July 2008

U.S. Farmers want more foreign markets open to their products. But they want to keep their subsidies and protectionist tariffs even more. And that, in a nutshell, explains why the latest World Trade Organization talks failed to bear fruit. America talks the talk on free trade, but it consistently fails to walk the walk when that requires making concessions that run afoul of the farm lobby.

Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley tried to blame the failure on trade barriers erected by developing countries like China and India, but Nicholas Hollis, president of the Agribusiness Council, saw U.S. support for biofuels as a key factor in scuttling the deal, according to the AP. "The collapse of WTO talks stems principally from an intransigence in the U.S. position regarding ethanol tariffs," Hollis said. "The U.S. needs to demonstrate flexibility and good faith by placing ethanol tariffs on the block for cuts - if not complete dismantlement."

The U.S. said it was willing to cap farms subsidies at $14.5 billion, down from the $16 billion cap the U.S. held firm on in the 2007 round of negotiations, in the interest of striking a deal. But since actual subsidies paid to U.S. farmers are reportedly less than $14.5 billion, that position required no sacrifice on our part and could hardly be called a concession.

Given the historically high, sometimes record-breaking prices American farmers are getting for their crops; given the likelihood that prices will remain high due to a world food crisis; and given all the good American farmers could do to help alleviate that crisis with greater access to overseas markets, this was an ideal opportunity for the U.S. to give ground on the subsidies and tariffs in exchange for better export opportunities. American farmers could have done very well for themselves while also doing a good turn for a hungry world at the same time. America’s fiscal outlook might also brighten. if the burden of these antiquated farm payments were lifted from the taxpayers’ shoulders.

But the opportunity was lost because American farmers want to have their cake and eat it too.

Today's Gazette has a lengthy report on the release of the latest CSAP test scores. Those hunting trends, and willing to wade through a lot of tables, can find all the numbers in the paper version of The Gazette. But I thought I would highlight one short section of the article, as a way of touting the virtues of school choice, and of charter schools in particular.

"Four Pikes Peak area schools had 100 percent of students scoring proficient or advanced on this year's CSAP tests. They include:

• The Vanguard School, Charter School Institute, ninth grade writing.

• Stratton Elementary School, Colorado Springs School District 11, third-grade math

• Cheyenne Mountain Charter Academy, Cheyenne Mountain School District 12, seventh grade reading

• Colorado Springs Charter Academy, Charter School Institute, eighth-grade reading"

This is something to be proud of for each of the 100 Percent Schools, and for the school districts they're in. But strangely, not every school district with one of these outstanding charter schools is happy about it. Cheyenne Mountain School District 12, let's remember, wants to rescind the Cheyenne Mountain Charter Academy's charter as soon as the opportunity to do so arises, in what district officials call a cost-cutting move. That's penny wise and pound foolish in my view.

The school will survive de-chartering, and continue to thrive even if it's chartered through another school district or through the state. But Cheyenne Mountain School District 12 will suffer the greater damage, in my opinion, when the options of district parents are narrowed and it gets a reputation as the district that unceremoniously "dumped" one of the best schools in the state.

The U.S. Forest Service is seeking public input on the latest roadless plan for Colorado, according to today's Durango Herald. But why bother?

This dispute will be settled, if it's ever settled, the way every other policy clash is resolved in America -- by a federal judge or panel of judges forced to make the final call (in this case, assuming the role of public land managers). The "public process" isn't much of a factor in a country that functions as a judicial oligarchy, and anyway, it's a game that's rigged in favor of narrow-interest extremists, since the general public doesn't have a small army of professional activists working for it.

This controversy has now been raging for almost eights years, since Bill Clinton, in one of his last acts as president, attempted to use the so-called Roadless rule to create de-facto wilderness on a third (or roughly 60 million acres) of national forest, while cutting Congress out of the process. The rule resulted in a dizzying array of sometimes-contradictory court decisions -- at least six or seven, when I stopped counting -- that have only deepened the paralysis gripping federal land agencies. This at a time when a forest health crisis requires more access to these disease- and fire-prone forests, not less.

So now we embark on another round of pointless public meetings, in response to a Bush administration roadless compromise that was tossed out by one federal judge, who restored the Clinton roadless plan of nearly eight years ago, which was itself overturned by another federal judge. Confused? Join the crowd. Meanwhile, as judges and bureaucrats and extremist groups fight and fiddle, beetle blight and wildfires devour ever greater swaths of the West.

At this rate, roadless advocates need not worry about the great unwashed running roughshod through the "last great places," because many of those great places are being methodically destroyed, with the tacit okay of the people who claim to love them. Perhaps future historians will see tragic irony in the fact that all this was done by folks claiming to have the forest's best interest in mind.

Go out and attend the public meetings if you choose to. Just don't imagine that your opinion really counts for much.

City governments around the country are constantly cranking out new ordinances (so many, in fact, that LLO could post more than half a dozen such stories on our news aggregator on any given day), the vast majority of which whittle away at property rights and personal freedoms in one way or another. It's a banner day, therefore, when we see the approval of an ordinance that actually expands freedom and enhances property right, as we did today.

The town of Stuart Florida just approved a new ordinance allowing dogs in open areas of restaurants. And that change was made possible by the 2006 passage by the Florida legislature of a so-called "Doggie Dining Bill," which granted local governments the power to approve their own canine-dining ordinances. This isn't an open invitation for canines to run wild in Florida restaurants -- a number of conditions must be met before a dog-friendly permit will be granted by Stuart -- but it's a small concession to freedom that should set the tail wagging of liberty-hounds everywhere.

There are too many wild horses roaming the Western range, an adoption program isn't working well enough and a proposal to thin the herd through euthanasia has animal lovers in an emotional stampede. But there is a solution. Let’s ship our surplus wild horses to West Virginia, where they've found a champion in U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall.

Rahall, a Democrat who chairs the powerful House Natural Resources Committee, has no wild horse problem in his home state -- at least not yet -- but he's helped create one out here, by repeatedly using his high position to block the Bureau of Land Management from pursuing any solution that animal groups oppose. He several years ago helped end the sale of horses to slaughterhouses, forcing the BLM to keep growing numbers of them penned up in what amount to federally-managed feed lots -- which isn't exactly humane, either -- but the feed lots are overflowing, the range is being ravaged, and the runaway emotions of animal lovers make reasoned debate impossible. BLM recently raised the possibility of euthanasia, which set off the predictable outcry, and Rahall again stepped in, to meddle in BLM's effort to responsibly manage the herd.

If Rahall and his constituents in West Virginia have such a soft spot for wild horses, and if they know better than we Westerners do how to manage them, they should have no problem turning our surplus horses loose in their own backyards. West Virginia, with its lush forests and fertile farmland, would seem ideal mustang habitat -- far better than the sparse and scrubby landscape of the arid Southwest. And when West Virginia's wild horse population grows unmanageable, we could reintroduce surplus reintroduced wolves from the West -- we're trying to cope with that problem, too. And if that doesn't work, we've also got federally-protected grizzly bears we could share with West Virginia.

How Rahall's constituents will react to the re-wilding of West Virginia is unknown. I can only assume, given Rahall's long-distance enthusiasm for re-wilding the West, that they'll be supportive. The newer, wilder West Virginia might even become a tourist draw, diversifying a state economy now largely sustained by strip-mining and congressional pork projects. Now only a Sunday drive away, Washingtonians can experience first-hand the bizarre and unmanageable menagerie their long-distance meddling has created here in the West.

And maybe, just maybe, they'll be shocked and chastened by what they see.

The Durango Herald today reports that housing prices and rental rates are out of reach for many locals, yet in the same paper we read that the city’s mayor and city council are plotting and scheming to stymie dreaded “growth,” by annexing a development project in an attempt to limit building density.

Does anyone see any connection between the two stories? Apparently not, at least in Durango.

High housing prices are generally the result of housing demand exceeding supply. But then we see officials in many high priced locales working feverishly to oppose and limit growth, by imposing various restrictions which help keep the housing supply tight and the prices high. Unable to connect the dots between regulatory causes and market effects, these people then decry the lack of affordable housing.

That usually prompts another round of inappropriate and inept government intervention. Rather than pay for this (usually very expensive) affordable housing out of general funds, which would require raising taxes on locals already straining to make ends meet, city officials foist the burden onto private developers, forcing them to build a certain quota of affordable residences. Rather than eat the losses, the developers shift those costs onto the buyers of their other, now necessarily more expensive houses. This raises housing prices overall, except for the lucky few who qualify to buy or rent one of the subsidized units. A few middle income people may be better off, but the growth restrictions and affordable housing mandates ironically result in a steadily ratcheting-up of housing prices overall.

If city officials and residents really want to keep Durango affordable to low-and middle-income folks, they should stop vilifying growth and start supporting projects that increase the housing supply. At the moment, they want contradictory things and are engaged in self-defeating behaviors.

Perhaps I'm getting a tad paranoid. But it comes with the territory if one spends enough time watching and writing about the Endangered Species Act, which routinely gets misused to advance ulterior agendas in the West.

A rare albino eagle this week was discovered by a rancher in a part of southeastern Colorado that Fort Carson is sizing-up as a possible expansion site -- here's the complete story in yesterday's Pueblo Chieftain -- and, given the political controversy this project has generated, one has to scratch one's head and wonder: How long before someone suggests that this might be some kind of protection-worthy subspecies, ala the Preble's meadow jumping mouse, requiring that we permanently lock this habitat away from use or development?

Absurd, you say? Perhaps. But stranger things have happened, and more ludicrous arguments have been made, in the surreal annals of the ESA, as anyone who's followed the Preble's meadow jumping mouse fiasco knows. Slice the DNA precisely enough and you will undoubtedly discover that this albino eagle is genetically distinct from other eagles, arguably making it a "distinct population segment" all its own. And given that the ESA now applies not just to species, but to subspecies of subspecies and "distinct population segments," and given, too, that these unique albino features could be transmitted genetically, why not petition for a listing?

It may not fly. But the years of of delay it will cause will almost certainly be enough to drive another nail in the coffin of the Pinon Canyon plan. And delay and obstruction, after all, are what ESA is really about, right?
Right.

When we think and talk about building the “Colorado Springs Model” -- meaning a great American city that consciously avoids many of the big-government pitfalls plaguing other cities -- must we construct this new paradigm from scratch, or are there other American cities we can turn to for ideas and inspiration? While it’s always risky trying to perfectly replicate another city’s successes, the thriving middle class Mecca of Houston, Texas, might be one model to emulate.

Let me take them one at a time.

“Build energy-efficient city buildings with alternative energy sources.”

This is fine, as long as locals are willing to pay more for these buildings, since this can frequently drive up costs. Manitou might also think about conducting a cost-benefit analysis ahead of time, since, as had often been pointed out in the case of hybrid vehicles, the “savings” gained through added efficiency may take many years to materialize, if they ever do.

“Use alternative fuels for city vehicles.”

That’s also the city’s prerogative, although problems can emerge, depending on what sorts of alternative fuels are involved. The supporting infrastructure is often lacking for such vehicles, requiring the city to provide it, and these vehicles are frequently less dependable and efficient than conventional alternatives. Colorado Springs’ first foray into electric buses was a disaster — the vehicles spent almost as much time being re-charged as they spent on the streets. And plug-ins don’t really curtail pollution, since the electricity generally comes from a coal-fired power plant.

“Contract with one waste hauler to reduce garbage truck traffic on streets.”

This is a terrible idea that will almost certainly reduce competition, drive up costs, hurt the private businesses that now provide these services, get city officials into the game of picking winners and losers and leave residents at the mercy of a single hauler.

“Expand recycling to include curbside pickup.”

Unanswered is the question of who will pay for the pick-ups, whether the benefits will outweigh the costs and whether this in time will lead to mandatory recycling, as has occurred in other communities. Voluntary recycling is fine; coercive recycling should be opposed.

“Urge businesses and residents to switch to fluorescent light bulbs.”

There’s nothing wrong with “urging,” “educating,” "suggesting,” etc. But mandating often becomes the next recourse if businesses decline to take the hint. And surely the environmentally-conscious folks of Manitou have heard about the potential health hazards involved in disposing of certain types of energy-efficient bulbs? Will the city take responsibility for cleaning up resulting mercury spills, or assume liability, if its “urgings” lead to such problems?

“Establish a park-and-ride area to reduce traffic and begin charging for on-street parking.”

Park-and-ride areas make sense. But the second proposal smacks of social engineering. What new kind of bureaucracy will be needed to issue the permits and enforce compliance? Manitou residents should beware revenue-generating devices that travel under the guise of something more innocuous. These sorts of things can take on a life of their own.

“Increase education, including screening Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" at Manitou Springs High School.”

Spoon-feeding alarmist agit-prop to Manitou’s kids doesn’t count as “education,” unless they balance the presentation with materials de-bunking Gore’s film. This confuses education with indoctrination.

My successor at The Gazette, Wayne Laugesen, does a nice job of framing the issues in the second of today's editorials. The top editorial also does a good job of bringing insight and context to another local government issue -- the question of whether the county should have a role in inspecting tattoo parlors.

In what will surely go down as one of biggest absurdities in the history of the Endangered Species Act -- and that's saying something -- the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service yesterday removed Preble’s meadow jumping mice in Wyoming from the endangered species list, while the creature’s identical cousins, just across the state line in Colorado, remain "threatened." Read about the culmination of this regulatory fiasco here.

A book could be (and should be) written about the long, strange saga of the creature intermittently known as the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse, which I followed closely during my years at The Colorado Springs Gazette. But I can’t possibly recount every plot point and bureaucratic intrigue here. Trying to do so would make my head spin right off my shoulders.
Here it is in bullet points, however.

• Jumping mouse listed as threatened subspecies in 1998, based on a cursory examination of three dusty old museum specimens. Listing motivated, as usual, by desire of greens and no-growthers to stymie development along the Rocky Mountain Front Range. The creature, which hibernates for 8 months of the year, is gleefully dubbed "Mighty Mouse" for its ability to stop building projects in their tracks.
  
• Critical habitat designation follows, endangering property rights and imposing enormous mitigation costs over large swaths of two states.
  
• After questions are raised about the listing decision, genetic testing debunks creature’s bona fides as a unique subspecies, leading to calls for de-listing and regulatory relief.
  
• All hell breaks loose. Greens go ape. Embarrassed federal bureaucrats circle the wagons and plot their response.
  
• An eco-Inquisition is launched against Dr. Rob Ramey, the biologist who courted heresy by daring to 1.) challenge the creature’s status as a subspecies, and 2.) raise questions before a congressional committee about the scientific integrity of the Endangered Species Act. Controversy and outside pressure cost Ramey his prestigious position at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, as well as a later consulting contract with the Department in Interior. [Vince Carroll of the Rocky Mountain News laid out some of the ugly particulars here. And we editorialized on the subject when I was with The Gazette.
  
• Feds in regional office go looking for a biologist who will debunk Ramey, and they find one — surprise! — who works for the federal government. His study — voila! — reaffirms mouse’s status as unique subspecies.
  De-listing process grinds to a halt, while an “independent” review panel -- selected by a contractor under hire to the USFW -- pretends to objectively weigh the conflicting evidence. The dispute, roughly speaking, is between “lumpers” and “splitters,” which is more fully explained here. Ramey — who isn’t anti-ESA but believes the law is being misused — likened this experience to becoming the target of the Spanish Inquisition.
  
• Agency officials side against Ramey and with the splitters, to no one's surprise, since slicing and dicing the genetic code so precisely, in search of otherwise insignificant and imperceptible differences, creates a potentially infinite number of listable subspecies. And that means a potentially infinite new expansion of agency budgets and regulatory clout.

In an otherwise New York-centric editorial with little relevance to the rest of us, the New York Sun stumbles upon a brilliant idea that should be applied nationwide: "Reverse eminent domain." The concept is described as follows:

"It is too bad we don't have the equivalent of reverse eminent domain, under which private developers could seize government property if they could convince a court that they could put it to better public use than the government."

Too bad, indeed.

It would be a perverse yet gratifying twist on the "logic" of the Supreme Court's Kelo decision, which grants municipalities the power to use eminent domain to clear the way for private urban redevelopment projects that promise to boost local tax revenues, thus broadening the traditional definition of "public use" to include virtually any project city leaders approve.

Adopting "reverse eminent domain" wouldn't right the wrong legalized by Kelo. But it might help even the score.

The Bush administration has drawn a lot of fire from Capitol Hill and elsewhere for allegedly politicizing science, by tailoring the facts to meet the policy on everything from climate change to endangered species. But there’s a lot of politics behind the allegations as well. Such critiques naively assume that all government researchers and bureaucrats are politically-disinterested parties, who wouldn’t conceivably tailor ambiguous (or non-existent) scientific data to advance personal or bureaucratic agendas. Everyone else is tainted by ideology, self-interest and ego; only public servants are free from such human foibles.

The institutional inclinations of federal regulatory agencies -- guided as they are by the precautionary principle and run as they are by ambitious bureaucrats -- is to regulate first, worry about the definitive science later, which puts them at odds with any administration that's reluctant to regulate based on flimsy or sensationalist suppositions. A few federal bureaucrats and scientists — NASA’s James Hansen most notably — have become famous bucking the Bush administration, shouting to the rooftops that they’re being silenced. Another of these is former associate deputy administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Jason Burnett, whose own political motives are revealed in this Los Angeles Times story.

Federal employees are entitled to have their personal ideologies and agendas — outside the workplace. Where this becomes a problem is when these insiders, instead of exercising professional discipline and permitting elected policy-makers to set the agenda, decide to “go public” with their complaints about administration policy, while still collecting a paycheck and pension from Uncle Sam. These freelancers are typically frustrated in the humble role of policy-implementer, and secretly want to be a policy-makers. They just don’t want to go to the trouble of getting elected.

Burnett, to his credit, left the EPA (though I’m sure he waited long enough to qualify for a gold-plated federal pension), but not before airing his differences in a way designed to discredit his former boss, the president — and meant to ingratiate himself with Bush-bashing organizations on the outside, with an eye toward future job prospects. There's almost always an element of opportunism in such cases. Perhaps Burnett hopes to land a plumb job with the Obama administration as a reward for his grandstanding.

But even a President Obama will want appointees and agency staff who have the discipline and professionalism to follow policy directives, not buck those they personally disagree with. He'll want (and deserve) subordinates, not insubordinates. How can the executive branch function when all the Indians act like chiefs? What's the point of electing a queen if the worker bees rule the hive?