Green means look both ways

If recent auto-accident related news has confirmed anything, it's that green does not mean go, it means look both ways and then go. I know that's the first thing they teach you in drivers ed, but even the most experienced drivers can get pretty lazy about that rule.

In March of this year, someone ran a red light on Rt. 29 and hit someone else using the left exit on to Rt. 70. It seems likely that this was a case of the person with the green light paying attention to the lights rather than checking to make sure the people with the red light were actually going to stop.

Again this week, a garbage truck ran a red light at Rt. 97 and Rt. 144 and hit a minivan (the article isn't clear about who was at fault, but the garbage truck at fault scenario seems to best fit the fact pattern). From what I have heard, it was pretty bad. Again, this could have probably been avoided if the person with the green light would have checked to make sure people with the red light were actually stopping.

We have a slogan to go inside when it thunders, but not one to look both ways at traffic lights. Traffic lights are far more likely to kill you.

Take one for the team

One of the women that Al Gore sexually harassed (and make no mistake, there will be others who come forward) went to some of her SWPL friends for advice. Get this- they told her to just deal with it or else the world will be destroyed by global warming. More here:

"He pleaded, grabbed me, engulfed me in embrace, tongue kissed me, massaged me, groped by breasts and painfully squeezed my nipples through my clothing, pressed his pelvis against mine, rubbed my buttocks with his hands and fingers and rubbed himself against my crotch, saying, 'You know you want to do it.'"

Finally she got away. Later, she talked to friends, liberals like herself, who advised against telling police. One asked her "to just suck it up; otherwise, the world's going to be destroyed from global warming."

Everybody's got their cup but they ain't chipped in

(Sorry, the only Phish song I am familiar with is their bluegrass version of Gin and Juice). According to this article on Explore Howard, Howard County police stole, er, "seized" $10,000 in cash and three vehicles from folks out and about for the Phish concert. I know I seem to be in the minority on this, but it seems a little Gestapo to me to steal someone's car because they are selling drugs, especially harmless stuff like marijuana and shrooms. It's pretty dumb that drugs are illegal in the first place.

Historically, seized drug funds have been used to help people needing treatment for drug and alcohol abuse, but last March Ken Ulman publicly patted himself on the back for taking some of those funds away from people needing treatment for drugs and alcohol abuse and instead using those funds to pay for elaborate high school prom parties.

Anyway, my personal research project will be to learn about where the HoCo police are storing these cars and how they end up disposing of them. It should be pretty interesting to follow the life cycle of a seized asset through the disposition process. If anyone knows anything about this feel free to drop a comment.

Biggest unintended consequence ever

I feel sorry for the Chinese. They are in the midst of a real estate bubble that may seem obvious to us but they are still irrationally exuberant about. It's a shame that many of the people buying at these prices are setting their lives up to be ruined (and of course the government is subsidizing prices which further fuels the fire):

Home prices in major cities including Beijing and Shanghai have easily doubled over the last year as families and investors rush to grab a piece of the Chinese dream. A typical 1,000-square-foot, two-bedroom, one-bath apartment in the capital now costs about $274,000. That's 22 times the average annual income of a Beijing resident.

Unlike in the United States, where home buying traditionally takes place after marriage, owning a place in China has recently become a prerequisite for tying the knot. Experts said securing an apartment in this market signals that a man is successful, family-oriented and able to weather challenging financial circumstances. Put succinctly, homeownership has become the ultimate symbol of virility in today's China.

The article goes on to point out that many women are requiring prospective husbands to own homes, which is creating an entire frustrated class of bachelors. What the article does not mention, is that there is a significant gender imbalance in China due to the one-child policy. Child-rearing couples have a significant bias toward male children, and since they can only have one child there are many more boys than girls. This is the direct result of China's social policy and is perhaps one of the most interesting and unfortunate cases of unintended consequences ever.

But this is what happens when the first instinct of government is to "fix it with policy". When your only tool is a hammer, every problem can be fixed with a nail.

They do that for everyone

Does it make sense that top police commanders would respond to a bicycle theft in Baltimore? Because that's what happened when Jenna Bush Hager's bike was stolen from her Baltimore home:

Officers from the Southern District, along with detectives assigned to the Regional Auto Theft Task Force, have been put on the lookout for the bikes.

In addition, officers who monitor the CitiWatch camera surveillance system have been notified. Crime lab technicians went to the house to search for fingerprint evidence. Top police commanders, including the major in charge of the Southern District, also responded. Police released a heavily redacted offense report Saturday. [Emphasis mine]

Montgomery vs. Fairfax

An interesting article contrasting the spending habits of Montgomery County and Fairfax County appears in the Washington Post. Montgomery County apparently has a deficit of $1 billion in a total budget of $4.3 billion. However, public school teachers are doing quite well in Montgomery County:

The results have been striking -- and strikingly unaffordable -- in a county where more than half of all spending goes to public schools. The average teacher salary in Montgomery today is $76,483, the highest in the region. Average pay for teachers is now almost 20 percent higher in Montgomery than in Fairfax and has increased much faster than in most local suburban school systems. Since 2000, salaries for Montgomery teachers, as for many other county employees, have nearly doubled, rising at almost triple the rate of inflation.

Teachers are pillars of any community, and Montgomery's are highly rated. But their compensation has outstripped the marketplace. Today, Montgomery schools spend about 20 percent more per pupil than Fairfax schools; they consume a greater share of the public spending than in any other locality in the region. The spending gap is not about classroom quality and student achievement; in those terms the two school systems are comparable. Rather, the difference is compensation, which accounts for 90 percent of Montgomery's education spending.

First they came...

I complain a lot about government regulations surrounding drugs and gay marriage, which I guess is a little strange because I don't do drugs and I am not gay. But now it's personal because the long arm of government is coming for my iPhone:

Some industry representatives are coming to Apple's defense.

"The iPhone was just introduced three years ago, and all of a sudden (Apple is) being accused of being a monopolist? To me, it's absurd," said Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Electronics Association, in an interview. "They don't even have a dominant position in smart phones—that's Blackberry."

However, some antitrust enforcers say that if they wait until a tech company has cornered a market it may be too late. The technology sector has powerful "network effects" that, some say grant outsize advantages to first movers and make it particularly difficult for competitors to break in.

Based solely on this article in the WSJ, the federal case against Apple doesn't even make sense. I get the argument about network effects which favor the first movers in the market which make it difficult for competitors to break in. BUT THE FIRST MOVER IS BLACKBERRY. The iPhone may very well kill Blackberry, and that in itself undermines the entire basis of the argument against Apple. This smells to me like competitors of Apple using government to stifle competition.

Besides, the iPhone has plenty of worthy smart phone competitors besides Blackberry (the Droid, for example, not to mention the Palm Pre and tons of other cool smart phones.)

Update: Here is a link to Radio Shack catalogs from 1939 to 2005. Take a look at the crap in these catalogs from companies that you probably have never heard of and see how expensive it is and determine for yourself how strong the first mover advantages are. The 1985 catalog (page 172) has a Tandy 2000 computer for $4,250. It has a 10 megabyte hard disk.

Columbia Festival of the Arts

I guess I am not very artsy, because nothing at the Columbia Festival of the Arts really jazzed me. I did like the following piece of artwork, which is apparently inspired by the TPI:

Teachers' union endorsements 2

Explore Howard reports that the teachers' union, which recently supported all Democratic candidates, did not even send their questionnaire to the three Republican incumbents.

"It's hard to respond to a questionnaire you never received," said state Sen. Allan Kittleman, a District 9 Republican. He added that District 9 Republican incumbent Dels. Gail Bates and Warren Miller also did not receive questionnaires, nor did Republican candidates Kyle Lorton, in the District 13 Senate race, and Jeff Robinson, in the District 13 House of Delegates race.

DeLacy said the association didn't send questionnaires to incumbents Kittleman, Bates and Miller "because they have a very low percent voting record for educational issues." She called their support of education "abysmal."

I am not a supporter of Republicans nor public education, but even I am surprised that the teachers' union did not even send these three Republican incumbents questionnaires. They must have stopped caring about even appearing to be unbiased.

Ann DeLacy, the teachers' union president, went on to say that "our school and our library systems are probably the crown jewel of our county." This county would totally suck if that were actually true. The reason we can even afford to support the public libraries and public schools is the result of the private sector (although a large part of our local private sector involves catering to the Federal Leviathan in DC, but I digress).

Oh, and this comment from Greg Fox is interesting:

Fox, however, said he proposed only one cut to the education budget in the past four years, which was in the amount of $184,000 for the removal of three school system positions in 2007.

"I've actually proposed more increases to the Board of Education budget than any other council member," in those four years, he said.

I think the teachers' union would endorse a stuffed donkey.

Update: As I was typing this post, Allan Kittleman left the following comment on another post:

I wanted to respond to the people who criticized the Republican candidates for not returning the Howard County Teachers Union questionnaire.

If you read the Howard County Times article in yesterday's paper (June 10th), you will see that the Howard County Teachers Union intentionally did not send their candidate questionnaire to me or Delegates Bates and Miller. As I commented to the reporter, it is hard to respond to a questionnaire if you don't receive it.

Further, I have learned that the Teachers Union also did not send their questionnaire to other non-incumbent GOP candidates such as Kyle Lorton (Senate, District 13), Jeff Robinson (House, District 13) and Ed Priola (House, District 13). Mr. Robinson told me that he was looking forward to speaking with the Howard County Teachers Union because he had served as the student representative to the Anne Arundel County Board of Education when he was in high school.

How would the Teachers Union know the position of these challengers if they did not take the time to send them the questionnaire and arrange an interview?

Unfortunately, it is clear that the Teachers Union decided early on that they were only going to support Democrat candidates in the November election. The failure by the Teachers Union to solicit opinions from all the candidates does a disservice to all the teachers (and parents) in Howard County.

Numbers game

A candidate for Howard County Board of Education, Robert Ballinger, has an interesting letter to the editor on this week's Explore Howard. Here's a snipet:

Once again I can not understand where the Board of Education priorities are and I wish that the Board of Education would have voted against the Howard County Board of Education FY 2011 budget.

The package included a reduction in the Board of Education's contribution to medical benefits from 90 to 87 percent for its current employees. The Board will contribute 85 percent for employees hired after June 30, 2011. These changes were necessary to offset the impact of escalating health care costs on the school system's budget stated Howard County

He goes on to agree with Allen Dyer- which is frightening enough in itself- who derides these changes (which Ballinger himself just described as "necessary") as "regressive 30 percent to 50 percent permanent increases in the employee's portion of the health care cost."

Reducing the B of E's contribution to medical benefits from 90% to 87% seems like a very reasonable measure in the face of the greatest recession in decades, and still provides an extremely generous employee benefit. Since employees currently only pay 10% of their medical expenses themselves, a 3% increase is 30% more than what they pay now. However, it is extraordinarily misleading to frame the change as 30% increase, as Ballinger has done. If anything, tell us how much this would cost the average employee. That would at least be a meaningful number.

Furthermore, since this change is so unsettling to Ballinger, I'd be curious to hear what he proposes instead.

No one who plays numbers games like this should be taken seriously as a candidate. If Ballinger believes that a necessary and insignificant measure like this is completely unpalatable, it frightens me to think what he might do and say if he were to actually get elected to anything.

TPI Referendum

During a brief visit to Centennial Park for Healthy Howard Day, I spotted two people collecting signatures for the Taxpayer Protection Initiative. This is the first time I had seen anyone gathering signatures for this particular referendum.

I spoke with one of the signature collectors named David. He understood what the TPI was attempting to accomplish (requiring a super majority of council votes to raise taxes) and seemed to be a good ambassador for the idea. At no time did he say anything inaccurate or misleading about the TPI. He also understood the high rejection rate of signatures during the Board of Elections verification process.

If you don't think the average attendee at Healthy Howard Day would be particularly receptive to TPI, you are correct. At the time I spoke with the signature gatherer, he had collected only 4 signatures. I didn't sign (I lied and said I had already done so) but I am not opposed to this referendum and might sign it at some point in the future. Sure, it's an election year gimmick, but I believe that it should be more difficult to raise taxes than cut spending, especially when most of us pay such high taxes already. Therefore, I think the TPI puts a reasonable safeguard in place.

Teachers' union endorsements

The Howard County Education Association (aka the teachers' union) has made public its list of candidates it is endorsing in the 2010 election. All of the candidates endorsed by the teachers' union are, surprise, Democrats.

Begin voucher rant:

I am not a Democrat nor a Republican, but I despise unions. The teachers' union is particularly bad. You can be in support of teachers or you can support education, but it's not very often you can support both at the same time. The teachers' union is very much opposed to school vouchers. Why? Certainly not because it would be a bad thing to give parents a choice in which school their children attend. The teachers' union opposes vouchers for the simple reason it would make their privileged members compete with the private sector. This is a benefit for public school teachers that comes at the expense of a higher quality education for students.

Public financing of education is (generally) supported by taxpayers because of the positive externalities associated with an educated populace. However, these exact same positive externalities occur regardless of whether or not the populace was educated in public schools or private schools. Therefore, the people who say "I don't want my tax dollars going to support private schools" make so sense whatsoever. I can at least understand their point if they are also opposed to their tax dollars going to public schools, but if you truly support education you shouldn't be concerned with whether the education is provided by public or private schools.

If anything, private schools create more positive externalities because they do a better job. Why else do you think that some Howard County parents shell out $15,000+ a year in private school tuition to send their children to private schools when they could send their kids to the best public schools in the country for free?

3rd Annual Healthy Howard Day

We've waited all year and it's finally back! Healthy Howard Day. June 6th at Centennial Park from 10am to 3pm. Yay.

Ken's Solar Panels

The nice sunny weather we have been having reminded me of the solar panels that were installed on the roof of the East Columbia branch library back in mid-2008. Ken Ulman was a driving force behind the panels and made a great deal in the media about them. The panels cost $45,000.

This website shows how much power the panels have been generating in real time. During the past year (June 2009-May 2010) the panels have generated 5,464 kWh of juice. According to BGE, the price per kWh is under 11 cents. This $45,000 "investment" in solar panels produced $600 worth of electricity last year, which is a return of 1.3%. At this rate, it will take about 75 years for the panels to pay for themselves.

Wow.

Solar panels absolutely, positively, do not make any economic sense but for the government subsidies given to those people who install them. This is why it's so amusing to see Ken Ulman and Martin O'Malley dressing themselves up like construction workers in order to promote solar panels and make it look like they are doing something for the environment. Being more concerned with perception rather than reality is in the job description of politicians.