiber Networks would construct the system at no cost to taxpayers - a key selling point for the cash-strapped city. The firm and its partners could even end up paying the city money to lease space in the city-owned underground conduit system.

Officials could also seek free wireless access in all parks or housing projects as part of the arrangement.

"This is an exciting proposition for the city," said Mayor Tom Barrett, who has had informal discussions with the company. He said it could lead to Milwaukee being the "first American city to become totally wireless at no cost to the taxpayers of the city."

Yeah, and how abut that wastewater system (p.4)! Anyone? (crickets)

Milwaukee is one city that could actually brag about wastewater. Perhaps city leaders are now entitled to be a bit frivolous?

Article here.

Why muni Wi-Fi isn’t such a cool idea here.

Today you can find “American” cars with mostly foreign parts and you can find “foreign” cars with mostly American parts. Japanese companies like Toyota build cars in the U.S. and then ship some of them back to Japan. Are these cars imports or exports?

The other day I read an article that highlighted U.S. job security anxieties and Japanese automakers. But it wasn’t the old foreigners-are-taking-our-jobs tale. Here Californians worried that a Nissan office would move, not across the globe to Japan, but across the nation to Tennessee.

What makes this globalization tale all the more interesting is that a French company recently bought a large portion of this Japanese company that employs so many Americans. Oh, and Nissan’s CEO is Brazilian.

Of course you can find similar mixing in other industries. This year Sony made a Welshman its first non-Japanese CEO. Also this year, China’s Lenovo purchased IBM's personal computer division - home of the Think line of notebooks, desktops, and monitors - for $1.8 billion.

… though the new company has more employees in China than anywhere else, Lenovo chose to make American IBMer Steve Ward its CEO and to move headquarters from Beijing to a new location in Purchase, New York, just a few miles from IBM's venerable home in Armonk.

And Fark points to globalization’s influence in beauty pageants:

[B]ehold the Miss Universe Contest, where Miss Germany is Vietnamese, Miss Norway is Iranian and Miss Namibia is white.

Wiredblog post and pics here.

The Supreme Court has annouced that it will rule on three cases that will ultimately decide the limits of wetlands regulation under the Clean Water Act:

The Supreme Court announced Tuesday that it will decide how extensively government can regulate the nation's wetlands, a key source of contention among environmentalists and property owners.

Property owners in two cases the court agreed to hear argue that government regulators have interpreted the 1972 Clean Water Act too broadly and exceeded their power to regulate interstate commerce, because the wetlands in dispute are miles from any waters able to support recreation or shipping.

In accepting the cases, the court ruled against the Bush administration, which had said in a brief that "core federal interests" were at stake and urged the court to let stand lower-court rulings that upheld the federal government's authority.

. . . .

At the center of the debate is the Clean Water Act, which gave the federal government authority to block pollution in "the waters of the United States." At the time, this jurisdiction was premised on Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce on the country's "navigable" waters.

The government views wetlands as a part of complex ecosystems that must be kept clean to preserve the quality of the larger bodies of water they ultimately feed. Property owners, supported by such organizations as the National Association of Home Builders, say this is a sweeping definition that rubs out state and local land-use authority -- and adds to the cost of housing.

These decisions likely won't generate the same intensity of public discussion as the June Kelo vs. New London ruling on eminent domain, but they're no less important: wetlands regulation is a HUGE issue in urban development, as well as the property rights movement. For some perspective:

With more than 100 million acres of wetlands in the contiguous United States, a total as big as California, the stakes are high, the justices were told.

The outcome could have implications for government authority in regulating construction in obviously environmentally sensitive areas, such as Hurricane Katrina-decimated parts of Louisiana and Mississippi, and even land that is not adjacent to water.

The Army Corps of Engineers regulates work on wetlands, which are home to many plants and animals.

"They define wetlands so broadly that even dry desert areas of Arizona are being called wetlands," said Paul Kamenar, a lawyer with the Washington Legal Foundation, one of the conservative groups that called on the court to intervene.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal has already taken a stand for property rights:

The common denominator in the three cases that will be considered next year is wetlands protection. According to an Agriculture Department study, farms and ranches lost some 263,000 acres to wetlands designations between 1997 and 2003. Rather than limit that protection to navigable waterways that connect major bodies of water and support shipping -- the intent of the 1972 Clean Water Act -- state regulators and the Army Corps of Engineers have slapped red tape on seemingly every depression that puddles during a rainstorm.

. . . .

Just what business does the Army Corps of Engineers, an arm of the federal government, have regulating small plots of land in Michigan? The Constitution allows the federal government to regulate interstate commerce. Did the Founding Fathers want this power used to stop the construction of shopping centers in areas that would support them? Environmentalists and the federal government would say, "yes."

Hopefully, Chief Justice Roberts can build a majority that will hand down a resounding "no."

And the Mackinac Center weighs in on the news as well:

The federal government has traditionally been able to regulate the nation's navigable waters under the Constitution's commerce clause. The landowners in both Michigan cases claim that the area alleged to be a wetland is too distant from navigable waters to be connected to them, while the federal government argues that if the water from the property could theoretically reach a navigable water, federal jurisdiction is proper.

[Mackinac Center Senior Legal Analyst Patrick] Wright said: "The federal government's claim of jurisdiction on grounds that water from an otherwise isolated water source might somehow still reach a navigable water is a sort of ‘one-drop rule.' It's too expansive. It gives the federal government almost unlimited jurisdiction over land-use regulation, an area that has traditionally been governed by the states. The Founding Fathers did not intend for the U.S. Constitution's commerce clause to allow for such sweeping federal regulation."

We'll definitely be keeping an eye on these cases as they progress. BTW, the three cases are Rapanos v. United States, Carabell v. Army Corps of Engineers, and S.D. Warren Co. v. ME Board of Environmental Protection.

As if Drew Carey, Christopher Hitchens, Joel Kotkin, and all sorts of your favorite Reasoners weren’t enough—now Mr. X Prize, Burt Rutan, has been added to the lineup.

Lots of folks have already signed up, so this little jab in the ribs is for all you fence sitters. C’mon and join us!

Reason's Dynamic Cities Conference
Las Vegas
November 4-6, 2005

And introducing, Reason After Dark ...

How do policies based on freedom and choice make a city great? Where are those cities? Who's winning the War on Pleasure? What can Las Vegas teach the liberals and conservatives who fear and loathe it?

Enjoy Director John Stagliano's award-winning Fashionistas dance show, the spectacular Penn & Teller, poker, shopping, great food, cigars, innovative speakers, panel discussions, and more at Reason's Dynamic Cities Conference and Reason After Dark special events.

More info, including online registration, here.

From the National Bureau of Econmic Research, a look at how policies are the cause of high housing prices.

What has happened is that fewer homes are being built relative to the existing stock of houses. In a sample of 120 metropolitan areas, the housing stock climbed 40 percent in the 1950s; in the 1990s, housing stock rose only 14 percent. The 1990s average change for the 120 areas was double that in booming markets as San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles where it is more difficult getting land approved for development.

As evidence of this difficulty, the authors note that the physical cost of building a home as a percentage of the home price has diminished over time. In 1970 and earlier, structure costs represented about 90 percent of the value of a home in most areas. But since 1980, the cost of land and obtaining regulatory approval has shrunk the importance of building costs as a factor in house prices. For instance, along a swath of the east coast roughly approximated by Amtrak's Northeast Corridor, the non-structure component of house value exceeded 40 percent by 1990. By 2000, this pattern had spread to 27 metropolitan areas. In the San Francisco area, an outlier among metropolitan areas, structure costs probably represent no more than 30 percent of house value.

The evidence, the authors write, points toward a man-made scarcity of housing in the sense that the housing supply has been constrained by government regulation as opposed to fundamental geographic limitations, especially in the last two or three decades. They see evidence that judges and local government officials have become increasingly sympathetic to community and environmental concerns with new housing developments. Zoning has become more restrictive. Permitting has declined by an estimated 37 percentage points between 1960 and today.

American technology entrepreneur Greg Olsen, Ph.D. successfully landed in Kazakhstan after a 10-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Dr. Olsen returned to Earth with the Expedition 11 crew, which was relieved after their six-month stay aboard the ISS.

More here.

Space Adventures organized the trip. More on the company here.

A very sharp analysis by Otis White at Governing magazine.

A 19th Century Mining Town?
How New Orleans Comes Back to Life
You’d need an empathy transplant not to feel compassion for the citizens of New Orleans as they return to their muddy, moldy homes and businesses, some ruined beyond repair. But as your heart goes out to New Orleanians, here’s something to do with your head: Watch how the city revives. It may teach you a lot about how complex modern cities work.

Cities are made up of scores and maybe hundreds of interrelated systems. An obvious set: Businesses need residents to be their workers and customers, and residents need businesses for employment and shopping. As New Orleans returns to life, then, its businesses will need workers to help clean up the mess and then stay and run the businesses. Good question: Will the customers be there? It depends on the business. If it’s a grocery store, hardware store or diner — businesses providing basic services — the answer is almost certainly yes. But if the business is more complex — say, a corporate law firm or a company catering to tourists — then it may take a while for its customers to return.

Then there are the residents themselves. What would bring you back to New Orleans? Well, work certainly. But you’d need a place to live, and such places may be in short supply in the months ahead. You’d need the basics, such as groceries and gasoline, but how long could you go without diversions, such as a night at the movies or an afternoon at the mall? And what about the kids? New Orleans is likely to be without functioning schools for most of the fall. How can families move back if little Antoine and Allison can’t go to school?

For a while, then, New Orleans will likely resemble a 19th-century mining town: mostly male and almost entirely adult, with little to do but work, eat simple meals (hot plates and mini-refrigerators should be big sellers for people living in motels) and drink at bars. Eventually, others will return — lawyers, stockbrokers, real estate salespeople, caterers, tour guides, hotel bell captains, maitre d’s, computer programmers, car salespeople and the like — but when and how? That’s the thing to keep an eye out for.

Footnote: If there’s a single institution to watch, it’s Tulane University, whose university, hospital and research complexes constitute the largest private employer in New Orleans. Tulane’s president vows that classes will begin again in January. (Freshman orientation was taking place as Hurricane Katrina struck.) But getting the other parts of the university back into business will be a monumental task. For example, when generators at the university stopped functioning, 33 years of blood samples collected as research into adolescent heart disease were ruined, destroying a major health science project. Some of Tulane’s most complex and important work, then, will take a long, long time to restore.

After the success of privatizing welfare to work in the 1990s, the logical next step has been to privatize the processing of food stamp, Medicaid and welfare applications.

Texas is pushing ahead with such a plan, which it expects to save the state $150 million a year and improve the quality of application review.

Are we overworked corporate cogs?

On Oct. 24, we can pledge our collective allegiance to "Take Back Your Time Day," which supporters describe as "a major U.S./Canadian initiative to challenge the epidemic of overwork, over-scheduling and time famine that now threatens our health, our families and relationships, our communities and our environment."

(October 24th Is Take Back Your Time Day.)

Or snickering slackers?

U.S. workers say they squander over two hours a day at the workplace, with surfing the Web, socializing with co-workers and simply "spacing out" …

More here.

[A]lmost all the data supports the notion that we have a lot more free time than we used to, and a lot more recreation.

More here.

The city of Philadelphia has awarded EarthLink a high-profile contract to build a Wi-Fi network stretching over 135 square miles, marking the formal start of the largest municipal effort in the United States to offer wireless Net access.

Dianah Neff, Philadelphia's chief information officer, said Tuesday that the Atlanta-based Internet provider has won the contract to place Wi-Fi access points on telephone poles throughout the city, beating out a competing proposal from Hewlett-Packard. Most city residents will pay $20 a month for access.

"EarthLink will fund, build and manage the wireless network, and will provide Wireless Philadelphia with revenue-sharing fees to support our nonprofit goals of getting computers into households with training and working with our neighborhoods to do economic development," Neff told CNET News.com.

More here.

The city of Philadelphia has awarded EarthLink a high-profile contract to build a Wi-Fi network stretching over 135 square miles, marking the formal start of the largest municipal effort in the United States to offer wireless Net access.

Dianah Neff, Philadelphia's chief information officer, said Tuesday that the Atlanta-based Internet provider has won the contract to place Wi-Fi access points on telephone poles throughout the city, beating out a competing proposal from Hewlett-Packard. Most city residents will pay $20 a month for access.

"EarthLink will fund, build and manage the wireless network, and will provide Wireless Philadelphia with revenue-sharing fees to support our nonprofit goals of getting computers into households with training and working with our neighborhoods to do economic development," Neff told CNET News.com.

More here.

If the French marauders known as The Deflated waged their brand of urban subversion in Southern California, the mecca of the sport utility vehicle, by now they would probably have been jailed, beaten, shot or at least sued.

But five weeks after the clandestine crew of environmentalists launched a low-intensity war on SUVs in Paris, there are no casualties to report. Except, of course, for dozens of deflated gas-guzzling vehicles, said Sous-Adjudant Marrant (Sub-Warrant Officer Joker), the mysterious, masked leader of Les Dégonflés.

Under cover of night, Marrant's troops target Jeep Cherokees, Porsche Cayennes and other four-wheel-drive vehicles parked on the tree-lined avenues and cobblestoned lanes of wealthy neighborhoods. The eco-guerrillas deflate tires without damaging them, smear doors with mud and paste handbills on windshields proclaiming that the vehicles are dangerous, polluting behemoths that do not belong in the city.

Some factoids abut Marrant and his group of low grade revolutionaries:

* Although his nom de guerre was inspired by Subcommander Marcos, the masked Mexican guerrilla revered by leftists, Marrant insists he is not violent or even particularly serious. "Deflated" is a self-deprecating name that also means "coward" in French.

* Marrant on The Deflated: "We emphasize the comic, the burlesque side.."

* Marrant is writing a children's song as an anthem for the cause. He also hopes to record a dance-mix version before Saturday, when activists plan an international wave of anti-SUV operations — by daylight, this time — in France, Britain, Canada and Australia.

* Marrant is unemployed, though he has dabbled in journalism.

Whole article here; my piece, Oui, Oui SUV, is here.

One other factoid … Marrant’s a smoker. Wonder what he would do if the anti-second hand smoke movement got as fired up in France as it is in the US? Would he enjoy a good laugh when some self-righteous activist/performance artist unloads on him with a Super Soaker?

Who’s the bigger spender?

Discretionary spending comprises most defense spending and other nonentitlement social programs; it's what president and Congress decide to spend each year through appropriations bills. Because it could be theoretically zeroed out each year, discretionary spending is the best measure of fiscal responsibility in evaluating presidents and Congresses.

In fiscal 1965-68, Lyndon Johnson raised discretionary spending a whopping 33.4 percent (all figures are adjusted for inflation and based on Office of Management and Budget data). He jacked up nondefense discretionary spending 34.2 percent and defense spending -- remember Vietnam? -- 33.1 percent.
…

Then there's George W. Bush. In his first term, he increased total discretionary spending 35.1 percent and that percentage will actually rise: the final figures for fiscal 2005 aren't in yet, so we have to rely on the July OMB midsession review numbers. The final numbers will be significantly higher, especially since midsession figures do not take into account hundreds of billions in supplemental spending related to Hurricane Katrina and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

How has the president spent so much? Defense spending has greatly increased, by 37.2 percent over four years. But the president also increased nondefense discretionary spending by a humongous 37 percent. Even when you subtract homeland security spending, Mr. Bush and Congress boosted nondefense discretionary spending by 23 percent during his first term.

Read the whole thing (by Veronique de Rugy and Nick Gillespie) here.

There’s so much evidence of the GOP's big spending ways, but will history pay attention? Here’s hoping we can break from our outdated stereotypes of Dems and Reps and realize that the party of limited government does not exist.

Two cheers for divided government.

here

But, compared to the 80s, they’re not that steep.

The LA Business Journal (no link) reports on the UCLA Anderson Forecast’s latest report:

Senior economist Christopher Thornberg wrote that, adjusted for inflation, a motorist buying 600 gallons of gasoline a year now spends roughly 6 percent of his or her income on fueling up the car. Back in the 1980s, the same amount of gas would have cost 8 to 9 percent of total income—and that’s without today’s more fuel-efficient vehicles.

Glenn Reynolds sees telecommuting as a 21st century way to address energy concerns. It’s great if your car gets good mileage, but it’s even better if you can just skip the daily commute (shameless plug: Look for my soon-to-be-released study on telecommuting!)

Here’s Glenn:

Managers and unions don't like this much: Managers because they like to have workers in plain sight (which also makes managers look more important), and unions because it's harder to organize workers who aren't all in one place. But while there's still plenty of work that can't be done at home, there's a lot more these days that can, and people who work at home use a lot less gas ...

What's more, the federal government, which has lots of employees, and lots of jobs that can be done from home, should take a very aggressive role in promoting telecommuting internally. If this shrinks the demand for new federal buildings, so much the better. It also occurs to me that once "working" doesn't come to mean "being in the office for eight hours regardless of whether anything gets done," people might start looking for output-related metrics, which might allow us to shrink the number of federal employees -- something sure to make both managers and unions unhappy, but something also likely to be good news for taxpayers.

Likewise, I think it's worth encouraging shopping from home, too. I order a lot of things from the Web specifically because it saves me the hassle of venturing out into traffic to visit stores, but when I avoid that hassle I avoid burning gas, too. True, the delivery truck burns gas -- but it's delivering to a lot of other homes at the same time it's delivering to mine, so overall it winds up using considerably less per person than if everyone shops individually. As we formulate energy policies, we should try to ensure that home-delivery services are encouraged, or at least not put to extra trouble. If even a modest percentage of grocery-shopping runs, for example, were replaced by internet shopping and home delivery, gas consumption would be substantially reduced -- particularly as I suspect that the early adopters would tend to be the people facing the longest drives.

As an added bonus, to the extent that more people work at home instead of in crowded office buildings, there's also a homeland-security and public-health benefit: There would be fewer dense targets for terrorism, and probably fewer opportunities for people to spread, and catch, infectious bugs ranging from the common cold to avian flu.

Get the scoop on mucus troopers here.

Read all of Glenn’s TCS article here.

Not Bruce Benson.

He argues that those who want to build roads, pipelines, and so on don't need it either.

In an interesting Independent Review article he tackles the “holdout problem” and other justifications for grabbing land.

Here’s the abstract:

According to the conventional wisdom, road transportation would be highly inefficient without the government’s power of eminent domain, because property owners could refuse to sell their property at the government’s asking price. In reality, there are strong grounds for thinking that private, for-profit road companies would have fewer problems with holdouts and few problems as severe as that of government failure in road transportation.

Read the whole thing here.

CEI's Iain Murray opines on the myth that more mass transit would have aided New Orleans' Katrina evacuation:

When Sen. Mary Landrieu (D.-La.) appeared on Fox News Sunday on September 11, she blamed the fact that so many people were left behind in New Orleans on the administration's transportation policies: "In other words, this administration did not believe in mass transit. They won't even get people to work on a sunny day, let alone getting them out." This characterization displays a profound ignorance of the realities of urban transportation. Mass transit would not have helped; only increased automobility would have.

. . . .

The problem with all the transit suggestions for evacuation is their inflexibility. They require people to have reached certain destinations at certain times. The need to retain capacity for humans means officials take a stern line on pets taking up space, which discourages many from taking up the option. And there is the significant question of what to do with the thousands evacuated at the end of the journey. While bus transit can help, it is by no means the solution to complete evacuation.

Indeed, by all accounts it seems that there is one factor and one factor alone that was the major determinant in whether people left or stayed: car ownership. One need only compare how successful the Houston evacuation was with the New Orleans evacuation to see that. Among black households alone, 31% of those in the New Orleans area had no access to a vehicle, compared to just 16% in Harris County, where Houston is located (see here for the detailed figures). With much greater car ownership, bus transportation was used to much greater effectiveness.

As transportation system expert Randal O'Toole has pointed out, New Orleans, a compact city where no-one needed to drive is now known as a disaster city at least partly because people were unable to drive when they needed to. Transit would not have eased New Orleans' plight.

For more on this, see Adrian's recent commentary.

Justice O’Connor might have added: “Or any poor neighborhood with a yachting complex”:

Officials of a poor, predominantly black Florida town plan to relocate about 6,000 residents to make room for a billion-dollar yachting and housing complex.

The coastal community of Rivera Beach in Palm Beach County may use eminent domain, if necessary, to claim 400 acres of land for the project, The Washington Times reported Monday.

More here; via Sploid.

O’Connor’s dissenting opinion in the Kelo case here.