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Bonding Bill: From the taxpayer's side of the looking glass

How doth the loyal St. Paul rep
Improve her bonding tale,
And pour on language full of pep
To try to make the sale!
How righteously she speaks her piece,
How neatly spreads her view
That general welfare will increase
With taxes paid by you.

— With apologies to the Rev. Charles Dodgson.

Better known as "Lewis Carroll," Charles Dodgson penned, "How Doth the Little Crocodile" as a parody of Isaac Watts' poem "Against Idleness and Mischief." Watts uses the busy little bee to personify the virtues of diligence and hard work. In Dodgson's parody, the "virtues" of the predatory crocodile are deception and guile — it lies in wait "with a cheerful grin" and "welcomes little fishes in."

St. Paul DFLer Rep. Alice Hausman and the Capitol hive have been busy as little bees pollinating key districts with construction projects that will bloom come November. But beware the "Jabber-talk," my son; there is much predatory guile and deception in Alice's wonderland.

In her rebuttal ("What's Essential," April 6)to my criticism of her bonding bill, Hausman pours nuance upon nuance on the word "essential" to improve her bonding tale and sell $925 million ($717 million after the governor's line-item veto Monday) worth of state spending. Hausman uses "essential" to mean whatever she needs it to mean.

Hausman believes "job creation is essential." The bonding bill, she says, is expected to create 10,000 good-paying jobs. In the bonding process, the Legislature gave preference to projects ready to go so that jobs would be created as soon as the bonds were issued.

In other words, it's not the projects themselves that Hausman regards as necessarily "essential;" that the projects are ready to go makes them "essential." Putting people to work is "essential," not necessarily the work they will do. That has a nice progressive ring to it, but as economic principle it is a clanging symbol.

When government builds projects that people would not willingly pay for themselves, the nonessential jobs it "creates" are at the expense of productive jobs lost elsewhere in the economy. In simple terms: A state-paid carpenter building a new house for a gorilla in St. Paul (vetoed by the governor) gets his job at the expense of a privately paid carpenter not building a new home for a family in Roseville.

As if it suddenly just happened, Hausman sees an infrastructure in decay — bridges are falling down, there is a backlog of basic maintenance of university buildings, and sewer and water systems are in need of repair. Spending to fix that is "essential." Tough to argue with that, but that is where deception, guile and predatory taxing comes into play. We find our infrastructure in such a state because legislators elect to spend available tax dollars on other non-essentials that litter current and past budgets and bonding bills.

For example, the state's complex highway funding formula, based on politics, not priorities (which legislators are too timid to tackle), virtually ensures that highway maintenance is deferred in favor of new but not necessarily "essential" road construction. In large measure the $6.6 billion transportation tax increase was "essential" because in this wonderland bonding for absolutely necessary state roads and bridges would suck too much money away from local legislative pet projects masquerading as "essential" state investments.

Hausman gives "essential" a nuanced local meaning. While I find the Rochester National Volley Ball Center a non-essential project for state funding (which the governor vetoed), Hausman says it is "essential" for Rochester; ergo it should be funded by state money collected in part from Duluth. But not to worry, Duluth, you'll get state money for a hockey arena (which the governor, inconsistently, did not veto) funded in part by Rochester. Of course, taxpayers in Rochester and Duluth and across the state, not the legislators bribing each other with ribbon-cutting opportunities, are actually picking up the tab.

But in Alice's wonderland, trading in "pork" futures, so to speak, "for better or worse," is "essential to getting the (bonding) bill passed" — even if it means sleeping with the enemy and trading local road funding for an override vote. Heaven forbid a legislative leader should actually show a little leadership and try to reform a bad system.

"Right now," writes Hausman, "DFLers think putting people back to work and protecting investment ... in our infrastructure are essential." Tomorrow they might think that a state-run health care system is "essential." Next, we'll need another "essential" light-rail line.

Essential ought not be simply a word reflecting Hausman's preferences. On the taxpayers' side of the looking glass, essential has an objective meaning. It is essential that Hausman and the DFL come to understand that.

Craig Westover is a contributing columnist to the Pioneer Press Opinion page and a senior policy fellow at the Minnesota Free Market Institute (www.mnfmi.org). His e-mail address is westover4@yahoo.com.

This commentary originally appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Wednesday April9, 2008

Eliot Spitzer: This is just too easy.

ABU DHABI (AFP) - The crown prince of the United Arab Emirates of Dubai has bought a female camel for a record 2.72 million dollars, an organiser at a camel beauty pageant said on Monday.

Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashed al-Maktoum "bought camels... worth 16.5 million dirhams (4.49 million dollars), including a female camel... for 10 million dirhams (2.72 million dollars)," Hamad bin Kardoum al-Amiri said.

Drum roll, please ....

The Sheikh paid more per hump that Eliot Spitzer.

Render onto Caesar ...

Interesting email from AM 950 KTNF this morning that highlights the difference in the way the political right and left look at religion. The email promotes the Progressive Faith Conference, "Voting Justice, Voting Hope." It reads in part:

Get Ready to Change the Way You Think About Faith and Politics at the national gathering "Voting Justice, Voting Hope: Progressive Faith Taking Action in 2008" sponsored by the Plymouth Center for Progressive Christian Faith.

While there is certainly room for debate on the role religion should play in politics, nonetheless, the left and the right take fundamentally different approaches to the question. On the right, the moral question is, “How does one reconcile one’s faith with politics?” On the left, the question , “How does one incorporate religion into one’s "progressive" politics?” That is a substantial difference.

Bonding Bill: "Essential" or not, period

Back in the days when grammar, not global warming, was taught in public schools, we learned that some adjectives can't be modified. "Unique," for example. Either something's unique — that is, one of a kind — or it isn't.

"Essential" is another. Rep. Alice Hausman, DFL-St. Paul, the chief House sponsor of the bonding bill, must have missed class the day they taught grammar; she most certainly missed the day they taught economics. Everything you need to know about bad bonding policy, you can learn from Alice Hausman.

On Wednesday the Minnesota House and Senate passed a capital investment "bonding" bill that authorizes the state to borrow $925 million to finance public works projects. Gov. Tim Pawlenty threatens a veto, saying $925 million is too much; it surpasses the state guideline for debt service of 3 percent of state revenue.

But, Hausman told the Star Tribune, the bill spreads out the bond sales without violating the 3 percent guideline. Thus, lawmakers can throw more money down the rabbit hole leading to Alice's wonderland of grammatical and economic nonsense. Let's start with the grammar.

In Alice's wonderland, words mean whatever legislators need them to mean. Hausman defends the size of the bonding bill, saying legislative negotiators pared nearly $4 billion in requests to less than $1 billion in "most essential" projects. Not to pick nits here, but dictionaries define "essential" as "absolutely necessary; vitally necessary; indispensible."

If a project request is "essential" to the state, then there are dire consequences to the state if it's not funded; if it's not essential, state government shouldn't be funding it. "Most essential" is as nonsensical a concept as ever uttered by a mad hatter.

Consider the "most essential," $3 million expansion of the National Volleyball Center in Rochester: absolutely necessary, vitally necessary, indispensible or no? Dire consequences for Minnesotans? Or no?

Responsible legislators might say "no," but in Alice's wonderland when some dodo makes a suggestion, everyone races around in a circle and everybody wins — and Alice doles out the comfits.

In Alice's wonderland, everyone eats from the side of the mushroom that makes spending grow. Grinning like Cheshire cats, they ponder "how much the state CAN spend" rather than "how much the state SHOULD spend."

Back in March, before the House and Senate agreed on $925 million as the "right" number for the bonding bill, Hausman hesitated to call a conference committee, which would determine the projects and funding that would make it into the final bill. Her rationale was: "Without agreement on the size of the bill, it is hard to write the first line." Nonsense.

Hausman is absolutely wrong; the first line of the bonding bill is easy to write. It is an appropriation for an "essential" capital expenditure, which means the capital investment relates to a constitutional responsibility of state government that should not be delayed for another year. The second line meets the same criteria. So does the third. The last item in the bonding bill is the line above the first constitutionally legitimate expenditure that isn't absolutely necessary.

If the bonding bill at that point is a mere $600 million, then that's the appropriate and legitimate level of state bonding. If indeed everything on the list is both a constitutional responsibility of the state and essential to the state and the total is $1.25 billion, well, then legislators do have to look for other sources of revenue - first eliminating non-essential expenditures elsewhere in the budget.

In fairness, we should note that Hausman's approach to bonding is not unique. Although the governor says at $925 million the bonding bill is "too much," he is still on the same side of the looking glass as Hausman. He, too, starts with a bonding bill cap instead defining which projects are essential and which are not. Nibbling on the other side of the mushroom to shrink the bonding bill to a mere $825 million is less damaging to taxpayers, but no less a mocking of fiscal responsibility.

In Alice's wonderland, the bonding bill is a croquet game without rules where taxpayers take the roles of flamingoes (mallets) and hedgehogs (balls) and get knocked around and rolled through hoops at the whim of legislators. Sadly for taxpayers, the bonding bill is not a fantastical dream; it's simply fantastical. How the state can refuse to bond for essential roads and bridges while at the same time eagerly passing on to our children the debt on local hockey arenas and polar bear exhibits is beyond my per diem level.

Go ask Alice, when she's 10 feet tall.

This commentary originally appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press Friday, April 4, 2008.

Transportation: Fighting over the spoils

So the vandals have sacked Rome, and now they are fighting over the spoils. Ripped from the Pioneer Press headlines, 'Fight erupts over new sales taxes for transit. At issue: whether money should be used to bail out Met Council.' Wow. Even I thought the transit kids would play nice together a little longer than this.

A couple of weeks ago, I cited comments by Rep. Bernie Lieder, a DFLer from Crookston and architect of the transportation bill the Legislature passed over Gov. Tim Pawlenty's veto. Lieder said, in effect, that county board members had concerns about the Metropolitan Council's power and influence.

To address those concerns, the transportation bill created a joint powers board through which the seven metro-area counties would influence new spending on transit. And should the Met Council and this new layer of government disagree on transit spending, I predicted, one or the other would be back at the Legislature looking for new money.

And here we are. A combination of Pawlenty's proposed budget cuts and a sagging economy have created a $47.5 million hole in the Met Council's transit budget, which substantially exceeds the $30.8 million bailout funding earmarked in the transportation bill for Met Council projects. Whatcha gonna do?

Pawlenty's proposed $30 million reduction in state General Fund support of regional transit operations makes the Met Council's self-inflicted problem worse, but the response of transit supporters to the shortfall once again highlights their unsustainable economic model of massive public transit expansion.

Conrad deFiebre on the Web site of the progressive think tank Minnesota 2020 rants about the governor's budget cuts to transportation and notes the Met Council bailout money "was needed because of a big hole in transit budgets left by declining revenues from the motor vehicle sales tax, which in a slowing economy has consistently fallen short of projections based on auto sales."

A sagging economy may have hastened the process, but isn't the goal of progressive transit policy to get people out of their cars? If that policy is successful, won't it lead to people buying fewer new cars regardless of the economy? Shouldn't someone have accounted for falling tax revenue? Or do we expect people to buy cars and just not drive them for sake of the "common good"?

Of course, the dirty little secret is that no one really expects light rail to actually fulfill its promises, especially those supporting it. DeFiebre laments on: "So now the talk is of fare increases and service cuts, the familiar fallback that hits hardest those least able to pay. Metro Transit riders are already paying some of the nation's highest fares, financing 30 percent of bus operations and a remarkable 38 percent of the cost of running the Hiawatha light rail line."

Are those LRT riders from Bloomington going to work in downtown really those "least able to pay?" Those people cramming the train on Vikings game days or projected to flock to the new Twins Stadium, $200 tickets ($65 along the outfield baselines) in hand? What is "remarkable" is that anyone could term a 62 percent operating deficit acceptable, much less a "success" — an operating deficit that under the new scheme, according to Lieder, will no longer come out of general funds; counties had better look to property taxes.

As quoted by deFiebre, Dave Van Hattum of Transit for Livable Communities carries transit support duplicity to another level. "More people than ever depend on the bus system to get around," he said. "In a struggling economy, bus service should be the last thing we cut since it directly impacts many people's abilities to reach their jobs."

OK. Then why, independent of the governor's budget proposal, are we planning to cut bus service on University Avenue? We are because it was necessary to cook the books in favor of light rail to obtain federal funding for the Central Corridor project. So what if people have to walk farther to catch a train, which will run less frequently than the current bus service. How does that not affect people's ability to reach their jobs?"

Of course it does, but current transit planning is not being done for the benefit of the public. The transportation policy being railroaded through the Legislature is about convenience for the well-connected and a legacy for the legislative elite for which everyone else pays. It's cool. The current dust-up among the Met Council, the Legislature and the counties is just more of the $6.6 billion entertainment value of the "historic" transportation bill, which is the best most of us can hope for.

This commentary originally appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press on Friday, March 23, 2008.

Tacking into the Wind: Another argument for choice in education

The Star Tribune is reporting today that Forest Lake Area High School Students abruptly canceled the appearance of the National Heroes Tour, featuring decorated veteran from the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Steve Massey, the school principal, said the decision to cancel was prompted by concerns that the event was becoming political rather than educational and therefore was not suitable for a public school.

He said the school had received several phone calls from parents and others, some of whom indicated that they may stage a protest if the event took place.

"The event was structured to be an academic classroom discussion around military service. We thought we'd provide an opportunity for kids to learn about service in the context of our history classes," Massey said. "As the day progressed, it became clear that this was becoming a political event ... which would be inappropriate in a public setting.

I’m sure much of the furor surrounding this bit of news will focus on the fact that it is a patriotic event being canceled. But there is an underlying problem at work here: Contrary to the notion that public schools are a place for bringing together diversity, public schooling often forces people of disparate backgrounds into political combat, as the Forest Lake decision makes plain.

Think about it: Whether one opposes or supports the war in Iraq, don’t we have to ask ourselves how public education reached the point where political controversy is “inappropriate in a public setting?”

Such value-based clashes are inevitable in government-run schooling because all Americans are required to support the public schools, but only those with the most political power control them. Political conflict is an inescapable public schooling reality – to the detriment of actual academic activities. That observation passes the smell test and is well-documented by the Cato Institute’s Neal McCluskey (“Why We Fight: How Public Schools Cause Social Conflict”).

Tacking into the Wind: To end the fighting caused by state-run schooling, we should transform our “public education system” system from one in which government establishes and controls schools, to one in which individual parents are empowered to select schools that share their moral values and educational goals for their children. Instead of an education funding formula that funnels money to district schools, we ought to have an education funding formula where money follows the student to district schools, charter schools, private schools, religious schools, online schools and home schools.

Of course, the problem is those with the political power to control education -- Education Minnesota, legislators and bureaucrats -- are not willing to consider parental empowerment at expense of their own power. But nonetheless, fighting to empower families with maximum educational choice is a battle worth fighting.

Minnesota Health Care Transformation Task Force: A sow's ear of corporate socialism

Driven by cost reduction, the recommendations of the Governor's Health Care Transformation Task Force, many of which are rapidly moving through the Legislature in health care reform bills, are, as I discussed in Wednesday's column, a fundamentally flawed approach to health care reform.

The Legislature charged the Transformation Task Force with reducing the cost of Minnesota's health care system by 20 percent by the year 2011, while increasing access to health care and improving quality. Should task force recommendations become law, state government and corporate health plans will make decisions about your medical care and set standards by which you conduct your everyday life.

The task force ignored economic factors affecting health care costs (including government policies) and instead focused on the very narrow assumption that the "culprits" creating rising health care costs are physicians who perform too many expensive procedures and the rest of us who live unhealthy lifestyles.

To control our doctors' and our personal behaviors, the Transformation Task Force would:

• Expand the concept of "public health" so virtually no behavior would be exempt from regulatory oversight.
• Radically reform health care provider pay by shifting "accountability for the total cost of care" from health plans to providers.
• Radically overhaul the insurance market by creating a nonprofit health insurance exchange that would de facto control the price and variety of insurance available in Minnesota.

For the layman, the most disturbing sections of the Transformation Task Force report are those that expand the concept of "public health" to include virtually any behavior with an impact on the cost of health care. Sure, Minnesotans would be better off if we were all a little skinnier, exercised a little more, smoked and drank a little less, and never strayed one toke over the line. Good health habits can prevent chronic diseases, and chronic diseases raise the cost of health care.

But do Minnesotans really want to live in a state that requires "the active engagement of employers, schools, communities and the health care system" to enforce healthy behavior? Is the body mass index of your children a matter of public health? Is it the legitimate responsibility of the Department of Education to "ensure that schools are held accountable for making progress on health improvement goals" (A No Child's Behind Left Behind Act)?

Does recommending the Legislature "encourage and/or require employers, schools, communities and health care organizations to adopt age-specific goals" for certain health conditions and diseases portend any consequences we ought to fear? (My emphasis added.)

"If we want to control costs, we need to stop adding more people with preventable chronic disease to the health care system," the task force declares. That idea is common to every resurgence of eugenics from Margaret Sanger to the Third Reich to the forced sterilization of 1,200 "feeble-minded" patients in Minnesota during the 1920s.

For now, the Task Force offers the unhealthy among us the opportunity for re-education and repentance — but what will Minnesota do with those who can't kick their unhealthy habits or the heretics who refuse to turn in their Milky Ways? What will Minnesota do with those who persistently, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote upholding a forced sterilization law, "sap the strength of the State"?

Cost reduction also drives the way the Transformation Task Force misconstrues the meaning of common words.

The task force defines words in terms of costs to the health care system, not their meaning to an individual. Thus, it makes perfect sense for the task force to believe a board of experts should determine if new medical technology has enough "value" to be included in the system.

An example of this attitude is the reaction of Sen. Linda Berglin to a proposed private cancer radiation treatment center in Woodbury. Berglin served on the Transformation Task Force and is chief sponsor of the Senate health care bill. Berglin and other legislators supported a moratorium on radiation therapy centers to limit duplication of costly facilities and protect hospitals from competition for lucrative outpatient cancer services.

How can that be — when the Transformation Task Force report promotes "competition" and "patient-centeredness"?

"Competition" logically means individual health care providers competing for individual patients on quality and price based on the individual's conception of value — much like Lasik surgery works today. Independent Lasik surgeons have had to innovate, improve their procedures, upgrade their technology and lower their prices to attract patients. Lasik surgeons operate outside the managed care payment system.

In the task force world, "competition" is "managed." Under the task force payment reform plan, health care providers must bid as low as possible for a contract to serve a population of patients offered by a managed care organization. Think of it like putting out a bid to provide computer maintenance: The task force approach is health care on an industrial model where we carbon-based units are maintained and repaired according to the manual. Unfortunately, we are not all the same make and model.

In the task force health care system, a provider's profit depends on how "efficiently" it provides medical treatment. The provider can be "efficient" by developing innovative treatment methods or by rationing the treatment it provides. Which method the provider chooses has great consequences for the patient, but from the task force's perspective of keeping costs down, either approach would yield "high value health care."

And, lest the Transformation Task Force leave any minor detail of your life untouched, it would require every Minnesotan to have a minimum amount of health insurance, dictate to health plans whom they must cover for what at what price, and create a health insurance exchange that effectively would eliminate the role of private insurance brokers.

Wednesday's and today's columns have scratched the surface of the Transformation Task Force recommendations. They haven't touched the report's bureaucratic proposals, data privacy issues, the true costs of implementation or the biases of the organizations that guided the task force's process. Those are not minor issues, but as noted Wednesday, the devil is not in the details of the Transformation Task Force report — he is sitting in plain sight.

While claiming to be "market-driven" and "patient-centered," "competitive" and "focused on outcomes" and structured around "quality," "price transparency" and "value," the Transformation Task Force report is none of these. From the sow's ear of corporate socialism, one cannot stitch a silk purse "market-driven," "patient-centered" health care system.

The Health Care Transformation Task Force is not a starting point for reform; it is a dead end.

This commentary originally appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press on Thursday March 20, 2008.

Part One of this two-part series appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press on Wednesday, March 19, 2008.

Minnesota Health Care Transformation Task Force: The devil's not in the details, but sitting in plain sight

Among the pressing issues facing the Minnesota Legislature this session are some very real problems with the health care system:

• Health insurance premiums are rising, and many employers are reducing or dropping health care coverage.
• Individuals without employer coverage are finding it difficult to obtain health insurance.
• Increased costs and reduced reimbursements from health plans, especially those administered through Medicare and Medicaid, are squeezing physicians.
• Large medical groups are swallowing up independent physicians and clinics.
• Consumers are finding fewer coverage and care options, and what is available is costly.

The polite line that might follow that list is that "reasonable people can disagree on how the state should address health care issues, but it is obvious something must be done." The Governor's Health Care Transformation Task Force is the centerpiece among several public-private committees that met between legislative sessions to "do something" about health care.

Observers of the Transformation Task Force portray it as a "love fest." Even critics praise the group's efforts. I have friends on the task force, and there are folks on it I respect. But I cannot in good conscience join the chorus of "Kumbaya." There is too much at stake.

My disagreement with the Transformation Task Force recommendations is not simply my preference for free-market solutions over government-run programs, nor even that I question the potential efficacy of task force recommendations (many of which are embedded in bills being rushed through the legislative process). My objection is more basic.

The devil is not in the details of the report, he's sitting in plain sight: The task force recommendations are a giant leap toward classical corporate socialism, a "friendly fascism," but fascism nonetheless.

Some things need to be called what they are. "Fascism" is a perfectly good word when used not as an insult but as an academic description. The task force recommendations are an integration of government and private corporations that destroys the distinction and endangers individual liberty and the quality of health care. It is the task force recommendations, not the task force members, to which the "fascist" label can be justly applied.

If the task force members are to be faulted, it is for letting their good intentions blind them to the unhealthy consequences of what they propose. Their report is the result of good people succumbing to the conceit that they, or any central committee, have the knowledge and authority to manage the health care system and make life-and-death health care decisions for others.

"Successful transformation of Minnesota's health care system will require active participation and engagement from consumers, employers, health care providers, health plans and government," declares the Task Force Report. The obligations the Task Force envisions for the first four groups require fundamental behavior change; government's obligation is to "enact the necessary changes to law to implement the transformation plan." In other words, supply the muscle, the force, the coercion.

The Task Force explicitly states that its report must be taken in its totality to be effective. Implied in that attitude are certain core beliefs:

• The state should have a vision defined by a central committee to which every Minnesotan is mobilized and committed.
• The state is ultimately responsible for the healthy behavior of its citizens; if "encouragement" and "influence" are inadequate, "mandate" and "requirement" are necessary.
• The individual must live for the good of the collective.
• The state, not individual demand, should determine how much health care is needed, and the state should control the size of the health care system.
• There is no segment of society the state cannot command into action.

Cost, quality and access to health care present problems, to be sure, but the greatest danger to Minnesota is the progressive assumption that the health of society outweighs any individual's interest in his or her behavior. That the Transformation Task Force or any group with a modicum of respect for freedom could publish a document so blatantly enslaving individual choice to the "common good" and have it be so well praised for its "good intentions" would be astonishing if it were not so frightening.

My intent here is not to discredit the 70-plus page report by killing trees; it is to point out a forest of recommendations fundamentally opposed to proven free-market principles and toxic to a robust health care system.

The Health Care Transformation Task Force was charged by the Legislature with proposing a plan to reduce Minnesota's health care expenditures 20 percent by January 2011 while increasing access to health care and improving quality. Cost reduction is the driving force of the Task Force recommendations. The Task Force report is a blueprint for the most nefarious kind of health care rationing.

Let's be clear — cost, quality and access to health care necessitate trade-offs. That is true in the managed care system we have today, in the totalitarian managed care system proposed by the Transformation Task Force, and in the purest of free-market systems.

Health care is a limited economic resource that will be rationed. The question is, "Will you manage your consumption of health care, or will someone else manage it for you?"

In a managed care system, health care is rationed for you; someone controls the supply of health care irrespective of demand; the pie is fixed and everybody more or less receives an equal share of the fixed amount. In a free-market system, you ration your own health care by making choices; choice, your slice of the pie, is always growing, albeit with some people having more choices than you and others fewer.

In a free-market system, health care is rationed by the relationship between price and the demand for service at that price, not by a central committee fixing supply and price.

The contrast of these two systems is stark. It is the difference between a managed health care system in which patients queue up for a 38-week wait for a hip replacement and an expanding market of competing Lasik surgery centers offering steadily declining prices and higher levels of quality to greater numbers of people.

The necessity to reduce costs steered the Transformation Task Force away from broad examination of macroeconomic factors like supply and demand. Instead, the task force pursued "culprit economics" — leaping to the narrow assumption that the culprits creating rising costs are physicians who provide "uneven health care below the levels we should expect for the money we are spending" and the rest of us for driving up health care costs with our "unhealthy behaviors."

Thus, changing behavior — the way doctors practice medicine and the way people live their lives — becomes the one best path to reducing health care costs, as if the laws of supply and demand could be eliminated.

It is said only two things in life are certain — death and taxes. If the Transformation Task Force recommendations are implemented, Minnesota government will have way too much control of both.

Thursday: The task force and public health.

This commentary originally appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press on Wednesday, March 19.

Part Two of this two-part series appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press on Thursday March 20, 2008.

Rejecting party and principle alike

The "Override Six" have been alternately flogged and fawned over as "traitors" to the GOP and "courageous" legislators who put "principle over party." As you'll recall, the six — Reps. Neil Peterson, Jim Abler, Kathy Tingelstad, Bud Heidgerken, Ron Erhardt and Rod Hamilton — voted with Democrats to override Gov. Tim Pawlenty's veto of a $6.6 billion tax increase included in the transportation bill.

Fiscally conservative Republicans took up torches and pitchforks and denied party endorsement to Abler, Erhardt and Peterson; GOP endorsement doesn't seem likely for Tingelstad, Heidgerken and Hamilton. Meanwhile, Democrats, business groups that reversed their previous opposition to tax increases, and pro-transit groups have been filling the breach with bipartisan praise and pledges of support for the beleaguered six.

Even Senate pit bull Steve Murphy, DFL-Redwing, has been licking the faces of the wayward Republicans. In a letter to the Star Tribune, Murphy went so far as to say he personally will support each of the six for re-election in their primaries and in the general election. Say what you will, Murphy knows a win-win situation when he sniffs it.

We may never really know why each of the Override Six voted as he or she did, but to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, "they are men and woman of great common sense with their fingers on the pulse of their constituents — meaning thereby men and woman without principle or moral courage."

In many ways, voting for the transportation bill was common sense: Consensus and a Legislative Auditor's report hold that Minnesota has neglected maintenance of its infrastructure. People are frustrated. Leaders of the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce were under pressure from influential members to make something happen. Transit supporters were pressuring for a pot of money like the highway kids have. Transit lobby support and campaign support from chamber members can fill a lot of GOP endorsement potholes.

Certainly Peterson and Hamilton had their fingers on the pulse of their constituencies; each received earmark projects in the transportation bill outside the legitimate funding process. For any of the six, new roads make nice backdrops for campaign photos.

I am a strong believer in voting principle over party. But one joins a political party because of common principles. When one opposes his party, it had better be because the party has wandered away from those principles, not because common sense and popular opinion make it expedient for the legislator to waver.

The GOP stuck to its principles on the transportation bill. It offered an alternative transportation proposal (albeit half-heartedly) that spent as much as the Democrats' bill but identified funding through means other than increasing taxes. The GOP proposal recognized state resources are state resources and state highways ought to compete with other capital projects in the general obligation bonding bill. It was a bill that one would expect from the Republican Party.

One might have voted against the GOP bill as bad policy, but bad policy from Republicans doesn't justify voting for worse policy from the Democrats. Desire to "do something" is not a principle, nor does it justify voting for a proposition one has consistently opposed. It takes moral courage to hold out for the right thing in the face of public pressure; capitulation and surrender, however popular, are not particularly admirable.

Overriding the governor's veto of the transportation bill was much like the passage of the Twins stadium bill (a case where Republicans did wander away from their principles and too few party members opposed the governor and special interests). The transportation bill was a siege on the taxpayer, not a cavalry charge. It was a victory in a war of attrition.

No waterboarding went on, but Democrats strapped the GOP to a chair under bright lights and slapped them about the head with the Orwellian proposition that 2 + 2 = 5, and that raising taxes in a recession is good economic policy if it is for a good cause. Peterson, Abler, Tingelstad, Heidgerken, Erhardt and Hamilton cracked. They denied their professed allegiance to Republican principles. We ought to give our praise to those GOPers who honored both principle and party.

*********

Transit Subsidies

In response to my Pioneer Press column bringing to light comments by transportation bill architect Rep. Bernie Lieder, Steve Dornfeld of the Metropolitan Council noted that little of the $6.6 billion transportation bill goes to transit operating subsidies; that spin is true. But I wrote that the metro area sales tax, which was sold as a way to build new transit and reduce congestion, is first being used to pay operating costs for transit we already have. Dornfeld says the $30.8 million subsidy is a one-time appropriation, but he doesn't discount the need for future light-rail subsides.

Per Dornfeld, future transit subsidies cannot come out of the metro area sales tax for transit (unless they subsidize new transit). Per Lieder, operating subsidies won't come out of state general funds, and they should come from county property taxes. I don't recall higher property taxes and subsidized transit operating costs being part of the DFL sell on the transportation bill.

Craig Westover is a contributing columnist to the Pioneer Press Opinion page and a senior policy fellow at the Minnesota Free Market Institute.

This commentary originally appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Friday March 14.

The Essence of the Race Issue

We can't talk about it.

Channeling Karl Rove

In case your neural implants were down and you didn't get Karl Rove's talking points last month, in the February Issue of Townhall Magazine Rove responds to a question from Mary Katherine Ham about the 3 things a Republican nominee must do to beat Hillary. The question may already be dated, but Rove's answer is not. It applies not just to a potential Republican presidential candidate, but also to every conservative. Here's what Rove said.

"First, our candidate must introduce himself again … he must create a narrative that explains his life and commitments … our candidate must not be afraid to say something controversial. The American people want their president to be authentic.

"Second, our candidate must also tackle issues families care about and Republicans too often shy away from … concerns like health care, he cost of college and social mobility will be important. The Republican nominee needs to be confident in talking about these concerns and credible in laying out how he will address them.

"Third, our candidate must go after people who aren't traditional Republicans – aggressively campaign for the votes of minorities … emphasize how his message can provide hope and access to the American Dream for all."

That's not a bad outline for all conservative voices to follow. I'd say the left has done a great job of casting conservatives as the party of "no" – no abortion, no gay marriage, no immigration, no new taxes – except the right has given the left so much help cartooning conservatism that it has hardly been a challenge.

Instead of using blog space to always roil against some obvious idiocy on the left, perhaps its time we reintroduced the notion of philosophical conservatism – the commitment to limited government and individual freedom.

Perhaps it's time to test controversy on our friends rather than our enemies by standing up for conservative principles even when the outcome might fly in the face of the outcome we personally desire.

Perhaps it’s time to stop harping only on issues of concern to fiscal conservatives and realize that there is a whole country out there with more pressing daily concerns that Republicans must be able to address to be relevant – address with principled conservative (free market) approaches, not liberal lite capitulations.

Perhaps it’s time Republicans actually went out and talked to minority groups on their turf. Maybe even looked at minority groups as something other than a voting block but as people with the same desires and hopes that we have for ourselves and our families. We need to get away from the idea that conservatism is something that protects us from them and start preaching conservatism for what it is – liberation for all people enabling all people to participate in the economy of the country.

Perhaps it’s time to stop crying in the wilderness for a conservative messiah and take up the cross ourselves.

The Play's the Thing

If you liked "The Moffitt" you may like "The Play's the Thing," the "Community Voices" piece in today's MinnPost.

The Play's the Thing

Scene – A local bar where patrons are staging a "play" to exploit a loophole in the state smoking ban. An author of the ban Sen. Kathy Sheran peers through the window.

Sheran: Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
Hover through the fog and filthy air.
These peasants dare to mock the law
That would deny their choice to draw
Into their lungs what ere they choose
While they imbibe in devil's booze.
To end their joy is our pursuit;
A prince, a clown, a doc ought do it.

Enter Smoking ban supporters Sen. Ron Latz, a real prince, and St. Paul Councilman Dave Thune, a real clown.

Thune: Is this a cigarette I see before me,
The butt toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I gave thee up, and yet I crave thee still.
Thy law, fair Prince, thou promised me
Would keep me from temptation;
For I be too weak to mind my own mind.
And so, although they mind, we must the minds
Of peasants mind for them.

Latz: Fie. Indeed, Clown, thou dus't well play the fool,
And fools can be most useful
In pursuit of stallin' liberty.

Thune: Pray, sir, do not pun-ish thy clown with harsh irony.
For 'tis this play on words with which we must be harsh.
We must raze this bar: To make it thus
We must in law punish thusly, and raise the bar.
Our hole is looped. Our law is breached.

Latz: Once more unto the breach dear Clown, once more
We nick away at liberty and wall them up with laws!
In theory, there's nothing so becomes a man
As happiness and liberty;
But when freedom lays siege to common good,
Then imitate the action of a king.

Thune: Here, Prince. Well spoken thus.
But there are some t'would make a fuss
Were we open in sincerity
To strike against their liberty.
A harder sell will make them buy
We need another, more strong ally.

Enter smoking ban supporter Dr. Brian Rank, a bleeder of men.

Rank: Have data. Will travel.
Reads the card of this man.
A solider of science in a savage land.
A Rank opinion I have always at hand.
A bleeder of men, until all is bland.

Thune: Fie! I understandth not
Of what oozes from the bleeder's lips
Like from the nose, snot.

Latz: 'Tis science, Clown!
One need not know. One need but accept.
Is that not so, good sir?

Rank: Indeed:
Science is not that which is true;
Science is what I give to you.
For as the doltish clown doth say –
If snot from nose doth make its way,
Follow it not that from what knows this doc
Should follow science, not a crock?

Secondhand smoke the peasants toke
Is no laughing matter; it is no joke.
In mere seconds it will kill you dead
And therefore is something all should dread.

Thune: But I who lit the weed and put it to my lips
Am still around -- the butt of jokes and quips.
I have not been put beneath the ground.
Pray, why am I still around?

Latz: Do not trouble thy mind, Clown.
Did not you say that science finds no home in thee?
Who can there be to question this bleeder's pedigree?

Enter former candidate for governor and former bar owner Sue Jeffers. She is followed by Mark Benjamin, a lawyer who originated the idea of smoking performances.

Jeffers (to Rank): Of a strange nature is the science you follow:
The quality of your science is quite strain'd.
It droppeth as spittle from your lips
Upon this place beneath: It is twice cursed.
It curseth he that knows and he that seeks the truth.
'Tis most damned in the mightiest: it serves
Both clown and prince – one the fool;
One with power and might to fool.
And therein lies the threat to liberty:
Truth enslaved to a stately vision
Is an attribute of the Devil himself;
And heavenly visions doth then show like Hell
When politics enslaves science.

Benjamin (to bar patrons in general): Light up, McDuff!

Latz raises his hand and a mob of state inspectors enters the bar and begins inspecting with a vengeance.

Thune (to Jeffers): Regs and laws will make my bones,
Your words will never hurt me.
Clearly, Sue, it's French fry grease
That lubricates your tongue.

Latz: Call the police.

Enter a platoon of soldiers who hustle away Jeffers, Benjamin, the bar patrons and the bar owner.

Thune: If this piece has you offended
Think but this and all is mended:
That you have but slumbered here
While this column did appear.
And while you sleep, the Prince and me,
Will put the cuffs on liberty.

The bar goes dark.

Star Tribune: One road, 22 lines helped override a veto

Excellent piece by Mike Kaszuba in the Star Tribune on the behind the scene dealings that went into securing Republican Rod Hamilton’s vote for the Transportation Bill. It also makes note of Democrat-Farmer-Labor Rep. Bernie Lieder’s sanding off the truth when it comes to “earmarks.”

I definitely don't like earmarks, that's correct," Lieder said. "This is kind of a general, if you want to call it, I suppose, a general earmark." But because Hwy. 60 was never specifically named in the legislation, Lieder said, it was not technically an earmark.

Earmarks are not the only ways the DFL is sanding off the truth on the Transportation Bill.

COLUMN: Drama, promises and DFL duplicity

There are promises, and there are political promises, which, lacking the maintenance of sincerity, crumble faster than a rural road in a Minnesota winter. Seems the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party is busy sanding off the truth around the promises it made in exchange for support of the $6.6 billion tax increase, nee "transportation bill," railroaded over Gov. Tim Pawlenty's veto.

In an interview with the nonpartisan Civic Caucus, Rep. Bernie Lieder, chief architect of the legislation, made a number of hedging-your-bets statements indicative of someone who may have overpromised and risks under-delivering. The promise the new metro area sales tax would help build transit and relieve traffic congestion? Apparently not the attractive package we thought. That promise of property tax relief? Well, that might have been a little padded, as well.

In public, the DFL is praising business groups that supported the tax increase. It might be wise, however, for those "courageous" defectors to take their kudos as faint praise and their DFL assurances with a grain of salt. Defection is often publically praised but seldom is it privately respected.

As one DFL Iron Ranger noted to a GOP colleague, "Labor would never (expletive) us the way the chamber (expletived) you" — a reference to the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce support for a gas tax increase. Of course, his comment doesn't mean the DFL is not ready to (expletive) business groups that supported the bill.

According to the Pioneer Press, the Minnesota Trucking Association supported the transportation bill after "being assured the measure wouldn't usher in toll roads." Depends on what your definition of the words "ushered in" is. As Lieder parsed it to the Civic Caucus, the prohibition on toll roads in the legislation applies only to existing freeway lanes, not to new lanes in the future. That door to toll lanes is still open. The powerful Lieder personally favors toll roads and would favor that the new Stillwater Bridge be a toll road.

And the promise that a metro sales tax would provide funding for new transit projects? Well, that isn't exactly how it's going to work, either.

In the Civic Caucus interview, Lieder said the first call for sales tax revenue would likely be for transit operating subsidies. In other words, the metro sales tax will simply go to camouflage the problem we LRT critics have harped on all along: Light-rail operation is so heavily subsidized it is economically unsustainable — eventually taxpayers must bend over and pick up the tab — it's up the ante time.

Oh, yeah — that property tax relief? If new sales tax money falls short of meeting required subsidies for transit? Lieder warned that counties should look to property taxes to make up any additional transit operating shortfalls and not come to the state.

By the way, an unusual county-led joint powers board will decide where the new metro sales tax money is spent. Counties, Lieder said, have concerns about the power and influence of the Metropolitan Council (ya think?). And should the Met Council and this new layer of government disagree on transit spending? Well, one or the other (or both) will likely be back at the Legislature looking for more new money.

That brings us to earmarks. Everyone deplores earmarks. Just not enough to resist circumventing statute to draft funding that comes "dangerously close" to earmarks. Some project criteria in the legislation are so detailed, they essentially designate specific projects. Included in that category are earmarks for the Lafayette and Hastings bridges and also substantial monies for the districts of Republicans Rod Hamilton and Neil Peterson, who defected to support the tax increase and the override.

But, Lieder explained to the Civic Caucus, with more money for road and bridge work, there is no longer a need for legislators to earmark transportation projects for their districts. If you believe that, well, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you — except the DFL already did that, didn't it?
Call it "the largest tax increase in modern Minnesota history" as the GOP does or cloak it as a "Transportation Bill" as the DFL does, the legislation passed over the governor's veto is but a packet of promises that will be breached as soon as it's politically expedient. Six-plus billion dollars is a lot to spend for entertainment value, but were it not for the soap-opera duplicity of the daytime drama at the Capitol, we'd get very little else from this "historic" legislation.

Craig Westover is a contributing columnist to the Pioneer Press Opinion page and a senior policy fellow at the Minnesota Free Market Institute (http://www.mnfmi.org/).

"Drama, promises and DFL duplicity" originally appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Friday, March 7, 2008

COLUMN -- On the necessary tension between moral concerns and individual freedom

Wednesday, May 03, 2007


I'd read quite a bit about the Supreme Court opinion in Gonzales v. Carhart - the "partial-birth" abortion case - but finally sat down last weekend and read for myself Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion and Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsberg's dissent. Viscerally and philosophically, Kennedy's opinion is pretty upsetting to a hobby columnist who holds abortion to be a negative right - meaning, the federal government has neither the authority to ban abortion nor the authority to support it as it would a positive fundamental right.

Government ought be neutral. Abortion is an individual choice. Better some women misuse their freedom than government is made the fetal police for every pregnant woman. Kennedy's opinion doesn't negate that position, but he does challenge us, regardless of our position on abortion, to question what kind of society would condone a "brutal and inhumane" procedure that ends life "inches from physical birth"? It's a question Ginsberg would rather avoid.

In the Carhart decision, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the "Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003." A 5-4 majority said the law passed by Congress overcomes the court's earlier objections to Nebraska's partial-birth abortion ban (Stenberg v. Carhart - 2000). The 2003 act preserves the ability of a woman to terminate her pregnancy as defined in Roe v. Wade (1973) and adequately maintains the balance between protecting the health of the woman and the life of a fetus struck in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992).

In his opinion for the court, Kennedy spares us little grisly detail of abortion procedures, the mildest of which is a clinically cold "how-to" for an "intact dilation and evacuation" ("intact DE") - the "partial-birth" abortion procedure banned by Congress.

"Lifting the cervix and applying traction to the shoulders (of the fetus) ... the surgeon takes a pair of blunt curved Metzenbaum scissors ... carefully advances the tip, curved down, along the spine ... until he feels it contact the base of the skull. ... The surgeon then forces the scissors into the base of the skull ... Having safely entered the skull, he spreads the scissors to enlarge the opening. ... The surgeon removes the scissors and introduces a suction catheter into this hole and evacuates the skull contents. ... He applies traction to the fetus, removing it completely from the patient."

Kennedy justifies the detail to demonstrate the rationale for the act. He quotes from congressional findings: "Implicitly approving such a brutal and inhumane procedure (intact DE) by choosing not to prohibit it will further coarsen society to the humanity of not only newborns, but all vulnerable and innocent human life, making it increasingly difficult to protect such life."

Kennedy's expression of the court's opinion, albeit sometimes tortured, reflects a tension that necessarily exists between moral concerns and individual freedom in a free but ordered society. He struggles, as the 2003 act struggles, to balance freedom to choose with a state interest in protecting fetal life. The dynamic of that struggle, the tension between morality and freedom, preserves society from falling into moral anarchy or regressing into totalitarianism.

Ginsberg's written dissent on behalf of the minority in Carhart recognizes no such struggle.

"The notion that the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act furthers any legitimate government interest is, quite simply, irrational," she writes. "The court's defense of the statute provides no saving explanation. In candor, the act, and the court's defense of it, cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by the court - and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women's lives."

Ginsberg reflects the purely political "reproductive rights" position on abortion. She writes dismissively, "The court admits that 'moral concerns' are at work."

"Admitting" moral concern ought not automatically negate a position, which is what Ginsberg seems to imply. Further, she contends, "non-intact DE could equally be characterized as 'brutal' involving as it does 'tearing a fetus apart' and 'ripping off' its limbs." Her conclusion: No state interest is served by banning one form of abortion and not an "equally gruesome" procedure (some supporters of a total ban on abortion might agree), a position that completely ignores the struggle to strike a balance between moral concerns and individual freedom.

As difficult as it may be to face, abortion is "brutal and inhumane." But in a free society, it is also a choice. There is validity in both contentions. Pursuing a balance that may ultimately be unachievable is, nonetheless, necessary to preserving a free and ordered society - a society where one is free to follow one's conscience, but also a society where law is respected and observed. The latter requires open and honest public discussion dealing with difficult problems in all their difficulty.

Kennedy's opinion in Carhart struggles with the moral and political difficulties of abortion jurisprudence. Ginsberg's dissent, the notion that broad moral concerns are not legitimate government interests, would simply abort public discussion.

COLUMN -- Fine, Imus the bigot is gone. What about Imus the activist?

Friday, April 20, 2007


I have to admit mixed emotions over the firing of Don Imus. On one hand, Imus' banishment from medialand is vindication of the value of free speech. Speech may be free, but it has consequences. Offend people's sensibilities, and you pay the price. The tribe has spoken. I'm not going to miss the race-baiting shock jock.

But I am going to miss the activist who took on issues others in the media backed off from - specifically, Imus' championing of the hypothesis that mercury in childhood vaccines is connected to rising autism rates - now one case in 150 live births. Writing in the Columbia Journalism Review in 2005, David Schulman noted the mercury issue locked most of the media in an awkward position.

The hypothesis that the mercury-based preservative thimerosal, commonly used in childhood vaccines before 2000 and still found in flu and a few other vaccines, plausibly contributed to the alarming increase in the incidence of autism was, frankly, heresy. The scientific, medical and government health establishments denied any vaccine-autism link. Moreover, they viewed those supporting the theory as crackpots, conspiracy theorists or fanatical parents looking for someone to blame for their children's fate.

So who was the media to believe? "On Autism's Cause, It's Parents Vs. Research," declared the New York Times. Attempting to portray the mercury-vaccine connection as an ongoing scientific controversy, some reporters, discovered Schulman, were discouraged by colleagues and their superiors from pursuing the story. In general, the media were reluctant to buck the establishment. They mostly still are.

Not Imus. In 2005, he was among the first to interview David Kirby, a Brooklyn-based writer whose book "Evidence of Harm" makes a strong case for the plausibility of a connection between thimerosal and autism. Imus was on the line two years before autism became safe enough for a recent one-touch by Oprah.

In a column on the Huffington Post, Kirby gives Imus and his wife, Deirdre, much of the credit for the passing of the Combating Autism Act, which allocates funds for autism research. But, notes Kirby, an April 17 Senate hearing on specific funding was scheduled without input from organizations that support the mercury hypothesis, and the groups will not be allowed to testify.

"Imus would have gone ballistic at that injustice," writes Kirby. "But now he is gone, and he can't."

There is a teachable moment here.

Yes, Imus made a personal, racist attack on a group of young African-American women who didn't warrant the insult. He's paying the price. But are we as a country better off? Are African-Americans better off? Are we willing to talk about that?

Imus intends a crack about a college basketball team and Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton come riding out of the hills hell-bent on shooting the wounded in hopes of maintaining a semblance of relevance. Their shtick is premised on America being a racist nation. Imus confirms that, they imply. Banishing Imus from the airwaves doesn't change that, but it does reinforce the notion that people of color are still victims needing organized outrage and preferential care.

Last legislative session, I sat at the Capitol and listened to a Minnesota-nice white woman speak against school vouchers because "inner-city" parents weren't equipped to make good choices about where and how their children should be educated.
Forgive me. While not excusing Imus, I find the woman's condescending liberalism far more sinister and indicative of racism than an off-the-cuff comment of a shock jock. Confronting the attitude that people of color can't possible succeed without beneficent white help would do more for African-Americans than booting Imus off the island.

Imus the bigot is gone, and the world is safe for female African-American basketball players, if not quite so welcoming for families of color who would like a choice of where they send their kids to school. But who's going to replace Imus the activist? Who's going to speak for the family facing odds of 1 in 150 of having an autistic child? Imus may have been grotesque and incomprehensible, but perhaps we really did need him to break down a few walls. Just a thought.

COLUMN -- Head-shaking won't do it; engaging in market-principled government might

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

It was a week where the Minnesota DFL taxed even our patience with proposals for tax increases on just about everything else. The time seems right for a good old-fashioned rant on the arrogance, self-serving politics and downright socialist propensity of the DFL (motto: "Willing to force someone else to pay for a better Minnesota").

Although such a rant would be indeed cathartic, it has little value. Two cardinal rules of life: 1) never bluff a dumb poker player and 2) never try to embarrass someone who has no shame.

A shameless DFL has gone wild exposing the nanny-state metaphors. But the blame for that irresponsible behavior, I contend, rests with the GOP. The GOP ran a bluff and lost its stake in the Legislature by playing a DFL-lite hand. Now it's a little late for the governor and the party to go all-in on conservative principles. Nobody's buying that ruse.

The DFL has exposed the GOP "tell" - the GOP shakes its head "no" whenever the DFL ups the ante. The GOP is chasing control of state government like a dog running after a bus; it doesn't know what to do with it when it catches it. Lacking faith that conservative principles can win elections, Republicans mimic the DFL tax and spend dance. Unfortunately, they don't know the steps very well and their metaphors are smaller.

In case the GOP (and my good friend Jason Lewis) missed it, David Brooks' New York Times column published in the Pioneer Press ("The folly of looking backward to Goldwater and Reagan," March 30) implies that while government is not THE solution to problems, by the very nature of its extent, government today must be a PART of the solution.

Brooks' premise is simple: Conservatism rose to prominence in the 1970s when people were right to think their future prospects might be dimmed by a stultifying state. The active paradigm was "liberty vs. power" - the idea that big government meant less liberty.

That was then. Today non-ideological Joe and Jane, facing large amorphous threats like having their jobs outsourced, rising energy prices, loss of health insurance and deteriorating schools for their kids, don't see their own government as the No. 1 threat to their personal freedom.

Brooks writes: "People with secure health care can switch jobs more easily. People who feel free from terror can live their lives more loosely. People who come from stable, secure homes and pass through engaged schools are free to choose from a wider range of opportunities."

The "liberty vs. power" paradigm has been replaced with a "security leads to freedom" model. That switch doesn't end debate between right and left, says Brooks, it just engages it on a different ground.

Unfortunately, the Minnesota GOP doesn't get that, or, if it does, it hasn't figured out how to engage the DFL in the new paradigm. That's why the DFL can run wild with economy-killing tax proposals, stomp on charter schools and vouchers to "save" the status quo education system, and create the illusion that government-provided universal health care coverage is the same as being able to see a doctor when you need to.

But Joe and Jane aren't listening to the conservatives on these issues because their head-shaking "no" strategy offers neither security nor freedom. Joe and Jane aren't responding to GOP moderates because they aren't offering as much as the DFL.
In today's world, the GOP can't portray government as the enemy when its goal is controlling the government. The challenge for the GOP is creating conservative policy that meshes with the "security leads to freedom" paradigm. The GOP needs a Ronald Reagan with a message for this time and this place that resonates with today's voters - someone who understands that even in the guise of a government program, market mechanisms work.

Government is no longer the only problem, or even our biggest problem. Neither is government the only solution or the best solution. But government is definitely part of most approaches to the challenges facing Minnesota.

The GOP must not slight individual and economic liberty (as the DFL and GOP moderates do), but it must stop its whining about DFL policy and lamenting the ignorance of voters (as conservatives do). The GOP needs to put aside its fear of government and consider how to replace the DFL tax-and-spend model with a market-mechanism approach to limited government programs. "Trust but verify" also makes for good domestic policy.

COLUMN -- charter schools should be seen as complements, not threats

Thursday, March 29, 2007


A scribe writing for the venture-capital asset across the river took recent delight in goring the "sacred cow" of charter schools. The Minnesota Senate's education budget bill, which caps public charter schools at 150 (the current level plus those scheduled to open in the fall), logically makes sense, he wrote. The "experiment" is out of control. With Manichean paranoia he warns:

"The charter-school movement has been hijacked by people driven by ideological beliefs. For too many, charter schools are accomplishing the cherished goal of dismantling the state system of public education."

Casting the charter school cap as a battle between good and evil reveals a visceral, and, I fear, all-too-common attitude. Some policymakers think "public education" is exclusively the state-district run system. Charter schools, private schools, religious schools and home schools are feared as threats rather than befriended as valid and valuable complements to that system.

For some, distrust of charter schools reflects a distrust of private choice, and the notion of marketplace decisions motivating the fast growth of charter schools is uncomfortable. Nonetheless, reasonable people concerned about providing the best education for Minnesota children raise questions about charters that, if given some thought, tend to support encouraging, not discouraging, charter schools.

*Are charter schools handling their finances in a responsible manner?

Some charters have run into financial problems. According to Commissioner of Education Alice Seagren, the Education Department has taken steps to reduce recurrence of the problems. As part of its approval process for charter schools, the department now requires charter school board members and sponsors to attend seminars on school finance. The state's effort is a good step, but the best check on charter schools is the vested interest of parents and teachers who sit on charter school boards.

Charter schools are funded much differently than traditional schools. District funding is determined using a complex formula that yields a deceptively precise "per pupil unit" funding amount. Money flows from the state through the local district to individual schools, which ultimately have little discretionary authority over their budgets. Charter school funding flows from the state to specific schools. Charter school administrators are accountable for how funds are spent. Charter boards have instant and direct access to financial information. Charter budgets and expenses are discrete, transparent and independent of one another. Financial problems, if they exist, are limited to individual schools; they do not indicate a systemic problem.

* Are charter schools producing increased student performance?

Comparisons of student performance among district schools are always couched in caveats about students' social baggage, positive intangibles not measured by test scores, appropriateness of standardized tests and the like. In that context, how do those questioning the performance of charter school students propose to measure it when traditional schools haven't figured that out?

Like all public school students, charter school students take standardized state tests. Results show some charters perform better than others, some better than district schools, some not as well. The more interesting comparison is how might students have fared had they remained in their assigned district schools. Charter enrollment is voluntary, and families seek out charters looking for better performance. Ultimately, a school that meets and exceeds parental expectations is a good measure of how the school is doing at the job of educating children.

That brings us to perhaps the most important questions that might seem to justify a cap on charter schools:

* Are charter schools hurting district schools? Are they doing more harm than good to the overall education system?

Increasing enrollment in charters compared to decreasing enrollment in some district schools, most notably Minneapolis, indicates charters might lure students (and consequently funding) away from district schools. Clearly, that's not good for the affected district schools. But should we be looking at what is best for traditional schools or what is best for kids?

Charter school enrollment is voluntary and increasing. That some charters have waiting lists upward of 100 indicates they are doing something right. If students are migrating from schools that aren't meeting their needs to schools that offer alternatives, why does the Senate want to cap the movement instead of looking at why it is occurring? Is the problem that charter schools are too successful or, perhaps, that the narrowly defined system is not successful enough?

Charter schools create opportunities that a single-system monopoly simply can't offer. Innovation is risky and will not always succeed. Some charters are bound to fail - which is a buyer-beware disclaimer for families considering charter schools. But overall, charter alternatives enhance education in Minnesota. Rather than questioning the motives of those supporting, founding and sending their children to charter schools, Minnesota is better served by acknowledging the value and encouraging the charter school movement.

Pioneer Press Comment Link

COLUMN -- Treating too many divorced dads like deadbeat dads

Wednesday March 14, 2007


Molly Olson, volunteer executive director of the Center for Parental Responsibility, has hammered away for seven years at reforming family law policy and divorce practice that discourages both parents from being fully involved in the lives of their children. Most often, she is on the side of noncustodial dads who want, both financially and emotionally, to be a part of their children's lives but instead find themselves battling a bureaucracy more oriented to chasing down "deadbeat dads" than encouraging equal parental responsibility.

No one is opposed to wringing child support payments out of deadbeat dads, Olson says. But a family law process that treats all noncustodial parents as if they were deadbeats is counter to the best interests of children. It makes children the "prize" in custody battles and creates a winner and loser where cooperation ought to be the objective. Sometimes government's best role is staying out of the way … but not always.

Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner oversees the front line of federal, state and Ramsey County child support collection and enforcement. She has spent 14 years associated with child support collection and enforcement. She is emphatic and unapologetic in her respect for county employees who collect court-ordered child support. She has seen the positive difference that effort has made for many families. Child support collection is fundamental to getting families off welfare and keeping them off welfare. It is, Gaertner says, a major factor in reducing crime. Sometimes government's best role is being aggressive … but not always.

Olson and Gaertner are both passionate. They both want parents actively involved with their children. But they bicker like a divorced couple over what is best for "the children." The apple of their discord is Title IV-D of the Social Security Act.

The original 1935 Title IV legislation provided grants to states to serve "needy" families with children and provide "child-welfare services." By 1974, Title IV was busting the budget. Through Title IV-D, Congress sought to reduce welfare expenditures by enforcing child support collection from absent parents, usually dads, who abandoned their families. Through cost avoidance and cost recovery, it was the government that was to benefit. Any benefit to children and families was incidental, not considered an entitlement.

In 1996 the feds said if states wanted certain welfare funding, they had to have a federally acceptable child-support enforcement program.

The new strain of Title IV-D included some tough enforcement powers and incentives for the states. A change in language altered the focus of Title IV-D from "absent" parents who abandoned their families to "noncustodial" parents, regardless of whether they were actually "absent" from their children's lives.

In essence, Title IV-D collection and enforcement services were suddenly available to any custodial parent who wanted them. Title IV-D agencies grabbed the opportunity to attract more federal money. They expanded collection services beyond "needy" families to middle-class and even well-to-do families — even where there hadn't been problems with collecting child support. If a little collection does good, they reasoned, then more collection must do more good.

That brings us back to the crux of the discord.

Olson looks at Title IV-D and sees "program creep" — expansion well beyond congressional intent and legitimate federal authority. Gaertner sees Ramsey County collecting court-ordered child support payments, helping needy families, and asks, "Where's the harm?"

If there is harm, Gaertner says, it lies in the "devastating" federal cuts to the Title IV-D program. She supports a proposed $8 million state appropriation to make up the federal shortfall. Olson opposes the appropriation, claiming Title IV-D has morphed into a middle-class child-support program that lets government intrude where it has no financial interest and costs taxpayers millions in unnecessary expense.

The harm, Olson says, comes from applying harsh measures aimed at fathers who have abandoned their children to fathers who, despite divorce or separation, have never been absent from their children's lives. The characteristics of the Title IV-D program that help Gaertner collect child support from absent fathers disrupt the relationship between children and loving and caring fathers who were never intended to be part of the program.

Enter constitutional lawyer Marshall Tanick of the law firm of Mansfield, Tanick & Cohen. In support of Olson's position, he's preparing for possible constitutional and statutory challenges to the Title IV-D program that would refocus Title IV-D on welfare recipients and those in danger of slipping onto public assistance. It might also provide needed precedent for setting elusive limits on government's "spending power" — the practice of making federal funds contingent upon state actions.

Title IV-D as originally intended is an effective tool for getting needy families off and keeping them off welfare; but expanding Title IV-D beyond its original role of cost recovery and cost avoidance is to risk Lord Acton's corruption by power. Olson is right that Title IV-D needs reform. Seeing not the dangers of its excess but only its benefits, Gaertner's interest lies in wielding Title IV-D power, not curtailing it. That is a challenge for others. Tanick appears ready to take it on. I wish him well.