Coyote Blog

I had an employee in a truck towing a pontoon boat from a marina we operate in Alabama to a marina we operate in California.  Apparently, we have grossly violated the law because to haul our boat from our own facility in one state to our own facility in another requires that we register as an interstate motor carrier and put DOT numbers on all of our vehicles.  Just great.  Who wants to bet that this will be an enormous and expensive hassle?

Update: Credit where it is due:  The application online was totally arcane (and of course the help link and instructions links were broken) but the guy at the DOT help line was remarkably helpful and walked me through it.  It was pretty clear that a lot of folks who casually transport their private property across state lines gets swept up in this net, and they actually were prepared to be helpful.  I did have to laugh when the very first screen of the application process was to get my credit card number - I think this clarifies the reason for this licensing process.

My vote:  mandatory income tax withholding.  Taxpayers never see most of the money they pay the Feds.   They don't have the shock of seeing the amount of money going to the government in one big check.  Since most formulas lead to over-withholding, people are actually eager to file their tax returns to get refunded the money that was withheld in excess of liability (e.g. interest-free loan to government).  Employers, who live in fear of violating one of a hundred thousand different labor rules, are more than willing to withhold whatever the government asks - they certainly aren't going to stand in front of the tanks to protect their employees' money.

California is taking this law to the next logical level of abuse:  Increasing the interest-free loan that citizens must give the state.  If free credit markets won't lend you money at a rate you can afford, force your citizens to lend it for free:

Starting Sunday, cash-strapped California will dig deeper into the pocketbooks of wage earners "” holding back 10% more than it already does in state income taxes just as the biggest shopping season of the year kicks into gear.

Technically, it's not a tax increase, even though it may feel like one when your next paycheck arrives. As part of a bundle of budget patches adopted in the summer, the state is taking more money now in withholding, even though workers' annual tax bills won't change.

Think of it as a forced, interest-free loan: You'll be repaid any extra withholding in April. Those who would receive a refund anyway will receive a larger one, and those who owe taxes will owe less.

I am starting to feel a sort of anti-irredentism for California.

This is just so typical.  In response to demands for transparency, the Norwegian government starts publishing ... tons of private data about its citizens.  I wonder how much detail they put online about how the government spends the tax money?   Via maggies farm.

Ken Lewis gets his payoff for knuckling under to Paulson and Bernanke on the Merrill Lynch acquisition

Kenneth Lewis, outgoing chief executive of Bank of America Corp., will get no salary or bonus for 2009, according to people familiar with the matter, the biggest Wall Street name thus far to come under the thumb of the government's pay czar.In fact, Mr. Lewis will have to repay the North Carolina-based bank more than $1 million in salary he has already earned.

The move was demanded by Kenneth Feinberg, the U.S. Treasury Department's special master for compensation, and was agreed to by Mr. Lewis and the bank.

After forcing Lewis to deal fraudulently with his shareholders, they cut his pay to zero. Nice. Lewis will do fine, he has a nice fat retirement, but it is still a pretty scary development for those of us who still care about contracts and individual liberty.  Just ask yourself - what objective standard did Feinberg apply?  Can't come up with one, can you?

Forget all the BS political posturing about the consumer -- the fact is that in the vast majority of its actions, the government is anti-consumer.  How else can one explain Administration officials criticizing China for selling goods to the US below cost.  "We're sorry, consumers, that you have been burdened with product choices that have had their prices subsidized by the Chinese.   We're working hard to fix this and make sure prices go back up where they should be."

Licensing, trade law, anti-trust, even consumer products laws -- its all become protection of politically connected corporations against smaller and upstart rivals.  Just look at how Mattel, whose sloppy due diligence forced a number of toy recalls last year, became the big winner of the new "consumer" law these recalls spawned.

Google voice is one of the more exciting communication products I have seen in years.  I have a phone number for free, I can have that number ring multiple different numbers while retaining a single voice mail -- with a free transcription service.  Awesome.

So, of course, the FCC is probably going to kill it.  They will find some way to justify it on nominally consumer grounds, but they are really just doing AT&T a favor.  The argument is that Google voice blocks calls to certain high-access rural areas.  So what?  Heck, I use it mostly to receive calls but if I made calls, do I really want my phone bill to go up by four or five times just so I can call some phone numbers I am never going to call.

The WSJ on new EPA CO2 rules under the Clean Air Act:

Usually it takes an act of Congress to change an act of Congress, but Team Obama isn't about to let democratic"”or even Democratic"”consent interfere with its carbon extortion racket. To avoid the political firestorm of regulating the neighborhood coffee shop, the EPA is justifying its invented rule on the basis of what it calls the "absurd results" doctrine. That's not a bad moniker for this whole exercise.

The EPA admits that it is "departing from the literal application of statutory provisions." But it says the courts will accept its revision because literal application will produce results that are "so illogical or contrary to sensible policy as to be beyond anything that Congress could reasonably have intended."

Well, well. Shouldn't the same "absurd results" theory pertain to shoehorning carbon into rules that were written in the 1970s and whose primary drafter"”Michigan Democrat John Dingell"”says were never intended to apply?

It is interesting to see the Obama administration using the exact same logic to limit the reach of the Clean Air Act vis a vis Co2 emissions as the Bush Administration did to say the Clean Air Act should have not applicability to CO2 emissions.

Yet one not-so-minor legal problem is that the Clean Air Act's statutory language states unequivocally that the EPA must regulate any "major source" that emits more than 250 tons of a pollutant annually, not 25,000. The EPA's Ms. Jackson made up the higher number out of whole cloth because the lower legal threshold"”which was intended to cover traditional pollutants, not ubiquitous carbon"”would sweep up farms, restaurants, hospitals, schools, churches and other businesses. Sources that would be required to install pricey "best available control technology" would increase to 41,000 per year, up from 300 today, while those subject to the EPA's construction permitting would jump to 6.1 million from 14,000.

So the Bush Administration argues that the Clean Air Act applies to 0% of CO2 sources and they are accused of breaking the law.  But the Obama Administration argues the Clean Air Act applies to 0.2% - 0.7% of sources and this is somehow a vastly superior legal argument?  The courts rejected 0.0% as non-compliant but they will accept 0.2%?

A question has been going around on legal blogs -- "Does a Federal Mandate Requiring the Purchase of Health Insurance Exceed Congress' Powers Under the Commerce Clause?"

My answer is:  Nowadays (not in the original intent) is there anything the Feds can do that exceeds current interpretations of the commerce clause?  In Raich, the Supreme Court decided that a product (marijuana) that was grown in state for personal consumption, like tomatoes in your own garden, and was used legally under state law, can still be regulated under the commerce clause.    As Clarence Thomas wrote in dissent:

Diane Monson and Angel Raich use marijuana that has never been bought or sold, that has never crossed state lines, and that has had no demonstrable effect on the national market for marijuana. If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers

No kidding.

Unfortunately the theory that this personal use in California could somehow affect marijuana pricing in other states (by growing their own, they reduced demand for out of state weed which might affect prices in Arizona -- again similar to an argument that growing your own tomatoes might affect prices in another state) won the day in the Court.   With the Supreme Court accempting this "butterfly effect" argument  (because truly the demand of one person in a national market is like a butterfly flapping its wings in China and affecting a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico), anything falls under the commerce clause.

I probably have posted on the electricity generating speed bump more times than it deserves, but Glen Reynolds linked this story and I am seeing it linked uncritically all over.  Here was the email I dashed off to Instapundit:

The speed bump / power device at the Burger King in New Jersey is the silliest technology I have ever seen and I am amazed that so many people praise it or write uncritically that it provides free power.  Energy is never free, it comes from somewhere.  In this case, the energy is actually stolen from the car.  The electricity power produced is equal to or less than the extra power the car has to expend going over the bump.

This electricity might be "free" if it is used where cars are braking anyway, say on a long down ramp in a parking garage, or on a suburban street or school zone where speed bumps already exist.  But the Burger King example, and in fact most of the examples I have seen of this installation, are just vampiric theft, very similar to what the US Government does in many of its programs, creating a large benefit for a single user and hoping that distributing the costs in small chunks across a wide number of people makes these costs invisible.

I wrote more about the technology here.

The leftish political strategy for over 100 years has been

1. Regulate something
2. Blame the free market for inevitable disruptions caused by the regulation
3. Use the above to justify more regulation
4. Repeat

Obama's speech has a classic example of this:

So let me set the record straight. My guiding principle is, and always has been, that consumers do better when there is choice and competition. Unfortunately, in 34 states, 75% of the insurance market is controlled by five or fewer companies. In Alabama, almost 90% is controlled by just one company. Without competition, the price of insurance goes up and the quality goes down. And it makes it easier for insurance companies to treat their customers badly "“ by cherry-picking the healthiest individuals and trying to drop the sickest; by overcharging small businesses who have no leverage; and by jacking up rates.

This is ENTIRELY a situation manufactured by government and specifically state regulations.  States prevent out of state insurance companies from competing in the health insurance market.  Think you have the same Blue Cross/ Blue Shield I have (or used to have)?  Wrong.  I have Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Arizona.  You have Blue Cross/Blue Shield of whatever state you are in.  If Amazon.com had to create 50 separate state entities all with wildly different regulatory structures, you can bet they would focus on just a few states and there would therefore be a lot less competition.  Obama HAS to know this is true, so this is just a cynical argument aimed at the ignorant and uninformed.

By the way, what evidence is there that having 75% of the market in 5 companies is too concentrated?  I have been in a lot of industrial markets that were far more concentrated than that which were brutally competitive.

Two excerpts from Obama's speech:

That's why under my plan, individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance "“ just as most states require you to carry auto insurance.

Oh, jeez, I sure wish that were true.  Auto insurance covers only catastrophic damages, such as totaling your car or incurring serious liability by hurting someone.   It does not cover regular repairs, preventative maintenance, etc.  Also, state-mandated auto insurance has a range of coverage caps -- if you want a higher cap, you can pay for it.  No one expects their company to pay their auto insurance, and if a company were to provide it it would be considered a taxable benefit.  Compared to our current health insurance system, auto insurance-like health insurance would be a brilliant improvement.  Despite his making this analogy, this is absolutely NOT what he is suggesting.  Also from his speech:

Under this plan, it will be against the law for insurance companies to deny you coverage because of a pre-existing condition. As soon as I sign this bill, it will be against the law for insurance companies to drop your coverage when you get sick or water it down when you need it most. They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or a lifetime. We will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses, because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they get sick. And insurance companies will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies

Update: OK, here is another good pairing, from the same source -- first, he says that a public option will not be subsidized:

They argue that these private companies can't fairly compete with the government. And they'd be right if taxpayers were subsidizing this public insurance option. But they won't be. I have insisted that like any private insurance company, the public insurance option would have to be self-sufficient and rely on the premiums it collects.

But then he makes this comparison:

It would also keep pressure on private insurers to keep their policies affordable and treat their customers better, the same way public colleges and universities provide additional choice and competition to students without in any way inhibiting a vibrant system of private colleges and universities.

See?  The public option will not be subsidized and will work just like public universities which are highly subsidized.

By the way, it is almost impossible for government NOT to subsidize such an entity, in part because of the way government accounting differs from private accounting.  Government accounting is on a cash basis, so large up front investments show as a first year loss with no future expense implications.  In operation, it means capital spending is pretty much free.  And numerous charges that private firms take on, such as liability insurance, are not charged for on government books.   I compete with the government a lot, and have investigated this dynamic in depth.  Even why my costs are lower, the government, because of the way it accounts for things, often thinks its costs are much lower than mine and they under-price us.

Over 700 employees of San Francisco's BART transit agency make over $100,000 just in cash wages.  This does not include lucrative benefits that probably add $30,000 or more to total compensation for most employees.  (SF Chron, via Thin Green Line)

I am really left speechless by this.

The Children's Secretary set out £400million plans to put 20,000 problem families under 24-hour CCTV super-vision in their own homes.

They will be monitored to ensure that children attend school, go to bed on time and eat proper meals.

Private security guards will also be sent round to carry out home checks, while parents will be given help to combat drug and alcohol addiction.

Around 2,000 families have gone through these Family Intervention Projects so far.

It actually undershoots the mark to call this "Orwellian," since in "1984" the government monitoring was aimed mainly at combating subversive thought and behavior.  But the Brits are going one better, monitoring families to make sure their kids are eating their vegetables and getting to bed on time.

Incredibly, the oppositions response is that this is... not nearly enough intervention!!!

But Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said: "This is all much too little, much too late.

"This Government has been in power for more than a decade during which time anti-social behaviour, family breakdown and problems like alcohol abuse and truancy have just got worse and worse."

Is there any voice left for individual liberties in England?  Am I missing something here?  This seems simply horrible.  Is there at least due process involved, such that such measures can only be imposed as a result of a criminal conviction (I don't think so, from my reading of the story and comments -- I think this is like Child Protective Services in the US, with a lot of not-subject-to-due-process intervention powers, but maybe my UK readers can fill in more detail).

I liked this from the comments:

These cameras should be in MPs homes so we can see what the scumbags are up too.

Ditto for Congress.  And how about a Lincoln Bedroom cam?

Hat Tip:  Engadget

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.

The author of one of the charts I criticized in the recent government climate report has responded directly to my post.    Generally unimpressed, I counter in this post at Climate Skeptic.

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.

Not much I even need to add to this, via Riehl World View:

On Tuesday, the Senate health committee voted 12-11 in favor of a two-page amendment courtesy of Republican Tom Coburn that would require all Members and their staffs to enroll in any new government-run health plan. Yet all Democrats -- with the exceptions of acting chairman Chris Dodd, Barbara Mikulski and Ted Kennedy via proxy -- voted nay.

In other words, Sherrod Brown and Sheldon Whitehouse won't themselves join a plan that "will offer benefits that are as good as those available through private insurance plans -- or better," as the Ohio and Rhode Island liberals put it in a recent op-ed. And even a self-described socialist like Vermont's Bernie Sanders, who supports a government-only system, wouldn't sign himself up.

Does anyone else find this reminiscent of Obama's decision to send accept a scholarship for his own education, send his kids to private school in DC, and then, nearly as his first action as President, kill the voucher program that let other African American kids in DC go to private school.

Jonathon Adler argues that Senator Feinstein grossly exaggerated the number of cases where the Supreme Court said the Congress had exceeded the bounds of the commerce clause.  Feinstein said it was dozens of times in the last 10 years, Adler counts about two.  I don't have my own count, but smaller numbers seem right to me -- just look at the extent of activities Congress currently pursues under the banner of the Commerce Clause.   For god sakes, several years ago the Supreme Court ruled that federal marijuana laws trumped state laws based on the commerce clause -- even when the drugs are grown for personal use and don't cross state lines.  As Clarence Thomas wrote in that case in dissent:

Respondents Diane Monson and Angel Raich use marijuana that has never been bought or sold, that has never crossed state lines, and that has had no demonstrable effect on the national market for marijuana. If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers.

But what I found really depressing in Adler's post was this:

Adding up all of the cases in which the Court found statutes exceeded all of the federal government's enumerated powers, including the sovereign immunity cases, the commandeering cases, and the 14th Amendment cases, in the last twenty years still doesn't get us to the three-dozen-plus cases Feinstein claimed. Add in the federalism-related constitutional avoidance cases, and we're still a ways off.

Given all the expansions of federal and Executive power over the last 10 years, and the hundreds of cases in front of the Supreme Court, the Court has not been able to rouse itself more than a handful of times to declare that the feds have exceeded their powers under the Constitution?  Bummer.

The new bypass bridge at Hoover Dam.  Photo courtesy of the Mail Online.

Bruce McQuain has a really good post debunking the meme that Medicare overhead costs are lower than those of private insurers.  You should read the whole post, but the short answer is:

• Medicare participants are older and less healthy than those insured privately, so the denominator for their overhead ratio is much higher
• Comparing overhead costs per plan participant, Medicare costs are higher than private
• The comparison is apples and oranges, because private firms pay account differently than does the government
• Lower Medicare overhead has tradeoffs, as it lets fraud through which is not counted as a cost

I can't add to Bruce's post, except to say that as someone in the business of trying to privatize government functions, we see the apples and oranges problem all the time.  I am constantly having cost discussions with government bodies, and they frequently leave out most of the following when they compute their costs:

• Insurance  (e.g. liability, property).  They say the government is self-insured, but the government does not charge its divisions any cost for this implicit guarantee.  I have to pay real money for it.
• State / local taxes.  Private companies have to collect and pay many state and local sales, excise, and property taxes that the feds do not pay.
• Pensions / retirement benefits.  The government grants fat pensions and retirement medical benefits to its employees but does not accrue or put any funds away in the present to pay for these.  Private companies do  (and in fact would go to jail for not doing so).
• Capital spending and rent.  This varies by entity, but most government bodies do not see full depreciation of the capital assets they are using in their budgets.  Ditto for the value of the space they are occupying - they often get valuable space rent and/or depreciation free.
• Services from other government divisions.  Sometimes transfer prices are charged, and sometimes they are even close to market rates, but most times they are not

This is a recurring post on Coyote Blog on Memorial Day, but I forgot this year so I will repost it on July 4.  Greetings this year from the Mother Country, from which I will be returning soon.  And let's give a big shout-out to the Dutch, who seldom get much love on this point, but the Dutch perhaps even more than the English really pioneered a lot of things that are important to us - e.g. capitalism, a republic, and tolerance.

I have suspected that this was coming, but I guess I have just buried my head in the sand, knowing that I would be taking a complete screwing and not wishing to contemplate it.

Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Chris Dodd, D-Conn., say their plan would preserve employer-sponsored insurance coverage and create an affordable public option for those who need it....

The bill includes a "pay or play" provision that would require employers to provide adequate coverage for their workers or subsidize a system that will.

"Pay or play" would require companies to pay the government $750 per full-time worker per year ($375 for part-timers) if they don't offer health coverage, or if they offer "qualified" coverage but pay less than 60% of workers' premiums. Small businesses that employ fewer than 25 workers would be exempt.   (Via Q&O)

I run a recreation business with about 500 part-time, seasonal employees.  Most of them work for the equivilent of about 1/4 of a year, or about 500 hours.  Almost all are over 70, and already on Medicare and Social Security, so we have no health plan  (no way to get a reasonable plan anyway for a bunch of 70 year olds).

Adding up the numbers, this turns into $187,500 bill I would have to pay to the government for not providing health care to people who already mostly have health care.  I will pay 1/2 the full time rate despite my employees working far less than 1/2 of the year.

One thing you can be sure of -- this may be the final death of my current human resources model.  We typically hire more people, working fewer than 40 hours, because retired folks don't generally want to (or can't) work a full week.   That's been OK, because 4 people working 10 hours a week has always cost me the same as 1 person working 40 hours.   But if I am getting charged $375 per worker whether she/he works 1 hour or 1000, you can bet I am going to hire fewer workers for longer hours.  There are probably a myriad of other implicaitons for my business model,  I just have not yet thought it through.

The Antiplanner observes, in the context of the Washington metro crash, that governments are happy to appropriate funds for expensive new facilities, but almost never want to appropriate funds for capital replacement and refurbishment of such facilities 20-30 years later.  Such refurbishment is nearly always necessary.  Private businesses plan for it -- for example, oil companies plan and budget on the assumption that all of their gas stations will need to be torn down and rebuilt every 20-25 years.

I work with public recreation a lot and can say that the exact same problem exists -- politicians love funding a new park or visitor center or museum expansion, particularly if they can get their name on it, but consistently refuse to fund capital replacements decades later when these are needed.  I guess they are unsexy.

We own about 100 trucks as part of the business, many of them Chevy's.  We are going out right now to replace several, and I just can't bring myself to do business with Government Motors.  So its Ford trucks for now.

Government officials have mastered the cost-cutting game, or should I say the cost-non-cutting game.  The trick they have learned is that whenever budget or tax cuts are proposed, they threaten to cut the most critical expenditures.

Now, as I have pointed out, such behavior in a private company would result in one's termination.

When I was in the corporate world, if I wanted extra funds for my projects, I would have to go in and say "Here are all my projects.  I have ranked them from 1-30 from the most to least valuable.  Right now I have enough money for the first 12.  I would like funding for number 13.  Here is my case."

But the government works differently.  When your local government is out of money, and wants a tax increase, what do they threaten to cut?  In Seattle, it was always emergency services.  "Sorry, we are out of money, we have to shut down the fire department and ambulances."  I kid you not "” the city probably has a thirty person massage therapist licensing organization and they cut ambulances first.   In California it is the parks.   "Sorry, we are out of money.  To meet our budget, we are going to have to close down our 10 most popular parks that get the most visitation."  The essence of government budgeting brinkmanship is not to cut project 13 when you only have money for 12 projects, but to cut project #1.

I can just see me going to Chuck Knight at Emerson Electric and saying "Chuck, I don't have enough money.  If you don't give me more, we are going to have to cut the funds for the government-mandated frequency modification on our transmitters, which means we won't have any product to sell next month."  I would be out on my ass in five minutes.  It just floors me that this seems to keep working in the government.  Part of it is that the media is just so credulous when it comes to this kind of thing, in part because scare stories of cut services fit so well into their business model.

Matt Welch has a great 8-point takedown of similar scare story on the current California budget crisis.  You should definitely read it, but I wanted to add a #9 -- this idea that the core, rather than the marginal, expense is always the first to be cut.  From the LA Times:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed slashing state spending on education by $3 billion to help close the budget gap, and the state would pay dearly for canceling classes, firing instructors, cutting class days and shortening the school year, experts said.

Promising students would go to other states, taking their future skills, earnings and, possibly, Nobel Prizes elsewhere. California companies would then find it harder to attract high-value employees who might be dubious about moving to a state with sub-par schools. [...]

John Sedgwick, co-founder of Santa Clara solar-energy company Solaicx, agreed.

"When you think about the genesis of Silicon Valley, it really started from its superior educational base" at Stanford and UC Berkeley, said Sedgwick, whose company makes the building blocks for photovoltaic cells. "That indicates that you don't want to kill the goose that's laying the golden eggs." [...]

The only way the most "promising" students would be affected is if, when the schools cut back, the best professors (rather than the worst) are fired and the most promising students (rather than the most marginal) are denied admission for limited spots.  Really?  If Berkeley has 10 fewer spots, it's going to start cutting admissions with the Physics wiz kid who had a 2400 on her SAT?

Further, is it really true that California only attracts people to its work force who went to school in California?  A top Michigan or Harvard grad won't do just as well?  I went to college in New Jersey yet have never held a job in that state.

Now, I understand that part of the argument is that workers may not come if the local primary schools for their kids are bad.  And that is true.  But California has had poor performing schools despite years of high and increasing spending.  Matt has much more on this in his piece.

Postscript: Of course, as crazy as it seems, there may be some reality to this threat.  I could easily see the University of California system, when faced with the choice of cutting back on some post-modernist social science program or a physics program that has produced 7 Nobel Laureates, choosing the latter to cut in a fit of outrageous political correctness.

At the primary level, it is very possible that the bloated school administrations filled with rafts of useless assistant principals will choose to fire teachers rather than themselves.  So unfortunately the plans to cut the most useful spending in a crisis and keep the most useless is not just a threat, it is a reality.

Radley Balko is having a back and forth with a guest blogger at Patterico over the drug war and violent crime.  Balko is always worth checking out, because while many of us bloggers may call ourselves the new media, we are mostly just a bunch of op-ed pages.  Balko is one of the few major bloggers out there doing real reporting.

One part of the discussion caught my attention:

Second, JRM leaves out the rest of my discussion of police militarization in the piece, which includes the very real, not-made-up statistic based on police department surveys done by Peter Kraska showing the number of SWAT deployments in the U.S. jumping from a few hundred per year in the 1970s to 50,000 or more per year today. Most of these SWAT deployments are to serve drug warrants. JRM can disagree, but my point is that even if these raids don't produce a single gun shot (though we know that's far from the case), that's a disturbing trend. The image of state agents dressed in black, kicking down doors, and wresting people out of bed at gunpoint in order to police nonviolent crimes just isn't one I associated with a free society (oddly enough, some prominent conservatives agree, at least when other countries do it).

Perhaps because I read this as my inbox is filled with Minuteman missives (I don't know how they got the impression I was somehow sympathetic to their cause) asking me to send a valentine to agents Compean and Ramos, but I sometimes really wonder about conservatives.

Conservatives distrust government and government bureaucrats.  Many understand public choice theory.  Many understand how faulty incentives within government can turn even good, smart people into stupid bad actors.

So I am left to wonder why conservatives feel ever so much better about the situation when the government employee is given a gun, and the unique authority to use it on the citizenry?