A question that is almost always ignored when crafting legislation is "How will this new law be abused?" In the case of Spain's horrific Gag Law (officially [and hilariously] known as the "Citizen Security Law"), the answer is, "As much as possible."

Just a couple of weeks away from a Spanish citizen being fined for calling his local police force "slackers," a Spanish woman has been fined for posting a picture of police car parked in a handicapped spot to her Facebook page.

A Spanish woman has been fined €800 (£570) under the country’s controversial new gagging law for posting a photograph of a police car parked illegally in a disabled bay.

The unnamed woman, a resident of Petrer in Alicante, south-east Spain, posted the photo on her Facebook page with the comment “Park where you bloody well please and you won’t even be fined”.

The police tracked her down within 48 hours and fined her.

If nothing else, the new law has reset law enforcement priorities. If law enforcement is insulted, the perpetrator needs to be tracked down before the trail goes cold.

According to the original report at Petreraldia.com, differing narratives have emerged. One version of the incident says the officer who parked in the handicapped spot approached the photographer and explained the situation, apparently hoping to prevent a disparaging upload. If so, it didn't take. Another version says the uploader called to apologize to the police, presumably to ward off a citation. If so, that didn't take. And yet another version says there was no interaction between police and the photographer until they showed up at her home to hand her a ticket.

What really happened isn't important, because there's the Official Police Narrative. The spokesman for the police informed Petreraldia that "in an emergency" police are allowed to park wherever they want, so as to expedite the apprehension of suspects.

The "emergency" behind this illegal parking job? An "incident of vandalism in a nearby park."

And, of course, the only other official remnant of this one-two punch of exemplary policework is the €800 ticket.

It seems the police -- if they felt so demeaned by the Facebook post (which was swiftly removed by the original poster) -- could have asked for an apology, rather than €800. Or the department could have offered its explanation of the situation (as it did!), rather than fine the citizen. But the law is the law, and as such, must be abused to the fullest extent allowable.

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When I was in North Carolina, at one time while my dentist was asking me questions while she had both hands and instruments in my mouth, she finished one of my sentences that started with “Oh, we grew up poor” with “But honest” which was not at all what I meant to say.  Oh, we were honest, as in we didn’t steal, but mostly for two reasons: one, grandma would have given us her “more in sorrow than in anger” look, and second, we weren’t conscious of needing anything.

Don’t get me wrong, I was a kid like other kids, and when there was a faddish toy I would drool over it.  But, perhaps because we didn’t have a TV till I was eight, it just never occurred to me that we were poor.  When I was six I asked grandma what we were and she said “We’re not poor, we’re not rich.  We make do.”

That’s about right.  In the same message in which my brother said we’d been poor as Job, he also mentioned we were rich as kings, much richer than we’re now when grandma would objectively describe our lifestyles as “what a luxury” what with running hot water and a bathroom per person in this house right now.

If you just said “Wut?”

Look, the only reason I knew there were people much better off than us is that at 12 mom contrived to have me attend a high school in the “rich” area of town.  (Theoretically, we all lived in a rented room down the street from the school.  In point of fact, mom paid a lady to forward our mail.) For the village we were between middle class and upper middle class.  In fact, when truly rich people came to the village or had their kids visit, I was among the small number of kids invited to play with them.

My childhood is, in point of fact, unclassifiable in US terms.  Sarah C. wrote a thing which I might post later, about all this, about the nostalgie de la bue and saying “but I was even poorer” that goes on on the other side, which quickly becomes “but I drank a cup of cold poison.”  She pointed out anyone born in the US (with the possible exception of Appalachia and other small pockets, such as the one Larry grew up in) was automatically better off than anyone born abroad.  From what I’ve seen, probably still is, except for the very rich.

OTOH the American assumption that those who come from  Latin countries that my dentist reflected must have been starving in tar shacks is almost — almost — infuriating.  The reason it’s not infuriating is that it is so funny.  Built into this is the idea that either Latin people are discriminated against in their own countries (wut?) or that they need leftists to enlighten them and make their lives bearable. Note this doesn’t apply if you come from English Speaking countries, where in point of fact, many people lived like we did when I was a kid, because then, of course, you have privilege, so you couldn’t have been poor-poor.

My delving into my childhood was more to show that I don’t impress conventionally.  And it’s really hard to sell me the Marxist theory of oppression that must be broken by government.

We’ve been damn broke.  And we’ve been enviably rich in many ways.  And we faced “you can’t come in” with “you and whose army”.

I grew up poor by US standards, but everyone was poor.  Okay, not everyone.  I remember going to the architect’s house when my parents were having the house built, when I was 5? 6? and being very impressed at the shiny woodwork.  We lived in a 100 plus year old house and our doors were painted and repainted with thick white paint.

My grandparents owned land and houses (grandma’s dad had bought most of the village before dying young.  He was a cattle dealer.  Yeah, yeah, I have cowboys in my ancestry) but in an era of rent control it didn’t do much, except for the fact we retained “right of cultivation” to a lot of the backyards, (lawn was sort of unknown in our circles) so we could grow twice the potatoes, had a chestnut tree and a lot of vines.

My parents lived extremely tight because dad has a religious hatred of credit.  Not just credit card debt, a hatred he passed on to me, or loans, but of any credit, including mortgage.  The first fifteen years of their marriage (I was born around year ten) were spent saving to buy a house outright.  They didn’t manage it, but built a house with a ten year mortgage.  And after that was paid off, when I was about 16, our lifestyle APPROACHED middle class US.

I still didn’t go to coffee shops as much as my friends, because I had no allowance, and earned my pocket money, but that was good as it saved me from the “coffee and pool” circle who usually repeated every year.

OTOH in my twenties I had some very rich friends who didn’t give a d*mn if they had to pay for me, so I got to vacation in really expensive resorts.  Mind you I came home to mom turning off the hot water (which the new house had) in summer because it was wasteful, but I got to go to places where the British nobility hung out.  And by the time I was in college, I was invited to embassy and consulate parties, due to my grades in foreign languages.  (Italian consulate had the BEST ice cream because most ice cream parlors in Porto were owned by Italians.)

Anyway, the reason for delving into my background was to point out that it rendered me singularly immune to Marxism.

When I was in 10th grade, one of my friends drank the koolaid and disputed with me that my family was upper class.  I asked her how, since her dad — skilled blue collar, manager — made about twice as much as my dad did.  Her sputtering reaction was that my parents were better educated, they had books, they–

They had the markers of upper class in the village.  Though in mom’s case, she was as educated as my friend’s mom, at least formally.  But mom took an interest in world affairs and history (mostly through the radio) while her mom took an interest in gossip and recipes.

I stiffly pointed out to said friend that Marx’s “classes” were economic only.  She didn’t like like.  She is still, I think, communist.  Eh.

My best friend at the time came from hereditary-upper-class meaning that her family had some noble ancestors (oh, who doesn’t in Europe?  Keeping it in their pants just didn’t apply to those people) and a lot of manners and parents who were both educated.  But I used to give her my used sweaters (when we got to the point mom was retired and, I swear, made those for recreation) because her family had 13 kids and therefore were a little tighter than we were with 2.  (Though I’m sure her dad too made more than mine.)

The completely insane background and the fact my dad acted like the dad in Have Space Suit “Dad, I want a radio.” “Go ahead, I have no objections” — Which meant I built one from parts of broken radios in the attic — left me singularly unimpressed by both wealth and poverty.  Later when my brother replaced his crappy and now broken tape player,(which he’d bought with his tutoring income) I bought it off him for 20 escudos and spent more time fixing it than listening to it, until mom got tired of her kitchen table getting used to perform surgery on the beasty and gave me a tape player bought from the smugglers (What?  Well, the shop was in Smuggler street which was a dead give away.  Yep, I grew up in a fantasy town) when I was 19.

I learned there was absolutely no virtue in being poor.  A lot of the truly very poor in the village made more than we did but spent it on either wine or frivolous stuff (mom classified meat every day as frivolous stuff, mind.)

In fact, when government started rendering assistance, most of the welfare cases lived in crappy houses and went through broke periods through what mom called “lack of head.” When they had money they ran through it, then pawned everything the second half of the month.

(Mind you mom thinks I do the same, because while I have two kids in college, I can’t drop 10k to come over with the kids when she wants me to.  To an extent she’s right.  No matter how tight the money, you can plan to make it plenty.  We choose not to live in a tiny apartment with the kids.  OTOH it’s our investment: buying more house than strictly needed, in places headed up and trading up regularly that allowed us to own a house that our peers couldn’t with double the income.  Now if we can sell it and downsize, when we no longer need the space and good schools are of no consequence, we can come close to debt free, which we couldn’t otherwise.)

All of this and dad’s cavalier attitude to anything I wanted to do “I need to go to Germany to improve my German.”  “Go ahead.  I trust you abroad.”  (I got a job as a hotel maid for a summer.) his absolute assumption that if I wanted I could figure out how to do it, and his certainty that he didn’t really care how difficult it wold be to get into college for instance, both of his kids WOULD make to college made me singularly unimpressed by people who complain of micro aggressions and discrimination.

And it made me singularly unimpressed by wealth, too.  My rich friends had it easier, of course, but they were also easily impressed by brands, and they had never had to fight for what they wanted.  If grades didn’t qualify them to enter public — free — college, that was all right.  Mommy and daddy would buy them a spot in the private one.

I think this is why the plot lines that consist of “victim is oppressed and spit upon and dies in gutter/gets bloody revenge” have always bored me.  The idea that you have to “make way” for someone and make their path easy because they’re a one-footed Patagonian Lesbian makes me laugh.

You are a minority/poor/oppressed and want to write science fiction?  Fine, I give you my dad’s answer “Go ahead.  I have no objection.”

You want to feature a minority/poor/oppressed in your story?  Go ahead, I have no objection.  Just don’t make them sad sacks who need the help of the enlightened to get anywhere.  Sad sack characters and ex-machina socialists are BORING.  I don’t care what they taught you in school, getting there on your own is much more fun, both to do and to read about.

This is something the establishment doesn’t get — both the genuine upper class and strivers.  It’s amazing how many of the puppy kickers are in point of fact well off, upper class in the Marxist sense, even if they feel “downtrodden” for whatever reason.  And the rest, the strivers, have adopted the attitudes of the “upper class” and their class-signaling Marxism.  As I said originally, more papist than the pope — It’s something they can’t seem to grasp.

The working class gets rescued by benevolent Marxists (or even attacks academics while drinking gin — good Lord, pull the other one, it plays Elvis) is only exciting to Marxists with messianic illusions.

From the rest of us it elicits a yawn and an itch of the middle finger.

Write people of whatever color, orientation, wealth level you want.  Make them live.  Make them interesting.

We don’t add special points for flagellation of Marxist stereotypes and we do deduct them for predictability.

Or write whatever the heck you want. I mean, the pap has its fans — but it’s not us.

Just don’t demand we doff our hats and bow and scrape and tell you that stuff we don’t like and which is formulaic and poorly written is “of course, better” because it “fights the patriarchy” or whatever other idea you’re obsessed with at the time.

We don’t care.  You’re in an entertainment job.  Your job is to entertain the public.

The public is rarely entertained by lectures.

If it makes you feel better, I’ll make grandma’s face when someone was bragging to her about how special they were, and I’ll say “Oh wow.”

But I still won’t tell you boring stories that conform to whatever the new Marxists are peddling are better.  Learn your craft.  Then write whatever the crap you want.  And let the rest of us write whatever the crap we want.

Go ahead.  we have no objections.

Interstate 35 between San Antonio and Austin is congested, so obviously (to some people, at least) the solution is to run passenger trains between the two cities. Existing tracks are crowded with freight trains, so the Lone Star Rail District proposes to build a brand-new line for the freight trains and run passenger trains on the existing tracks. The total capital cost would be about $3 billion, up from just $0.6 billion in 2004 (which probably didn’t include the freight re-route).

Click image to download a PDF version of this map.

By coincidence, that was the projected capital cost for the proposed high-speed rail line between Tampa and Orlando (cancelled by Florida Governor Rick Scott), which are about the same 80-miles apart as Austin and San Antonio. But, despite the cost, Lone Star wouldn’t be a high-speed rail line. According to a 2004 feasibility study, trains would take about 90 minutes between the two cities, with two stops in between. While express trains with no stops would be a bit faster, cars driving at Texas speeds could still be faster.

Lone Star is asking the San Antonio city council for $500,000 to help pay for an environmental impact statement and other studies. Austin has supposedly already agreed to fund its share, though it isn’t in the city’s budget.

Lone Star is promising 32 trains (16 each way) carrying 20,000 riders (10,000 round trips) per day at fares of up to $12. That’s more than 600 riders per train; though some may not go the entire distance, it still seems high. Megabus currently operates three buses a day that take 85 minutes between the two cities at fares of $1.50 to $7.50. It seems likely that if there were 20,000 people per day wanting to pay $12 to take the trip at the same speed, Megabus would find them.

If the goal is to relieve congestion on I-35, two new lanes would probably cost less than a billion dollars and would be capable of moving far more vehicles per day than Lone Star would take off the road. Of course, the highway is probably not congested over the entire route, so two new lanes for the full length probably aren’t necessary. Besides, self-driving cars will probably go on sale and eliminate any need for passenger trains before the first Lone Star train would turn a wheel.

San Antonio Mayor Ivy Taylor, who famously cancelled the city’s even more backwards streetcar project, says that Lone Star isn’t one of her priorities. “There will be benefits from this alternative transit option, but we have to be good fiscal stewards,” she added. Local taxpayers should hope that she and the San Antonio city council can resist the starry-eyed Lone Star plan.

…. is from C. S. Lewis, from his 1948 book God in the Dock: Essays on Theology:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

HT: Nicolas, who provided that quote and wrote the following in the comment section of this CD post about drug use:

“What has to be recognized is that self-medication is a basic right, and moderate drug use is not a moral or medical defect.”

The post Quotation of the day on moral busybodies vs. robber barons…. (and self-medication as a basic right) appeared first on AEI.

Clark’s nutcracker, Rocky Mountain National Park, September 2, 2009

(Don Boudreaux)

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Even when I disagree with John Oliver’s politics (which is quite frequently), he makes me laugh.  (A steady offering of humor prompts me to forgive lots of sins.)  My son, Thomas, and I roared with laughter yesterday morning as we watched Oliver’s recent smack-down of televangelists who preach something called “the Prosperity Gospel.”  (Warning: Adult language.)  

Until watching Oliver’s video, I was only vaguely aware of this sub-species of scam-artists.  But as I watched this video I kept thinking to myself “These people – these scamming televangelists – remind me of something.  What?  Who?  What???  Who????”  Then it hit me: Politicians!

Most Americans (myself included) – and, most assuredly, all Americans to the left of Mike Huckabee – understandably both laugh at the antics of these televangelical slime balls and shake our heads with a mixture of sorrow and befuddlement that fellow human beings fall prey to their idiotic dupery.  But without claiming that there is a one-to-one correspondence between cosmetics-caked preachers of the Prosperity Gospel and typical politicians crawling the corridors of Washington, DC., I submit that the overlap and similarities between these two types of public pleaders are far greater than most respectable Americans are willing to admit.

According to the Prosperity Gospel (or so I gather), sending money to one of its preachers will, by some mystical force, eventually result in more material prosperity redounding to the benefit of those who heed the call to send money to these con artists.  Of course, the people who send their money to these swindlers are convinced that these swindlers are sincere oracles of a higher power – oracles who tell of a genuinely reliable means of both pleasing the higher power and being rewarded materially for doing so.

Naturally, the only people becoming more materially prosperous through this scam are the swindlers and their entourages.  The poor suckers who fall for the swindlers’ schemes are drained of wealth.  And it is the rare and cold-hearted person who asserts that, because the swindled people should have been smart enough to see through the deceits and illogic of the swindlers, the swindlers aren’t blameworthy.

The parallels between government and these televangelical swindlers are numerous; they’re too numerous even to list in a single blog post.  I’ll content myself here to point out only some of these ominous parallels, which include the notions that:

– sending your money off to other people will result in that money being spent in ways that promote your long-term well-being better than your long-term well-being would be promoted had you spent your money yourself;

– telegenic people speaking into the camera while alluding to mysterious doctrines – and claiming to have special understanding of those mysterious doctrines – are motived chiefly by your best interest as they plead for your money;

– these telegenic people must, of course, fly about in private jets and live luxuriously, for they – unlike you – are tasked with a special responsibility to work for a Higher Good;

– these telegenic swindlers are expert not only at feigning sincere concern for strangers, but also at spinning lies and deceits to explain away the constant failures of their prophesies.

….

One significant difference that notably separates the Prosperity Gospel swindlers from what we might call the Prosperity Politics swindlers is that only the latter have the power to grab the money of people who don’t fall for their deceits.  If the Prosperity Politics swindlers manage to dupe 50% +1 of the voters into falling for their scam, the Prosperity Politics swindlers get to grab the money of not only the people who naively fall for their dupery but also the money of those of us who see such dupery for what it is.

It should at least give pause to those who are enthusiastic about substituting the ‘will of the majority’ for the freedom of each individual to choose to lead his or her life as he or she will to reflect on the fact that the world has no shortage of people who fall for the Prosperity Gospel fraudsters.  Democracy – as opposed to individual freedom – allows people who fall for the Prosperity Gospel to have a say in your life and in the lives of everyone who understands that the Prosperity Gospel is the work of Satan.

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 463 of the 5th edition (2015) of Thomas Sowell’s Basic Economics:

The illusion of investment is maintained by giving the Social Security trust fund government bonds in exchange for the money that is taken from it and spend on other government programs.  But these bonds likewise represent no tangible assets.  They are simply promises to pay money collected from future taxpayers.  The country as a whole is not one dollar richer because these bonds were printed, so there is no analogy with private investments that create tangible wealth.  If there were no such bonds, then future taxpayers would still have to make up the difference when future Social Security premiums are insufficient to pay pensions to future retirees.  That is exactly the same as what will have to happen when there are bonds.  Accounting procedures may make it seem that there is an investment when the Social Security system holds government bonds, but the economic reality is that neither the government nor anyone else can spend and save the same money.

Eighty years ago this month (on August 14th, 1935, to be precise), Uncle Sam foisted on its subjects a scheme that would make Charles Ponzi green with envy.  And to help hide the hideous nature of this spending-other-people’s-money fraud, Uncle Sam maintains a scam called the “Social Security Trust Fund” – which is simply I.O.U.s written by the government to itself.

If you think that the Social Security Trust Fund represents real wealth for the American people held in trust by their agent, the U.S. government, go out right now and hire an agent and give him the following powers:

– he can regularly take a large chunk of your current income and spend it however he chooses on you; but

– for every dollar that he takes from you he must draft an I.O.U. requiring that you will repay yourself that dollar in the future; these I.O.U.s are stashed in a “Trust Fund” maintained by your agent; your agent assures you that this Trust Fund contains enough wealth to enable you to live comfortably in your retirement.

When you retire, you attempt to redeem your I.O.U.s.  Only then, lo and behold!, does the realization hit you that an I.O.U. that you owe to yourself is no wealth at all for you.  Those I.O.U.s are redeemable only if you return to work and then pay yourself, with your income, the value of each of your I.O.U.s.

You’ve been scammed by your agent, although you yourself bear much of the blame for being so stupid as to fall for his misrepresentation.

Over the years, Techdirt has had a couple of stories about misguided chefs who think that people taking photos of their food are "stealing" something -- their culinary soul, perhaps. According to an article in the newspaper Die Welt, it seems that this is not just a matter of opinion in Germany, but established law (original in German):

In individual cases, shared pictures may be illegal. At worst, a copyright warning notice might come fluttering to the social media user. For carefully-arranged food in a famous restaurant, the cook is regarded as the creator of a work. Before it can be made public on Facebook & Co., permission must first be asked of the master chef.

Apparently, this situation goes back to a German court judgment from 2013, which widened copyright law to include the applied arts too. As a result, the threshold for copyrightability was lowered considerably, with the practical consequence that it was easier for chefs to sue those who posted photographs of their creations without permission. The Die Welt article notes that this ban can apply even to manifestly unartistic piles of food dumped unceremoniously on a plate if a restaurant owner puts up a notice refusing permission for photos to be taken of its food.

It's sad to see this kind of ownership mentality has been accepted by the German courts. As a Techdirt article from 2010 explained, there's plenty of evidence that it is precisely the lack of copyright in food that has led to continuing innovation -- just as it has in other fields that manage to survive without this particular intellectual monopoly, notably in fashion.

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For a limited time, Brandon Sanderson's novella Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell is available for only 0.99$ here.

Here's the blurb:

Originally appearing in the Dangerous Women anthology and now available as a solo ebook, Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell is a chilling novella of the Cosmere, the universe shared by Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series and the #1 New York Times bestselling Stormlight Archive.

When the familiar and seemingly safe turns lethal, therein danger lies. Amid a forest where the shades of the dead linger all around, every homesteader knows to follow the Simple Rules: "Don't kindle flame, don't shed the blood of another, don't run at night. These things draw shades." Silence Montane has broken all three rules on more than one occasion. And to protect her family from a murderous gang with high bounties on their heads, Silence will break every rule again, at the risk of becoming a shade herself.

In 1653, Blaise Pascal composed a triangular array in which the number in each cell is the sum of the two directly above it:

In 1915, Polish mathematician Waclaw Sierpinski described an equilateral triangle in which the central fourth is removed and the same procedure is applied to all the succeeding smaller triangles. Perplexingly, the resulting structure has zero area:

Interestingly, if the odd numbers in Pascal’s triangle are shaded, they produce an approximation to Sierpinski’s triangle:

And as this triangle grows toward infinity, it becomes Sierpinski’s triangle — an arrangement of numbers that takes the shape of a geometrical object.

Please support Futility Closet on Patreon!

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 192 of Karl Popper’s 1969 paper “A Pluralist Approach to the Philosophy of History,” which is a chapter in the 1969 collection Roads to Freedom: Essays in Honour of Friedrich A. von Hayek (Erich Streissler, Gottfried Haberler, Friedrich A. Lutz, and Fritz Machlup, eds.):

[G]etting educated is getting an inkling of the immensity of our ignorance.

The myth that there’s no evidence that school choice works has more lives than Dracula. Worse, it’s often repeated by people who should know better, like the education wonks at Third Way or the ranking Democrat on the U.S. Senate education committee. In a particularly egregious recent example, a professor of educational leadership and the dean of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education wrote an op-ed repeating the “no evidence” canard, among others:

The committee also expands the statewide voucher program. There is no evidence privatization [sic] results in better outcomes for kids. The result will be to pay the tuition for students who currently attend private school and who will continue to attend private school—their tuition will become the taxpayers’ bill rather than a private one. Additionally, the funds for the expansion would siphon an estimated $48 million away from public schools, decreasing the amount of money available for each and every school district in the state.

It is astounding that a professor and a dean at a school of education in Wisconsin would be unfamiliar with the research on the Milwaukee voucher program, never mind the numerous gold standard studies on school choice programs elsewhere. Fortunately, Professor James Shuls of the University of Missouri-St. Louis and Martin Lueken of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty set the record straight:

…the Wisconsin Legislature commissioned a comprehensive five-year study by researchers at the University of Arkansas. The research team matched and compared children at private schools in the choice program to similar students at Milwaukee Public Schools. The study concluded that children in Milwaukee who used vouchers were more likely to graduate from high school, enroll in four-year colleges and persist in college.

These findings are very similar to those of “gold-standard” studies done nationwide. Among 13 peer-reviewed studies on voucher programs that use research methods based on random assignment, all but one study concluded that vouchers benefit students (the other was unable to detect an impact). In addition, recent work by a Harvard economist demonstrates that giving low-income families better educational options can help improve social mobility for children.

Just a year and a half ago–in response to yet another school choice denier who should know better–the coauthors of the Milwaukee study clarified that their research found school choice produced “a modest but clearly positive effect on student outcomes.”

First, students participating in the Milwaukee Parental Choice (“voucher”) Program graduated from high school and both enrolled and persisted in four-year colleges at rates that were four to seven percentage points higher than a carefully matched set of students in Milwaukee Public Schools. Using the most conservative 4% voucher advantage from our study, that means that the 801 students in ninth grade in the voucher program in 2006 included 32 extra graduates who wouldn’t have completed high school and gone to college if they had instead been required to attend MPS.

Second, the addition of a high-stakes accountability testing requirement to the voucher program in 2010 resulted in a solid increase in voucher student test scores, leaving the voucher students with significantly higher achievement gains in reading than their matched MPS peers.

Moreover, as Shuls and Lueken note, “private schools in the choice program obtain these results when the government funding for a voucher is 60 percent less than what public schools receive.”

The final two claims by the UW-Madison faculty–that the voucher program benefits students who would attend private school anyway and siphons money from the district school system–also fail to withstand scrutiny. A conservative analysis of the Milwaukee voucher program by Prof. Robert Costrell of the University of Arkansas found that “about 10 percent of low-income voucher users would have attended private school anyway.” The 2009 study also found that the voucher program produced significant savings to the state taxpayers, as shown in the figure below:

Chart by Robert M. Costrell.

A Friedman Foundation study released last year found that the Milwaukee voucher program saved the state more than $238 million since its inception in 1990. Moreover, as the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty notes in a recent report, Wisconsin gives a “school choice bonus” to district schools that lose students to the voucher program. Although a district’s total revenue decreases when a student leaves (along with the variable costs associated with that student), the “school districts will actually have more revenue per pupil because the district can continue to count students it no longer educates for equalization aid and revenue limit purposes.”

Sadly, opponents of school choice are likely to continue resurrecting the “no evidence” canard. But when they do, Van Helsings like Shuls and Lueken will be there to put a stake in its heart.

4gifs:

[unedited / video]

Update:  This post may be unfair, as discussed here.  I am not fully convinced, though.

I won't repeat what I wrote before, but several months ago I wrote a long article about my suspicions that Yelp was using its review recommendation system to disappear reviews its corporate sponsors and their attorneys did not like.   My evidence was based on my actual experience writing a detailed, fact-based negative review of an insurer, only to have it disappear from the site and be left out of the insurer's overall score.

It took me a long time to find the review, along with dozens of others, in a purgatory of "not recommended" reviews reachable from a near invisible link that doesn't even look like a link.  I won't retype the whole post but my evidence was in part:

• Yelp says it is sending reviews to not-recommended purgatory because they are of lower quality or have reviewers with less reviewing history on Yelp.  But a scan of the reviews in my case showed no such pattern.  Not-recommended reviews were at least as (and arguably more) detailed than recommended reviews, and there was no discernible difference in reviewer experience.  The not recommended reviews were also no less moderate, as there was immoderate language (and horrible grammar) in accepted reviews while there were calm and reasoned reviews that were rejected.
• What the not-recommended reviews had in common was that they tended to be more negative on average than the recommended ones (which is hard to do because the recommended reviews average to about 1.5 stars)
• Looking at several local independent restaurants, I saw no or few not-recommended reviews and pages and pages of recommended reviews, a ratio that was reversed for the major insurer which presumably has far more resources to intimidate or buy off Yelp.  For the insurer, there were two not-recommended reviews for every one recommended one.
• I knew this insurer to be willing to litigate against bad reviews, since they have sued me for libel to remove my review.  Presumably, they would not hesitate to threaten Yelp as well.
• Yelp already has a review quality system driven by upvoting by customers based on the usefulness of the review.  So why the need for an entirely parallel review-rating system unless that rating system was for an entirely different purpose than quality control.

Yelp got a lot of grief a while back accusing it of deleting reviews, so its CEO has pledged on multiple occasions that it doesn't do so.  I believe them.  Instead, it looks like Yelp disappears reviews in a way that the CEO can truthfully say they were not deleted, but they are for all intents and purposes invisible to the public.

Anyway, all this was spurred by the following trailer sent to me with this article from a reader.  Apparently a film called Billion Dollar Bully is being made about Yelp, and from the hints in the trailer it appears that they will be taking on many of the issues I listed above and frankly have only been able to guess at rather than prove.  Brava!

The Spin Cycle is a reoccurring feature based upon just how much the latest weather or climate story, policy pronouncement, or simply poo-bah blather spins the truth. Statements are given a rating between 1-5 spin cycles, with less cycles meaning less spin. For a more in-depth description, visit the inaugural edition.

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President Obama is keen on calling carbon dioxide emitted from our nation’s fossil fuel-powered energy production, “carbon pollution.” For example, last week, when introducing EPA’s Clean Power Plan—new regulations limiting carbon dioxide emissions from the power plants that currently produce 67 percent of the country’s electricity—he used the term “carbon pollution” ten times. For example:

Right now, our power plants are the source of about a third of America’s carbon pollution. That’s more pollution than our cars, our airplanes and our homes generate combined. That pollution contributes to climate change, which degrades the air our kids breathe. But there have never been federal limits on the amount of carbon that power plants can dump into the air. Think about that. We limit the amount of toxic chemicals like mercury and sulfur and arsenic in our air or our water – and we’re better off for it. But existing power plants can still dump unlimited amounts of harmful carbon pollution into the air. [emphasis added]

Clearly, he is trying to paint a picture for the American public whereby carbon dioxide emissions are thought of as dirty, noxious substances that invade the air we breathe and make us sick. Who wouldn’t support regulation to try to limit such a menace?

But, this is scientifically inaccurate and, no doubt, intentionally misleading. It reflects poorly on the president and on his scientific advisors.

First and foremost, carbon dioxide is a colorless, odorless gas that is non-toxic to humans at concentrations below some tens of thousands of parts per million (ppm). The current carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is 400 ppm and even worst case projections by the end of the century only put the concentration at 800-1000ppm. This is still some 5-6 times below the government’s recommended exposure limits. No one breathing open, well-mixed air* has ever been sickened from breathing carbon dioxide—nor ever will be.

Secondly, far from being sickened, the planet’s plant life is invigorated by carbon dioxide—the more the merrier. High concentrations (~1,000ppm) of carbon dioxide are routinely used in commercial greenhouses to produce faster growing and more robust plants. Scientific studies have shown that as carbon dioxide concentrations rise, plants become more resilient to environmental stressors, more efficient in their use of water, and more productive. A recent estimate has pegged the economic contribution of human carbon dioxide emissions to date, acting via increased crop production, at $3.2 trillion over the past 50 years and estimates an additional $10 trillion by mid-century. Pretty good for a “harmful” pollutant.

Thirdly, referring to carbon dioxide as “carbon pollution” is just plain scientifically inaccurate.

A carbon dioxide molecule is made up of two atoms of oxygen and one atom of carbon. Under the president’s apparent logic, wouldn’t it be twice as apt to term carbon dioxide “oxygen pollution”? But, we think, everyone would agree that would be deeply misinformative. So, too, everyone should agree, is applying the term “carbon pollution.”

In fact, carbon pollution already exists—it is more commonly called “soot,” the tiny elemental carbon particles that result from incomplete combustion. Soot is black, dirty, and oily, and not only makes an environmental mess, but is also dangerous to breathe. It is just what you expect a “pollutant” to be. And, it is already highly regulated by the EPA. So Obama’s statement that “existing power plants can still dump unlimited amounts of harmful carbon pollution into the air” is factually incorrect.

And finally, the carbon dioxide emitted from power plants is part and parcel of the chemistry of combustion. It is not some sort or gas or particle that is produced as a result of impurities in the fuels and can be separated from the process—it IS the process. Adding heat to hydrocarbons, such as fossil fuels (like coal, natural gas, or oil) in the presence of oxygen starts a chemical reaction that releases more heat (in excess of what was original applied) along with carbon dioxide and water (CO₂, and H₂O)**. Consequently, the power plants that the President refers to as being able to “dump unlimited amounts of harmful carbon pollution into the air” aren’t so much polluting as simply doing their job, the one that we ask of them—to produce the power that drives modern society and our way of life.

By calling carbon dioxide emissions “carbon pollution” President Obama and his EPA seek not to be scientifically accurate, but rather to sway public opinion in support of voluminous regulations aimed to restrict energy choice, not only here, but through his leadership aspirations, abroad (e.g., at the upcoming UN climate conference this December in Paris). For this, we award him 2.5 spin cycles—somewhere between Slightly Soiled and Normal Wash—in other words, the standard modus operandi of the federal government.

*There have been documented, although quite rare, occurrences of sudden carbon dioxide outgassing events associated with volcanic activity that have led to high fatalities in affected areas.

** In fact, it is similar to the process your body uses to power itself (in this case metabolism rather than combustion), breaking apart carbohydrates into carbon dioxide and water and liberating energy. Just as power plants emit H₂O and CO₂ into the air, so do you. The biggest difference, from a climate standpoint anyway, is that the carbohydrates you ingest were taken out of the air recently by plants (via photosynthesis), while the hydrocarbons ingested by power plants were taken out of the air by plants millions of years ago (and have been geologically converted and stored in the form of fossil fuels). Consequently, the collective breath of humanity does not lead to a build-up of CO₂ in the atmosphere, whereas the collective breath of fossil fuel-powered electricity generating facilities does.

Letter to Editor PREDICTED COLORADO EPA SPILL One Week Before Catastrophe=> So EPA Could Secure Superfund Status. Typical Obama administration. If there isn’t a problem, create one so you can use it to get your way.

A reader sent me this:  A recent McKinsey study looked at large infrastructure projects (over $1 billion).  In the introduction they observe:

Rail projects, for example, go over budget by an average of 44.7 percent, and their demand is overestimated by 51.4 percent.

We actually can combine these two numbers and find that the total cost per user of these systems was over-estimated by 117%, meaning the cost per user was on averagemore than double what was promised when these projects are sold to the taxpayers.

At the end of the day, the first segment of the line cost $75,000 per round trip daily raider.  We could have bought every regular rider a prius and a lifetime of gas and still saved money.

Is the distracted citizenry beginning to wake up? We can only hope so. Giving hope to Americans everywhere, after covering the usual local news, Orlando-area news anchor John Brown was transitioning into a segment about one of the Kardashian daughters recently naming her new pet rabbit "Bruce," he stood up and walked off set exclaiming, "I am having a good Friday, so I refuse to talk about the Kardashians today, you are on your own, Amy. I can’t do it." As the program’s co-host storms off set, he can be heard off-screen shouting, "I’ve had enough Kardashians. I can’t take any more Kardashian stories on this show." A message many may start to heed...

 

See full clip here...

 

As TheAntiMedia.org reports,

How many people do you know that would agree with the following statement? “I’ve had enough of the Kardashians…I’m sick of this family! (They’re) a non-story!” I believe most of us, including myself, would shout “amen” at the top of their lungs like it’s a Sunday in the South if we heard someone in the media utter those words. Well, get ready to holler.

 

The above exclamations are actually direct quotes spoken by Orlando-area news anchor John Brown during a live broadcast of “Good Day Orlando” on Friday.

 

After covering the usual local news, the show began to transition into a segment about one of the Kardashian daughters recently naming her new pet rabbit “Bruce.” (Just typing that sentence made me want to launch my fist into the computer screen where my pupils are currently fixated. Rest assured, I’m still typing, so I obviously mustered up all of the self-control in my being and refrained.) That’s when Brown interrupted the correspondent reporting the “story” in mid-sentence:

 

“I am having a good Friday, so I refuse to talk about the Kardashians today,” said Brown. “You are on your own, Amy. I can’t do it.”

 

As the program’s co-host storms off set, he can be heard off-screen shouting, “I’ve had enough Kardashians. I can’t take any more Kardashian stories on this show.”

 

After a replacement anchor rushes in to fill the void left on the morning show’s couch, the fed-up Brown — whose microphone stays on despite walking off set — can be heard continuing his rant away from the cameras: “I don’t care about this family. I’m sick of this family. It’s a non-story!”

 

The initial member of the news team that introduced the story agreed with Brown’s sentiments, but continued to talk about the Kardashians anyway.

 

Brown later posted video of his outburst on Facebook, saying, “Sorry I lost my mind a bit, although it was partially in jest!... I did feel better though after I was done though.”

 

All-in-all, I would say Mr. Brown kept his composure and handled the situation better than most people given the task of reading celebrity gossip disguised as news for a living.

*  *  *

Kaibab squirrel, North Rim, Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona, October 4, 2011

Kaibab squirrel (Wikipedia)

The Kaibab squirrel (Sciurus aberti kaibabensis) is a tassel-eared squirrel that lives in the Kaibab Plateau in the Southwest United States, in an area of 20 by 40 miles (30 by 60 km). The squirrel’s habitat is confined entirely to the ponderosa pine forests of the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park and the northern section of Kaibab National Forest around the town of Jacob Lake, Arizona.

This squirrel is not found anywhere else in the world. In 1965, 200,000 acres (800 km²) of Kaibab squirrel habitat within Grand Canyon National Park and Kaibab National Forest were declared the Kaibab Squirrel National Natural Landmark.

My headline is probably the most accurate description of how China's devaluation of the yuan yesterday affects this country.  But I bet you will not see it portrayed that way in any other media.  What you are going to see, particularly as the Presidential election races heat up, are multiple calls to bash China in some way to punish it for being so generous to American consumers.  Why?  Because the devaluation of the yuan will negatively affect the bottom line of a few export sensitive companies.  And if we have learned anything from the Ex-Im battle, things that GE and Boeing like or hate are much more likely to affect policy than things that benefit 300 million consumers.  Make no mistake, protectionist measures are the worst sort of cronyism, benefiting a few companies and workers and hurting everyone else (look up concentrated benefits, dispersed costs).

By the way, aren't the worldwide competitive devaluation sweepstakes amazing?  If everyone is doing it, then devaluations have no substantive effect on trade (except to perhaps decrease its magnitude in total), which just adds to the utter pointlessness of the game.  And it is hilarious to me to see US elected officials criticizing China for "manipulating" its currency, as if the US Fed hasn't added several trillion dollars to its balance sheet over the last few years in a heroic attempt to manipulate the value (downwards) of our own currency.

Last year, when Congress did a 1-year renewal of legislation governing public recreation and fee policies (FLREA) they left out a tiny provision that discouraged government agencies from taking back tasks they had privatized.  With that gone, parts of the USFS immediately began to move to bring certain operations back in house, even when doing so required that they both spend more tax money AND reduce services levels to the public.  Such is the strength of incentives in any government bureaucracy to expand their scope, staffing, and budget, even when it makes no sense for the public.

This week in an article at PERC, I tell one such story in depth. Here is an excerpt:

Consider one example: The Tahoe National Forest in California recently took the operation of some of their parks out of private hands, ending a nearly 30-year partnership with one of our competitor companies.

Did the Forest Service do it to save money? The private concessionaire operated entirely with the user fees paid by visitors, using no taxpayer money, and even paid rent back to the government. The agency’s in-house operating plan for running these campgrounds requires at least $2 million in taxpayer money over the next five years to supplement user fees.

Did they do it to improve service? The private concessionaire employed more than 60 paid workers living on site, with managers who worked weekends and holidays. The Forest Service plan calls for half this number of paid employees, and none will live on site or work weekends—the busiest time for recreation.

Did they do it to address some egregious for-profit abuse? The agency is actually planning to replace dozens of paid private workers with volunteers. At the same time that the federal government is mandating higher minimum wages for campground concessionaires, the Forest Service is replacing paid workers with unpaid labor.

Did the Forest Service do it to keep user fees low? The original stated reason for kicking out the private operator was the concessionaire’s request to increase user fees in response to recent increases in California’s minimum wage. In the end, however, the Forest Service raised fees even higher than those proposed by the concessionaire.