Category: Government

Hokies thank you for free WiFi

This story is a few months old, but since I visited Blacksburg last week, I learned about it now. The facts:

The New River Valley will soon be more connected than ever as Blacksburg Transit goes wireless with a pilot program offering Internet service aboard select buses.

The new service, created as the result of a partnership between Citizens Telephone Cooperative, based in Floyd, and Blacksburg Transit, has already begun wireless Internet service aboard a single bus, but plans are in the works to add six more by the end of May. “We’re still testing, but we should have them all done by the end of the month,” said Tim Witten, manager of BT Access.

“We’re doing it as a pilot program. We’re deploying this to see how it works, and hope it would be a really attractive part of our service, and serve as an example to the rest of Virginia,” Witten said.

That’s fancy enough, but I don’t imagine students clamored for this service. Although my experience is eight-plus years old, I’m confident that local travel patterns among Virginia Tech students haven’t changed that much. Most users aren’t on the bus long enough to scan for the wireless network and connect, much less to check the status of their fantasy football. Those students who are on the bus long enough and want to download the latest Paris Hilton song should pay for it themselves.

The program is being paid for by a series of grants from the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation and the federal government, thus restricting the number of buses that will receive wireless service.

Because it’s some tech nerd’s vision of cool does not mean it’s a public good. Should I also point out that Blacksburg Transit does not intend to test the program on specific routes? That the routes could change daily? I’m sure that will inspire riders to bring their laptops on a regular basis. Hopefully this flawed premise will help the program fail. As long as it’s in place, when the Hokies take the field and the leaves change colors this fall, you should stop by Blacksburg and surf the free wireless you’re providing.

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(General hat tip to Kip for the basic structure of this post.)

Only consumers of redistribution count

Shouldn’t researchers ask you and me what we think?

Most senior citizens who signed up for Medicare’s new prescription drug coverage say they are happy with their plans, but some report that they are not saving money and many say the overall program could be better designed, two new independent studies show.

I’d also say the program could be better designed. Barring the obvious course (elimination), those receiving the “benefits” should pay for them. Those of us not receiving benefits shouldn’t. The phrase private markets comes to mind, but I’m probably being selfish.

Leslie Norwalk, deputy administrator of the Medicare agency, said, “I was heartened to know that we were largely successful.”

Let’s wait more than two months to pop the champagne. The longer-term success might need different standards to determine success.

He served us, but I might have that backwards

Nothing like ambitious standards:

U.S. Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona let it be known yesterday that he is stepping down, saying in a letter that he would judge himself successful if he had persuaded one student to make good health choices or one mother to stop smoking.

I suspect he was working more to persuade politicians to force all students to make “good” health choices and all mothers to stop smoking.

Baseball has no shot clock

So what?

Federal regulators said yesterday that Comcast Corp. may have discriminated against a regional sports television network by refusing to carry the network’s broadcasts of Nationals games.
…

In a 10-page opinion, the FCC said it found that MASN had made a “prima facie showing” that Comcast had discriminated against the network and had “indirectly and improperly demanded a financial interest” in the network in exchange for carrying it. The FCC also said, however, that there were factual disputes on both points that would have to be decided by a judge.

Media lawyers said the FCC’s finding shifted the burden to Comcast to prove that it has not broken any of the agency’s rules. The lawyers said it was possible that the judge could find Comcast had played by the rules and was justified in declining to carry the network.

I don’t know the specifics of the rules, but shouldn’t we first be asking whether or not the FCC should have rules governing this? Is this regulatory burden in the interest of customers, or is it in the interest of regulators? Let’s all ponder that for a long nanosecond.

Where are the tofu subsidies?

As a vegan, testing or not testing for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (Mad Cow Disease) isn’t a particular concern. One cow with the disease, or one billion cows, my brain is going to continue functioning nicely. (Open to interpretation, of course.) And the politics involved, through subsidies for meat and dairy production, preclude my “Save the cows” pleas from making any headway. So, instead of complaining or applauding the wisdom of the Agriculture Department’s decision to cut testing for BSE, I’ll highlight this quote from the story about the possible impact of the decision:

“It surely will not encourage consumers in the U.S. or Japan to rush to the store to buy more beef,” said Carol Tucker Foreman, food-policy director for Consumer Federation of America.

The government shouldn’t be in the business of encouraging consumers to buy more beef. Or less beef. Or chicken instead of beef. Or beets instead of chicken. Or… you get the point.

If consumers want beef, they’ll buy it. If they deem BSE or any other possible contamination to be a risk, their inevitable decision to stop buying beef will suggest responses from beef marketers. They could stop selling beef. This might be necessary if the cost of testing proved prohibitive to what consumers are willing to pay. More likely, they would test their beef, which would raise their costs. They would pass that increase to their consumers. Taxpayers like me, who do not consume the beef we’re all paying to protect, would no longer be forced to artificially support the carnivorous habits of everyone else.

Capitalism. It’s what’s for America.

Imagine the fun of National Healthcare!

I can’t imagine a better story to support my contention from yesterday that the federal government should not be funding medical research than this story:

Federally funded “pregnancy resource centers” are incorrectly telling women that abortion results in an increased risk of breast cancer, infertility and deep psychological trauma, a minority congressional report charged yesterday.

The report said that 20 of 23 federally funded centers contacted by staff investigators requesting information about an unintended pregnancy were told false or misleading information about the potential risks of an abortion.

The pregnancy resource centers, which are often affiliated with antiabortion religious groups, have received about $30 million in federal money since 2001, according to the report, requested by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.). The report concluded that the exaggerations “may be effective in frightening pregnant teenagers and women and discouraging abortion. But it denies the teenagers and women vital health information, prevents them from making an informed decision, and is not an accepted public health practice.”

It’s not essential to take the specific topic of abortion out of this debate. Like it or not, abortion is legal in America. If the federal government should be funding science, or not funding science for moral rather than constitutional reasons, does it not have the obligation to tell the truth? Or is the truth, as based on evidence, too inconvenient to fit with a specific political agenda? Just like I don’t want my tax dollars paying for circumcisions, religious Americans probably do not want their tax dollars paying for abortions. This isn’t a complicated argument. Keep the government checkbook out of science.

More lessons in civics and fewer in social appeasement.

A few days ago, Glenn Reynolds wrote of Tennessee’s proposed Constitutional amendment aimed at protecting marriage from those who believe that individual rights should determine how the government treats the citizenry. Mr. Reynolds and I are in agreement that constitutional amendments for this question are a bad idea, but I mostly added on that last bit as a summary of my own feeling because I don’t care for parts of his explanation. Consider:

…

My own sense is that this sort of thing belongs in the political sphere, and that efforts to insulate it from the political sphere, either by judicial fiat or constitutional amendment, are a bad idea.

UPDATE: This is part of a string of losses for gay marriage advocates, reports Dale Carpenter, who has detail on what’s going on. As I’ve noted before, it seems to me that the big push on gay marriage came before the public was ready. You have to educate first; there’s been good progress on public attitudes toward gays, but it actually seems to go faster when gay marriage advocates aren’t getting a lot of publicity and calling people who disagree with them bigots. (Kaus has noted this, too — scroll down due to lack of permalinks at Kausfiles.) Honey, vinegar, and all that.

My own feeling is that Americans are basically fair, and will come to support gay marriage on their own given a bit of time. And I think that — despite claims that they’re really just opposing “judicial activism” — gay marriage opponents fear that I’m right.

I understand his point, and I believe he’s right that Americans will eventually support same sex marriage on their own. I also think he’s right in describing what will be most effective, given our current political atmosphere in which selling out one group of Americans is an accepted strategy for buying another, larger group. That’s a practical realization of how malignant our political climate remains. We shouldn’t pat ourselves for working within that system, though.

The larger, more troublesome challenge in accepting that thinking is that this flawed climate should invalidate a Constitutional approach to achieving equality. It’s ridiculous to assert that the opinion of a majority of Americans matters in this. Why should a segment of Americans wait for future generations to grant them fundamental rights that should be respected now? We live in a republic based on individual rights, not a land where mob rule should dictate how our courts interpret our Constitution. Judicial fiat or not, the role of our judiciary is to interpret the Constitution, thereby protecting the individual rights of every citizen from government and other citizens. Only in not faithfully administering its duties is a court engaging in judicial activism.

The legislature may be the best location for this fight, but that doesn’t make the courts a bad place for it. The majoritarian mentality consuming the willingness of our elected representatives to uphold the Constitution indicates the fallacy of abandoning the Constitution to meet the mob’s delicate condition that it never be offended by others and that the minority must bow to the majority until the majority is ready. Our liberty doesn’t work that way.

Oxymoron of the Day

Commenting on Ezra Klein’s post about Charles Murray’s book In Our Hands is well past its timeliness, but I enjoyed this bit:

I do, however, want to use my blog’s blissfully unlimited space to go into some added detail on Murray’s policy mistakes. The base assumption of his plan is that he can halt the growth of health spending — the primary driver of budgetary inflation — by restoring all power to the individual, who will then bargain with private insurers and demand better care, lower cost, and snappier service. His basic premise is that given the trillions floating around our government, the concept that we have any problems at all is absurd, and it must mean that government waste is subverting America’s abundance.

The problem is, our country’s entitlement programs are models of bureaucratic efficiency. Social Security spends less than one percent of its budget on administration; for Medicare, it’s two percent. Compare that to the private health insurers, who blow about 14 percent on administration. Indeed, if you imposed the Plan immediately, it would cost staggering $355 billion more than the government currently spends. Some efficiency.

Perhaps Mr. Klein’s summary of Mr. Murray’s plan is correct; I haven’t read the book, so I can’t comment on the details. Its details aren’t essential to understand that Mr. Murray is probably not talking about overhead. It doesn’t matter how efficient the bureaucracy is at administering entitlements, if it’s paying too much for unnecessary procedures, there is waste that should eliminated. If the public wants its unnecessary procedures, they should pay for those procedures themselves. So, if you spend 14% on overhead to keep prices in line, you may be able to save more than if you efficiently overpay.

Link from a Balloon Juice discussion on minimum wage proposals.

Save our souls (and state monopolies)

Congress: Boo yourself!:

The House passed legislation Tuesday that would prevent gamblers from using credit cards to bet online and could block access to gambling Web sites.

The legislation would clarify and update current law to spell out that most gambling is illegal online. But there would be exceptions — for state-run lotteries and horse racing — and passage isn’t a safe bet in the Senate, where Republican leaders have not considered the measure a high priority.

The House voted 317-93 for the bill, which would allow authorities to work with Internet providers to block access to gambling Web sites.

Work with is a euphemism for force. Anyone still want to claim that Republicans and Democrats are for economic freedom, and liberty in general? I don’t. Paternalism marches on.

I don’t have any more to say on this bill specifically, but I want to savor the stupidity of this quote:

“Never before has it been so easy to lose so much money so quickly at such a young age,” [Jim Leach, R-Iowa] said.

When will Congress act to outlaw citizens from using credit cards to finance a new business? As a business owner, I could lose everything I own. Won’t you protect me?

Ass.

Politicians will find new ways to be hacks

Tim Lynch has an interesting position on term limits, reinforced by the news that Tom DeLay considers himself a Virginian now that he’s “retired”.

One of the best arguments for terms limits is that we have reached the point where members of Congress are no longer “representatives” of their districts. The latest evidence of that came in this morning’s newspaper, which says Tom Delay will be on a Texas ballot in an upcoming election even though he has now declared himself to be a Virginian. …

Mr. Lynch concludes that term limits are necessary to prevent the next generation from assuming “that this is all perfectly normal and appropriate.” I think the current generation accepts that. I don’t, however, think that calls for term limits.

We have the power to vote. We know what our representatives are doing, especially now with the pervasive access to information. We possess the power to demand local access and accountability within our individual districts. Yet, we rarely choose to exercise that power. Some polls suggest we might collectively seek change this year, but I’m not convinced. It’s too easy to see that (R) or (D) on the ballot and punch the corresponding button because that’s what we always do. The name almost doesn’t matter. Term limits won’t fix partisanship.

Abuse by our representatives is inevitable, but we have the power to stop it. It is our responsibility to do so. The founders designed our Constitution to protect us from the coercive power of government without providing for explicit term limits. As an extension of our now-accepted idea that unlimited presidential terms is bad, I might entertain term limits for Congress. But that’s a different approach. Using the “Tom DeLay is a Virginian” argument for term limits seems to offer little more than protecting us from ourselves.