South Africa: where the costs of a minimum wage are more obvious

The minimum wage has explicitly racist origins in South Africa-- as white labor unions used it to limit competition from black non-union workers. In the U.S., our "Davis-Bacon" or "prevailing wage" laws (minimum wages for some semi-skilled jobs) have explicitly racist origins as well.

Independent of motives, there will be racial implications-- for good and for ill-- if a racial-minority group is disproportionately represented among the "unskilled", those who are (most) impacted by a wage floor.

We've seen the same thing in the U.S.-- when a much higher minimum wage has combined with the "Great Recession" (one of its contributing factors, by the way): staggeringly high unemployment rates for teens, especially those from certain minority groups.

Here's an international case from Celia Dugger in the NYT...

Thoko Zwane, 43, who has worked in factories since she was 15, lost her job in Newcastle when a Chinese-run factory closed in 2004. More than a third of South Africans are jobless.

“Why? Why?” shouted Nokuthula Masango, 25, after the authorities carted away bolts of gaily colored fabric.

She made just $36 a week, $21 less than the minimum wage, but needed the meager pay to help support a large extended family that includes her five unemployed siblings and their children.

The women’s spontaneous protest is just one sign of how acute South Africa’s long-running unemployment crisis has become....

Over a third of South Africa’s workforce is now idle. And 16 years after Nelson Mandela led the country to black majority rule, more than half of blacks ages 15 to 34 are without work — triple the level for whites....

Why? The article lists many factors: low-wage competition from China, too few unskilled jobs being created and too few skilled workers being produced, the global economic downturn, higher wages negotiated by politically powerful trade unions, and of course, various problems that are stubborn hold-overs of their apartheid past.

The article only mentions the minimum wage in the context of violations of it-- including the notable, repeated, and unsurprising willingness of workers to break the law to earn a living. But to the extent that the minimum is effective, an artificially high wage must reduce the likelihood of employment for the unskilled.

Finally this-- on labor unions which benefit from wage floors and despise wage subsidies:

Eight months ago, Mr. Zuma proposed a wage subsidy to encourage the hiring of young, inexperienced workers. But it ran into vociferous opposition from Cosatu, the two-million-member trade union federation that is part of the governing alliance, which contended that it would displace established workers....

dude would have paid $13,800 PER DAY in income taxes to New York State? wow...

A nice little anecdote from John Stossel at TownHall.com on New York billionaire Tom Golisano...

With $3,000 and one employee, he started a business that processes paychecks for companies. He created 13,000 jobs.

Then New York state hiked the income tax on millionaires.

"It was the straw that broke the camel's back," he says. "Not that I like to throw the number around, but my personal income tax last year would've been $13,800 a day. Would you like to write a check for $13,800 a day to a state government, as opposed to moving to another state where there's no state income tax or very low state income tax?"

He established residence in Florida, which has no personal income tax.

Keeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life

That's the title of Margaret Kim Peterson's interesting little book on home-making and house-keeping-- food, clothing, shelter, and putting it altogether within a Christian worldview.

The book has eight, easy-to-read chapters-- and would be a fine medium for a small group discussion or one lesson (or even a series) in a Sunday School class. Throughout, she surveys the Biblical literature on food, clothing, shelter, home-making, and hospitality-- both, how God does these for us and calls us to do them for others (from family to friends to strangers). At times, she goes back into history to explain "how we got here".

The book is partly a "how to" manual-- things to consider doing within home-making and house-keeping, and more importantly, ways to think about them. On the former, she has a number of interesting suggestions. On the latter, it reduces to thinking about house-work's parallels to a religious litany and the practice of spiritual disciplines.


For Lauren Winner's review in Books & Culture, click here.

A similar article in CT from Jenell Williams Paris...

Tea Party may mess with special interests in business

Interest groups love the Democrats and the Republicans-- a lot of lip service for us while they dish out expensive favors.

Here's an interesting angle-- from Brody Mullins and Naftali Bendavid-- in the WSJ (hat tip: Linda Christiansen)...

Business leaders and lobbyists are increasingly worried that the election of tea party-backed Republican candidates to Congress might threaten their priorities next year, fearing that these candidates' anti-spending fervor and opposition to special tax breaks would jeopardize prized programs.

Business leaders clearly prefer a Republican-controlled Congress to a Democratic one, judging from their statements, endorsements and campaign contributions....

And campaign donations from the business community, along with voter anger at Washington's current leadership, are playing an important role in helping Republicans as they try to regain control of the House and Senate in the November elections.

But amid that support, some executives and lobbyists say they are growing spooked by the populist rhetoric they are hearing from some tea-party Republicans.

Some candidates have said they want to take aim at a $30 billion annual package of tax breaks for a range of businesses—among them Wall Street firms, the timber industry, fast-food restaurants and the owners of NASCAR racetracks.

Also in the line of fire are programs that many businesses have backed or at least quietly accepted as crisis measures, including the stimulus bill, the Wall Street and auto-industry rescues, the now-expired "cash-for-clunkers" car trade-in initiative and the temporary homebuyer's tax credit....

Congress is also scheduled to take up a multibillion-dollar farm bill in 2011 that includes expensive subsidies for crops and farmers. Rand Paul, the Kentucky Senate candidate who was backed by the tea-party movement, has been critical of farm subsidies....

The tensions also reflect a broader conflict between business leaders and the GOP platform more generally.

The business community is largely behind the Republicans this year, yet businesses have strongly favored Democratic initiatives that are under direct attack from Republicans. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce supported President Barack Obama's 2009 stimulus package and the auto-industry bailout—two programs that GOP candidates have frequently decried.

These conflicts mattered less as long as the Republicans were in the minority. But if they seize control of at least one chamber of Congress, the disputes could flare into the open.

2010 as "the exhausted vs, the enraged"

From Peggy Noonan in the WSJ...

All anyone in America who cares about politics was talking about this week was the searing encounter that captured, in a way that hasn't been done before, the essence of the political moment we're in...

It is Monday, Sept. 20...CNBC is holding a town hall for the president. A woman stands—handsome, dignified, black, a person with presence. She looks as if she may be what she turns out to be, an Obama supporter who in 2008 put up street signs, passed out literature and tried to win over co-workers....

The president looked relieved when she stood. Perhaps he thought she might lob a sympathetic question that would allow him to hit a reply out of the park. Instead, and in the nicest possible way, Velma Hart lobbed a hand grenade.

"I'm a mother. I'm a wife. I'm an American veteran, and I'm one of your middle-class Americans. And quite frankly I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantle of change that I voted for, and deeply disappointed with where we are." She said, "The financial recession has taken an enormous toll on my family." She said, "My husband and I have joked for years that we thought we were well beyond the hot-dogs-and-beans era of our lives. But, quite frankly, it is starting to knock on our door and ring true that that might be where we are headed."

What a testimony. And this is the president's base. He got that look public figures adopt when they know they just took one right in the chops on national TV and cannot show their dismay. He could have responded with an engagement and conviction equal to the moment. But this was our president—calm, detached, even-keeled to the point of insensate. He offered a recital of his administration's achievements: tuition assistance, health care. It seemed so off point. Like his first two years.

But it was the word Mrs. Hart used that captured everything: "exhausted." From what I see, that's how a lot of Democrats feel....This election is more and more shaping up into a contest between the Exhausted and the Enraged....

There are two major developments, [Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee says, that are new this year and insufficiently noted...First, Washington is being revealed in a new way [since people know a lot more and are paying much more attention]....Second is the rise of women as a force....

Why would more women be focusing more intently on politics this year than before? Ms. Blackburn hypothesizes: "Women are always focusing on a generation or two down the road...They are worried about..."

How does 2010 compare with 1994 in terms of historical significance? Ms. Blackburn says there's an unnoted story there, too. Whereas 1994 was historic as a party victory, a shift in political power, this year feels more organic, more from-the-ground, and potentially deeper. She believes 2010 will mark "a philosophical shift," the beginning of a change in national thinking regarding the role of the individual and the government.

This "will be remembered as the year the American people said no" to the status quo. The people "do not trust" those who make the decisions far away....

a relatively easy way to balance the budget in a decade

From Edward Lazear in the WSJ...

As Washington debates the fate of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, many lawmakers have fallen into a logical trap of their own making. Although they recognize that tax increases hurt the economy, they argue that our huge deficit requires Congress to raise revenue through a tax hike.

This argument rests on the flawed premise that we can reduce the deficit only by increasing taxes, as if high levels of spending are a given. Not so.

To reduce spending and reignite growth, this Congress or its successor should take two actions. First, immediately cut the level of spending that has been increased so dramatically since 2008. Second, institute an "inflation-minus-one" rule to constrain future spending increases...

Much public discussion focuses on the deficit, which is indeed at critical levels of around 10% of GDP. But even if President Obama succeeds at lowering the deficit to 4% of GDP by 2013, our public-debt-to-GDP ratio will still be dangerously high, at over 70%, or nearly twice what it was during the Bush years. As the economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff have shown in the journal American Economic Review, such high debt-to-GDP ratios are associated with low growth.

Tax increases—which some suggest in order to reduce the deficit—also impede growth. But Americans don't have to choose between an enormous deficit or high taxes. If we returned to the relative fiscal restraint that prevailed during the Clinton and Bush years, when spending was 19.7% and 19.6% of GDP, respectively, we could avoid the entire mess....

religiosity vs. per-capita income worldwide

From Charles Blow in the NYT (hat tip: Randy Baker)...

With all of the consternation about religion in this country, it’s sometimes easy to lose sight of just how anomalous our religiosity is in the world.

Gallup surveyed people in more than 100 countries in 2009 and found that religiosity was highly correlated to poverty. Richer countries in general are less religious. But that doesn’t hold true for the United States.

65% of Americans say that religion is an important part of their daily lives. That is compared with just 30% of the French, 27% of the British and 24% of the Japanese...

Here's his chart of religiosity vs. per capita income...

UPDATE: PoliticalMathBlog takes Blow to task for some key omissions (hat tip: Buddy Dowdy)

federal (and congressional) employees with overdue taxes

From the WaPo's T.W. Farnum (hat tip: FEE)...

Capitol Hill employees owed $9.3 million in overdue taxes at the end of last year, a sliver of the $1 billion owed by federal workers nationwide but one with potential political ramifications for members of Congress...It comes at a time when some Republican members are pushing for the firings of government workers who owe the IRS and President Obama has urged a crackdown on delinquent government contractors...

The IRS information does not identify delinquent taxpayers by name, party affiliation or job title and does not indicate whether members of Congress are among the scofflaws. It shows that 638 employees, or about 4 percent, of the 18,000 Hill workers owe money, a slightly higher percentage than the 3 percent delinquency rate among all returns filed nationwide.

The average unpaid tax bill is $12,787 among the Senate's delinquent taxpayers and $15,498 among those working in the House....

and that's the difference between men and women...

From Dave Barry (hat tip: Patrick Morley through Dave Carlsen)...

Let's say a guy named Roger is attracted to a woman named Elaine. He asks her out to a movie; she accepts; they have a pretty good time. A few nights later he asks her out to dinner and again they enjoy themselves. They continue to see each other regularly, and after a while neither one of them is seeing anybody else.

And then one evening when they're driving home, a thought occurs to Elaine, and, without really thinking, she says it aloud: "Do you realize that, as of tonight, we've been seeing each other for exactly six months?"

And then there is silence in the car.

To Elaine, it seems like a very loud silence. She thinks to herself, Gee, I wonder if it bothers him that I said that. Maybe he's been feeling confined by our relationship; maybe he thinks I'm trying to push him into some kind of obligation that he doesn't want, or isn't sure of.

And Roger is thinking: Gosh, six months.

And Elaine is thinking: Buy, hey, I'm not so sure I want this kind of relationship either. Sometimes I wish I had a little more space, so I'd have time to think about whether I really want s to keep going the way we are, moving steadily toward…I mean, where are we going? Are we just going to keep seeing each other at this level of intimacy?

Are we headed toward marriage? Toward children? Toward a lifetime together? Am I ready for that level of commitment? Do I really even know this person?

And Roger is thinking: So, that means it was…let's see…February when we started going out, which was right after I had the car at the dealer's, which means…let me check the odometer…Whoa! I am way overdue for an oil change here.

And Elaine is thinking: He's upset. I can see it on his face. Maybe I'm reading this completely wrong. Maybe he wants more from our relationship, more intimacy, more commitment; maybe he has sensed, even before I sensed it, that I was feeling some reservations. Yes, I bet that's it. That's why he's so reluctant to say anything about his own feelings. He's afraid of being rejected.

And Roger is thinking: And I'm going to have them look at the transmission again. I don't care what those morons say, it's still not shifting right. And they better not try to blame it on the cold weather this time. What cold weather? It's 87 degrees and this thing is shifting like a garbage truck, and I paid those incompetent thieves $600.00.

And Elaine is thinking: He's angry. And I don't blame him. I'd be angry too. I feel so guilty, putting him through this, but I can't help the way I feel. I'm just not sure.

And Roger is thinking: They'll probably say it's only a 90 day warranty…scumballs.

And Elaine is thinking: Maybe I'm just too idealistic, waiting for a knight to come riding up on his white horse, when I'm sitting right next to a perfectly good person, a person I enjoy being with, a person I truly do care about, a person who seems to truly care about me. A person who is in pain because of my self-centered, schoolgirl romantic fantasy.

And Roger is thinking: Warranty? They want a warranty? I'll give them a warranty. I'll take their warranty and stick it in their ear.

"Roger" Elaine says aloud.

"What?" says Roger, startled.

"Please don't torture yourself like this," she says, her eyes beginning to brim with tears. "Maybe I should never have…Oh I feel so…"

(she breaks down sobbing)

"What?" says Roger.

"I'm such a fool." Elaine sobs. "I mean, I know there's no knight. I really know that. It's silly. There's no knight, and there's no horse."

"You think I'm a fool, don't you?" Elaine says.

" NO!" says Roger, glad to finally know the correct answer.

"It's just that…it's that I…I need some time." Elaine says.

There is a 15 second pause while Roger, thinking as fast as he can, tries to come up with a safe response. Finally he comes up with one that he thinks might work.

"Yes" he says.

Elaine, deeply moved, touches, his hand. "Oh, Roger, do you really feel that way?" she says.

"What way?" says Roger.

"That way about time," says Elaine.

"Oh," says Roger. "Yes."

Elaine turns to face him and gazes deeply into his eyes, causing him to become very nervous about what she might say next, especially if it involves a horse. At least she speaks.

"Thank you Roger," she says.

"Thank you," says Roger.

Then he takes her home, and she lies on her bed, a conflicted tortured soul, and weeps until dawn.

When Roger gets back to his place, he opens a bag of Doritos, turns on the TV, and immediately becomes deeply involved in a rerun of a tennis match between Czechoslovakians he never heard of. A tiny voice in the far recesses of his mind tells him that something major was going on back there in the car, but he is pretty sure there is no way he would ever understand what, and so he figures it's better if he doesn't think about it.

The next day Elaine will call her closest friend, or perhaps two of them, and they will talk about this situation for six straight hours. In painstaking detail, they will analyze everything she said and everything he said, going over it time and time again, exploring every word, expression, and gesture for nuances of meaning, considering every possible ramification....

And that's the difference between men and women.

a praying church

The newest tweak of the vision of Southeast Christian includes an emphasis on being "a praying church". Just after rolling that out, Dave and Kyle preached a four-part series on prayer.

Kyle on praying with "eyes wide open"-- and then Dave on "knees bowed", "hands extended", and "voices raised". (From the last sermon, the story about Beth Moore and Steven Curtis Chapman's wife is really powerful.)

They also had Joe Donaldson do a seminar on "prayer". (If you haven't heard Joe, check it out; he's a gifted teacher!)

Olasky on the Wallis/Soros connection (cont'd)

Marvin Olasky in World on a continuing back-and-forth about Jim Wallis and George Soros...

The web version of this essay now opens with Wallis apologizing for what follows and asking for Olasky's (granted) forgiveness...

Jim Wallis has been the subject of some recent blogosphere humor. Hugh Hewitt wrote, "Most folks who receive donations from billionaires tend not to forget them, so pray for Jim Wallis's memory"...

This all grew out of my mention halfway through a July 17 WORLD column that Soros gave money to Sojourners. It didn't seem like a big deal. Of course, Soros would find the religious left useful...Nor was it surprising that Jim, trying to keep his organization afloat, would take the cash. Yet Jim last month told an interviewer twice, "We don't receive money from George Soros."...

Jay Richards wrote in National Review Online, "I have physical copies of these pages, which is good, because these pages seem to have disappeared from the OSI website (I'm sure that's just a coincidence)"...

OSI's Form 990 for 2004?...On page 225: Sojourners..."To support the Messaging and Mobilization Project: Engaging Christians on the Importance of Civic Involvement." October 2004: $200,000.

Want to see for yourself? Go to The Foundation Center website. Type in Open Society Institute, New York, fiscal year 2004. Go to page 225....the 2006 grant [is on] page 125...[and] page 114 of the OSI 990 for 2007: another $100,000 grant to Sojourners...

As more evidence emerged, Sojourners communications manager Tim King acknowledged that his organization had received funding from Soros....

We'll take him up on his statement that "our books are totally open." We'll welcome the opportunity to examine Sojourners' financial records.

None of this says that Sojourners is beholden to secular leftists and pro-abortionists. Grants from Soros, Barbra Streisand, the Ford Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund—Jay Richards has recently discovered these other donors—are evidence that individuals and organizations supporting abortion and other unbiblical goals find Sojourners useful. As a person who has worked to keep alive financially some small Christian groups, I know the difficult decisions Jim Wallis has to make about whether to accept such funds....

Rasmussen on polling

An interview with Scott Rasmussen (of political polling fame) by Marvin Olasky in World...


With polls these days conducted by phone, how do you develop your call list? List selection is really critical. One reason is that people answer phones differently....At the same time, it's supposed to be totally random. So you have to have a process where you select numbers at random, and then make sure that you get enough calls from each segment of the country. It is a real challenge to set up the call lists...

Which people are more likely to respond? Women answer the phone more than men, older people more than younger people. Men will stay on longer if they are interested in the survey.

Do you use a recorded voice or a live questioner? Companies used to do polls by having a room full of people dialing up people and asking questions. We have a single voice recorded. It's played out to everybody. It's a 30-something female Midwestern voice, which we picked because we tested sports announcers, opera singers, professional announcers, anything you can think of—and a Midwestern female voice got the best response. Non-threatening, easy to understand, gives us a consistency that the operator-assisted polls can't possibly have....

Do Republicans and Democrats have different response rates? Not noticeably. The hardest group to get in touch with is moms with young children. Senior citizens are the easiest to find at home and the most willing to take a survey...Cell phones are the next big problem for us....

Some liberals have questioned Rasmussen polling of Barack Obama's popularity because you poll "likely voters" as opposed to other organizations that just poll the populace. As a result, you find less support for Obama than other pollsters tend to do. There is a consistent 3-5 point gap between our numbers and Gallup's in the presidential approval rating. The reason is the president gets great support from younger adults and from minorities who don't vote as often...

Fantasy SCOTUS

Not quite as cool as the U of Iowa Political Future Markets, but still interesting!

From Damon Root's interview with Josh Blackmun, founder of FantasySCOTUS.net. Blackman is a graduate of George Mason University Law School and a teaching fellow at Pennsylvania State University's Dickinson School of Law. Fantasy SCOTUS asks players to predict the outcome of Supreme Court decisions-- "a cousin to the thriving world of prediction markets, where participants bet on real-world outcomes in everything from elections to the Academy Awards."

Q: How does the game work?

A: Players are predicting three things. First, the result. Will the Supreme Court affirm or reverse the lower court? Second, they predict the split. Will it be 5-4, 6-3, 7-2? Then they try to predict the votes of the individual justices.

For the most part, people impute into the Supreme Court their own personal views of how the law should turn out...

Q: Tell me about the players.

A: The vast majority are law students. The rest are an amalgam of law professors, practicing attorneys, political junkies...

Q.: You found out that teachers were using it in the classroom.

A: When I launched the league in November, I started receiving emails from high school teachers all over the country telling me, "Josh, this is a great tool. I'm using it in an A.P. government class or A.P. American history class, and my students just love it."...

little correlation between salaries and winning in baseball this year

From Matthew Futterman in the WSJ...

After nearly two decades of class struggle between its richest and poorest teams, and eight years since a wholesale renovation of its economic system, Major League Baseball is on the verge of a historic milestone.

If the current standings hold up through the end of the season, this will be the first year in the game's modern history—the period since the 1994 players' strike—when the amount of money a ballclub pays its players bears almost no relationship with how many games it won.

According to estimated payroll figures updated throughout the season, the correlation between a team's player payroll and its winning percentage is 0.14, a number that makes the relationship almost statistically irrelevant. That figure is 67% below last year's mark and is easily the lowest since the strike.

This outcome represents a stark reversal from the state of affairs a decade ago. In 1998, the correlation between payrolls and wins was 0.71, a figure that suggests a strong and significant tie. And in the 1999 season, when the correlation was 0.5, all eight teams that reached baseball's playoffs were among the 10 top spenders....

If the 2010 season had ended Wednesday night, however, only three of the 10 richest teams would make the playoffs, and four postseason teams—the San Diego Padres, Tampa Bay Rays, Cincinnati Reds and Texas Rangers—would have climbed into that exalted position from the bottom half of the spending list....

Last year, the poorest teams collected about $40 million each in revenue sharing, up from no more than $20 million in 2001. Many small-revenue teams also have boosted their income by building new ballparks. And baseball's central fund, which distributes money to all clubs, gave out some $40 million to each team last year compared with just $13 million in 1999.

Some teams have thrived by making significant investments in other areas besides payroll—a list that includes scouting, solid trades, player development and the amateur draft....

Christianity, professional golf and the Ryder Cup

From John Paul Newport in the WSJ...

In 2006, when a U.S. Ryder Cup team rich in born-again Christians descended on the K Club in Ireland for the biennial matches, the British press published several reports about the team's conservative leanings, both religious and political.

...this year's Ryder Cup team...is no less religious than its predecessor. The captain, Corey Pavin, and several of the players are born-again Christians. Three of Mr. Pavin's four discretionary "captain's picks"—Stewart Cink, Zach Johnson and Rickie Fowler—are regulars at the PGA Tour's weekly Bible-study sessions. Messrs. Pavin and Lehman are also frequent attendees, along with team members Bubba Watson and Matt Kuchar. (The fourth pick, Tiger Woods, claims Buddhism as his religion.)...

Mr. Pavin's captain's picks were logical. Mr. Woods, whose game appears to be coming around despite another over-par round Friday at the BMW Championship, was a no-brainer. Messrs. Cink and Johnson, both experienced Ryder Cup hands, have been playing superb golf recently and will add stability to a U.S. team with five Ryder Cup rookies (Messrs. Watson, Fowler and Kuchar, Dustin Johnson and Jeff Overton).

The 21-year-old Mr. Fowler, despite ranking only 20th on the Ryder Cup points list, brings enthusiasm, personality and five top-10 finishes this year, as well as a 7-1 match play record in amateur Walker Cup competitions. He also marks his golf balls with "4:13," for a verse in Philippians: "I can do everything through him who gives me strength."

Sojourn turns 10

A nice article on Sojourn Community Church from Peter Smith in the C-J last weekend-- on the occasion of their 10th anniversary...

In excerpting from the article, I've decided to stick with its demographics, history, and a little bit of its mission. For the interview parts of the article, please click through...

Sojourn Community Church started small a decade ago — and resolved to stay small.

“We were against ‘The Man,'” recalled lead pastor Daniel Montgomery. “Most of our visions of ‘large' were churches that were primarily driven by attendance, building, cash.”

Not that Sojourn didn't want to reach people. But the twentysomethings worshipping in rented spaces around the Highlands figured they would grow to 150 members — 250 tops — and then subdivide, starting new churches elsewhere.

While they have launched new churches, both in Louisville and around the country, “We had to make more room for more people — or we had to turn people away,” Montgomery said. “So we made more room.”

Now at its 10th anniversary, which Sojourn celebrated Sunday, the church draws close to 2,400 worshippers each weekend at three Louisville locations.

With attendance rising 40 percent in just the past year, the congregation has passed the 2,000-worshippers-per week threshold that researchers use to define megachurches — or congregations with large attendance, staff and program offerings. About 10 other Louisville-area congregations fit that description.

Sojourn blends conservative theology, high-octane worship music, casual dress, an embrace of the arts and a strong emphasis on community service — reflected in its use of Louisville's fleur-de-lis symbol in its own logo.

...the church bought the former Isaac Shelby Elementary School at 930 Mary St. in Germantown in 2006....Having outgrown its worship space there, Sojourn plans to move its Sunday services to the nearby former St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church...Sojourn has launched two suburban campuses, in northeastern and southeastern Jefferson County at 8509 Westport Road and 11412 Taylorsville Road. Montgomery said the goal is to “radicalize the middle class” toward community service rather than consumerism. And it hopes to launch a fourth campus next year in downtown New Albany, Ind.

how big would the Gulf Oil spill be if centered in Louisville? how great (in size) is the Great Wall?

From Alissa Wilkinson in World on a BBC project called "Dimensions" at howbigreally.com...

...hearing or reading about the size of an event or place is nothing like seeing it for yourself...

Want to know how the moon's diameter compares to your hometown? Interested in seeing how much of Europe the Gulf oil spill would cover? Curious about how ancient Constantinople's size squares with Texas? Simply choose what interests you—say, the Great Wall of China—then punch in your zip code or the name of the town, and see an illustration laid across the map....

Centered in Louisville, here's the Gulf Oil spill and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

the Ig Nobel Prizes

From World...

Bona fide Nobel Laureates will be on hand at Harvard University on Sept. 30 to hand out the Ig Nobel Prizes, a mock award created by the [20-year old] scientific humor periodical Annals of Improbable Research.

Two of last year's winners:

a research team that studied whether it is more harmful to be struck in the head with a full or empty beer bottle...[and a researcher] who concluded that bacteria found only in the feces of giant pandas could reduce kitchen waste by 90 percent.

"Mourning in America"

Kathleen Parker in the WaPo on a clever take-off of an old ad...

Sometimes when everyone is shouting, only a whisper can be heard.

This is the thinking behind a powerful new anti-Barack Obama ad that seeks to tap not the nation's anger but its sadness.

"Mourning in America," which is hitting the national airwaves, is a poignant takeoff of Ronald Reagan's iconic "Morning in America" ad. Whatever one's political affiliation, it is impossible to watch this new ad and not feel, well, sad.

Brilliant. Everyone's angry. But anger is cheap and tired...Americans are also sad. The always bountiful America seems on the edge of famine, spiritual if not literal, though the latter seems all too possible as jobs disappear and businesses close.

The ad, cites the latest unemployment and foreclosure statistics, and other facts that illustrate the rupture of the social contract -- the idea that our children could, should and would do better than we. Or at least as well.

Echoing closely the text of Reagan's ad, the new one is shot in darker, more somber light. Here's Reagan:

This is a smart ad, created by Strategic Perception's Fred Davis, one of the GOP's favorite admen....

The ad is not subtle in blaming current circumstances on Obama....Whether this ad succeeds remains to be seen. Meanwhile, the more relevant question is: Is it true? Is Obama responsible for our near-dire circumstances?

I have never been a fan of presidents who place blame on their predecessors or who accept credit for events that couldn't have been engineered so soon in their tenure. Politicians will always massage the data to tell the story their way. Bill Clinton's happy economy surely owed some credit to Reagan. George W. Bush's ill fortunes surely had at least some of their roots in Clinton's lack of attentiveness. Obama clearly inherited a load of fertilizer, but his policies also have exacerbated those effects....

Ft. Wayne poised to pass Indy in public school enrollments next year

As Indy parents continue to exercise choice by moving out of the district-- at least those with the means to afford it...

From Indy Channel 6 (hat tip: C-J)...

Indianapolis Public Schools lost more than 900 students from last school year, putting it within 800 students of falling behind Fort Wayne's school district as the state's largest....IPS officials had hoped that last year's 3 percent decline would remain steady...a temporary lull in a long slide as more families move to the suburbs.

It's not odd for them to have that "hope", but it'd be odd for them to have that expectation.

The state uses the enrollment figures to determine how much money each district gets in its general fund. Typically, IPS gets $8,000 per student and $11,000 per special education student, who make up 20 percent of the student population.

This implies that these are the monies from the state, rather than all of the monies received by the district. Since special education is defined so widely, it's difficult to have any sense whether the premium in the subsidy for those students is appropriate.

"Unfortunately, less money means less programs," said IPS spokeswoman Mary Louise Bewley. "We're going to have to take a hard look at how much money we will get, what kind of programs we must offer our children and what may end up on the chopping block."

Less total money is not the same as lower per-student spending (the larger issue)-- which would be unchanged (or perhaps higher) with declining enrollments. (Does she not know this or is she trying to play a political card.) That said, one might expect fewer programs with fewer students and less money-- IF they are, now, suddenly unable to take advantage of previous economies of scale.

surface station temperature data bias

I've blogged on this two other times: here and here.

Here's two more websites (hat tip: Bruce Neely)...

SurfaceStation.org, rating "surface stations" by temperature bias...

Breaking down the "surface station" data by state...

cutting the nasty payroll tax? nahh...

The GOP likes cutting income taxes moreso-- and the Dems are too busy demagoguing Social Security and posing on helping the working poor and middle class.

From Matt Miller in the Washington Post...

Ask any economist or businessperson what kind of tax cut would be the biggest boost to job creation and the answer is clear: a cut in payroll taxes, because it would directly reduce the cost of employment.

Ask any social justice champion which tax is the unfairest tax of all and the answer is clear: the payroll tax, because on the employee side it is 6.3 percent of wages up to a cap of $106,800, thus taking a bigger bite, proportionally, out of a dishwasher's paycheck than a CEO's.

So which tax has the Democratic White House decided it won't propose cutting as part of its last-ditch scramble to convince voters before November that it's serious about jobs?

The payroll tax.

If this doesn't make sense to you, you're paying attention. And you're beginning to see why the president's latest economic rescue plan has been held hostage (again) by his party's confusion and fear...

As The Post reported Tuesday, "The White House has decided to forgo a broad-based payroll-tax holiday at this point...could have deprived Social Security of needed cash even as Democrats are accusing the GOP of plotting the program's demise on the campaign trail."

Translation: The one tax cut that could have immediately created jobs (and gained bipartisan support -- Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) proposed a payroll tax cut on Wednesday) has been declared off-limits because it would muddy the Democratic message that Republicans are out to destroy Social Security....

And Miller is ignoring that fact that firms shift much/all of "their" burden to workers. Brutal!

NYC govt schools give tenure, even when the job has disappeared!

From Barbara Martinez in the WSJ...

A majority of New York City teachers who lost their positions at schools earlier this year have neither applied for another job in the system nor attended any recruitment fairs in recent months, according to data released by the Department of Education Thursday.

New York is the only city in the country where teachers are guaranteed pay for life even when their school closes and they are put out of a permanent job. In Chicago, teachers get a year to find a new job. In Washington, D.C., highly rated teachers get a year or a buyout option, while low-rated teachers are dismissed.

The employment guarantee costs New York's DOE more than $100 million a year in salary and benefits...

Of the nearly 1,800 teachers in the ATR pool, 59% had not applied for any jobs through the DOE's job-recruitment system nor attended any of the job fairs, the DOE said. There are currently about 1,200 job openings in the system and significant restrictions on schools' abilities to hire teachers from outside of the system, giving ATR teachers and other current instructors first shot at job openings.

Daily Show skewers unions: labor market cartel for me-- but not for thee...

HI-larious bit from Jon Stewart's Daily Show....

Working Stiffed

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

the govt continues to say that Head Start is an abject failure

From Lisa Snell in Reason...

Since 1965 the federal government has invested more than $166 billion in Head Start. Yet a January report from the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed once again that the program does not offer disadvantaged students any lasting educational advantage.

The study randomly assessed more than 5,000 preschoolers. It found that by first grade not one of more than 114 academic and behavioral tests showed a reliable, statistically significant positive effect from participating in Head Start.

President Barack Obama promised to show fiscal restraint and to reward “evidence-based” education programs. But his fiscal year 2011 budget, released after the study had come out, increases Head Start funding by $989 million...

r u sur? texting promotes reading and spelling?!

From Katherine Mangu-Ward in Reason...

Contrary to worries that cell phone texting impairs literacy, kids who use text abbreviations on their phones—lol, l8tr, and the like—do better in reading and spelling in school, according to new study from Britain’s Coventry University. In a small study of 63 children between the ages of 8 and 12, psychologist Clare Wood found that levels of text speak (“textism”) were good predictors of reading ability.

Wood theorizes that texting is related to “phonological awareness”: the ability to sense and manipulate rhyme and other sound patterns in speech. This facility is tied to the development of reading and spelling skills....

LA's inner city (central/statist) economic planning: banning blight and replacing it with nothing

From Matt Welch in Reason-- who starts with his interview of the police chief in L.A....

...[his] mind was on the kinds of establishments he was sick of seeing in his neighborhoods. “Auto-related business, auto-related business, fried chicken restaurant, liquor store, fast-food restaurant”...If only those Del Tacos could be replaced by sit-down family restaurants, those used-tire lots by Whole Foods outlets, the area could finally begin making an economic comeback.

Parks' solution: Ban the “blight.” As a first step, by a unanimous vote in the summer of 2008, the L.A. City Council prohibited the construction or expansion of fast food restaurants in South Los Angeles. You could still build a McDonald’s in nearby (and more prosperous) Lakewood. But creating burger-flipping opportunities near Florence and Normandie was deemed bad for the neighborhood.

It’s important to point out that the political class supporting the fast food moratorium does not, as a rule, dislike poor minorities. Parks is black, the mayor of L.A. is Latino, and community activists in favor of the ban actually used the phrase “food apartheid” to describe the state of affairs before mostly white central planners zoned away consumer choice for half a million mostly nonwhite residents. They genuinely believe that punishing some of the few businesses willing to serve troubled neighborhoods is a necessary precondition to bringing in the commercial chains they prefer, such as Trader Joe’s, Mimi’s, or Starbucks (though never Walmart).

Two pathologies stand out here. One is the belief that prosperity is sourced at the stroke of a government pen, whether it’s prohibiting one type of commerce or doling out favors to another....The second pathology is the disconnect between political in-group identity and the real-world impact of policies....

"Born Free" vs. the Police State

From Radley Balko in Reason...

The music video may have died out as a vehicle for political protest, but in April the eclectic avant-world-beat artist M.I.A. released a haunting, nine-minute protest against the police state tied to her song “Born Free.” The clip sent ripples across the Internet.

The video portrays a squad of police descending on a housing complex, roughing up ordinary-looking people as they’re engaged in everyday activities (eating, sleeping, having sex). As the narrative progresses, the twist reveals the reason for the apparently random madness: The government is rounding up [X].

I don't want to tell you X to avoid spoiling it; if you're curious you can follow the link to the full article. The video depicts the nastier versions of violence by the State-- particularly the "police" State. On the other hand, I can't strongly encourage you to see the video either: it is graphic-- depicting some sex (as noted above) and a lot of disturbing violence. (You can only watch it by signing up for YouTube's age-restricted content.) Anyway, use your discretion.

USPS proposed rate increase illegal?!

The USPS is a mess. I've blogged about that repeatedly. It's a government-sanctioned monopoly with inefficiency that results in taxpayer subsidies-- and will eventually, sack it or change it dramatically.

Here's Max Heath in the C-J with a different angle on the most recent rate hike proposal...

I serve as [the National Newspaper Association's] long-time Postal Committee chairman. That's why I want to respond on behalf of them and other mailing industries in Kentucky to the recent opinion piece printed in many state newspapers by Ellen Williams of Kentucky, member of the United States Postal Service (USPS) Board of Governors....

We understand that the USPS is facing a decline in mail volume and revenue, but the Postal Service cannot plan its recovery on the backs of customers. We can't afford it, and it will only increase the downward spiral in postal revenue.

In 2006, Congress passed a law that prohibited the Postal Service from raising postage prices greater than the rate of inflation. The law has sound reasoning. The Postal Service is no longer allowed to raise rates to make up lost revenue or to cover its inability to manage costs. The goal of the law was to force USPS to manage its workforce well, control costs and improve its business through innovation and new products....

Rather than tackle the hard issues, USPS took the easier route and let existing contracts push up costs. Rather than renegotiating with its workers, it is looking for a quick fix. Other industries have addressed their problems jointly as management and labor, knowing that sustainable jobs are possible only when the business is sound....

Once USPS “busts” the legislated rate cap, it will be gone forever, and USPS can return to business as usual with price increases that further lower mail volume. Then USPS jobs will be even more at risk than they are now....

a little-known scene in the drama to put together the Constitution

From Michael Ramirez in Investors' Business Daily (hat tip: World)...

a book on I-69!

A book review by Mary O'Grady in the WSJ-- of Interstate 69...

The road has been a contentious subject in some circles within Indiana-- especially in the SW, given the painful environmental consequences of the decisions about where to put the road. (It was a very small part of my congressional campaign, but could have been much larger; I couldn't get the opponents to side with me-- over my two opponents who favored what they despised! Ahhh...politics!)

A 1990 study looked at the potential for new federally funded routes in the region and concluded that, for the money, they didn't make sense. But that same year David Reed, a researcher for the Hudson Institute, then headquartered in Indianapolis, came up with another idea: Take I-69, an interstate running from Port Huron, Mich., on the Canadian border, to Indianapolis, and finish it all the way to Mexico. Mr. Reed reasoned that Indiana then wouldn't be alone in lobbying for federal funds, and the rural corner of the state being championed by Mr. Graham would lie smack in the middle of a vibrant new commercial corridor.

What followed, under Mr. Graham's leadership, was the I-69 Mid-Continent Highway Coalition. Proponents in Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas joined. Washington politicians and big-name lobbying firms such as Patton Boggs signed on. Republican Sen. Trent Lott (now a Patton Boggs lobbyist) wanted a piece of the action for Mississippi. He made his support contingent on snaking the road through his state.

Twenty years later, though, the extension of I-69 remains a dream—or, for some, a nightmare—and in "Interstate 69" Matt Dellinger explains why, mapping the story of what "could be the last great interstate built in America."...

federal govt owns 65% of American land and $1.2 Trillion in unused buildings

From Robby Soave in Reason about the results of a Reason Foundation study...

Most people are not aware that the federal government owns 65 percent of the land in the contiguous United States. It turns out that the government isn't totally aware of this either...

According to Peter Orszag, former director of the Office of Management and Budget, in addition to about 14,000 buildings that federal agencies have already conceded they don't need any more, there are at least 55,000 more that are either underutilized or not used at all. Since the indexing of property is often left to individual agencies, there is no accurate, comprehensive federal database of government-owned property. The Reason study, written by Anthony Randazzo and John Palatiello (or a shorter/summary) revealed that the amount of unused holdings owned by the government is much greater than previously estimated: Selling them could raise more than $1.2 trillion and put a sizable dent in the federal debt.

On June 10, President Barack Obama issued a memorandum calling for federal agencies to save money by selling excess property, earning the president praise from one of the study's authors...

more illegal immigrants does NOT = more violent crime

From Michael Moynihan in Reason on the "pernicious...mistaken idea" that (illegal) immigration can be strongly linked to violent crime...

...according to a June review of crime data by the Associated Press, the four American cities with the lowest crime rates are El Paso, Austin, San Diego, and Phoenix...the A.P. [also] found that border cops faced significantly less violence than their counterparts in police departments across the U.S. According to data from 2009, only 3% of agents were assaulted while on duty, mostly with tossed stones, compared with 11% of police officers in general....

top 5 current ecological catastrophes (incl. the BP oil spill) all strongly connected to government policy

From Ronald Bailey in Reason...

While the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was dominating summer headlines, a July 16 article in Foreign Policy listed five ongoing ecological catastrophes around the world that hadn't attracted as much attention. The article didn't mention it, but all five had something in common with one another and with BP's oil leak as well: Each was rooted in public policies that encouraged environmentally risky behavior.

That shouldn't come as a surprise. The first question you should ask when you see environmental misbehavior is: What is the government doing that encourages people to act that way?

The annual Economic Freedom Index put together by The Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation is a good shorthand indicator of bad government policies; so is the World Bank's Rule of Law Index. With those two measurements in hand, let's briefly consider each of the catastrophes.

...the Foreign Policy's list:
1.) five decades of Nigerian oil spills...
2.) a massive collection of coal-seam fires in China...
3.) deforestation in Haiti...
4.) the shrinking Aral Sea in central Asia...
5. ) the Great Pacific Garbage Patch....a classic example of the tragedy of the commons. If there is no clear ownership of a natural resource...no one is responsible for protecting it.

And the BP oil spill? It involved a resource owned by the U.S. government, which set the rules for how it would be managed and then enforced them with notorious ineptitude. BP's risky behavior also may have been encouraged by a paltry, congressionally mandated $75 million cap on liability for environmental and economic damages resulting from offshore drilling spills. And the Energy Policy Act of 2005 strongly encourages deep water oil exploration by offering a graduated suspension of royalties paid to the federal government. The deeper the water, the greater the number of barrels exempt from royalties....

UPDATE: To be clear, private actions bear ultimate responsibility in each of these examples; if people weren't knuckleheads, then we wouldn't have any of this. But the absence of govt (tragedy of the commons) and the various incompetencies of govt are also significant factors.

Obama and Dems play political games with Social Security

From the editorialists of the WSJ...

Democrats are trying to keep control of Congress by scaring the wig off grandma with a phantom GOP plot against Social Security. That is not news. Social Security scare tactics have been regular campaign themes since FDR. President Obama's unique contribution is to do this even as he's begging Republicans to help him reduce the deficit and reform entitlement spending.

On the one hand, Mr. Obama has charged his deficit commission with crafting a bipartisan plan to restrain entitlements. "Everything's on the table. That's how this thing's going to work," he said when he created the commission in February....Yet even as Mr. Obama beseeches Republicans, he and his political allies are playing the Social Security card for all it's worth in this campaign season.

...surely will reinforce Republican fears that the deficit commission is nothing but a political trap. Mr. Obama wants the GOP to support entitlement reforms in exchange for tax increases, but when they do he'll pocket the revenue and slam the GOP for the entitlement "cuts."

The President's bad faith is all the more notable because Social Security is less a GOP reform priority than it should be. Republicans never even brought President Bush's private account plan to the floor in 2005....

One of the few things Bush did well with the economy-- and not backed up by a GOP Congress that lacked principles and courage.

This Social Security ploy perfectly illustrates the Obama political method: Bipolar rhetoric that lurches between partisan distortion and bipartisan entreaties—all the while governing hard to the left with Democrats in Congress running the show.

trial lawyers and the BP post-spill payments

From the editorialists of the WSJ...

When is $20 billion in ready cash not enough? Answer: When state Attorneys General and the plaintiffs bar are vying for a bigger chunk of the BP compensation fund that is supposed to go to victims of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

That's the real story behind the headlines about unhappiness over Kenneth Feinberg's terms for payments under the Gulf Coast Claims Facility. As administrator, er, King Solomon of this exercise, Mr. Feinberg has to make difficult judgments as he attempts to compensate genuine victims while not rewarding freeloaders. Plaintiffs attorneys and their AG pals seem to be afraid that they'll be cut out of the action....

What are Mr. Feinberg's supposedly onerous terms? Well, claimants can file through November 23 and receive an immediate cash payment for up to six months of emergency relief without forfeiting any legal right to sue BP. They can take that money and hire a lawyer if they'd like. The same claimants then have three years to apply for a final loss settlement, and only if they accept that Feinberg offer would they have to give up their right to sue.

So let's see. A Gulf Coast shrimper can get immediate emergency cash, plus a larger final settlement from Mr. Feinberg in relatively short order. The money is taxable as income, but otherwise the shrimper can keep it all.

Or, instead of accepting a final settlement offer, that shrimper can hire one of Mr. Hood's plaintiffs bar friends, wait years to see how the litigation plays out, and then pay 40% of his share of any settlement to the lawyer as a contingency fee. Which process sounds fairer to the victims?...

Mr. Feinberg is also criticized for demanding documentation such as income tax returns or other proof of loss, especially since much of the Gulf economy seems to run on a cash (not to say, tax-avoiding) basis....

We would have preferred that the Gulf claims follow the regular laws of liability, but President Obama insisted on the $20 billion fund and BP agreed to an offer it couldn't refuse. The best path now is to let Mr. Feinberg get on with judging claims and getting cash to the victims as soon as possible so they can get back to making a living and the Gulf economy can revive.