In a letter printed in the February 22, 2008 Wichita Eagle, Sedgwick County Commission Chairman Tom Winters, along with Wichita State University President Don Beggs, praised some Kansas congressmen for being "very effective Washington advocates for south-central Kansas." What the congressmen -- Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, and Kansas Sens. Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts -- did was to "roll up their sleeves and work on many issues that help improve our quality of life in the Wichita area." Sounds like a noble cause, doesn't it?

What the three congressmen did was to secure federal funding for several projects deemed important to Chairman Winters and President Beggs. In other words, they brought home the pork to Wichita in the form of earmarks. This is why efforts to reform earmarks and pork barrel spending have failed and are likely to continue to fail. Evidence of this is Tom Winters, as I believe that he would describe himself as fiscally conservative, yet he praises his congressmen when they bring home the pork.

Rep. Todd Tiahrt recently sent me a newsletter by email titled "It's Time to End Wasteful Spending." It told me of his goal "to find and create solutions that will benefit Kansas taxpayers." He's done just that, according to the letter from Winters and Beggs, and in the past too.

In 2004 the Wichita Business Journal reported on two projects where Rep. Tiahrt brought home funding to his district. One was a computer-aided dispatch system for Sedgwick County's 911 system. The other was a grant to the Wichita Art Museum. Neither recipient of the earmarks, the director of Sedgwick County's Emergency Communications Department and the director of the Wichita Art Museum, thought the spending qualified as pork. Most pork recipients feel the same.

Then there's Tiahrt's earmark for the BTK investigation. As reported in Human Events: "Tiahrt, according to 'The Almanac of American Politics,' has bragged that one of the 'top 10 most gratifying things I’ve done' is securing $1 million in an omnibus appropriations bill for the Wichita Police Department to investigate the 'BTK' killer."

That's the way it usually is. The recipients of the earmarked pork barrel spending believe the need is urgent, the cause worthy, and a federal earmark is justified. It seems that everyone across the country believes this about their own pet projects.

To Rep. Tiahrt's credit, he has voted for earmark reform measures. But his behavior and that of our two senators, Roberts and Brownback, is to continue to bring home earmarks and pork for the good of the folks back home.

And who can blame them, really? After all, we pay taxes to the federal government. Shouldn't we get something back? Even Ron Paul gets earmarks for his congressional district. Should Rep. Tiahrt turn down earmarks, his political opponents would have his hide for failing to look out for the needs of his district.

But with these attitudes, earmark reform will never succeed, and pork barrel politics will never end.

In the February 21, 2008 debate between Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama, Clinton mentioned the "wasteful tax cuts of the Bush administration."

That's a phrase that only a leftist politician such as Sen. Clinton could utter with a straight face, and it tells us a lot about the beliefs of Sen. Clinton and her supporters. (I don't think Sen. Obama's beliefs are very different on this matter.)

It tells us that they feel they have first claim on the money we earn, and if we are allowed to keep more of it, it is wasted. Wasted, according to Sen. Clinton, that is, because she didn't get a chance to spend it.

That is perhaps the most important thing to remember about Sen. Clinton, and Sen. Obama, too. They believe that they know better than you how a large portion of your money should be spent, and if you don't let them spend it that way, it is wasted.

Not that Sen. McCain is that much better. He didn't support the Bush tax cuts, although he says he does now.

There are many problems with the Bush Administration's spending, and it's correct to claim that a large portion of that spending is wasted. There is certainly a problem with the deficits year after year, but that is a problem caused by too much spending, not too little taxation, as Clinton and Obama claim. Taxing less -- meaning that people keep more of their own money and spend it the way they see fit -- is wasteful only for those politicians and their supporters who believe they know best how to spend the money we earn.

By John Todd.

The people know much better how to spend their money than the government. -- Ron Paul

The economic prosperity and the freedom that people of this country enjoy today were a result of low taxes combined with little or no regulations dating back to the founding. People were free to use the fruits of their labor and their property as they wished, and through this freedom they created the most prosperous country in the world with the greatest amount of individual freedom. Today, Ron Paul is the only candidate for president who understands the dangers to our economic prosperity and freedom that has resulted as people have learned to vote themselves money from the government treasury and how to take other peoples property through government regulations. The result has been high taxes and regulations that threaten our prosperity and freedom, and we must stop this slide.

Ron Paul says, “too many politicians and lobbyists are spending America into ruin. We are nine trillion dollars in debt as a nation. Our mounting government debt endangers the financial future of our children and grandchildren. If we don’t cut spending now, higher taxes and economic disaster will be in their future -- and yours.”

How does this impact Kansas? The per capita share of the national debt is around $30,000 per Kansan or $120,000 for a Kansas family of four! Our own state budget has grown to nearly $13 billion. Six billion of the $13 billion that comes from state general funds with all source funds accounting for the balance. A large portion of the “all source” funds come from the Federal Government. What we as a people have allowed is for the Federal Government to overtax us, and then place our state in a position to compete with 49 other states to recover our own money. And when the money comes back to Kansas, it has “strings” attached on how the money can be spent, thus allowing non-elected federal bureaucrats in Washington to control us through their imposed regulations. What does this do to state sovereignty? We need to stop this abuse, and Ron Paul is the only candidate for president who is willing to do it! Ron Paul says, “The Constitution was written to restrain the government, never to restrain the people.”

Ron Paul is clearly the only presidential candidate, who understands individual liberty vs. the collectivism that permeates our country, private property rights that restrict governments ability to give our house, business, or farm to the politically well-connected, free market capitalism, and the need for limited government that eliminates the onerous overburdening regulation that stifles our businesses, our personal lives, and our freedom.

A common theme of the various candidates for the Republican Party nomination for the Presidency of the United States is Ronald Reagan. Candidates compete with each other to be the true heir of Reagan and his legacy.

Ron Paul, however, looks back to an even earlier time in American politics when the word "conservative" had a different meaning.

Most Republican candidates favor a muscular American foreign policy advocated by the neo-conservatives who advise our current president. This is a far cry from the foreign policy our nation once had.

What do World War I, World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, the Bay of Pigs, and our presence in Kosovo have in common? These wars or police actions were all started by big-government Democrats and opposed by conservatives. I don't think that any of the current crop of Republican candidates would agree that these wars -- by any stretch of the imagination -- might have been unnecessary. Instead, these men argue at debates about who supported the surge in Iraq first and strongest.

Ron Paul's non-interventionist foreign policy is simply the policy that our party once had. Non-interventionist does not mean isolationist. It does not mean that we cower at home and hope that no one notices us and attacks us. Instead, it means that we honestly assess threats against us, and respond to those that are real. This is why Ron Paul was in favor of the efforts in Afghanistan to remove the Taliban, but against the war in Iraq. And we now know that the case for war in Iraq was fabricated largely from falsehoods.

With regard to economic policy, most of the current Republican candidates admire Ronald Reagan because he cut taxes. That was the easy part. The more difficult thing to do, what Reagan couldn't accomplish, is to drastically cut spending by government. This is something Ron Paul believes in and will do.

As in foreign affairs, Ron Paul believes in an economic policy that is non-interventionist. You may be asking "Doesn't someone need to manage the economy?" Well, there is someone managing -- or at least attempting to manage -- a large part of the economy: the Federal Reserve System. It is that system, though its policy of low interest rates, that is most directly responsible for the sub-prime mortgage crises we are now facing. Hundreds of billions have been lost in market value of securities and homes, and tens of thousands of families have lost their very homes. It is now believed that this crisis is leading our country into recession, and cries for even more intervention into and management of the economy are heard across the land, even from Republican presidential candidates.

It is economic interventionism itself that harms the economy. The Federal Reserve System, which creates money from nothing with its printing presses and open market operations, creates the inflation -- with its accompanying uncertainty -- that harms our economy and prosperity.

Further, the Federal Reserve System and its policy of inflationary money and credit creation provides extra income for government to spend without having to tax. That is quite lucrative, as printing hundred dollar bills is inexpensive, and creating money in computerized ledger entries costs even less. Even worse, he who prints the money gets to spend it first, before its value is diluted by inflation.

Among Republican candidates, only Ron Paul recognizes this. Only Ron Paul calls for an end to the Federal Reserve System and its monopoly on the creation of money out of thin air.

Non-interventionism in foreign affairs, non-interventionism in domestic economic policy -- non-interventionism is a theme with Ron Paul.

How so? In other ways:

Stop government intervention in private property, through the taking of property from one party and giving it to another, more politically favored party through the process of eminent domain.

Stop government intervention into the environment. Today, it seems as if environmental policy is written by those who are enemies to capitalism -- the "watermelons" -- green on the outside but red in the center. Instead, Ron Paul promotes reliance on property rights and markets to solve environmental problems.

Stop ever-increasing government interventionism into education. Ron Paul supports freedom for parents to choose where and how to educate their children. That freedom should be backed up by tax credits, so that the freedom is a real choice that parents can exercise.

Stop government intervention in the types of drugs people may use. The unwise war on drugs has created criminal gang empires that affect us all, as we have witnessed here in Wichita recently. The government response is more law enforcement, which only makes the drug trade more profitable and increases the violence on our streets.

These policies of non-intervention that Ron Paul believes in may seem strange and incredible to some of you. That they may, however, is only an indication of how far we have strayed from the vision of freedom and liberty that this country was founded upon.

If you believe in freedom, if you believe in liberty, if you believe that "we the people" can solve problems without the heavy-hand of government interventionism, you should cast your ballot for Ron Paul.

Writing in the July 8, 2007 Washington Post, George Will has a column titled "Declaration of Dependence." The link to it is here, although you may have to register (for free) to read it.

All through my public school education, we were taught that Franklin Roosevelt was godlike for saving the country from the Great Depression. While I don't directly know what schoolchildren are taught today, I imagine that the stature of Roosevelt has only increased, as his vision of large, overpowering government is in perfect alignment with the goals of public schools. This is more that I need to unlearn.

Some excerpts:

Some mornings during the autumn of 1933, when the unemployment rate was 22 percent, the president, before getting into his wheelchair, sat in bed, surrounded by economic advisers, setting the price of gold. One morning he said he might raise it 21 cents: "It's a lucky number because it's three times seven." His Treasury secretary wrote that if people knew how gold was priced "they would be frightened." … In his second inaugural address, Roosevelt sought "unimagined power" to enforce the "proper subordination" of private power to public power. He got it … Roosevelt, however, made interest-group politics systematic and routine. New Deal policies were calculated to create many constituencies -- labor, retirees, farmers, union members -- to be dependent on government. … Before Roosevelt, the federal government was unimpressive relative to the private sector.

Thank you to Karl Peterjohn for this excellent, well-researched article.

Urban Renewal: A Flawed Idea That Failed 50 Years Ago
By Karl Peterjohn, Executive Director Kansas Taxpayers Network

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1) Urban renewal failed across the United States in the 20th century. The urban renewal efforts from the 20th century that are the foundation for the newly proposed redevelopment agency in Wichita rely upon these old Kansas laws that require an increase in local government’s powers. There are no clearly defined steps that will avoid repeating these past mistakes in the public hearing discussions so far.

2) The financing mechanism for this new redevelopment agency is not clear. Other communities might have agencies with this label and operate their Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) money through them, but integrating the current CDBG programs into this new agency have not been made clear. The revenue need to fund this agency is unspecified. The city has property, sales, and fee revenues that can be raised to provide the substantial funding needed for this proposed new agency.

3) No efforts have been clearly defined to avoid repeating the mistakes that occurred in the 20th century urban renewal redevelopment process. If the city is going to make mistakes, let’s not repeat the errors of the past.

4) Current city activities will be impacted by this redevelopment agency. This includes and is not limited to central inspection, zoning, and planning.

5) The city will need to restore the eminent domain powers that the 2006 legislature removed from state law for many of the proposed redevelopment efforts to work. While the eminent domain reform enacted in 2006 does not take effect until July 1, 2007, the city needs a plan that will fit within the boundaries of state law.

6) A disproportionate amount of the burden created by urban renewal fell upon low income and largely minority groups. Urban renewal programs provided disproportionate benefits to high income, developers, and citizens with close ties to these programs at city hall.

INTRODUCTION ON WICHITA

The Wichita City Manager is promoting a new city redevelopment agency and using the existing urban renewal statutes that exist in Kansas law for this community. Sedgwick County officials have joined both appointed and elected city officials in discussing this concept.

Urban renewal was an important post World War II program that tried to rehabilitate and improve cities all over the United States. Unfortunately, urban renewal and the government dominated and controlled redevelopment process that was the essence of urban renewal in the 20th century failed. It was also a very expensive failure.

Wichita has gone through two rounds of urban renewal. The first effort was in parallel with the national efforts that ran from 1949 to 1974.(1) Downtown Wichita changed significantly when urban renewal programs used their eminent domain powers to acquire large chunks of property in Wichita. The City of Wichita has been one of the largest property owners in this community since this program began. Century II was one of the major redevelopment projects in downtown Wichita during this period of time.

Fortunately, the troubled history of urban renewal is one that is readily available. This is particularly critical for a city like Wichita that went through a second stage that it has been following with a city directed special redevelopment program since the late 1980’s.

Developer Jack DeBoer issued his “DeBoer Plan” for downtown redevelopment in Wichita almost 20 years ago. DeBoer’s vision was for the construction and development of a large number of new and enhanced existing facilities in downtown Wichita. The focus would be in turning the downtown area into an entertainment/tourist destination with a variety of primarily enhanced public facilities. The DeBoer plan was largely implemented in stages with the “crown jewel” being the recently approved downtown arena. This private-public partnership was expected to transform and revitalize downtown Wichita. A large amount of public and private funds were expected to be spent to turn this vision into a reality.

The centerpiece for this revitalization proposal was three major projects downtown: a 500 foot keeper of the Plains that would be for Wichita what the space needle is for Seattle; a new downtown hotel; a new downtown arena. In addition a variety of other attractions would be built to attract people, particularly tourists, to downtown Wichita. The Wichita ice arena and Childrens Museum were two of the other significant attractions that were built.

The irony of the DeBoer proposal, was the fact that almost 20 years later, DeBoer is most prominently attached to the East Bank/Waterwalk development proposal and was NOT specifically part of his 1980’s era proposal. This redevelopment project, which included a large amount of city owned parcels, included land that had originally become city property back in the urban renewal era.

The DeBoer redevelopment proposal went well beyond the arena and a 500 foot Keeper of the Plains statue. Downtown Wichita was supposed to become an urban tourist destination location with a variety of attractions to get both residents and out-of-town tourists to flock to see. Naturally, accommodations like a new hotel would be needed to go with the recent expansion of the Bob Brown convention center complex attached to Century II.

The expansion of museums on and by the river, a new ice rink, remodeled Lawrence-Dumont stadium (roughly 20 years ago) and other improvements were all supposed to stimulate a new form of local development that went beyond the traditional businesses and industries existing in Wichita. The City of Wichita and Sedgwick County spent huge sums to build, expand, or remodel facilities in and around downtown. Meanwhile, the private sector that was already downtown quietly continued to shrink and diminish.

A new local bus station was built downtown in the 1990’s. Macy’s retail store disappeared to be replaced by the Finney State Office Building that the city helped arrange by providing a nearby parking facility.

The initial reaction to the DeBoer revitalization plan was mixed. The family of the late Black Bear Bosin quickly sank the idea of inflating his statue into a 500 foot city landmark. That was the only idea that was not substantially implemented, and by raising the base, a good argument can be made that the intent of the DeBoer plan to increase the height of the keeper has been partially met.

The city has just finished spending a large amount of tax funds raising the pedestal for the Keeper of the Plains statue so that the original statue is more visible to the public. However, it is not clear to what degree this statue is attracting either local or outside the Wichita area visitors into downtown. The city supported Indian Museum that is adjacent to the Keeper of the Plains statue has continued to struggle and this facility continues to have a variety of operational problems that continue to appear in the news from time-to-time.

Both the city’s ice arena as well as the Children’s Museum have struggled over financial operating costs and budget problems at several points since these facilities were opened. Downtown Wichita’s Old Towne area has seen an influx of restaurants and nightclubs. Many of the private projects have required a variety of taxpayer funded support that included but is not limited to parking. The high amount of turnover in the ownership and operation of many of these private facilities raised performance questions. Similar firms outside of the downtown area did not receive the same benefits that many of the downtown firms received. This situation raised equity issues for similar businesses. Is local government capable to step in? The sizable financial losses from the operations of the now city owned Hyatt Hotel during its first few years of operation raises questions about the effectiveness of the public-private redevelopment efforts that occurred in the last few years of the 20th century in Wichita.

Wichita has struggled both with the explicit urban renewal along with the rest of the country in the middle of the 20th century. Follow up redevelopment programs during the last 20 years have created a number of changes downtown but the growth in this community had largely eluded the downtown area. This Wichita history is important for city council and other local officials to keep in mind when examining the redevelopment agency proposal and resurrecting urban renewal.

I. NATIONAL URBAN RENEWAL: A BRIEF HISTORY

Urban renewal failed. Even before the federal urban renewal efforts ended in the 1970’s the academic critics were pointing out major problems. The goals were not being met and costs far exceeded initial projections.

In my September 6, 2006 letter to city leaders discussing urban renewal I pointed out the wide range of literature discussing urban renewal and redevelopment that dated back over 40 years ago. This history was wide ranging and featured prominent scholars from that era who included several who went on to national prominence in other public realms like the late Senator Patrick Moynihan who was also a White House staffer for several presidents, and White House staffer to former President Reagan, Martin Anderson. In addition, major urban scholars like Jane Jacobs, Harvard professors Edward Banfield, and Nathan Glazer who focused upon city improvements and trying to reduce and ameliorate the urban poverty problem had a major impact at looking at city issues.

Now a case can be made that urban renewal has never totally ended. That is a certainly a reasonable position in light of the existence in some states of the urban renewal statutes in state law that were enacted roughly 50 years ago. The late Ronald Reagan jokingly commented that there was nothing as eternal as a government program. The echoes of urban renewal and similar redevelopment efforts continue like a governmental version of the scientists “Big Bang” echoes detected by the Bell Laboratory scientists who won Nobel Prize in Physics for their effort.

As far back as 1963 then professors Glazer and Moynihan wrote in their classic “Beyond the Melting Pot” described urban renewal and its ethnic and sociological impact this way, “There have been difficult (sociological) problems, but not different from those in other great American cities. The major attempt to deal with these problems has been through urban renewal—the rebuilding of the area so as to reduce the low-income and increase the middle- and high-income population. This movement has been supported by all the middle-class groups and institutions in the area, who of course would like to see less crime and disorder and crowding and dirt around them.” (2)

Urban renewal had impacted the natural evolution of the neighborhoods that were in transition in New York City in the 1950’s as the Irish, Jews, and Germans moved out to be replaced back then what Glazer and Moynihan referred to as “Negroes” and Puerto Ricans. Glazer and Moynihan comment on the paucity of Puerto Rican community organizations and attribute this in part to the impact of urban renewal, “Aside from the storefront churches, organizational life is not strong among the Puerto Ricans….but Puerto Rico, just as the rest of Latin America, has always been weak in spontaneous grass-roots organization. Probably the rise of organization has been inhibited too by the factors that have dispersed the population and prevented the development of a great center for the Puerto Rican population—housing shortage, slum clearance, and the availability of public housing….The demolition of the houses that affront the neighborhood means precisely the demolition of those that house vast numbers of Puerto Ricans—families living in single rooms, families taking in migrant relatives, displaced children, and temporarily homeless friends. Ironically, ‘improving a neighborhood’ means moving out those who are most crowded, have the least room, and whose resettlement offers the most difficult problem for themselves and city agencies.”(3)

Slum clearance is just a synonym for urban renewal. Slum clearance is the argument being put forth by the advocates for new city redevelopment agency. Glazer and Moynihan identified over 40 years ago simply bulldozing buildings does not address the underlying problems. These are problems of crime that result in the dilapidation that is being used to justify a new city agency.

What will be done differently in 2006 than what was done in 1956? If local officials are going to make build a new city bureaucracy and expand the city’s role in controlling property within the city limits, Wichitans need to know why the local officials should repeat the same mistakes that were exposed over 40 years ago?

Aesthetically, urban renewal was a failure creating a monotonous diversity that the leading urban scholar of her day Jane Jacobs described, “Anything looks ugly if it is done badly. But this belief implies something else. It implies that city diversity of uses is inherently messy in appearance; and it also implies that places stamped with homogeneity of uses look better, or at any rate are more amenable to pleasant or orderly esthetic treatment. But homogeneity or close similarity among uses, in real life poses very puzzling esthetic problems. If the sameness of use is shown candidly for what it is—sameness—it looks monotonous.”(4)

In fact, the converse according to Jacob is true for cities, “Intricate minglings of different uses in cities are not a form of chaos. On the contrary, they represent a complex and highly developed form of order…Nevertheless, even though intricate mixtures of buildings, uses and scenes are necessary for successful city districts, does diversity carry, too, the disadvantages of ugliness, warring uses and congestion that are conventionally attributed to it by planning lore and literature? These supposed disadvantages are based on images of unsuccessful districts which have not too much, but too little diversity. They call up visions of garish, sprawling, unremitting commerce. None of these conditions, however, represent flourishing city diversity. On the contrary, these represent precisely the senility that befalls city neighborhoods in which exuberant diversity has either failed to grow or has died off with time…. Flourishing city diversity, of the kind that is catalyzed by the combination of mixed primary uses, frequent streets, mixture of building ages and overheads, and dense concentration of users does not carry with it the disadvantages of diversity conventionally assumed by planning pseudoscience.(5) Jacob then proceeds to criticize the urban planners and urban renewal advocates of her day for their failures to understand the intricacies or the spontaneous order created by the marketplace operating under a rule of law.

The problems outlined in a practical sense by Jacob are examined in much greater detail that extends well beyond urban renewal and municipal revitalization and into a broader discussion of the role of urban experts, government planners, city residents trying to live their lives and how this exists in an America where the role of the government has been expanding during the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century.(6)(7)

The most recent national explosion of this issue is the eminent domain battles that lead up to the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent and highly controversial, Kelo decision ratifying forced land acquisition powers for private developers at the expense of current landowners when exercised by local units of government. That has led some Wichita city leaders to put this city behind an effort to have broad based powers to condemn private land using eminent domain and then be able to turn that property over to other private hands. This led the 2006 Kansas legislature to pass legislation that will limit municipal eminent domain powers for redevelopment beginning July 1, 2007.

These failures go far beyond the sociological analysis offered by Glazer, Jacob, Anderson, and Moynihan. Hoover Institute scholar Martin Anderson identified a number of problems with urban renewal.

In addition, liberty and control over property by citizens was diminished for all and in some cases eradicated for the people living in the targeted “redevelopment” areas. “Who wants urban renewal? Certainly not the lower income groups—they get displaced from their homes to make way for the modern apartments they cannot afford to rent. It is hard to know whether the middle class is much concerned with the changes that have occurred in the cities…Then who is behind the tremendous push for urban renewal? Raymond Vernon, former Director of the New York Metropolitan Region Study, has speculated that the main stimulus for urban renewal comes from two elite groups—the wealthy elite and the intellectual elite. Both groups have strong economic and social attachments to the central city.”(8)

In a book examining eminent domain abuse and its ties to urban renewal, Steven Greenhut looked at Anderson’s analysis and warned: “Nothing much has changed today.”(9)

Greenhut also pointed out, “Without eminent domain, very little of the destruction could have taken place. But once the government had the right to take whatever it pleased in the name of the ‘higher good’ then the sky was the limit.”(10)

Urban renewal did do massive amounts of damage. Let’s look at one well examined and very costly case: Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis that was described: “Few people could have missed the demolition of St. Lous’ Pruitt-Igoe and other hideous housing projects that came to epitomize wht the urban-renewal program was all about: creating high-rise, crime-ridden slums that eventually had to be dynamited before any real urban progress could be made.”(11)(12)

Von Hoffman’s Harvard University study went on to describe this redevelopment tragedy this way, “St. Louis’s Pruitt-Igoe housing project is arguable the most infamous public-housing project ever built in the U.S. A product of the postwar federal public-housing program, this mammoth high-rise development was completed in 1956…Only a few years later, disrepair, vandalism, and crime plagued Pruitt-Igoe. The project’s recreational galleries and skip-stop elevators, once heralded as architectural innovations, had become nuisances and danger zones. Large number of vacancies indicated that even poor people preferred to live anywhere but Pruitt-Igoe. In 1972, after spending more than $5 million in vain to cure the problems at Pruitt-Igoe, the St. Louis Housing Authority, in a highly publicized event, demolished three of the high-rise buildings. A year later, in concert with the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, it declared Pruitt-Igoe unsalvageable and razed the remaining buildings.”(13)

If the city of Wichita is going to resurrect the urban renewal that led in it worst cases to problems like the one listed above, a specific program is needed to make sure that these past mistakes are not repeated. In addition, it must be clear where the public funding sources will come from to provide for this redevelopment.

Avoiding the government redevelopment/urban renewal model is needed. This problem remains a national challenge for communities across the country. In Abuse of Power, Steven Greenhut describes the 21st century challenge this way: “For as bad as the old urban renewal was—and almost everyone from every political perspective has criticized the outcome of this massive federal program—at least it was done to remedy what its proponents saw a genuine urban problems of substandard housing and rundown neighborhoods. Since at least the early 1980s, urban renewal has morphed into something known mainly as redevelopment. Advocates of modern redevelopment projects often use the same language of blight to justify their efforts, but the purpose has changed dramatically.”

“Whereas the old urban renewal was designed largely to wipe away areas that unquestionably were down on their heels, the new urban renewal is basically about filling city coffers with money. It’s about building tax bases. It’s about luring new commercial retailers into older areas to bring in additional property and sales taxes. Just because these financial motives are sometimes (but not always) dressed up in the language of the New Urbanism or downtown revitalization or blight removal should not fool one into thinking that the new urban renewal is about anything more than money.”(14)

For local government to proceed, it must have eminent domain powers to remove the wrong people from the targeted property. This has led to condemnations of property across the country and destroyed the property rights for homeowners in many cases. Lakewood, Ohio is one example but books have been written outlining a large number of cases that cross the country.

“As there were no structural problems with the houses, the City (Lakewood, OH) relied upon terms like ‘economic and functional obsolescence’ to find blight. Translation: The houses lack two-car attached garages and second bathtubs and their yards are too small. No modern family could possibly want a historic, well maintained house without a two-car attached garage.”(15)

The author of this study “Public Power, Private Gain,” issued by the Institute for Justice in 2003 provided numerous abuses similar to Lakewood’s that are occurring throughout the country. Dana Berliner’s book is filled with outrages to individuals, a variety of businesses, churches, farmers, and others in the name of eradicating “blight” or “neglect” or “distressed” properties.

Many of these outrages occurred in Kansas. “Unfortunately, for the citizens of Kansas, their state is one of the worst abusers of eminent domain, especially in comparison to other states with similar population size.”(16) Problems with redevelopment in the context of eminent domain abuses were specifically cited in Kansas City, the infamous Gross case out of Merriam, and Topeka. Kansas was ranked second worst out of the 50 states behind only California in this national study.

In the Gross case a small businessman operating a used car lot lost his property because the city of Merriam condemned it so a neighboring BMW dealership could acquire the property.(17)

These abuses were part of the foundation for the effort to reform Kansas eminent domain laws in the wake of the Kelo decision on eminent domain by the U.S. Supreme Court. In addition, there is also a similar and even more anti-property owner case coming out of the Kansas Supreme Court recently. Unlike Kelo that has been extensively covered in the news media, the Kansas case has received almost no local news coverage.

“A good example is the Kansas Supreme Court’s 2003 decision in the case of General Building Contractors and Robert Tolberg v. Board of Shawnee County Commissioners. The justices not only affirm the county’s right to take virtually any property they chose in the name of economic development, but they also show open disdain for the property owners who are challenging the taking of their properties. Throughout the ruling, one sees an emphasis on process rather than on rights. As long as the government followed the letter of the law and the proper redevelopment process, then the court couldn’t see what the controversy was about. Yet, courts are supposed to serve as a check on the government’s edicts, holding them up to timeless constitutional principles rather than the planning ideologies of the day.”(18)

This was the perspective of a California eminent domain author in looking at the problems in Kansas recently. The Kansas events where eminent domain was used to favor private parties helped set the stage in 2006 for the legislature’s efforts to limit eminent domain takings for non public purposes. This is primarily for economic development efforts but in some other states even the traditional eminent domain powers for public purposes are now being questioned or even limited. In other states, the voters have been specifically asked to decide the proper role for eminent domain powers in the case of redevelopment.

November 7, 2006 the voters in Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oregon, and South Carolina all passed initiatives that would restrain the government’s power to seize private property. If Kansas powers would receive a similar opportunity, a similar outcome by voters speaking out to defend their property rights is likely.

Naturally, for an elite few who are at the center of local government power, this is not an outcome that they approve of in their vision to improve their communities. The genius of the founders in providing a system where power was supposed to be spread widely among the people also puts a crimp in the utopian planners. “As in all utopias, the right to have plans of any significance belonged only to the planners in charge.”(19)

In the wake of the Berman, the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the 1950’s that provided the foundation for the expanded eminent domain powers for government became the foundation for the loss of private property rights and a sizable expansion in government’s ability to modify property ownership into the hands that the state prefers.(20)

Lower court decisions had problems with this concept but their argument, “One man’s land cannot be seized by the Governmnt and sold to another man merely in order that the purchaser may buildupon it a better house or a house which better meets the Government’s idea of what is appropriate or well designed.”(21)

II. CONCLUSION

Urban renewal failed nationally over 35 years ago across this country. Wichita’s effort to redevelopment within the national urban renewal and outside it have at best a record that is incomplete and continues to require significant public support even for nominally private, albeit many are not-for-profit entities.

The city should not proceed precipitously in once again proceeding down the “urban renewal/redevelopment” path. The experiences in the last 20 years should make city leaders sanguine in proceeding down the proposal coming out of the city manager’s office.

All possible avenues should be examined. “By the end of the federal urban-renewal program in 1974, cities that refused Title I funds and let the market hold sway over downtown redevelopment projects generally had more more impressive downtown revitalizations than those that relied so heavily on federal power and that abused property rights so egregiously.”(22)

Wichita needs to avoid repeating past mistakes. Providing a strong level of property rights actually enhances development. A stable system of government that is not excessively large and expensive is a stronger incentive to growth than a new governmental body promoting “redevelopment.”

Individual states are engaging in a number of experiments: on November 7, 2006, the voters in the city of Nashville, TN approved an ordinance requiring that the city get voter approval before any and all taxes could be raised. This question arose in light of that community’s high property tax rates.

FOOTNOTES

1) Abuse of Power, Greenhut, 2004, page 107
2) Beyond the Melting Pot, Glazer & Moynihan, page 179.
3) Ibid, page 107-8.
4) The Death and Life of Great American Cities, J. Jacobs, 1961, page 223.
5) Ibid, page 223.
6) Constitution of Liberty, F.A. Hayek.
7) Vision of the Anointed, T. Sowell.
8) The Federal Bulldozer: A Critical Analysis of Urban Renewal, 1949-1962, page 218.
9) Abuse of Power, Greenhut, page 111.
10) Ibid, page 110.
11) Ibid, page 111.
12) “Why They Built Pruitt-Igoe,” A. Von Hoffman, Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard U., 2000, http://www.soc.iastate.edu/sapp/PruittIgoe.html.
13) Ibid.
14) Abuse of Power, page 114.
15) Public Power, Private Gain, D. Berliner, Institute for Justice, Washington, D.C., 2003, page 166
16) Ibid, page 78.
17) “Condemnation Is Used to Hand One Business Property to Another,” D. Starkman, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 2, 1998, page A1.
18) Abuse of Power, page 150.
19) The Death and Life of Great American Cities, J. Jacobs, 1961, page 17.
20) Takings Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain, R. Epstein, 1985, page 178.
21) Ibid, page 178-9.
22) “Urban Renewal and Its Aftermath,” J.C. Teaford, page 458 cited in Greenhut.

Pay As You Go?
By Karl Peterjohn, Kansas Taxpayers Network

On the rare occasions the mainstream national news media bothers to cover federal spending and taxes you are sure to hear the phrase, “pay as you go,” as the primary talking point of the new congressional Democratic majority. This phrase is supposed to reassure us now that the profligate “Bridge to Nowhere,” free spending Republicans have been relegated into the minority.

New York City Congressman Charlie Rangel, who now heads the powerful tax writing house ways and means committee, wants to dismantle the most successful legacy of George W. Bush’s administration, the 2001 and 2003 federal tax cuts. These tax cuts are scheduled to expire because of arcane congressional budgeting rules. However budgets must be enacted now and not put off until after the 2008 election.

Liberal North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan, who heads up the budget committee in the senate, is joining Representative Rangel in this push. While the national “news” media is focused upon Al Sharpton’s take on the Don Imus firing or the latest DNA results from the Bahamas, there is a large federal tax hike in your future as well as increased IRS powers to enforce tax laws.

Congressional liberals want you to “Pay MORE as you go,” and the lower federal income tax rate of 10 percent, increased child credit, and pro growth capital gains and dividend tax rates from the 2003 Bush tax cuts are all likely to be allowed to expire. The left wing blogosphere is determined to eradicate every last accomplishment of the Bush presidency.

March 28 the Heritage Foundation’s 2008 budget report warned, “The budget blueprint reported out of the House Budget Committee last week and supported by Democratic leadership is a study in fiscal irresponsibility ... the House budget resolution boosts discretionary spending, does nothing to tackle out-of-control entitlement spending, and, worst of all, would impose the largest tax increase ever on the American people.”

A few days later the Wall Street Journal warned their readers, “The Bush tax cuts don’t expire until 2010, and Democrats aren’t about to tip their tax hand before the 2008 election. But under cover of zero media attention, Democrats are constructing a budget process that will make a tax increase all but inevitable.”

“The ploy here is ‘pay-as-you-go’ budget rules that Democrats are implementing in the name of ‘restoring fiscal responsibility.’ A few journalists even quote that phrase with a straight face. But everyone in Washington knows that ‘paygo’ is all about making tax cuts more difficult and not about slowing the growth of spending,” the journal editorialized.

The Heritage Foundation report criticized the Democrat budget, “...the (2008 proposed) budget assumes tax increases of $900 billion over five years which would be accomplished in part by allowing the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts to expire.” The U.S. economy has enjoyed solid growth and lowering unemployment rates ever since the 2003 tax cut was enacted. Federal budget deficits have also fallen despite bipartisan fiscal spending growth since 2004 too. This reduction in federal deficits has occurred because tax revenue growth grew more rapidly than federal spending hikes.

Fiscally responsible and informed citizens need to know, “…that the tax increase fuse has now been lit. Do nothing and taxes will rise as much as they have at any one time since World War II. Democrats have made the decision to obscure this burning fuse
and the press corps is ignoring it. But that doesn’t mean the rest of the country has to play along….It’s a debate we should start having now, before the fuse burns down,” the Wall Street Journal warned April 5.

Kansans reading these words have now been warned. Tax and spend has returned with the Democratic majority that is now controlling congress.

At the end of March 2007, President Bush raised taxes on Americans. How so? He did it by applying tariffs to imports of paper from China.

The measure is supposed to help Americans, but all it does is hurt us. Donald J. Boudreaux's column Paper Chase from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review explains how this happens. A portion follows:

The Bush administration recently raised Americans' taxes.

If you missed this item in the news, it's because this tax hike isn't described forthrightly by government nor is it reported forthrightly by the media. The tax hike I'm talking about is the higher tariff on paper products imported from China.

"Tariff" is simply another word for "excise tax" -- here, a levy imposed by government on each unit of some class of products bought domestically.

Descriptions of higher tariffs, though, almost always focus on foreigners -- such as a headline in this very paper on March 31: "U.S. to slap trade tariff on China." But a more accurate headline would have read "U.S. to slap higher taxes on Americans buying paper from China."

Curious Logic
Presidential hopefuls exercise school choice, but deny it to others
by Clint Bolick

There's something about our nation's capital that converts many leading Democrats to school choice. But in most cases this extends only to their own children--not to the millions of children in failing public schools.

Indeed, a nearly perfect correlation exists among Democratic presidential candidates who have exercised school choice for their own children and those who would deny such choices to other parents.

When the Clintons came to Washington, D.C. in 1993, they sent Chelsea to the private Sidwell Friends School. Two years later Mr. Clinton vetoed a bill that would have allowed low-income D.C. parents to use public funds to send their children to private schools. In a speech to the National Education Association, presidential candidate Mrs. Clinton has vowed "never to abandon our public schools" -- speaking apparently as a politician, not a parent.

John Edwards decries that "America has two school systems -- one for the affluent and one for everyone else." He should know. When he joined the U.S. Senate he sent his children to a private religious school. Mr. Edwards, however, opposes private school choice for low-income families on the curious grounds that this would "drain resources" from public schools. By such logic Mr. Edwards himself "drained" approximately $132,000 from the D.C. public schools.

There is only one candidate, Sen. Joe Biden, who has both sent his children to private school and supported school choice for others.

The mystery man is Sen. Barack Obama, who sends his child to a private school in Chicago yet once referred to school vouchers as "social Darwinism." Still, he says that on education reform, "I think a good place to start would be for both Democrats and Republicans to say ... we are willing to experiment and invest in anything that works."

Well, school choice works. Every study that has examined the effect of school choice competition has found significantly improved performance by public schools.

Given their track records it is doubtful how many candidates will agree with Sen. Obama. But as he might say, we can always have the audacity to hope.

Mr. Bolick is president and general counsel of the Alliance for School Choice and senior fellow at the Goldwater Institute. A longer version of this article appeared in the Wall Street Journal.

Writing from Little Rock, Arkansas

A recent USA Today editorial ("Hooked on Handouts" July 31, 2006) makes the case for reforming corporate welfare, given the success of "regular" welfare reform:

Most of what the government does could be called welfare, using a very broad definition of the word. It's not hard to find individuals, corporations, states or communities hooked on one Washington handout or another. The result of this largesse is a society that is unproductively dependent on government support -- and politically organized to keep it coming.

Agriculture is a leading example. Supports have become a sad hoax on the U.S. taxpayer. According to a recent report by The Washington Post, the government has handed out $1.3 billion since 2000 to people who don't even farm. It has sent billions of dollars in drought relief to areas where there was no drought. And, oh yes, it has paid out a staggering $144 billion over 10 years, according to the National Taxpayers Union, 72% of which went to the 10% of farmers with the largest holdings. Such spending is an insult to hardworking, unsubsidized, Americans. Wasteful farm programs should be cut.

The federal budget is replete with hundreds of payments to, and tax benefits for, other politically potent industries. This "corporate welfare" ranges from government-funded logging roads to subsidies for electric utilities. Last year, according to the non-partisan Congressional Research Service, Congress earmarked 15,877 items worth $47.4 billion to specific recipients, many of them companies with well-connected Washington lobbyists.

This not only squanders taxpayers' money, it also clogs decision-making in the private sector. Rather than making a smart business decision promptly, companies wait to see whether they can make more by delaying and doing something that could be less sensible.

With so much available in the form of government handouts, it is no wonder companies spend billions on lobbying, and that there are scandals.

F.A. Hayek wrote in his book The Road to Serfdom: "As the coercive power of the state will alone decide who is to have what, the only power worth having will be a share in the exercise of this directing power." Lobbying scandals are a symptom and manifestation of a government that has too much power and spends too much time rewarding one person at the expense of another.

Is there a solution? Can we persuade the rewarded class to give up their spoils? The economist Walter E. Williams relates this story and solution: "Nearly two decades ago, during dinner with the late Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek, I asked him if he had the power to write one law that would get government out of our lives, what would that law be? Professor Hayek replied he'd write a law that read: Whatever Congress does for one American it must do for all Americans."

It could be that simple.

Writing from Miami, Florida

A few months ago I wrote how most states, when testing their schoolchildren, post results such as "80% of our state's students are proficient in reading or math," but when tested by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the number judged proficient falls to 30% or so. (See Every State Left Behind.) It was noted that local education officials are eager to tell parents and taxpayers that students are doing well. The NAEP test hasn't felt such pressure.

Now a commentary in the February 27, 2006 Wall Street Journal by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Diane Ravitch tells us that under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which uses the NAEP tests -- not the state tests -- to measure student progress, there is pressure to water down the NAEP test so that more students test at the proficient level.

This movement to weaken the standards of what has to this point been an objective, nation-wide measure of student progress will let politicians at the federal level claim that students are doing better, just as politicians at the state and local level do with the dumbed-down state tests.

Politicians, education bureaucrats, and teachers unions will claim victory, citing "proof" that increased funding for schools has been successful in increasing student achievement. But with the standard of proficient slipping to what has been until now called basic, will the students even be able to understand how they've been harmed?

This is more evidence of why we need to take control of education away from the government.

Arthur C. Brooks, associate professor at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Public Affairs, has a commentary in the December 8, 2005 Wall Street Journal titled "Money Buys Happiness." Rich people, the author tells us, are much more likely to say they are happy. Although we are becoming richer as a whole, the percent of people saying they are "very happy" is the same today as it was 30 years ago. Some people say it's the rich having relatively more than others that makes them happy. This excess happiness of the rich being bad, they say, we should use progressive taxation to improve our "moral fiber" by making after-tax incomes less divergent.

But is this a good idea? "In fact there is another explanation for unchanging happiness levels over time which is rather less supportive of income redistribution. As incomes rise, so generally do levels of government revenues and spending, and there is evidence that these forces work against personal income on the overall level of happiness. For example, a $1,000 increase in per capita income is associated with a one-point decrease in the percentage of Americans saying they are 'not too happy.' At the same time, a $1,000 increase in government revenues per capita is associated with a two-point rise in the percentage of Americans saying they are not too happy. In other words, not only can money buy happiness, but it may be that the government can tax it away as well."

Mr. Brooks also tells us that donating money and time -- that is, the giving of charity -- illustrates the link between money and happiness: "Givers of charity earn substantial mental and physical health rewards, even more than do the recipients of charity -- empirical evidence that it is indeed more blessed to give than to receive."

The actions of government can swamp private charity efforts. In the week after hurricane Katrina, I read that private donations had reached $600 million. I thought that was wonderful, until the next news story told me that Congress had just approved some $60 billion in relief, that being described as merely the down payment on the final spending. Government spending overwhelmed private charity, even though not many seem satisfied with the government response, and there are many stories of effective help supplied privately.

So when government taxes us to pay for programs that take the rightful property of one person and give it to another to whom it does not belong, government harms us in two ways: it taxes away happiness and reduces our capacity to engage in charitable activity.

Common Sense Economics: What Everyone Should Know About Wealth and Prosperity
James D. Gwartney, Richard L. Stroup, and Dwight R. Lee
St. Martin's Press, 2005

This is a wonderful book that can teach anyone what is important to know about economics. It teaches the insights that people can use to understand and evaluate the mechanism of our economy and government themselves. It is not a textbook with charts, graphs, and formulas. It requires no special prerequisite from the reader.

The book contains four parts: The ten key elements of economics, seven major sources of economic progress, economic progress and the role of government, and twelve key elements of practical personal finance.

This book promotes a restricted role for government. From page 80: "A government can promote social cooperation and enhance its citizens' economic welfare primarily in two ways: (1) by providing people with protection for their lives, liberties, and properties (as long as the properties and liberties were acquired without force, fraud, or theft) and (2) by supplying a few select goods that have unusual characteristics that make them difficult to provide through markets." Later, in the section titled "Government is not a corrective device" we read, "When thinking about government, it is important to recognize that there are fundamental differences between political democracy and markets. When a democratic government levies taxes, it does so through coercion. Dissenting minorities have to pay taxes regardless of whether they receive or value the goods that the taxes supply. ... There is no such parallel coercive power in the private sector. Private firms can charge a high price, but they cannot force anyone to buy. Indeed private firms must provide customers with value or they will be unable to attract consumers' dollars."

We also learn that when decisions are made through the political process, it is the majority that wins and sets policy, and the minority must yield to the majority. But when decisions are left to the market, each person can choose what they want. If they want something different from what the majority wants, they can get it without also having to pay for what the majority decided on.

This part of the book also explains how special-interest groups are usually able to get the government to implement laws and policies that benefit the group at the expense of the rest of the country. An example is the sugar tariff, which is very valuable to a small group of people. They focus tremendous energy and money on getting politicians to keep the tariff in place. The average American may not be aware that the sugar tariff costs them an additional $20 per year in the form of higher prices for products containing sugar, and even if they are aware, well, what's the use of getting worked up over $20? Even the employees of American candy makers who have moved out of America to somewhere where they can buy sugar at world market prices may not know who to blame for the loss of their job.

This part of a book also contains a section titled "Unless Restrained by Constitutional Rules, Legislators Will Run Budget Deficits and Spend Excessively." This is certainly the case with the recent Congress, and in the state of Kansas too, except that our state can't deficit spend. The root of the problem is this: "Legislators like to spend money on programs to please their constituents. They do not like to tax, since taxes impose a visible cost on voters. Debt is an alternative to current taxes; it pushes the visible cost of government into the future." The solution, we are told, is political modifications such as a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget, or supermajority requirements for spending proposals.

The book concludes with a good section on personal finance. The authors strongly recommend, as I do, that investors use low-cost stock index funds instead of actively managed funds or individual stocks.

This book is very easy to read, and contains a great deal of valuable information. I strongly recommend it to people just starting to learn about economics, and to people like me who had some college training in economics, but didn't really learn how economics and its relation to government affects our wealth, prosperity, and freedom. If you couple this book with Thomas Sowell's two recent books Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy, Revised and Expanded Edition and Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One you will have an excellent understanding of how our economy and government work.

Writing from Orlando, Florida

Two recent Wall Street Journal articles ("A Golden Opportunity" in the November 1, 2005 issue, and "Triple Jeopardy" in the November 2, 2005 issue) make the case for simplification and reform of our current income tax system. In these articles we learn these things:

"... true reform -- changing to a broad-based income or consumption levy that taxes income only once -- could yield once-and-for-all annual household income gains of 9%."

Our tax system has a bias against saving and investment. That slows capital formation and wage growth.

"It is the marginal tax rate -- the rate on the additional dollar earned from work, saving or entrepreneurship -- that sets incentives and governs the pro-growth gains from tax reform."

"Eliminating the tax bias altogether in favor of employer-provided insurance is sound tax policy and would increase efficiency in health-care spending." I have written in the past about how employer-provided health insurance is not good for our economy, or for consumers of insurance.

"A tax system should generate the government's required revenue with as little economic distortion as possible, while distributing tax burdens fairly. It should not discourage work, saving or entrepreneurship more than is necessary, and it should not discourage individuals from acquiring the skills and education that will increase their productivity. It should not discourage investment, or favor investments in one asset over those in another. In short, an efficient tax system alters economic decision-making as little as possible.

"Although many see simplification as the primary goal of tax reform, promoting economic growth is a more important objective. Even in the relatively short run, the economic costs of a tax system that slows growth are likely to exceed compliance costs. U.S. households spend roughly 1% of GDP in complying with the income tax system. Halving the costs of compliance would be equivalent to raising GDP by one half of one percent -- no minor accomplishment. The increase in GDP that might result from a tax reform that reduces tax burdens on investment and shifts the tax system toward a consumption tax are much larger."

"Tax reform, as distinct from tax reduction, inevitably involves curtailing some entrenched tax benefits. If reform proposals are dissected by politicians in an attempt to promote provisions that reduce their constituents' tax liabilities while excising those that increase constituents' tax liabilities, reform will inevitably fail. But if reform proposals are viewed instead as a collection of provisions that leave most families in a position not very different from their current one, while also shifting the tax system toward a structure that will promote long-term economic growth and reduce the burden of tax compliance, then these proposals can command broad popular support and even enthusiasm. Genuine tax reform is a difficult process that requires commitment to the goal of creating a more efficient, simpler and fairer tax system."

With so much to be gained, why isn't there a rush to implement tax reform and simplification? The primary reason is that there are many special interest groups with a lot of political power that favor the present system. These interests include those industries and companies powerful enough to manipulate the tax system to their benefit. Politicians, of course, enjoy the present system, as it offers many ways to reward those who help them stay in office and increase their power. It also lets them influence the behavior of nearly everyone through manipulation of the activities that the tax code favors with deductions and breaks.

Sadly, neither promotes economic growth and prosperity, which is what would really benefit the average person. Instead, people cringe at the idea that they might not be able to deduct their home mortgage interest. In reality, the mortgage interest deduction is worth very little to most middle-income families. (I get the feeling sometimes that people think they get to deduct the interest from their tax liability rather than from their taxable income.) Considering today's low mortgage interest rates, the relatively low marginal income tax rate many people pay, and the fact that the benefit of the deduction is only valuable to the extent it exceeds the standard deduction, many families may not see any benefit from the mortgage interest deduction. But they would probably revolt against any politician who supported its elimination.

Writing from Chicago, Illinois

In the September 3, 2005 New York Times, columnist John Tierney educates us on the difference between private insurance and government insurance. Currently, the flood insurance that's available through the federal government, because the premiums are so low, doesn't fully reflect the costs of assuming that risk. And even as cheap as the flood insurance rates are, not many people bought it.

What's wrong with government insurance that's priced too low to cover the risks it insures? First, the taxpayers as a whole have to pay to subsidize something that benefits only a few. Second, as Mr. Tierney writes, building strong levees is a long-term project that protects against something that probably won't happen before the next election -- the time horizon of most politicians. "Members of Congress will always have higher priorities than paying for levees in someone else's state."

Also, government insurance isn't subject to the discipline of having to make a profit. Private insurance companies must earn a profit over the long haul, so they will charge rates commensurate with the risk, and they will seek ways to reduce the risk. They might decline to insure property in the riskiest areas, and they will pressure governments to build and maintain the protections that, sadly, we learned failed in New Orleans when levees broke under conditions they should have survived. Private companies have the discipline to do this. Governments don't.

In his column, Mr. Tierney tells us the history of fire protection in America, and how private fire insurance has worked to ensure the fire safety we have today.

Some may say that the poor of New Orleans couldn't afford to live where they did if they had to pay flood insurance premiums that were priced properly. That's something that government can't cure -- except that government will try by spending untold billions. But after New Orleans is rebuilt, it is likely that before too long the same situation will exist as did before Katrina. Do we really expect anything else?

In an article published by The Cato Institute (Bush Beats Johnson: Comparing the Presidents), we can read this:

Revised data released during the summer by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) provide analysts the ability to make side-by-side comparisons of the spending habits of each president during the last 40 years. All presidents presided over net increases in spending overall, though some were bigger spenders than others. As it turns out, George W. Bush is one of the biggest spenders of them all. In fact, he is an even bigger spender than Lyndon B. Johnson in terms of discretionary spending.

This is before the prescription drug plan spending has started, and before costs from the recent hurricanes were known.

It makes me long for the days of the Clinton presidency, when a Congress led by the opposing party seemed to hold spending in check. But now that Republicans hold both Congress and the White House, it seems that spending is spiraling out of control.

In the past I have written on how the system in America where almost everyone gets their health insurance through their job (Let's Pay for Our Own Health Insurance) does not serve us well. Now I have become aware of even more evidence as to why we should all choose and pay for our own health insurance.

A Harvard study (Illness And Injury As Contributors To Bankruptcy) concluded that of families that declared bankruptcy, about half cited medical bills as the reason. Of those, 76% had medical insurance at the time they became sick. Some of the problem is that when people become seriously ill, they can't work. After they lose their job they have no income, and they can't pay the premium to continue their existing coverage.

Many types of insurance, and some health insurance policies, I have found, offer an option called "waiver of premium." This option, if selected and paid for, pays the policy's premiums when the insured can't. This would help in the case where people are too sick to work and can't afford their premiums. They would still be covered.

If your employer, through whom you get your health insurance, doesn't offer this waiver of premium option, you realistically have no way to obtain it. But if we all chose and paid for our own health insurance, those who wished to could have this option. This is just one more reason why the current system of employer-provided health insurance does not work well.

Congressman Todd Tiahrt has secured $1 million for use by the Wichita Police Department in the omnibus appropriations bill that goes before the House of Representatives on Monday.

The bill has already passed the Senate, Tiahrt spokesman Chuck Knapp said, and approval by the House is expected to be a formality.

While there are safeguards in place to make sure the money is used for certain purposes, Knapp said, "we're just not able to comment on the details of the funding." -- From "BTK 'clues' breed theories" in The Wichita Eagle, December 2, 2004.

Here The Wichita Eagle reports that U.S. Representative Todd Tiahrt secured one million dollars from the federal government to help pay for costs related to the investigation of the BTK serial killer. Rep. Tiahrt was widely praised for this.

We should remember where that money came from. It didn't fall out of the sky. It wasn't free. It came from the taxpayers of the entire country. I suspect that many people in Wichita thought it was good that we got the nation as a whole to pay for the BTK investigation.

But think about what had to happen behind the scenes. Rep. Tiahrt must have lobbied for the money. Then the federal government collected tax money, only to send it back to Wichita. That, right there, is inefficient. A bureaucracy had to exist to perform that.

Then, of course, Rep. Tiahrt and Wichita aren't the only ones looking for a federal handout. When other cities or states receive money in this way -- a special payment to one locality for a special project -- we in Wichita call it pork barrel spending. That's exactly what Rep. Tiahrt engaged in to get us the money for BTK. He should be ashamed, and we should not laud him for it.

Because Government Should Have Accountability
Paul M. Weyrich, Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation (Click here to read the article.)

In an article from The Wichita Eagle published on May 3, 2005 titled "Ice rink figures don't add up, records show" we find this quote: "Ice Sports Wichita has been on a downward slide longer than the city staff admits in a report the City Council is scheduled to act on today, records show." These records were obtained through a request filed under the Kansas Open Records act. My understanding of this news story is that City of Wichita staff has been misleading everyone -- including the mayor and city council -- about the true state of the ice rink's financial affairs. If not for the reporters who obtained the records, this deception might be continuing.

The commentary by Paul M. Weyrich referenced above contains examples of where the Federal Freedom of information Act has been used to uncover governmental misdeeds. The article also mentions a bill titled the OPEN Government Act, designed to "ensure that government acts promptly and efficiently in responding to FOIA requests."

This is what I haven't seen mentioned in the debate over the future of social security.

Opponents of private accounts cite the risk inherent in investing in markets. Instead, they will rely on future generations of workers to pay the taxes necessary to pay promised social security benefits.

It seems to me, though, that investments in U.S. securities markets, both stocks and bonds, derive their value from the underlying strength of the U.S. economy. If the economy does well, in the long run, markets do well. If the economy does not do well, the investments will not do well, and social security recipients will need to rely on a future generation of workers to pay taxes that will pay benefits.

Where do these taxes come from? They come from workers, hopefully earning high salaries to pay the high taxes that will be needed. But if the economy does not do well, there will not be very many highly-paid workers, and the government may have trouble collecting enough taxes to pay social security benefits.

So we need to hope that the U.S. economy performs well, so that private accounts earn a high return, or there will be workers earning enough to pay high social security payroll taxes.