The Ironies Of Whining For Education As Free As Water

Well Occupiers are now less popular than the Tea Party, but that hasn’t stopped NPR from covering their latest antics every time I’ve been in the car for the past two days. This morning I was treated to students chanting that education should be as free as water and air, and while I hate giving these folks more attention and picking on the low-hanging fruit of the Tree of Progressivism, this statement is full of so much ignorance that I just had to respond.

Look, I understand students’ frustrations with expensive education. A lot of them are racking up debt loads without good job prospects in sight. My personal bias is that it’s the government’s involvement in making student loans more accessible that contributes to college’s soaring costs, and that more government would make things worse, not better. But I understand the frustration. But chanting about a perceived right that education should be as free as water is so ironic on so many levels that it borders on hilarious hysteria.

1. The phraseology about making education “free as water and air” comes from Peter Cooper, the founder of a privately funded college. I think it’s fantastic that this guy believed people deserved free education and set up his own institution where every student has their tuition fully covered from voluntary donations. Of course, the college can only accept about 10% of the students that apply, and it seems to be in financial troubles these days, too. Free college is expensive. But forgive me for assuming that these chanting students aren’t pushing for voluntary philanthropy to fund their college experience, and it’s ironic that they’re stealing the catch phrase of someone who tried to provide free college in the private sector and using it to suggest that the government should mandate this for everyone.

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Big Yellow Taxi Medallions: Regulation in New York City

I heard a fascinating story on my drive home from work this evening, and while I don’t have a complete grasp on it, it’s so interesting that I want to blog my scattered thoughts about it. The NPR story was about these taxi medallions that are required to operate a taxi in New York City, and how these medallions, after rising in value for decades, have now ballooned in value from a couple hundred thousand dollars to a million dollars in just a few years. Regular taxi drivers can’t afford them anymore so there’s a company called Medallion Financial that makes loans. I was waiting for the reason the cost of these medallions has gone up so much, but first I got a hilarious mouthful from Medallion Financial’s president:

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Baby Boomers and the Stock Market

Now that I have been at my cubicle job for a year, I have taken the option of diverting a small portion of each paycheck to the chaotic markets under the guise of a retirement fund. This has had me thinking about the stock market in new ways. I’m generally rather pessimistic about the whole thing, because even though it’s been investor dogma that the stock market always goes up in the long-term, I’m coming of age at a time when the market’s basically been flat for a decade, and I see no reason to presume that the future must echo the past. But my own participation has led me to wonder if demographics will affect the future of the stock market more than anything else.

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The Ironies Of Taxing Christmas Trees

Well, the Christmas tree tax sprouted and got chopped down before I had time to blog about it, but I’m going to blog about it today anyway. The audacious folks of Fox News almost certainly had a part in destroying the plan before it started by combining the words “OBAMA and TAX and CHRISTMAS” enough times in enough headlines to scare the Administration off. I have a love-hate relationship with those folks; they spend a lot of time, er, barking up the wrong tree (like complaining about Obama visiting a mosque that George Bush also visited), but when I don’t like the tree I’m glad to have them around doing all that barking, if you take my meaning. Though I sympathize with Cato’s disappointment that the GOP also had hands in the history of this proposal and “certain people saw the ‘Christmas Tree Tax’ as an opportunity to further partisan aims rather than provoke a discussion and debate on the proper role of the federal government.”

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A Conservative Reason To Oppose The Drug War (Or, Don’t Track Me, Bro)

Barely more than 24 hours after writing about my opposition to government invasions of privacy, I learned yesterday about a case going before the Supreme Court to determine if police need a warrant to place a GPS tracking device on your car:

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Are Governments Worse At Projects Than Businesses?

The L. A. Times notes the latest development in the, er, lack of development on California’s high speed rail program:

The bullet trains from Anaheim and Los Angeles to San Francisco will not cost $34 billion as originally estimated, or $43 billion as the authority insisted just two years ago, but closer to $100 billion….

The original system included Sacramento and San Diego. They are not part of this estimate. They will be added in Phase 2, and the authority does not say what Phase 2 will cost. Critics of the plan estimate the total cost at $180 billion.

It’s not at all surprising to read about a government project that is now projected to cost three times its original budget even after removing some of the original goals. Just a few days ago I was reading about NASA’s latest Mars mission being “24% over budget and… by October 2008 MSL was getting closer to a 30% cost overrun…” The CATO Institute has a dutiful article about the infamous history of government projects (though of course they prefer the more politicized phrase “government schemes”), from the Boston “Big Dig” transportation project that ballooned from $2.6 billion to $14.6 billion to a series of defense vehicles that took millions more dollars and several years longer to arrive than originally estimated.

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My New Favorite Analogy For Opposing Privacy Intrusion

I have a new favorite analogy for protesting privacy invasions that are done in the name of security, courtesy of darleen click commenting on a Volokh post about intellectual property:

I have a great way to cut down on undiscovered crime — we all must provide copies of our house keys to our local police departments and never bar them from rummaging through our homes to make sure we are law-abiding.

I mean, if you don’t have anything to hide, why should you object? The local government only has your best interests at heart…

I’ve tried to explain before why I oppose the government reading my emails or patting my genitals under the guise of defending the nation, even if I have nothing to hide. I usually try to explain this position with philosophical ramblings about how a government bureaucrat’s definition of “doing something wrong” may be different from mine, but I don’t know that I always get my point across very well.

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Thank Government For Something: Interstate Highway System

It’s time for another Friday edition of “Thank Government For Something.” Last month my wife and I spent a lot of time on interstate highways on our way to and from visiting Great Smoky Mountains National Park (and National Parks are something else I thank the government for). The Interstate Highway System was authorized by Congress by the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, and while it certainly has its flaws, I am very thankful for its existence. The interstate provides a relatively low cost to traveling across our giant country, which increases mobility and opportunity for individuals, and trade and commerce between the states. Now there may be issues with the large costs of maintaining these highways and the incessant need for construction projects, and we have a growing road tax problem, but overall I think our transportation infrastructure is a public good.

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Safety Creep 2: Anatomy of a Conservative Freakout

Attention, conservatives! The freakout regarding TSA screenings on Tennessee highways has been cancelled! OK, not cancelled, just dialed back a wee bit… According to autos.aol.com, the TSA “came in for just three days – Oct. 18, 19 and 20 – to help the state improve communication between state, federal and local agencies during a crisis. It does not plan to stick around, and won’t be setting up permanent checkpoints in the state…”

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Safety Creep: TSA Comes to the Interstate

UPDATE: There is less reason to freak out than previously suspected, although there is still reason to be concerned..

Attention, conservatives! Did you get the latest memo? There’s a new Thing For Conservatives To Be Freaked Out About. The TSA now has checkpoints on Tennessee highways.

Now sometimes conservatives get a little hysterical about all the evil, socialist things that Obama and the government are doing. Remember when the food bill was going to make backyard gardens illegal? Whatever happened to that anyway? But some actions by the government do seem legitimately frightening. (Don’t forget about the Gibson guitar raid.) And with as much reasonableness I can muster, I think this new venture by the TSA is something to be rather concerned about.

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