Author: Brian J. Noggle

St. Louis County cuts a program, and the program performs well:

A recent survey of Choices reported that 95 percent of its graduates last year remained out of jail and drug free for at least a year. This is good news for a program that was badly hobbled after St. Louis County reduced its funding from $950,000 to $200,000 last year.

The budget cut forced officials to reduce the number of counselors in the program from eight to two, cut the number of inmates it served from 320 to 147 and shorten the overall program from 120 to 90 days. A midyear grant helped officials add another full-time and part-time counselor.

Sounds like they streamlined the course and targeted those inmates who the program could help. Probably at the expense of people who were looking forward to killing time over the course of 120 days of their sentences and then looked forward to scoring some dope after their sentences were up.

But undoubtedly, this represents a travesty because MORE TAX MONEY COULD BE SPENT!!!! Proponents of spending a million dollars where $200,000 would do have scoured the St. Louis County ordinances to discover that the Law of Diminishing Returns does not apply here.

It’s one thing to take your life, but this indicates Thompson either hated his wife or didn’t even think of her:

Pitkin County, Colo., Sheriff Bob Braudis said in a brief telephone interview that Thompson was alone in his kitchen of his Woody Creek home when he shot himself with a handgun. His wife was at a gym, Braudis said.

He left her to walk in on his mess. What a jack.

(Link seen on Michelle Malkin.)

Powerline’s Hindrocket suggests:

Leach’s belief that the anti-hunting forces are just getting warmed up is undoubtedly correct; as another hunter quoted by the Times observes, some of the hunting opponents “would protest the opening of a meat pie.”

This is one time when we can say “It can’t happen here,” and really mean it. America’s hunters are too powerful; I suspect they’re also better armed than their English counterparts. I think it’s time for the NRA to open a branch in England.

Huh, too bad they don’t have a second amendment to defend in England.

It starts with an anecdote:

Lou Emery used to sell donuts and bus rides out of town until a company man came by this month to tell her the Greyhound had made its last stop here.

He broke the news gently to Emery and the rest of the crew at Daylight Donuts on Interstate 44, about 65 miles southwest of St. Louis. The man gathered up Greyhound’s equipment and apologized for shutting down the service. He left the slightly rusted bus sign in the parking lot.

Now the bus doesn’t stop anywhere around Sullivan for miles. And most residents didn’t even hear about it.

“It was never in the local paper or anything that we had lost it,” Emery said.

The whole story has the tone of a prelude. These people can no longer get transportation! Greyhound is losing $140 million a year! States have tax money or the ability to get tax money! Certainly, states should support this piece of Americana that allows dozens of people to travel every day!

Stories like this, and the inevitable calls for tax money to help a relatively few people make relatively few trips, confuse an offered service with a duty. If private business won’t lose money providing something, the government should. That’s asinine, and perhaps it’s even a straw man, but isn’t that the sense you get?

You know what the government can do to improve Greyhound’s business? Stop propping up airlines. When airline ticket prices go up, Greyhound will once again become the idolized piece of Americana because it will compete with train service for people who cannot afford to pay as much for a airline ticket as it actually costs to ferry the person there.

The Montana legislature has a really bad idea: setting a retail minimum wage at $22,000 a year. Friends, Montanans, and countrymen, that’s a $10 an hour minimum wage. Rationalizing:

Wal-Mart pays its workers such low wages that they qualify for state welfare benefits subsidized by Montana taxpayers, people told a Senate committee Tuesday.

As an incentive for these “big box stores” to pay a living wage to their workers, Sen. Ken Toole’s Senate Bill 272 would impose a gross proceeds tax on these companies. They would be exempt from the tax if they paid their employees an entry level wage of at least $22,000 a year, counting both pay and benefits and if less than half of their workers were part-time.

Because legislators would prefer that the workers receive only state welfare benefits, which is the choice that legislators are making.

The socialists chirp:

“State taxpayers are subsidizing Wal-Mart’s payroll,” said Kim Abbott, lobbyist for Working for Equality and Economic Liberation, a low-income advocacy group. “It’s ridiculous.”

and:

Gene Fenderson of the Montana Progressive Labor Caucus agreed, saying “The Wal-Marts, Targets, Home Depots are not paying their fair share of taxes for the amount of wealth they extract from our states and the services they demand.”

Because business is the chupacabra of society, and the government and the ‘progressives’ who want to forcibly redistribute wealth according to their whims are doing good.

This bill, should it pass, would yet again prove that the government is a Keynesian flat tire, loudly slowing economic progress.

(Link seen on Rocket Jones.)

This looks a lot like the NHL, but it’s the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra:

Musicians refuse to vote on latest offer

When music returns to Powell Hall, will the players be around to play?

How come no one’s floating the idea of a salary cap or tying the musicians’ salaries to revenues? Because they’re artists? They’re artists for a starting salary of $70,000 a year in a break-even or worse venture often propped up by public funds.

Perhaps the musicians’ union bosses are onto something. It’s just like sports, and perhaps the musicians should be paid accordingly.

Pay floor boost goes to council: Supporters say move will prompt state action:

A Milwaukee Common Council committee voted 4-0 Thursday to support an increase in the city’s minimum wage, a move that advocates hope will pressure state lawmakers to OK a statewide increase.

The measure, which goes to the full council Tuesday, would raise the minimum wage in the city in two steps, first from $5.15 an hour to $5.70 an hour as of Oct. 1. A year later, it would rise to $6.50 an hour.

The steps are the same as those proposed in March by a bipartisan commission appointed by Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle. That group’s recommendations, based on a compromise among business and labor groups, have been stalled in the Republican-controlled Legislature, as GOP leaders have said the proposed increase is too high.

Critics said the city would be foolish to increase its minimum wage when surrounding communities have the lower state wage. They argued that it would cause some businesses to look elsewhere.

I’m with the critics. You know what’s going to happen? Let’s examine the unintended consequences:

• Service will suffer in all city businesses, from restaurants to the Grand Avenue Mall shops, as employers will stretch existing employees to cover more tables, more hours, more customers. How do you think customers will react? There’s an Applebee’s in West Allis, and if there’s not, one’s looking for space right now.
• Young people who might have taken summer jobs to silence their parents will have excuses to not find jobs (which don’t exist) and will have to amuse themselves, possibly by participating in the bash mob fad.
• People who want or need these jobs, whether as primary jobs or second jobs, will have to commute to the suburbs, spending twenty five minutes in an unsafe beater car like my brothers immortal Frankencar (no relation to Al) or ride the White and Green Limosine (the MCTS buses, now celebrating its first homicide ever) for an hour. Either one wastes time better spent on reading, spending time with children, or preparing a meal that doesn’t come from a box or a window.

I think the politicos achieve their goals with the boost, though: currently employed people get more money for no more effort, and the politicos get more votes for spending someone else’s money.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has dug deeply and found some ‘Republicans’ incensed about Governor Blunt’s government cuts:

Malinda Terreri, a homemaker from Ballwin, contends that Gov. Matt Blunt is ill-informed and pursuing “a path of political suicide.”

Rajesh Shah, a Creve Coeur physician, accuses the governor of displaying “a lack of maturity” and “playing the ‘class’ card” for political gain.

Both are Republicans who said they voted for Blunt in the fall. They might not do so again.

Blunt angered them and thousands of other parents when the cost-cutting measures he outlined with his State of the State address included eliminating the state’s First Steps early childhood program.

What kind of parents/Republicans are they?

The media-savvy parents have held a news conference, packed a Jefferson City hearing room, appeared on television and flooded the phone lines and computers of the governor and legislators with hundreds of calls and e-mails protesting the plan.

Terreri, the mother of a 3-year-old boy with autism, quickly set up an Internet site – savefirststeps.com. The site has collected more than 40,000 signatures on a petition to preserve the program, and also features a forum where backers regularly post their irritation with the governor’s proposal.

The kind directly benefitting from the program they want to save and who are savvy enough to hold a news conference, get some fawning coverage from the socialist St. Louis daily, and collect 40,000 clicks on an Internet petition–which are not signatures, dear Post-Dispatch.

Too bad these people don’t have the energy to pursue non-coercive charitable solutions to their problems, but that’s much harder, since it requires constant effort, whereas getting a government program requires only an investment to get the program started and then to infrequently fight program cuts.

Although I have to say, it surprises me to see the Post-Dispatch coming down on the side of the upper middle class or lower upper class, but they’re taking government handouts, so they’re okay:

Shah, the father of an autistic son, replied that the wealthy pay plenty of taxes and have just as much right to First Steps as they do to drive the state’s public highways and attend public schools. “To suggest that the very wealthy should not receive these services is inconsistent with the Republican message,” Shah said.

I’m not sure that’s the Republican message.

NBC puts on a brave face:

The suicide of a boxer competing in the upcoming NBC reality series “The Contender” won’t derail plans for the program, according to the network and its production partners.

Pardon my cynicism, but I imagine they’re at least torn. Sad for the loss, but ecstatic about the publicity. At least, I hope they’re torn.