Out of Control

Upon hearing the news of the passing today of Ric Williamson, chairman of the Texas Transportation Commission, I am reminded of a quote attributed to Goethe: "Boldness has genius, and magic and power in it."

After serving seven terms in the Texas legislature from 1985 to 1998, Williamson was appointed to the Texas Transportation Commission by Governor Rick Perry in 2001 and became perhaps the key architect of the state's bold embrace of tolling and public-private partnerships as the primary means of addressing the state's massive urban congestion woes and staggering transportation infrastructure needs. While other states had taken tentative steps in this direction, Texas took the bull by the horns and ran with these ideas in a way that catapulted it to the front of the pack, placing it far ahead of other states in its willingness to not only facilitate, but also to institutionalize, the use of these cutting-edge concepts.

Charged by Gov. Perry with modernizing a transportation system that had not been managed to deal with the rapid population and economic growth that was occurring in Texas, Williamson undertook a methodical process of quantifying the extent and scope of the state's transportation needs and identifying a range of short-, mid-, and long-term strategies and solutions to address the needs. Then came the herculean task of implementation, and bolstered by Williamson's vision and leadership the Commission has presided over something unfortunately rare in government--a paradigm shift of massive proportions in a major state agency (the Texas Department of Transportation). So often in government, innovative ideas and bold visions are relegated to large reports that ultimately gather dust on dark bookshelves hidden from the light of day. But in this case, TxDOT jumped headfirst into a new way of doing business, a fact that owes much to Williamson. From these efforts came a powerful set of new tools--such as private-sector financing, pass through tolls, the Texas Mobility Fund, and the Trans-Texas Corridor--designed to allow the state to address its congestion, mobility, goods movement, and environmental challenges.

I've met numerous elected and appointed officials in recent years, many of them intelligent, passionate and accomplished, but I can honestly say that no one impressed me as much as Ric Williamson. I had the fortune of conducting a lengthy interview with him this past fall, during which he blew my mind with his ability to spontaneously articulate the different aspects of the "Texas model" with clarity, intelligence, depth, and purpose.

Beyond that, having previously read description after description of Williamson as a "bully," or as "arrogant"--the "most hated man in Texas," according to Texas Monthly writer Paul Burka--I was pleasantly surprised to find that, in person, Williamson's intelligence and purposefulness was only exceeded by his humanity. Instead of starting our interview immediately, he spent the first several minutes asking me about my life, my work at Reason, and my mother (who's from San Antonio), and I then spent the next 45 minutes or so glimpsing into the mind of an intelligent and shrewd, while simultaneously thoughtful and gentle, man. When I saw him at a conference again in November (figuring he wouldn't remember me), he greeted me like an old colleague and the same humanity shined through.

What I came to realize is that Ric Williamson exemplified that rare breed of public steward--a gentleman, leader, and innovator bolstered by his experience and the courage of his convictions. Individuals like Williamson that are willing to push the envelope and move in bold new directions are often misunderstood, misinterpreted, and shunned until the rest of society catches up to them. As Texas Senator John Carona stated today, "[Williamson's] ability to see far into the future, coupled with his command of process and the here-and-now, ensure his place in our history books when the story of 21st century Texas is told." Not only is Texas better off for his leadership, but given the degree to which other states are starting to emulate Texas on the transportation front, I'd bet that Williamson's impact will ultimately be felt far beyond the borders of Texas.

For more on Ric Williamson, these pieces are well worth a read:

• Fort Worth Star-Telegram on Williamson's passing


• Williamson remembered as committed visionary (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)


• Peter Samuel (TollRoadsNews.com) on Ric Williamson

UPDATE: My original post focused exclusively on transportation, but I failed to highlight Ric Williamson's leadership on tax and fiscal policy during his tenure as a legislator. As the Dallas Morning News notes this morning:

Mr. Williamson spent 13 years in the Texas Legislature, much of it fighting for sensible state spending, colleagues say. [...] He went to the Legislature in 1985 a Democrat and left in 1998 a Republican. Serving on the House Appropriations Committee, he was one of the "Pit Bulls," conservative lawmakers (including Mr. Williamson's Austin roommate, Mr. Perry) who questioned how the state spent its money. He believed that agencies should get money based on the goals they set and met – not just based on what they ask for. That concept, performance-based budgeting, is used today.

More from the FWST:

Williamson, who in the private sector operated a natural gas production company, was a conservative Democrat in 1984 when he first won a seat in the Texas House representing a largely rural district west of Fort Worth anchored by Weatherford. He came to the House at age 33 as Texas was reeling from a slump in the oil industry, which strained the state budget.

Along with a coalition of other conservative Democrats and many of the then-outnumbered Republicans in the Legislature, Williamson pushed for steep cuts in state spending in an effort to hold the line on new taxes.

It was during that period that he befriended Perry, another rookie lawmaker with similar West Texas roots and conservative Democratic leanings. Both would change their party affiliations to Republican as their careers advanced.

This excerpt from my recent interview with Williamson gives a glimpse into his thinking on tax policy:

"I determined from my years in politics—and just observing, just common sense, listening to people—that there was a reason why, all across our country, citizens less and less support general taxes into a common pool to be distributed by political decision makers. There’s a reason why people vote for Republicans and Democrats who claim that they won’t raise those common taxes, and the reason is, our citizens, whether we like it or not, have decided that it’s not in their best interest to permit themselves to be taxed in common and the money put into a common pool to be distributed based on political will. They have rightfully, I think, ascertained that when that occurs, the investment of the tax revenue is not made in the best interest of their welfare, but rather in the best interest of the welfare of the elected class."

New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who’s been all worked up about violence in video games, and his friends in the New York Department of Criminal Justice are wiping the egg off their faces after a 20-minute presentation cited a well-known Internet hoax and parody site, Mothers Against Videogame Addiction and Violence (www.mavav.org) as an important “parental resource.” The site, in truth, does a terrific job of spotlighting and lampooning the very type of moral panic Spitzer’s fomenting.

The MAVAV citation caps a sensationalized presentation filled with errors, inaccuracies and misinformation about the so-called dangers of violent video game content, including the since-discredited report that the Virginia Tech shooter was an avid player of Counter-Strike.

With the ominous title “Video Games and Children: Virtual Playground vs. Danger Zone,” the slide show was designed to drum up support for state new laws restricting the sale of video games.

For more see Cord Blomquist’s post at Technology Liberation Front and this entry at Gamepolitics.com. Note also that all of New York State's links to the presentation are currently down.

I find it hard to get as worked up as the opposition over yesterday's FCC’s decision to allow a company to have common ownership of a newspaper, TV and radio station in any one of the top 20 U.S. markets, amending a 32-year old rule.

As I said yesterday on Larry Mantle’s AirTalk program on KPCC, the Los Angeles public radio station, it amounts to a half-baby step toward liberalization of media ownership. My opposite number in the discussion, Josh Silver, executive director of the Free Press, was apoplectic over a ravenous quest for “profits” ending diversity in media. The segment is available at the KPCC site here.

The trouble is, there’s no sign of the great blanding of media content that Silver rails against. To be sure, local newspapers and radio stations have cut their staffs, but that reflect changing market conditions – a shift on the part of readers, viewers and listeners to other sources of news, the Web, cable TV and satellite radio, to name three. And if local alternative journalism is the goal, in this day and age owning a newspaper or TV station is a terribly inefficient way to accomplish it. Why take on all this overhead when, with far less resources, a motivated individual can accomplish much more with a video camera, a PC and a connection to YouTube.

Bottom line, however, the FCC’s decision did not amount to much. Through past waivers, the FCC has permitted cross-ownership in many of the major markets covered by the new blanket ruling, including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Under the new rules, a newspaper still cannot acquire one of the market's top four broadcast properties and at least eight independent voices must remain. So despite the outcry from anti-business corners, from a regulatory perspective, there isn’t much that’s going to change.

Although the FCC made a token effort at loosening media ownership rules yesterday, at the same meeting the Commission adopted a rule preventing any cable company from serving more than 30 percent of all pay-TV subscribers nationally.

At least its arguable that media companies are consolidating, although that consolidation has not been accompanied by the decline in diversity that critics fear. The multichannel video industry, on the other hand, is growing. The telephone companies have entered the business and have peeled off 3.2 million customers as of Q1 07.

The industry rightly believes this latest FCC overreach won't survive a court challenge. More at Multichannel News here.

The network neutrality crowd is taking a page from the climate change club. In the same way environmentalists say just about every social, economic and natural problem is attributable to global warming, it’s getting so that anytime an Internet-based application hits a glitch, the activists say the root cause is lack of network neutrality regulation.

The latest accusations have been directed at T-Mobile, whose users had trouble connecting to the Twitter SMS application this weekend. The problem was a technical glitch, which Twitter (which does not believe it was blocked on purpose) is working to repair. But that didn’t stop accusations from flying.

The Twitter jitter continues a pattern where network neutrality advocates cry “net neutrality” wolf at every relatively minute and isolated applications interruption.

A few months ago, over the course of a few days, Cox users couldn’t reach Craigslist.com. After charging Cox with a neutrality violation, they quieted down when the problem was traced to a flaw in a security software problem.

Accusations that Comcast was blocking Google turned out to be a DNS glitch. Another claim that Comcast was blocking peer-to-peer sites turned out to be completely false -- Comcast merely was slowing down isolated P2P uploads by reducing the number of simultaneous connections the user could have to the file-sharing site at peak times. This was routine traffic management.

Then there was the kerfluffle over AT&T’s alleged “censorship” of lyrics critical of President George W. Bush during a wireless web transmission of Pearl Jam concert. Turned out a solitary employee of the company managing the webcast, not AT&T, had made a unilateral and unauthorized decision to delete the lyrics.

With the classic fable in mind, observers are warning net neutrality activists to stop are endangering their own credibility.

Here’s Mike Masnick at TechDirt.com with some common sense.

“Before we get accused of all sorts of incorrect things (as per usual when we post about network neutrality), let’s start off with a few clear points: I think that the concept of network neutrality is important for creating conditions that enhance innovation. However, I don’t think that means we should mandate network neutrality through legislation. I think what it means is that we should look for ways to increase competition in the connectivity space, as that would make network neutrality a non-issue. Anyone who violated network neutrality would pay for it in lost customers. Unfortunately, with many people having very few connectivity choices, companies can get away with things. However, these firms aren’t stupid. They're not randomly blocking stuff just for the hell of it. And, yet, every time a minor technical problem pops up -- such as T-Mobile having problems delivering SMS to Twitter, suddenly everyone makes it out to be a net neutrality violation. Unfortunately, it appears that the phrase “network neutrality” has now become a catch-all for any connectivity provider that has trouble delivering any particular service. While that generates headlines for advocates and politicians who want to keep “network neutrality” in the headlines, it actually does a great disservice to the actual concept of network neutrality. It changes the debate away from one that concerns the actual issues (competition and what is best for innovation) to one that involves lots of needless finger-pointing and blind accusations. So, next time there's a problem on the network, before shouting “network neutrality,” at least wait until the details come out.”

A new website, USASpending.gov, serves as a virtual invoice of the top expenditures of federal tax dollars, thanks in part to efforts by Reason and a coalition of other groups who have been urging the presidential candidates to make good on the promise of the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act.

In August, Reason Foundation's Amanda Hydro spearheaded distribution of the "Oath of Presidential Transparency" to every presidential candidate. To date, six presidential candidates, including Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), have signed the oath declaring that, should they win the presidency in 2008, they will issue an executive order during their first month in office instructing the entire executive branch to put into practice the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, creating a Google-like search tool that allows you to see how your tax dollars are being spent on federal contracts, grants and earmarks.

You can read the oath, view the signatures of those candidates who have signed it, and related coverage here.

From Dale Gieringer:

DEA raids on California's medical marijuana dispensaries are costing the state's taxpayers millions of dollars in lost revenues, according to records collected by California NORML.

The DEA has not only closed facilities that were paying millions of dollars yearly in sales taxes, but also seized as much as $450,000 in sales tax payments that were in transit to the state Board of Equalization.

The tally includes a $348,078.49 bank transfer to the Board of Equalization stopped when the DEA raided and seized the bank account of an Alameda County medical marijuana dispensary October 30, a $51,935 check to the state BOE that bounced when the DEA seized the bank account of a Kern County dispensary in May, and others.

Keep in mind, those figures are only account for medical marijuana dispensaries lawfully filing state taxes--or at least attempting to!

In November, California Attorney General Jerry Brown claimed that the state had eradicated $11.6 billion worth of marijuana in the last year, some 2.9 million marijuana plants grown under conditions presumed illicit. The dollar value in the case of black market marijuana is likely exaggerated--the state's figures generally count worthless seedlings and mature plants alike--but it is still a sizeable crop (California's wine grape harvest is worth about $3 billion annually). Mendocino County supervisors have considered adding marijuana back into their annual agricultural report in order to shed more light on the subject.

Further reading: Jon Gettman's October publication, "Lost Taxes and Other Costs of Marijuana Laws," provides a national perspective on the theoretical value of marijuana taxes, and Dale Gieringer and Richard Lee estimated the tax value of California's medical marijuana market for Oakland's Measure Z Oversight Committee a year ago.

Should No Child Left Behind Act be fixed or scrapped? That’s the question addressed by the contributors to the latest Reason Roundtable. But they have diametrically opposite views. Erin Dillon of Education Sector emphatically argues to fix it and Andrew Coulson of the Cato institute equally emphatically to scrap it.
Dillon believes that those who maintain that NCLB is useless if it does not give parents an exit option to take their kids to whichever school they want are naïve. They end up wasting precious resources on dead-end political battles, leaving in the lurch parents whose kids are stuck in failing schools. They are making the perfect the enemy of the good. Coulson believes that the NCLB is a useless distraction that hasn’t – and can’t – do anything to reform public schools while violating our constitution. He thinks the only way to help parents is to get rid of the law and push school choice initiatives at the local and state levels now.

Check out their discussion and post your own thoughts below:

http://www.reason.org/roundtable/nochildleftbehind.shtml

A debate on municipal recycling pros and cons (and an interesting case of Smith vs. Smith) from a recent article in the Orlando Weekly by Deanna Sheffield raises an interesting point (or three):

After decades of warning about greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, and stressing the importance of the three R’s – reducing, reusing and recycling – the EPA is far less interested in the economics of recycling than the perceived effect it will have on the environment.

“Recycling is still needed,” the EPA’s [Roxanne] Smith says. “Waste reduction practices and recycling reduce the demand for resources, specifically raw material and energy, conserving resources and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Similarly, resources are saved and greenhouse gas emissions avoided when recycled materials are used in place of virgin materials.”

Smith says it takes almost twice the process energy to manufacture newspaper from new fiber as opposed to recycled materials (though, as Wiseman notes, recycling newsprint creates more pollution than using virgin pulp). She also emphasizes that the benefit of recycling is clearly reflected in the commodity value of recycled materials.

“For example, paper is in such high demand overseas that it has become the single largest volume commodity exported through Los Angeles ports,” Smith says. “Currently, the supply of recycled paper cannot keep pace with the demand from both domestic and foreign paper mills, driving commodity prices to near-record highs.”

But she acknowledges that recycling programs aren’t going to win any awards from an economic feasibility standpoint.

“Recycling costs money, but so does waste disposal,” Smith says, noting that communities should be able to assess how each option will play out “through a full appraisal of the environmental and economic benefits and costs of recycling, as compared to the one-way consumption of resources from disposing of used products and packaging in landfills and incinerators.”

Dumping garbage into a landfill is not only cheaper, but often it just makes more sense when all the factors are taken into consideration, says Smith-Heisters of the Reason Foundation.

“When and where recycling makes sense, you’ll often find collection centers open voluntarily,” she says. “For local government leaders and people interested in boosting recycling and waste diversion rates, curbside recycling is probably the last option they should consider.”

If China really wants waste paper from Los Angeles that badly, maybe everyone in Hollywood should consider a change of careers!

Or, maybe there's another explanation. The major market in recycling/reuse out of California ports isn't waste paper, it is shipping containers. It is economical to send waste paper, obsolete electronics, and other recyclable materials overseas because most of the containers coming into Long Beach, LA and Oakland would be heading back empty otherwise. It also helps that the materials head for recycling centers where daily wages tend to be less than U.S. hourly wages and occupational safety and environmental standards are all significantly lower--but hitch-hiking the across the ocean in empty cargo containers is key.

With this added context, the U.S. export of recyclable materials only bolsters Sheffield's conclusion, that "Curbside recycling doesn’t pay for itself on a county, state or national level. It is inefficient, and its very existence is predicated on cheap energy." Supporters of recycling subsidies, like Roxanne Smith of the Environmental Protection Agency, often do so on the premise that these subsidies are needed to balance against environmental subsidies, such as free greenhouse gas emissions in the energy-intensive virgin paper pulping industry. When greenhouse gas emissions are priced, as they most likely will be in the near future, it will be interesting to revisit the balance sheet for recycling subsidies. Still, that ignores another ugly imbalance in the world of recycling subsidies. The expressed purpose of these subsides is to act as a sort of "great equalizer" between materials like corrugated cardboard and aluminum, for which market demand in many cases actually exists, and materials that we as taxpayers have to pay to get rid of--at every step of the way--until we ultimately buy them back. That's a terrible price to pay for materials that likely aren't just economic losers, but environmental losers, too.

Full article here.

Despite a lack of general sympathy, the NFL is attempting to apply pressure at the state level to force cable companies to carry the NFL Network on its larger tier of “expanded basic” channels.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones addressed the Texas House of Representatives’ Regulated Industries Committee in Austin yesterday, and although they said they were not seeking legislation or aribtration that would require cable companies to carry NFL Network on expanded basic, that’s more or less exactly what they wanted.

In its Texas markets, Comcast makes the NFL Network part of an add-on package of sports channels for $7.95 a month. Time Warner Cable has not come to terms with the NFL for carriage. DirecTV, Dish Network and AT&T all carry the network as part of an expanded basic-like line-up.

The NFL Network aired the first of eight scheduled games Thanksgiving night. They will continue through the end of the season. Despite NFL Network's marquee match-up between the Green Bay Packers and the Dallas Cowboys Nov. 29, league attempts to sway the Federal Communications Commission to press the cable industry generated little interest. Even several media outlets, including USA Today, never champions of the cable industry, thought the NFL was overreaching.

And it is. Government should not be arbitrating business decisions at all. In fact, the NFL should be careful about what it wishes for.

“As America’s team, the Dallas Cowboys have millions of fans outside the home market who are being kept in the dark by Big Cable,” said Jones.

“This is about fans and consumers having access to the programming they want,” Goodell asserted.

Oh, really?

If, as Goodell and Jones protest, cable companies are doing fans a disservice by making out-of-market games inaccessible, why allow Monday Night Football to move to ESPN? Why extend DirecTV’s exclusivity on the “NFL Sunday Ticket” package? Why not allow “Big Cable,” with its 60 percent market share, to offer the season game package, too. Why acquiesce to CBS and Fox’s demands that they rotate “doubleheader” Sundays, a deal that essentially guarantees each network, on alternating weekends, the higher-rated 4:15 p.m. kickoff slot free of a competing telecast? Better still, why not open all out-of-market games to a la carte pay-per-view?

The NFL clearly has the power to do so, but it will mean less revenue from the networks, who are willing to pay handsomely for exclusivity.

So what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If the cable companies feel the NFL Network rates placement on a special tier, it’s their right to make the call, Packers-Cowboys showdown not withstanding. By the way, this Thursday, the NFL Network serves up Denver and Houston in a battle of 6-7 teams. That’s followed Saturday night by an utter meaningless game between Cincinnati (5-8) and San Francisco (3-10).

Must-see TV!

There have always been those who are magnanimous enough never to say, “I told you so.”

Unfortunately, I’m not one of them. iProvo, the municipally-owned wholesale fiber optic system, has lost $214,000 over the first four months of its current fiscal year, which began July 1, Provo’s Deseret Morning News reported last week. That figure does not include the four payments of $100,000 made by the city to cover the shortfall iProvo had anticipated going into the current fiscal year. So, all told, four months into fiscal 2008, the operation is $614,000 in the red.

In a policy study Reason released 12 months ago, I predicted that the losses would continue, growing larger year to year. If they continue at this current rate for the rest of the fiscal year, iProvo’s 2008 cost will be approach $2 million--$850,000 on top of the $1.2 million already budgeted from city coffers. iProvo spent $1 million in 2006. All this for phone, cable and/or Internet services that Provo residents can get from either Comcast, Qwest, DirecTV or Dish Network, not to mention a bevy of local ISPs, at comparable prices.

iProvo reports that it has 10,236 customers, a goal that its business plan had required it to reach two years ago. Even then, 10,000 has not proven to be the break-even point it was expected to be. Lower revenue per subscriber plus an abysmal churn rate–140 service activations per month offset by 120 cancellations—frustrate any attempt to gain market traction.

Some of the proposed quick fixes are rather cynical. iProvo is seeking to add additional retailers. The idea is that they would flip their captive customers to the iProvo network, immediately boosting the muni’s numbers (at the expense of commercial ISPs now carrying the backbone traffic). And while Mayor Lewis Billings is loath to raise taxes to support iProvo, he and interim project director Kevin Garlick have said they might raise the rates city departments pay for iProvo services. Any resulting tax increase then, while not funding iProvo directly, will fund the ability of the city to do business with iProvo.

Billings says he has “31 key strategies” for iProvo. He needs only one: An exit strategy. This route might be the best way to salvage the city treasury, taxpayer wallets and perhaps his own administration.

The Deseret News said it best in an editorial (which cited the Reason study) the next day:

“By now it should be obvious that private businesses, faced with such losses, would consider abandoning ship. Provo is treading where only private business ought to go, and doing so badly. Telecommunications is a market demanding the nimble feet of private investors. Trends and technologies are constantly shifting.”

If there is any doubt that global warming alarmism is turning into self-parody, the study reported below courtesy JunkScience.com should put it to rest. If it had been released on April 1, most would have dismissed it as an April Fools joke. But, no, these guys, both Michigan State University profs are dead serious. But the methodological flaw in this study is this: It did not take into account the environmental damage of staying in a hellacious relationship. Surely, the heart-ache, indigestion and consequent increase in flatulence could not be good for global climate!

Divorce, Global Warming-Style

JunkScience.com, December 3, 3007

Will lawyers soon be working out green divorces? They may need to since divorce causes global warming, according to a new study published Dec. 3 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Michigan State University researchers Eunice Yu and Jianguo Liu report that divorce results in more households that use more water, energy and land resources and that generate more solid and liquid waste, including more greenhouse gases. The study was edited by Paul "Population Bomb" Ehrlich who, in 1967, predicted that the world was running out of food and that hundreds of millions would die of starvation as a result in the 1970s and 1980s.

Remarriage helps reduce environmental damage. "The results suggest that mitigating the impacts of resource-inefficient lifestyles such as divorce helps to achieve global environmental sustainability," the study concludes.

"The personal life is over," is what a Bolshevik apparatchik told Boris Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago. Soon we'll all be living for the Left's twisted idea of what's good for Comrade Earth -- that is, until someone comes up with a no-carbon divorce.