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Reason Foundation Study Produces Surprising Good News: State Highways Are Better Than They've Been in a While!
From today's
USA Today:
A new report on the condition of the USA's state highways finds that they are in the best shape they have been in nearly 20 years.
The annual study by the Reason Foundation, a Los Angeles-based, libertarian, non-profit think tank, credits road improvement progress man by states and decreased wear and tear as commuters and commercial truckers drove less during the recession.
"Lo and behold, we've actually been making slow but steady progress on most performance measures," says report author David Hartgen, professor emeritus of transportation studies at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. The study says states did a better job of maintaining and repairing roads and bridges in 2008, the most recent year for which complete data are available. "Human nature focuses on the pothole rather than the couple of miles of smooth pavement in front of and after the pothole," Hartgen says.
Some highlights from the study, which you can read here:
* Best overall and most cost-effective roads: 1) North Dakota 2) Montana 3) Kansas 4) New Mexico 5) Nebraska
* Worst overall and least cost-effective roads: 1) Rhode Island 2) Alaska 3) California 4) Hawaii 5) New York
* New Jersey spends more than $1.1 million per mile on the roads it controls. South Carolina spends just $34,000 per mile, yet ranks 6th in best overall roads.
* California spends $93,464 in administrative costs for each mile of road it controls, while Kentucky spends just $1,100 per mile on administrative costs.
* Most traffic congestion, urban Interstates: 1) California 2) Minnesota 3) Maryland 4) New Jersey 5) North Carolina
* Worst pavement condition, urban Interstates: 1) Hawaii 2) California 3) New Jersey 4) Vermont 5) Oklahoma
* Most deficient bridges: 1) Rhode Island 2) Massachusetts (over half of both states' bridges are deficient or functionally obsolete)
* Lowest fatality rate: Massachusetts
* Highest fatality rate: Montana
Find out how your state ranked here!
Can the U.S. Afford $70 Billion in Tax Relief in 2011?
What's popularly known as the "Bush tax cuts" expire at the end of this year. President Barack Obama wants to keep rates the same (or lower them even) for individuals making less than $200,000 and households pulling down $250,000. And he wants to end the reductions for the group that, using 2005 figures, accounts for the top 2.67 percent of American taxpayers. (Fun fact: the top 1 percent of households pay about 40 percent of income tax receipts.)
The big taxes that would go up include the death/estate tax (currently at 0 percent but slated to jump to 55 percent on inheritances beyond $1 million!) and the top two marginal tax rates, which would go up from 33 percent and 35 percent to 36 percent and 39.6 percent (which is what they were under Clinton).
The Congressional Budget Office says that extending the cuts for the tippy-top income earners will cost $700 billion in foregone revenue over the next decade. Let's call it $70 billion per year then. According to CBS News (I know, I know, not the greatest source), a majority of economists think that extending the cuts are a good idea because wealthy people, who have the most money to spend and invest, are particularly sensitve to tax increases. They are particularly good at finding shelters and new places to stash money in tax-advantaged ways. Incidentally, killing all the Bush tax cuts would, says the CBO, bring in $3.9 trillion over the next decade.
But even ignoring the idea that increases might stymie the crappy economy even more, can the feds afford to leave $70 billion on the table? For god's sake, the total 2010 budget is $3.6 trillion (and that's an estimate; if the past is prologue it will be higher than that.) As it stands, there's $164 billion of stimulus funds tagged for transportation projects that haven't been spent yet, so you could pay for two years plus of a tax-cut extension right there.
Which might explain why the Wash Post is reporting that
a growing cadre of Democrats - alarmed by evidence that the recovery is losing steam and fearful of wounding conservative Democrats in a tough election year - are advocating a plan that would permanently extend tax cuts benefiting the middle class while renewing breaks for the wealthy through 2011, senior Democratic aides said.
Indeed.
All the talk of tax cuts is nice, but it does tend to take people's attention off what really matters, which is spending. Lest we forget, federal revenue has been highly stable since World War II, coming in around 18 percent of GDP despite heroic attempts to increase or decrease that share.
Here's the bad news: Official estimates of spending relative to GDP for the years 2010-2015 average 23.7 percent. The highest percentage recorded since 1930? A mere (irony!) 20.9 percent, in 1944. And the same estimates of total federal revenue as a percentage of GDP during 2010-2015? A whopping 17.7 percent. By all means, let's have a debate over whether the government can afford to let taxpayers keep either $700 billion or $3.9 trillion of their own money over the next decade. But let's NOT pretend that the economy can withstand the government spending 28 percent more than it's taking in over the next six years. Or that looking for change in the back seats of the car is what's going to bring to us fiscal salvation or ruin.
FTC Suspects Chuck E. Cheese of Marketing to Children
The
eagle-eyed regulators at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have a
sneaking suspicion that a company offering disgusting pizza,
animatronic human-sized mice, and a ball pit may be trying to
appeal to children. Or rather, their marketing (the slogan was
"Chuck E. Cheese: Where a Kid Can Be a Kid!" last time I checked)
may inappropriately appeal to children.
A spokesman for the commission reassuringly told AdAge:
"We are not proposing any regulation."
But Chuck E. Cheese is one of 44 marketers who received an "order to file special report" three years ago. The chain, or rather its parents company CEC Entertainment, has now been subpoenaed so that the commission can check up on how that whole voluntary industry self-regulation thing is going. The FTC is just trying to be "supportive" of those self-regulation efforts, you see. Other companies caught in the net include Yum Brands, Wendy's, Sunkist, Red Bull, and Chiquita.
From layman's prespective it's not entirely clear how much self-regulation would satisfy the FTC in the case of the animatronic mouse, since the whole model of Chuck E. Cheese seems to be built on getting kids to whine and complain until their parents take them there—along with 10 of their closest friends—for an afternoon of plastic and cheese fueled mania.
Luckily, you can still bring your gun to Chuck E. Cheese. Or have a beer there. And play skee-ball! From that list, it sounds more like the chain should be accused of marketing to vulnerable Reason readers, actually.
Via Jim Morrell.
Reason Morning Links: Cocktail Copyrights, Another Round of Mideast Peace Talks, This Hurricane's Name Is Earl
- Hurricane Earl strengthens to Category 4, takes aim at North Carolina.
- Report: Economy drives sharp drop in illegal immigration.
- Netanyahu, Abbas begin Mideast peace talks.
- Latest target in the copyright wars: cocktails.
- Discovery Channel gunman killed by police after a four-hour standoff.
Become ACLU-Nevada Exec. Dir. & Fight For The Rights of Gun Owners, Elvis Impersonators
Do you have what it takes to be executive
director of the Nevada ACLU? It's based in Las Vegas and this
chapter is dedicated to defending the whole Bill of Rights (even
No. 2!):
Imagine working on legal observing with the organizers of Burning Man, a famous experimental art festival in the Black Rock Desert. Imagine advocating for an Elvis impersonator’s right to perform for tourists on the Strip. Imagine consulting with criminal justice reform groups, gun rights activists, and LGBT community advocates all in one day. Nevada is a patchwork quilt of diverse communities, histories, and ideologies, and the ACLU travels among them regularly, always guided by the constitutional principles at the core of our mission.
Hat tip to UNLV's and Wilson Quarterly's Stephen Bates, who writes, "It's an interesting ACLU chapter (pro-Second Amendment rights) in an interesting place (fairly libertarian state, but casinos don't cotton to the First Amendment)."
Two Reasons The Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles Sucks
1. Yesterday, I went to the Ohio BMV to get license plates for a car I'd recently bought. I wanted to pay for the tags and registration with a credit card but was told that the BMV didn't accept that form of payment because the credit card companies "charge a transaction fee" that the merchants have to pay and "that would eat into our fee." When I asked why they don't charge a convenience fee for those paying with credit cards, the clerk shrugged.
Such is the world of public-sector service provision, in which business practices that are universal (I've paid for cups of coffee with credit cards without hearing vendors bitch about merchant fees) are decades late in arriving. To its credit, the BMV did have an ATM machine right there. And they do take checks (but not check cards).
2. More seriously, here's a development covered by the ACLU in which the BMV has decided to get ahead of schedule in dinging folks born in Puerto Rico if they want a driver's license issued by the Buckeye State:
Earlier this year, Puerto Rico passed a law requiring that all birth certificates be reissued in order to combat identity theft. On September 30, 2010, all birth certificates issued prior to July 1, 2010 will become invalid.
However, the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles has preemptively said they will no longer accept Puerto Rican birth certificates effective immediately. This has left thousands of American citizens born in Puerto Rico without proper documentation to obtain a driver’s license or state-issued identification. Many of these citizens must wait weeks or months before the Puerto Rican government can issue them a new birth certificate. Reportedly, Ohio is the only state to preemptively reject these birth certificates.
A state-issued ID is vital for people to access important social services, employment, voting, and travel throughout the country. American citizens born in Puerto Rico will face increased obstacles in exercising these fundamental rights.
Hat tip: Recidivist commenter Citizen Nothing.
We Don't Need No Breast Cancer Awareness Bracelets in The Classroom...
In case you've forgotten just how shitty and
prison-like high school can be (and why school choice would, like,
totally rule!), here's a dispatch from the frontlines of
adolescence:
This week, Baltic High School, just north of [Sioux Falls, S.D.], became one of the latest across the USA to ban the rubber bracelet, which has a message some say is in poor taste: "I love boobies."The bracelets have caused controversy in schools in states including California, Colorado, Idaho, Florida and Wisconsin. Some districts allow students to wear them inside-out, and others ban them.
"When we had an assembly the first day of school, I basically told the students we are not insensitive to the cause," Baltic High Principal Jim Aisenbrey says. "I think everybody in the gym, including myself, has had a family member or relative or friend who has dealt with the issue. I do think there are more proper ways to bring this plight to the attention of people, and I don't think this is a proper way."
More here. It's a small annoyance, sure, and I don't doubt that all sorts of off-color comments emanated from the bracelets like a homing device. But really, can high schools work harder to just try to suck the life out of everyone and everything?
Then again, this is how it's been for
decades, if not centuries: oppressive, repressive, suppressive Mr.
Weatherbees and Miss Grundys trying to smother signs of life among
their students. And the students end up forming their personalities
against said repression. Where else is that dark sarcasm in the
classroom gonna come from?
Take it away, Pink Floyd.
New at Reason: Steve Chapman on the Pointless Prosecution of Roger Clemens
If it were a crime to venture onto Capitol Hill
to reveal yourself as a self-absorbed liar with an inability to
admit mistakes, writes Steve Chapman, there would be tumbleweeds
blowing through the vacant halls of Congress. Fortunately for
members of the legislative branch, that is not a crime. Unless your
name is Roger Clemens.
Repubs Like Outcome of Boxer-Fiorina Debate
A roomful of supporters of a California Republican candidate got their money’s worth from Carly Fiorina tonight as the former Hewlett-Packard CEO and Republican Senate nominee faced off for the first (and apparently only) time against Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer.
Starting with video confirmation that Fiorina is substantially taller than Boxer, the crowd of about 30 supporters of 28 District State Senate candidate John Stammreich, watching the debate on television at Stammreich’s Torrance headquarters, cheered Fiorina’s on-point though somewhat affectless performance.
This crowd was longer on social conservative than
libertarian passion. A group “YES” went up as Fiorina affirmed that
she would not support “amnesty,” and a fugue of “Right!” and
“That’s right!” followed Fiorina’s affirmation of her support for
Proposition 8, the state’s 2008 ban on same-sex marriage. Mentions
of illegal immigration prompted plenty of muttering.
On the other hand the room was silent on Fiorina’s admission that she would “overturn” the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision “if it came up” (i.e., if the Senate were in position to overturn a court ruling, which it is not – a point Fiorina seemed to grasp better than debate moderator Randy Shandobil). There was also no reaction to Fiorina’s professed support for the DREAM Act, which would provide financial aid to illegal immigrants who came in as children. (This time it was Carly who failed to note that this is a proposed California law, and she’s running for the U.S. Senate.)
Boxer was characteristically facile, but suffered several setbacks. She returned at least four times to her efforts on behalf of veterans and her “love” for the military, only to have that strategy unravel when the topic turned to Boxer's July “Don’t call me ma’am” contretemps with Brig. Gen. Michael Walsh.
Boxer’s other main thrust of the evening was a protectionist attack on Fiorina’s record at HP – including digs at Fiorina for having “30,000 jobs shipped overseas” during her HP tenure, and a vision of “Made In China” and “Made In India” stamped where “Made In America” should be.
Fiorina’s defense on this point was pretty straightforward: “In the 21st Century,” she said, “a job can go anywhere.” She also put off a video-voter question from a disgruntled former HP employee who asked if she would accept that a job is a “God-given right.” Pushing her advantage too far, Fiorina then chided Boxer for soiling the reputation of HP, “one of the jewels of California” – a tack as transparent as Otter’s defense.
The most interesting questions
of the night came from, respectively, a video voter (described with
wonderment by Shandobil as “not a Republican or a Democrat – an
Independent") who wanted to know what the next senator would do
about farm subsidies, and La Opinión’s Pilar Marrero, who
asked whether Boxer (widely seen as the more partisan firebrand to
DiFi’s get-along moderate) had ever differed with President Obama
on anything.
Boxer’s response to the subsidies question was preposterous: She bragged of having added a host of new specialty crops to the subsidized list. Her professed difference with Obama concerned an “exit strategy” for Afghanistan.
Boxer’s easy demeanor may have been working against her. All Fiorina had to do was get some good digs in, which she did by focusing on Boxer’s lengthy Senate record. Boxer’s decision to put protectionism front and center – repeating the “Made in U.S.A.” theme throughout and returning to offshoring of jobs in her closing comments – seems odd in an era when most grownups have stopped treating fluidity of employment and the fragility of a job as campaign issues and recognized them as facts of life.
There was little to nothing in either candidate to please fans of individual liberty, with Fiorina’s proud stance against reproductive choice and Boxer’s prouder stance in favor of a calcified, unionized form of jingoistic protectionism leaving little but nightmares for libertarians.
As for our host for the evening,
I appreciated Stammreich’s candor about the people he supports. “I
will admit,” he told the crowd, “[Fiorina] was not the person I was
voting for” in her primary race against Chuck Devore and Tom
“Demon
Sheep” Campbell. Before praising Los Angeles District Attorney
Steve Cooley as a “crime fighter,” Stammreich noted that Cooley is
“not a spiritual speaker. He’s not going to replace Tony Robbins or
Joel Osteen.” His characterization of Fiorina a “strong,
conservative, pro-life, pro-marriage candidate” seems about right
to me.
Stammreich is not supporting Proposition 19, though he does support medical marijuana and “taking a look at recreational use." His reason for not supporting it, however, seem to me troublesome in ways that go beyond pot coolness or uncoolness. He believes a pre-emptive move on pot legalization might endanger federal contracts with companies in California such as Raytheon (where he works as a supply-chain manager). Leave aside how this stacks up in terms of support for individual freedom and think about what it means for fiscal conservatism. If you’re not willing to risk some shriveling of the federal tit, how can we believe you’re serious about cutting government spending?
Still, best wishes to Stammreich, to his Democratic opponent Jenny Oropeza (who is battling an abdominal ailment), and of course, to Libertarian Party candidate David Ruskin.
Related coverage from the Merc, the Comical, and the L.A. Times.
Two States, One Cup
To
the many similarities between New Jersey and California -- the
basic shape, the endured disapprobation of an uncomprehending
country, the vibrant but little understood beach culture, the cowboy
way -- you can now add complete stupidity in managing public
sector pensions.
The Garden State has been using sleight of hand to avoid funding its largest public-worker pensions since the beginning of this century. The Bond Buyer gets the details from the prospectus for a new state bond issue:
The preliminary official statement distributed ahead of the note sale indicated that the state only made $106.3 million in contributions to its seven pension plans for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2009, much less than the $1.047 billion that was included in the fiscal 2009 appropriations act and just 4.8% of the total actuarially recommended contribution of $2.231 billion.
Fans or haters of Reason's coverage of the Golden State's pension peccadilloes will recognize the pattern seen most recently in the University of California's failure to fund its own swollen pension commitments. But New Jersey also, like California, traces its crisis back to a catastrophically large increase in pension payouts enshrined nearly a decade ago, followed by a long period of denial and unrealistic expectations:
Specifically, the SEC said the disclosure fraud began in November 2001 when the Legislature enacted a law that increased retirement benefits for employees and retirees enrolled in the Teachers' Pension and Annuity Fund and the Public Employees' Retirement System by 9.09%.
However, the state resorted to gimmicks to "fund" the enhanced benefits, rather than increase cost of the benefits to the state or employees. Specifically, it revalued TPAF and PERS' assets to reflect their full market value as of June 30, 1999, at the height of the bull market. As a result, the documents essentially masked a $2.4 billion decline in the market value of the pension assets between 1999 and 2001, the SEC said.
That is, the last time New Jersey actually paid this enormous bill was during the administration of Christine Todd Whitman. As Hoboken's favorite son found out, when the cultures of the bicoastal sister states overlap, the results are usually grim:
California Roundup: Plastic Bags and Government Golf Cart Drivers Are Up; Illegal Immigration, Bad Surfers Are Down
*
Bankrupt city to make sure every golf cart driver is a government
employee: The City of Los Angeles, after spending seven years
negotiating the golf cart concession for its seven!!!
(7!!!) public courses,
drops the private company and decides to get into the golf cart
business itself. "I would recommend that someone put a bullet in
their head before they try to get a contract with the city," jilted
Ready Golf President Michael Bernback
tells the L.A. Times' David Zahniser.
* California is objectively anti-turtle: State assembly throws out plastic bag ban AB1998.
* Survivors will envy the dead: First debate between Sen. Barbara Boxer (D) and Republican challenger Carly Fiorina happens tonight.
* Now who do we blame? Pew Hispanic Center reports illegal immigrant population is dropping sharply in California and the rest of the country. Full report [pdf].
* Public art and waveriding form: Cardiff-By-the Sea Botanical Society, noted earlier by Matt Welch, puts up a sculpture showing the "the joy, and awkwardness, of learning to surf," but locals focus on the awkwardness. Art vandals wage a campaign of détournement putting the "Cardiff Kook" in a tutu, a clown costume, and the mouth of a shark, to name a few. But do we hate the Kook's bad form or our own? "I'm sure I look like that," one of the pranksters tells the Wall Street Journal. "That's why everybody is so down on it. They like to think they don't look like that, but they do."
FCC Will Figure Out What To Do About the Internet Later
With the FCC’s September meeting just a few weeks
away—it’s scheduled for September 23rd—the agency has been under
enormous
pressure to make a call on how it will pursue its Net
neutrality agenda. On the left, the loudest members of the activist
class have urged the FCC to embark on a program of wholesale
regulatory reclassification, shifting broadband Internet from a
Title I information service to Title II telecommunications service.
The problem, though, is that just about everyone else, including
Democrats in Congress and some factions within the White House, has
been
pushing the agency to hold its regulatory horses.
But even given the widespread pushback, it’s tough to let down the activist base in an election year. So what’s FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski doing? Attempting to split the difference. Rather than rile up the base or pursue a path toward a potential “Regulatory World War III,” he’s clearing his throat and announcing his intention to punt until after the election. In a statement this afternoon, Genachowski announced that he would delay definitive action on two of the most controversial aspects of Net policy, managed services (essentially, web traffic prioritization), and the even bigger question of whether or not to extend neutrality rules to wireless services. But Genachowski isn’t simply delaying. He’s also “seeking further public comment,” which makes it tougher to oppose the move. Who wants to be against a robust discussion of the issues?
Read Genachowski’s complete statement here. Lots more on the FCC and the fight over Internet regulation here, here, and here.
New Hong Kong Minimum Wage Law Makes Everyone Unhappy
I've occasionally heard it
said that any law where all parties are dissatisfied in a good law.
But I'm skeptical. Consider Hong Kong's new minimum wage provision.
BBC News reports
that:
The agreed level—likely to raise the earnings of 11% of the working population—is unlikely to satisfy employers or workers.
The territory has never had a minimum wage before, but the BBC's basic reporting on the new rule (which is quite similar to the progression of the AFP wire story on the same subject) is a study in the contradictions of minimum wage laws in general.
The story suggests that the need for the law arose due to Hong Kong's "big wealth gap," which has "become wider in recent years due to a series of financial crises."
But at the very end of the piece, readers learn that the law will do nothing to address the most obvious gap between rich and poor in Hong Kong: It will not apply to "the tens of thousands of migrant workers from the Philippines and Indonesia who work here as domestic helpers."
Ironically, that exception means the Hong Kong minimum wage law is better for the poor in that territory than typical minimum wage rules like those in the U.S., precisely because it leaves workers willing to labor for very, very low pay—for their own reasons, good or bad—alone to negotiate their wages as they see fit. And that means would-be employers will likely dig deeper into this pocket of cheap labor rather than messing around with people to whom the minimum wage rules apply, minimizing the impact on the economy. But it would suck to be a Hong Kong-born, non-union construction worker once this law goes into effect, wouldn't it?
OK, How About "Jobs Saved But Uncreated"
Butting factoids on
unemployment today:
The outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas says planned layoffs as of the end of August were the lowest they have been since June 2000. Here's the company's report [pdf]. Here is Reuters' coverage:
The number of planned layoffs at U.S. firms fell 17 percent in August from the prior month and hit the lowest level in 10 years, a report on Wednesday showed.
Employers announced 34,768 planned job cuts last month, down from 41,676 in July, outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. said.
It was the first month-on-month decline since April, when planned job losses had hit a seven-year low, and the lowest level since June 2000.
Not sure what "planned layoffs" are? A Challenger spokesman says that 34,768 figure captures all layoffs that occured in August, plus layoffs that have been announced through the next few months, as gleaned from news stories and press releases.
Meanwhile, Automatic Data Processing's National Employment Report says these here United States shed 10,000 productive-sector jobs from July to August. ADP's report [pdf] says the numbers might look even worse when the non-productive sector gets counted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday:
Private sector employment decreased by 10,000 from July to August on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the latest ADP National Employment Report® released today. The estimated change of employment from June to July was revised down slightly, from the previously reported increase of 42,000 to an increase of 37,000.
The decline in private employment in August confirms a pause in the recovery already evident in other economic data. The deceleration in employment was evident in the major sectors and by size of business. This month’s decline in employment followed six monthly increases from February through July. Over those six months the average monthly gain in employment was 37,000 with no evidence of acceleration.
Unlike the estimate of total establishment employment to be released on Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), today’s figure does not include the effects of federal hiring — and now firing — for the 2010 Census. Hiring for the census peaked in May. For this reason, Friday’s figure for the change in nonfarm total employment reported by the BLS might be weaker than today’s estimate for nonfarm private employment in the ADP National Employment Report.
ADP's figures -- for nonfarm jobs -- are drawn from an anonymous subset of more than 340,000 U.S. businesses with more than 21 million U.S. employees working "in all private industrial sectors."
Don't know what conclusions we can draw for Average American. Maybe: If you're looking for a job you're more screwed than ever, but if you've already got a job your chances of keeping it look slightly better.
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