Out of Control

I’ve come to think of the whole effort to create a national standard for the exchange of health care data as misguided at best, a looming patient privacy disaster at worst.

Last year, the House of Representatives passed a bill (HR 4157) aimed at promoting a national health IT network, but it died in the Senate and has not been reintroduced in 2007 so far. States are showing an interest as well. In 2005 and 2006, 24 states passed 36 bills calling for Health IT use to improve health care, while 10 state governors passed executive orders to that effect, according to eHealth Initiatives’ Third Annual Survey of Health Information Exchange at the State, Regional and Community Levels.

Meanwhile, the language on a statement of principles, with an eye toward model legislation, is working its way through the American Legislative Exchange Council, where I am a private sector member of the Telecom & IT Committee.

Let’s start by saying that Information Technology, or IT, can encompass a lot. And one of the problems in attempting any sort of constructive dialogue is understanding the complexity of what’s at hand. And I freely admit I don’t have as keen a grasp on the subject as I should. But I daresay that few do.

You're probably not surprised to see LA join cities like Austin, Atlanta, Houston, Portland, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Sacramento, San Diego, and San Francisco, where traffic congestion has recently topped residents' gripe list:

Growing traffic jams and rising gang violence top Los Angeles residents' lists of concerns — beating out global warming and even terrorism, a survey released today says.

On a scale of one to 10 — with 10 being the worst — respondents rated traffic congestion a 7.7, edging out threat of gang violence at 7.6, according to the survey.

Angelenos considered the local issues a greater threat than even global warming, terrorism, race relations, and access to health care and housing.

"Clearly, traffic is No. 1 because it's an issue that impacts everybody every day and gangs because it's a public-safety issue," said Fernando Guerra, director of the Leavey Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, which conducted the random survey of about 1,400 residents.

"It's (also) the one area where I don't think the Los Angeles Police Department and the city have had great success."

More here.

Related: Griping about Grilock

Related: In this LA Times op-ed, Sam and I explain how to untangle gridlock.

Companies can set up shop in all sorts of locations. Why do they cluster in some places more than others?

Do they want to ...

1. get close to suppliers and customers to keep transport costs low?
2. be near a big labor pool?
3. benefit from intellectual spillovers?

In this HIER discussion paper Glenn Ellison, Edward Glaeser, and William Kerr find evidence that supports all three, with one and two being most important.

The LA Times has an interesting piece on school drop outs. Nope, it's not about students dropping out:

In California, teachers are departing the profession in alarming numbers — 22% in four years or fewer...

Just throw some more greenbacks at them and they'll stay, right? Maybe not:

[S]imply offering them more money won't solve the problem, according to a report released Thursday.

The real issue is working conditions, which are the flip side of a student's learning conditions, said Ken Futernick, who directs K-12 studies at the Center for Teacher Quality at Cal State Sacramento.

His study, which was based on a survey of nearly 2,000 California teachers, maps a growing crisis that fundamentally affects student learning.

The study also casts doubt on commonly pursued remedies both for the teacher shortage and student achievement in general.

The study lists the top reasons why California teachers quit teaching:

Percent saying each reason affected decision

Bureaucratic interference 57%
Poor support from district 52%
Low staff morale 45%
Lack of resources 42%
Unsupportive principal 42%

"Poor compensation" comes in at number 6, cited by 41 percent of respondents. Focus just on LA teachers and the story is quite similar: "L.A. Unified's data lists salary as the No. 9 reason why new hires leave."

In the TierneyLab, John Tierney touches on a similar theme. He cites a new study that finds that smart people aren't necessarily rich people:

“Your IQ has really no relationship to your wealth,” says Jay Zagorsky of Ohio State University, the author of the paper.

Why not? Zagorksy suggests smart people aren't saving enough. Tierney offers other thoughts, including:

I also wonder if smart people are likelier than average to sacrifice income for intellectually stimulating jobs. It’s easy to point to anecdotal evidence — like the career of Dr. William Hurwitz, whose finances I discuss in the previous post. His former wife, Nilse Quercia, told me that his family used to joke about the statewide award he’d won during high school for his mathematical ability. “We’d say, ‘Billy, all your math skills sure didn’t help when it came to making money.’ ”

In the past, I've pointed to other signs that more people are placing less importance on dollars and cents:

Salary was one of the least important requirements of a dream job, cited by just 12 percent of respondents in [a new] survey by CareerBuilder.com.

In this overview of telecommuting trends (pdf), I point to other surveys where workers say they prefer perks like flexible schedules to more pay.

I think this is a fairly common pattern in America: An immigrant trades a desperately poor nation for America and takes whatever job's available, probably something like factory work since he doesn't have much formal education.

The immigrant's son gets a high school degree, maybe a college degree, and, still fueled by the immigrant experience, takes the highest-paying job available.

The grandson gets a college degree, maybe even an advanced degree. The grandson grows up in the land of plenty, not terribly worried about being destitute. Since he has the luxury of doing so, when he thinks about his career path he considers additional factors besides money (intellectual stimulation, personal fulfillment, work environment, schedule flexibility). He may even choose a less lucrative career than his father, because it makes him happier.

So simply crunching salary numbers will understate the progress made (the first generation to do worse than the one before it?!), because such calculations don't account for trade offs job seekers make. Lou Dobbs, White House wannabes, and others will get plenty of attention telling viewers with callus-free hands watching on flat-screen TVs that they're getting screwed.

Let's hope Granddad is still around to tell them how good they have it.

Related: If things are so great, why do I feel so lousy? Part V

Related: Why I'll take today's LA

Government agencies and universities have accounted for the overwhelming majority of breaches in data security, according to Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, an organization that has been tracking data breaches since California made reporting of them mandatory in 2002.

State and federal governments have accounted for 60 percent of the reported breaches. The retailing industry, which is often demonized in the media as apathetic to consumer privacy, accounted for only 3 percent. Banks and financial institutions accounted for 9 percent.

Elizabeth Oesterle, senior director, government relations counsel for the National Retail Foundation broke down the breaches at last week’s National Conference of State Legislators’ Spring Forum. Governments, especially, she said, rely too heavily on social security numbers as identifiers.

No sooner did I absorb this when, upon arriving home from the conference, I found a letter from a state (which shall remain nameless) department of revenue inquiring about a tax return on a trust fund I manage. Not only did the letter contain the name, address and corresponding bank account number, but the "case number" was the social security number associated with the name on the bank account. Somewhere, on some PC, server, disk, tape or hard drive, this data resides alongside that of millions of other individuals. It’s a serious breach waiting to happen.

While thefts are invariable, one way states can protect their citizens’ identity and privacy is to stop using social security numbers as identifiers for other business. Ironically, some states now require this of private business. For example, Texas (not the state involved in this example) prohibits health insurers from using all or part of a policyholder’s SSN as an account number.

The latest broadband statistics from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has touched off its usual round of hand-wringing about the state of U.S. broadband. The OECD now places the U.S. as 15th in the world in terms of broadband penetration.

Of course that’s not counting all the Internet connections U.S. businesses have, nor the WiFi networks at schools and universities. Turns out that OECD data is based purely on what member governments collect and provide. And unlike some European countries, The U.S. does not include Internet connections used by businesses in the equation, according to Len Kruger of the Congressional Research Service, who spoke at last week’s National Conference of State Legislators’ meeting.

Want more flaws in the OECD methodology? See Randolph May’s blog at the Free State Foundation site.

“Today's Communications Daily [subscription required] refers to a letter David Gross, U.S. Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy, sent to the OCED pointing out the flaws in the OECD's broadband statistics. Gross explained that the OECD reports rely too heavily on counting mere subscriptions as a measure of broadband use (this ignores, for example, the fact that most colleges today have campus-wide WiFi access where thousands of students have high-speed access but no "subscriptions," that millions of others use thousands of WiFi hot spots throughout the country, and that many businesses obtain broadband through high-capacity special access facilities that are not even counted as "subscriptions" in the OECD reports). OECD also ignores important factors such as geographic diversity and population density differences that impact broadband penetration.

The plain fact of the matter is that the U.S. has more broadband subscribers--64 million as of June 2006--than any country in the world. And the most recent FCC report, encouragingly, showed that the largest increase in the number of broadband subscribers occurred in the wireless segment. From June 2005 to June 2006, the number of broadband wireless subscriptions increased exponentially from 380,000 to 11 million.

Rather than celebrating this good news, which is at least partly attributable to the FCC's deregulatory broadband policies under the leadership of FCC Chairmen Michael Powell and Kevin Martin, the "talking broadband down" crowd continues to relish trotting out the flawed OECD statistics to advance a pro-regulatory agenda.”

So many people have proposed so many ways of dealing with global warming (btw, Sheryl Crow now says her toilet paper plan was a joke). Our Bob Poole just tossed a little perspective into the debate.

From his most recent Surface Transportation Innovations newsletter (which will be archived here soon):

Whatever you may think about the extent to which human activity is generating greenhouse gases that are warming the earth, the political reality is that curbs on carbon emissions are coming. The question before us in transportation is how to deal with this challenge in the most cost-effective ways.

One of the worst things we could do is to single out transportation as the villain of the piece, focusing controls disproportionately on this sector that is so vital to economic activity. That’s the perspective of ridiculous books like last year’s Lives per Gallon, which attributes most of the world’s evils to the use of petroleum products as transportation fuel. Petroleum fuels are still critically important, since we don’t yet have anything with the same energy density, a crucial component for a vehicle that must carry its energy source around with it (especially aircraft, where weight-minimization is essential). Petroleum accounts for 42% of total US energy usage, and two-thirds of that is used for transportation. Thus, we use 28% of our energy on transportation.

Electricity is one of the other major uses of energy, with the largest sources being coal and natural gas, not oil. So any sensible policy for reducing carbon emissions has to look carefully at all energy use, not just transportation. Coal is by far the largest source of carbon emissions, and there are ready substitutes for coal as power plant fuel. An article on coal mining, in the Wall Street Journal this week, noted the worldwide problem of uncontrolled fires in coal mines. According to the article, “ . . . more than 100 million tons of coal are consumed by fires annually in China, contributing as much to worldwide carbon dioxide emissions as all the cars and light trucks in the U.S.” If that number is valid, it may well be more cost-effective to go after that problem (sheer waste) before taking draconian measures to curtail vehicle fuel use.

More than 13 states have considered legislation to offer school vouchers to special education students in 2007.

Georgia becomes the first state in 2007 to actually approve vouchers for special needs students.

Read the details below from the press release from the Milton Friedman Foundation:

Special needs voucher bill sent to Georgia governor.

“The legislators in Georgia worked tirelessly to make this happen for the parents of special needs children,” said Gordon St. Angelo, president and CEO of the Friedman Foundation. “When elected officials listen to the demands of their constituents, the result is amazing.”

See Alliance for School Choice Press release here.

Similarly, Nevada is also close to passing a special needs voucher. Check out Alliance for School Choice coverage here.

Nevada families with children with special needs are one step closer to having a choice when it comes to their child’s education. The Special Needs Scholarship program, which will allow children with disabilities to attend the public or private school that best meets their complex educational needs, passed the Senate Human Resources and Education Committee on April 12. The bill will be heard in the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday, April 25.

This was an historic moment for Nevada, as a school choice-related bill has never progressed this far in the state. SB 158 is sponsored by Sen. Barbara Cegavske. The program would allow parents of students with disabilities to send their child to the out-of-district public school or private school of their choice, if the parents are dissatisfied with their child’s progress under their Individualized Education Program (IEP). The amount of the scholarship would be less than or equal to the amount the student receives for his or her education in their assigned public school. Participating private schools must demonstrate financial viability and meet state nondiscrimination and safety requirements.

Last year the CA legislature passed AB 32, which sets goals for cutting CA greenhouse gas emissions and directs the Air Resources Board to promulgate regulations to that end. But rather than wait for that process, environmental activist groups are suing rght and left to force government agencies to cut greenhouse emissions. The latest example is in San Bernadino County, where activist groups have been joined by Jerry Brown in suing the county because their proposed general plan does not "do enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions."

Such suits in advance of the law are ridiculous. An editorial in the Riverside Press Enterprise explains it. Thanks to Steve Frank for spotting this.

Reason's Katherine Mangu Ward wrote in Friday's Wall Street Journal reflecting on the 100th birthday of Rachel Carson and the celebration of her book Silent Spring. As Katherine says "With all the birthday hullabaloo, now seems as good a time as any for a re-examination of Carson's legacy." It is a good look at the good and bad of that legacy. Some snippets to give a sense:

. . .

Her concerns about the effects of insect death on bird populations were well-founded. But threats to human health were central to her argument, and Carson was wrong about those. Despite massive exposure in many populations over several decades, there is no decisive evidence that DDT causes cancer in people, and it is unforgivable that she overlooked the enormous boon of DDT for malaria control in her own time.

. . .

Carson didn't have the benefit of more than 40 years of additional data, but her successors do. DDT remains the cheapest and most powerful tool for stopping malaria. When sprayed on interior walls, it has virtually zero interaction with wild ecosystems. Yet when the topic of relaxing restrictions in order to save millions of lives comes up, someone inevitably brandishes a copy of "Silent Spring" and opposition is silenced so completely that you could hear a mosquito buzzing in the next room.

Perhaps the real question to ask about the so-called “digital divide,” isn’t how to address it, but whether it exists at all, at least when it comes to rural telecommunications.

Universal service came up during two policy sessions at the National Conference of State Legislatures' Spring Forum in Washington this week. And comments and presentations left me wondering to what extent rural America was “underserved.”

During Friday’s session “Local Competition in Local Telecommunications: Do Americans Have a Real Choice?” (as an aside: all the evidence presented points to the answer as a resounding “Yes!”), Brian Ford, policy analyst for OPASTCO, the trade group that represents some 520 small rural telcos, said some 90 percent of its membership is offering broadband Internet. And that group of 90 percent makes broadband available to 90 percent of their customers. In addition, half of the OPASTCO membership is offering wireless services and half (not necessarily the same or opposing half) are offering video.

OK, so light rail doesn't do much to reduce traffic congestion. But rail hungry cities often learn that it can actually jam up congested streets even more.

Houston Mayor Bill White in a recent interview:

I support the Main Street rail line but it's wreaked havoc on some of our signal timing.

Here's BlogHouston's Kevin Whited:

The Main Street rail line has indeed wreaked havoc on signal timing, and (as a result) vehicular traffic flow in that corridor. Sensible people understand the folly of laying light rail lines down busy vehicular traffic corridors, but Houston's light-rail-at-any-cost crowd is not always sensible. Unfortunately, the Mayor's "complaint" doesn't have much teeth, as he seems disinclined to discourage METRO from laying even more light rail down busy streets, some of which have much more heavily trafficked intersections than the Main Street corridor (like Richmond/Kirby).

Flashback to Minneapolis 2004:

The past week of testing showed that traffic signals that give priority to Hiawatha light-rail trains have dramatically slowed the flow of traffic on Highway 55, which parallels the line through south Minneapolis.

Meanwhile, in Charlotte, an exasperated Jeff Taylor considers whether he should not just submit to railophilia, but also kick the fantasying up a notch:

Hey, maybe CATS’ problem is that it is just not thinking big enough. For example, why do a boring $250 million commuter train line up I-77 way when there is 70 year-old plan for an amphibious monorail out there just waiting to be made a reality.

More here.

Related: Sam and me on How Traffic Jams are Made in City Hall

Roger Koppl, director of the Institute for Forensic Science Administration at Fairleigh Dickinson University, is writing a report for Reason on ways to improve accountability in forensic investigations. The real world ain't like CSI.

In light of the Duke lacrosse rape fiasco, Roger wrote a nice commentary in the NY Post.

[T]hese Duke athletes aren't the first people to be wrongly accused, nor are they the first victims of a politically motivated prosecutor. Their ordeal demonstrates that we need to make forensic-science services, including DNA testing, available to defense and prosecution teams equally.

. . .

The time has come to free forensic science from the pressures of prosecutorial bias. To that end, crime labs should become independent of police and prosecutors, and public defenders should be given greater access to forensic advice and testing. Crime labs should be independent, operating under the supervision of an officer of the court, who would be responsible for assigning forensic evidence to laboratories and ensuring that all crime labs in the system are following proper scientific procedures.

The National League of Cities is on the job to protect all you dumb schmucks from your poor financial management. They are pushing Maxed Out a "call to action to prevent exploitation of consumers in difficult financial circumstances. Cities, states and the federal governmetn all have roles to play in ending predatory business practices and helping workers, especially lower-wage workers, make the most of their hard-earned dollars."

We all know the government is expert and "making the most of hard-earned dollars"--they never waste a dime.

Not to mention the unmitigated gall of an elected official saying this.! No payday lender ever took as much of a poor person's paycheck as taxes do every single payday. Hey NLC, wanna help the poor, get behind smaller governemnt and lower taxes!

We warned at the outset that network neutrality was the camel’s nose of government interference under the Internet’s unregulated tent.

Now comes an FCC Notice of Inquiry that aims to address the entire Internet information supply chain. Adam Thierer offers a fine critique at the PFF blog.

It tees up all the questions that we've been asking here for the past few years. The difference is, of course, that now the whole world is going to flood the agency with answers and many of them will entail regulatory action.

Just the way the FCC frames some of the questions in this Notice concerns me, especially in terms of the breadth of what the agency is investigating. Consider how the discussion kicks off:

We seek a fuller understanding of the behavior of broadband market participants today, including network platform providers, broadband Internet access service providers, other broadband transmission providers, Internet service providers, Internet backbone providers, content and application service providers, and others.

My oh my, who isn't under the regulatory spotlight here? I remember when I used to joke about how NN would eventually come to cover just about every company under the Internet sun. And now the FCC is basically confirming that with this Notice! When the FCC asks about the practices of "content and application service providers," does that mean Apple, Google and Microsoft's business practices are going to be scrutinized? Or could "content service provider" be read broadly enough to even include media and entertainment companies? Who knows.

And when the FCC refers to "broadband transmission providers," does that include the likes of Akamai, Limelight Networks, Savvis, Mirror Image Internet and other content delivery bit traffic managers? They are clearly engaged in practices that betray NN principles, and thank God they are because the Internet operates a hell of lot better because of it!

Unfortunately, that won't serve the debate either. It will just provide bureaucrats with more fuel. Network neutrality proponents, some of whom honestly thought themselves as devotees of the free Internet, were foolish enough to put the suggestion of government Internet regulation on the table. Good luck getting it off any time soon.

Obama can.

He pulled this off during a recent speech in Milwaukee:

"There's also another kind of violence that we're going to have to think about. It's not necessarily the physical violence, but the violence that we perpetrate on each other in other ways," he said, and goes on to catalogue other forms of "violence."

There's the "verbal violence" of Imus.

There's "the violence of men and women who have worked all their lives and suddenly have the rug pulled out from under them because their job is moved to another country."

For more, including audio of the speech, go here.

Even cities that set up municipal networks through private-public partnerships may have to re-assess their promises and expectations, especially when it comes to free service.

MetroFi, one of the leading wireless network companies in the municipal space, has told cities it will not offer a tier of free services unless the city agrees to become an anchor tenant on the network. This has proved a setback to leaders in Batavia, Geneva and St. Charles, Ill.—the so-called Tri-Cities—which had been touting wireless as a new way of offering residents “universal free broadband.”

This was the same Tri-Cities that a few years back proposed a $62 million municipal fiber-to-the-home plan that area residents voted down twice.

MetroFi said that while a free, advertising supported tier of wireless access is viable, it cannot by itself support a city-wide network infrastructure. Adrian van Haaftan, MetroFi’s vice president of marketing, told Wireless Week, an industry trade publication, that revenues from municipalities must be part of the sales “equation.”

In other words, even private-public partnerships may be subject to the rules of the marketplace. In the end, it just might behoove cities to step aside and let build out proceed without their “help.”

Wireless Week reports:

Industry observers don’t seem surprised with MetroFi’s stance given that municipal Wi-Fi networks offerings are still relatively unproven and it was obvious from the advent of RFPs that business models would evolve as the market matured.

[Market research firm] IDC’s Godfrey Chua says that at a high level, given a relatively densely populated urban setting, metro-scale Wi-Fi coverage makes sense because the economics are very favorable at around $5 million to $15 million to cover a city.

“It’s a really cost-effective means of providing wireless access and delivering services,” says Chua. “A lot of folks are experimenting with different iterations that should be able to support the cost of the networks.

“But our view is that purely ad-supported networks are yet to be proven. Tiered services might work better because the service provider isn’t left counting on one revenue stream or one customer type to support their business. They need to be able to play to different market segments.

“But the key element is making municipalities anchor tenants. At the end of the day, I don’t see service providers building networks for free. Nobody builds networks for free.”

Word is that Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) is readying legislation to lift the ban on Internet gambling – or at least relieve the banks of the responsibility of enforcing it.

The bill reportedly has the support of Ron Paul (R-Texas), a member of the House Financial Services Committee that Frank chairs.

The news follows a March 30 World Trade Organization finding that the ban is not compliant with an earlier WTO ruling that called on the U.S. to change the way it regulates on-line gambling. The complaint was brought by Antigua and Barbuda, two Caribbean nations that handle a heavy amount of Web hosting for Internet gaming companies. Cato’s Sallie James recently outlined the implications of the WTO decision at TCS Daily.

The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) passed last October as part of a larger ports security bill. In its wake, the U.S. Department of Justice began an unprecedented campaign of harassment against legally operating non-U.S. banks. In January, it charged two former executives of Neteller, a publicly traded U.K. online money transfer company, with moving billions of dollars of illegal gambling proceeds from U.S. citizens to Internet gambling companies located overseas. According to InformationWeek (in an excellent report on the consequences of UIGEA), the DOJ also reportedly issued subpoenas to a number of prominent global banks that had participated in the underwriting of the IPOs of overseas gambling sites. Upon this news, stock prices of online gambling concerns registered on the London stock exchange tumbled.

In the meantime, Congress’ attempt at Internet nannying has led some of the best and most reputable gaming sites, like PartyPoker.com and 888 Poker-on-the-Net, to stop taking U.S.-based customers, potentially leaving the market to more shady operators.

The Washington Examiner has had it with congested thinking, and I'm pleased to report the paper is using our book to (try to) open some eyes and decongest DC:

We wondered how open local officials are to new thinking, so a month ago, The Washington Examiner sent a copy of “The Road More Traveled” to each member of the Montgomery and Fairfax boards. We asked them to read the book — which is well-written, factual and concise — then tell us their reaction. The deadline was Friday and we said their responses or lack of would be published.

The book was written by Ted Balaker and Sam Staley. They uncovered mountains of data and other evidence that discounts most conventional wisdom on transportation policy among federal bureaucrats, state functionaries in Richmond and Annapolis and the Fairfax and Montgomery fiefdoms.

The book has been widely praised by this newspaper and The Washington Post, plus a rapidly growing list of government officials, academic experts and private sector executives looking for new approaches to reduce or even eliminate traffic congestion. (Yes, it’s been done in major cities elsewhere and it can be done here, too.)

In short, “The Road More Traveled” is chock full of fresh thinking about one the biggest worries facing most of us living in the Washington region — what’s the traffic like out there today. It’s a significant book that local officials need to read, just as many elsewhere already have.

Despite several follow-up reminder calls and e-mails, only Andrews read the book and then told us what he thought of it.

Whole thing here.

In yesterday's LA Times I was one of several researchers to offer some quick-shot, "cheap" fixes to gridlock (in the spirit of the heightened attention given to the sensible idea of one-way street conversions).

Here's my blurb:

A big roadblock to faster traffic flow is the now-outdated notion that carpool lanes, or high-occupancy vehicle lanes, are good congestion-busters. For the most part, they're not. Carpool commuting is becoming less common even as more lanes to accommodate it are being built. Better that we turn these carpool lanes into special toll lanes.

The toll would go up or down depending on the flow of cars: The greater the congestion, the more expensive to use these high-occupancy-toll lanes, or HOT lanes. But the flexible-pricing system would maintain free-flow conditions, allowing more vehicles to fly along the same lanes that today are often as congested as the regular ones.

Apart from buying special software and hiring some back-office staff, setting up HOT lanes would be simply a matter of installing antennas for communication with electronic toll collectors, video cameras to catch cheaters, changeable message signs at various points along the route and plastic pylons to separate the lanes from the regular ones.

I'm often frustrated by "solution" talk in LA (subway to the sea?!), but I'm in agreement with most of the ideas tossed about here.

And here they come….

Lompoc, Calif., which spent $3 million on a citywide municipal wireless network reports that has signed up a whopping 281 customers since it launched service in September. That’s an investment of $10,676 for every customer, for those scoring at home. The town’s original feasibility study said the system would need 3,000 to break even. Town leaders say the system is attracting 24 customers a month. At that rate, in 12-1/2 years, Lompoc will finally be in the money.

The San Francisco Examiner reports that in Foster City, Calif., “for better or worse, a citywide free Wi-Fi Internet signal has enabled Foster City residents to take their e-mail, homework and digital assistants just about anywhere they go.”

Except in places the wireless network doesn’t, which in Foster City’s case is 40 percent of the town. The city, which contracted with MetroFi, had promised residents 95 percent coverage by now. It blames the coverage problems on the layout of homes in Foster City and the geography of the city itself, as if these factors didn’t exist when the network was originally designed.

Meanwhile, Willamette Week Online, in an article eloquently titled “Portland Wi-Fi Sucks Inside and Out, says Independent Evaluation,” reports the findings of Portland’s own Personal Telco Project.

Whatever was intended originally, the current local cable franchising process is much more a barrier to competition than a facilitator.

While municipalities talk about the their desire to offer consumers more competition for cable TV services, in less than two years, statewide franchising has done much more toward achieving that goal than thousands of towns and cities have managed in the 15 years since the FCC ordered local franchising authorities to open the process to competitors. James Speta, John Skorborg and I discuss the impediments the local franchising process puts in the way of competition in The Consumer Benefits of Video Franchise Reform in Illinois, a report recently published by The Heartland Institute.

A tip of the hat, nonetheless, goes to Tom Hazlett, who quantified the problem in Cable TV Franchises as Barriers to Video Competition, published last June.

While cable companies indeed face a degree of competition from satellite providers such as DirecTV and Dish Network, market studies show that satellite market share has long since flattened at about 29 percent and shows no sign of future growth. And satellite service is still hampered by its lack of a phone and high-speed Internet bundle. Meanwhile, telephone companies have the capability to upgrade their existing networks with fiber optics in order to package multichannel video services around their own voice and data services, yet are running head-on into franchise regulations at the local level that do nothing but impede rollout.

The local franchise process is no longer workable when diverse service providers can deliver video via cable, satellite, telephone and wireless. Cable franchise agreements were originally set up as purely bilateral revenue-sharing arrangements between the cable company and the local community. The community guaranteed a monopoly. Safe from competition, the cable company was willing to bear the various extra costs that the franchising process imposed, such as franchise fees, rights-of-way fees, public, educational and government (PEG) channel overcapacity, and the costs of such “non-cash concessions” as the construction of parking lots and public swimming pools. These costs were simply passed along to consumers.

For any would-be competitor, who, on top of all these demands, often would be given just three to five years to build a network that extended to the same number of households that it took an incumbent 10 to 20 years to reach, local franchise rules represented an insurmountable barrier to entry, even after the 1992 FCC ruling that called on local authorities consider competitive franchisees.

Statewide franchising ends this nonsense. Cities and towns will continue to receive franchise revenues, right-of-way compensation and PEG channels, but franchises will be granted quickly and terms will be consistent across the state. Cable—and more pointedly—badly needed broadband services, will no longer be and easy cash machine for local government that residents have to refill through higher bills.

A typical Illinois household with a cable subscription would save $103 a year due to lower prices, plus gain $12 a year in services valued over and above the amount paid for them, for total consumer benefits of $115 a year, according to an original analysis published this month by the Heartland Institute.

If every community in Illinois were to become competitive, the benefit to consumers would total $316 million a year due to lower prices and $36.5 million due to increased consumption of desired services, for total annual consumer benefits of $352.5 million.

The report was co-authored by James Speta, John Skorborg (who along with Heartland President Joe Bast) did most of the heavy-lifting, and myself.

The report, The Consumer Benefits of Video Franchise Reform in Illinois, is available for download here.

Well, I feel silly.

A couple days ago I expressed amused shock that the Alabama House Majority leader was also on the payroll of two state community colleges. It seemed to me a rather cozy relationship, since the Majority Leader exercises considerable control over the state budget and appropriations to these schools.

Well, it turns out that about ONE-THIRD of the legislators in Alabama—or their immediate family members—are employed by community colleges in the state. Half the members of the Education Committees in both the House and the Senate (or their relatives) derive significant income from the state’s two-year colleges.

No wonder the colleges’ budget has increased 50% since 2001.

And it isn’t just two-year colleges. One prominent GOP state Senator is also a public school teacher, drawing a full-time salary even though his legislative work forces him to miss 105 of the school’s 180 teaching days.

Governor Riley is making noises about prohibiting these relationships. Many legislators are crying that this would be unconstitutional. I hope their argument generates LOTS of public debate.

Just a quick follow to an earlier post about Michigan lawmakers' plan to fix the economy and education. One of the wise proposals included buying every student a new iPod. Turns out that two state lawmakers were among a group of politicians who made a trip to California that was paid for at least in part by Apple, the maker of iPods.

The lawmakers said the trip was about "about technology in the classroom" and educational uses for the popular audio and video players. Rep. Matt Gillard D-Alpena added that "I don't know that it has to be iPod-specific technology."

Seems a little fishy to me.

Sometimes, the political stars just happen to line up.

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has no doubt been feeling increasingly isolated, as his huge tax grab has run into a phalanx of opposition. The Gov’s plan would represent the largest tax increase in any state’s history and has, as a result, galvanized the usual business opposition. No surprise there.

But, the Governor’s expected political allies have also come out against the tax. His own Lieutenant Governor, Chicago Mayor Daley, most Democrat constitutional officers and probably powerful House Speaker Mike Madigan have come out against the Governor. Even Jesse Jackson, never before known as an anti-tax advocate, has come out against the tax hike.

Through all this, one state Democrat leader--Senate President Emil Jones--has stood by the Governor.

Which is nice. You see, Sen. Jones’ wife works for the Governor. In fact, she’s been such a great employee that the Governor’s people have given her a big promotion and two big pay hikes just before and after her marriage to Sen. Jones at the end of 2005. The Gov’s people were even nice enough to quietly change the guidelines for her position so that her lack of a medical degree wouldn’t prevent them from fully rewarding her great work. She doesn’t seem to mind that, at a salary of $180,000 a year, she makes more than her boss, the Governor.

Clearly, there’s no connection between Sen. Jones’ solitary support of the tax hike and his wife’s stellar performance on the Governor’s staff. It is just one of those win-win situations that arise often in places like Illinois.

Imagine the outcry from shareholders if a top executive of a company was also on the payroll of two of the company’s suppliers. Hell, legislative hearings have been convened on lesser conflicts of interest.

Fortunately, this isn’t the latest business scandal. Unfortunately, however, it is how things are often done in politics these days. This story chronicles an unfolding melodrama in Alabama, where the House Majority Leader, Rep. Ken Guinn, was on the payroll of two state taxpayer-supported community colleges. The two schools paid Rep. Guinn almost $100,000 a year at the same time that he held considerable sway over the state budget.

What exactly Rep. Guinn did for the colleges is unclear, although news sources report that one of the school’s leaders noted that Rep. Guinn “has brought in more money for the college than he’s been paid.”

Well.

No doubt, any state appropriation to these schools was fully vetted and found to be in the best interests of the taxpayers. I’m certain their case for taxpayer funds will be equally strong without a Majority Leader on the payroll.

Michigan with one of the worst economies in the nation just keeps giving us fodder for how not to fix an economy. In short, they keep coming up with hairbrained idea after hairbrained idea. The Detroit News' latest editorial argues that what "Michigan faces is not a shortage of revenue, but an excess of idiocy."

The latest proposal will have the added bonus of not improving education. On Thursday, House Democrats offered this one up, "a spending plan that would buy a MP3 player or iPod for every school child in Michigan." No, I didn't make that one up...and check out what the Detroit News had to say about this idea, "An iPod for every kid? Are they !#$!ing idiots?"

There's a host of new spending programs and pledges to spend additional money in existing programs too--including floating bonds to pay for health care (that's right, Michigan is following in California's footsteps and pulling out the credit card to pay for expenses!). Figuring out how to pay for all these ideas hasn't been worked out yet but Rep. Steve Tobocman (D-Detroit) suggested that raising the income tax, levying a 6 percent tax on some services, and taxing junk food and soda were options all on the table. Only option that seemed dead on arrival was cutting the budget.

The last four lines from the Detroit News editorial say it better than I could ever hope for, so I'm just copying it:

"Stop the stupidity. Michigan can't tax or spend its way out of this economic catastrophe.

The only responsible option is to bring spending in line with current revenues. The mission must be to expand the tax base, rather than to expand taxes, by crafting a budget that encourages growth.

We won't get there by wasting money on early Christmas presents for Michigan kids."

Politicos in Illinois have always had a rather expansive view of where government work ended and political activism began. Still, this story gave even this cynical observer pause.

As you may know, the Illinois Governor wants to impose a new Gross Receipts Tax on businesses in Illinois to fund the usual litany of bright shiny objects, i.e. universal health care, education, property tax relief. The plan, however, has run into a buzz-saw of criticism and has succeeded in pulling off the rarest of hat-tricks in uniting virtually every office-holder from both parties and the entire business community in opposition.

In the face of this, the Governor has launched a full PR blitz in support of the new tax. So far, so typical--politicians routinely use the resources of their office and their bully-pulpits to promote their legislative initiatives. But, the Governor has taken this a step further.

He has pushed regional offices of the state Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity to recruit businesses to support the plan. (Can you imagine being a small businessman and fielding that call?) He also has dispatched managers at state agencies to drum up public support for the plan. The Department of Healthcare and Family Services sent e-mails to more than 40,000 people, asking them to call legislators in support of the new tax. Even the state Veterans Affairs agency has been tasked with rounding up support of the tax.

We can assume these agency personnel are mostly communicating with people who have some kind of business --or at least a relationship—with their department. And the officials are ‘asking’ them to call their legislator to support the new tax. It’s the ultimate “offer you can’t refuse.”

This nice article breaks it down.

Here’s a statistic that combines two of April’s most significant annual events, baseball’s Opening Day and the tax filing deadline: All the people who combine to pay 30 percent of all income taxes paid in California could easily fit into Dodger Stadium.

Of course, there would be a lot of grumbling from those who didn’t get a luxury box.

To be sure, these are people accustomed to sitting in luxury boxes. They are the 37,837 tax filers who reported adjustable gross incomes of more than $1 million. They represent 0.4 percent of all tax filers in California. Combined, they paid $10.8 billion in state income taxes, or 30 percent of the total.

These figures are from the most recent annual report released by the Franchise Tax Board and cover the 2004 tax year. The new figures reinforce a truism about California’s progressive income tax structure: It’s the rich who pay taxes.

These mythical Dodger fans (perhaps bluebloods really do bleed the Dodger team color) represent only the thinnest slice of the pie. The Tax Board calculates that the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid 42.7 percent of income taxes in ’04, up from 38.8 percent in 2003.

Cut a bigger slice still, and you find that the top 5 percent paid 64.3 percent of income taxes.

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels issued the Indiana State Government Performance Report for July to December 2006, its the fourth of his administration and is truly unique in state government. The midterm update shows that agencies are making steady improvement, with nearly 40 percent of results in the top-performing category compared to about 25 percent for a comparable period in 2005.

Daniels and his team at the Indiana Office of Management and Budget have worked tirelessly to show that state government can become a performance-based organization. An orgnaization that is committed to results and focused on continuous improvement in service and cost reduction. Performance measurement is used to ensure accountability but also empower employees to succeed. Truly a model for the nation.

Now that I've got you're attention, former Clinton-Gore aide Elaine Kamarck has a new book, "The End of Government...As We Know It: Making Public Policy Work." Washington Post columnist Stephen Barr recently wrote about the book, the full article can be found here.

I haven't read the book but I sure like the title, and from the looks of Barr's column I just might enjoy the book too. Kamarck argues that we need a new way of governing and she relies on many of the tools that Reason has been fighting for. For example,

Government needs to focus on results and use performance measures to track programs and services. Unfortunately, government employees unions have fought these efforts in the past and most likely will in the future. Furthermore, when was the last time an elected official had the stomach to end or alter a failing program (does public education ring a bell)? The government's usual response is to send more money.

Kamarck also calls for "government by network." She may have picked this up while at Harvard where my friend and colleague Bill Eggers along with Stephen Goldsmith recently wrote "Governing By Network" - essentially this is where government uses the network of service providers -- universities, laboratories, nonprofit and for-profit organizations to do the work that the government wants done.

Last, Kamarck also calls for "government by market" where through incentives are used to change peoples behavior, such as one so people will stop driving gas-guzzling cars. This one probably raises a red flag for any liberty lover in this country -- its a pretty slippery slope when you start using taxes or incentives to create the world you want...especially if taxes are used as penalities for exercising your preference.

In today's Wall Street Journal (password needed for full article), new legislation would put some restraints on the practice of dolling out millions in subsidies to attract development. Under the proposal, sponsored by Sen. Ken Cheuvront, a Phoenix Democrat, Arizona cities would lose a dollar of state revenue for every dollar they offer as incentives.

In the past five years, cities in the Phoenix metropolitan area have given more than $300 million in incentives to retail developers.

Proponents argue that developers will move to other states or that localities will lose tax dollars. First, move to other states? Phoenix is one of the fastest growing areas in the country, if they can't support development without subsidy we're all in trouble. Even the Arizona Republic agreed in a March 24th editorial, "With the region's growth machine at full throttle, success is a given." Second, so you have to spend $100 million, in tax dollars, in order to raise tax dollars. Great logic.

Providing perhaps the definitive proof that legislatures could meet a little less often, this story details Massachusetts' lawmakers crusade to save America's teens from the newest health threat...tanning beds.

This Thursday, lawmakers on Beacon Hill (insert your own joke here) will consider legislation to ban teens under 16 from using tanning beds. Teens 16-17 would have to secure parental consent to frequent tanning dens.

As one of the bill sponsors, Sen. Pamela Resor, stressed, ”Let’s not make it so easy for young people to expose their skin to dangerous rays.”

Right. Maybe vulnerable youth should be kept indoors during daylight hours. Perhaps schools can add classes like, "SPF and You."

Sen. James Timilty adds this sage observation: "I think people get very anxious to be out in the sun. And some people also don’t realize you can be exposed to harmful rays even on a cloudy day. If you can see your shadow at all, you’re feeling some effects.”

I guess after several long months enduring a New England winter, folks are probably a tad anxious to get out in the sun. When I was growing up, we called that Spring. Who knew it was fraught with such danger?