And the thunder rolls...

I am not impressed by the "when thunder roars, go indoors" campaign being pushed by the county government and some other agencies. It's not that I think it's too expensive or anything like that, I just think that it's an absurd program.

Lightning strikes are a real threat, and I am not dismissing that. However, they are a very statistically improbable threat. According to this blog post on the new program, 62 people out of 304 million are killed nationwide each year by lightning strikes. This means that your odds of being killed this year by lightning are about 1 in 4.9 million. Those kind of odds are akin to winning the lottery.

Additionally, I don't think there is widespread unawareness that lightning is dangerous. Most people kinda know that already.

Maybe this program will make a few people feel like the county government is doing something useful, and it will certainly get Ulman and a few other politically ambitious folks in front of a camera. Any other good coming from this public awareness program is a long shot.

Vennari's to close?

There is a rumor flying around that Vennari's Pizza in Oakland Mills is closing up shop as of July 31 when the lease expires. If true, that royally sucks. Their pizza is straight up awesome.

Another dog shooting and a lawsuit

A Columbia couple is suing Howard County for $5 million after their dog was shot in a botched raid. No, this is not the raid that occurred in Elkridge in which the Howard County Police shot a dog in January of this year. This is a separate dog shooting by the Howard County Police. This lawsuit stems from a mistaken drug raid in January of 2008 in Columbia.

Both cases are similar in that the raids occurred during the month of January (one year apart almost to the day), and in each case the raid was on the home of people who had done nothing wrong.

This lawsuit also alleges a fair amount of police brutality to the owners of the home and even their son:

When Henderson’s son James asked why they had shot the dog, police handcuffed him, drug him down the steps and threw him over the balcony to the hallway floor where they began stepping on his back with their boots, the lawsuit alleges.

When James Henderson continued to ask why the police shot his dog, an officer pointed his gun at Henderson’s head, saying, “If you say one more word I’m going to blow your ... head off,” the suit alleges.

It is really sad that this kind of thing would happen in Howard County of all places. We pay a lot of taxes to provide our police force with the best equipment and training, and they even enjoy the benefits of being unionized (such as higher wages). I recall from when the now defunct Examiner used to publish the salaries of county employees, it was not uncommon to see HoCo police officers making $100,000+ per year.

And now, police tactical teams have shot two dogs during two mistaken raids in two years. This is one hot mess.

Minimum wage (f)laws

As of July 24, the federal minimum wage has been raised to $7.25 per hour. The minimum wage law is simply a law that forces employers to discriminate against people with low skills. Minimum wage laws makes folks like this worse off.

My main man Milton Friedman can explain much more eloquently than I:

Misleading metrics

It's so annoying to hear certain facts cited over and over than have little or no meaning. For instance, this figure of 1,200 food miles that I keep hearing about:

Barbera and his family have picked their own fresh produce at Larriland Farm for over four years. After realizing it takes over 1,200 miles for produce to travel to its destination, Barbera began searching for local fresh produce in the area. Four years ago, he began a business relationship with the Moores from Larriland Farm in Woodbine. “Now, our customers have become accustomed to eating local produce during the season and are beginning to ask us when we will have the product incorporated into our menu.”

It means absolutely nothing to say that a piece of food traveled X miles to get to you, because it traveled with hundreds or thousands of other similar pieces of food. A much more useful figure of travel would be miles per calorie. For instance, tally up all the calories in a tractor trailer load of blueberries that come from 1,200 miles away (and the return trip if the truck goes back home empty), and compare that ratio of miles to calories to the same ratio of food coming out of Larriland or some other local farm. That statistic would be meaningful, a simple calculation of food miles is completely useless.

By the way, I will be selling locally ripened bananas if anyone is interested.

Expert opinion

Sometimes I question how good the "experts" are at interpreting and understanding data. This article in Explore Howard tells us that the unemployment rate hit a record high of 5.8% in June. This is up from 5.1% in May. A somewhat local "expert" offers the following possible explanation for the increase:

Anirban Basu, chairman and CEO of the Sage Policy Group, an economic consulting firm based in Baltimore, said the rising number of jobless people in recent months could be due, in part, to the recent influx of high school and college graduates entering the job market. People who left their jobs during better economic times also are trying to re-enter the labor force, he said.

The bit about people who left their jobs in good economic times but who need to work now that the economy has fallen apart is a reasonable explanation for the rise in unemployment. However, the bit about college and high school kids entering the workforce is an unreasonable explanation for the rise. This is because unemployment data which compares two months in the same year is useless unless it is seasonally adjusted. The seasonal adjustment would have already accounted for the cyclical rise in unemployment that naturally occurs when recent graduates of colleges and high schools enter the workforce.

I think the data that Basu opined on is SA, only because the May data did not square back to these not seasonally adjusted numbers.

Irony

When the owner of a French restaurant is so happy with the eco-friendly policies initated by his staff, he drives them nearly 200 hundred miles to NYC to eat at another French restaurant.

Small world

A Howard County Police Department tactical team has screwed up enough to indirectly make Andrew Sullivan's blog. If you follow the link about the police shooting pets from Sullivan's blog, you get to another blog that links to this Explore Howard article about the police shooting an Australian Cattle Dog in Elkridge.

What would Jesus refinance?

The Glen Mar United Methodist Church wants the county to issue municipal bonds to finance the church's expansion into the day care business. The bonds would be sold to Columbia Bank, and the debt would be the obligation of the church.

According to Mr. Richard Story of the Economic Development Authority, the church cannot use the proceeds for religious purposes (whatever the heck that can be interpreted to mean):

According to Story, the Glen Mar project creates no liability for county taxpayers and will help the church build a facility for needed child care, without crossing the church-state line.

"None of the proceeds can be used for religious purposes," Story said, and the buildings will not have obvious religious symbols, like icons or stained-glass windows. Any violation of that would mean the church could lose its nonprofit tax exemption. Story said the authority has received very few requests from churches.

Even if it is true that the church cannot use the proceeds for religious purposes under any circumstances (and I hope that is the case), it does not then follow that the taxpayers should effectively subsidize the financing costs of the church's expansion into a business that is unrelated to the church's exempt purpose. If the church wanted to start a non-religious coffee shop or perhaps a dog grooming facility, should tax payers have to subsidize the interests costs via a municipal bond issue? Of course not.

Any time politically connected organizations like the Howard County Economic Development Authority work with the County Council to curry favor for other private groups, the end result is all the greed of private business without that greed being channeled by the marketplace to work for good. Instead, that greed leverages the force and coercion of government to rip us all off.

Government monopolies

Today, I was again reminded of how badly the US Post Office sucks. I can go to nearly any grocery store and purchase a perishable kiwifruit that was shipped halfway around the world for under 40 cents, but it costs me $5.54 to mail something certified mail with a return receipt less than 10 miles away.

Wait until the government is running health care. That will be a trip.

Special interests want you to buy local food

The Howard County Economic Development Authority is pushing locally grown food. The main reasons they give for purchasing locally grown food is that it tastes better, it is better for the environment and it is good for our local economy.

The first reason may be legitimate (it's a matter of personal taste) but the other two reasons are bullshit. I've already blogged about the questionable environmental benefits of locally grown food. The alleged economic benefits are fallacy as well. "Buying local" is another way of saying "self-sufficiency" which is another way of saying "really poor". Trade makes us rich, and it makes the most sense to trade a good that you have a comparative advantage in producing. That may or may not be agricultural goods for any particular producer.

The HCEDA also tells us that locally grown food is healthier, because it is eaten sooner and therefore retains more nutrients. I don't know if this claim is true or not, but I am skeptical to put it mildly.

Fun fact of the day: according to the Howard County Farm Bureau, Howard County produces $200 million a year in agricultural output. That number actually struck me as surprisingly high. However, in a population of 270,000 people (assuming each person consumes $50 a week in agricultural goods), we annually consume about $700 million in agricultural products. Our local farms can supply us with about 3 months worth of food in a year. Yay?

Locally Grown Foods Two

Stan Sersen, in this month’s Business Monthly column, asks if we are locavores. Below is a snippet of his column:

When was the last time you sat down to a meal and were concerned that the food on your plate came from halfway around the world? Or whether that same food would even be available at any cost in the future?

How about the questions, "What will we do if the food is no longer available?" or "What types of chemicals are they putting on this food to grow it in China and ship it to us?"
According to the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service (www.attra.ncat.org/farm_energy/food_miles.html), the average "food miles" to get food from the farm to your plate in the U.S. is, on average, between 1,300 to 2,000 miles. Would you have thought that?

Another disturbing fact is that, since 1970, when the supposed endless supply of oil was available to us, truck shipping has dramatically increased, replacing the more energy efficient, and less carbon burning, rail and water transport used in other parts of the world, even today.

I have already blogged about the lack of environmental benefits from locally grown food here. Additionally, a weakness in the concept of “food miles” is raised by Wikipedia:

The calculation of food miles ignores questions of scale. Consider the following simplistic example: a small family farm produces 10 tons of produce, but has a small truck with capacity for only 1 ton. If the farm is located 100 miles (160 km) away from market, each piece of produce only travels 100 "food miles"; however, 10 trips are required to bring that produce to market. Now consider a farm located 1,000 miles (1,600 km) away but with a 10-ton truck. That farm's produce would travel 1000 "food miles" while consuming a slightly higher amount of energy (as a bigger truck needs less fuel per unit of mass transported).

The Wikipedia article above also cites a source which tells us that only 4% of the greenhouse gases produced by the food industry come from transporting the food from producers to retailers.

I am a strong believer in helping the environment, but I think that the things we do should make sense and be more than mere propaganda. Sometimes I wonder if people who proclaim to environmentalists are more concerned about actually helping the environment or making it look like they are helping the environment. Food for thought.

Daisy Used Car Lot and Public Park

The main reason I oppose redistributions of wealth is not because they are immoral, but rather that they don’t work. Goods and services do not flow from the privileged to the underprivileged. Instead, the resources flow from the dispersed interests to the concentrated interests. When you look at almost any program, it gets porked up with all sorts of crap which makes it more expensive and less helpful to those who could be said to need it most.

Take public schools for instance. Most people believe that everyone should get a “free” education. Who does such a policy benefit? The few poor children that get a decent education are incidental to the wealthy parents in this county who drive BMWs and have three kids in public schools who are getting massively subsidized tuition at the expense of everyone else. The same can be said for libraries, parks, and many other forms of government programs. Then there are other programs, like the home mortgage interest deduction, that are straight-up handouts to the wealthy with no real pretense of helping the less fortunate.

Another great example of this is the issue of the used car lot (or pre-owned car dealership, if you prefer) that is planned for Daisy. The so-called “Concerned Citizens of Western Howard County” oppose this lot, and they want the county to use our tax dollars to purchase the lot and build a park on it. They didn’t say anything about their desire for a community park until a car dealership was slated for the lot, now all of the sudden they are lobbying hard. I have to wonder if the dealership was selling John Deere tractors instead of cars if there would even be an issue. It’s very unfortunate that this is the state of our government at every level.

Shock doctrine

It's hard to take Rep. John Sarbanes seriously when he says things that are so absurd that he cannot possibly believe them himself. This is what Mr. Sarbanes had to say about our economy and health care:

"We can't have an economic recovery without health care reform," he said. "This is the moment to tackle it."

Really, dude? Our economy will not recover without further government intervention in the already heavily regulated health care system? That statement is completely false. It's actually pretty shameful of Sarbanes to use an economic crisis to expand the scope of government. Unfortunately, this is a common tactic. It was the Great Depression that was used to orchestrate the greatest ponzi scheme ever created: Social Security. Social Security makes Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme look like child's play, although it was undertaken with the best intentions. Now a new economic crisis is being used to rationalize the next moronic idea, this time in health care. Lucky us.

Or more likely...

I'll blog more about the community meeting held at Mount Hebron later, but right now I will weigh in on something that Ulman had to say to the press. He was referring to the low turnout (only 16 people showed up to speak):

The meeting was shorter than the previous two, with fewer citizens in attendance, but Ulman vowed to continue the sessions next summer.

"It's an important opportunity," he said, interpreting the lower participation as a good sign.

"People seemed to be reasonably pleased with the county," he said.

Well, I guess that one possible interpretation of the paltry turnout is that people are happy with the county. I personally don't think that is a very likely explanation. I think the low turnout is evidence that most citizens are rationally ignorant. In fact, I would be willing to bet that more than half the residents of Howard County could not even name their councilperson or the CE.

Another explanation is that most people have better things to do. Each speaker was only allowed two minutes. Who would be willing to sit around for several hours at some old-fashioned community gathering to get two minutes worth of someone's ear?

Fireworks

The fireworks show put on by the County was actually pretty good. The private contractors that the orchestrated the actual fireworks show did a superb job. The fireworks were extremely well choreographed to the music.

The thing I found most interesting about the whole event was the business of using blankets to mark your spot in the lawn. People were unbelievably civil about respecting the area marked by someone’s blanket. Although, there were a few instances in which people showed up in the morning to mark a spot, but then didn’t get there until 9PM which is sort of rude, IMHO. If an event like that were every weekend, I am sure a more sophisticated etiquette would evolve. Regardless, it seemed like a pretty efficient process.

Boo to the Hoo

Howard County Recreation and Parks Director Gary Arthur may have become a bit spoiled by the recent boom in real estate. During a time when many people have lost their jobs, he has the audacity to complain that his department no longer gets nearly $10 million a year from Project Open Space:

Three years ago, Howard County received $9.5 million from the state's Program Open Space fund for buying and developing parkland, the highest amount this decade. For the fiscal year starting July 1, the county is due $438,062 from the local share of that same state program.

That's the lowest amount the county has received this decade, and it led county Recreation and Parks Director Gary J. Arthur to publicly ask county legislators for help.

"I'd appreciate it if our delegation, when times improve, can fund it the way it was," Arthur said recently.

The program's money comes from one-half of 1 percent of real estate transfer tax revenues, which are drastically down statewide due to the recession. In addition, the General Assembly took $21 million from local-share open space funding in the November 2007 special session, according to David Juppe, senior operating budget analyst with the state's Department of Legislative Services.

What is sad is that none of the politicians that Arthur is pandering too seem to be asking why he needs this money. We already have plenty of parks spread all over the county, to say nothing of the open space provided by Columbia. It is almost taken a priori that open space is a great thing. I don’t really see it that way. All of the county parks seem to me to be wildly underused by residents, and the space they provide is not particularly well suited for wildlife. In fact, the Dept of Rec and Parks smears vegetable oil on goose eggs to kill the goose embryos in order to keep the goose population under control. Additionally, spending public money on parks destroys wealth.

Furthermore, the millions of dollars that Arthur is asking the Delegation to steal and give to him could be put to any number of better uses. I would suggest leaving that money in the hands of those in which it was stolen from.

Arthur’s department already has an annual budget of $30 million dollars, and anyone who attended the fireworks at the lake front yesterday saw a fantastic display of all the unneeded trucks and equipment that the Department of Recreation and Parks already has. There were at least 10 large DRP trucks parked along LPP in the GGP parking lot, but my favorite toy that DRP has is the portable stage that the Kinderman performed on. It is a giant mobile stage on wheels that has two hydraulic cylinders that open it up like a clamshell for use or close it up for road transportation. I’d love to know what this contraption cost the taxpayers, and how many hours a year it is used.

Happy Secession Day

From a local boy who made good:

In every age the advocates of the dominant political theory seek to give it dignity by identifying it with whatever the contemporaneous desire of man happens to be most powerful. In the days of monarchy, monarchy was depicted as the defender of the faith. In our present era of democracy, democracy is depicted as the only safe guardian of liberty. And the communism or super-communism of tomorrow, I suppose, will be sold to the boob-oisie as the only true palladium of peach, justice and plenty. All of these attempts to hook up cause and effect are nonsensical. Monarchy was fundamentally not a defender of the faith at all, but a rival and enemy to the faith. Democracy does not promote liberty; it diminishes and destroys liberty. And communism, as the example of Russia already shows, is not a fountain that gushes peace, justice and plenty, but a sewer in which they are drowned.

-H.L Mencken