Voice For Liberty

Tag: Freedom

  • Wichita planning puts freedom, prosperity at risk

    Remarks to be delivered to the October 13, 2009 meeting of the Wichita City Council.

    Mr. Mayor, members of the council,

    I’m here today to ask this council to put aside consideration of this proposal. My reasons are not particular to this proposal or planning firm, but rather I am concerned that we believe we have the ability to successfully plan at all.

    Here’s just one reason why I’m concerned: Wichita’s favorite method of financing developments is the TIF district. Recognizing this, the Goody Clancy proposal under the heading “Opportunities” mentions “Continue to employ established TIF funding mechanisms.”

    But as documented by the Wichita Eagle last year, our city has a poor record of financial performance with TIF districts.

    Another reason I’m concerned is that our attempts at downtown redevelopment so far have produced mixed results. In particular, the WaterWalk project in downtown Wichita has so far consumed $41 million in public subsidy, and we have very little to show for it. Shouldn’t we see if we can nurture this project to success before we take on projects that are much larger?

    Then there’s the presumption expressed by city leaders that downtown must be revitalized for the sake of our entire city. Several months ago I asked Mr. Williams to supply me with references that provide evidence for the claimed benefit of downtown redevelopment. At first he referred me to the mayor’s vision statement. But with all due respect, Mr. Mayor, your visions and dreams aren’t evidence.

    We do have a document that describes what’s been built in several cities. But the mere fact that buildings were built or renovated is not evidence of success. In these descriptions there’s no discussion of the cost, or the public subsidy needed to redevelop these downtowns, and importantly, no discussion of the effect on the entire city.

    When we look at the effect of things like TIF districts on an entire city, we find evidence like economists Richard F. Dye and David F. Merriman found. They concluded that yes, development happens in the subsidized TIF district. But it’s often at detriment to the entire city.

    Besides TIF districts, I’m also concerned about the use of other public subsidy, including a sales tax that some are talking about. I’m also concerned about the potential for eminent domain abuse. This summer I traveled to Anaheim, California to learn about a redevelopment district where the city decided not to use these techniques. The article Anaheim’s mayor wrote about this planning effort is subtitled “Foundation of Freedom Inspires Urban Growth.”

    That’s what I’m really concerned about: freedom.

    Why aren’t we satisfied with letting people live where they want to live? Why aren’t we satisfied with letting developers’ capital flow to where they think it finds its most valued use? Why do we think that centralized government planning can do a better job of making decisions and allocating resources than the dispersed knowledge of all the people of Wichita?

    Randal O’Toole has written about the impossibility of the planning task. In his book The Best-Laid Plans: How Government Planning Harms Your Quality of Life, Your Pocketbook, and Your Future, he writes this about urban planners: “Because they can build a house, planners think they can design an entire urban area.”

    He expands on the difficulty of the planning task at length in his book.

    These difficulties can be summed up like this: If we think that we can plan the revitalization of downtown Wichita, we ought to heed this quote from Friedrich Hayek’s book The Fatal Conceit: “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

    Mr. Mayor and members of the council, our efforts at downtown redevelopment have produced mixed results at best. Yet we have a lot of development — commercial and residential — taking place in Wichita. It’s just not happening downtown. Instead, it’s happening where people want it to happen. It’s happening without TIF districts, public subsidy, or the use of eminent domain.

    Why can’t we be happy with that?

  • Kansas protects its gambling interests

    At one time Kansas prohibited its citizens from gambling because it was thought to be immoral. That attitude started to change when Kansas allowed a lottery. Now that the state owns casinos — that’s right, in Kansas the state owns the casinos that aren’t Indian casinos — thoughts of morality have been swept aside. Or, at least, we’ve decided that the potential revenue inflows to state coffers is more important than the moral health of Kansans.

    Now that Kansas is in the business of gambling, it’s working to protect the monopoly it granted itself. In Wichita, entrepreneurs sought to get around gambling laws by offering a variation of poker that they argued was legal. A judge disagreed, and the game was shut down, preserving the monopoly of the state in gambling.

    Having settled the question as to whether gambling is moral, we now see that this case is all about the money. The state doesn’t like competitors.

    The state is willing to look the other way on smoking too, when it comes to the potential of earning more revenue from its casinos. Earlier this year the Kansas senate considered a state-wide smoking ban that allowed smoking in its casinos.

    Is this another example of Kansas hypocrisy: smoking should not be allowed, except where it might reduce the state’s gambling revenue?

  • AFP Defending the American Dream summit draws thousands to Washington

    Last Friday and Saturday over two thousand defenders of free markets and capitalism traveled to the Washington area to meet at the Americans for Prosperity Foundation’s Defending the American Dream summit. It was an action-packed two days, so I’ll report on just a few personal highlights.

    One of the speakers in the general session was Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal. He said that global warming is the “greatest hoax of the last century.” The cap-and-trade bill, besides not having an effect on global temperatures, should really be named the “China and India Full Employment Act.” Jobs will flee the United States for these countries, as they will not agree to reduce their carbon emissions.

    Our national debt is another grave concern. “What happens if the Chinese, Asians, and the Arabs stop buying our debt?”

    After Moore’s talk I asked if he agreed with the assessment of some economists that we’re coming our of the recession. He said that the national debt, the threat of higher taxes, the threat of cap-and-trade, plus the threat of government takeover of our health care system is crippling the jobs market. The real sickness in our economy, he said, is that small businesses have no incentive to grow. “We spent $3 trillion, but we have done nothing to help small businesses. Small businesses are the backbone of our economy. They create 3 out of every 5 new jobs. So how are you going to get a jobs recovery if you don’t have small businesses that are healthy, vibrant, and growing?”

    I asked about the tone of the national debate, how the left uses ridicule instead of facing issues squarely. Moore said the we need to maintain the high ground. We have some big advantages over the left, including that we’re right. We have empirical evidence and the Constitution on our side. The left doesn’t want to debate the issues. They don’t want to post bills three days before they’re voted on because they don’t want people to know what’s in the bills, he said.

    He added that health care, cap-and-trade, and the budget are important issues we need to watch out for in the next eight weeks.

    The Wall Street Journal’s John Fund reminded us that most of the provisions of the current health care bill don’t take effect for four years. So why, he asked, must we pass it in the next four weeks? I asked him if we’ve seen the worst of the revelations we’re likely to see about ACORN. He replied no, there’s more — and worse — to come.

    After the closing reception, I spoke with AFP Foundation President Tim Phillips. He said that 2,100 people attended the summit. What’s the message the rest of the country should get from this summit? “It’s the determination and commitment of free markets and conservative folks to stay though this thing, to not lose interest, to not grow weary. We’re in it for the long haul. Today’s a good example of it. We don’t want to lose. This is not just gamesmanship — these are real issues.”

    I reminded him that opponents of capitalism and free markets point to the events of the last year as failure of these things. He said “Only in Washington would you have liberals like Barney Frank and other politicians run the housing market into the ground with federal regulation and then call it a free market failure. It’s obviously wrong.”

  • Star Parker delivers message in Wichita

    In an energetic message delivered to an audience at Wichita State University this Monday, author and columnist Star Parker spoke about breaking the cycle of poverty and other issues facing our country.

    Early in her talk, Parker noted the irony of the welfare office in Washington (the Department of Health and Human Services) being located on Independence Avenue. The approaches that have been tried over the last 45 years to conquer poverty haven’t worked and have led to two generations of government dependence with disastrous consequences, she said.

    Speaking of her own experience being on welfare, the rules of welfare are “don’t work, don’t save, don’t get married.” These rules are designed to keep poor people on welfare, not allow them to break out of poverty. There’s something wrong with our society, she said, if we allow this to continue.

    She believed the lie that “I was poor because rich people are rich.”

    There used to be a healthy black community, but the war on poverty has been very harmful to family life. Fathers used to be in the black home. But the government moved in and began to bankrupt family life.

    At the time, Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan looked at the plans for Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and recognized that it will hurt black families more than help them, Parker said. Then, black out-of-wedlock births was one in four; today it is three in four. Even though there was poverty and racism, black family life was largely intact.

    The ideas of the conservative right work for all Americans, including poor people, she said. Traditional values, including the duty to be self-sufficient and responsible in the choice they make, are an important factor in getting out of poverty.

    Who is in poverty, Parker asked? 53% of the poor live in families with only one parent. We need to “mention marriage every now and then,” she said.

    Developing a work ethic is also important, she said. “Work is how you get out of poverty.” But there is a hostile environment in Washington and elsewhere that says the wealthy need to be penalized. That means they can’t produce as many jobs as they could.

    The welfare state and moral relativism has caused harm to all of America, she said. The black family was most vulnerable, so it was hurt first. Now the rate of births out marriage for Hispanics and whites is higher than it was for blacks was when the war on poverty started.

    Regarding education and school choice, Parker made the point that the rich — even the middle class — already have school choice. It’s poor people that benefit most from school choice programs across the country. She told of the Washington, DC scholarship voucher program, where 1,700 poor children each year were able to attend better schools. Parents desperate to get their children out of DC schools applied, 40,000 of them, so there had to be a lottery to decide who would get the scholarship.

    But President Barack Obama canceled this program.

    Social security is another government program that is harmful to the poor, Parker said. The little that they might be able to save gets sent to Washington for something they don’t own, they can’t transfer, and on which they get a horrible rate of return.

    In response to a question about the redistribution of wealth through the tax system to provide basic needs such as food and shelter, Parker said that the best approach is to create an environment where people can provide these things for themselves.

    Answering another question, Parker said it’s important for youth to hear all sides. Most curriculum, she said, is slanted towards the left.

    A question about race and racism brought out Parker’s observation that whenever the left is losing on an issue, such as health care, they bring up the issue of race. This is the case even when the people on both sides are black. There’s an industry that benefits from racism, but “most of the barriers of segregation have been removed,” she said. The number one crisis facing African-Americans today is not racism, but sexual immorality, she said.

    Regarding the murder of Wichita abortion provider Dr. George Tiller, she said that people should not take justice into their own hands. The debate is intense, and we need to “take it down a notch.” The death of Tiller was a horrible thing, and it is also horrible to glorify the man and the things he did, she said.

    Additional coverage of Parker’s visit is at Kansas Watchdog.

  • Star Parker to deliver message of freedom in Wichita

    Tonight in Wichita, author and columnist Star Parker will deliver a lecture titled “Breaking the Cycle of Poverty: From Entitlement to Empowerment.”

    I spoke by telephone with Parker and asked her to give Wichitans a preview of the topics she’ll address tonight. One topic she will address is the notion that people do not have the ability to control their own lives. There are some that believe that other forces keep people from being able to live free, she said.

    Also, Parker will look at political freedom and its role in enabling people to live free. Then, she’ll examine the steps out of poverty, including self-government, work ethic, education, saving and investing, and charities, and whose role it is to provide these.

    A recent article in the Sunflower, the WSU student newspaper, criticized her visit to the campus. Parker said “In a free society, we have free speech. For too long, we’ve only allowed on our universities one side of the case to be made. It is healthy for students to hear both sides.”

    She said that her personal experience, having lived on welfare and experienced the social engineering that takes place, gives her a unique perspective on the war on poverty. That war has been fought for 40 years, she said.

    She also disputed the comments about the Iraq war attributed to her by the Sunflower article.

    Parker’s lecture is Monday, October 5th at 7:00 pm In the CAC Theater at WSU.

  • Author and columnist Star Parker to speak in Wichita

    An evening with Star Parker
    Sponsored by Johnny and Marjorie Stevens

    Lecture: “Breaking the Cycle of Poverty: From Entitlement to Empowerment”

    Monday, October 5th at 7:00 p.m., with a book signing following lecture.

    The location is the CAC Theatre at Wichita State University
    (click for a Google map of the location)

    This event is free and open to the public. It is presented by The African American Student Association, The Young Democratic Socialists, WSU College Republicans, and The Center for Student Leadership. This event is part of WSU’s Civic Engagement Lecture Series.

    Star Parker
    From Welfare to Warrior

    The story of Star Parker is a chronicle of how she left the seductive life of drugs, crime, abortions and welfare fraud to become a leading advocate for the family.

    Star Parker is the founder and president of CURE, the Coalition on Urban Renewal & Education, a 501c3 non-profit think tank that provides a national voice of reason on issues of race and poverty — in the media, inner city neighborhoods, and public policy.

    Star is a syndicated columnist for Scripps Howard News Service, offering weekly op-eds to more than 400 newspapers worldwide.

    As a social policy consultant, Star gives regular testimony before the United States Congress, and has appeared on major television and radio shows across the country. She is a regular commentator on C-Span, FOX News, and MSNBC. Star has debated Jesse Jackson on BET, fought for school choice on Larry King Live and defended welfare reform on the Oprah Winfrey Show.

    Star Parker’s personal transformation from welfare fraud to conservative crusader has been chronicled by ABC’s 20/20; Rush Limbaugh; Readers Digest; Dr. James Dobson; the Washington Times; Christianity Today; Charisma, and World Magazine. Articles and quotes by Star have appeared in major publications including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. Recently she co-hosted an episode of The View with Barbara Walters.

    Her books include “Uncle Sam’s Plantation” (2003) and “White Ghetto” (2006). She works in Washington, DC, and resides in California.

    (Click here for a printable flyer announcing this Star Parker lecture.)

  • Milton Friedman on ‘How to Stay Free’ presented in Wichita

    The local chapter of Americans for Prosperity has been screening the PBS television series “Free to Choose.” This series from 1980 features Milton Friedman teaching about the close relationship between human freedom and economic freedom. This week, the series finishes with program ten: “How to Stay Free?”

    “Democracies have only recently been considered desirable. Historically, it was feared that democracies always self-destruct when citizens, forgetting that you cannot remove want and misery through legislation, insist on government actions that physically and morally bankrupt their nation. Friedman explains why the United States has so far avoided this outcome and how we can continue to do so. This program includes an interview of Dr. Friedman by Lawrence E. Spivak.”

    The program is from 11:30 am to 1:00 pm this Wednesday, in the private dining room at Mike’s Steakhouse, 2131 S. Broadway, Wichita, Kansas 67211. The telephone there is (316) 265-8122. Attendees purchase their own meals from the regular menu.

  • American Liberty Tour stop added in Salina

    It’s coming to Kansas City, and now a stop has been added in Salina.

    It’s the American Liberty Tour, which “seeks to bring together and support a new and dynamic breed of citizen activists borne of the desire to preserve personal and economic freedom.” It’s a collaborative effort of some great freedom-loving organizations: American Liberty Alliance, American Majority, Americans for Limited Government and the Sam Adams Alliance.

    The stop in Kansas City next Wednesday has always been in the plan, and now on Tuesday evening, the tour will stop in Salina. The web page for this event is American Liberty Tour Stop: Salina, KS.

  • American Liberty Tour to be in Kansas

    To be precise, it will be Kansas City, Missouri, but that’s close enough. This event — American Liberty Tour — is an opportunity to hear some great speakers, get some training, and make new friends. The Kansas City stop is on Wednesday, September 16th, 2009.

    According to the organization’s website: “The American Liberty Tour is aimed at generating mass awareness and promotion of liberty, and the effort required as a country to retain it.”

    This tour is a project of some great freedom-loving organizations: American Liberty Alliance, American Majority, Americans for Limited Government and the Sam Adams Alliance. And I’m proud to say I am personal friends — not just Facebook friends — with some of the organizers and speakers.

    American Majority will be offering candidate and activist training in conjunction with this event.

    The page for the Kansas City stop is Kansas City American Liberty Rally. On that page you can RSVP for the rally, and also separately for the activist training by American Majority.