Looks like Brad Ellsworth (IN-08) is pushing on the national level a bill of which I was critical on the state level.

A bill to require all new manufactured homes to come equipped with emergency weather radios is gaining traction in Congress, pushed by a campaign promise to an Indiana woman whose 2-year-old son was killed by a tornado in 2005.

My main critique was that this level of involvement by the government was a bit too great given what I perceived to be the effectiveness of weather radios and the relative ease of getting them on one’s own. Who knows, maybe my perception is wrong on both counts.

Interesting post over at Balloon-Juice about the Petraeus “report.” Apparently the word “report” is being used as a verb rather than as a noun. There will apparently be no document, rather Gen. Petraeus will simply have a little chat with Mr. Bush. Gotta keep the paper trails to a minimum.

Amy is running in the Bloomington mini-marathon tomorrow. So if you’re there, go ahead and cheer for good old #381!

We are both alumni of IU, so it was nice to roam around the campus a little bit this evening. I can tell I’m getting old and surly and have lived in Tippecanoe County for too long. Some student was jaywalking in front of my car, and I mumbled as an aside to Amy, “You’re way too trusting. I’m from Lafayette. I’ll effin kill you.” (Except I didn’t use the “effin” euphemism, but, you know, this is a family blog.)

Police: Teen wrecks SUV at Noblesville City Hall.

A 17-year-old Noblesville boy is facing juvenile court proceedings after crashing into City Hall with a sport utility vehicle, police said. The boy, who was arrested at the scene of the accident Wednesday night, was charged with driving while intoxicated after investigators conducted field sobriety tests.
“He has apparently admitted to huffing (from) some canister, and that he had blacked out and lost control of the vehicle,” Noblesville Police spokesman Sgt. Graig Collings said Thursday.

The Indiana Law Blog linked to an interesting article in the New York Times on the push to “re-regulate” the electric industry in some states where “deregulation” was attempted.

I remember the deregulation efforts fairly well because that was one of the areas to which I was assigned when I worked for the Legislative Services Agency. The electricity deregulation bills would usually cross my desk at some point or another. I was staff counsel for the Regulatory Flexibility Committee where the proposals would usually get banished for study over the summer. In Indiana, I believe the push for deregulation of the electric industry failed in large part due to sentiments I remember being expressed by Rep. Dave Crooks. He didn’t want to be the guy responsible for raising electricity prices for the folks back home. Indiana was, after all, already one of the lowest energy markets in the country — even if the lobbyist from Enron, along with others, was telling the General Assembly that deregulation of the energy market was the way to get even cheaper energy. I also recall Rep. Jim Bottorff playing a pretty active roll in bottling the deregulation proposals up in the House Commerce Committee. I may be wrong, but I seem to recall the folks from the Indiana Manufacturers Association were pretty keen on the idea of deregulation as well.

Apparently the states that didn’t have enough guys like Rep. Crooks and Rep. Bottorff are having a little buyer’s remorse.

More than a decade after the drive began to convert electricity from a regulated industry into a competitive one, many states are rolling back their initiatives or returning money to individuals and businesses.
. . .
Of the 25 states, and the District of Columbia, that had adopted competition, only one, California, is even talking about expanding market pricing.

The main reason behind the effort to return to a more regulated market is price. Recent Energy Department data shows that the cost of power in states that embraced competition has risen faster than in states that had retained traditional rate regulation.

One of the main problems seems to be that there wasn’t any real competition in the markets. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has a laughable approach to determining “market prices”:

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, however, has declared that once it determines that a market for electricity is in place, the prices that result are inherently market prices.

Marily Showalter, a former Washington State energy regulator has calculated from government data that the total real cost to consumers in states with “competition” was $292 billion in higher electricity prices since 2000.

There were good reasons for regulating energy companies in the first place. Apparently those reasons haven’t entirely disappeared over the past 70 years.

A bit of Labor Day news: American workers are the most productive in the world.

American workers stay longer in the office, at the factory or on the farm than their counterparts in Europe and most other rich nations, and they produce more per person over the year. They also get more done per hour than everyone but the Norwegians, according to a U.N. report released Monday, which said the United States “leads the world in labor productivity.”

The average U.S. worker produces $63,885 of wealth per year, more than their counterparts in all other countries, the International Labor Organization said in its report. Ireland comes in second at $55,986, followed by Luxembourg at $55,641, Belgium at $55,235 and France at $54,609.
. . .
The U.S., according to the report, also beats all 27 nations in the European Union, Japan and Switzerland in the amount of wealth created per hour of work — a second key measure of productivity.

. . .

Whereas a Chinese industrial worker produces $12,642 worth of output — almost eight times more than in 1980 — a laborer in the farm and fisheries sector contributes a paltry $910 to gross domestic product.

The difference is much less pronounced in the United States, where a manufacturing employee produced an unprecedented $104,606 of value in 2005. An American farm laborer, meanwhile, created $52,585 worth of output, down 10 percent from seven years ago, when U.S. agricultural productivity peaked.

Consequently, American laborers have seen steady increases in wages and leisure time. O.k., just joking about that. But, still. &$%*& Norwegians!

With these facts in mind, I’d now like to direct you to an opinion column featured in today’s Lafayette Journal & Courier entitled “Today’s employees need to develop a better work ethic.”

And the general attitude that many workers have is: “What is the least I can do and the most I can get paid for it?”

Nobody wants responsibility.

Many young people don’t want to start at entry-level positions.

They want to name all the conditions for their job and they want to start out making the decisions and being their own boss.

Employers aren’t that concerned about the applicant’s level of education anymore. They are more interested in past work experience; lost workdays, tardiness record and an employee’s history of work quality.

It’s difficult to find people with good work ethics.

Damn kids. Leading the world in productivity. Why, in my day . . .

Meanwhile, John Edwards, speaking in Des Moines, Iowa suggested that the future of America’s middle class is tied to the future of the labor union:

“The truth of the matter is that in order to grow and strengthen the middle class in this country, we have to grow and strengthen the organized labor movement,” Edwards told the South Central Iowa Federation of Labor’s “Solidarity Fest.” . . . “I want to be the candidate who talks about the economic disparity that still exists in America and then I want to be the president that does something about that economic disparity and builds one America where everybody has a real chance,” Edwards said.

So, what about it? The decline of the labor union certainly has taken place during a period of time where the middle class has, if not declined, at least slowed its advance. As I’ve discussed before, wages have been stagnant over the past 30 or 40 years even while productivity has increased substantially. I can’t say whether the lot of a middle class family is any more tenuous than it was in 1967; but I’m pretty sure the lot of the middle class family at least feels more tenuous. Jobs seem less secure, retirements uncertain, catastrophic health bills could be just around the corner, etc. etc. etc. Part of this might be the same fear media porn that makes us fear a pedophile or murderer on every block, even while crime is decreasing. But, I suspect the financial security of the middle class actually is more tenuous, though perhaps not as much as the hype would suggest.

Are labor unions the answer? I have no idea.

SchansBlog brings us the C.S. Lewis quote-of-the-week:

We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.

In other words, The First Rule of Holes: if you’re in one, stop digging.

Taking Down Words has a post that flags an article by Karen Eschbacher in the Indy Star. The two discuss tax abatements and TIF districts and juxtapose them against 501(c)(3) exemptions. The tension between the types of exemptions had not really occurred to me before.

During the latest property tax brouhaha, there has been a fair amount of railing against tax exemptions for businesses and mechanisms such as TIF districts. Generally speaking, tax exemptions or abatements are mechanisms by which taxes on businesses are eliminated or lowered as a means to lure the business to the area or as an incentive for expansion of a business. TIF districts are mechanisms by which the businesses are still taxed, but the taxes are used for projects in the district — for example a business wants to move into an area, a locality creates a TIF district and takes bonds out to improve infrastructure in the district, and tax revenue from the TIF district businesses are used to pay off the bonds. Consequently, tax revenue from the businesses in the TIF district do not serve to lower the tax burden for other citizens in the locality. 501(c)(3) organizations are tax exempt non-profits. Churches are one of the most common of these organizations.

Apparently the folks grousing about business exemptions, Eric Miller as a primary example, are not grousing about 501(c)(3) exemptions. So, which type of exemption benefits a community most? Obviously there is not going to be any hard and fast rules. Some churches bring more to a community than some businesses; and vice versa. But, according to the Star report, the business exemptions “don’t take as many tax dollars off the books as tax exemptions given to churches and other nonprofits.” So, at the least, the non-profit exemption is more expensive for the community than the business exemption.

[tags]property tax, religion[/tags]

(H/t Muncie Free Press) The Indiana Department of Workforce Development has highlights of various county data.

Each county highlight includes population, education, commuting, labor force, industry, income and firm size data, available by clicking on any county on the map.