10 percent is "enough"

Hmmm, this is interesting:

The group, called People Acting Together in Howard, or PATH, has also won a promise from County Executive Ken Ulman to push for lower bank interest borrowing rates for consumers by moving public monies out of banks that charge high rates.

Maryland's ceiling for credit card interest is 24 percent, Ulman said, but the group said banks often raise interest to 30 percent, even on people who have never been late with a payment. PATH is aiming for a 10 percent maximum rate in a campaign called "10 percent is enough." The non-partisan group, made up of 16 congregations, is an affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation, the nation's oldest community organizing group founded by the late Saul Alinsky, and has been operating in the county for several years.

With all due respect to the folks promoting this well-intentioned campaign to lower consumer interest rates, I think that banks are far better equipped to determine what the market interest rates should be based on the supply and demand of capital and the credit worthiness of borrowers. If the folks at PATH think that 10% is "enough" of an interest rate, then I encourage them to put their money where their mouth is and start lending at a 10% rate to folks that real banks want to charge 30%.

If this campaign succeeds, and I can't imagine it will without a mandate from gov't, then the obvious result will be that high risk borrowers will not be able to get loans at all. So are those folks better off having access to capital at a high rate or not having access to capital at all?

I suppose another alternative is that banks will agree to cap interest rates to risky borrowers, but reduce the rate at which the county is paid on monies deposited with banks. In which case, taxpayers have essentially subsidized loans to high risk individuals. But I don't think any bad things will happen if we encourage folks with poor credit to borrow money. That seems perfectly normal to me.

LOL

O'Malley pays a visit

Well readers, I hope you locked up your wives and daughters today because Gov. O'Malley was in Town Center stumping for his re-election bid. Here is a shot of him amongst his supporters. It was a good idea on behalf of O'Malley's campaign to coral them into a small area so the media shots make it look more crowded that it was:



I think he arrived in this hybrid Tahoe with dark tinted windows. This must be the state government's attempt at a non-desrcript/low profile vehicle:

See Pete Lobby

Peter Bielenson is lobbying for another $500,000 of our tax dollars to fund the Healthy Howard Access Plan for another year. The plan only has 614 members, so this would be a hand out of more than $800 per enrollee. That seems like too much of a subsidy for a single program. I don't think HHAP should get another penny, but the council is unlikely to cut them off entirely. Given this political reality, the council should at the very least cut the funding request in half. Either make HHAP raise their rates or cut their services.

The Sun reports that private charities are unwilling to give to HHAP because Howard County is too rich:

Fox was not mollified, however, asking Beilenson how much he has raised in private donations, which were originally touted as a major source of funding. Columbia's Horizon Foundation has contributed $650,000, and another $57,000 in grants have come along with $1 million in donated services, but Beilenson said other foundations have bluntly told him that "this is too wealthy a county to support this. It should come from government." Shirley Collier, a Horizon board members, testified in agreement, explaining why Horizon's newest grant is $150,000 after an initial seed grant of $500,000.

"Obviously, they're defensive about something," Fox said after the hearing. "I don't think there's a [predicted] number they've met. Everything is an excuse."

On a slightly separate note, I found this anecdote from the Sun article very interesting:

Deborah Mills, an entrepreneur selling custom clothes to business executives, saw her business fall off due to the recession and had to choose between her mortgage, utility bills and health insurance before she got into Healthy Howard. "What is happening in this county is history in the making," she said. Now she needn't worry that missing routine tests could be putting her health at risk.

It really sucks to have to choose between health insurance, paying your mortgage and paying your utilities. I guess that is the risk of being self employed, and of those three choices dumping the health insurance seems the least painful. But when the insurance reform provisions of Obamacare kick in during 2014, people in the same situation will be choosing between paying the mortgage and paying utilities, because health insurance will be required by law. I guess we'll have to see how the insurance subsidies impact that mandate.

Candidate for state senate

This is the first public mention of a challenger to Allan Kittleman's state senate seat that I have seen:

Running for Kittleman’s Senate seat on the Democratic side is Jim Adams, of Ellicott City.

Adams, 68, a retired accountant, said he believes Kittleman has not taken advantage of opportunities to work with Democrats on issues such as the state budget.

Adams said he will focus on environmental issues, health care coverage and public education.

“I don’t have a specific issue,” he said. “I just know that the record in terms of environmental support with the current Republicans in poor.”

I like Jim Adams, I think he is a smart guy with interesting things to say. I think he would be a fine Senator. However, Allan Kittleman is the one local politician who I think should be cloned rather than be replaced. So I guess I just wish Jim was running against someone else.

...And I'm out in the nine-deuce Cad'

We are approaching the six month anniversary of the infamous Halloween shooting which left one person dead and another paralyzed, and the Howard County Police have not been able to stick any charges to the shooter. Explore Howard reported today that the Feds have charged two people who were initially suspects in the shooting with gun and drug charges:

After the shooting at the Halloween house party in Columbia — which left one man dead and another paralyzed — Howard County police searched Schroyer’s trailer and found a shotgun and a handgun, ammunition, marijuana, scales and packaging material.

Based on that search, federal prosecutors allege that between August and the shooting, Schroyer and Dixon were engaged in drug dealing and were in possession of firearms during that activity.

The reason these guys are selling marijuana is because legitimate business people are unable to do so, yet intense consumer demand persists. They are chasing the extremely high profits that our misguided drug policies produce. Since the dealers can't rely on the police to protect them or their stash, they need to carry guns to provide their own protection.

The choice our political "leaders" have made with current drug policy is not to have a society free of drugs, but rather to have a society where gun toting outlaws sell drugs to anyone, including children. Additionally, the profits from the drug trade remain untaxed under our current system.

One alternative to the our current drug policy is to legalize drugs and regulate them like alcohol. The blood of people killed and resources wasted on the drug war is the fault of people who refuse to support this no-brainer of a policy improvement. Just so you know.

Operating budget released

The proposed 2011 operating budget was released. I have not looked through it yet, but two interesting things right off the bat are that HHAP is set to get another $500K, and the rainy day fund will not be hit:

The plan also leaves funds for Healthy Howard, Ulman’s public health initiative, allocating $500,000.

“I am very pleased that Healthy Howard will be put out of business in 2014 by the federal (health care) bill,” the executive said.

He also allocated $232,000 for the Howard County Department of Citizen Services to dole out to agencies that will do the work of the now defunct Specialized Trauma Treatment and Recovery Center, which treated victims of psychological trauma and sexual assault until closing last year amid financial distress.

Ulman’s budget does not pull money from the county’s never-been-touched $48 million rainy day fund, which budget administrator Raymond Wacks previously speculated might be necessary to solve a $20 million shortfall in the current year’s budget.

I am not surprised by either of these two items. Tapping the rainy day fund, especially during an election year in a bad economic climate is dangerous business for someone who wants to be re-elected.

However, I will make one prediction with respect to the rainy day fund: that fund will be cleaned out by some future County Executive during an economic boom when money seems to be growing on trees and no one is paying attention to the budget. It will never be touched during a recession because doing so would make it appear that the CE does not have spending under control. That's just how the politics will work out.

It's the bees knees

A few months ago I blogged about ZRA 117, which would reduce the required setback for beehives. Current zoning classifies bees as livestock, which means the setback is 200 feet. The implication of a setback that large is that most people are prohibited from legally keeping bees on their property. ZRA 117 would change the setback for beehives to 25 feet.

Someone has set up a website to promote bee friendly zoning in Howard County. It looks like there's also a related blog.

You can't make this stuff up

The federal government gives about $3 billion in subsidies to the 20,000 American cotton farmers each year. This subsidy hurts cotton farmers in other places like Brazil, so the Brazilian cotton farmers sued on the grounds that American cotton subsidies violate some sort of trade agreement. The WTO upheld the challenge.

So, what should the U.S. government do? The obvious answer is to stop subsidizing U.S. cotton farmers. But that's not the course of action that our beloved government has chosen. Instead, the U.S. government will subsidize Brazilian cotton growers in addition to American cotton growers.

The U.S. negotiators did agree to modify the complicated export-guarantee program to make it less of an export-subsidy program. They also agreed to ease restrictions on Brazilian beef that have been justified as an effort to protect Americans from foot-and-mouth disease — and criticized as an effort to protect U.S. cattlemen from competition. But the big-ticket item is the settlement's "technical assistance" fund of $147.3 million, prorated, for Brazilian cotton growers. That just happens to be the precise amount of the retaliation the WTO had approved for the improper cotton subsidies. According to the U.S. press release, the fund will be replenished every year "until passage of the next farm bill or a mutually agreed solution to the cotton dispute is reached." So the total cost will exceed the price tag of the infamous Alaskan bridge to nowhere, which was at least designed for Alaskans; the annual cost will far exceed the $100 million President Obama ordered his Cabinet to cut from the federal budget last year. [Emphasis mine]

Obamacare will make HHAP obsolete in 2014

Awhile ago I had asked what the passage of Obamacare would mean for the Healthy Howard Access Plan. An article that appears in the Baltimore Sun today confirms that when Obamacare's health insurance reform provisions kick in (which will not happen until 2014), HHAP will be obsolete.

Beilenson hopes to morph HHAP into completely new entity which would operate as an insurance co-op. A co-op is a company that is owned by the members, so all the profits are rolled back into the business to benefit the members through lower premiums. I could be wrong, but I don't think there are a large number of insurance co-ops now, so I don't know why that would change with the passage of Obamacare. Also, if an insurance co-op was such a good idea, I don't know why Beilenson and Ulman didn't do that in the first place. The whole concept of insurance is based on risk pooling, so they would need many more members than they have been able to attract under the existing HHAP structure. Additionally, I suspect that Obamacare is a huge boon for insurance companies, so I bet the federal regulations will make it difficult to compete with existing insurance companies. Someone else seems to agree with that:

Edmund F. Haislmaier, a senior research fellow for health policy studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said although "it is conceivable that someone might want to do that [start an insurance co-op]," he's skeptical that the concept will remain attractive once the federal regulations are written. He believes that the regulations will promote a consolidation of insurance companies that will end with two or three large providers in Maryland. But others are more enthusiastic about the concept.

So, the bottom line is that Obamacare will put HHAP out of business by 2014. The local government spent $1 million tax dollars on HHAP to keep it afloat for two years, and it currently has 600 enrollees.

Healthy Howard has about 600 enrollees, Beilenson said. Another 180 received health care through it but have left the program as their circumstances have changed, he said. Enrollment is a far cry from predictions of 2,000 enrollees in the first year.

Outsource edition

I get to outsource my blogging duties today by linking to this awesome post from Jessie X on Maryland's absurd new cell phone ban while driving, as well as this awesome post from HoCoRising on Ulman's genius plan to fix the $20 million revenue shortfall. Spoiler alert: it's so genius that Ulman hasn't quite figured out the details yet.

Influence, yer doin it wrong

Wordbones points to this list of influential state representatives. HoCoRising makes some good observations about the list here.

As noted by Wordbones, Shane Pendergrass is number 15 on the list of most influential state delegates. Given her influence, she sure has a strange way of capitalizing on it. When she was offended that someone leading a prayer in the chamber on Good Friday mentioned Jesus, she "slammed down her desktop in protest." That seems to be the reaction one might expect from an angry schoolboy, not a state delegate. And then after she approached the colleague who had offended her, the only thing she was able to accomplish was to get suckered into a media pissing match.

Of course, given our current fiscal situation, having any measure of influence means you have ownership of the blame. No one said influence was necessarily a virtue.

Amazing disgrace

"Your interpretation of the sky fairy is offensive to my interpretation of the sky fairy."

That seems to be what Del. Penergrass is saying to a delegate representing parts of Montgomery County. She was offended that a prayer he led on Good Friday mentioned Jesus Christ (Pendergrass is apparently Jewish, although I don't know if she is secular or not). I am an atheist, so I think it's a little silly to believe in spirits that live outside of our world of space and time, but the world is a big place sometimes you just have to be cool and let people swing their arms as long as they don't hit you in the nose. Getting bent out of shape because someone mentioned Jesus on Easter is a little bit bananas when there are serious issues to discuss like how to fix the budget mess.

If Pendergrass wants to make the argument that prayer should not be said during the delegation meetings, that would at least make some sense given that there is supposed to be a separation of church and state. But that's not the approach that Pendergrass is taking. I know that SWPL Columbia liberals love to be offended almost as much as they like farmers markets and free health care, but do me a favor and just try to get along with the Christians so you can get the budget problem fixed without taxing me to death.

Really?

Really county government? We have had 90 degree days, bees are flying, flowers are blooming and yet the water fountains are still off at Centennial Park? Really? Really?

Columbia 2.propaganda

I don't have enough interest in the future of Columbia to take a hard stand on CB 58 and 59. I pretty much think that Columbia as a whole is destined to be a larger version of the Wilde Lake Village Center, although most people I trust are generally supportive of the plan and are fairly optimistic about downtown Columbia's future. I live a half an hour or so west of Columbia so they'll have to let me know how it works out over the next few decades.

However, it is unfortunate that a group like Columbia 2.0 would botch an opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to Columbia's future, and instead promote three videos that are propaganda rather than good argument. The middle video featuring quotes taken out of context from a HoCoMoJo interview with Alan Klein in order to misrepresent his views is as misleading as it is annoying. And I say that as someone who has not drank the CCD kool-aid. From an unbiased point of view, that video is just completely inaccurate.

These videos are Lame 2.0.

Profit Opportunity

The Wall Street Journal points out a possible profit opportunity for anyone who trusts the Obama administration:

So the wave of corporate writedowns—led by AT&T's $1 billion—isn't caused by ObamaCare after all. The White House claims CEOs are reducing the value of their companies and returns for shareholders merely out of political pique.

A White House staffer told the American Spectator that "These are Republican CEOs who are trying to embarrass the President and Democrats in general. Where do you hear about this stuff? The Wall Street Journal editorial page and conservative Web sites. No one else picked up on this but you guys. It's BS." (We called the White House for elaboration but got no response.)

OK, if what the White House is saying is true, this is a great profit opportunity for anyone who is foolish enough to believe them. Recording these bogus write downs means that the stocks are undervalued. Obama and friends could purchase stock in these companies at a bargain price, and when the market finally figures out that the reduced profitability of these companies was bogus, the price will shoot up and Obama and his cohorts will profit from the evil Republican CEOs' trickery. What better way for Obama to expose the political trickery of his critics than to profit from attempts to embarrass his administration?

You're welcome, Mr. President.

Another example of Howard's nanny state

Wow, this is the most ridiculous thing I have heard all week:

School concession stand workers in Howard County have been told they have to take a 16-hour training course, or stop selling hot food.

The county health department-mandated training, which begins in April and costs about $100 per school, means that county schools will have to stop offering French fries, pizza, hot dogs and other hot items at extracurricular activities, such as athletic events, until the training is complete -- perhaps until next school year.

Anyone who thinks that government regulation keeps people safe does not, in my opinion, fully grasp the incentives of business. What keeps people safe is the profit motive, not government regulators. And this is a good thing. I don't want someone to do the right thing because a law says that they should- I want people to do the right thing because it is in their best interest to do so. Brand names, repeat business, reputation, etc. mean higher profits. Part of cultivating these factors that increase profits means being careful not to harm your customer. None of the volunteers affiliated with these concession stands will knowingly serve tainted food or engage in unsanitary practices that will result in harm to their customers (who in this case are their neighbors) because this would kill the golden goose. Regulations just lead to higher prices for the customers and/or lower profits for the booster clubs.

Obviously people are fallible and mistakes will sometimes happen, like Toyota's unfortunate "gas pedal sticking" problem. You can rest assured that Toyota did not find that fiasco to be profitable, and will fix the bust in the production process that allowed it to occur. Simple regulation will not make us any safer in a cost effective way.

The Howard County Health Department is not nearly as useful as most people think they are.

Wegmans to open in December of this year!!

Wegmans has pushed up the opening date of the Columbia store to December 2010. News is just trickling in on this, but the company released a statement that they have placed a "top priority" in serving key markets, and I guess Howard County is one of those markets that they aim to be serving by year end.

"I could not be happier" said Ken Ulman in a county press release. "This just goes to show what a great job my administration has done."

More details here.