The Maryland Heights Planning and Zoning Commission sounds just a little bit defensive about the city’s ban on new carports:
“We’re not saying anything against anyone who lives in a house with a carport,” said Chuck Caverly, vice chairman of the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission, which recommended the change.
Is [...]
The man who was denied admission to the bar because of his unpaid student loans has once again been told he can’t get a law license.
[...]When I blogged about Michigan’s bill to exempt babysitters from daycare regulations, I didn’t know it imposed a $600 limit. The bill has been signed into law, and babysitters are free to watch kids in peace — as long as they earn less than that amount in a [...]
When I last blogged about the BASIS charter schools, I hadn’t had a chance to watch Two Million Minutes: The Twenty-First Century Solution, which is the fourth in the Two Million Minutes series. Now that I’ve seen the full documentary, I can revisit the question: “Is BASIS [...]
Combest linked today to a Missourinet article about a decline in the state’s transportation funding:
State Transportation Director Pete Rahn has warned lawmakers that transportation funding will soon drop from $1.5 billion dollars to $421 million, which would end the ramped up construction the past few years which has [...]
The Warrensburg Daily Star-Journal weighed in with its position on truck-only lanes for Missouri. Its editorial view is really that truck-only lanes are worth considering and could be good for Missouri, but the paper didn’t stake out a strong view either way. The editorial is mildly disappointing, because although it [...]
As we have written previously, one of the great evils of tax increment financing (TIF) is that it offers special advantages to the beneficiaries selected by elected officials, forcing everyone else in the market to compete at a disadvantage. Sadly, there’s a new example of how destructive this sort of [...]
While they waited in line this morning, I wonder if any Black Friday shoppers read George Will’s op-ed, “The Gift of Not Giving,” in the Washington Post. He explains that holiday-related shopping activities destroy wealth and aggregate utility.
Gifts that people buy for other people are usually poorly matched [...]
The University of Missouri Extension runs a program called the Kindergarten Farm Food Initiative. A newsletter to parents from the beginning of the school year states (emphasis in the original):
your child will enjoy locally grown fruit and vegetable snacks three times a week.
It also characterizes locally grown food [...]
When online schools in Oregon used technology to compete with traditional districts, legislators responded that the virtual schools shouldn’t accept new students until the state can study the matter further. Yet when an Oregon district uses the Internet for crisis management, it’s celebrated as innovative. No one calls [...]
Abby Sunderland, a 16-year-old American, is another sailor who hopes to become the youngest to sail around the world. In a few weeks, she plans to depart for a nonstop six-month voyage.
I haven’t heard about any government criticism of her or any attempts to put her in state custody. That [...]
By way of Edspresso, I see that Pittsburgh is dealing with the same issue that St. Louis did not long ago: Its public school district won’t sell a building to a charter school.
I’m optimistic that this will turn out well for Pittsburgh charters. Districts can dig in [...]
Do U.S. high school students score poorly on math and science tests because of too many commercials and not enough encouragement from Big Bird? If so, a new federal campaign will remedy that. It’s a hodgepodge of initiatives, ranging from science-themed video games in public libraries to commercial-free science [...]
Tyler Cowen is blogging about a study that found No Child Left Behind to have improved student math scores but not reading scores. Cowen comments:
Math skills are more the result of drill, whereas you have to learn how to love to read and much of that happens within the [...]
The Wall Street Journal reports on a bakery that experiences a large increase in demand for pies around Thanksgiving.
Although there is nothing she can do to prevent the occasional customer from scalping her treats in the parking lot — a $12 pie can go for more than $20 — [...]
One of the things I like best about production in a free economy is that consumers don’t have to think about it. If each of us had to pay attention to the details of how all our things are made — where the materials come from, what knowledge is needed [...]
The trial for the man charged with terrorism because of a conversation he had with a telemarketer was originally scheduled to take place this month, but it’s been postponed until Jan. 4 (search case no. 0922-CR03091-01).
Getting angry on the phone is only one of many behaviors that can [...]
A small Oregon school district has found a way to gain new students. It’s converted to a charter specializing in natural resources. In the upper grades, the curriculum includes public service experience:
High school students are working with the Forest Service to help clean up campgrounds and do other activities [...]
Hopefully, the editorial board of the Post-Dispatch will read the AP story they are running today, titled “Rising unemployment taxes could hinder hiring.” But we are supposed to look at taxes as an “investment,” according to the Post, rather than as a compulsory taking (a term I don’t automatically regard [...]
Fulton’s public kindergarten screenings are nothing compared to what New York City kids have to go through to get into a public gifted program. Kids in New York have to sit still for a whole hour and answer questions about analogies. Needless to say, few preschoolers can accomplish [...]
Kansas City’s city manager, Wayne Cauthen, is out of a job after a majority of the KC City Council surprisingly voted to remove him from office yesterday. We don’t talk about city managers too much on the eastern side of the state. St. Louis city does not use one [...]
This article in the Fulton Sun details all the things the Fulton Public Schools expect entering kindergartners to be able to do:
Social and emotional skills screeners look for include children being able to go to the bathroom by themselves, sharing toys, sitting and listening, showing independence and learning how [...]
Uh oh. News media and bloggers have been reporting all week about federal stimulus dollars going to fictitious congressional districts. The website Watchdog.org reported that, nationwide, the fictitious districts are receiving $6.4 billion in stimulus money.
I did some reporting of my own over at Policy Pulse, the Show-Me [...]
Financialstability.gov no longer says “Coming Soon.” Now it reads like any other campaign website:
America is back from the brink of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. It was helped back by the actions of the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve, and especially the forceful [...]
I recall several years ago when the Post-Dispatch ran a great series about abuses in fire districts around St. Louis that led to the mayor of Creve Coeur receiving a number of angry phone calls demanding he address those types of issues at the Creve Coeur Fire District. What almost [...]
Nobel laureate James Heckman spoke to the St. Louis Federal Reserve on Monday about human capital investment. A theme of Heckman’s research is that it’s wisest to invest in children when they’re young. Programs that serve preschool-aged children have a high rate of return, in economists’ parlance, while programs [...]
CBS’s moneywatch.com site recently released an article by Mark Thoma on the independence of the Federal Reserve, and those very real political conditions that threaten it. This situation is dangerously close to a Catch-22 scenario. Here’s the problem: When politicians get involved with monetary policy, manipulating it in their [...]
Today, the Show-Me Institute released a study, written by Texas A&M University economics professors Timothy Gronberg and Dennis Jansen, reviewing research published between 2004 and 2008 about the effectiveness of charter schools. Don’t have time to read the full study? Here’s a link to the four-page briefing paper! [...]
The Federal Reserve, like a knight in shining armor, is riding forth to protect consumers from a fearsome dragon: gift cards that expire within five years from date of purchase.
If retailers are not informing customers about the terms and expiration dates of the cards, I can understand a regulation [...]
I agree with this quote about urban farming from an article in the Pitch:
“I’m hoping for more availability and enthusiasm for local food in Kansas City — seeing a code that allows growers to sell and connect with potential buyers. Then local food will grow all on its own,” [...]
The new George Clooney film, Up in the Air, premiered at the Tivoli in Saint Louis over the weekend. Many are using the event as an opportunity to promote film tax credits, to be used as a means to bring more film productions to Missouri. John Combest links [...]
Some teachers who want to sell lesson plans online are running into trouble with the districts that employ them, according to this New York Times article. The concept of mutual gains from trade is foreign to the education establishment:
Joseph McDonald, a professor at the Steinhardt School of Culture, [...]
On Sunday, one of my favorite economists, Greg Mankiw, used basic economic concepts to describe how the government reimbursement system distorts the health care market:
If a government policy increases the demand for a service, the price of that service tends to rise. If the government prevents prices [...]
An article in Time profiles Yinghua Academy, a Mandarin-immersion charter school in Minnesota. (And, yes, although equally innovative schools are cropping up in various sectors of the education market, this school really is a charter; someone in the Yinghua Academy office confirmed its status over the phone.)
Yinghua Academy [...]
The Show-Me Institute will be hosting a blogosphere event on Nov. 21 for established bloggers, as well as new and prospective bloggers. There will be training, panel discussions, and a panel presentation from the the Motorhome Diaries folks! It’s free, and will be a lot of fun. If you’re [...]
A recurring concern within our national health care debate has been about insurance, and how to make it work for our friends that don’t want, or cannot afford, to participate. This led some of us to examine how that problem is solved elsewhere. One approach is seen in Switzerland. As [...]
The Wall Street Journal reflects on Pfizer’s recent decision to leave its location in New London, Conn. I like the following statement from the op-ed in particular:
If there is a lesson from Connecticut’s misfortune, it is that economic development that relies on the strong arm of government will never [...]
There’s an article on the Wall Street Journal’s website about fishing rights in New England. It’s a very interesting case. It seems that a small-time commercial fishermen refuses to get the mandated fishing license, asserting that his right to fish the waterways is protected by a 423-year-old legal compact [...]
There is no reason Missouri could not do just fine if we went through reassessment every three years instead of every two. I’m serious, here. Today, Combest linked to a story from the Rolla Daily News about budget cuts in the state’s assessment reimbursement fund. Every county gets [...]
Today, the Missouri Record carried my article on commercial property tax surcharges in Jackson County / Kansas City. Last week, the St. Louis Business-Journal carried the St. Louis version of the same idea. (The Business-Journal website only shows the first half of the piece unless you are a subscriber.) I [...]
Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall! To celebrate the historic event, the Washington University branch of Young Americans for Liberty constructed a Gulag on their campus. Josh Smith, Caitlin Hartsell, and I [...]
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is reporting on the budget troubles in Florissant, the largest city in St. Louis County. Not surprisingly, the police officers there are objecting to a proposed 3-percent pay cut. Now, I don’t ordinarily sympathize much with government employees, but the ones in uniforms generally deserve [...]
This article in the Kansas City Star celebrates the Parents as Teachers Program, and the fact that it makes no effort to focus on people who really need help:
Saturday marked the 25th anniversary of legislation in 1984 that forced all Missouri school districts to offer the experimental Parents as [...]
On Friday, the state of Missouri surprised me. I’m used to long waits, unreturned phone calls, and copying fees whenever I ask a local or state official for public records. So, when I called the folks at the Missouri Accountability Portal (MAP), a state government website devoted to making [...]
I knew homeschoolers in Tennessee faced some restrictions, but I wasn’t aware that parents need a bachelor’s degree or their superintendent’s permission to homeschool high school–aged students. (Parents of younger children need only a high school diploma or GED.)
There are many happy homeschooling families in Tennessee, and I [...]
MoDOT Director Pete Rahn has received a well-deserved award from Governing Magazine for his work at MoDOT. I eagerly second the award. (A quick note on Governing: I used to read it regularly. You might assume that most of the writers and readers here, coming from a free-market perspective, would [...]
The Kansas City Star reports that on Sunday, the state’s Department of Revenue began enforcing a 4-percent tax on yoga and Pilates classes. Why the change? Missouri officials have decided that yoga and Pilates are places of “amusement, entertainment or recreation” and therefore taxable, rather than spiritual practices that [...]
Today was the second USDA live Facebook chat. (Here are my comments on the first chat; the video is here.) Today’s session focused on the Farm to School component of the USDA’s “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” Initiative, and its goal of supplying public schools with local [...]
Nothing involves the combination of occupational licensing, the Second Amendment, civil rights, police and courts, free markets, and entrepreneurship quite like the bail bond industry. That’s probably why I write about it every chance I get. So, when I got back in the office this morning for the first time since [...]
Worrisome news from Los Angeles suggests that some public school districts are not the “melting pots” that education lore makes them out to be. Students who don’t speak English are relegated to separate classes, where they have little contact with native speakers. Many who entered the schools in kindergarten [...]
No school program epitomizes a childhood in the nineties like the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program (D.A.R.E.). I still have a few awkward memories of wearing an over-sized D.A.R.E. t-shirt, reading my “I promise never to do drugs” essay at the D.A.R.E. graduation ceremony. I don’t remember the essay [...]
A Wall Street Journal article explains how unusually rainy weather affects the corn and soybean harvests. Most crops aren’t dry enough for storage yet, but leaving them in the fields puts them at risk for mold and other kinds of damage.
A late harvest that threatens crops is a challenge [...]
Matthew Kahn writes about safety precautions that can do more harm than good because they lull people into complacency:
Child proof safety caps on medicine lull people into not hiding medicine from kids and kids break into the pills. Diabetic medicines for fighting high blood sugar lull diabetics into thinking [...]
At Cato@Liberty, Andrew Coulson discusses Charles Murray’s ideas about education. Murray advocates competition in education because he believes competing schools will offer safer environments and impart more knowledge, but he does not expect choice to raise test scores significantly. He thinks that students could learn more information than they [...]
If a successful, low-cost, cutting-edge school in Missouri were being shut down midway through the school year, leaving thousands of students without feasible educational alternatives, the state would see an uproar. But recent budget cuts to Missouri’s virtual school program will bring essentially the same result, with little backlash.
The [...]
The Missouri Budget Project recently wrote a special piece for the St. Louis Beacon about affordable health care, “What to do about health care? Make it affordable.” In it, the author conflates increased coverage with affordability, ignoring the systemic and regulatory factors that have led to the ever-increasing costs of [...]
Today brought sad news for Laura Dekker: The Dutch court has forbidden her to set sail and extended state guardianship until July. This despite the fact that she passed every test they set for her:
The court said that while Dekker’s sailing skills were adequate and a psychological report concluded [...]
I think not, but that’s what a poster from the New York City Health Department does. The poster, which is intended for a religious Jewish audience and is also available in Yiddish, reminds people to wash their hands for at least 20 seconds. It also shows several hand washing [...]
Our Policy Pulse site has a good story with some detailed links to the recent budget cuts announced by the governor. I hope and plan to have more thorough work on these proposals released soon, but I don’t want to rush anything — and many of us will be [...]
You may well have noticed that we’re rapidly reaching the end of 2009, and yet we had not yet released our annual report for last year. I’m happy to announce that this is no longer the case. The Show-Me Institute’s 2008 annual report is now available on our website.
Releasing [...]
I blogged yesterday about how tax policy distributes people and businesses. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal illustrates an example of this: Tax credits distribute film production activities.
Instead of leaving filmmaking to states that specialize in it, like California, and then realizing gains from interstate trade, [...]
An op-ed in the Birmingham Weekly contains an error that’s familiar to anyone following school lunch policy. It conflates “healthy” food with “local” food:
Currently each of these “funded” meals are allotted $2.57, which means that after you strip away labor, energy and overhead costs, schools have $1 per meal [...]
The Michigan House passed a bill that would exempt babysitters like the woman who watched neighbors’ kids at a bus stop from daycare regulations. If the bill becomes law, Michigan won’t require you to get a license just to look out a window at some kids for 20 [...]
Voters in Saint Louis County and Jackson County have some tax and smoking proposals on the ballot Tuesday. Most of the Show-Me Institute staff will be at a conference next week, so I’m posting some thoughts on the issues now. For the Jackson County voters, you get to choose whether [...]
The headline for this AP article on rail subsidies says it all. Shockingly, a government agency has overstated its efficiency and understated its subsidies. This report covered by the article documents the enormous subsidies required to operate Amtrak. It is notable that the totals used in this new study come [...]
George Soros believes that the free market is “a dogma whose time has passed,” and according to an article in the Financial Times, he has devised a plan of action for eradicating free market think tanks like the Show-Me Institute.
First, he will throw money at the problem: $50 million [...]
A debate on the New York Times website examines the question of regulating twins. Just as many people called for restrictions on in vitro fertilization after Nadya Suleman gave birth to octuplets, some medical experts are outraged by the far more commonplace occurrence of twin births — and [...]
A 2009 study in the October issue of the Journal of Labor Economics finds that teacher unions have no effect on teacher pay.
Shocking! As the author, Michael Lovenheim of Stanford University, notes, these results aren’t expected. Unions negotiate for better work conditions and salary increases, so it’s a general [...]
Today’s edition of the Maneater featured an op-ed attacking the notion that a public option in health care is necessary to keep health care costs in this country low. From the article:
Indulge me in a very simplified thought experiment. You, reader, enjoy beer, and I have deep pockets. [...]
The St. Joseph News-Press reports that Missouri lawmakers recently proposed a solution to the problem of “tax stacking” — the practice by which municipalities attempt to pass additional tax increases through referendums in order to circumvent the state-mandated limit of an additional 1.5 percent in sales taxes. The lawmakers [...]
If Pennsylvania were to rescind its remaining restrictions on ticket scalping, this kind of thing would happen less often.
[...]Less than a month after the federal ban on clove cigarettes began, a close substitute good, clove cigars, has hit the market.
[...]During the drive home from work yesterday, I listened to a discussion of high-speed rail on NPR’s “Marketplace.” Mitchell Hartman discussed a new report from the Pew Research Center reminding us that high-speed rail depends on federal assistance. Pew calculated that Amtrak receives a $32 subsidy per ticket, [...]
New York’s higher-income residents are fleeing the state, and they are taking their tax dollars with them. The New York Post reports that this is because of the state’s high cost of living and high taxes:
It all adds up to staggering loss in taxable income. During 2006-2007, the “migration [...]
Edspresso links to this essay by Hope Frick, a virtual school student in Pennsylvania. She’s written an articulate explanation of why she chose to attend a virtual academy. You have to sympathize with her frustration at the responses she gets when she tells people about her school. Frick [...]
Laura Dekker is still waiting for permission to set sail; latest reports say the Dutch court will issue its decision on Friday.
Dekker is bending over backward to respond to criticisms of her plans. She’s delaying her trip until after this school year. She says she’ll study while she’s [...]
Don’t worry, I still detest red light cameras and think they are a total violation of our rights. I think the state should ban them throughout Missouri. However, I give Springfield some credit for truly using them for public safety purposes rather than as a back-door revenue generator. The [...]
According to a little-known website, the Drudge Report, Chicago is considering privatizing its water utility. This would follow on the heels of: a very successful privatization of a local highway, the Skyway; the successful near-privatization of Midway Airport (it was successful because even though the deal fell [...]
The Columbia Daily Tribune examines school lunches in this interesting article. Like many districts, Columbia Public Schools is trying to serve healthier lunches. And the locavore philosophy is in fashion, so the district wouldn’t mind jumping on the local food bandwagon, either.
But the district is learning that buying local [...]
The headline of this Missourinet post really got me riled up, but the body of the report calmed me down a bit. According to Missourinet, (link via Combest), Sen. Claire McCaskill favors sending senior citizens a check for $250 each, as proposed by the Obama administration, to make [...]
With a vote looming in two weeks, there are still a number of unresolved issues about the Springfield pension system. How should they construct the citizen board overseeing the pension? Which employees should be moved to the state’s local government pension system, known as LAGERS? Does this suit [...]
A proposed charter school, Excelsior Prep, has been turned down by a school board in Oregon. Surprise, surprise:
“We were expecting this,” said Excelsior Prep Board member Tonjia Haskins after the meeting. “They have been opposed basically since the beginning.”
Getting charter applications denied by Oregon’s school boards is par [...]
When teachers in the Harlem Success Academy charter schools observed that students were struggling with farming references on standardized tests, they decided to do some unconventional test prep. They took their classes to a farm and let them learn firsthand about sheep and pumpkins.
Some people (namely, commenters on the [...]
Clayton residents are debating whether the city should restrict pet chickens. This Post-Dispatch article presents the usual quotes from neighbors who abhor all things farm-related. Also noted are the people who want Clayton to promote chicken ownership actively:
On the other side of the issue is Clayton resident Stan Braude, [...]
This week, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to spend two consecutive afternoons being interviewed on St. Louis’ WGNU, a radio station with programming directed to the city’s African-American population. On Monday afternoon, I spent an hour as part of a panel conversation (with Sheila Rendon and Romona [...]
By way of the Panama City Renaissance School blog, I’ve learned that an executive director of a teachers’ union in Nevada wants to start a charter school for the purpose of preparing future teachers.
The proposal has some characteristics in common with the apocryphal public service [...]
This week’s Well-Intentioned But Ineffectual Nanny State Award goes to California, for enacting a law requiring doctors to conduct a physical examination before performing cosmetic surgery. At the Orange County Register’s In Your Face blog, Colin Stewart writes:
As this blog commented last year, passing a law requiring doctors to [...]
The Missouri Virtual Instruction Program (MoVIP) is offering additional courses at the high school level through the National Repository of Online Courses Network. When I first saw the news, I was thrilled because I’ve long thought that the online school covered too few subjects. Then I read through [...]
Today, Matt Drudge linked to two articles that illustrate the negative consequences of excessive licensing requirements. The city of Ventura, Calif., has condemned a homemade haunted house on private property as an “unsafe structure,” and prohibits visitors from entering it.
Responding to an anonymous complaint, the city said [...]
The St. Louis Business Journal has a story about a recent study comparing sales tax rates in the 50 states. The study is from the Tax Foundation, one of my favorite think tanks. The foundation’s task is difficult, because compiling local tax data is very complicated, nowhere more so [...]
According to an article over at the Springfield News-Leader, the Missouri prison population has inexplicably reached an all-time high. On a related note, I’d like to take this opportunity to commend President Barack Obama for scaling back the police state milieu slightly with his recent announcement that federal authorities [...]
Over the weekend, the Columbia Missourian ran an interesting article that questioned the effectiveness of Missouri’s charter schools. Using MAP scores as a benchmark, the article suggests that the lower average MAP scores of charter school students as opposed to traditional public school students show that charter schools are [...]
The above advice was given to students in China before a national exam, according to this radio program featured on the Two Million Minutes Blog.
The program reports that China is trying to incorporate more critical thinking into its school system. I don’t expect it to make progress in this [...]
Jessica Watson started out yesterday on an attempt to sail solo around the world. I hope she completes her voyage safely.
Meanwhile, Laura Dekker remains on land, waiting for Dutch authorities to decide whether she’ll be allowed to sail. We’ll see later this month if she gets to try to [...]
Some locavores argue that the government should encourage local food consumption in order to create a more stable and sustainable economy. I’ve countered that a geographically diverse food supply is more reliable than any local food supply.
Today I have an example. The following entries are from Whole Foods’ [...]
Missouri has a mountain lion response team, even though we don’t have any mountain lions.
[...]Here is a Popular Science article about Quest to Learn, the game-themed charter school I wrote about last month (article link via the Quest to Learn Parents’ Blog).
I’m glad that Quest to Learn is the subject of media attention and debate. Unfortunately, this particular article leaves readers [...]
While most states are giving parents a wider range of educational choices, Oregon is going in the opposite direction. From shutting down public school choice in Portland to threatening virtual schools with enrollment freezes, to holding up charter school applications, Oregon’s education policy blocks innovation at every [...]
Sarah Brodsky, Alyssa Curran, Dave Roland, David Stokes, Stephen Feman, Christine Harbin, Josh Smith, Audrey Spalding, Caitlin Hartsell, Chaya Kristen Chopra
