Those of you who read this blog for in-depth analysis and riveting commentary, I’m sure you haven’t noticed my absence, but for everyone else: I HAVE RETURNED! After a wonderful week in San Diego, I have returned to my cubicle and have resumed normal intern duties. St. Louis is just as I remember — hot, humid, and no beaches.

The past week was an awesome experience. For those of you who don’t know, my fellow intern Dan Grana and I were Bastiat scholars at Cato University, which is a weeklong seminar organized by the Cato Institute that focuses on enhancing freedom and liberty through lectures and discussions. It is a great experience, and I recommend it to any libertarian — or anyone who is just generally interested in promoting freedom. Although the days were somewhat long (9 a.m. to 9 p.m.), it was completely worth it. The days were filled with incredible speakers, ranging from Tom G. Palmer of the Cato Institute to Rejoice Ngwenya, who is a leader against Zimbabwe’s corrupt president, Robert Mugabe. Even after the daily lectures were finished, the conversation continued. We spent most nights at the Veranda Grill discussing liberty and other issues with like-minded individuals.

The entire week was a first-class experience. The food and hotel were awesome, and the speakers were even better. Before I arrived in San Diego, I was a little apprehensive about the trip. I was worried that the speakers would not be entertaining, or the days would be too long, but it turned out that my notions were unwarranted. Again, if anyone ever has the opportunity to go to Cato University, I highly recommend it. I’m even thinking about going again next year.

Somehow, I messed up my prior post, so the following portion did not get added.

The disaster movie references were leading up to the fact that, last night on the 10 p.m. news, Channel 5 hit a new low in nanny-state obsessing. Leisa Zigman (who lives right by me, although she’s moving) had a story about the “silent danger” of hot plastic slides in St. Louis playgrounds. Needless to day, the station went just hyperplectic (might not be an actual word) [Editor's note: "hyperplectic" sounds so nicely intemperate that I'm resisting the urge to change it to "apoplectic" — EDD] about the danger of hot slides. A two-year-old recently suffered second-degree burns from a plastic slide in Corondolet Park. And, of course, according to the story, it is the government’s responsibility to protect people from this danger.

I loved how the representative of the city of St. Louis basically told them the city was not going to do anything. Cities around the county have spent many millions replacing metal playground equipment with plastic pieces during the past decade. It is still not good enough for some people. I swear, some nanny state control freaks won’t be happy until we all have to put on our safety helmets before we get out of bed in the morning. Hey, parents: When it’s 95 degrees out, touch the frickin’ slide before you put your kids on it! This is St. Louis in the summer — it gets hot. And the city should not pay the medical expenses of the family. It is not the city’s fault or responsibility.

As our regular readers (hi, Frank and Mary!) know, I detest the way in which our lives and laws are constantly being regulated, in matters both large and small, for our own safety. We have been discussing how this situation came into being, where we are just so happy to let the government take care of us and our children. I run the risk of sending this post into book-length territory, so let me make this quick. Who do I blame for this?

I blame the following people and groups (this is fun): Hollywood, trial lawyers, consumer reporters, and parents too willing to let other entities take responsibility for their own children (and, yes, I have a child, and, no, it’s not your job to take care of him, unless his nanny is reading this, in which case it is indeed your job to watch him between 8:30 and 6:00). I honestly bet that you could trace a line from the consumer movement to our overwrought safety obsession with the disaster movies of the 1970s. This point hit home for me a few years ago, when I was watching The Towering Inferno. Check out these lines:

Chief O’Hallorhan: You know we were pretty lucky tonight, body count’s less then 200. You know, one of these days, you’re gonna kill ten-thousand in one of these firetraps, and I’m gonna keep eating smoke and carrying out bodies until someone asks us… how to build them.
Doug Roberts: Ok, I’m asking.
Chief O’Hallorhan: You know where to reach me.

Or:

Doug Roberts: I thought we were building something where people could work and live and be SAFE! If you had to cut costs, why didn’t you cut floors instead of corners?
James Duncan: Now listen. Any decisions that were made for the use of alternate building materials were made because I as a builder have a right to make those decisions. If I remained within the building code and god-dammit I did!
Doug Roberts: [Chuckling] Building code? Jesus. Building code. Come on, Dunc, I mean now that’s a standard cop-out for when you’re in trouble. See, I was crawling around up there. I mean duct holes weren’t fire-stopped! Corridors without fire doors in them, sprinklers that won’t work, and electrical system that’s good for what? I mean it’s good for starting fires! Phew, where was I when all this was going on? Because I’m just as guilty as you and that god-damned son-in-law of yours! What do they call it when you kill people?

I just want to quickly link to this article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, by Bob Rybarczyk, that discusses our society’s obsession with safety. The amazing thing about the obsession, as the author discusses, is how it seems to have come about so quickly, yet so completely. Things we did as kids — and by “kids,” I mean just during the 1980s — like riding bikes without helmets, or cramming into the station wagon without seat belts were so completely normal, yet 20 years later they could get a parent indicted. I feel that our society has gone way too far with this obsession — both legally, with laws mandating safety requirements like bike helmets, and just on our own, as the author discusses with his own worrying about his kids if they travel out of the immediate neighborhood. I am not criticizing the author; I will certainly be the same way with my toddler as he gets older.

I am generally not one to blame the media, but the enormous coverage given to crimes against kids, such as kidnappings, feeds into people’s worries and puts normal parental concerns about such crimes way out of whack. A simple look at crime stats tells you that your kid can ride a bike outside of your view for a few hours and is not going to be kidnapped, but numbers don’t really matter much when it comes to people’s children.

From July 10–15, Lindenwood University (over in St. Charles) will be hosting an exciting conference, “The American Decentralist Tradition.” Among the topics of discussion will be the Declaration of Independence, the Kentucky Resolutions, and the Webster-Calhoun Debate (also known as the Webster-Hayne Debate), as well as contemporary issues such as the effect of centralization of political power on corporate structure and the correlation between highly centralized governments and the murder of their citizens. The conference’s very structure will imitate its subject matter, shifting among several unique locations in eastern Missouri, including historic Ste. Genevieve, the St. Louis Cathedral, Daniel Boone Village, and the mounds at Cahokia, Ill. If you are interested, you can get additional details by dropping a line to Prof. Rachel Douchant, who is heading up the conference.

The Drudge Report brought my attention to an Associated Press story describing how a St. Louis–area faith-based group, A Call to Oneness, will be starting a new program to provide moral guidance in high-crime neighborhoods.

This is a fantastic idea. The organization’s teams will likely be able to have far more of a positive impact on these neighborhoods than squads of police officers, halls full of bureaucrats, or other "outsiders" could ever hope to have, simply by providing role models of socially responsible behavior to whom young people can relate. This is just one more example of how civil society can work together to improve communities without relying on inefficient and/or misguided government programs.

In case you haven’t read it, I highly recommend David Boaz’s (of the Cato Institute) op-ed in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal about the hypocrisy of the current presidential nominees’ calls for Americans to "do something noble" like "public service":

The real issue is that Messrs. Obama and McCain are telling us Americans that our normal lives are not good enough, that pursuing our own happiness is "self-indulgence," that building a business is "chasing after our money culture," that working to provide a better life for our families is a "narrow concern."

They’re wrong. Every human life counts. Your life counts. You have a right to live it as you choose, to follow your bliss. You have a right to seek satisfaction in accomplishment. And if you chase after the almighty dollar, you just might find that you are led, as if by an invisible hand, to do things that improve the lives of others.

Who is John Galt?

Every Memorial Day that I can recall while I grew up in Portland, Ore., we went to visit my mom’s parents’ resting place. After moving away, first for college and later for work, I got out of the habit of visiting family members’ graves on Memorial Day. There just weren’t any within driving distance.

Now that I’m living in Missouri, it’s a little easier — my great-great-great-great grandpa is buried about an hour and a half northeast of Kansas City, lying at the bottom of an abandoned well with several other people after they were all murdered. Although I visited the site in March, and had considered going there again over the Memorial Day weekend, a nasty bug has laid me out for the past few days … and the rain would have been a dealbreaker anyway — my car didn’t handle so well on the muddy back roads last time.

I did, however, spend some time on Monday thinking about the value of civil society. Because we live in a country largely founded on principles of freedom, tolerance, and the rule of law, people with wildly different cultures, backgrounds, and belief systems can live comfortably together in the same communities. And although from time to time tragic incidents may occur — like the one that killed one of my progenitors, and drove several others out of Missouri — they are by far the exception rather than the rule. There are places in the world where this sort of organized persecution and violent purging happens all the time.

Ultimately, this is one of the most important historical innovations of the United States — despite our differences, for the most part we all manage to live and work together in peace.

The Columbia Daily Tribune published an editorial today about cyber bullying. There are lots of questions, but not a lot of answers:

Whom can we blame for implications of the new cyber world? The technology? The senders of messages? The recipients of messages? Clearly, most control rests with recipients. Their most effective weapon is the "off" button, but who are we as the rest of society to tell anyone he or she must use it?

Over at the Technology Liberation Front, Adam Thierer suggests that a state-mandated media literacy curriculum is the best solution. He writes:

For the most part, media literacy is not routinely integrated into the curricula at elementary school, secondary school, high school, or college. This situation must be reversed. Luckily, my home state of Virginia is helping to pave the way.

And a comment to his post even recommends including "information literacy" on state assessment exams.

I’m more inclined to side with the Tribune than with Thierer. First of all, my experience is that kids start using computers in the very early grades, and courses on word processing and online research are plentiful. If anything, schools go overboard with lessons on how to use the Internet or how to send email — skills most kids already have or could figure out in a minute.

Second, even if I’m wrong about that and kids are missing out on instruction, state standards and tests aren’t going to help. We already have state standards and MAP exams for subjects like reading and math, and they haven’t spread traditional text-based literacy. I doubt media literacy will fare better.

And finally, I don’t see any indication that media literacy would have prevented Megan Meier’s tragic death. It wouldn’t have improved Megan’s emotional health or made her less vulnerable to rejection. Unfortunately, the state can’t mandate resiliency the way it can require schools to teach computer skills or safety tips.

I’ll let David concentrate on the "sexy" news stories of today (like MoDOT’s revenue shortfalls and year-round school), and instead write about something of fundamental importance.

Apparently, Mizzou awards golf caddy scholarships.

This is my second Chevy Chase reference in a week — a new record.

Forbes Magazine has ranked Kansas City fifth in its “Best Cities for Home Sellers” list.

This is good news for Kansas Citians, who have been largely spared from the harshest wrath of the current housing “correction.” Saint Louis residents haven’t fared nearly as well, with the latest housing price index indicating year-over-year price declines of 5.2 percent. In fact, Forbes lists Saint Louis as number 4 in its “Riskiest Real Estate Markets” list.

Leading Kansas City on Forbes’ list were San Jose, Calif., San Francisco, Calif., Salt Lake City, Utah, and Austin, Texas.

I suppose that this is what I get for having free time and watching local news, but last night this report caught my eye. However, my attention was dragged toward the closure of the Ted Foster & Sons funeral home — not because of the story’s touching emotional appeal or the horrendous nature of the actions taken by all those involved, but because of this one last bit:

Authorities say, by law, money collected for pre-arranged funeral plans has to go into a trust. [...] Other homes should gladly accept the business.

A trust, you say? By law? Because of my infatuation with a certain HBO series (with the best ending you’ll ever see on television) I was already vaguely familiar with the concept of pre-need funerals, and was sure that the law cited in the report probably had some form of corruption that would make the lives of Mr. Foster’s customer’s worse.

And guess what? There is!

According to RSMO section 436-021, funds accepted from the sale of a pre-need funeral service must be placed into a trust, which (in the event of the closure of the original establishment of sale) can be transferred elsewhere, as stated in the report.

What wasn’t mentioned, though, was that funeral directors in Missouri, according to section 436-027, can retain up to 20 percent of the initial payment for the ceremony, regardless of circumstances. Thus, for every $5,000 funeral that Mr. Foster sold before he went out of business, he can legally keep $1,000 — no questions asked. This provision was likely included in order to assist funeral homes in maintaining facilities for a rush of business that they cannot  reasonably plan for, but it also allows the proprietors of failed businesses to run away to Mexico with the funds that families set aside to make a terrible time less difficult for their loved ones.

Surprisingly enough, the General Assembly has a pair of bills that have already been proposed this session, attempting to correct this problem. However, as described quite well in this analysis, certain consumer advocates feel that the bills themselves are still not doing enough to protect the final wishes of many funeral home customers.

The pre-need funeral is an aberration in the marketplace, as it is the one product that you know you’ll need, but also (presumably) the one that you can in no way predict the timing of. As such, it differs from insurance and other preventative investments not only because of the associated emotional weight, but also because of its unusual economic certainty. Because pre-need funerals are so unique, they require a unique amount of consumer protection to be provided by the state government itself.

While we advocate free-market solutions here at the Show-Me Institute that shy away from extensive government interference, I don’t think anyone can reasonably claim that a market with a definite and defined end is truly free, and I hope stronger legislation can be put in place to protect consumers of these unique services.

Here’s an example of one of those hot-button “libertarian” issues.

In 2005, Congress passed the “Real ID Act” as an addendum to an appropriations bill, for the Iraq war and tsunami relief. The “Real ID” Act set national standards for the data that is included on state driver’s licenses, and required states to build and share databases containing licensees’ personal information.

Libertarians find such identifying requirements to be a blatant violation of privacy rights, and a very dangerous precedent (not to mention a fiscal burden to the states).

Rep. Jim Guest (R-Kingwood) has succeeded in suspending the Missouri provision — at least temporarily. It prohibits the state Department of Revenue from amending its procedures to comply with the Real ID Act. It further prohibits the department from collecting, storing, or sharing additional personal data mandated by the act.

I, for one, would like to be free to move around the country without a constant border check and ID scan. If I wanted those, I would have moved to Russia back in the mid-80s … when I was like two years old.

I’m all for preventing drunken driving, but I don’t think scarlet-letter license plates are going to solve the problem. Here are a few reasons I doubt they’ll be so effective as some legislators hope:

1. Drivers will start paying more attention to the license plates around them when they should be paying attention to traffic signs and signals. This distraction could itself cause accidents.

2. In many families, two or more people takes turns driving one car. It’s unfair to subject relatives of a drunk driver to scarlet-letter license plates. This also makes the plates less useful, because no one will know whether they indicate a convicted drunk driver or just a family member.

3. If a car is swerving or otherwise behaving erratically, police should pull it over — whether or not the driver has been convicted previously. As for all the previous offenders who apeear to be driving normally, it’s unlikely that the police will be able to track them all down by their license plates and keep close enough tabs on them to prevent accidents. If convicted drunk drivers are so dangerous that police really need to see that on their cars, then those people should not be driving at all.

I’d like to apologize for the title, first off, as I really don’t like the word "deadbeat" — but the pun was too good to pass up.

The State of Illinois, as reported by this article in the Post-Dispatch, recently enacted a new policy that refuses to grant hunting or fishing licenses to fathers who are behind on child-support payments. As the article plainly explains:

A $14,000 child support check was handed Rachel Miller because the father of her two sons likes to hunt white-tail deer.

Apparently, though, the individuals who have been forced to make that choice aren’t too happy about the fact that the government is getting more involved with their affairs:

[The father] isn’t happy about the turn of events. He says the way the state works now, they’re in control of way too many things.

Child support, like most topics in family law, is a touchy subject. And while I agree that there should be some government impetus toward parental responsibility (if for no other reason than fathers should take care of their children, rather than passing that burden on to the state) I feel like options such as paycheck garnishment often go too far in restricting the freedoms of "deadbeat dads," who are not always as much to blame for an unfortunate family situation as the mother — but who still get stuck with the bill for children they’re often not allowed to see.

But that’s not what we’re talking about here.

If you want to make a claim against the fishing license, fine. But I think it’s pretty apparent that the State of Illinois is justified in restricting who runs around in the woods and shoots off a firearm or bow. Unless you’re hunting for food for the children who you owe child support to, the state should be able to restrict the activity of recreational hunting as a motivation for fathers to fulfill their lawful financial obligations.

This isn’t an issue of "oh, they can afford a hunting license, so they should be able to afford child support," because that’s a ridiculous comparison. A deer license in Illinois for 2008 costs $15, while child support payments are often in the thousands of dollars per month. This is a carrot and stick issue. Hunters want to hunt, but they need to tend to responsibilities before they can play.

Or, they could just take their children hunting with them … which might have solved the whole problem in the first place. Just a thought.

An article in the Post-Dispatch summarizes the various proposals on cyber-bullying that the Missouri and Illinois legislatures are considering. Like all the other proposals I’ve seen on this issue, these would be difficult to enforce and probably wouldn’t have prevented the Megan Meier tragedy had they been law in 2006. Here’s an example:

One lawmaker has suggested making it a felony for any adult to have electronic contact that "demonstrates a knowing disregard for the health, safety and welfare" of the child.

How can you tell whether the disregard is knowing or not? But at least that proposal just forbids bad behavior (albeit ambiguously) — other ideas out there would establish new programs and requirements only tangentially related to what happened to Megan Meier. One bill would require public schools to institute policies about online bullying, never mind that Megan’s alleged harasser was an adult woman outside of the control of public school administrators.

These legislators are well-intentioned, but the most effective protection against online bullies are watchful parents.

I’ve suggested that encouraging students to nominate state symbols is a bad idea because it’s a slippery slope. I felt that my concern was validated when a legislator proposed that the state declare Budweiser its official beer. But the News-Tribune has a different take on it:

As far as we know, the idea was not initiated by a group of students. Thank goodness for that.

The origin of the idea gives evidence that young people sometimes think more clearly than the adults who govern them.

So the students are actually coming up with better ideas for symbols than the adults are. Maybe we should turn over the rest of state business to them, too.

Thanks, Combest, for linking to the Springfield News-Leader story about this proposed bill:

A proposed Missouri Senate bill would strip community college students of tuition money if they violate underage drinking laws, which educators call shortsighted.

One provision of the bill sponsored by Sen. Luann Ridgeway calls for students to lose A+ program money — which pays for community college tuition — if they receive three "minor in possession by consumption" alcohol violations.

This proposal is arbitrary and unfair. It would punish community college students by taking away their scholarship money, while students who receive government loans and scholarships to attend four-year colleges are off the hook. And as a student quoted in the article pointed out, it doesn’t make sense to pass a law specifically targeting alcohol possession above other illegal activities. It’s reasonable to take away publicly-funded scholarships if students break the law, but legislators should target a class of offenses at once, not one infraction at a time. Otherwise, we’ll see a proliferation of scholarship retraction bills to compete with all of the potential state symbols that are bombarding the General Assembly.

In light of our recent study on transportation, this article in the Onion has some outstanding additional recommendations for addressing Missouri’s serious transportation needs. (A hat tip to devoted reader James "Jim" Cronin, aka "Cronin", of Fairfield, CT for alerting me to this. Because of his much- appreciated tip on the story, he and I are now officially even for the time he brutally cubed me with a hackey-sack. Or was it a tennis ball? To be honest, I only remember the agonizing pain.)

I also must recommend this amazing article about the changing political worldview of playwright David Mamet, written by Mr. Mamet as an essay in one act. While Mamet has never thrown anything at me for no reason whatsoever, I still loved the article, which briefly gets into the economics of Thomas Sowell and Milton Friedman. Link via Drudge. (Hey, Drudge, I have now linked to you, so I believe it’s your turn to link to me.)

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never visited a state because of its official state symbols. But that’s the rationale behind a new bill that would make Budweiser the official state beer:

Budweiser is a Missouri-based international icon that — if officially recognized — might even persuade more people to visit the state, said Rep. Curt Dougherty.

It’s clear that the purpose of this bill is to help out a particular company. (Perhaps in hopes of future campaign contributions?) Or maybe Rep. Dougherty just wants to help Budweiser learn about the political process!

Legislators are starting to lose their cool about ice cream cones — official state ice cream cones, that is:

Farmington Senator Kevin Engler is fed up with teachers thinking it’s a good teaching idea to come up with new state symbols and have their students convince lawmakers to pass a bill for them. "These things are stupid," he has told the Senate.

He argues the legislature is not a teaching tool for fourth graders…and that it demeans itself by creating new state symbols when it should be addressing [...] things of importance.

There are many other hands-on ways students can learn about state government, like researching ideas for legislation and holding mock debates in their classrooms. Nobody wants to prevent students from having fun with their first civics lessons. But if every class has to get their symbol considered, or even if only a few of children’s bills go to the General Assembly each year, the precedent puts too much pressure on kids to lobby for their bills and try to get them passed. Inevitably, kids will be disappointed when symbols are turned down or when their ideas don’t make it to the floor in the first place. Fourth-grade civics class should be a pleasant fourth-grade experience, not a win-or-lose situation.

Most importantly, as the article points out, flooding the Legislature with state symbols wastes valuable debate time and distracts legislators from the serious issues that Missourians need them to address. That was just a hypothetical concern when there were only a handful of symbols; now, legislators themselves are complaining about the annoyance. Let’s respect them and find other ways to teach kids.

We already have 24 state symbols. Enough is enough.

On Sunday, I will get to sleep for one hour less than I otherwise would have, through the wonders that come with the beginning of daylight saving time. Had I been flummoxed by a pitch-dark commute, frozen at a sporting event, or not had enough sun left over to harvest my crops, this event might’ve been a boon for me. However, with the rise of such wonderful technologies as central heating, the incandescent light bulb, and the John Deere 600 Rigid, I think it’s time that we step back and look at whether or not we need to keep pretending it’s an hour earlier than it truly is.

In the state of Indiana, where the economy is primarily based on agricultural pursuits (much like in Missouri), daylight saving time only came into existence in April 2005. Prior to that date, rural counties generally chose to rebuke the practice of changing clocks, while the more urban regions surrounding Chicago, Louisville, and Cincinnati chose to adopt the practice. The reason? Daylight saving isn’t that great for agricultural communities.

Despite the fact that a large majority of the public seems to think that daylight saving time exists "to help farmers," shifting clocks back an hour actually has the opposite effect. Farmers do most of their work in the morning, to avoid as much direct, burning sunlight in the middle of the day as possible. If nothing else, the practice hurts them more than the rest of the population. In actuality, daylight saving time was adopted in order to help cut energy costs by reducing electricity use in the evening hours. But again, with the rise of modern technology, this isn’t the case either.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that, as a result of Indiana’s switch to the system, researchers at the University of California–Santa Barbara were able to determine that an additional $8.6 million was spent on electricity in those Indiana counties which switched over to daylight saving time. The reason? Air conditioning costs. People are home when the sun is still out during the summer, and they crank up the AC to stay cool — whereas before, they would just enjoy the sunset.

The federal government passed a law in 2005 that standardized the start and end times for daylight saving time, but as seen by Indiana’s recent shift, said law is not a mandate for state observance. Missouri, a state that depends on agriculture, is desperately trying (like every other state) to keep energy costs down. Why not end daylight saving time? While I’m not advocating some ridiculous Indiana-like system that would keep St. Louis and Kansas City on daylight time while letting the rural counties ignore it, I think that avoiding the issue entirely is something worth a bit of thought. Sunlight is something our bodies are naturally attuned to. Shouldn’t we listen to it when we make our schedules?

Or maybe I’m just angry about losing that hour of sleep.

After nine hours in a rented Pontiac G6 (that handled remarkably well in sleet, by the way) the second leg of the Show-Me Institute’s release tour for our study on Missouri transportation has been completed. In case you haven’t read it yet, KODE — Joplin’s ABC affiliate — ran a piece last night that nicely highlights the study’s main points. We thank them, and all of the other members of the media who we spoke with, for their time and hospitality.

That being said, the only thing you can really do after a long drive is riff on the news you missed:

• The Pew Center on the States (which also released a study I commented on last week) released Grading the States 2008, its annual report card on the performance of state governments. Missouri was one of five states ranked as a B+, behind only three states ranked as an A-. According to the Post-Dispatch, the improvement comes largely from improvements in state-sponsored road projects. Yay, MoDOT.
• The St. Louis Metropolitan and County police departments are going to start pursuing fugitives without warrants for their arrest. Despite the fact that without warrants these individuals are technically not "fugitives" per se, there is an administrative step that prevents warrants from being sought until an individual is first apprehended. This is, coincidentally, why lots of fugitives miss court dates in the first place: Often in St. Louis County, a suspect will be released from custody and assume that everything is hunky-dory until he gets pulled over for rolling a stop sign two years later and finds out that he’s had a warrant for his arrest out since the day after he was first brought in. Happens all the time. That said, pursuing individuals without warrants isn’t the step that needs to be taken. Rather, warrants should be made easier to get in the first place.

I love finding market solutions to social needs. So I was happy to write about Grameen Bank’s expansion into New York City, and I’m even happier to report that microfinance loans are already available to small business owners in Missouri. ACCION USA accepts applications from business owners anywhere in the United States, and it has licensees in several states — including nearby Illinois.

Passing stricter laws about payday loans may sound like attractive policy, but it doesn’t give anyone better access to credit. So nonprofits like Grameen and ACCION are stepping up to the plate.

I’m still hoping for an announcement of microcredit offices opening in Missouri — if not from Grameen, then from ACCION or one of the other organizations out there.

Muhammad Yunus has brought the Grameen Bank to the U.S. The microfinance venture, which previously helped the poor in countries like Bangladesh, is now offering small loans to residents of New York City. Grameen lends money to finance small businesses and help new entrepreneurs become self-sufficient. It’s been remarkably successful, with a repayment rate of 98 percent:

Why is Grameen’s debt-repayment rate so high? "Self-interest," is one reason. "For the first time, she has been given this opportunity to make money, make an income. Now she has a choice: she can pay back the loan so that she can continue with this door open and she can move on step by step. Or she says, enough is enough, I’m not going to pay back, I’m going to enjoy the money I got. What happens? The door gets closed." [...]

Each borrower joins a group of people from similar social and economic conditions, and the group approves the loan request of each member.

Traditionally, loans to the poor have entailed high interest rates and a lot of risk. That’s why there’s so much enthusiasm for regulation and government involvement in the business. But Yunus has created a new business model for lending; he combines mentoring and money to increase the loans’ effectiveness. Rather than passing strict laws to drive lenders out of the business, we should be encouraging this new kind of bank for the poor. Maybe the next branch of Grameen will open in St. Louis or Kansas City!

For more information on microfinancing, take a look at Enterprise Mentors International, a microcredit organization cofounded by Show-Me Institute board member and treasurer Menlo Smith.

In a study highlighted by the New York Times and every other major news publication in the country, the Pew Center on the States released data today stating that more than one in every 100 Americans is currently incarcerated in some kind of state or local correctional facility. Hearing this information initially made me stop and question that math (it’s actually one in every 99.1 Americans) but then forced me to question whether Missouri faces a similar problem.

According to data made available by the Missouri Department of Corrections, there are 30,685 inmates (as of February 2008) incarcerated in Missouri penitentiaries, along with another 71,000 under some alternate form of corrective state supervision. Thus, with Missouri’s population hovering around 6 million, this means that about 1.6 percent of Missouri’s population is currently restricted by the DOC.

This information means nothing, though, without context. Last summer, the DOC and state officials were quick to brag about how well the state’s new recommended sentence system was doing at lowering the prison population and reducing recidivism, stating that the 2.1-percent drop from 2005 to 2006 was one of the best in the nation. However, since that time, inmate populations have begun to increase yet again, with 2007 seeing a .5-percent increase, according to the Pew Center Study.

More important than the amount of increase, though, is that inmate numbers are increasing at all in a corrections system that, like most others around the country, is becoming more and more overcrowded. Missouri’s 20 penitentiaries currently boast a capacity of 29,988 — a capacity that has already been blown past and is looking to be stretched even thinner in coming years, with the looming threat of recession.

Granted, a half-percentage-point increase in prison population isn’t as bad as that seen by Kentucky (12 percent) or Iowa (8 percent), but Missouri’s lawmakers should be looking for new methods to reduce the prison population itself — especially when, according to the report, Missouri spends only 67 cents on higher education for every dollar it spends on corrections.

I wonder: If that ratio was switched, would more than one problem be solved?

Maybe I’m a little late in getting this out, but last week the Miller-Coors merger talks focused on a neutral headquarters for the new conglomerate as the company hopes to take on St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch, which controls just under half of the domestic beer market.

Perhaps Blog KC says it best when they comment that “such a move would give Missouri a monopoly on sh[!#$@] yellow beer.”

Not to mention one more thing to fight about.

There is an op-ed in this morning’s Kansas City Star opposing Ward Connerly’s grassroots-based Missouri Civil Rights Initiative.

Many so-called “civil rights” advocates despise Ward Connerly because the African-American head of the American Civil Rights Institute brings a great deal of legitimacy to his cause to abolish affirmative action programs throughout the country. I’ve written before about why I oppose affirmative action programs, but I’d like to address one statement in today’s editorial in particular.

Diversity matters, and affirmative action helps promote diversity in education, contracting, businesses and jobs, making America more competitive.

Surely the author must be more open-minded than to believe that we can judge an individual’s "diversity" solely on the basis of his/her skin color. Just because someone is “black,” this doesn’t imply a qualitative difference from someone who is "white." This assumption alone ensures that affirmative action programs do more to segregate people along racial lines than they do in promoting racial harmony.

Civil rights protections are of the utmost importance to a free society. But affirmative action should be anathema to civil rights advocates and the history of their movement. Civil rights legislation aims to ensure that no person is discriminated against on the basis of their sex, race, religion, etc. Affirmative action ensures that they most certainly are.

On the lighter side, I’d like to make one correction to Dave’s last post.

In that post, Dave stated that:

“As for being informed, active, and intelligent, when I was 16 I was none of the three, and I now work at a think tank!”

We apologize for this error. Dave’s statement incorrectly implied that Dave is now somehow “informed, active, and intelligent,” which we assure you is incorrect. We sincerely apologize for any confusion this may have caused to our readers.

Hits and misses from around Missouri newspapers, blogs, and elsewhere today:

• Education Week has a story on how the increased enrollment in charter schools across the country has hurt enrollment at Catholic schools. We have certainly seen this in St. Louis, with the controversial decision to close several city parishes and schools in recent years. I think this is one of the things that just happens. As parents get a less expensive (free), quality option for their children’s educations, many low-income people are going to take that. Change is often good, but nobody said it was always easy.
• The Arch City Chronicle is reporting about a bill that would take away the driver’s licenses of teenagers not in school. While I certainly understand the use of incentives to keep kids in school, and none is more powerful than a driver’s license, I would recommend to you Eric Dixon’s post the other day on unintended consequences. A fairly obvious unintended consequence of this bill would be to limit the employment opportunities for teenagers who have left school. It would be limited to jobs along public transit routes, which don’t require a car. Now, that may be a decent number of jobs, but further limiting opportunities for people who are already limiting their own opportunities might not be such a good thing.
• Missourinet has a story on the Missouri House of Representatives moving to restore the deductibility of property taxes for outstate taxpayers who work in Missouri. This is an excellent, and unanimous, move by the House, and if it passes overall it will head off retaliatory moves by other states. This is very important to me, because I commute here to work from Singapore.
• Finally, in a contender for stupidest idea of the year, the Post-Dispatch is reporting that Illinois is considering lowering its voting age to 17. However, an even worse idea is contained within the article:

Alex Koroknay-Palicz, executive director of the D.C.-based National Youth Rights Association, said his group is pushing for the voting age to be 16 across the country.

"(They’re) informed, active and intelligent, and they deserve a voice in our democracy just as much as everyone else," he said.

Koroknay-Palicz said 16- and 17-year-olds are typically more stable than an 18-year-old. Eighteen-year-olds have more on their plate — starting college, getting a job or moving away from home, he said.

"The trouble is, though, that when you give people the right to vote at 18, it’s actually a bad time to start voting because you’re going off to college or getting on with your life," Koroknay-Palicz said.

Seriously, is this a joke? Is there really a National Youth Rights Association? How are they funded? Do they get an allowance from other lobbying groups? As for being informed, active, and intelligent, when I was 16 I was none of the three, and I now work at a think tank!

If you don’t have a voice in how your own house is run, you don’t need a voice in how the country is run. This guy’s statements remind me of the end of Wild In The Streets, after the 20-year-old dictator insults a kid, and the 10-year old looks in the camera and says, "We’re gonna kill everyone over 12." (And yes, I deserve enormous praise for not only being able to reference this camp classic, but to paraphrase it from memory despite only seeing it once about 15 years ago.)

Alex’s statements just get more absurd. His arguments that 18 is a bad time to start voting could just as easily serve as a reason to take voting rights away from senior citizens. Switch "…starting college, getting a job, or moving away from home," to "retiring, collecting social security, and moving into an assisted care facility," and wham!, it now makes the point that there is too much change in your 70s for you to vote. Just unbelievable.

Some people scoffed when I complained last year that encouraging schoolchildren to lobby will lead to a lot of frivolous legislation. So I wonder what they think about this:

In their quest to designate the ice cream cone as Missouri’s official desert [sic], a group of 19 St. Louis-area students made their case before a Senate committee Wednesday. [...]

Besides the dairy association, the Missouri Restaurant Association, the Division of Tourism and the owner of several Cold Stone ice cream shops also spoke in favor of the measure.

Back in the days when kids’ bills were limited to animals, nobody in particular stood to benefit. After all, the box turtles didn’t care. Now that kids have broadened their efforts, real industries are looking to benefit. Some rent-seeking is an inevitable part of politics, but the restaurant and tourim associations should pay full-grown professionals to do their lobbying work.