Boulder’s proposed grocery bag fee is garbage. It trashes our liberties

A version of this article was printed in the Boulder Daily Camera on May 19, 2012.

By Boulder’s standard of “zero waste,” the City Council’s plan to restrict plastic bag use is garbage. Regardless, such restrictions are foul rubbish. They empower bag bullies to self-righteously trash our liberties.

Plastic bags contribute just 0.4 percent of Boulder County’s municipal solid waste, says a recent Waste Composition Study.  By weight, there’s more than ten times as much recyclable plastic, “clean dimensional lumber,” and items accepted at the Center for Hard to Recycle Materials. Instead of shaking down shoppers, bag banners should wade through dumps to extract these items for reuse or recycling.

Bag restrictions stifle reuse and recycling trends. Consumers reuse plastic grocery bags at home, and restrictions increase sales of thicker, single-use plastic bags. Plastic bag recycling has increased by 50% since 2005, yielding durable plastic and lumber products,reports Moore Recycling Associates. RecycleYourPlasticBag.com lists local places to recycle bags. The City Council should add its meetings to this list.

Meanwhile, durable bags meant for reuse “are seldom if ever washed” and “almost all” contain bacteria, concludes a Loma Linda University study. Just last week MSNBC reported that one such bag spread “nasty … norovirus infections” to a youth soccer team.

Comparing various bag types, the British Environment Agency found that plastic bags had the lowest “environmental impact,” which is most determined by resources required for manufacturing, rather than transport and disposal.

Regardless of which bag is best, retailers have a right to distribute bags, and customers have a right to discard them through voluntary means. Boulder City Council, stop your bag bullying.

If you say government authorities can justly restrict voluntary exchange of a plastic bag, then you’re conceding that can justly restrict any other type of voluntary exchange. You can no longer you can no longer oppose any government action by arguing that it violates people’s right to liberty.

“Free” parking isn’t free, and the benefits of charging for it

This piece originally appeared in the Boulder Daily Camera in response to the question:

[A] proposed test program was tentatively approved for Chautauqua, which would have time-limited parking for areas within the landmark, but outside of the parking lot near the green. The test program will run in June, July and August. What do you think? What do you think about parking and parking restrictions in Boulder?

Since demand for “free” parking spaces near Chautauqua exceeds supply during popular hiking months, clearly the monetary price to park is too low.  With “free” parking, the monetary price is zero, but non-monetary prices become costly: time, inconvenience, and frustration.  Many Chautauqua hikers would happily pay some money to avoid such hassles – if the price is right. Hence, the City should certainly find a way to charge for parking.

Of the approaches described in the City Council’s April 17 agenda packet, a combination of parking permits and time-limited parking sounds best. However, this proposal limits permit sales to only Chautauqua guests, Boulder residents, and those who work in Boulder. Why not sell permits to any willing buyer?  The City could discount permits to Chautauqua guests, residents, and local employees to roughly account for taxes they pay.

Also, how about earmarking the Chautauqua revenues for trail maintenance?

For per-hour parking, in Chautauqua or elsewhere, the City should consider pay-by-phone methods, which would allow hikers to extend their meter time via text message or smartphone app. CU-Boulder uses ParkMobile, while San Francisco’s SFpark project uses PayByPhone.com.

The City Council should also consider leasing its parking lots and curbside parking areas to for-profit or non-profit operators. Several cities have made such arrangements, as discussed in the Reason Foundation‘s recent Annual Privatization Reports [2010, 2011]. Such leases bring cash-strapped cities significant non-tax revenue while freeing them from financial risk and maintenance costs. Cities have also retained the power to approve or reject leasers’ proposed rate increases.

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In the video above, UCLA professor Donald Shoup explains Pasadena revitalized a shopping district by charging for curb-side parking.

Why college costs so much: government financial “aid” is more harm than “aid”

This originally appeared in the Boulder Daily Camera on April 9, 2012.

Are tax-funded student loans and grants financial “aid” or financial harm?  ”Harm,” political scientist Gary Wolfram would say. Tax-funded financial aid “results in increased tuition, leading to political pressure to further increase aid. This in turn leads to higher tuitions,” he writes.

Basic economics predicts that subsidizing the purchase of a product increases demand for it, and hence increases the price.  For example, in four-year public schools, a one dollar increase in student loans was associated with a 93-cent increase in average tuition students paid, writes Dr. Andrew Gillen in his study “Financial Aid in Theory and Practice.”

Dr. Gillen shows that since 1986, the federal government’s financial “aid” has nearly tripled. During this time per-student fees and tuition have almost doubled, Gillen shows. Student debt “has generally outpaced inflation” and family incomes, reports US News and World Report.

Educational opportunity hasn’t faired well, either.  In 1972, students in the top income quartile were six times more likely to earning a bachelor’s degree by age 24 than those in the bottom quartile. Today, upper income students are eight times more likely, notes economist Richard Vedder, author of Going Broke by Degree.

Politicians win points for being “pro education.” But politically-driven financial “aid” for college is truly harmful.  Low graduation rates show that “aid” distorts people’s career choices by encouraging them to attend college, even though learning valuable skills in an unsubsidized apprenticeship might be wiser. They drop out after realizing they’ve wasted time learning unmarketable skills. Then they must pay off debt, if they can find a job in today’s “stimulated” economy.

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See also:
“Higher Education Subsidies” at DownsizingGovernment.org.
The Center for College Affordability and Productivity

Concealed carry allowed at Colorado’s public universities

A version of this article was printed in the Boulder Daily Camera on Saturday, March 10, 2012. It’s in response to the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision that CU regents cannot prevent conceal-carry permit holders from being armed on campus.

The “make my day” moniker for House Bill 12-1088 trivializes the traumatic stress of defending one’s life. It also reflects baseless prejudice against gun owners.  Like the fictional Dirty Harry who popularized “make my day,” arguments against self-defense rights fit in Hollywood scripts, but not in reality. (Continues below video.)

Jim Manley of the Mountain States Legal Foundation was the lead attorney in the case to overthrow the concealed-carry ban at the U. of Colorado. He explains the basic facts & rationale regarding the decision.

CSU has allowed concealed-carry since 2003, while Colorado community colleges have since 2010. Writing in the Camera that year, Jimmy Calano of the Camera’s editorial advisory board opposed campus concealed-carry by describing horrors that could occur — but never have.  In its amicus brief for the case, County Sheriffs of Colorado say they “are not aware of any incident since 2003 involving firearms misuse on a Colorado state campus by a person with a licensed carry permit.” Or in Utah, which also allows campus conceal-carry. Nor has opposition to campus conceal-carry cited an incident.

Also in 2010, board member Dave Ensign says he “cannot understand the obsession with carrying at all times a weapon that’s sole purpose is to kill people.” But killing is not the purpose. Like police officers, civilians carry guns for self-defense against violent criminals, as documented in the Cato Institute’s “Tough Targets” study and books by Robert A. Waters.

These civilians include heroic life-savers Joel Myrick and Tracey Bridges, who thwarted school shootings after retrieving guns from their vehicles, notes scholar Dave Kopel in “Pretend ‘Gun-free’ School Zones: A Deadly Legal Fiction.”  Self-defense is a basic human right. Abridging this right is morally equivalent to disabling seat-belts in someone’s car.

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Here’s an excerpt from my longer article on this topic, published in the Denver Post:

Here’s a challenge for the CU Regents and Boulder Faculty Assembly. They’re OK with armed campus police, but not armed citizens with the training and qualifications to have earned a concealed-carry permit. Then why not issue special campus gun permits to those who, at their own expense, undergo the same firearms training as the CU Police?

If this is not acceptable, how about more rigorous training, or limiting permits to faculty and staff? If a regent or CU faculty member opposes this, you should wonder about his actual motives for opposing concealed carry on campus.

See also: Students for Concealed Carry.

Colorado’s ban on text messaging while driving: ineffective, misguided

The originally appeared in the Boulder Daily Camera on Saturday, February 11, 2012.

The Boulder Daily Camera‘s article on the Safe Streets Boulder report says “drivers who follow too close and rear-end other vehicles” cause the most accidents by far. No doubt texting while driving has contributed to some of these. But does this lend credibility to Colorado’s 2009 prohibition, sponsored by Rep. Claire Levy (D-Boulder), against texting behind the wheel? The evidence suggests not.

Like other driver distractions, texting increases accident risks. But it doesn’t follow that banning text-messaging helps. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety compared collision accidents rates in four states that had banned texting. “Crash rates rose in three of the states after bans were enacted,” reports the USA Today. Researchers suggest that “drivers try to evade police by lowering their phones when texting, increasing the risk by taking their eyes even further from the road and for a longer time.”

Enforcement is also problematic. When drivers poke at phones, police “can’t tell … whether they’re dialing a phone number” or texting, said Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle, who called the prohibition a “feel good law.” To promote safety, Pelle says that police should “focus on pulling people over and writing tickets for bad driving.”

The Sheriff is right. As journalist Radley Balko argues, to promote safe streets, “we should be punishing reckless driving. It shouldn’t matter if it’s caused by alcohol, sleep deprivation, prescription medication, text messaging, or road rage. … The punishable act should be violating road rules or causing an accident, not the factors that led to those offenses.”

(Image via Reason.com)

Obama’s State of the Union: You’re just part of his “blueprint”

This originally was published in the Boulder Daily Camera on Saturday, January 28, 2012.

For refutations of the President’s flawed claims and statist economic plans, see the Cato Institute‘s website, blog, and YouTube channel.  Regarding Obama’s “Buffett tax” on millionaires, the Associated Press explains that the wealthiest Americans already “pay a lot more taxes than the middle class,” including secretaries

To understand Obama’s statist fervor, ask yourself: Are you a machine cog?  Surely not. But like many politicians, Obama disagrees, at least tacitly. How? Linguist George Lakoff explains how metaphors are key to understanding political discourse.  In his speech, the President expressed his desire to “lay out a blueprint for an economy.”  At least twice he’s mentioned starting a health care “system” from “scratch.” This speaks volumes.

“The economy” refers to people producing and exchanging goods and services. In a freed economy, government respects people’s right to trade voluntarily. But Obama sees the economy as a machine to be manufactured, or a cake to be baked.

Obama has the same conceit that better economists have warned about for centuries. Describing the “man of system,” Adam Smith wrote: “He seems to imagine that he can arrange … members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges … pieces upon a chess-board.” “Socialists look upon people as raw material to be formed into social combinations,” wrote French economist Frederic Bastiat in 1853. Or, as 1974 Nobel laureate F.A. Hayek wrote, “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

Tim Tebow: Fans should thank home school equal access laws

This article was printed in the Boulder Daily Camera on December 17, 2011.

No one would be talking about Tim Tebow’s football excellence had the Florida legislature acted differently when Tebow was nine years old. In 1996 the legislature allowed home-schooled students like Tebow to participate in local public school sports programs.

In high school, Pro Bowl line-backer Jason Taylor also benefited from such home-school friendly policies. But in college the NCAA revoked Taylor’s football scholarship for reasons related to his home schooling. In 1994 he successfully challenged the decision and regained the scholarship. After this case, reports ESPN, the NCAA streamlined eligibility requirements for home-schooled athletes.

In a 2007 ESPN interview, Taylor spoke out in support equal access for home-schooled athletes: “It’s important to let the kids know, and the people who are holding the kids back know, that there’s a lot of kids with a lot of potential.  … They just need a chance. … It’s a problem when you have sixteen states in our country that say it’s OK to play and the other 34 still have a problem with it. … Look, the parents are still paying tax dollars. If [the students] can’t play in the school system, then give the tax money back.”

The Tebow family has lent their name to TimTebowBIll.com, which advocates legislation “to allow homeschooled students equal access to sports and extracurricular activities” in Alabama. According to the site, Colorado is among 24 states that now allow equal access, while 15 have introduced legislation.

Jared Polis on U.S. Postal Service: end its “monopolistic protections and special treatment”

This originally appeared in the Boulder Daily Camera on December 3, 2011 in response to this question: The United States Postal Service is facing major financial constraints, and it is forecasting a record $14.1 billion loss for fiscal 2012. … What do you think the USPS should do?

Break free, USPS! Leave your over-protective and controlling parent: the U.S. government. Yes, the perks are nice. The Feds grant you monopolies on mail delivery and mailbox access. They exempt you from costs such as vehicle licensing, parking tickets, threats of antitrust suits, and taxes on sales, income, and property. The fifteen billion dollar U.S Treasury credit line is nice, too.

But Federal controls cripple you. The Feds make you deliver mail almost everywhere, six days a week, while restricting your ability to increase prices. Freedom to adjust prices and deliver on fewer days would save billions annually. Three of four Post Offices lose money. But U.S. Code prohibits closing them “solely for operating at a deficit,” and Congress must approve any layoffs.

Further, you must pre-fund your retirees’ health benefits, which your Postmaster General says is “effectively bankrupting” you. Yes, USPS retirees get health benefits! As your website says, “federal statutes hamper [your] ability to craft a market-based benefits package.” Indeed. DownsizingGovernment.org describes how your employees enjoy a “postal pay premium” between 20% and 35% compared to comparable private-sector employees.

USPS, listen to what Rep. Jared Polis, D-Boulder, wrote ten years ago. Ending “monopolistic protections and special treatment enjoyed by USPS” would “benefit … postal customers, postal employees, and businesses in the delivery sector. … Unless we unshackle USPS and allow it to leverage its infrastructure effectively as a normal privately owned company, then USPS will sadly fade away as it becomes increasingly irrelevant in the marketplace.”

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Thanks to Ari Armstrong for the Jared Polis reference.

Technocrats violate our right to buy and sell incandescent light bulbs

This letter appeared in the November 2011 print and on-line issue of APS News, the newsletter of the American Physical Society, the world’s second largest organization of physicists.

Physicist-turned-Congressman Rush Holt supports legislation banning conventional incandescent light bulbs (Back Page, August/September APS News). His statements about the legislation are misleading. Worse yet, his support of the ban embodies an elitism that supplants people’s right to choose with authoritarian dictates of a technocratic ruling class.

To the Wall Street Journal‘s claim that “Washington will effectively ban the sale of conventional incandescent light bulbs,” Holt glibly replies, “This was, of course, untrue. No type of light bulb was banned.” Sure, the legislation does not ban all incandescents, but it does ban conventional ones, as the Journal claims. The legislation will “make current 100-watt bulbs obsolete” and such bulbs will “disappear from store shelves,” reports the New York Times.

To justify the ban, Dr. Holt narrowly defines efficiency to mean only energy efficiency. But the most “efficient” light bulb best achieves the user’s purpose. Energy efficiency is important, but so are an appealing color spectrum, quickly reaching full brightness, low-cost dimming, and tolerance to vibration and heat.

The Congressman also decries proposals to repeal the bulb ban, as it could undermine Congress’s “tradition of supporting innovation.”  But when companies spend money to satisfy government demands, they invest less on innovation to satisfy perceived customer demand.

Businesses in relatively free markets innovate just fine. Consumer electronics is an obvious example, but product packaging has also become more efficient. Soda cans use less metal, while bottled beverage manufacturers advertise bottles using less plastic or petroleum-free plant-based plastics.

Meanwhile, the bulb ban exemplifies “innovative” ways for bulb makers to increase profits through political pull. Conventional bulbs are a “ubiquitous commodity” with a “negligible” profit margin, the New York Times magazine recently noted.  “No amount of subsidy or ‘green’ branding has managed to woo consumers away from Edison’s bulb.” So the lighting industry endorsed new efficiency standards that force consumers to buy more expensive products.

“We are taking away a choice that continues to let people waste their own money,” quipped Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate in physics. Even if this is true, wasting one’s own money is every person’s right. Moreover, if a consumer has good reasons to prefer conventional incandescent bulbs, buying them is not wasteful. What’s wasteful is being forced to buy less desirable alternatives.

A physics PhD and a high-profile government job is not a moral sanction to violate consumers’ right to choose.

Prop. 103 supporters: You can still donate more of your own earnings to tax-funded schools

This article was printed in the Boulder Daily Camera on November 5, 2011.

To paraphrase Mark Twain: Don’t let funding schools interfere with funding students’ education. Boulder Senator Rollie Heath was behind the defeated Proposition 103, the proposed tax increase for Colorado’s tax-funded schools. “I just don’t know how far in education cuts we’ll have to do before people realize what we’re doing,” he told the Daily Sentinel after the election.

Heath implies that increasing school funding improves students’ education. Where’s the evidence?  As I documented in a recent Denver Post op-ed, national standardized test scores for 17-year-olds have been essentially flat since the early ’70s, while real-dollar per-pupil spending has doubled since then.

Increased spending didn’t increase test scores, but it increased teacher employment. Since the early ’70s student-to-teacher ratios decreased by almost a third. Employment in K-12 schools doubled, though student enrollment increased by just 10%.

Prop. 103 was really a Democratic Party fundraiser. Hiring more teachers sends more tax revenue to teachers unions. The unions almost exclusively support Democrat politicians, who when elected push for higher school taxes, and hence more money for unions that supported their campaign. These politicians also oppose school choice, and hence protect tax-funded schools as a monopolistic cartel.

Don’t fret if you supported Prop. 103. You’re still free to donate more of your earnings to tax-funded schools. You just can’t force others to do so.  But if you really care about quality education, you should support efficient schools that provide quality education at low cost, rather than letting politicians determine where your money goes.

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Update:  Oddly, the website for the Boulder Valley School District does not make it easy for people to donate to the district itself or specific schools. But the District has received more than $2 million in annual donations. I did find the following:

• a donation page for Summit Middle School (Boulder County)
• CrayonsToCalculators.org
• Education Foundation of St. Vrain Valley