Red Clay Citizen

Recycling: Green Church Selling Indulgences?

One of my heros, Mike Munger, has a great piece on recycling in Durham here. His case is fairly simple: if it's a valuable resource, someone will pay you to take it away. If it's garbage, you have to pay someone to take it away. The price system is the only standard of value we have.

Greens use a different standard, though, one akin to selling indulgences, perhaps. Paraphrasing John Baden: Applying resource economics to recycling is like applying nutrition analysis to taking communion. (See also my piece on the recent trash legislation put out by the NC General Assembly in which I also describe how recycling consumes more resources than it saves.)
-Max Borders

Elon "Poll" again... (updated)

Well, it's that time again for the results of the latest Elon University "poll" to be released. See this AP article here. (I use the term poll very lightly, it should be more accurately called a survey.)

The media will once again fawn over the poll and report the results as a snapshot of the pulse of North Carolina.

Just remember, when you read about who's up or down, that this survey is of all North Carolina residents.  More or less, they start dialing random phone numbers and then figure out who they have on the line.

*** Update:  Download methodology_and_raw_data_elon.doc (word doc) Here is the actual methodology statement:

The Elon University Poll is conducted using a stratified random sample of households with telephones in the population of interest – in this case citizens in North Carolina.

Ok, so how is it relevant or newsworthy to ask people with telephones their political preference without asking 1) if they are registered to vote or 2) if they even plan to vote.  If both of these criteria aren't met, then their opinion doesn't really matter, does it?

Fairness and the Dream Act

According to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), "It just isn't fair" that illegal immigrants can't receive amnesty and taxpayer subsidized college tuition to boot. The message behind all this ... illegal immigrants are a protected class, a victim class. Thus illegals deserve in-state college tuition rates, even in those states where U.S. citizens who have migrated from one state to another are denied access to the lower tuition rates.

Just when did illegal immigration turn into a civil rights issue? This leads us to the single most important question regarding illegal immigration: Do immigrants from one country have a right to immigrate into any country they choose? If so, what is this right based on? International law? But that would be absurd because international law is an attempt to codify the responsibilities that sovereign, independent countries have toward one another. Natural law? ... surely Pelosi doesn't even know what natural law is. Conventional law? But conventional law in the United States prohibits illegal immigration.

In other words, Pelosi can point to no objective standard to support her claim that denying illegal immigrants amnesty -- and college tuition -- is "not fair."

In the same report, Pelosi declares that a border fence "is a terrible idea" because it divides local communities. By this she means border towns, such as Laredo and Nuevo Laredo. Again, what is the hidden message here? ... National sovereignty is irrelevant. What is important is the sense of community that binds people together. But isn't this sense of community at the basis of national sovereignty to begin with? You can't have it both ways. Communities require borders. Communities require a sense of self-identity. Communities, in other words, require fences of one kind or another.

One final word ... If you want to read more about why U.S. citizens who actually live on the border want a fence, read this shocking article in Time Magazine.

All this is to say that comprehensive immigration reform must begin with ... securing the border.

Crusty Old Fitzsimon Piece makes Observer

For some reason, the Charlotte Observer decided to run an old piece from Chris Fitzsimon -- one that we debunked more than a month ago! In it, he argues that the General Assembly and Governor haven't been raiding the Highway Trust Fund. And he's either lying or ignorant of the truth. I think the former, because surely he read our post.

But also: doesn't the McClatchy want first rights? And wouldn't they like their writers not to obscure the truth? (If the Observer wants old crap, I've got a few pieces they can run.)
-Max Borders

Socialized Healthcare: A Warning from Kentucky

Jim Waters from the Bluegrass Institute in Kentucky writes today what should serve as a warning to those here in NC that think the best remedy for our health care system is more government.

He recounts Kentucky's failed experiment with "universal health care" which began back in 1994:

It was called the Kentucky Health Care Reform Act. And it destroyed the state’s health-insurance system. Within a couple of years of passage of this government invasion, all except one of the state’s providers left Kentucky.

Think a move toward "universal coverage" will help reduce the number of uninsured? Think again:

Premiums jumped between 36 percent and 165 percent, which resulted in fewer – fewer – Kentuckians with the capability to afford health care coverage. Ironically, more people went without coverage. Today, 19 percent of working-age Kentuckians – more than a half-million workers – go without.

Mr. Waters is concerned that Kentucky might continue on with their mistaken policy. We should be concerned that North Carolina seems determined to make the same mistake. 

Policy Watch's Chief Scientist Offers "Reality Check"

Rob Schofield, ever one to drop hyperbole bombs on fact and rational argument, doesn't get through the first paragraph of this "reality check" before offering us names David Duke and John Birch. Not surprising from the camp that accuses reasonable anthropogenic climate skeptics of being "holocaust deniers" and "flat earthers." (The level of groupthink has reached a fever pitch, and the complicit media are marching in lockstep. It's the "if it's on NPR, it must be true" level of reflection.) Here's a slice of Schofield's vacuity:

Lately, as the evidence has mounted [has it?], the right has favored the “nothing we can do” [without dismantling civilization] argument: “Well, global warming may be taking place and humans may be playing a role, but it’s not really that big of a deal and, anyway, there’s nothing we can do about it.” Mix in a little of the “nothing we can do” [four Nobel Laureate economists and many more agree] take with the “environmentalist conspiracy” [watermelon groupthink] argument (as in, “the whole global warming thing has been trumped up my meddling tree huggers who just want us to abandon modern capitalism and move back to the stone age”), and you’ve got a pretty good idea of the Locke line in 2007.

At the heart of all of this nonsense, of course, is the right’s messianic [if you call understanding economics messianic] obsession with the genius of “the market” – their notion that when society does anything intentionally or collectively [read: coorcively or bureaucratically] to control the unfettered pursuit and possession of “property,” [or time, or services, or family fun, or philanthropy] it is somehow altering the divinely ordained [no] rules of the universe [yes, laws of organization complex systems].

We can only awe at Schofield's firm grasp on economics and climatology. He drafts his most recent diatribe with all the verve of a college freshmen who's just joined Earth Club. It's no secret that the left's only instruments of persuasion are smart-assedness and fear-fongering. Schofield, heavy on the former, polishes it off with a little hyperbole and a lot of guilt-by-association allusions verging on the absurd. For those unreflective greenie hoards to whom Schofield provides fodder, real "public policy" would fry their neural circuitry. But if Schofield ever decides to think critically about the issue, there are some places he can go.
-Max Borders

Colleges and Civics Literacy: A Failing Grade

That college seniors know so little about America’s history and political thought is something many of us have long suspected. What we may not have known is that some of the most expensive and highly regarded colleges and universities in the country are some of the worst at teaching about our nation’s history and our public institutions.  Those are the findings of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s (ISI) Report on national civic literacy, Failing our Students, Failing America: Holding Colleges Accountable for Teaching America’s History and Institutions.

The ISI study, the second such in as many years, reports that the nation’s college freshmen and seniors again scored just over 50 percent, or an F on the exam. The findings hopefully serve to fuel reform efforts on all our college campuses –  and especially on some of most expensive, where it is evident money doesn’t buy knowledge. Cornell, Yale, Duke and Princeton were near the bottom in the civic literacy rankings outranked by smaller, lesser-known institutions like Marian College of Wisconsin and Concordia University of Nebraska. The University of North Carolina Chapel-Hill ranked 24th out of 50 institutions. Sobering but necessary reading.  To find out more:  http://americancivicliteracy.org.

Me Fail English? That's Unpossible

Remember the announcment from a couple of days ago by Eddie Davis (the teachers union's head grammarian) that he would run for Superintendent of Public Instruction? Over at The Soup, Miss Dish adds a few more layers of irony than we could dig up in our original post.

The Red Clay Citizen was quick to point out the glaring typo in Eddie’s announcement. There is certainly an enjoyable paradox when grammatical errors befuddle candidates promising to improve public schools, but RCC missed the bonus fact that Davis is a former high school English teacher... for 30 years. Every kid that failed grammer can smirk.

As if that weren't enough...

But wait, there's more for the “do as I say, not as I do” category. Remember, Davis said the reason for NCAE’s decision to move up its gubernatorial endorsement was, "If we're going to be worker bees, we can't wait." But Davis is a taking a much more lackadaisical approach himself, telling the AP he doesn't plan to step down from his president's post to campaign. "The rigors of the campaign may cause me to take some leave" only in the weeks leading up to the May primary, he said. Davis also promised he wouldn't use NCAE’s databases to contact its 70,000 members for politicking. Please.

Good luck with all that, Eddie. (S - u - p - e - r - i - n... where was I?)

For the NRDC, the Truth Must Sting

(Cross-posted from EnvironmentNC.)

Joel Schwartz dissects the NRDC ozone "study" Heat Advisory with much gusto. Here's a sliver from his conclusion over at Planet Gore:

Heat Advisory is a cynical exercise in manipulation and fear-mongering masquerading as science. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that NRDC manufactures bogus increases in ozone in order to scare people (and then dissembles further when someone like me calls them on it). After all, environmentalists derive their power from public fear and outrage. Where there is no legitimate reason for fear and outrage, environmental groups and some scientists have shown themselves to be only too willing to manufacture it.

(Ouch. That must smart.) Read the whole thing.
-Max Borders

Think-Tank Equity

In case you missed yesterday's John Hood post on NC think tanks, here's a choice bit:

I’ve just started a new assessment, but my guess is that the proportions will not have changed much in the past couple of years. Oddly, many politicos in Raleigh are under the impression that conservative and free-market groups in North Carolina are more numerous and better-funded than their lefty counterparts, neither of which has ever been true.

So is this mendacity or ignorance on the part of these "politicos"? Either way, the left has some explaining to do about "big political money" -- and this extends not just to the realm of thinktanks, but also to political campaigns.
-Max Borders

Reforming the H-2A Program for North Carolina

Last night I happened to find myself chatting with Senator Fred Smith (R-Johnston) about agriculture and illegal immigration. It surprised me to learn from Senator Smith, who is also running for governor, that agriculture is still the leading industry in North Carolina, contributing almost $70 billion to the state’s economy and employing over 20 percent of the work force.

As I pointed out to Senator Smith, though, it’s difficult to run a farm these days without feeling that you have to hire illegal immigrants. It’s not that these good folks –- salt of the earth –- want to hire illegal or “undocumented” workers, it’s that they think they have to in order to stay profitable. I suppose, though, that Fred Smith could make the same excuse about any of his housing developments. As a resident of Hedingham, I can personally testify that the Fred Smith Company doesn’t hire illegal aliens to do maintenance and groundskeeping on their properties. Yet the company doesn’t seem to have any problem finding and keeping qualified laborers.

In any case, the real question we have to ask is whether farmers have to break the law (by hiring illegal immigrants) to stay in business. According to the National Council of Agricultural Employers, the answer is yes. According to Fred Smith, the answer is no. In this regard, Senator Smith mentioned the need to improve the federal H-2A program. The H-2A program permits U.S. farms to hire what are referred to as “nonimmigrant workers (H-2A workers) to perform agricultural labor or services of a temporary or seasonal nature.” In order to participate in the program employers must certify that they have not only attempted to fill seasonal positions with U.S. citizens, but are also attempting “to engage in the positive recruitment of U.S. workers.” All workers must be paid at the highest of the following rates: the Adverse Effect Wage Rate [AEWR], which is $9.02 an hour for North Carolina, the state minimum wage ($6.15 an hour in North Carolina), or the local prevailing wage. Hence, in North Carolina agricultural workers enrolled in the H-2A program are generally paid at least $9.02 an hour, or $18,761 a year (2,080 hours).

Now, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the average median hourly wage for farmworkers and laborers in North Carolina is $7.88 an hour. For this reason, not a few farmers are hesitant to use the H-2A program, which would force them to pay significantly higher wages than the state average.

This past August, however, the Bush administration announced that it would be streamlining the H-2A (and related H-2B) programs as part of the Border Security and Immigration Administrative Reform initiative. In addition to making the program easier to use, the White House is requiring employers to electronically verify worker documentation (better known as the “no-match rule”).

To this reform, we might suggest two more. First, petition the federal government to suspend the AEWR rate for H-2A employees and replace this rate with the local prevailing wage, so long as this wage does not fall below the state minimum wage. Second -– and more likely in the short-term -– use money from the Golden LEAF Foundation (tobacco settlement money) to create a fund that agricultural employers can use to hire workers under the H-2A program.

Finally, none of this will do any good ... until we Secure the Border.

You Made Your Bed

Hooker Odom doesn't like that private facilities prostitute themselves to get money from the public coffers (no pun) and that their executives make big bucks. But such is the nature of a system in which there is no check on facilities that get to ding the state willy-nilly every time they "serve" a poor person at the taxpayers' expense. Can you say "block grant"?
-Max Borders

Goodyear at it Again

Apparently, Goodyear is threatening to pull out in another state, so Ohioans are offering to build them some Taj Mahal that will require eminent domain abuse. I don't know what is worse, the corporate welfare here or the eminent domain abuse there.

No use in picking just on Goodyear, though, I'm sure the incentives game is being played everywhere around the country.
-Max Borders

N.C. Schools: Test Score Echo Chamber?

While NC bureaucrats are congratulating themselves on new state testing data, alternative views of the apparent success are beginning to emerge... 

See this policy piece.

-Max Borders

UAW Concedes to GM

So says the headline of this Business Week article, and basically, if you read what has been revealed about the contract, that is basically the case.

GM gets:
Offloading of health care program to the union
Lower starting salaries for new hires
Reduction in "Jobs Bank" program
A two-tiered wage structure

UAW gets:
No wage or benefit reductions (notice, no increase either)
A commitment from GM to invest in US factories (although no specifics are given)

There are some that theorize that the strike by the UAW was simply a ploy to show their rank-and-file members that they were fighting the "man," when all along, they knew they really had a very weak bargaining position.  Thus a 2-day, practically meaningless strike.

Capitalism wins, labor loses, there is no other way to read this.

Healthcare: My Tax Dollars for This?

This appallingly biased healthcare "forum" is co-sponsored by the UNC School of Social Work and the League of Women voters. OK, so maybe the latter... But how in the world can UNC get away with using our state's resources to sponsor an event so blatantly partisan?

Here are the plans for discussion: Hillary Clinton's Health Choice Plan; Barack Obama's Health Care Plan; John Edwards' Health Care Overview; Dennis Kucinich's Health Care Plan; Suggested Background Readings -- All of which is another way of asking: which type of top-down, socialized, rationed, price-controlled, mandated, regulated, distorted, expensive, special-interest forming, otherwise Rube Goldbergian healthcare system do we want to "create" like the Lord on high?

(I see Adam Searing has been asked to appear. Adam, my invitation to debate you on healthcare is still very much open. Afraid of good ideas?)
-Max Borders

NCCivitas.org

We heard your pleas, your plaintive cries to bring you something you could navigate easily and experience  without encountering those baleful letters - P - D - F.

Welcome to the new site. (After much toil, blood, sweat, and tears...) We will also be updating the site with a new event registration system, robust newsletter capability, and more. Stay tuned.
-Max Borders

PS: Thanks to the great work of these folks.

WRAL on Pollution and Transit

This article on WRAL is not only bad journalism, but bad propaganda:

As the Triangle grows, traffic grows, and so grows air pollution.

This is flat wrong. Air pollution over time continues to decrease. "Growing" air pollution is not the same thing as failure to comply with EPA standards for air quality, because air quality standards keep getting lowered so EPA bureaucrats can keep their jobs. Don't believe me? Read this (pdf, page 38) or this.

Currently, the area does not comply with the Environmental Protection Agency's standards for air quality.

Note the conflation? Check this out:

"Our air pollution problems don't come from factories, they primarily come from cars," said John Hodges-Copple, the planning director for the Triangle J Council of Governments, the regional planning group for Wake, Durham, Orange and surrounding counties. "So, whatever we do, transportation-wise, that will have the long-term effect."

We don't need to do anything except wait for cars to continue to gain in fuel efficiency as they have over the last 30 years.

Studies indicate that during the heaviest commute times in the Triangle, nine out of 10 vehicles have one person on board.

So what? I don't take my wife to work with me. Cramming people into a $1billion+ cylinder doesn't move people where they need to go any faster or more efficiently - or with less energy usage - than cars on a street. This trolley fixation is just downright ridiculous.

Trains and buses could help take cars and pollution off the road, but the Triangle Transit Authority's commuter rail plan was put on hold after the federal government declined to help fund it.

By one percent for one year -- and at the cost of more than a billion dollars? This light rail thing could have been conceived by a patient in a mental health facility who's not getting enough Haldol.
-Max Borders

The DREAM Act: In-state Tuition for Illegal Immigrants, but not U.S. Citizens

Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) has announced that he is again going to introduce legislation to provide amnesty to illegals who entered the United States as children (under age 16). Called the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, the bill could be voted on this week as an amendment to the defense authorizations bill.

In its original incarnation, the DREAM Act required that illegals who receive amnesty under the legislation likewise be granted in-state college tuition. At the same time, the bill would have repealed a current federal law that prohibits states from granting illegal immigrants in-state tuition unless these states also extended the same tuition break to all U.S. citizens. Notes a recent Heritage report:

What is less well known about the DREAM Act is that it also allows illegal aliens to receive in-state tuition rates at public universities, discriminating against U.S. citizens from out of state and law-abiding foreign students. It repeals a 1996 federal law that pro­hibits any state from offering in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens unless the state also offers in-state tuition rates to all U.S. citizens.

As currently written, Durbin's amendment would permit illegals to "earn" their citizenship through either enrolling in college or entering the military. If the amendment passes -- even without the mandatory tuition break for illegals -- expect many states to act on their own to extend in-state tuition to illegals. As Heritage reports, 10 states are already granting such benefits to illegals -- in blatant violation of federal law.

As for earning citizenship through military service, this is a noble idea that has been used to great success in the Philippines, for instance. Any such program for citizens of other countries, however, will have to be designed so that it does not reward people for breaking U.S. immigration laws. Under the DREAM Act, not only would we excuse illegal immigration, we'd reward it with a subsidized college education.

Finally, none of this will do any good ... until we Secure the Border.

Water Bans and a Drought of Prices

Sigh. Why are we stuck with rationing and other ridiculous, restrictive solutions to something as basic as water? Because government planners are afraid to use prices. Normal prices. That's right, you don't need to ration, restrict, ban or otherwise interfere with a water market. People are basically rational and respond to prices much better than bans. This is why the government shouldn't be doing much of anything (much less supplying our basic needs).
-Max Borders

Dieting for Dollars?

The media are going bonkers over this UNC study that showed people will diet for financial incentives. Frighteningly, this comes from the school of "Public Health" -- as if obesity has anything to do with the public. (Incentives matter -- duh. A little econ never hurt anybody.)

But how about this for a financial incentive? Let health insurers charge higher premiums to heavier people -- just as they do with smoking. Now that's an incentive.
-Max Borders (HT: Chris Hayes)

Reactions to UAW Strike

MSNBC has a list of Democratic Presidential nominees' reaction to the UAW strike, and it typical left-wing pandering, they all side with the plight of the unions.

So, in the interests of fairness, I'll provide a somewhat different reaction:

Shut up, get back to work, and be thankful you have a job.  Your outrageous demands and overly-generous benefits are so out of whack with the market that the companies you work for are being driven to the edge of bankruptcy.  Maybe you should have your union boss remind you about what happens to your job and that precious union contract under Chapter 11 bankruptcy. 

Healthcare: Schofield's Bizarre Definition of Success

Rob Schofield over at Policy Watch writes about the SCHIP expansion being debated in DC. Just like every social ill (real or imagined), he thinks that the solution lies in bigger government (I know, I know - big surprise).

One thing I did find curious, was part of his description of SCHIP as a "successful" program:

SCHIP is one of the most successful government human services programs in recent American history. Since it was initiated in 1997, the number of uninsured poor children has actually declined by a third, even as the number of uninsured American children overall has risen.

I'll wait a minute for it to sink in....

That's right, a program designed to lower the number of uninsured children is deemed a success in Schofield's eyes, even though "the number of uninsured American children overall has risen."

I simply can not make this stuff up.

Unions running DPI?

Eddie Davis, the head of the teacher's union in NC, the NC Association of Educators, announced today that he is running for Superintendent of Public Instruction.

"I strong [sic] believe that my candidacy will bring excitement, hope, and the joy of learning to citizens from Murphy to Manteo," Davis announced in an email.

Perhaps the joy of proper adverb usage will become a plank in his education platform, as well.

Isn't electing the head of the teachers' union to run the public schools akin to naming the UAW boss as the CEO of General Motors?

If elected, will Davis collectively bargain with himself?

Zero-sum Game, Positive-Sum World

(Cross-posted from EnvironmentNC.)

Greens are all excited about this publically-funded game from the people who bring you NPR. It’s supposed to teach us lessons about environmental sustainability, much in the same way Frogger sent us messages about the fate of endangered amphibean species.

Anyway, if they must take my tax dollars to build educational video games about resource allocation, I really wish they’d do so with an eye to some actual resources economics.

Here are a couple other ones that people might enjoy (don't worry, you weren't forced to pay for these):

Liberty Arcade (See Tragedy of the Commons and Gains from Trade — Not a big fan of the bunny game, personally, but it gets the point across.)
-Max Borders

Hilarycare Redux

When Hillary and healthcare are in the same sentence, some of us tremble. And for good reason: her latest foray into government healthcare planning is scary. And while Hillarycare redux is not healthcare a la Castro, it certainly preserves much of the worst in the status quo while adding more troubles still.

Clinton, for example, wants not only to preserve the distorted tax code that ties healthcare to employment, she wants employers to pay for it -- or else. How many marginal businesses – large and small – could such a plan tip into bankruptcy? It’s difficult to say, but it should make us shudder. 

Clinton’s plan becomes “universal” in that it requires all individuals to get insurance – including millionaires. It’s the stick over the carrot. And while the Clinton plan borrows the carrot idea (tax credits) from the right, she preserves, nay worsens, the whole regulatory edifice that currently makes insurance so expensive.

In a final stroke of political genius, Clinton decides to keep the private market of insurers around to do the dirty work. Why? Not because she particularly likes private insurers (she proved she didn’t in 1993); but rather because she knows she can harvest campaign contributions from the insurance industry.

(Note: I'm still waiting for Adam Searing to debate me. Come on, Adam, let's rumble.)

The Sky is not Falling

Here's a children's book for your green friends about global warming and the environment. (Holly Fretwell is a great environmentalist by the way -- the right kind.)

Greens: Is History Repeating Itself?

(Cross-posted from Environment NC.)

I would encourage anyone who is concerned about the environment - and, indeed, involved in environmental causes - to take a look at this (pdf) history of the environmental movement called "Hysteria's History".

When taken as a whole, there are some particularly damning items for which the Green Movement has never been held accountable. The consequences of some green regulations have gone from counterproductive to genocidal. Tough language to be sure. But see for yourself.

(See also this piece on ozone, which has ominous parallels with today's global warming hysteria.)
-Max Borders

Save the Children: Promote Globalization & Capitalism

Rich Lowry at National Review writes about the good news just released by a United Nations Children's Fund report, which finds that deaths of young children worldwide have hit an all-time low. This coincides with research by the World Bank "reporting global poverty rates had fallen as part of an extraordinary worldwide economic boom."

According to the World Bank, developing countries have averaged 3.9 percent growth since 2000, contributing “to rapidly falling poverty rates in all developing regions over the past few years.” In 1990, 1.25 billion people lived on less than $1 a day. In 2004, less than a billion did, even though world population increased 20 percent in the interim.

Furthermore:

China and India have led the way in growth, with the fastest- and second-fastest-growing major economies in the world. Thus, what have been sinks of human misery on a vast scale for centuries are becoming more livable. China accounted for almost all the recent drop in people living on less than $1 a day, experiencing a decline of 300 million since 1990. India has seen its mortality rate for children under the age of 5 decline from 123 per 1,000 in 1990 to 74 in 2005.

Basically, economic growth can save millions of lives. Of course, India and China have liberalized their economy over the last couple of decades - leading to such tremendous advances. The best way for people to "lift themselves out of poverty" is not more government programs, but an infusion of capitalism. According to the World Bank report, such economic growth in emerging countries can be attributed to:

“further integration into world markets, better functioning internal markets and rising demand for many commodities.”

Take note all you anti-globalists and anti-capitalists: the cure to international poverty is the very medicine you despise.

What? No Special Session?

I don't mean to make light of people losing their jobs, but yesterday, Henredon Furniture announced it was closing its plant in Morganton (Burke County) plant, laying off 520 workers.

So I have to ask, why didn't the state hold a special session to give a cash payment to Henredon to bribe them to keep the plant open? 

Burke is a Tier 1 county and has suffered tremendous losses as furniture manufacturers have fled the state.  According to the NC Employment Security Commission, the unemployment rate in Burke (6.8%) is a full percentage point higher than that of Cumberland's (5.8%).

So why is it then that the General Assembly can't write a check fast enough to "save" Goodyear in Cumberland County, but completely ignores job losses in Burke?

Is it because the plant isn't union run?  Or because the Senate Majority Leader isn't from that county?

Questions of motive begin to come about when government tries to decide winners and losers.   It also opens the door to corruption as we saw when Jim Black picked winners and losers based on how thick of an envelope he received in the bathroom.

Level the playing field and stop the opportunity for corruption.  End incentives now and cut the corporate tax rate.  Heck, you may just save some jobs in the process.

Googled from Behind

If you haven't had a chance yet, please take time to read this article in today's News & Observer updating the Google project in Caldwell County.  If this doesn't emphasize how fundamentally flawed the incentive shell game is, I don't know what will.

It turns out that after waiving Google's property taxes for the next 30 years, the Caldwell County Commissioners turned around and raised property taxes on everyone else by 22.2%!

Unbelievable.

Hopefully as more things like this are revealed, the tide will begin to turn on this incentive game.  Would Caldwell County residents still have supported the Google deal if they knew their property tax bills were going up by nearly one-fourth? I guess they'll have a referendum on that next fall when those Commissioners stand for re-election.

Medicaid: Physician Crowd-Out & Socialism

A physician, who read my TCS piece from today on healthcare, just sent me a chilling note:

I read with interest your article in TCS this morning about the role of government in creating a crisis in health services provision. I'm not sure you understand how purposefully Leninist (the worse, the better) the regulators are, but here's a story, now 25 years old, that makes the point.

I was a young doctor, opening an office in a poor neighborhood of a Northeastern city. Lots of my patients had Medicaid.

My office was physically in a hospital, across the hall from the outpatient department/ER. I was horrified to find that Medicaid paid me $8 for an office visit that cost me $26 to roll out, without any profit for me. I was even more horrified to find that if I walked across the hall and did the same visit in the hospital outpatient department, they would pay the hospital $192.

Being a naive young man, I saw an opportunity to craft a win-win situation (if only Stalin knew). I went downtown to meet with the regulators. "Have I got a deal for you", I said. "You raise my OV to $46. Send all the outpatient visits to me. I make $20 profit/visit, you save $146/visit, my volume goes up so I can stay here and make a nice income, the patients get better care, and the taxpayers make out".

Big mistake.

I learned that day that the MOST IMPORTANT THING to Medicaid was to drive me out of business. If they gave me $46, $20 would leave "the system" to buy food for my family, a baseball glove for my son, a sports car, God knows what. If they gave the hospital $192, all of it would stay "in the system" to hire friends of the regulators to interpret the regulations, become community activists, expand the payroll in various ways desired by the state, and, most importantly of all, no one would "profit".

The most important thing this taught me was actually not that they were out to screw me, personally. The most important thing was that they were out to make sure that NO DOCTOR could afford to work anywhere where there were lots of poor people. One or two $8 office visits a week if most of your patients were middle class was no big deal. 70% of your visits losing $18/unit was a very, very big deal.

Well, I've moved on (obviously), the patients still have no doctors, and the crisis gets worse.

Which is just how they like it. Everything is proceeding according to plan.

(Chilling, indeed. -Max Borders)

What Do Oregon and Mexico Have in Common?

In case you missed this on Drudge ...

Some Oregon high schools are adopting Mexico's public school curriculum to help educate Spanish-speaking students with textbooks, an online Web site, DVDs and CDs provided free by Mexico to teach math, science and even U.S. history.

The Oregon Department of Education and Mexico's Secretariat of Public Education are discussing aligning their curricula so courses will be valid in both countries.

Similar ventures are under way in Yakima, Wash., San Diego, Calif., and Austin, Texas.

I was going to blog about how dangerous this movement toward North American integration has become, but I think I'll just let this piece of news soak in for a while.

Jameson Taylor

PS - Anyone out there have a new North Carolina license? The one with the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA) hologram on the back?

Ominous Parallels

Joel Liebermann shows how the Ozone scare of the 80s turned out to be naturally variable, with ozone holes leveling off during the 90s -- too soon for the Montreal Protocol. Parallels with global warming are striking.

The major difference is that there is a lot more at stake. Indeed, the left apparently has an independent reason to redistribute global wealth and target the corporations they most hate.

Are "The People" Dumb?

At Civitas' poll luncheon yesterday, several people asked why North Carolina voters say they disagree with the direction our state is headed in, yet continue to vote the same old politicians into office. Citing Walter Williams' column, "Stupid, Ignorant or Biased?" one attendee wondered whether voters are just plain stupid. Or, as former FDR adviser (and alleged Soviet agent) Harry Hopkins once quipped, "Tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect, because the people are too damn dumb to know the difference."

So are the people really that dumb? Another way of asking this question is, "What are the limits of reason?" Or, even more to the point for an organization like Civitas, "What are the limits of public policy?" If the people really are so dumb that they are moved more by desire and passion, or force and fraud (as Hobbes puts it), than by prudent discourse, then the endeavor of influencing public opinion via public policy is doomed - or, at the very least, misguided. In short, if the people are that "dumb," then they are not moved by public policy - but only by rhetoric, or as we call it nowadays, ideology, or even, propaganda.

Of course, if this is the case, then the question becomes whether all "the people" are the same? More precisely, is there a distinction - based on reason - between the many and the few? And, if that is the case, then is public policy really just the province of the few? To simplify things quite a bit, in the modern technocratic state (as envisioned by FDR, Hopkins and others) the few are those experts who have obtained the knowledge necessary to rule on behalf of the people. If this is the case, then public policy - in its purest form (see the work, for instance, of the CFR or of Rand) - exists to influence this group of people. Another alternative, suggested by Plato and clarified for modern readers by Leo Strauss, is that the few aren't very interested in public policy at all. In any case, neither theory seems to permit that public policy is much good at influencing "public opinion."

...And The American Way

While I was walking back from lunch today I overheard a portion of a conversation by two men on the street.  One guy said, "I hate the government, I swear, I hate everyone one of them.  I can't stand our government."  I couldn't help but think of the irony of that statement.  It is because of our government that we are able to stand on the street and proclaim hatred for that very entity.   Would such vitriol be allowed on the streets of Cuba, Venezuela, perhaps Iran?  I think not.  That must mean we have a good government - not perfect - but good.  Sure they spend too much, argue too much, accomplish too little...and if you've tried to get a passport in the last six months, you are probably considering staging a coup..but it's still the best thing going.  Some students down in Jena, Louisiana also understand that.  Today nearly 40,000 of them converged on the small town to request, scratch that, demand justice for a group of local students.  There is no doubt that the students committed a crime.  There is little debate that they should be punished.  But the group of students from all parts of the country have gone down to remind local officials that one thing that makes our government good is equality and justice for all citizens.  Despite the fact that the usual suspects (Sharpton and Jackson) are there, there seems to be an understanding of the need eschew injustice everywhere we can in order to protect justice everywhere we can. 

Church Weighs in on Advance Directives

Those of you who followed the passage of HB 634 (now S.L. 2007-502) might be interested in recent guidance from the Catholic Church clarifying that the provision of food and water (by natural or artificial means) to a patient in a vegetative state is morally obligatory. Dr. Elizabeth Wickham, head of LifeTree, notes that the Church's teaching on this point raises troubling questions regarding North Carolina's new law:

The Church teaches that we cannot authorize through living wills, health care power of attorneys, POLST/MOST forms, etc. the withholding or withdrawing of artificial nutrition and hydration under the vague conditions permitted by the legislation. Take for example the conditions in the new NC standard Living Will form. Called an "Advance Directive for Natural Death" the standard LW form in H634 invites the declarant to authorize the withholding or withdrawing of life-prolonging measures, which include artificial nutrition and hydration, if the declarant:

a)  Has an incurable or irreversible condition that will result in the declarant's death within a relatively short period of time, or;

b)  Becomes unconscious and, to a high degree of medical certainity, will never regain consciousness, or;

c)  Suffers from advanced dementia or any other condition resulting from the substantial loss of cognitive ability and that loss, to a high degree of medical certainity, is not reversible.

For the record, nowhere in the bill are terms such as "relatively short period of time," "to a high degree of medical certainity," or "advanced dementia" ever defined.

These three conditions stand in stark contrast to the conditions listed in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith document explaining the very limited circumstances under which artificial nutrition and hydration can be withheld or withdrawn. 

To learn more, see Civitas’ Life/Family Issues Recap.

Jameson Taylor

Civitas Poll Released Today

Poll in pdf.

(Missed you today, Justin. Next time.)

Do Better Trained Teachers = Better Students? Some Surprising Results

Better trained teachers lead to improved performance and achievement for North Carolina’s students. That’s the argument that won over the General Assembly in 1995 when it passed legislation to award teachers who earn National Board Professional Teaching Standards certification (NBPTS) automatic salary increases of 12 percent. In addition, the legislation also allowed teachers to be reimbursed by the state for up to $2,500 in costs related to acquiring certification.  The law has helped to make North Carolina home to over 11,300 NBPTS certified teachers, by far, the highest number of any state in the nation.

In a new study, “The Effects of NBPTS-Certified Teachers on Student Achievement,” two researchers, Douglas Harris and Tim Sass test the effectiveness of NBPTS certified teachers in Florida in the areas of math and reading. The results are instructive. Harris and Sass found that while NBPTS teachers may be above peer teachers initially, after receiving certification, many of these teachers tend to lose their edge. More important, Harris and Sass found that math teachers, who become certified, end up being more effective with high achieving students. But when working with students from low-socioeconomic status, researchers found no difference in effectiveness between certified and non-certified teachers.Bottom line: The efficacy of NBPTS as a tool for improving student learning is questionable, at best.

Specific costs for the NBPTS program in NC are hard to gather, but my conservative estimates place costs in the $7-$9 million range, most likely more.  Is the public investment worth it if there is no increase in student achievement? The education establishment won’t likely give this report a second look. You should.   

Civic Illiteracy

Sadly, this years report on civic literacy among college students isn't much better than the last.

I wrote about last year's here. Here's a slice, which I think still applies:

It’s no secret universities have long been dominated by competing agendas. But none of these include basic civic literacy. “Diversity” curricula like global awareness, minority studies and various non-traditional disciplines have come into vogue. It’s not so much a conspiracy as a herd mentality among academic elites. Study of basic institutions gets passed over in favor of “alternative” subjects.

But apparently, there are opportunity costs. If the ISI survey tells us anything, it’s that students are implicitly asking “alternative to what?” Socialist economics and obscure cultural theories are evidently the new baseline of comparison.

None of this is to suggest students should be inculcated with a particular worldview. But they should be offered greater options — particularly if their school receives government funding. And under no circumstances should state universities be allowed to leave civic literacy out of the core curriculum.

Private universities are just that — private. So if they want to offer “History 101: From Mother Goddess to Marx,” then fine. But when a loud, activist professoriat at UNC-Chapel Hill rejects millions of dollars in private funding for a Western Civ program, while cutting the ribbon on a Black History and Culture center built with public money, something’s gone wrong.

Do your college kids know more about Rigoberta Menchu than Patrick Henry? Have they read more Marx and Engels than Locke and Hume? Are they asked to share stories of phallo-logo-centric abuse in required courses, but can’t explain the Bill of Rights? Is their idea of “democracy” populist rebellions and land reforms, or based on the Constitution and private property?

Some of North Carolina's colleges appear in the rankings -- but no school scored higher than D+. Sad.

Hoyle 50/50 on Returning

Longtime Senate stalwart and Finance Committee Chairman David Hoyle is 50/50 on seeking another term in the NC Senate reports NCFREE in an interview with its President John Davis.

The seat leans Republican, and his departure could put another seat in play in the GOP's attempt to take over the chamber.

Indoctrinate U

A new film by indy producers exposing the leftwing higher ed propaganda cloister.

(Update: article by the maker of the film done for the Pope Center for Higher Ed).

#3 with a Bullet!

Wanted to thank all you readers out there who have made Red Clay Citizen the #3 "Most Influential" Political Blog in North Carolina according to the website blognetnews.com.  (Yeah, we've never heard of them either, but it's my favorite website now!).

We'll continue to work hard to try and take over #1, but that Beckwith guy over at Dome is relentless.  The man is a posting machine, but we hope to be up to the challenge.

Notably absent from the list of top 20 are our friends at the Progressive Pulse and the Locker Room.

I'm not sure about the accuracy of the Top 20, but heck, it's just nice to know someone out there is reading.

Reforming the Reform: Healthcare 2008

Billary is at it again. "HillaryCare 2.0" - socialized medicine for America - could be on its way to a hospital near you. The alternative? -- apparently the Massachusetts-style insurance connector program proposed by Mitt Romney. The two programs are similar in that the government will require everyone to have health insurance (even illegal immigrants? -- Uh ... Billary doesn't know yet). The key difference is that Hillary's plan offers both a system of public insurance and private insurance (which, regardless of what she claims, means government-run health insurance as taxpayer-subsidized insurance will certainly crowd out insurance sold on the private market); in Romney's plan, the private market will be used to provide what, in effect, is taxpayer-subsidized insurance.

Dr. Sven Larson, though, has a solution ... in short, he proposes reforming the reform ... reforming the Romney model so as to make the most of its dependence on the free market. In his new book, Larson proposes creating a national version of the Romney plan using the following guidelines:

1) Build a national connector that sells insurance plans from all states.

2) Create a small business pool within the connector so that small businesses can get rates similar to those available under ERISA.

3) Permit single state registration -- that is, permit any plan registered in one state to be sold in all states.

4) Delay the mandatory insurance requirement for three years so that we can evaluate how well these free market reforms have worked.

5) Preserve Medicaid for the poor - instead of expanding it (for example, via NC Kids Care) to the middle class.

6) Eliminate price controls -- and let the free market and competition make private coverage truly affordable.

To read more, check out Sven's book: A Prescription for 2008. And when you finish that, make sure to pick up a copy of the Civitas Guide to Healthcare Policy that Sven and I wrote this past summer.

Tampon Cookies and Other Strategery

MoveOn.org is getting a lot of extra press from its Petraeus Betray Us ads. Apparently, George Lakoff is helping out. I know Lakoff from his work on metaphor (that used to be non-partisan). Now he's become a darling of the left, and therefore far less academic, but he knows how to shape perceptions with figures and tropes -- which are often more effective than rational argument. The right should take a page from Lakoff's book (literally and figuratively).

Indeed, there are all sorts of mental models, figurative language and powers of association that people can use to influence others (and change minds). Just yesterday, I saw a talk by a Duke psych prof named Gavin Fitzsimons, who has studies showing the influence of the "contagion effect" on the purchasing habits of folks in grocery stores. You can take a sterile, unopened box of tampons and have them touch an unopened box of cookies (on, say, a display) and people will often refuse the cookies due to subconscious revulsion.

I can see people applying this contagion phenomenon in other media: Run ads with roaches crawling over Hilary Clinton's face. Or repeat the phrase "Jim Black Democrats" whereever possible. Anyway, politics has become a war for hearts and minds and no device is beyond our grasp in a society of free speech and expression. (We've even criticized our counterparts on the left for less-than-artful use of such tactics.)
-Max Borders

Bait and Switch

I know it seems like we're writing a lot on incentives, but some of this stuff is just too good to be true.

Take this article from today's Triangle Business Journal detailing a cash handout from the Governor in the amount of $60,000 from the One North Carolina Fund to Unilever to add 25 jobs to its plant in Hoke County.  And since it's from the One NC Fund, the county and city has to match the state amount, so the total grant is $120,000.

Well, here's the kicker... That specific plant has cut almost 400 jobs in the past 3 years!  Now they are getting paid to hire them back!

The lows keep on being eclipsed in this incentive game.  Hopefully they will end soon.

Balfour on the Knowledge Problem

Central planners take note.  Here's a slice from the Fayetteville Observer piece:

Fayetteville residents should take note of Memphis, Tenn., which has aggressively used tax incentives in an attempt to create jobs. For 18 years the city’s program offered property tax exemptions to select companies adding jobs in the city. The result? A study by George Mason University’s Mercatus Center revealed that Memphis’ unemployment rate ballooned from the national average in 1990 to 7 percent in 2006 — two full percentage points above the national average. Furthermore, the poverty rate in Memphis grew to 21.5 percent, twice the national average.

Here's why incentives don't work in the abstract:

In his classic essay “Individualism and Economic Order,” Nobel Prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek tackled perhaps the most fatal flaw of central economic planning. As Hayek saw it, possibly the greatest single point that separates free-market advocates and those that favor strong government intervention in the economy is a “dispute about whether planning is to be done centrally, by one authority for the whole economic system, or is to be divided among many individuals.” This sentiment was a perfect summary of the current contrast between economic incentive supporters and critics.

Hayek argued that the sea of knowledge necessary to grow the economy and create value for society simply can not be held by any individual, or even a committee of lawmakers. Rather, such knowledge is dispersed among millions of individual actors making decisions that affect their own interests. When lawmakers intervene in the economy in an attempt to add jobs, they are delving into a complex system that involves literally millions of varied priorities, needs and outlooks contained in the collective — yet dispersed — knowledge of consumers and entrepreneurs.

Hot Air

Joel Schwartz shreds this fake report by the NRDC (picked up by NPR, if I recall):

Here’s how NRDC faked its future air pollution increases: they used air pollutant emissions during 1996 to “predict” ozone levels in the 2050s and 2080s. Actual emissions of ozone-forming pollutants are already more than 25% lower than they were in 1996 and will drop another 70%-80% in just the next 20 years, based on already-adopted and implemented federal requirements.

Wasn't it Goebbels who said the big lies are the ones most likely to be believed? I don't trust NPR any more than Fox. The former I trust less because their MO is to let overly articulate pe