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Hours and days

14 July 2009

There were several interesting New York Times articles about the (in)effectiveness of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) last week.

I, for one, am not the least bit surprised that the ARRA has been less effective than envisioned at stimulating the economy. I could have told anyone who asked that this would be the case as I scrambled to collect a list of “shovel-ready” projects for West Virginia’s higher education system. The Governor’s Office literally gave us hours, not days, to come up with our original list. We then got another day to come up with a new list when the rules of the game changed dramatically. The process from beginning to end was a joke.

Fortunately (and I use that word with some sadness), virtually all of the higher education shovel-ready funding hit the cutting room floor during final ARRA negotiations. But the process that we went through is similar to the process undertaken by other federal and state agencies. So what did the ARRA’s authors produce with all this careful planning?

Story No. 1. France will spend 75% of that country’s stimulus monies this year. Washington, on the other hand, hopes to reach that goal next fall. Why? France had a real plan to spend its funds quickly; the United States, with people like me scurrying to assemble shovel-ready lists, did not.
Story No. 2. The federal government provided about $3.5 billion for the Workforce Investment Act’s Adult and Dislocated Worker programs, which a major study late last year indicated are far from effective.
Story No. 3. While most Americans live in cities, transportation stimulus funds are going disproportionately to rural areas because they, not surprisingly, have a disproportionate share of roads and bridges. This is good for West Virginia, but not good for the overall national economy.

I appreciate that our economy was in free-fall in February, but could Congress not have spent a little more time pondering the pros and cons of some of the proposed investments before rushing through the largest spending bill in United States history? Good public policy is made over months and years, not hours and days.

There’s a sucker born every minute

13 July 2009

The Charleston Gazette-Mail published an op-ed commentary criticizing the minimum wage yesterday. The author was Kristen Lopez Eastlick, “senior economic analyst for the Employment Policies Institute, which studies entry-level employment.”

Let’s see what the internet tells us about Ms. Eastlick and the Employment Policies Institute.

According to Citizens for Responsbility and Ethics in Washington, Ms. Eastlick has a very long resume – having been listed over the years with 17 different job titles with 8 different companies, including the Employment Policies Institute.
“The Employment Policies Institute was launched in 1991…. EPI deliberately attempted to create confusion in the eyes of journalists and the general public by adopting a name which closely resembles the Economic Policy Institute, a much older, progressive think tank with ties to organized labor,” says SourceWatch.
The Employment Policies Institute’s executive director is Rick Berman. Indeed, all of the companies for whom Ms. Eastlick has been listed as working are connected to Mr. Berman.
And just who is Rick Berman? He is a lobbyist for the restaurant, hotel, alcoholic beverage, and tobacco industries and was dubbed “Dr. Evil” by 60 Minutes a few years ago for, among other things, shamelessly using non-profit organizations for his clients’ political and economic purposes and taking on groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving to protect your freedom to drive drunk. I encourage you to check out the 60 Minutes video.

While I understand that freedom of speech means that everyone is entitled to express his or her opinion, I wish the Charleston Gazette-Mail at the very least had made Mr. Berman pay for the use of its printing press, even if that payment probably would have been made with tax-free dollars because the Employment Policies Institute claims to be a non-profit organization. Joseph R. Goodwin, Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, wrote more than a decade ago in a case styled Collard v. Smith Newspapers that, while everyone has a right to express his or her opinion, that right does not extend to guaranteeing anyone (least of all Mr. Berman and his ilk) a free printing press.

Reading in the wonder years

12 July 2009

When we talk about education, we generally talk about it in three contexts: primary, secondary, and tertiary (commonly used international term for post-secondary education). Left out of the discussion is middle school education, which is lumped at one or the other end of the primary-secondary spectrum.

The Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) recently shined a bright light on middle school education in a report on reading skills. Some highlights from the report:

While national testing has found gains in reading at the elementary level, the numbers are stagnant at the middle school level and declining at the high school level.
Unlike speaking skills, which develop naturally, advanced reading skills do not.
Success in reading is critical to later academic and workplace success.
Developing students’ reading comprehension skills in all subjects should be a priority for middle schools.

First Lady Gayle Manchin was a member of the committee that issued this report.

To assist students who are falling behind in reading and math at the middle school level, the West Virginia Legislature recently passed legislation to create and fund critical skills instructional programs for eighth graders (and third graders).

The drug war Is over?

11 July 2009

In a week in which Governor Joe Manchin was getting tough on drug crimes, The American Prospect was reporting that the drug war is over. The new drug czar Gil Kerlikowske said: “I’m ending the phrase, ‘the war on drugs’…. People see a war as a war on them…. We’re not at war with people in this country…. The addiction problem, the drug problem in this country is much more complex than a 40-year-old metaphor for a war on drugs.”

Today there are 500,000 people in prison for drug offenses. That number is larger than the entire prison population of this country in 1980. Despite this, half of all Americans report trying illegal drugs. With a market that large, it is unsurprising that nothing, from mandatory minimum sentences to $6 billion coca defoliation efforts in Columbia, has worked, and neither will this state’s latest effort: “Operation Eviction.”

What do we need to do? First and foremost, eliminate the federal sentencing disparities for crack cocaine, which have sent a disproportionate percentage of African Americans to prison for ridiculous amounts of time. Second, focus more on education and treatment.

We’ll have a lot of money to devote to these and other efforts if we stop locking up drug dealers and throwing away the key – at an estimated cost of almost $24,000 per prisoner per year.

Calling Sheriff Joe Arpaio

10 July 2009

The drug war continues. The Associated Press reports: “Joe Manchin has a message for drug dealers. Get out of West Virginia and don’t come back.” The story goes on to say that the Governor wants the State to explore hard labor as a punishment for drug crimes.

I have a message for everyone who believes that prisons are the answer to West Virginia’s and America’s drug problems: “Puttin’ the smackdown won’t keep the crack down. Havin’ a crackdown won’t keep the smack down. Education is liberation.”

Hours and days

There’s a sucker born every minute

Reading in the wonder years

The drug war Is over?

Calling Sheriff Joe Arpaio

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