I was in Washington, D.C., yesterday to hear a presentation by Wendell Cox at the Heritage Foundation. His presentation centered on whether technology or behavioral changes should be emphasized when considering greenhouse gas emissions. It was a great talk, and I just want to share the accompanying slides with all of you. Check them out.

Over at our Policy Pulse portal, staff reporter Audrey Spalding has published several recent articles about education issues in Missouri.

This past week, Audrey has explored how recent school board meetings have not led to a resolution for teacher negotiations in the Lindbergh School district, how recent state legislation has affected Lindbergh’s budget, and how that same legislation threatens to choke funding to 23 St. Louis County school districts.

Please stay tuned to Policy Pulse as we continue to promote government transparency, civic participation, and policy analysis.

The Panama City Renaissance School blog links to an article in the Las Vegas Sun about same-sex public education. The article quotes the usual experts for and against single-sex schooling. Then it concludes with this on-target quote from a parent:

“I don’t know if boys and girls really do learn differently — I know that’s the theory,” Curiel told the Sun as he dropped Eric off for class. “But whatever it is, it’s working.”

Experts on the both sides make the mistake of overgeneralizing. Single-sex education proponents claim, for example, that all boys should learn in classrooms painted certain colors because the average boy reacted better than the average girl to that color in a research study — never mind that wall color may not affect achievement, or that individual boys have different color preferences. On the other hand, critics of single-sex education rally against the perceived unfairness of separate classes, dismissing the fact that some students have had good experiences with single-sex schooling.

One system wouldn’t work for everyone, but it’s better when people have a choice.

I was blessed with a pretty good memory, especially for words and numbers — less so for faces. So when I read this headline at the Post-Dispatch’s “Political Fix” blog, it instantly reminded me of this “Saturday Night Live” skit from 20 years ago. My memory had it that John Goodman was in the sketch, not John Larroquette, but other than that, I was right on.

Perhaps I confused the two because they each have a St. Louis connection. If you can tell me what that connection is in the comments, you will win my praise (but nothing else).

John Combest recently posted a couple of articles about Better Courts for Missouri’s attempt to change the Missouri Plan, the current method for choosing justices for the state courts. The Missouri Plan, in theory, is supposed to take the politics out of the process of judicial selection: A panel, mostly comprised of lawyers, submits three nominations to the governor, who selects from those three. After a year, the judge stands a “retention” election. Better Courts for Missouri argues that this process is too secretive and heavily favors trial lawyers.

Show-Me Institute scholars have written about this topic before, discussing benefits of the Missouri Plan as measured by a few particular metrics.

Findings from the Show-Me Institute’s 2008 study of judicial selection have been misinterpreted by proponents of the Missouri Plan who have drawn broad conclusions about its positive effects on the economy based on the study’s relatively narrow, caveated data set. The authors of the study, economists Joshua Hall and Russell Sobel, stipulated that the criteria they used to determine the effects of judicial selection mechanisms on economic growth amounted to a limited methodology. They concluded that although it appeared variants of the Missouri Plan tended to correlate with better economic growth than states using partisan or nonpartisan elections, it might be possible to make minor improvements to the process, such as adding legislative oversight. Although Hall and Sobel’s data provided a useful glimpse at the effects of the Missouri Plan from one particular angle, other future studies analysing different sets of source material might arrive at somewhat different conclusions.

Hopefully, Better Courts for Missouri will take as many of these factors into account as possible as they work toward a solution that brings increased transparency to judicial selection in Missouri.

This chapter of Liberating Learning describes the political process of education reform. In a nutshell, new practices like merit pay and parental choice threaten teachers’ unions, so the unions do all that’s in their power (and they have a lot of power) to prevent them from taking root. If a significant reform makes it through the political process, unions challenge its legality in the courts.

The authors stress how unions would lose out if public schools became more competitive and efficient. I think they would agree, though, that virtual schools, charter schools, and other new developments in the education market have the potential to help teachers as individuals. The catch, from the unions’ point of view, is that not all teachers would gain in the same way. Good teachers would earn more. The best would have new opportunities for career advancement; an example of this appears in the very beginning of the next chapter, “Technology on All Fronts,” where the authors tell the story of a teacher who goes into curriculum development after helping to create a successful online charter school.

Teachers would depend less on unions if schools competed to offer them better pay and benefits. They might also consider which schools would suit their teaching style — virtual vs. in person would be just one choice they could make. Instead of asking, “Will the union negotiate the best deal for me and everyone else?” teachers would ask, “Which combination of work environment and pay would be best for me personally?” Then unions would lose members, dues, and power.

This week, the federal minimum wage will rise to $7.25, which is 70 cents higher than the previous national minimum and 20 cents higher than the current minimum in Missouri. Advocates of the minimum wage hike ostensibly intend to create a “living wage” for the poor, but there are some significant unintended consequences: Minimum wage policy raises costs for businesses and creates economic pressure for them to hire less low-skilled labor.

As the Show-Me Institute has cited in several studies and articles about the effects of minimum wage on the labor market, most people in minimum wage jobs are not in the poorest brackets — many are teenagers who live with their parents, or are people with wealthier spouses.

Those in the poorest brackets and at minimum wage level tend to be predominantly low-skilled workers. When the minimum wage is increased and employers are forced to scale back their hiring, the poorest low-skilled workers tend to lose their jobs as employers choose between them and teenagers from mostly middle-income backgrounds. Minimum wage increases also raise the cost of goods, which harms poorer families disproportionately. Essentially, minimum wage function as an additional tax on the poor.

Any time that the minimum wage is raised, but especially during a recession, the people hurt the most are the lowest-skilled workers — the very same people these raises are supposed to help. If Missouri wants to help its poorest workers, lowering mandated minimum wage levels (or eliminating them entirely) would help tremendously.

The urbanites that run MSNBC are apparently shocked that young people in America are allowed to hunt all by themselves. Can you believe this? Kids are actually allowed to use guns and hunt animals without a parent or guardian around in many states. (In Missouri, which is covered in the story, you only have to be 11 years old to be able to hunt on your own.) How terrible.

Of course, they found a tragedy that they’ve used as the basis for an argument that kids should hit a certain age before they are allowed to do something that kids in America’s rural areas have been doing for hundreds of years. From the story:

On the national level, Guzzo’s comments won support from Jim Kessler, policy director and co-founder of the progressive think-tank Third Way who previously spent four years at Americans for Gun Safety. Both groups seek tighter gun laws but are not opposed to hunting.

“I find it shocking actually that there aren’t laws that prohibit unsupervised hunting by minors,” said Kessler. “For a lot of families, hunting is passing on values from fathers to sons and it’s about responsibility and there are a lot of good lessons there, but it is far too much responsibility to give to a child or a minor teen, far too much responsibility. You need an adult there.”

There are tragic accidents in every aspect of life. The young man who committed the manslaughter prompting the article will pay a price for it. It seems most people see a tragedy and try to make laws to restrict the rights of others in order to prevent another tragedy, no matter how small the odds may be that the law will actually prevent a similar future tragedy. Maybe I am a jerk, but I get offended when people try to use a tragedy to limit the freedoms of others.

And I don’t mean to make fun of MSNBC. The story is interesting and the survey informative. I just don’t see a need for Missouri to increase its age limit because of one terrible incident.

I feel bad for this guy, who is being held as a terrorist after he threatened a telemarketer. While I agree with the commenters on my texting-while-driving post, who explain why actions that have a high risk of leading to crimes should be outlawed, I don’t understand why the irate consumer in this case isn’t just liable for a misdemeanor. Is it because he threatened to harm more than 10 people? (Who came up with that magic number?) Or because they wanted to evacuate the building?

Not everyone who gets angry on the phone is a terrorist.

The second chapter of Liberating Learning is “The Need for Achievement.” The authors present data from NAEP and international tests that show a large achievement gap between white and minority students, and an achievement gap between U.S. students and students in other countries. The latter gap persists even when you compare students from similar socioeconomic backgrounds.

This chapter could serve as a concise, clear introduction to achievement studies of the past 20 years. Readers who are already following education reform debates probably won’t find anything new here. It’s the same story we’ve heard time and again: U.S. test scores are poor, therefore U.S. economic power is at risk.

One thing that strikes me when I look at test score comparisons like the ones presented in this chapter is the decline in achievement as students get older. U.S. 4th-graders do okay by international standards. Students fall behind in middle school and high school, so by the time they take the tests as 12th-graders, their international peers outperform them.

If U.S. students started out far behind others, it would be understandable if their relative performance declined in the higher grades. One might conclude that the disadvantage was too great for U.S. public schools to overcome, and that they would have to push kids harder and harder at each grade level — an increasingly difficult challenge. But, in fact, U.S. students do OK in elementary school. We don’t see the big gaps between the United States and other developed countries until students have been in school for several years. U.S. schools are not helping students reach their potential.

As I have repeatedly said, civil lawsuits — not zoning ordinances — are the best solution to nuisances caused by a property owner’s use of land. It just so happens that events in the western part of the state provide a handy case study in how this is supposed to work.

In 1998, a concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) began operations in Cedar County near property owned by Ed and Ruth McEowen. The odors from the hog farm’s operations dramatically impacted the McEowens’ ability to enjoy their home, and the farm also polluted a creek that ran across their property. In 2005, the couple sued several entities responsible for the CAFO, and last week the suit was settled for $1.1 million dollars. That payment only addresses the problems caused from 1998 to the date of the settlement, so if the CAFO continues to operate in such a way that it disturbs the McEowens, they retain the right to file a new lawsuit. The Kansas City Star reports that there are currently about 400 similar nuisance lawsuits pending all over Missouri.

When the government imposes restrictions on property use, they are usually painted with broad strokes, prohibiting a variety of uses that might not result in any harm. The potential uses that are permitted are frequently governed by a set of standards that impose strict limits on what must be done in order for that use to be permissible. Such stringent, one-size-fits-all prescriptions inhibit innovation, and they make the mistake of assuming that non-compliance will be detrimental, whether or not this is actually the case. Furthermore, if a private property owner, such as a CAFO, violates this sort of governmental regulation, the government is strictly responsible for its enforcement, and if there is to be any financial punishment for such a violation, the government will usually be the beneficiary. Any citizens that have been negatively affected by another’s use of their property are not likely to be compensated for the inconvenience they have suffered.

A policy that relies upon civil lawsuits to address private nuisances, however, has several advantages. It results in a system in which property owners have tremendous freedom to pursue their business — perhaps in innovative ways — while still holding them accountable for any harm that their actions might cause to their neighbors. The neighbors, on the other hand, would have a way to defend the quiet enjoyment of their own property by demanding financial compensation for any harm they might suffer. (For anyone concerned about a neighbor’s ability to afford legal representation, let me assure you that many attorneys would leap at the chance to take a case like this on a contingency basis — 30 percent of $1.1 million is a lot of money.)

The ultimate result is that property owners would have a very powerful incentive to cooperate with their neighbors and to avoid disturbing their neighbors’ enjoyment of their property, while still retaining the freedom to make beneficial use of their own.

Here’s a Post-Dispatch article about the proposed Hindu temple in Jefferson County, which I’ve blogged about in the past. The project will be reconsidered this month, because the developers scaled down their plans. The latest proposal calls for fewer than half the number of houses that were first envisioned.

It’s outrageous that resources are allowed to sit idle while neighbors hold developments hostage — especially in a weak economy. The zoning process results in a lot of waste, probably outweighing the decreases in property values it’s supposed to prevent.