Coyote Blog

I may just be showing how ignorant I am on the subject, but my sense has always been that state nullification of federal laws is a tool not much tried or used since the first half of the 19th century.  While a number of our Founders, particularly Jefferson, saw state nullification (not the Supreme Court) as the key check on arbitrary or unconstitutional Federal legislation, the whole subject sort of gained a taint, along with states rights, by its association with the South's defense of slavery.

Anyway, state opposition to the Real ID law has been an pretty interesting and frankly, for this libertarian, exciting re-invigoration of this potential check on Federal power.  We have also seen efforts in states like California and Colorado to effectively nullify certain Federal drug laws.  Now Arizona, among other states, is seeking to nullify bits of the proposed Federal health care legislation:

Right on the heels of a successful state-by-state nullification of the 2005 Real ID act, the State of Arizona is out in the forefront of a growing resistance to proposed federal health care legislation.

This past Monday, the Arizona State Senate voted 18-11 to concur with the House and approve the Health Care Freedom Act (HCR2014).  This will put a proposal on the 2010 ballot which would constitutionally override any law, rule or regulation that requires individuals or employers to participate in any particular health care system.

HCR2014, if approved by voters next year, also would prohibit any fine or penalty on anyone or any company for deciding to purchase health care directly. Doctors and health care providers would remain free to accept those funds and provide those services.

Finally, it would overrule anything that prohibits the sale of private health insurance in Arizona.

Five other states "” Indiana, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Dakota and Wyoming "” are considering similar initiatives for their 2010 ballots.

I have zero idea if this is legal or possible, but I am all for trying.   And I say this knowing that as an employer, the legal mess it may create for me could be awful.  I could easily see a situation where it is required under Federal law that we enroll employees but illegal to do so under state law.  I can easily see a situation developing similar to what medical marijuana growers face in California, pulled back and forth between state and federal law.

from a reader:

The White House is secretly planning to follow "Cash For Clunkers" with a new scam called "Moolah For Mainframes" that will reward CIOs for replacing mainframes with smartphones and turning data centers into wetlands. The top-secret plans also say the Administration will launch a government-run IT company in 2010 "to keep those greedy private IT companies honest."

Since the White House has already made incursions into banking, the car industry, insurance, mortgages, and healthcare, the Administration sources said that a number of top executives in the IT industry "have become kinda jealous and angry" about the government's lack of direct ownership in the tech business.

Using air quotes liberally, another White House source said, "The President is on "friendly terms" with many "techie CEOs" and he says they feel there's been a "breach of etiquette" with all those other industries getting "stimulus" while the IT industry has had to "battle it out" in the marketplace with only customer revenue to "fall back" on."

For years, I have suspected that a lot of increased per pupil spending in public schools has gone to increasing numbers of administrators rather than teachers or facilities.  I just have to compare the administration numbers at my kids private school and those at the local public school and the contrast is just amazing.

Mark Perry demonstrates a similar effect in state-run college education:

This decade has been good for associate vice chancellors at UNC-Chapel Hill. Their numbers have nearly doubled, from 10 to 19, and the money paid to them has more than tripled, to a total of nearly $4 million a year. The university now admits that some of these people were in jobs that were not vital. They represent the rapid management growth in the 16-campus UNC system that has added tens of millions of dollars to annual payrolls.

Now, with a tough economy and sinking tax revenues, UNC officials and state lawmakers say these jobs need cutting first.

Systemwide over the past five years, the administrative ranks have grown by 28%, from 1,269 administrative jobs to 1,623 last year, UNC-system data show. That's faster than the growth of faculty and other teaching positions -- 24% -- and faster than student enrollment at 14%. The number of people with provost or chancellor in their titles alone has increased by 34% the past five years, from 312 in 2004 to 418 last year. The cost was $61.1 million, up $25 million from five years before.

Perry also show similar numbers in his own university in Michigan.

Kudos to the UNC system for at least considering cuts in these bloated administrator positions.  You never see public grade schools systems ever suggest such cuts - when forced to economize, they always suggest cutting something inflammatory like textbooks for high school or crayons for kindergarteners.  One difference is that UNC faces competition from a myriad of other public and private colleges, while most local grade school districts do not.

I would still like to find similar staffing numbers for our local public school district, breaking out teachers from principals, assistant principals, and administrators, but they seem loath to share such detail.

Via John Stossel:

On that note, economist Justin Ross points out on his blog how, for 44 cents, you could mail a letter via USPS - or buy a kiwi fruit that had to be grown and watered in New Zealand, picked, carefully packaged, and shipped across the world to a store near you.

Show him this chart, via Carpe Diem

From Henry Payne:

"In apparent violation of the new cash-for-clunkers law, the Department of Transportation [DOT] is more than 10 days late in paying rebates of at least hundreds of thousands of dollars on dealer claims," reports Automotive News....

The clunkers law signed by President Obama requires that dealers be reimbursed by the government within ten days for the $3,500 to $4,500 credits they've paid to customers. The DOT says it's working through computer problems.

"Very few dealers are getting very little money," said Bob Israel, president of the Louisiana Automobile Dealers Association. "It's not working smoothly at all."

David Wilson, a Toyota dealer in Orange County, Calif., has been paid for only three of 92 claims he submitted before Aug. 2, leaving him in the lurch for $374,000.

North Carolina's Brad Wood has12 unpaid claims since Aug. 1. He's received just $26,000 of the $319,000 in rebates he is owed. "I've never experienced anxiety like this in business before," he says. "If I don't get paid, I will have been working almost free for several months."...

Many deals are also are getting rejections for procedural minutiae that they can't straighten out because the 200 employees DOT has allocated program aren't enough. Employees are inaccessible by phone or e-mail, NADA's Wood says. The problem? Unlike the IRS, for example, which doesn't audit every tax form, all clunkers applications must be reviewed. That's 315,000 forms so far (for a staff of 200). Washington is scrambling to boost the number of employees to 1,000, but that will cost more money in a program already tight for cash.

Read the whole thing.  He goes on to describe the way in which the Feds are setting up dealers as the fall guy for the Fed's failures.

Update: From Carpe Diem, on health care in Britain

1. TELEGRAPH -- A quarter of a million people are waiting more than 18 weeks for treatment on the NHS, new figures show. The figures, published by the Lib Dems, show that 236,316 people are currently waiting more than 18 weeks for a range of treatments including oral surgery, rheumatology and geriatric medicine. This means that nearly 10% of patients are not being treated within the government's waiting list target.

2. TELEGRAPH -- Civitas, the think tank, blames the monolithic nature of the National Health Service for "putting the patient last". It argues that the "customer" of the NHS business model introduced by Tony Blair and continued by Gordon Brown is the health secretary rather than the patient.

By the way, if you are intrested in free markets and economics, you really should be reading Carpe Diem. I could link almost every one of Mark Perry's posts if I had the time.

Christopher R. Knittel of UC Davis has  a paper (pdf)  looking at likely CO2 reductions from cash-for-clunkers under a variety of assumptions.  The $416 figure per ton of CO2 avoided may actually be low, as it does not include the well-documented rebound effect of people with higher MPG cars driving more miles**.  Also, he admittedly assumes that cars being turned in will have average future driving miles for a car of similar age, though there is anecdotal evidence that in fact the cars being turned in are driven less than average.   Under these assumptions, the cost may be as high as $600-$1000 per ton.

The analysis looks pretty thoughtful, with the proviso (which the author is the first to make) that data on the program and cars bought/turned-in is still sketchy.  The interesting part was that there were no reasonable assumptions that even got the price within an order of magnitude of the $28 per ton clearing price the CBO estimates under cap-and-trade.

As a CO2 reduction program, this is the equivalent of the military's $700 toilet seats.  But of course we all know that no one ever really considered this an environmental or even stimulus bill.   This was always first and foremost 1) another Easter egg subsidy for the middle class and 2) a back door way to subsidize GM and Chrysler to try to make the Administration's investment in them look better.

** This is straight supply and demand -- reduce the cost of miles driven, and people will drive more miles.

...only those of us in Congress get to fly private jets

Congress plans to spend $550 million to buy eight jets, a substantial upgrade to the fleet used by federal officials at a time when lawmakers have criticized the use of corporate jets by companies receiving taxpayer funds.

The purchases will help accommodate growing travel demand by congressional officials. The planes augment a fleet of about two dozen passenger jets maintained by the Air Force for lawmakers, administration officials and military chiefs to fly on government trips in the U.S. and abroad.

The congressional shopping list goes beyond what the Air Force had initially requested as part of its annual appropriations. The Pentagon sought to buy one Gulfstream V and one business-class equivalent of a Boeing 737 to replace aging planes. The Defense Department also asked to buy two additional 737s that were being leased.

Lawmakers in the House last week added funds to buy those planes, and plus funds to buy an additional two 737s and two Gulfstream V planes. The purchases must still be approved by the Senate. The Air Force version of the Gulfstream V each costs $66 million, according to the Department of Defense, and the 737s cost about $70 million.

Even the richest of private companies blush at the prospect of buying Gulfstream V jets, the absolute top of the line in business jet luxury.  Except, of course, for the ridiculously oversized Boeing Business Jet, of which Congress appears to be buying 3 (the BBJ is the business version of the 737).  I am sure there is one, but I can't think of a single Fortune 500 company, and I have worked for and with a lot of them and flown on their jets, that has even one BBJ.

I can understand why certain officials need to fly private planes just for security, but the average Congressman from Wyoming?  Why won't commercial work.  Andy why, if they must have  a private plane, wouldn't a more reasonably sized Falcon 50 or Citation work just as well?

Update: Several people have found it ironic that the White House threw a fit over $300+ million for funding of new warplanes but hasn't blinked over $500+ million to ferry Congress around in luxury.

Update #2: An example of the BBJ.  This is how you fly, right?

Doesn't anyone speak for sanity any more?

Washington runs on political leverage, and at the current moment few people have more of it than Chuck Grassley. President Obama is desperate to have the Iowa Republican sign on to some version of ObamaCare to give cover to jittery Democrats. So in a remarkable noncoincidence, the Obama Administration decided to roll over last week on one of Mr. Grassley's major concerns: ethanol.

OK, we will give in to your ridiculous use of government power if you will accept our ridiculous use of government power.   Lots more on the complete waste of money and time that is corn-based ethanol here.

The US Forest Service is using a million dollars of its stimulus money to ... fix broken windows! How appropriate.  But these are not any broken windows -- these are energy inefficient windows for a visitor center that was closed two years ago and for which no budget exists now or in the future to reopen.   Beyond the nuttiness of building a multi-million dollar visitor center, then closing it only a few years after it was built, and then spending a million dollars on its abandoned carcass, no one was available to explain how energy efficient windows will save money in a building that shouldn't be using any energy any more.  Remember, for this spending to truly be stimulative, the money has to be spent more productively than it would have been in whatever private hands it was in before the government took it.

But even forget the stimulus question and just consider the issue of resource allocation.   I work on or near US Forest Service lands in many parts of the country, and know that their infrastructure is falling apart.  Congress loves to appropriate money for new facilities (like shiny new visitor centers), but never wants to appropriate money for capital maintenance and replacements of existing facilities.  So there are plenty of needs for an injection of $274 million in capital improvement money.  And I know that the USFS has had teams of people working for 6 months on their highest priorities.  And after all that work, they allocated  almost a half percent of their funds on upgrading windows in an abandoned building?

Postscript: I have vowed not to write about the US Forest Service because I interact with them so much and such interactions would not be improved by my dissing on them online [I am in the business of privitizing the mangement of public recreation and am constantly working to convince the USFS and other recreation providers to entrust more to private companies.  One thing many people don't know -- the USFS is by far the largest public recreation provider in the world, far larger than the National Park Service or the largest state park systems].  However, I feel on safe ground here, as I think virtually every frontline USFS employee I know would agree with this post and be equally angry.  In recreation at least, this is an organization that begs and pleads to get a few table scraps left over after the National Park Service is done eating, and it is crazy that they spend the few scraps they get this poorly.

I was going to respond to this goofy post on sustainability, but it would just be wasted time for this audience.  I think most of you can spot the errors and non sequiturs.  The heart of the problem is that the folks discussing "sustainability" have far more faith in the goodwill of people who deal with them through force (ie the government) than the folks who deal with them only via mutual consent (e.g. private enterprises).

I have never understood this attitude -- sure, the private guy on the other side of my transaction may be ridiculously wealthy, but he got that way only by being able to provide a service people are willing to buy of their own free will at a price that actually covers his costs**.  No one ever volunteers to consume government services unless they are 1) forced to do so (as in public schools or a government supported monopoly) or 2) the service is heavily subsidized (meaning it doesn't not cover its costs).

Which led me to my definition of sustainability, which I think is particularly important in this time of absurdly skyrocketing government spending.  Sustainability in my world means being able to supply a product or service that people are willing to buy of their own free will for the price I specify or that we negotiate, without any sort of coercion.  And that this price charged covers not only my costs, but covers the capital costs of continuing to improve my offering in order to fend off potential competitors.  And that this price further yields me a profit which pays me for my effort and gives me the incentive to keep providing this product or service.

In a free society, the ultimate measure of sustainability is profits.   Profits are what make the division of labor possible, which in turn is the only approach we have ever found to living above a subsistence level.  Without profits, activity beyond subsistence only occurs through coercion at the point of a gun.  If an activity does not yield us surplus, does not reward us for our time spent, then we only pursue it if our rulers use force to make us do so.

iPods and Dell computers and Big Macs are sustainable.  Government health care and cash for clunkers and the Post Office and Amtrak and about everything run by the State of California are not -- except when the government uses its power of force to grab the money it needs to close their budget gap or restrict individual choices or both.   The Post Office is a great example -- the government uses force to take money via taxes from citizens to cover its operating losses, which the Post Office incurs even though the US has used force to prevent anyone from competing with its first class mail business (particularly the most profitable segment, intracity mail).  And still, I might add, the Post Office is going bankrupt.

Look at Exxon vs. Amtrak.  One runs for profit, and in fact gets excoriated for its profits, while the other is run by the government and is lauded for its beneficence.  Which has proven the most sustainable?

And private enterprise has checks on their behavior that don't exist for monopoly government offerings.  When private businesses screw up, or become senescent, or even corrupt, and fail to cover their costs, they are supposed to go bankrupt.  For all the public handwringing about Enron being a bad example for capitalism, it was in fact a victory for capitalism  --  an unsound, possibly corrupt, business died.  Unsustainable business models, whether they be banks making nothing down mortgages or car companies producing bad cars, fail -- in fact, they are supposed to fail -- and resources are diverted to sustainable companies and businesses.  Except when .... you guessed it .... the government intervenes to prevent this from happening by bailing out bankers and manufacturers alike because those companies are owned by or employ people who helped get the president elected.

This renewal never happens in government.  We still have Amtrak, despite nearly 40 years of losses.  We still struggle with the post office and the DMV.  Heck, we still have state alcohol boards fingerprinting bar owners and running FBI checks on them to make sure we are not Al Capone, a problem that went away with the end of prohibition 3 generations ago.

Postscript: A part of the linked post is also a plea by two progressives for more protectionism.   Clearly, these two folks don't agree with the majority economic opinion that protectionism is bad for all nations.  But let's accept their premise for a moment.  Let's assume, as they do, that trade is a mercantilist zero sum and that protectionism would net boost our economy.   They are essentially advocating that the US, the wealthiest country on Earth, protect its workers to the detriment of poorer workers around the world.  Is this really the progressive position?

Postscript #2: A good question I have been using for people lately who show great confidence in the government's ability to solve problems through coercion:  "Imagine what powers you want to give the government.  Now, imagine your political opponents in the _____ Party wielding those powers.  Are you still happy?  If not, what are you counting on?  Point to the period in history where the same party held the presidency for 30 or forty years straight."  This question works well because almost everyone who favors giving coercive power to the government imagines only themselves or their allies wielding this power.

** Footnote: OK, the guy in private enterprise may also have gotten rich from rent-seeking and government favoritism,  but is that a failure of free enterprise or government?    I would normally have said this was a rhetorical question -- clearly, to me at least, rent seeking is the result of a system that gives government employees power over individual decisions.  In a country of strong personal liberties and limited government,  rent-seeking is much much harder.  But my liberal mother-in-law is totally convinced that rent-seeking is not the fault either of the structure of the government or the individual occupants of government but totally the fault of private businesses, and that only more regulation will stop it.

Several people have emailed me this: Apparently the White House web site is asking that you report anyone writing things on health care that don't match the Administration position so the White House can "keep track".

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can't keep track of all of them here at the White House, we're asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Wow, "disinformation."  You wonder why people ever listen to those counter-revolutionaries and aren't satisfied with just reading Pravda.

Well, we at the global headquarters of CoyoteBlog Enterprises are certainly happy to help.  I sent them this email today:

Thanks for the opportunity to report disinformation where people write things that don't match what the President is saying on health care.  Please check out this document I found on the web -- a number of parts bear very little relationship, and in fact outright contradict, what the President is promising about health care reform.

The link is to a copy of the House health care reform bill.  If you are so inclined, you might wish to offer similar help.

Postscript: My son, who is a big fan of dystopic novels like George Orwell's "1984" might ask if he would get extra credit for turning in a family member.

Update #1: The White House site in question is really ridiculous.  It responds to critiques of what is actually in the bill with statements like "the President has consistently said that if you like your insurance plan, your doctor, or both, you will be able to keep them."  Well duh, of course he has.  But this President, even more than the average President, will say just about anything.

At this point, since the President is purposely uninvolved in the crafting of the legislation and has admitted at times that he doesn't even know the details of what is in it, talking about his promises or preferences is irrelevant.   In fact, nobody is talking about the President's promises and intentions any more, with actual legislation on the table.   They are talking about what is actually in the written bills in the House and Senate.

So the question is, what is in the actual legislation, and does it match Obama's promises, and the current answer is clearly "no."  And will the President veto a health care bill that doesn't follow through on his promises?  Don't make me laugh.  He is going to sign any bill with "health care" in the title no matter what it says -- his advisers have already made that clear by saying that the entire Presidency is riding on having some kind of bill pass that does something with health care.

By the way, in this we can see the White House strategy for passing such controversial bills.  Their hope is to jump directly from the President's "everyone is a winner and there is no cost" rhetoric directly to signed legislation.  They want people focused on his promises, which are enticing, and not the reality of the actual language of the bills, which is ugly and in many ways bear no relationship to the President's rhetoric.  This worked for the stimulus and almost worked for Waxman-Markey and was tried again for health care.

Added a link on the right for phone numbers and emails of all Congress members.

John Stossel has a post on Dan Rather's really bad idea to have the government restructure and, presumably, fund the media.

A press that is financially dependent on the government cannot be free. Even if it had formal protections against micromanaging by elected officials, socialized journalism would inevitably be compromised journalism. It would be no more independent than a subsidized farmer or a defense contractor.

Perhaps an even better example are state governments.  There are explicit protections - not just legal, but Constitutional - of state's authority vs. those of the Federal government.  Theoretically, it should be impossible for the Federal government to impose, say, seatbelt laws or restrictions on drinking age, as those are clearly in the purview of states.

But enter Federal highway and education money.  Time and again, states are threatened by the Federal government that it will withold money from a state -- money collected from taxpayers in that state -- unless the state passes legislation of its choosing.  If the Feds can use funding to push around California and Texas, what hope does the LA Times or the Houston Post have of avoiding such control, if their survival becomes dependent on federal funds.

I have been trying to find a word to describe the legislative style we have seen prominently over the last 9 months (though it was used long before this administration -- the Patriot Act comes to mind).   Unable to think of any other name, an in homage to "murder-death-kill" in "Demolition Man,"  I am going to call it Crisis-Emergency-Rush.

TARP was a Crisis-Emergency-Rush.  As was the Stimulus bill, Waxman-Markey, and now Health Care.  (The last two are particularly hilarious when one needs to evaluate the need to rush.   Waxman-Markey is implemented over decades, and the health care bills as currently written don't really begin to take effect until 2013).

So here is my prediction for the next Crisis-Emergency-Rush:  Raising taxes.  Obama already has his boys out sending trial balloons about new taxes, even beyond those required in Waxman-Markey and to fund the health care bill.  Having spent over a trillion dollars on useless spending to support favored political constituencies, Obama will now declare a fiscal crisis that can only be solved by increased taxes on his non-favored constituencies.

Dan Rather says:

"A democracy and free people cannot thrive without a fiercely independent press"

How does he want to achieve this independent press?  He wants the Obama Administration to appoint a czar or something.  Because we all know how independent GM's decision making has been since Obama dived in there.  And don't forget the fiercely independent EPA, which suppresses any internal dissent to Obama's positions.  Or the fiercely independent inspector generals who get fired when they look into Obama's friends.  And don't forget the fiercely independent John Woo, who was willing to write that just about anything the last Administration wanted to do was legal.

Any person with a room temperature IQ can figure out that the Obama "jobs saved" metric is complete BS, a measure that is totally unmeasurable, and therefore can be set to any value the Administration wishes.

But this is, if anything, even crazier:

How much are politicians straining to convince people that the government is stimulating the economy? In Oregon, where lawmakers are spending $176 million to supplement the federal stimulus, Democrats are taking credit for a remarkable feat: creating 3,236 new jobs in the program's first three months.

But those jobs lasted on average only 35 hours, or about one work week. After that, those workers were effectively back unemployed, according to an Associated Press analysis of state spending and hiring data. By the state's accounting, a job is a job, whether it lasts three hours, three days, three months, or a lifetime.

"Sometimes some work for an individual is better than no work," said Oregon's Senate president, Peter Courtney.

With the economy in tatters and unemployment rising, Oregon's inventive math underscores the urgency for politicians across the country to show that spending programs designed to stimulate the economy are working "” even if that means stretching the facts.

At the federal level, President Barack Obama has said the federal stimulus has created 150,000 jobs, a number based on a misused formula and which is so murky it can't be verified.

On a full-time FTE basis, the report figures Oregon has "created"  215 full-time jobs.  They don't even attempt to do the math on how many jobs were destroyed when $176 million was taken from other productive uses.  But does anyone else syspect that the private hands the $176 million was formerly in probably would employ more than 215 people for that chunk of change?

I had trouble believing this chart (ht Maggies Farm) until I looked at the HHS data here and saw it was dead on.  On the chart below, the width of the band at the left is percentage of the US population, and to the right is percentage of the US welfare roles.

The second biggest band, in green, I believe is New York.  Its incredible that California's financial problems can be in the news for months and I have never seen a whiff of this in the media.

Local swimmers have gotten a court order forcing the City of San Diego to chase away the seals from the Scripps children's pool in La Jolla.  But it is not my intention to blog on that specifically, but on this bit:

The city said it would blast recordings of barking dogs to scare away the pesky pinnipeds at the cost of $688,000 a year. San Diego cannot use force because the seals are a federally protected marine species.

Please, oh please can I get paid $688,000 a year to play loud recordings on the beach?  I have not even cracked a spreadsheet on this, but I am betting I can turn a profit on that.

Those of you who may be encouraged by the reports of disagreements and problems among Democrats in reachi9ng consensus on a health care takeover, don't be too encouraged.    This appears to be exactly like the run up to Waxman-Markey.  If this is the case, these cries by certain Democrats of problems in the bill are really thinly disguised pleas for bribes.

Recalcitrant Democrats  in Congress know that Obama will be happy to spend tens of billions in taxpayer money to buy off the votes he needs to pass these bills.  This is how they got over the hump in the House with Waxman-Markey, and you can expect the same thing to happen again, and happen fast, on health care.  In fact, I expect the bribes to be higher than the $3.5 billion per vote clearing price on Waxman-Markey.  Obama knows that only steamroller tactics will pass a bill -- if he pauses even for a second to let opponents have time to take their case to the public (or even to finish reading the bill) he will likely lose.  Sunlight is his worst enemy right now, and he will gladly spend our money for porkbarrel projects in key districts to avoid it.

Normally, if I were to contemplate resorting to bribery to change someone's decision, I would have to face two hurdles.  First, of course, I would face legal consequences because in many contexts., bribery is illegal.  Second, I would have to consider the cost -- is the price being demanded worth it.  After all, it makes little sense to spend a million dollars to bribe someone to make a decision worth a hundred thousand dollars to me.

But, unfortunately, neither of these problems exist when Congressional leadership seeks to bribe recalcitrant lawmakers to vote their way.  Bribery in this context is not illegal, its just "horsetrading."   And the cost is meaningless, because folks like Nancy Pelosi do not bear the cost of the bribe, taxpayers do.

It is totally clear to me that Obama and Pelosi will spend any amount of money to pass their key legislative initiatives.  In the case of Waxman-Markey, the marginal price per vote turned out to be about $3.5 billion.  But they didn't even blink at paying this.  That is why I fear that some horrible form of health care "reform" may actually pass.  If it does, the marginal cost per vote may be higher, but I don't think our leaders care.

Waaaay back, before the stimulus was even passed, I did an analysis of the proposed spending in 2009-2010 and said that very little of it was for the infrastructure type projects that were being promised.  I concluded:

The reason so much of this infrastructure bill can be spent in the next two years is that there is no infrastructure in it, at least in the first two years!  42% of the deficit impact in 2009/2010 is tax cuts, another 44% is in transfer payments to individuals and state governments.  1% is defense.  At least 5% seems to be just pumping up a number of budgets with no infrastructure impact (such as at Homeland Security).  And at most 6% is infrastructure and green energy.  I say at most because it is unclear if this stuff is really incremental, and much of this budget may be for planners and government departments rather than actual facilities on the ground.

So don't call this an infrastructure bill.  This is a tax cut and welfare bill, at least in 2010 and 2011.

Via the Atlantic (hat tip to TJIC) we get a GAO report that comes to the same conclusions (they leave out the tax cut part and look at only the spending side):

But most federal stimulus funds aren't necessarily being spent to create $250K jobs out of thin air -- they're being spent to plug in the ongoing decay in state budgets. That was the conclusion of the GAO report early this month. Here's a graph they provided breaking down stimulus spending by program:

Of the $29 billion spent this year, 90 percent has gone to assist Medicaid and to stabilize tottering state budgets, according to the report. That's not just job creation -- that's emergency rescue, a fiscal crutch propping up our humpback deficit-ridden states. So what exactly is the logic in kicking the crutch away? If you see an old man with a cane who's barely managing to place one foot in front of the other, the logical commentary seems to me to be "Thank God for that crutch," not "Well obviously that crutch isn't doing much for him, he probably won't mind if I borrow it for a while."

But we're talking about job creation, so let's take a look at shovel-ready, highway spending, which the GAO puts at 6 percent of the spent stimulus. I suppose this would be a good place to knock the administration for not spending fast enough to create construction jobs, but Conor Clarke notes here (with a chart, of course), highway spending is actually ahead of schedule is all 16 states the GAO studied for the report.

Only $29 billion spent so far?  Can we please just stop it now before the other $700 billion or so get spent?  Why are we planning spending in 2015 to prop up the 2009 economy?

The other day, there was an intriguing story in the USA Today that a disproportionate share of stimulus money is flowing to counties that voted for Obama.  In fact, counties that voted Obama are getting twice as much per capita so far as counties that did not.  Matt Yglesias writes:

The insinuation of the piece is that the stimulus bill's funding streams are being artfully manipulated or something to disproportionately direct resources toward Obama-loving constituencies....[But] the secret to the riddle seems to be that areas that benefit from federal spending formulae tend to support the Democrats. Not as a result of short-term fluctuations in voting patterns or federal spending levels, but as a structural element of American politics.

Kevin Drum misses Matt's point, I think, when he responds:

Actually, that's not quite right.  It's weirder than that.  I just got around to reading the piece, and aside from the factual statement in the lead, it doesn't insinuate that the money is being unfairly distributed.  In fact, every single paragraph after the lead quotes people saying that there's nothing dubious going on and the money is just being distributed by formula.  The piece doesn't quote a single person, not even Sarah Palin, suggesting that there's any monkey business going on here.

But this does not refute Matt's point as I understand it, that "tinkering" is not necessary because the formulas themselves have been worked over time to preferentially send money certain places.  I would use the analogy that there are well worn channels where the money preferentially flows.

I must disagree that a story that money tends to flow preferentially (on a ratio as high as 2:1) to Democratic districts should be spiked, as Kevin Drum advocates. I think there is a story in this, though certainly I agree with Kevin it is not the story the author set out to write (one of micro-manipulation by Administration employees).

My sense is that the causality involved would be impossible to discover. Does money flow preferentially to these districts because Democrats are better or more focused on bringing home the taxpayer largess to their districts? Or does our money preferentially flow to these districts based on, say, economic or demographic factors that line up well with Democratic constituencies. Or is it, more likely in my mind, a virtuous circle with both factors involved.

Either way, this is an interesting story and some interesting new data in our endless red state-blue state analyses.

GM is apparently emerging from bankruptcy.  It will have the same (though fewer) managers, employees, and assembly plants.  It will have the same product designers, marketers, strategists, and planners.  It will have roughly the same organization systems, the same culture, and the same history.   Though it was able to shed some plants and employees, it will have most of the same stifling work rules on the shop floor.  It did, however,  manage to shed a lot of interest payments to creditors who entrusted their money to GM in return for claims on GM assets, only to be given the shaft by the Obama administration,

The main difference in the new GM is that it will have an ownership group whose primary concerns are NOT the financial success of the company.  The UAW will be primarily concerned with keeping union members employed and happy and not shifting any manufacturing to lower-cost venues.  The US Government will be primarily concerned with making sure the UAW is happy and promoting a number of its own goals, like "sustainable" plants and smaller cars, irrespective of whether these goals make business sense.  It will be a company more concerned with whether plants have recycling programs and workers with American passports rather than cost or quality.  Both the UAW and the US government can pursue such non-business goals secure in the knowledge that financial success is virtually irrelevant, as the US taxpayer can be counted on to make up any shortfalls.

I predicted the climate bill would likely pass the House as Obama and Co.  would happily pull out the checkbook to spend taxpayer money to bribe Representatives to pass his legislative agenda.   I wrote:

I am again hearing rumblings that the climate bill may pass the House.  If so, it will be interesting to see what last minute bribes were added to make this happen.  The most recent bribe we know about is the commitment to pay farmers not to grow crops with the weak window dressing that this is somehow a carbon offset.

The Washington Times reports on one such payoff:

When House Democratic leaders were rounding up votes Friday for the massive climate-change bill, they paid special attention to their colleagues from Ohio who remained stubbornly undecided.

They finally secured the vote of one Ohioan, veteran Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Toledo, the old-fashioned way. They gave her what she wanted "“ a new federal power authority, similar to Washington state's Bonneville Power Administration, stocked with up to $3.5 billion in taxpayer money available for lending to renewable energy and economic development projects in Ohio and other Midwestern states.

This is part of that mysterious 310-page ammendment that was revealed just hours before the vote.