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 [...]
I have not blogged on politics in a long time but I desire to [...]
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 [...]
In honor of Dana's document showing that County Counselor Patricia Redington filed assault charges against Richard Gephardt's election opponent after just two days, I've made a quick movie explaining just what the county counselor is doing.
Redington's first year as the County Counselor must have been a little different' [...]
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 [...]
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Today we take time to pause and honor all of the men and women [...]
I might pay money to have Tom Cruise attempt to "give me a beatdown." Then again, I'm not a lapsed Scientologist.
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 [...]
Happy Birthday United States Marine Corps! [...] 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 [...]
I'm struggling under a hefty workload, but will still try to set up the first document party for next Sunday at 3:00. The first one will be in West County. and the next will be in Sunset Hills. I'll be responding to all of your emails [...]
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 [...]
Don't have time to follow this up today - but Glenn Beck is asking why charges haven't been filed in the Gladney case. He has the police report, and reads off a pretty graphic description of the assault from an eyewitness. I went down to the County Courthouse to get [...]
I've never met Todd Akin, and don't know anyone who works for him, but maybe I should give him a call.
Congressman Todd Akin (R-MO) hosted the meeting of a dozen Hill conservatives who’ve had enough. The meeting was to help Michele Bachmann, and other originators of the House Call protest, retain control of [...]
Before he was a national figure, ACORN Man was just a low level staffer with a love of spandex. Here is the story of his short-lived rise to power, beginning in a Metro link car in 2006.
Watch for the next installment, Green Jobs Man: The Return of ACORN.
And feel [...]
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 [...]
Don't say we don't get results. After several series on the links between FiredUpMissouri authors, Missouri Democratic operatives, and an as yet to be resolved leak of documents directly from the Secretary of State's office, the authors at FiredUp have all gone silent.
In the month of October, 183 posts [...]
At 1:00pm today, Green Bay Packer fans will gather at Lambeau Field attempting to set a new Guinness Record for longest sustained boo by a stadium crowd.
When I first heard the concept of a half an hour sitcom about a [...]
This was the event where Kenneth Gladney was attacked by staff members of SEIU. At the time, OFA was organizing to send people to counter the Healthcare Townhall protests, and Russ was hiring Sara Howard from SEIU.
Standing up for insurance reform in Mehlville [...]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 [...]
Heading out for some fun and games, so be sure to check out some of the St Louis Tea Party folks.
St Louis Tea Party Coalition is the main site, run by Bill Hennessy.
Dana is our superstar, on the air at 97.1, and on a webcam tonight. [...]
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 [...]
Anonymity is not a right online. It's a privilege. No one is truly anonymous, but most of us try to respect boundaries, especially when it comes to politics. At the same time, when you make nasty personal attacks and try to hide behind anonymity, you've broken the rules, and you [...]
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.
[...]
Of course, by this logic, none of us could afford to go to seminary.
