I have a few comments to add about the Springfield News-Leader op-ed piece that David Stokes wrote about earlier today. The piece berates Rep. Roy Blunt for favoring private insurance reform to a public option model, and falls prey to a few logical errors in the process.

The article claims:

For-profit insurance companies milk 30 percent off the top for “administrative” costs vs. just 4 percent for Medicare.

These are very misleading numbers. For one, elderly and disabled Medicare patients require more care so that the administrative cost will be spread out over more patient dollars. In actuality, the per-patient Medicare administration cost is much higher for Medicare than for private insurance companies — it is just spread out over more health care dollars. This does not mean that Medicare is more efficient; a study from the Heritage Foundation debunks the myth of Medicare “efficiency”:

In 2005, Medicare’s administrative costs were $509 per primary beneficiary, compared to private-sector administrative costs of $453. In the years from 2000 to 2005, Medicare’s administrative costs per beneficiary were consistently higher than that for private insurance, ranging from 5 to 48 percent higher, depending on the year.

Private insurance companies must also pay additional taxes from which Medicare is exempt — as much as 4 percent in certain states. This must be factored into the administrative costs for private insurance. These costs do not go to “insurance execs” and their “cronies,” but to the government. Other administrative costs for private insurance include marketing expenses and profit margins; the latter is a significant factor, because profit helps motivate efficiency.

The author of the News-Leader op-ed rails against the fact that private insurance company executives take home “multi-million dollar salaries and huge stock options while the government pays its top Medicare brass just a few hundred thousand dollars a year.” Offering large salaries enables some insurance companies to attract the best in the business. Effective leadership is not an arbitrary factor in building a successful business; a good CEO can create profits that far outweigh his compensation. And it’s worth emphasizing that private insurance companies can’t survive in a competitive market if they merely take profit without providing good service to their customers.

Expanding measures to increase market competition would be more likely to “squeeze the profiteers” than the author’s proposed public option. A government-run option does not engender competition, because its taxpayer-subsidized nature means it does not have to compete for revenue or customers, and will be guaranteed to offer the lowest sticker prices (not counting the cost of the subsidy, of course).

The private insurance business as it stands today is not a free market at all — it’s restrictive and highly regulated. Potential competitors face significant barriers to entry in the insurance market because of the geographic and other regulatory barriers they face; this effectively drives up health care prices. However, even considering the limited competition that currently exists in the private insurance market, these companies manage to be more efficient than their government-run counterparts.

Combest today has a link to a truly bad op-ed on health care in the Springfield News-Leader. (This is not a knock on the News-Leader, because the piece appears to have been submitted by someone outside the paper.)

The only thing good about this op-ed is that it can serve as an excellent lesson in how not to do something. I don’t call it “bad” because I disagree with the author, although I do disagree vehemently with him. It is poorly written because, for whatever reason, it contains all the easy, worthless catch-phrases that instantly identify the author as being biased and operating from a pool of partisan emotions rather than reasoned thinking.

Take a very quick skim of the piece. The heavy use of loaded words and phrases like “cronies,” “greedy profiteers,” “huge stock options,” and “skimming the system” instantly let me know that I have no need to take the writer seriously. He clearly hasn’t put the time into writing the piece that might make it worth my time to read it carefully. (I did read it carefully anyway, but only for the purpose of this blog post.) I think the author uses the term “profiteers” three times in the op-ed to describe executives at insurance companies, as though he has the ability to judge the amount of profit that is proper.

If you want to convince people who are not already inclined to agree with you about something, try more of this:

For-profit insurance companies milk 30 percent off the top for “administrative” costs vs. just 4 percent for Medicare.

And far less of this:

We need both these options in the final bill to reign in greedy profiteers.

The first is an argument. The second is a screed. This op-ed has too much of the latter and too little of the former.

Two stories on the Drudge Report feature kids sailing (or wanting to sail) solo around the world. The first is about a boy from Britain who accomplished this feat, and the second is about a girl who is being prevented by a court in the Netherlands from doing the same.

One reason advanced in opposition to the girl’s plan is that she would have to study by herself for two years rather than going to school. This is a scary example of a state imposing uniformity at the expense of someone’s dream. Schools as we know them have been around for only a short period of time, relative to the vast span of history. People have been exploring for thousands of years. Who is to say that the modern classroom constitutes a normal experience and sailing the open seas is aberrant?

As for the safety issue, the girl’s family planned her trip so that she would at most be at sea for three weeks at a time. Young teenagers have sailed solo on voyages of that duration. If a three-week journey is acceptable, then there should be nothing wrong with many three-week journeys in succession.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that babies be breastfed for a year because of the medical benefits it confers. More mothers might choose to breastfeed if they had that information. However, people should make decisions with their doctors about caring for infants, based on a calm consideration of medical advice. They shouldn’t make those choices out of fear.

That’s why I don’t like this ad from the Department of Health and Senior Services. The ad urges readers to prepare for “those emergencies that come up every day or during a natural disaster” and admonishes that breastfeeding is “even more important during emergencies.” The ad also features a little emblem that looks like a sheriff’s badge and reads, “Breastfeeding: A Vital Emergency Response.”

The website explains the link between breastfeeding and emergencies: If people can’t get to a store because of a natural disaster, it’s helpful to be able to breastfeed. Well, I guess that’s true. The print ad doesn’t make the connection, though, and even after reading the website’s commentary, I’m still confused by the reference to “emergencies that come up every day.”

The ad leaves readers with the impression that breastfeeding is necessary to avert disasters that could strike at any time — much like last year’s midwifery op-ed that claimed we need midwives in case of floods or hurricanes.

Besides provoking anxiety with its allusions to unlikely scenarios, the ad tells women to “contact a local public health department,” as though women could only breastfeed with the government’s help.

Although I personally think breastfeeding is an important practice, I don’t want the state to push that choice on everyone — especially not with scare tactics.

In an effort to cut expenses, the U.S. Postal Service is offering to pay employees to retire or resign by the end of the year. This deal, arranged by the union, will offer employees payouts totaling $15,000 over the next two years. The USPS hopes to save $500 million with these job cuts, and is also considering closing mail centers to address further budget concerns; of the 681 national mail centers that may potentially close, 38 are in St. Louis.

With a $6 billion budget deficit, the USPS surely needs an overhaul.  But the USPS has taken the wrong tack. It should be improving its service, rather than simply cutting it. Many businesses and individuals rely on the USPS for important mail; reductions to service fail to address that, instead exacerbating the existing problems. The advent of the Internet has made USPS service redundant in some areas, and a decrease in service would only serve to push its usefulness even farther to the wayside.

With the inevitable decline of USPS service, however, lawmakers need to reduce the legal restrictions that currently hamper other potential mail services. Although the USPS does not receive taxpayer funds, it has essentially been given a regulatory monopoly on certain types of delivery services. Mailboxes, by law, can only be accessed by postal service employees. The Private Express Statutes limit private mail carriers from delivering mail unless it has the proper USPS postage or is “extremely important” and priced at more than $3. These statutes stifle competition and hurt consumers.

Even long before the advent of the Internet and telephones, the USPS was inefficient. In 1844, abolitionist and individualist lawyer Lysander Spooner created the American Letter Mail Company to ferry letters to Boston, Philadelphia, New York, or Washington, D.C., for a third of the price that the USPS charged at the time. New legislation eventually halted his business, but his efforts did force the USPS to significantly lower its rates. The giant postal monopoly of today no longer has to respond to this sort of cost-cutting competition, because federal protection keeps it insulated from those who might provide a similar service more efficiently. Instead, it can get away with practices like paying employees to quit without having to address the real reasons that it cannot make a profit, while private companies like FedEx and UPS are flourishing.

It’s certainly a good idea for the USPS to cut jobs and make its process more efficient, in order to meet its budget constraints. But sustainable efficiency will not occur without real, free-market competition. Simply paying people to quit does not address the growing superfluity of the USPS, and instead makes the mail service slower and more expensive.

The president of United Teachers of New Orleans comments on charters:

“There’s no replication of programs that are successful,” Carter said. “I don’t want to see schools closing year after year because their business models don’t work.”

At first glance, it’s hard to tell what he’s referring to when he says there’s no replication. Many of the most successful charter programs, like KIPP, are national networks. They replicate their best ideas in multiple schools.

I think he’s talking about different charters within the same city, which are not joined by common policies the way schools in a traditional public district are. If one charter does a good job, other nearby charters are free to deviate from its methods — and possibly fail, as a result.

That’s not such a bad thing. Allowing some charters to stagnate is the flip side of giving charters the freedom to innovate. Sponsors can dismantle their charter schools if expectations are unmet, so there’s no need to worry that a poor performer will be around for decades. The same can’t be said of traditional public schools; they lack a mechanism by which they can be shut down, and at best the state can step in after a protracted accreditation battle. The potential to close, far from being the disadvantage implied by the above quote, is actually a plus for charters when compared with traditional districts.

And the uniformity within districts doesn’t always mean that they replicate the best practices, either. For example, KIPP started out in a traditional district, but its success wasn’t replicated there because of bureaucracy. Only when KIPP’s founders switched to the charter model were they able to expand their program to help thousands of kids.

Not all charter schools are coordinated through networks, but they all can learn from other schools. The language-immersion charters opening this year in St. Louis were able to gain inspiration from the French-immersion charter in Kansas City, as well as from language-immersion schools in other states. They didn’t have to invent an immersion approach from scratch. And countless charters adopt long school days, even ones that are not affiliated with KIPP. No school board orders them to do it; they do it because it works.

I’d like to take a moment to point out the excellent work being done by Audrey Spalding over at the Show-Me Institute’s Policy Pulse website. She’s been providing detailed coverage of breaking events like health care protests and town hall meetings, a court case involving school districts and property assessments, community meetings regarding the proposed north side development project in Saint Louis, and more. One piece about a Missouri health care forum, by Show-Me Institute intern Caitlin Hartsell, even garnered notice from the widely read national blog Instapundit.

So, be sure to stay tuned to Policy Pulse as Audrey and a few other talented writers bring you perceptive coverage of events that you won’t always be able to find in other media outlets.

Here are some recent headlines, to get you started:

• McKee eschews media, makes pitch for NorthSide development
• Some north side properties kept vacant for more than a decade
• Health care protests stay cordial
• Anti–eminent domain activists join north side community group’s cause
• Earmarked millions now a little more transparent
• Eleven school districts get day in court
• High-speed rail predicted to travel much slower than advertised
• McCaskill fields questions about health care bill in Hillsboro
• North Side community group questions TIF project’s validity
• Smoking ban will likely be put to county voters
• Community group wary of north Saint Louis redevelopment plan
• Gingrich presents health care reform ideas in Saint Louis
• Health care forum draws hundreds, mostly opposed to federal reform legislation
• Legislative fix misleads school district budgets

The Grade has posted excerpts from the Columbia Community Unit School District’s statement about the service dog a judge has ordered it to accept (which I’ve written about here and here).

This part doesn’t make sense to me:

“The District’s compliance with the Preliminary Injunction will have a direct and negative impact on at least one other student who attends the Early Childhood Program,” the statement said. “Specifically, the District is aware of at least one child who will suffer serious physical harm if he is exposed to animal hair. Additionally, the District is aware of multiple other children with medical conditions which may be impacted by the presence of a dog.”

Accommodating the dog “is not a simple matter of moving students from one room to another, or even one building to another,”  the statement goes on to say.

I can’t believe every other student in the program would be adversely affected by a dog. So put the kids who can handle it with the dog, and the others in another room or building. I could sympathize if the district said moving students between rooms or buildings was a big hassle that required lot of schedule changes. But why is the district implying that wouldn’t even solve the problem?

A public school can’t serve everyone, and that’s especially apparent in the case of students with disabilities. If a child has such a severe allergy to animal hair that he can’t be in the same building as a dog, that child would still have a problem if his classmates hugged their pet dogs, then came to school with animal hair on their clothes. Is the district going to forbid pets at home? How else could they protect that child?

Very specialized schools are better able to deal with students’ severe medical problems than a public schools that has to be open to all. A broad tuition tax credit program would go a long way towards giving these kids better options.

Tonight at 7 p.m., at Zion Lutheran Church, developer Paul McKee and alderwoman April Ford-Griffin will make a presentation about the $8 billion proposed redevelopment of Saint Louis’ north side. Part of that redevelopment would involve the NorthSide Regeneration company acquiring more than 2,400 properties. On the list are a number of churches, as well as owner-occupied homes.

I hope that the mainstream media will cover tonight’s presentation. The development is contentious, not least because it is very large and involves an application for $410 million in tax increment financing (TIF) from the city, but also because of current residents’ worries that the company will use eminent domain to take their property (there is, in fact, mention of using eminent domain in the NorthSide Regeneration company’s TIF application).

There is also the issue of whether a city agency was somehow complicit by holding on to vacant property in the north side for more than a decade in case a developer came along, rather than putting the property up for sale.

These issues have been brought forward several times by the North Side Community Benefits Alliance (NSCBA), a group of north side residents determined to be involved in the redevelopment process. Although the group is new, it has done a lot to publicize this issue. Recently, the NSCBA held two community forums. At the first, Saint Louis TIF commissioner and Saint Louis School District Board of Education member David Jackson spoke. At the second, Christina Walsh, of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Justice spoke. Both speakers were noteworthy, yet both forums were mostly ignored by the press.

To his credit, Don Marsh, host of “St. Louis on the Air,” did have NSCBA members on his show, and when one of the banks holding more than 400 mortgages of McKee’s north Saint Louis properties was seized by the FDIC, KMOX contacted NSCBA’s vice president, Barbara Manzara, for quotes.

It is likely that a number of community residents who oppose the proposed development will attend tonight, which means that reporters could hear both their concerns and McKee’s responses without filter. I didn’t think that media needed a nudge to cover this side of the issue, but here it is: This is important, and this is newsworthy.

You can learn so many new vocabulary words by tracking legislation in the Missouri General Assembly. “Tocology,” otherwise known as “midwifery,” made the news in 2007 when legislators accidentally legalized the practice because they didn’t know what the word meant.

Now, it turns out that a law intended to ban Styrofoam coolers on lakes and rivers really prohibits hard plastic containers, like Tupperware. Fortunately, the Missouri Water Patrol says it will ignore this law.

I’m confused by this statement in the Kansas City Star editorial about the mix-up:

The mistake was especially disappointing because the government was trying to tell the public how to behave, in this case to protect the environment.

Don’t all laws “try to tell the public how to behave”? I find this mistake less disappointing than others, because it was caught promptly and won’t be enforced.

This article in the Salt Lake Tribune tells the woeful tale of some overworked kindergartners. These kids spend several hours a day on academics, with little or no time left for play.

One comment blames this state of affairs on charter schools:

There’s seems to be this disturbing trend today, seen specifically in the development of the charter school program, of pushing the education system to higher standards in the name of achievement.

Are charter schools really the culprits? I don’t think so. The article describes public kindergartens run by traditional districts, and at least some of the impetus for drilling kindergartners comes from Utah’s education department:

“Doubling time in kindergarten should mean twice the time for instruction,” said Reed Spencer, a curriculum coordinator at the state office of education who is designing a uniform testing tool for Utah’s full-day kindergarten programs.

I’m guessing whoever wrote the comment would say that the traditional districts are responding to competition from charters. There’s pressure for traditional districts to win back students from charters, and the way they attract them is by ruthlessly pursuing higher test scores.

If districts are pressured to improve, that’s a good thing. However, improvement doesn’t have to mean forsaking common sense. As an illustration, look at some of the new charter elementary schools in St. Louis. There’s a Montessori school, a Spanish immersion school, and a French immersion school. None of those charters takes a drill-and-kill approach. A district that wants to compete with them would do well to avoid standardized tests for five-year-olds and instead replicate what the charters are creating.

As for charters like KIPP, that are known to focus on academic skills, they find ways to do that through age-appropriate activities. Here is a sample schedule from a KIPP elementary school in Houston. There are long hours, lots of time on reading, math, Spanish — what you would expect from a KIPP school. But interspersed throughout the day are blocks of time dedicated to “circle time,” “creative play,” “”storytelling,” and “project-based learning.” (And see this article about the creative ways KIPP is teaching reading to older children in St. Louis.)

It’s not all about textbooks and the blackboard. In fact, any charter that did torture kindergartners with uninterrupted test-prep would have trouble attracting students and would be very easy for any district to compete with. There would be no need to change the kindergarten curriculum in order to compete with such a poorly designed charter.

I’m opposed to local-food mandates and farm subsidies, but I’m all for consumers buying local produce if that’s what they choose. So, I was happy to see this St. Louis Beacon article about a business model that gives consumers what they want and keeps farms in operation, without resorting to handouts from the state.

Here’s how it works: Consumers pay a subscription to the farm in advance, then they receive boxes of produce every week at a pick-up location in the city.

Most Missouri doctors work in densely populated communities, while areas needing physicians appear unable to attract them. Although health care issues fill our headlines, the problem of distribution receives little press coverage. Our state suffers from a unique health care disparity problem, one of geographic distribution. Elsewhere in America, it has been common for people to migrate to the cities and their suburbs, while in Missouri many prefer to live in rural areas. Today, about 27 percent of our state’s residents live in rural locations.

Previously, people thought the physician distribution problem would be resolved by economic factors alone, and suggested there would be a diffusion of doctors from urban to rural communities. But that did not occur. This may be attributable to the problem that most of the Missourians without health insurance live in rural areas. A 2004 state survey found that rural regions had the largest populations without health insurance, and few doctors choose to work where most people have no health insurance.

At one time, people thought the distribution disparity arose from physicians preferring to be near other doctors, in order to benefit from professional synergism, such as sharing emergency calls. However, another factor has been found: the risk of lower earnings in rural medical practices — a disincentive that keeps physicians from choosing those locations.

In response to this problem, the federal government started the National Health Service Corps (NHSC) to establish financial incentives that would bring doctors to areas with a physician shortage. Congress then established the Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) program, designed to retain health professionals in these locations.

Neither program, however, has satisfied Missouri’s needs. In spite of these government efforts, more than 18.6 percent of Missourians live in areas that are underserved by physicians, and more than 60 Missouri counties are identified as health care professional shortage areas. Last year, Missouri became the 10th-worst state in terms of the doctor/citizen ratio.

Why does this problem continue? In 1991, there were 10,095 physicians working in our state. Since then, the number has grown, and by 2001 there were 12,565. At the same time, however, the average physician age has increased. During that 10-year interval, the number of physicians under age 45 decreased by 25 percent, and now most rural Missouri surgeons are looking to retire. As a result, many Missourians do not have access to the health care they need.

How to respond remains uncertain, although a recent innovation addresses this issue. Missouri Southern University and the Kansas City University of Medicine have united to build a medical education program in Joplin. In an example of a group of citizens responding to their own needs, that community is developing a school to supply them with doctors. With this new program, another 100 physicians will graduate each year from the Joplin location. No one knows whether those graduates will remain in the area, but after four years, some will have local ties. Others, though, will look elsewhere. To keep them, incentives will be needed.

One approach might be to underwrite medical student loans that will connect the students to a local service obligation. Vermont initiated such a practice, and it has done well. There, new physicians that accept such loans have an obligation to practice in areas where there is a physician undersupply. A similar program already exists in Missouri, but it has had such limited publicity that most medical students and physicians are not aware of it.

There may be other and/or better incentive programs. It is up to your ingenuity, and that of your community, to develop them.

Today’s Post-Dispatch has the history behind the famous 1876 split between St. Louis County and city. This coincides nicely with an opinion piece that the Show-Me Institute just released, about St. Louis city rejoining the county. I discussed both this op-ed and the overall subject it addresses on the McGraw Show a few weeks ago, on The Big 550. (Scroll down to 8/3/09.) It’s always nice when things tie together so well.

I won’t add any more here, because it would just be repeating what I wrote in the op-ed and said during the radio interview, both of which you should all go read and listen to without delay.

It turns out I spoke too soon when I said beer companies enjoy so much freedom to advertise and market their products in the United States. The news reported in this Wall Street Journal article is appalling. All Anheuser-Busch did was change the colors of its cans to match college teams’ colors, and now everyone, from the FTC to the colleges themselves, is in an uproar.

The colleges allege trademark infringement. The beer cans don’t feature any mascots or logos, though, so I don’t see how Anheuser-Busch could be in violation of trademark. Surely, these schools don’t have a monopoly on color combinations like blue and yellow.

Regarding marketing to underage students: It’s true that most college freshman and sophomores aren’t old enough to drink, but what about the juniors, seniors, graduate students, and faculty? Are they off-limits, too?

The FTC would have a weak legal case because of a concept called “free speech.” The government can’t forbid a company to use a combination of two colors on a package. However, that doesn’t deter an FTC lawyer from harassing Anheuser-Busch:

“We would certainly hope that something like this never happens again,” she said.

School districts will tell you it’s wrong to make decisions based on test scores — unless you conclude that textbooks are useless:

The district usually replaces the science textbooks every six years. This year, it would have cost the district $610,000 to buy new ones.

But district officials found they were wasting money on the books. When they looked at standardized test scores in science, they found that classrooms with the highest scores never touched the textbooks.

Districts don’t systematically use test scores to evaluate teachers, which makes the textbook evidence suspect. A correlation between textbook-free classrooms and higher scores doesn’t necessarily mean that textbooks lower scores. It might be that better teachers choose hands-on projects, but those teachers would improve achievement no matter which curriculum they used. If the textbooks used previously were inadequate, it could be that better textbooks would boost scores even more than exploratory activities. It’s also possible that the hands-on work is superior to textbooks, but that teachers who didn’t adopt the approach voluntarily won’t use it well when the district mandates it for all classrooms.

This should not be taken as a criticism of the mobile science lab described in the article, which sounds like a worthwhile addition to the curriculum. I just object to the arbitrary use of test scores to advance certain popular programs, like hands-on science, but not controversial policies like merit pay.

Below is the full text of a comment from a blog post over at the Post-Dispatch’s Political Fix blog. It demands a response from anyone who is not content with living in servitude to the government. My comments follow each quoted portion.

I assume this piece was not original to the Post, but it may have been. I remember about 15 years ago when a state rep from south Saint Louis County wrote a similarly themed article for the Post, and then got in a lot of (political) trouble when it turned out she had just copied it from somewhere else. I remember her name, but don’t feel like printing it. She did lose her next election, if I recall correctly. (All that stuff predated the web by a few years, so no free links are available.)

Not everything he (or she) writes here is crazy or wrong, so feel free to take my lack of comment on certain areas as being along the lines of agreement in those instances:

Dear Tea Party Members:

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly, Ameren UE, regulated by the US Department of Energy.

All true, as it goes, but are you really that dependent on the government to get you out of bed in the morning? And didn’t the alarm clock get built in the first place by the mechanics of the free market?

I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility, Missouri American Water.

This is the first flat-out error: Missouri-American is a regulated, private company, not a municipal water utility.

The water was heated by the public natural gas monopoly, Laclede Gas,

Laclede Gas is a private company.

and disposed of by the the municipal sewer utility, Metropolitian Sewer District of St. Louis.

A government entity — ask Tom Sullivan about them.

After that, I turned on the TV to one of the Federal Communication Commission regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

This totally ignores the role that private companies and people played in all of this, and ignores the fundamental question of whether this regulation is necessary. I can guarantee you the television needs of Americans would be met just fine without government regulation.

I watched this while eating my breakfast of US Department of Agriculture inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the Food and Drug Administration.

This is all true, and a legitimate role for various levels of government, but let’s not pretend that nobody in America was able to feed their families before the government got involved. A nation of farmers fed itself just fine.

At the appropriate time as regulated by the US Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US Naval Observatory,

Does the author really think people could not tell time before the government got involved?

I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approved automobile and set out to work on the roads built by the local, state, and federal departments of transportation,

The private provision of highways is very common in other countries.

possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank. On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the US Postal Service.

The Post Office versus FedEx and UPS? Enough said.

If I had kids, I would probably drop them off at the nearby public school funded by the state and federal Department of Education.

Many Americans choose private education for their children for a number of reasons, the failure of certain public school systems among them. Clearly, there are many excellent public school systems as well.

At lunch time, I pick up a bite to eat at a nearby restaurant that has been inspected by the local department of health which enforces state and federal guidelines for food safety and workplace safety. I then return to my cubical where I listen to the local FCC regulated radio station

As with television, I will guarantee you that, beyond distributing the channel spectrum as a common good, government involvement is not necessary for radio to operate, at all.

as I work on a computer that has been certified by the Consumer Products Safety Comission to be safe and compliant with FCC Part 15B regulations.

The computer industry has grown as it has during the past 40 years because of private markets, not government involvement.

Sometimes instead of work, I go on a business trip and use an airplane inspected by the Nation Transportation Safety Bureau to travel. But first I have to take off my shoes and anything metal as a walk through the the inspection station set up by the Transportation Safety Adminstration.

Watching grandpa get a body cavity inspection because he shares a nickname with a terrorist is not an argument for government success.

After checking the weather with the National Weather Service, the Federal Aviation Adminstration gives the all clear for the airplane taxi off the tarmac and to take off.

Then, after spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the US Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, I drive back to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes

People CAN build things on their own, you know.

and the fire marshall’s inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.

It’s a sad view of society that assumes we would all descend into chaos without government force — perhaps a true view, but still a sad one. I tend to think people cooperate in many more ways without government coercion than the author does.

At home, I can call up my grandparents on a cellular telephone that is FCC Part 15B complaint and designated on a frequency regulated by the National Telecomunication and Information Administration.

As with computers, the telecommunications revolution is attributable far more to private initiative than to government control and regulation.

I then log onto the Internet which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration, an agency of the Department of Defense which is the parent agency of the US Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps who are defending our country so that I can enjoy my freedom to post on Freerepublic and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can’t do anything right.

End of letter. Many of the points the writer makes are valid to varying degrees, but he discounts or ignores the role individuals and private actors played in many of the advancements he credits to government. What is also missing is any even remote debate over whether or not these things are the proper role of government as set by our Constitution. As it stands, the letter makes Americans sound like a nation of people who could not blow their nose (the closest to a clean scatological reference I could think of) without government involvement and approval.

Seriously, you thank the government for helping you get out of bed in the morning? That is not the type of life I want to live and not the type of country I want the United States to become.

It was short-lived, and it could have been worse. Yes, I thought it was a bad program, but I wouldn’t go so far as Cato’s Chris Edwards to say it was the “dumbest program ever.” Better to give away something for next to nothing than to give away something for countless calculations, changes in behavior, and misplaced investments. (If you’d like an example of such a program, look at the federal tax code!)

In some ways, the idea behind Cash for Clunkers was similar to the rationale for sales tax holidays. Both are intended to spur economic activity by giving consumers an incentive to spend on targeted items. Instead, each diverts spending from better uses, without generating new wealth.

To learn more about Cash for Clunkers, check out the entire post by Chris Edwards. For a mathematical analysis of the program’s effect on carbon emissions, see Matthew Kahn’s August 12 post.

This middle-class protest song makes “Mad in America” sound like lyric opera.

When all taxpayers have to chip in to keep your family farm going, it’s not a family farm anymore; it’s a collective farm. Family farms are quickly becoming a thing of the past. When the state steps in to “preserve” them, it actually transforms once-viable enterprises into repositories for tax dollars.

Statements like this make it clear that pouring money into small farms is a losing proposition:

“Right now it costs more to produce milk than you get paid,” Letterman said.

It’s not unusual to see some ignominious mention of SLPS in newspaper articles about education. The reference goes something like this: “Districts across the country are facing problems, including the Saint Louis Public Schools, which lost accreditation and blah blah blah …”

This Wall Street Journal article is no exception:

Perhaps the boldest marketing push is in St. Louis. The urban district’s enrollment has plunged 40% in the past decade because of students moving to charter schools and suburban districts. The school district has been through eight superintendents in 10 years and lost its state accreditation. It faces a $53 million deficit and recently closed 14 schools.

But administrators have set aside $1 million for pay for publicity that may include bragging about a top-ranked high school and magnet programs in culinary arts, aeronautics and international studies.

I’ve criticized SLPS in the past for obsessing about logos and bashing charter schools. However, this time around SLPS has good reason for marketing. SLPS has started new programs, like a virtual school and choice schools; it has to tell people about them, or no one will know they exist.

The more innovations SLPS comes up with, the more effective its advertising will be in bringing students back to the district.

This is one of those topics with a good chance of starting an argument, which would be swell fun for everyone. In the current debate over our health care system, to which the Show-Me Institute contributed a terrific paper to yesterday, one of the proposals put out there is tort reform. Indeed, our study states among its seven recommendations of how to improve our health care system:

• Reform tort liability laws.
  Defensive medicine needlessly drives up medical costs and creates an adversarial relationship between doctors and patients.

Now, to be clear, this is the last of the seven recommendations and the least discussed within the paper, but how do they mean for it to apply? This exact issue is being discussed all over the web. It also appeared in that great op-ed from the Whole Foods CEO that I linked to yesterday.

The health care bills being discussed are, as you all know, part of a federal issue that has tremendous effects on the states. But, because it is for the most part a federal issue, I’ll stick with how tort reform might be implemented nationally. I fully support tort/malpractice reforms in federal courts. But only a very small percentage of malpractice claims are filed in federal court — usually claims against a veterans hospital, or something like that. The vast majority of malpractice cases occur in state courts, and just four years ago Missouri passed greatly needed comprehensive changes to the state’s malpractice system.

So, are supporters of tort/malpractice reform talking about just changing the malpractice system at the federal level, which would probably be a good thing but would only affect a very low percentage of total cases filed? Are they talking about encouraging states to reform their own malpractice laws, which Missouri has already done very successfully and which I fully supported at the time and still do? Or — stay with me, here — are people who generally support states’ rights arguing in this instance for changing the law so that tighter federal laws would replace and overrule state laws in malpractice cases? I realize that it is incomprehensible that someone, especially a politician, would generally support doing things one way but change that opinion in an instance where it would work against you. (Please note dripping sarcasm.) So, which of the three is it?

I have to fear it is the latter, which is also the only one of the three possibilities I don’t support. Civil tort laws have long been the province of the states (I’ll stand corrected by any lawyers in the audience). Just because a federal takeover/usurpation in this instance might fall along the lines of something I support in general (tighter malpractice laws) does not mean I am going to give up on the 10th Amendment.

Missouri succeeded in making significant improvements to how our system deals with civil justice and malpractice a few years ago. It is my hope that Illinois will also do so soon. However, this is still something for the states to determine, rather than the federal government.

The Illinois boy with autism who I wrote about the other day will be allowed to bring his service dog to school, at least for a short time after the district discusses accommodations and before a full court hearing takes place.

I’m happy that the dog and boy will stay together, and I’m also glad that some of the district’s infuriating arguments were disregarded. The district claims the dog is not a true service dog because he isn’t listed in the boy’s Individual Education Plan (IEP). But the boy’s doctors said he should get a dog, and the dog was specially trained for several thousand dollars, paid for by the parents — that sounds like a service dog to me.

IEP’s can’t be as comprehensive as full medical evaluations; they’re basically lists of learning goals, and shouldn’t override doctors’ orders. And, because the district doesn’t want the dog in class, of course they wouldn’t recommend a dog in an IEP. You can’t conclude that the boy doesn’t need the dog just because the district left dogs out of the document.

This statement by the district Superintendent is misleading:

“If 230 students were to bring animals, it would be catastrophic to the degree it would be uncontrollable and very unhealthy to the students,” Settles said.

We’re not talking about pets brought for show and tell, but animals (usually dogs; I don’t know which other animals the district is expecting) that help children cope with serious medical problems. Dogs have to go through a lot of screening and training before they are given to patients. “Uncontrollable” animals don’t make the cut. I should hope the district would not advance similar arguments against a service dog used because of epilepsy or vision impairment. Autism deserves equal consideration.

Although the judge issued an injunction in the boy’s favor, I’m standing by my assertion that he would be better off with tuition tax credits. No one should have to attend a school that resents his service dog and that fought hard in court to exclude it.

Including Cash for Clunkers. This sentence sums up the experience:

President Barack Obama said in an interview Thursday that the program has been “successful beyond anybody’s imagination” but dealers were overwhelmed by the response of consumers.

Giving out free money (or paying above the market rate, which amounts to the same thing) is a wildly popular policy. No one should be surprised by consumers’ robust response to the opportunity to get something (cash) for nothing (a clunker, by the program’s own admission).

It’s strange to call a program “successful” when it did little more than squander wealth — and so quickly that even Washington politicians realized it couldn’t continue.

Although Cash for Clunkers will drive into the sunset on Monday, the idea lives on in a multitude of other policies that offer attractive payment in exchange for ubiquitous antiques. Like gun buybacks, for example.

The latest Show-Me Institute Policy Study — “The Prognosis for National Health Insurance: A Missouri Perspective” — is shaping up to be a slam dunk.

Produced by Arduin, Laffer & Moore Econometrics, the study gives some historical perspective on the growth of the public sector’s role in paying for health care expenses, and provides an analysis of the effect of a public health care plan on Missouri residents. The study spells out the expected costs such a plan would impose per capita on Missouri residents, as well as making predictions about inflated medical costs overall in the face of increased bureaucratic distance between health care producers and consumers.

And it’s getting attention. Missourinet ran a segment about it, and it was also featured on Jamie Allman’s radio show yesterday, as well as some more attention from him while he was guest hosting for The Laura Ingraham Show this morning. So far, it has also been featured in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Springfield News-Leader. This coverage combined to break our previous single-day study download record yesterday, and we’ve already more than doubled that number so far today.

Why wait? Read the study that everyone is talking about. Or, if time will simply not permit, at least check out the four-page briefing paper.

What is the opposite of a boycott?

Many school districts don’t have the resources to provide intensive services for autistic students — or the ability to accommodate their service animals. This article reports on a boy whose parents are suing his school district because it refused to allow his service dog in a kindergarten class.

There are merits to both sides of the dispute. The boy’s behavior is improved when his service dog is around, and it would be a big disruption for him to be separated from the dog for several hours every school day. But, from the district’s point of view, the teacher and classmates expect to go to school with people, not dogs. Some could be afraid of animals or allergic.

It’s not that one side is right and the other wrong, just that they’re a poor match. The district would be better off leaving its classrooms free of dogs. And the boy with autism would benefit from an environment that’s more accepting of his condition and its treatment.

Many of my friends are involved in discussions about health care. A common thing I hear is that people are happy with the parts of the health care system that affect them personally. Often, there is a story, such as: Doctor (you supply the name) found a cancer in my (you supply the relative); he/she started therapy just in time and that person’s life was saved.

That is wonderful. But is that all there is? The health care debate seems centered on financial issues. Where is the dialogue about health? With all the talk in the news and elsewhere, is something missing? Could your health be better?

Missouri is blessed with many health care educational programs. There is the Saint Louis University Medical School, the first school west of the Mississippi, founded in 1836. Then there is the School of Medicine at Washington University, the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine, the University of Missouri–Columbia Medical School, the University of Missouri–Kansas City Medical School, and the College of Osteopathy in Kansas City. In addition, there are plans to build a program in Joplin. If so many physicians are being produced, then health care in this state should be pretty good. Is it?

To find out about that, one must look at how the health care system product is measured. Although asking your aunt about her cardiologist and how well he responds to her needs can be helpful, aggregate data is needed to get valid information. The common tools used by states to measure health care system outcomes are: 1) life expectancy; and, 2) infant mortality.

According to the World Bank, “life expectancy at birth is the average number of years a newborn infant would be expected to live if health and living conditions at the time of its birth remained the same throughout its life.” That definition includes both the current health of a population and the quality of care people receive when sick.

In 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau said that life expectancy in Missouri was 76.2 years, and it has improved since then to 76.4. That can be contrasted with 78.5 in Iowa, 77.5 in Kansas, 76.7 in Illinois, 75.3 in Kentucky, 75.3 in Oklahoma, 75.1 in Arkansas, and 75.0 in Tennessee. Missouri is in the mid-range among our adjoining states, but not at the top, and many states have life expectancy rates higher than ours.

In 2009, the average life expectancy for the entire United States was 78.11, and more than half the people in this country were doing better than Missourians. What is most disturbing is that there are several countries in 2009 with life expectancy rates better than ours. With this measure, many people are found to have better health than we have in the United States, and in America many states are reported to have better health care results than we have in Missouri.

The second most frequently used gauge of health care system outcomes is the infant mortality rate. It is used to evaluate prenatal care, postnatal care, and all the other aspects of society that affect young children. The following are the rates for infants under one year of age per 1,000 live births in 2005. In Missouri it is 7.5, Kansas 7.4, Iowa 5.3, Illinois 7.4, Kentucky 6.6, Tennessee 8.9, Arkansas 7.9, and Oklahoma 8.1. Our state, again, is in the middle range. That year, the infant mortality rate for the entire US was 6.89 per 1,000 live births. Once again, it seems that Missouri’s health care results are not as good as the average for our country.

How does this compare with the rest of the world? Many international organizations study this. The easiest numbers to access come from groups interested in economics, such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Among OECD nations, the average is 6.1 per 1,000 live births. The United States is not too far from that average — but Missouri is. In 2005, there were five countries with infant mortality rates of less than 3.5. What is the difference? Do they care more about their children than we do?

What is the matter with health care in Missouri? These are only a couple of the areas that need improvement. Please be sure that your quality of health is included in the health care discussion.

St. Louis was mentioned as a city that allows urban chicken farming in this article about an Indiana neighborhood and its chickens. (Thanks to Drudge Report for the link.)

I liked this part:

The urban chicken movement has businesses that sell equipment and offer tips for raising the birds.

“There are even ’stealth’ chicken coops that look like trash cans,” Stulp said.

Camouflaged coops are an amusing reminder that some activities are better left legal and regulated. If you’re concerned about chickens getting loose and wandering the streets, you’d prefer they be kept in secure enclosures. But if raising chickens is illegal, their owners will try to hide them — sometimes in specially designed hidden coops that are completely functional, but possibly in improvised cages that sacrifice practicality for covertness.

In case you’re wondering, the quote in the title of this entry came from Frank Lloyd Wright.

Not just anyone can come up with attention-grabbing headlines like that. You are either born with the talent or not. Seriously, though, the above headline has it all. Mid-size suburb, detailed local sales tax issues … who wouldn’t jump at a chance to read this entire post?

My Tim Hardaway writing skills aside (that reference will be lost on just about every one of my readers, except for one loyal dude who reads from London), we all know how the current economy has really hit the financial health of malls and the cities that depend on them. One such city in St. Louis County is St. Ann, home to Northwest Plaza, which will go into foreclosure soon, and has been in trouble for some time. This will have a significant impact on St. Ann’s finances, but the city does have options.

Option one, which it will likely follow, would be to pour even more tax incentives into the property in an attempt to revive it. The St. Ann city manager is quoted in this Post-Dispatch article:

Conley said the structure of the public assistance for mall redevelopment remains. He noted that city officials hope for an eventual revival of St. Ann’s largest commercial property.

“I don’t think there’s anybody who would disagree that something needs to be done up there,” he said.

Well, I disagree, for whatever that is worth.

Option 2, which is probably a long-term solution with short-term budget pains, would be NOT to pour more tax dollars into a failing developement, and instead just become another sales tax pool city within St. Louis County. I doubt anyone in St. Ann is seriously considering this, although I would love to be wrong. If St. Ann became a pool city, it would benefit from growth around the county, and would not be so dependent on one particular mall. This move would increase the total amount of tax dollars available in the pool, and with St. Ann’s large population, the city would get a significant amount from it each year — although not near what they used to get when Northwest Plaza was a thriving mall. Those days are gone, however, and an investment in public dollars might change things around, or it might not. A switch to “B” or “Pool” status would be in the long-term interest of the city and its people.

Lest you think I am picking on St. Ann, I think Crestwood should do the exact same thing.