France has many things going for it. It has smart public policy on nuclear power, and its court ruled in favor of Linden Labs when a complaint was brought against them. (I mention that last point to try to win back the commenters who were outraged by my anti-Second Life post.)

However, reading Mound City Money reveals one aspect of French policy that ought to stay in France: free newspaper subscriptions for teenagers. If you’re going to waste money on newspapers, at least give them to someone who will read them.

When I saw this, I immediately thought of Dave Stokes’ classic post about people who don’t seek government assistance. Here’s the Post-Dispatch’s summary of what Nixon said about uninsured children in MIssouri:

Most are eligible for coverage under the state’s Children’s Health Insurance Program but haven’t signed up.

“That’s unacceptable,” Nixon said. He promised to start identifying eligible families, who can make up to three times the federal poverty limit, or $63,600 for a family of four.

Now’s a good time to review what Dave said:

Some types, generally of the left-leaning persuasion, just can not understand that people eligible for government aid might still prefer to make it by on their own.

And for the good news, here are Nixon’s words on reducing the number of Missouri state employees:

In total, my FY10 budget proposes the elimination of more than 1,300 positions. We will cut nearly $200 million from overhead by eliminating these positions and cutting bureaucracy.

I’m glad he isn’t using the economic situation as an excuse to add government jobs.

There’s more good stuff at Education Next. Here’s a forum on the subject of technology in K–12 education. John E. Chubb and Terry M. Moe think that technology will radically transform the sector, while Larry Cuban is more cautious and maintains that reformers are too quick to buy the latest gadget for every classroom.

I think that technology has the potential to change the market and the way educational services are delivered to students. Virtual schools bring competition to areas where there was none before, and help break the connection between where a student lives and his learning environment. They bring enrichment opportunities to students who once had only the foreign languages and electives offered by their local schools to choose from.

However, curriculum and learning processes will evolve more slowly. “Virtual” students take tests and complete assignments online, but they still read books and practice handwriting. Although they have more subjects to choose from than their counterparts in brick-and-mortar schools, they don’t study them in radically different ways. A student learning Chinese online will memorize vocabulary and learn to write just as a student studying French in a classroom would.

Some municipalities in Missouri have smoking bans on the books; some don’t. Some private businesses forbid smoking on their premises; some allow it. That’s the kind of spontaneous order that legislators just can’t resist overriding with a statewide policy.

I recommend reading John LaPlante’s excellent post today about smoking bans, and why the decision should be left to individual businesses.

Education Next reports on education blogging. The list of top education policy blogs includes Jay P. Greene, who participated in the Show-Me Institute’s 2007 conference, From Equity to Adequacy to Choice.

Show-Me Daily didn’t make the cut this past year, but maybe in 2009?

One thing that my brother, Mike (the second-oldest of four, with moi being the eldest), and I have in common is a devotion to the “Bloom County” comic strip. I own all the books, have read them all at least six times, quote them a lot, etc., which is also true for Mike. For whatever reason, many of my interests/hobbies are ones I share with my friends (”The Simpsons,” politics, Axis and Allies, darts, trivia nights, everything sports), but “Bloom County” — like skiing and Coen Brothers movies — is one I mostly share with my family. There are certainly crossovers between these sets of interests, especially so for politics and sports, but for whatever reason my friends never really gotten into “Bloom County.” Dunno, maybe they’re cooler than I am. …

I know what you are thinking: Is there a point to all of this? Not really, but because I am the only staffer to make it through the snow to come in today (thanks to my new 4WD SUV, and the fact that I live only a mile away), I may be particularly inclined to poignancy. Which gets me to reassessment, that special period every two years in Missouri during which our property gets revalued — a process that determines our tax rates.

This morning’s Wall Street Journal has bad news for anyone expecting the upcoming reassessments to lead to tax cuts, at least in the St. Louis area. You can’t read the full article without a subscription, but I’d like to point you to the map that’s on page one today, if you are interested. This map lists the decline in the price of homes in about thirty major cities during the past year. St. Louis has one of the smallest declines, at 3.7 percent. Many other cities have seen declines well into double digits, and only a few cities have slightly smaller declines.

This is all pertinent because, as the Post-Dispatch has reported recently, many homeowners are gearing up for a fight in St. Louis County, which has been ground zero for assessment and property tax issues during the past decade. From what I’ve heard, many people were astounded when, in an article that ran a few weeks ago, the St. Louis County assessor claimed property values really hadn’t gone down that much. Well, at least according to Zillow.com and the WSJ, he may be right. Frankly, the difference may be even less than negative 3.7 percent in St. Louis County, because that number applies to the entire metro area, and the new home construction prices in extended suburbs like St. Charles have probably fallen more than areas like St. Louis city and county.

I am not saying that this is a good thing. Of course, I would like to see lower property taxes and less government involvement in our lives. Fewer government employees and (self-assumed) government responsibilities are the best things that can come from a recession. But, to repeat what I said here a few weeks ago, the best thing that most of us can probably hope to arise from this reassessment in Missouri is that our property taxes will remain level for the next two years. Considering how much they have increased during past cycles, perhaps a leveling-off would not be so bad.

To some opponents of charter schools, a proliferation of charters in your city is almost as bad as a natural disaster. So what happens when charter school growth follows a disaster in quick succession? Chaos, right? Not according to this editorial in the Times-Picayune (thanks to Edspresso for the link):

Just as encouraging is the finding that scores jumped from 2007 to 2008 within all school types, including campuses run by the Recovery School District, the Orleans Parish School Board and dozens of independently run charter schools.

[...] the quality of education New Orleans’ children are getting is improving. And for the first time, parents have numerous educational choices.

This diminishes the credibility of those who predict imminent doom and gloom with the opening of each new charter. As the editorial points out, it’s not possible to prove that charters directly caused the rising test scores and other positive developments in the New Orleans education market. But it conclusively shows that progress is possible even with a bunch of new charters in town — and charters don’t have to mean the end of life as we know it.

Combest links to this article in the Fulton Sun about a proposed nuclear reactor. The General Assembly is considering AmerenUE’s plan to add on to the Callaway Nuclear Plant. What I liked best about the article was that in addition to summarizing the usual arguments for and against, it points out that nuclear energy is a success in countries that don’t impose so many political barriers to its use:

France has more than 60 nuclear power plants that generate more than 80 percent of its electrical power. France also is the world’s largest exporter of electrical power, sending 18 percent of its production to other nations.

We’ve followed in France’s footsteps by establishing an official language; it would be a good idea to emulate their openness to energy innovation, too.

The Springfield Business-Journal ran a nice article about my occupational licensing study and some reactions to it. I think it’s a great article, and I thank Jeremy for his interest in the subject.

Like any good journalist, the reporter got quotes from all sides of the debate. And, man, did he ever get some good quotes from the supporters of licensing (all emphasis below is added):

“The licensing process is a must,” said Detwiler, who along with fellow state-certified massage therapist Stephanie Lansdown run The Neuromuscular Clinic, which opened Nov. 15 in Springfield. “If you don’t know what you’re doing and say that you do, you could really do some harm to somebody.”

Clearly, this person has never tried to pick someone up at a bar.

“If we did the same work in San Diego, it would be a lot more expensive,” Detwiler said.

“I think it’s more about where you are. I don’t think the licensing would really have an effect on price.“

Believe it or not, we actually considered the issues of cost-of-living. The therapist is right that it matters, but wrong when he or she says that it explains the difference between Wichita and Springfield. The two cities have a very comparable cost-of-living, and Wichita’s is actually slightly higher. The main reason a massage session is $10 more in Springfield than Wichita is licensing, not costs of living.

I’ll finish with one quote that shows progress being made:

He added that the National Council of Architecture Review Boards has in recent years made it easier for architects licensed in one state to get licensed in others.

That is one way for the harmful effects of licensing to be reduced, and I applaud the architects for making it happen.

Check out this article in the Columbia Missourian about Missouri government’s use of the website Second Life:

Avatars can make their way through the flowering dogwoods, stop to view a spinning Missouri state seal overhead and browse displays about information technology opportunities and facts about the state.

I wonder whether they can eat official Missouri dessert ice cream cones, catch official Missouri invertebrate crayfish, and dance the square dance, the official folk dance of the state of Missouri. (I don’t know, because I’m not on Second Life!)

The Information Technology Services Division has already hired someone they recruited on Second Life. In the virtual world, he was a kitten. The article doesn’t say what he turned out to be in real life.

And state involvement in this online community goes even further:

In November 2008, the Missouri Government Island was established. A plan is under way to use virtual construction machinery, even bulldozers, to make the island the shape of Missouri. This will become home to several state government entities.

“We understand that we are the only state to go out and obtain our own island,” Grecian said.

Now, I don’t want to be overly critical of this because it sounds like expenditures on the project have been negligible so far. But there’s a fine line between staying ahead of the pack when other states are too conservative in taking advantage of new technology, and going off the deep end. If other states aren’t buying islands, that’s probably because states just don’t need their own virtual islands. And there are lots of options for state agencies to use social networking — for example, through Facebook pages — to get in touch with people in more direct ways. I thought the whole idea of using online networking was to avoid the bulldozers and stuff you need in real life. If you have to create a virtual MoDot in order to recruit people on Second Life, how is that an improvement over planet Earth?

The explanations that are being given to justify the black-white achievement gap in suburban school districts are disturbing:

When affluent districts show a similar achievement gap, the usual excuses given don’t seem to apply. Students in Clayton, Webster, Parkway, would all come from home environment not associated with poverty. Perhaps, it is a matter of “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.”

That’s a comment from “taxpayer” on today’s Post-Dispatch article about the achievement gap.

Any reasonable person would agree that skin color alone has no effect on a person’s desire to learn and succeed. If the gap persists even in affluent districts, you have to conclude that that there is some socioeconomic difference between the black and white students — perhaps because minority families are making sacrifices to move to the better districts — or that the schools are not educating everyone equally.

I’m amazed at how reluctant people are to criticize public schools, to the point where they resort to blatant racism rather than admit that public schools systematically produce worse outcomes for some students.

I urge everyone to read this study from the East-West Gateway Council of Governments about the ludicrous economic development policies that the St. Louis area has been pursuing during the past decades. The Post-Dispatch had a major article about it over the weekend. People at the Show-Me Institute, including me, have been raising issues like this for some time, but it is great to see EWG’s proof in the pudding. I will return to this issue after I have had time to read the entire study.