Tag: Tea Party

  • Opinion: GOP economics devastated Kansas

    An op-ed on the Kansas economy needs context and correction.

    An op-ed about the Kansas economy needs a few corrections before the people of Illinois get a wrong impression of Kansas. The article is Opinion: GOP economics devastated Kansas, published in the Alton (Illinois) Telegraph. The author is John J. Dunphy.

    First, Dunphy refers to Sam Brownback as the “Tea Party” governor of Kansas. As far as I know, the tea party favors reducing not only taxation, but spending too. Given the choice, Brownback preferred raising taxes rather than cutting spending. Not very tea party-like.

    Dunphy: “Moderate Republicans who voiced objections to such extremist politics were targeted by the Tea Party and voted out of office in 2012. With the legislature now dominated by True Believers, Brownback was able to pass the largest tax cut in Kansas history.” I’ll leave it to others to judge whether the legislators voted into office in 2012 classify as “True Believers.” (My opinion is that True Believers are scarce in the Kansas Legislature.) But I do know this: The tax cuts were passed during the 2012 legislative session, which ended months before the 2012 primary elections. There seems to be a timing issue here.

    Dunphy: “With such drastically-reduced revenue, Kansas had to cut social services.” Except Kansas spending has continued to climb, although there have been a few cuts here and there.

    Dunphy: “Rather than admit that slashing taxes created a disaster …” Tax cuts allow people to keep more of what is rightfully theirs. That is not a disaster. That is good.

    Dunphy: “Trickle-down economics doesn’t work. Although most Republicans choose to ignore it, George H.W. Bush said as much while campaigning for the GOP presidential nomination in 1980.” Contrary to this assertion (made during a political campaign, and we know how much those are worth), the administration and policies of Ronald Reagan ushered in the The Great Moderation, a period of sustained economic growth.

  • Kansas newspapers against the children

    apple-wormA Kansas newspaper editorial illustrates that for the establishment, schools — the institution of public schools, that is — are more important than students.

    An unsigned editorial in the Garden City Telegram proclaimed “Another attempt to undermine public schools materialized last week in the Kansas Statehouse.” (Legislators turn to ALEC for poor plan on schools, March 25, 2014.)

    What was in a bill that so worried the Telegram editorial writers? According to the op-ed, the dangerous provisions are “expansion of charter schools, overhaul of teacher licensing and tax breaks for private school scholarships.”

    To the Telegram, these ideas are “radical” and would “undermine” public schools. These ideas are from American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), purportedly funded by Charles and David Koch. To low-information newspaper editorialists, the source of an idea alone is sufficient evidence to condemn it. To buttress its argument, the Telegram mentions the Koch Brothers several times along with Americans for Prosperity, the tea party, and other “special interests.”

    What’s curious is that the op-ed says “ALEC promotes concepts of free-market enterprise and limited government, which are worthy of discussion in legislative pursuits.” It’s good that the op-ed writers realize this. Very good.

    But the next sentence criticizes ALEC’s “one-size-fits-all approach.” That’s a strange claim to make. The education reforms that ALEC supports — and the public school establishment hates — are centered around providing more choices for students and parents. The public schools that the Telegram defends are the “one-size-fits-all approach.” School choice programs foster diversity, creativity, and entrepreneurship in education. Government schools are the opposite.

    Further, these school choice programs do not “target” public schools, as claimed in this op-ed. It is true that school choice programs provide competition for public schools. But to say that giving choices to parents and students is targeting public schools assumes a few things: First, it assumes that the institution of public schools is more important than Kansas schoolchildren.

    Second, it assumes that public schools are somehow more worthy of taxpayer funds than are charter schools and private schools. But should taxpayer funds be spent where government school bureaucrats want, or where parents believe their children will get the best education?

    Third, allowing and encouraging competition is not “targeting.” Proclaiming this reveals lack of understanding of economic competition in markets. In the jungle, the winners kill and eat the losers. But in markets, competition is a discovery process. Competition spurs people to innovate with new products, or become more efficient. As new products and services are discovered and refined through competition, the old products and services must adapt or fall by the wayside. But the old stuff doesn’t die, as do animals in the jungles. People and capital assets from failing enterprises are recycled into the new successful enterprises, and life goes on — except everything is better.

    That’s the real problem. Kansas schools are not getting better. Editorials like this are part of the problem. It doesn’t help that the Wichita Eagle excerpted this editorial.

  • Kansas Senator Jerry Moran wants to pick losers in the market: His choice is big wind

    In Kansas, we have a lot of wind — no doubt about that. But the economics of wind as a source of electricity generation is another matter. There’s a split in Kansas over this. On one side are Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, who has been vocal in his support of wind power, along with Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer, who has been busy promoting Wichita as a site for wind energy-related industry. Now we see Kansas’ newest U.S. Senator Jerry Moran jumping in to promote the wind power subsidy program. Contrast this with U.S. Representative Mike Pompeo of Wichita, who has introduced legislation to end all tax credits related to energy production. It’s important to remember that the government subsidy program for wind power is in the form of tax credits, which are equivalent to grants by the government. The term “tax expenditures” is starting to see widespread usage to accurately describe the economic effect of tax credits.

    Senator Jerry Moran wants to pick losers in the market: His choice is big wind

    By Daniel Horowitz

    If I were pressed to offer one anecdote exemplifying our failure to elect consistent conservatives to Congress last November, the story of Senator Jerry Moran and Big Wind would be at the top of the list.

    In 2010, then-Congressman Jerry Moran beat former Congressman Todd Tiahrt for the Republican nomination for Senate in Kansas running as a red meat conservative. He easily won the seat in this solid Republican state and summarily joined the ‘Tea Party Caucus’ in the Senate. Nothing emblematizes the convictions of the Tea Party more than its fervent opposition to special interest handouts and government interventions in the private sector as a way of picking winners and losers. Yet, Senator Moran let the cat out of the bag last week that he has absolutely no compunction about picking winners and losers, or in the case of Big Wind, big losers.

    Last week, Senator Moran announced that he is submitting an amendment to the terrible Senate highway bill (S.1813) that would extend the 2.2 cent/ per kilowatt-hour Production Tax Credit (PTC) for another 4 years. This special interest handout to Solar and Wind is slated to expire at the end of the year. What happened to Moran’s Tea Party views? Well, he unabashedly threw them under the solar-powered bus:

    Asked about opposition to extending the credit expressed by Rep. Mike Pompeo of Wichita, Moran said: “There are members of Congress who feel we ought not to pick winners and losers, to let the markets decided. I believe it’s better to get this industry up and running, then let the country decide … rather than pull the rug out overnight.”

    Wow! At least he’s honest. I wish we had known that before the election.

    The PTC is the corporate version of the Earned Income Credit for green energy. It is among 51 ‘tax extenders’ that have either expired last December or are slated to expire this December. The PTC offers a 2.2 cent/per kilowatt-hour refundable credit for wind, solar, or geothermal. According to the Heritage Foundation, if the oil industry received a commensurate subsidy, they would get a $30 check for every barrel produced.

    Headed into the November elections, one of our most potent and popular arguments we have is to paint the Democrats with the Solyndra economy — an economy where the government intervenes to pick winners and losers, at the detriment of consumers and taxpayers. How can we effectively articulate an alternative free-market vision when we have a member of “the Tea Party Caucus” supporting Obama’s policy of picking losers in the energy sector? Talk about pale pastels!

    Folks, this is not how we win elections. Moreover, this type of special interest peddling — from energy subsidies to farm welfare — creates dependency in some of the reddest states. This is not a winning message for the future of conservatism, especially when it emanates from such a Republican state.

    There is a better way. Congressman Mike Pompeo (R-KS) introduced legislation (HR 3308) to sunset all targeted energy tax credits and grants, including those for fossil fuels and nuclear power. The bill would use the savings from the repeal of these credits (roughly $90 billion over ten years) to lower the corporate tax rate on everyone. Senator DeMint has introduced a companion bill in the Senate (S.2064).

    Every member of Congress who seeks a clean break from a centrally-planned Solyndra economy must cosponsor this bill. Additionally, as we look for more congressional candidates to endorse, it is these issues — energy and farm subsidies — that will separate the men from the boys. We must fight this election by offering voters a choice, not an echo.

    Cross-posted from The Madison Project

  • The creeping expansion of government power

    Trackside is a column written occasionally by John D’Aloia Jr. He lives in St. Marys, Kansas.

    TRACKSIDE © by John D’Aloia Jr.
    12 December 2011

    A belief I encounter increasingly often is that, with few exceptions, the Guardians ensconced in Washington, and their minions in the bureaucracy, The Clerks, are driven by greed, corruption, fraud, power, and immorality, not by the Essential Liberty principles of our Founding Documents. The electorate is angry and frustrated. They see their resources and their freedom being whittled away for the benefit of the Guardians and their cronies. They see the basic morality of the country being banned from the public square and perversion jammed down their throats. They see the very gas they exhale being cited, in spite of the evidence, as a reason to deny the use of energy resources. They see the Guardians trash the Constitution and their oath of office. They see themselves being made slaves of the state. Daily headlines reinforce these beliefs.

    Much internet traffic has circulated about the words in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (H.R.1540) that gives the federal government the ability to detain U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism, at home or abroad, in military custody, outside of the court system, and hold them indefinitely. Bye, bye Fourth Amendment. This reading of the law was confirmed by Senator Graham, who said in the Senate on November 17th that Section “1031, the statement of authority to detain, does apply to American citizens, and it designates the world as the battlefield, including the homeland.”

    The Guardians manipulate words to mean whatever they want them to mean and they have the force to impose their meanings — this makes the power of warrant-less arrest of citizens highly dangerous. A pesky Tea Party activist is shining a spotlight on your misdeeds and machinations? Designate him a terrorist and haul him off to a military gulag where he will have no rights, no recourse to the courts. It gives me no comfort knowing that the Guardian-in-Chief’s rule book, written by Saul Alinsky, holds that lying is a tool of the trade, that ends justify means, and that there is no moral code.

    A provision of H.R.-1540 that has not gotten the same notoriety is the one that repeals Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the article that makes sodomy a court-martial offense. (I refrain from quoting Article 125. Google can assist if you must know.) Why repeal it? The repeal fits right in the with the Guardian-in-Chief’s efforts to promote the homosexual agenda as part of his effort to dissolve society’s moral glue, its standards, making it easier for him to impose his vision of a state in which his whims are the law.

    The 9 December issue of the economic newsletter “Casey Daily Dispatch” contains an article titled “Man vs. Morlock” in which the writer reached back and pulled up a book by Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45, University of Chicago Press, 1955. The excerpt in the Dispatch included this paragraph, one you may well have read elsewhere, but was not aware from whence it came — I wasn’t:

    “Pastor Niemöller spoke for the thousands and thousands of men like me when he spoke (too modestly of himself) and said that, when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing; and then they attacked the … and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something — but then it was too late.”

    And further on in the excerpt was this “boiling the frog” analogy of how the Nazis gained complete domination:

    “In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.”

    We must make a stand in November 2012. Absent a massive “Road-to-Damascus” constitutional epiphany by the Guardians, and by their Clerks, the only recourse citizens have to regain our country’s future as a free people is to turn them out, election after election, until we again have a Constitutional Republic governed by the virtues established by The Founders. The eviction of the Guardian-in-Chief and voter-imposed term limits on all those who believe they are our Guardians are actions that I encourage all to undertake.

    Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of the Americas, Pray for Us, Pray For Our Country.

    See you Trackside.

  • Lies of liberal progressives, Sunday edition

    On the C-SPAN television program Washington Journal (Sunday August 14, 2011) Democratic strategist Mark Mellman appeared and gave viewers a lesson on how the political left lies and distorts in order to score political points against what it sees as easy targets.

    Mellman said: “The tea party comes out, and has really done real damage to this country. Most people in this country think it’s okay to to stop giving subsidies to oil companies. The tea party says no. Most people say it’s okay in the country to make corporate jet owners pay taxes, or hedge fund managers pay taxes. The tea party says no, you can’t do that, you only have to cut spending. And what spending do they end up cutting? They want to cut Medicare, they want to cut Social Security. Those are the plans that have been put forth by the Republican Party.”

    Mellman is not alone in his use of these lies and distortions. They are stock talking points of the Democratic Party and liberals or progressives. It’s a low form of demagoguery that picks a few targets that are easy to stir up hatred for, and then distorts facts without any regard for the truth.

    On the oil industry, for example: The magnitude of the subsidies and tax breaks to the oil industry is about $4 billion per year. Eliminating this is not going to come anywhere close to balancing the budget. As a matter of fact, this annual amount that President Obama complains about is just about what the U.S. borrows each day to cover its spending in excess of its revenues.

    But being a relatively small amount is not a reason for ridding the tax code of these measures, even though some of the tax measures appear to be similar to treatment that all industries receive, such as the ability to intangible costs associated with drilling a well. To the extent that conservatives and tea party groups oppose eliminating special tax treatment of the oil industry or any other industry, they become just another special interest group. It is essential for our country to eliminate preferential tax treatment and the spending of money through the tax system.

    Regarding Mellman’s assertion that we need to “make corporate jet owners pay taxes” — with the implication that presently they pay no taxes: This is a lie. The measure Mellman refers to is an economic incentive implemented in the form of accelerated depreciation for purchasers of corporate jets. This provision allows companies to deduct depreciation costs from their income sooner, so they save on taxes now rather than later.

    (This incentive, by the way, was part of President Obama’s stimulus bill passed in February 2009.)

    Depreciation is an accepted concept that allows companies to recognize the costs of their capital investments over time, which is appropriate for purchases of long-lived assets like airplanes. Accelerated depreciation doesn’t increase the total amount of depreciation that can be deducted from income, and therefore doesn’t decrease the tax that must eventually be paid. While not as blatant as other forms of preferential treatment found in the tax code, this provision should be eliminated with all others.

    Of course, taking a deduction this year rather than in a later year is valuable. But receiving this deduction a few years sooner is nowhere near the same as paying no tax at all, which is what Mellman asserted.

    At the same time Mellman and liberals attack industries they sense they can stir up hatred towards, they pick programs they believe are unassailable to accuse conservatives of attacking.

    For example, Mellman mentioned Medicare. He didn’t tell viewers that President Obama has proposed cutting Medicare spending, too. It’s rare that any Democratic source mentions this.

    And according to the Washington Post at one time this summer Obama proposed Social Security cuts as part of the debt ceiling negotiations.

    In either case, the changes that are usually proposed to these programs by conservatives are quite gentle, and recognize that reforms must be made or these programs will sap the country of its vitality.

    Democratic political operatives, on the other hand, ignore these problems and attack those who recognize them. They must do this. The entire system of modern American liberalism is based on the lie that human freedom and liberty is enhanced by expanding government beyond what is minimally necessary to secure our true rights and freedoms.

  • Kansas and Wichita quick takes: Wednesday March 2, 2011

    Duplication in federal programs found. Washington Examiner Editorial: “Nobody with even minimal knowledge of how public bureaucracies work should be surprised by the Government Accountability Office’s conclusion that there is a ‘staggering level of duplication’ in the federal government. Duplication is inevitable when professional politicians in both major parties go for decades using tax dollars to buy votes among favored constituencies, and reward friends, former staffers, family members and campaign contributors with heaping helpings from the pork barrel. With the inevitable program duplication also comes an endless supply of official duplicity as presidents, senators and representatives rationalize spending billions of tax dollars on programs they know either don’t work as promised, or that perform the same or similar functions as existing efforts and are therefore redundant.” … And they say it’s tough to cut spending.

    Public school town hall meetings. Walt Chappell, Kansas State Board of Education member, is holding two public meetings in Wichita this week. Chappell writes: “You are cordially invited to share your top 4 priorities for what Kansas K-12 students should learn at a Town Hall meeting this week. Your Kansas State Board of Education is deciding how to improve our schools at a Board retreat on March 7th. As your elected representative on the KSBOE, I look forward to hearing your suggestions before we vote.” The first meeting is Thursday March 3rd from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm at Lionel D. Alford Library located at 3447 S. Meridian (just north of I-235). A second meeting will be on Saturday March 5th from 2:30 pm to 4:30 pm at Westlink Public Library, 8515 W. Bekemeyer, just North of Central and Tyler.

    Wichita school board candidates. This Friday (March 4th) the Wichita Pachyderm Club features candidates for the board of USD 259, the Wichita public school district. For the at-large seat, the candidates are Sheril Logan, Carly Miller, and Phil Neff. For district 4, the candidates are Michael Ackerman, Jr., Jeff Davis, and Clayton Houston. The public is welcome and encouraged to attend Wichita Pachyderm meetings. For more information click on Wichita Pachyderm Club.

    Bureaucrats can’t change the way we drive … but they keep trying. More from the Washington Examiner, this time by Fred Barnes. “For most Americans — make that most of mankind — the car is an instrument of mobility, flexibility and speed. Yet officials in Washington, transportation experts, state and local functionaries, planners and transit officials are puzzled why their efforts to lure people from their cars continue to fail.” While Barnes writes mostly about automobiles vs. transit from a nationwide perspective, the issue is important here in Wichita. The revitalization of downtown Wichita contains a large dose of public transit as a way for people to get around downtown. It’s also likely that various streets will be restructured to make them less friendly to automobiles. .. More broadly, a major reason for some to support public funding of downtown is their hatred of “sprawl” and its reliance on the automobile, despite that being the lifestyle that large numbers of Wichitans prefer. They see this as something that government needs to correct.

    Wednesdays in Wiedemann tonight. Today (March 2) Wichita State University’s Lynne Davis presents an organ recital as part of the “Wednesdays in Wiedemann” series. These recitals, which have no admission charge, start at 5:30 pm and last about 30 minutes. … Today is an all-Bach program, and Davis writes: “This is music for the soul, music for when the weather isn’t quite what it needs to be, music to heal our coughs and colds, music to meditate by — however this grand yet simple composer speaks to you.” … The location is Wiedemann Recital Hall (map) on the campus of Wichita State University. For more about Davis and WSU’s Great Marcussen Organ, see my story from earlier this year.

    Americans for Prosperity website attacked. The website of Americans for Prosperity has been attacked by a group that disagrees with AFP’s position on issues. AFP President Tim Phillips issued a statement: “Americans for Prosperity has established itself as a leading voice in one of the great political debates underway in this country over government spending and how best to restore the fiscal solvency of governments at both the state and federal level. Yesterday, a group claimed credit for an attempt to silence our voice and to stifle that debate through an illegal attack on our website. While the political debate over government spending can be heated, we hope that even our opponents will join us in condemning this illegal attack on our free speech rights as unacceptable and irredeemable. Our country cannot meet the great challenges before us if we cannot have a free and open discussion about the threats that we face. Americans for Prosperity will not be intimidated and will not be deterred from our effort to support responsible economic policies, including the efforts of Governor Walker and other democratically elected leaders in that state to balance the budget through common-sense reforms.” … While I agree with Phillips that free and open discussion is necessary to resolve the issues we face, the disruption of AFP’s website is really more a property rights issue than a speech issue.

    Kansas presidential primary pitched as economic development. Washburn University political science professor Bob Beatty: “Why the dash by states to be early on the [presidential primary] calendar? The first is political power and ego. Early primary and caucus states merit attention from the presidential candidates to party big-wigs and power brokers within these early states. But a second reason has rapidly risen in prominence: The economic impact that candidate visits and media coverage of same brings a state. One economist has argued that the economic impact of the Iowa caucuses on the Iowa economy in 2004 was in the neighborhood of $50-$60 million. Other states want a piece of that action.” The complete editorial is Insight Kansas Editorial: Creative Thinking About 2012 GOP Presidential Caucus Can Benefit State.

    Huelskamp joins Tea Party Caucus. Tim Huelskamp, a new member of the United States Congress from the Kansas first district, has joined the Congressional Tea Party Caucus headed by Michele Bachmann. The two other new members of the House of Representatives from Kansas have not joined.

    How government works. The myth of George W. Bush as a small-government conservative, hiding information from the press and public, and the revolving door between government and lobbying. From Rollback: Repealing Big Government Before the Coming Fiscal Collapse by Thomas E. Woods, Jr. “Of the $96.5 trillion in unfunded Medicare liabilities, $19.4 trillion was added by the ‘small government’ George W. Bush administration’s prescription drug benefit, known as Medicare Part D. The story of that bill’s passage is the story of America in the twenty-first century. The White House did not want to risk the bill’s passage by letting accurate estimates of its cost leak out. Richard Foster, Medicare’s chief actuary, reported that its administrator, Bush appointee Thomas Scully, threatened him with his job if he revealed cost estimates to Congress — a claim that email correspondence from a Scully subordinate appeared to corroborate. The pharmaceutical industry was thrilled with the bill, which would yield perhaps an additional $100 billion in industry profits over the next eight years. Ten days after the bill’s passage, Scully left to join a lobbying firm and represented several large pharmaceutical companies. The bill’s principal author, Billy Tauzin, went on to head the drug companies’ main lobbying organization, a position that paid $2.5 million per year.”

  • Tea party has nothing on Wisconsin union supporters

    While the political left likes to portray tea party protesters as racist neanderthals hell-bent on violent overthrow of the U.S. government, the tea party has nothing on government union members when it comes to protesting. Union leadership can’t bring itself to condemn even the worst excesses of the union protests.

    On Sunday’s episode of the NBC public affairs television program Meet the Press host David Gregory gave AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka a chance to condemn the very nasty tone of the pro-union demonstrators in Madison:

    MR. GREGORY: Richard Trumka, I want to ask you one thing, again, about the tone of the debate. You’re one of the leading labor voices in the country. Do you condemn the hyperbole, the overstatements, comparisons to Hitler and dictators? Do you think that’s wrong on the part of pro-union supporters?

    MR. TRUMKA: We want to–I–look, we ought to–pro, anti-union, it doesn’t matter.

    Trumka could have simply answered “yes.” But he didn’t. This is the same Richard Trumka that has said: “I’m at the White House a couple times a week. Two, three times a week. I have conversations everyday with someone in the White House or in the administration. Everyday.” It’s a mystery as to why President Obama would want to be associated with someone like this.

    Just after Trumka’s refusal to criticize vulgar behavior, Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC likened it to democracy, saying “And I don’t know why you fear democracy so much.”

    It’s quite a contrast between the union demonstrators in Wisconsin — and the gallery of the Kansas House of Representatives — and tea party protestors. After tea party events in Kansas, participants pick up their trash — or never throw it down in the first place. Tea party people are courteous to the news media, and even to counter-protesters who heckle them.

    Not so with the Wisconsin union protesters. Remember: some of these protesters are teachers, who demand to be treated as professionals.

    The behavior of union protesters in Wisconsin is so bad that even some Democrats are concerned about its effect on public opinion. As CBS News reported: “Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chairman Mike Tate is condemning signs carried by pro-labor protesters that compare Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Hosni Mubarak and showed the governor with a cross-hairs rifle sight over his face. In an interview with CNSNews.com, Democratic Party of Wisconsin Press Secretary Graeme Zielinski said that Tate and the party ‘absolutely’ condemn the inflammatory signs but says that they are not representative of the majority of the protesters who have taken to the streets in opposition to the Governor’s plan.”

    But it’s hard for the average person to make this comparison. The mainstream media’s least-underhanded criticism of tea party participants is to cast them as hapless pawns of some right-wing conspiracy. More radical leftists paint tea party attendees as ignorant racists, and their cameras look long and hard for the one protest sign out of many that provides the evidence they need to “prove” their preconceived ideas.

  • Wichita’s vision, by the urbanist elites

    Why are some in Wichita so insistent on pushing their vision of what our city should look like, and why are they willing and eager to use the coercive force of government to achieve their vision? In the article below, Randal O’Toole, using a work by Thomas Sowell, provides much insight into understanding why.

    Reading this post, I couldn’t help think of Wichita: the “manufactured crisis” of too much driving and too little walking; the desire by many, including several Wichita City Council members — even self-styled conservative members — to expand the power and reach of government; and the denial of responsibility for obvious failures like Waterwalk.

    We should remember that the plan for downtown Wichita developed by Boston planning firm Goody Clancy is a plan developed by and for self-styled elites. We only need to remember when David Dixon, Goody Clancy’s principal, told Wichitans that in the future, Wichitans will be able to “enjoy the kind of social and cultural richness” that is only found at the core. That’s an insult to the vast majority of Wichitans, but the elites in Wichita evidently believe it, or are willing to tolerate this insult in order to achieve their vision.

    O’Toole visited Wichita last year and presented a fascinating lecture.

    The Vision of the Urbanites

    By Randal O’Toole

    As the Antiplanner has traveled and visited people all over the country, I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon. Though I’ve met thousands of suburban and rural residents who are very happy with their homes and lifestyles, I’ve never met one who thinks the power of government should be used to force others to live in the same lifestyle. Yet I’ve met lots of urban residents who openly admit that they believe their lifestyle is so perfect that government should force more if not most people to live in dense, “walkable” cities.

    Do cities turn people into liberal fascists? Or do liberal fascists naturally congregate into cities, and if so, why?

    A general description of the phenomenon I’ve observed can be found in Thomas Sowell’s 1995 book, The Vision of the Anointed. Sowell says that America’s liberal elites view themselves as smarter or more insightful than everyone else, and thus qualified to impose their ideas on everyone else. The process of doing so, says Sowell, follows four steps (p. 8):

    First, the anointed identify or, more usually, manufacture a crisis. Sowell’s book reviews three such crises: poverty, crime, and teen pregnancy, all of which were declining in the 1960s when the liberals turned them into crises. The crises relevant to this blog include such things as urban sprawl (totally manufactured as in fact it is not a problem at all) and auto driving (while some of the effects of driving are negative, these are easily corrected while the overall benefits of driving are positive).

    Second, the anointed propose a solution that inevitably involves government action. Sowell makes it clear that the the leadership of the elites go out of their way to define or manufacture the crises in ways that make it appear the government action are the only solutions. In other words, their real goal is to make government bigger, not to solve problems. I don’t know if that is true or not, but it doesn’t really matter; what matters is they propose the wrong solutions to problems that often don’t really exist.

    Third, once the solution is implemented, the results turn out to be very different, and often far worse, than predicted by the anointed. Crime, poverty, and teen pregnancy went up, not down, when government stepped in to “fix” these problems in the 1960s. In the case of urban planning, anti-sprawl policies made housing unaffordable and led to the recent mortgage crisis. Anti-automobile policies make congestion worse and therefore waste even more energy and produce more pollution.

    The final stage is one of denial, in which the elites claim that their policies had nothing to do with the worsening results. Other factors were at work, they claim; in fact, the results might have been even worse if their enlightened policies had not been put into effect.

    Sowell notes that the anointed use several tactics to promote their ideas. For example, “empirical evidence itself may be viewed as suspect, insofar as it is inconsistent with that vision” (p. 2). Whenever the Antiplanner uses data to show that there is no urban sprawl crisis or rail transit doesn’t work in a debate with an urban anointed, the inevitable response is some version of “figures don’t lie but liars figure.” “Statistics can be used to show anything you want,” is another version. These comforting words leave the anointed free to dismiss any data and all that conflict with their vision.

    A second fundamental tactic is to presume that they have the moral high ground. “Those who accept this vision are deemed to be not merely factually correct but morally on a higher plane,” says Sowell. “Put differently, those who disagree with the prevailing vision are seen as being not merely in error, but in sin” (pp. 2-3). The term “smart growth” is a classic example of this tactic, used solely to bludgeon any dissenters with the claim that they must favor “dumb growth.”

    Relying on tactics like these, the anointed avoid confronting the fraudulent nature of their crises and the failures of their solutions. “What is remarkable is how few arguments are really engaged in, and how many substitutes for arguments there are,” says Sowell (p. 6).

    While The Vision of the Anointed describes the situation, it doesn’t answer the fundamental question of why people think that way. A partial answer is provided by Sowell’s 1987 book, A Conflict of Visions, in which Sowell traces two different world views back to the late eighteenth century. One view, expressed by Adam Smith, is that humans are imperfect and so we should design institutions that work even if the face of these imperfections. The other view, proposed by William Godwin, is that humans are perfectable, which suggests that the benign hand of government authority should be used to guide people to that perfection.

    Today, the Tea Party represents the descendants of Adam Smith, while urban planners are descendants of Godwin. As University of California planners Mel Webber and Fred Collignon wrote more than a decade ago, urban planners were “heir to the postulates of the Enlightenment with its faith in perfectibility.”

    The question still remains: why are urbanites more susceptible to the vision of the anointed? Perhaps part of the answer is that the constant friction between strangers that cities impose on their residents leads to a desire for government authority to protect people from those frictions. But a larger part of the answer may be that the role of government is far more visible in cities than elsewhere, and far larger in cities today than in the past, so residents of those cities cannot imagine living without it — and those who want more government are attracted to those cities. In any case, everyone in general and urbanites in particular should be wary of any ideas that make government bigger, as they are probably just part of some elitist scheme to coercively impose their vision on everyone else.

    The link to this article at O’Toole’s site is The Vision of the Urbanites.

  • Kansas and Wichita quick takes: Tuesday December 21, 2010

    Steineger switches teams. Chris Steineger, a Kansas State Senator from Kansas City, has switched to the Republican Party. As a Democrat, Steineger had compiled a voting record more conservative than many senate Republicans. On the Kansas Economic Freedom Index for this year — recognizing that supporting economic freedom is not the same as conservatism or Republicanism — Steineger had a voting record more in favor of economic freedom than that of 15 of the senate’s Republicans.

    Kansas school funding reform to wait. Incoming Kansas Governor Sam Brownback says that the Kansas economy comes first, and then school finance, Medicaid, and KPERS in a “year or two.” Tim Carpenter of the Topeka Capital-Journal reports in Revitalizing the Kansas economy is the governor-elect’s No. 1 priority.

    Tax cuts in Kansas not likely, says new senate leader. Yesterday Kansas Senate Republicans elected Jay Emler of Lindsborg to be the majority leader, replacing Derek Schmidt, who will become Attorney General. As the Associated Press reports, Emler is not in favor of any tax cuts, including a repeal of the recent increase in the statewide sales tax.

    McGinn to lead Ways and Means. Carolyn McGinn, a Kansas Senator from Sedgwick, will chair the Ways and Means Committee. This important committee handles appropriations — in other words, the actual spending of money. On the Kansas Economic Freedom Index for this year, McGinn scored seven percent, tying her with Senate President Stephen Morris as the Republicans most opposed to economic freedom. She also scores low in the Kansas Taxpayer Network/Americans for Prosperity ratings.

    Kansas holds on to House seats. At one time it was feared that the 2010 U.S. Census might find Kansas losing one of its four seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. But Kansas will retain them. Texas picks up four seats, Florida adds two, while Georgia, South Carolina, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah gain one seat each. Ohio and New York lose two each, while Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, and New Jersey lose one each.

    Rasmussen polls. As often, Rasmussen is the bearer of bad news. Like: What’s the deal with Obama? “For the first time since he became president, only 35% of voters say Barack Obama thinks society is fair and decent. That’s almost half as many as voters who hold that belief themselves. A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds that 49%, on the other hand, say Obama thinks society is unfair and discriminatory.” See America’s Best Days: Fewer Voters Than Ever Say Obama Thinks Society is Fair and Decent. … Tea Party people skeptical of newly elected officeholders: “Most Tea Party members view the candidates they elected in November as agents of change from government business as usual, but non-members are a lot more skeptical. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone poll finds that only 34% of all Likely U.S. Voters think Tea Party candidates elected in November will remain true to their beliefs. See Most Tea Party Members Think Those They Elected Won’t Sell Out, Others Aren’t So Sure. … Others are pessimistic, too: “Just 23% of Likely U.S. Voters now say the country is heading in the right direction.” See Right Direction or Wrong Track.