Now They Admit It

Virginia Democrats suffered from Gilmore's campaign to end the car tax (an annual tax based on value of your car) which was in 1997. He rode the issue to Richmond and the Reps rode it into control of the House of Delegates and Senate. Given the Clinton boom (might as well be partisan today) Gilmore had the surplus to start the process, even though it was obvious that he was digging a hole for the future. Mark Warner had to duck and dodge around the issue to get himself elected in 2001, but made a name by navigating through the Gilmore fiscal mess that resulted when the state went into a recession.

But now, that great organ of enlightened government, the Washington Times carries this piece: Officials sour on car-tax relief�

" 'Frankly, I wish it had never happened, even though I voted for it,' said Senate Majority Leader Walter A. Stosch, Henrico Republican. 'The car-tax program was a wonderful political decision but almost a nightmare for the state and for local governments.' "

Sad for Liberals

The NYTimes Business section today has a profile of the head of Brown University, Ruth Simmons--Doing It Right Matters .

I found this very sad:

"As an African-American, I was patronized pretty consistently by professors, so to finally have someone say to me, 'You know I think you are very smart but what you just said is dumb'... nobody had ever been honest with me before."

This might tie to David Brook's column today (Remaking the Epic of America) in which he sees a trend of popular sports movies with the gruff, tough coach and the working class team fighting against their adversary. Contrary to the 60's, the movies celebrate authority but like the 60's, they embrace equality--minorities and women. Uniformly the coaches are honest with their players. Perhaps that's one reason for their popularity.

Bureaucracy and Counting

Tim Harford has a piece at Slate: Who's the Greatest Artist of the 20th Century?
He uses this research to segue into bureaucracy:

"My former colleagues at the World Bank have also been counting away: How many official signatures does a farmer in the Central African Republic need to obtain before he's able to get his bananas on a ship bound for America or Europe? 38. How many official procedures must a businessman in Lagos go through in order to legally buy a warehouse? 21.

This kind of counting—done with the help of local lawyers and public officials—shares common ground with Galenson's work. It transforms a qualitative impression ('Nigerian bureaucracy is painful') into a quantitative fact; it does so through the intermediation of experts, and uses a perfectly transparent process."

There's a topic for someone--what history explains the cumbersome bureaucracy often found outside the developed world. (See De Soto's work for further discussion.)

(Who's the greatest artist: Picasso)

Legends, Myths, and Truth

Tomorrow is the Super Bowl. Snopes.com does a debunk on this:

"Before Super Bowl XXII in 1988, a reporter asked Washington Redskins quarterback Doug Williams, 'How long have you been a black quarterback?'

Humans value a good story over good facts.

DC Government More Efficient Than Private Business

Steven Pearlstein writes in the Post about his problems with bureaucracies, particularly Verizon. But he includes this nugget:

"While on this vacation, I discovered at 6:30 one morning that my wallet had been lost or stolen. Normally, this would have ruined my day. But by 8:30, using the hotel's Internet access and dialing some 800 numbers, I was able to order up three new credit cards, a new bank card and a new driver's license. When I returned home two days later, I found the replacement license from the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles in the mailbox. (Honest!) All the other cards arrived within the next two business days."

Back to Verizon--his wife was sold a one-stop solution for phones and Internet, but there wasn't good communication within Verizon on the different pieces. Pearlstein rightfully complains, but as a bureaucrat that's what you have to expect. It's much easier to present one face to the customer if the face is really a mask than to reengineer the reality.

Partisan Thought Is an Oxymoron--II

Jim Lindgren at The Volokh Conspiracy
passes on a Cass Sunstein report of an experiment on the effect of discussion on political views. The bottom line is that, when liberals talk to liberals and conservatives to conservatives, both groups get more extreme.

Cat People, This Administration??? No, Really

Who woulda thunk it?

Ready Kids, From the U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Definitions Matter--a War is a War is a War

Via Washington Monthly James Carroll writes in the Boston Globe challenging the idea we're at war:

Is America actually in a state of war? "Iraq is not a war, because, though we have savage assault, we have no enemy. The war on terrorism is not a war because, though we have an enemy, the muscle-bound Pentagon offers no authentic means of assault."

I don't agree with everything he says, but I emphatically agree that determining whether the current state of affairs is a "war" is crucial. My answer is "no"--this is not a war, not a war between states, not a war of armies whose leader can be convinced to surrender. It may be a war as in the "war on organized crime" or the "war on cancer". But precision of language is vital.

My main concern about Guantanamo is the idea we're at war. It's inhuman to sentence prisoners when we can't define the conditions under which the sentence would end.

My doubt as to the "war" also underlies my position on NSA wiretapping. If we were at "war", as Judge Posner posits in the TNR (registration required), I'd be more comfortable with Bush's position. Bush does have historical precedents for his position. We Americans do accept Presidential excess in times of crisis--look particularly at the Civil War. In my case, and perhaps the case of many liberals, the fact is that we disagree with Bush's analysis of the current situation: we don't call this "war".

Hirschmann and KIPP Schools

Jay Mathews writes about the KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) schoools in DC in High Scores Fail to Clear Obstacles to KIPP Growth. KIPP has done well at the middle school level, but is having problems as they try to go up. As I read it I was reminded again of Hirschman's book on exit and voice.

As an economist, he was aware of Milton Friedman's proposal for school vouchers as a measure to increase competition. The proposal had been floated by 1969 but not implemented and Hirschman was dubious of its effectiveness. He compared it to the Big Three automakers, where "competition" wasn't really effective. He suggested that private schools would drain the public system of those parents who would fight for reform, so the public school establishment would be happy to see them go and would not react by improving their systems. From the Mathews article:

"Craig Jerald, a D.C.-based school achievement consultant who has watched KIPP's growth, said much of the response to the program has been tepid at best. He said Feinberg once told him that 'opening a KIPP school in every big city would embarrass or inspire urban districts to do better for their kids.

'I think we all underestimated how dismissive these systems can be.'"

The article also hints that KIPP may be having problems with maintenance as I blogged earlier. KIPP has succeeded in capturing the idealism and energy of the young, but the iron law of building is, the more you build, the more there is to maintain. Unfortunately, maintenance doesn't have the sex appeal of building.

Creation and Maintenance

A piece in the Washington Times today--White House eyes billions for Iraq maintenance Newspaper:

"The Bush administration is considering asking Congress later this year for at least $2 billion in new reconstruction money, primarily for maintaining completed Iraqi facilities.
Administration officials say the additional funding is needed to prevent completed projects in Iraq from falling into disrepair while the new government tries to establish a steady flow of revenue from oil and other sources to sustain the nation's infrastructure. "

The Bush administration is learning some home truths: time and decay happens to everything and that new ideas/facilities/organizations need to make connections to survive. It's rather like rooting a cutting. A cut flower may look beautiful, but will wither and die. If you can root a cutting, you've got a plant that can survive. That encapsulates one problem with "nation building" and "development aid". We can build facilities, whether roads in Afghanistan or water treatment plants in Iraq, but without rooting them they won't last. We have only to look at the history of many of the facilities colonial powers built across the world.

What do I mean by "rooting"? First is the knowledge. If Americans did the work, then Americans have the knowledge of how to repair and maintain the facility. It may be faster and more efficient to import equipment and the expertise to build a facility, but it's short-sighted in the long run. Second is the system--who is responsible for maintenance? Someone has to "own" the facility (or idea), someone who's going to be there year in and year out. And third is the money--is there a tax system in the case of Afghan highways or a fee system in the case of Iraqi water plants to get the money needed to make repairs? Knowledge, responsibility, and money all go together--it's difficult to have one without the other.

In short, you need a bureaucracy that works.