Category: policy

When Good Bills Go Bad

HF 193’s fall from grace and it’s hoped redemption.

German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck said, “There are two things you don’t want to see being made—sausage and legislation.” Watching the political tug-of-war going on in the Iowa legislature right now over Iowa’s concealed carry permit system, I can see what he meant. Sausage-making usually renders a usable product, however, while legislating might not.
Such is the fate of House File 193, a bill partially reforming Iowa’s weapons permit process. About two weeks ago I included HF193 in my “Funnel Week” report as one of the “good bills” to have survived. How quickly things change.
I reported at that time: “HF 193 would improve the licensing regime in several ways. First, if a sheriff denies a permit he has to give the applicant a written reason why it was denied. Secondly, a denial can be appealed to the Iowa commissioner of public safety (and then to a judge, if needed). Thirdly, it would standardize training requirements statewide. Fourthly, it would grant reciprocity, recognizing weapons permits from other states. Lastly, it would grant immunity to the issuing sheriff or commissioner of public safety for any unlikely harm done by a permit holder.”
That was how the bill read as it was originally introduced by pro-Second Amendment legislator Clel Baudler. However, it emerged from the Iowa House’s Public Safety Committee “sausage factory” much different than it went in. It even came out sporting a new name: HF 746.
HF 746 still leaves discretion on issuing permits to the county sheriff, meaning Iowa will retain its 99 different policies on issuance requirements. It would keep the appeals process from HF 193, but permit denials would be upheld so long as they were “uniformly applied to all nonprofessional permits issued pursuant to standards published by the sheriff[.]”
In other words, all that Iowa’s many anti-Second Amendment sheriffs would have to do is post a list of their “standards” for issuing permits, perhaps requiring applicants be blue-eyed Eskimo amputees who are native-speakers of Portuguese. (It doesn’t say how these standards would be disseminated. Presumably, an 8.5” X 11” photocopy hung in the sheriff’s personal restroom would suffice.) So long as these standards were “uniformly applied” to all applicants, the sheriff doesn’t even need to give you a written reason for the denial and the appeals process would be meaningless.
The new bill was so bad that Gun Owners of America (GOA) said it would consider a legislator’s vote for HF 746 as an “anti-gun” vote. According to GOA, the bill would also:

  • Permanently ban you from getting a permit if you have been convicted of a simple misdemeanor assault or harassment charge (charges that can include such things as “pushing and shoving” cases);
  • Raise the permit age from 18 to 21;
  • Remove some of the confidentiality restrictions on psychiatric records(which means that military veterans suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder could be unduly affected by [HF 746]);
  • Require that an abused spouse attempting to get a permit to protect herself from her abusing husband pass a marksmanship test;
  • Specify that the Lautenberg amendment be strictly enforced, even though strict enforcement of the Lautenberg amendment in other jurisdictions has interpreted its language to reach parents who spank their kids, wives who spit at their husbands, and even spouses who inflict “emotional abuse.”

Since anti-Second Amendment legislators trashed Baudler’s original bill, a few pro-Second Amendment legislators decided to try to return the favor. Representative Kent Sorenson (who had earlier seen his “Vermont Carry” bill go down in flames) and several others, introduced three new amendments to HF 746.
Again according to GOA, these amendments (labeled H 1184, H 1185, and H 1186) would “reaffirm[…] your right to carry a firearm without the gracious permission of the government” (Sorenson’s Vermont Carry), and include “‘Castle doctrine’ language which would allow you to defend yourself, your family, and others without retreating,” and “[l]anguage to move Iowa toward a ‘shall issue’ state in which your concealed carry permit could not be withheld for arbitrary reasons[.]”
The pro-Second Amendment group Iowa Carry reports that Speaker of the House Pat Murphy has stated that he will not allow HF 746 to come to a vote on the house floor with these amendments attached. Iowa Carry encourages concerned gun owners to contact Representative Murphy and tell him to allow a vote on HF 746 WITH the amendments H 1184, H 1185, and H 1186. (Remember, without the amendments this is a bad, bad bill. With the amendments, it’s okay.)
That’s where concealed carry reform in Iowa stands at the moment.

Funnel Week

During each legislative session of the Iowa General Assembly there are what are as known as “funnel weeks” where, if a bill has not been atleast passed out of committee, it is dead for that year. (They may still resurface latter as amendments to other bills, however.) This does not apply to certain spending bills, tax bills and leadership bills. The week of March 9-13 was the sessions first funnel week.

Of the many Iowa bills discussed on this blog, the following ones, good and bad, are still alive:

Bad Bill- House File 179, “An Act including members of the clergy as mandatory reporters of child abuse, and making penalties applicable.” This bill flies in the face of the First Amendment right to free exercise of religion. It would require State determination of who is and who is not “clergy.” Also (as I pointed out in “How About A Little Separation of Church And State?”) this would discourage people from going and talking to their minister, who is “a small town’s first responder for family crises.”

Bad Bill- Senate File 227, “An Act relating to an agreement among the states to elect the president by national popular vote.” Formerly called SSB 1128, this bill would require all of Iowa’s electoral votes be awarded to whichever presidential candidate wins the most votes nationwide, regardless of how they fared in Iowa. In “Iowa Senate Studies ‘Tyranny of the Majority’” I stated that a candidate therefore could “win” Iowa without having a single person in Iowa vote for them.

Good Bill- House File 74, the “Iowa Taxpayer Transparency Act of 2009.” This bill would require the state to create a “searchable budget database website for the public to access the details of the expenditure of state tax revenues and a searchable tax rate database for the public to access the details of each tax rate for all taxing districts in the state.” [Referenced in “3 Good Bills In Des Moines“]

Good Bill- House File 721, “An Act relating to the carrying of a gun in or on a vehicle on a public highway and making penalties applicable.“ Called HF 116 when I wrote about it in “3 Good Bills In Des Moines,” this bill would alter the silly Iowa law that considers a loaded magazine to be a loaded weapon even if it isn’t in a weapon. This was a pain in the neck for shooters who had to spend valuable range time loading and unloading their magazines. If they forgot to unload one, they could become criminals on the drive home.

Good Bill- House File 193, “An Act relating to the issuance of permits to carry weapons and providing an effective date.” Although I didn’t actually endorse HF 193 in “‘Shall Issue’ In Iowa?,” I did mention it. In the eyes of libertarian purists, it certainly wasn’t the best of the five bills to reform Iowa’s concealed weapons permit system, but it’s the last man standing, and it is pretty good.

HF 193 would improve the licensing regime in several ways. First, if a sheriff denies a permit he has to give the applicant a written reason why it was denied. Secondly, a denial can be appealed to the Iowa commissioner of public safety (and then to a judge, if needed). Thirdly, it would standardize training requirements statewide. Fourthly, it would grant reciprocity, recognizing weapons permits from other states. Lastly, it would grant immunity to the issuing sheriff or commissioner of public safety for any unlikely harm done by a permit holder.

There are still plenty of other bad bills and probably even a few good ones that made it through the funnel. Since tax and spending bills aren’t affected by funnels, don’t let go of your wallet just yet.

End The War(s)!

Excerpted from a post by Jeff Yager, one of our friends at Advocates of Liberty:

“One of the major news stories from the last week is that Barack Obama has decided that he will end the war in Iraq. Well, not really. Removing “combat” troops in Iraq is at least a step in the right direction, even if they are baby steps. This policy announcement mirrors what appears to be his stance in another war going on that’s closer to home and perhaps claiming even more lives than the one in the Middle East: The War on Drugs.

“Last week, Eric Holder announced that the raids on medical marijuana users would end. This could mark the beginning of the end for marijuana prohibition. However, if Obama’s Iraq War timeline is any indication at the speed at which he will be delivering his wonderful change, then I wouldn’t go looking for that new bong on Ebay quite yet.”

Read the entire article here.

Time To Tax Our Taxes?

According to the Sioux City Journal, Governor Culver said Tuesday that he “would give ‘serious’ consideration to eliminating federal deductibility as a way to simplify and streamline Iowa’s tax code.” This came just the week after Iowa Senate Democrat leaders announced their support for eliminating federal deductibility. Obviously there is growing support in Des Moines for this idea. What does that mean for Iowa taxpayers?

Federal deductibility simply means that, when figuring your state income taxes, you may deduct from your income the money that you’ve already paid in federal income taxes. For most of us, these federal taxes are withheld from our checks. It is money that we never get to see, touch, deposit or spend, so why on earth should it be counted as income?

For many low and middle-income taxpayers who don’t have mortgage interest or property taxes to deduct from their income, federal deductibility represents a significant savings on their state tax bill.

Federal deductibility is a matter of fairness. To eliminate it would mean allowing the state to charge a tax upon a tax.

Proponents of changing the deduction say that it would simplify the tax code. But one already-existing line on the tax form seems to be a worthwhile complexity to assure fairness. If they really wanted to simplify the tax code, they could eliminate the personal income tax altogether like Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming have already done. Or they could move to a flat rate personal income tax such as Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Utah have.

Proponents also claim that the deduction forces the state to charge higher taxes in order to compensate for its lost income from federal deductibility. This argument could also be made against any other state deduction. The watchdog group Iowans for Tax Relief is fond of pointing out that, when “simplifying” the tax code, any promised tax cuts are short-lived while the lost deductions are usually gone for good.

While the idea of eliminating federal deductibility might be popular with those who charge taxes, it is unpopular with the Iowans who pay the taxes. A January 2009 poll showed that 72.5% of Iowans support maintaining their right to deduct federal tax payments.

If you are a member of this majority of Iowans, you can look up your state legislators here and ask them to retain federal deductibility on state income taxes.

Further reading: Public Interest Institute Policy Study No. 07-3 “Federal Tax Deductibility in Iowa: Who Benefits and Why It Should Continue”

How About A Little Separation Of Church And State?

Christian conservatives and the ACLU get along almost as famously as the Hatfields and McCoys. However, it appears the two may have to grit their teeth and work together to oppose a legislative bill here in Iowa.

The religion clause of the First Amendment reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof[…].” The ACLU focuses on the first part of the clause, the religious right focuses on the second part. (Libertarians like to focus on both parts.)

The ACLU often defends the First Amendment’s supposed “wall of separation” between church and state. The Christian right likes to point out that the First Amendment mentions no such wall and concludes that the ACLU is merely trying to keep Christians from participating fully in the public realm. Now however, Christians may be willing to step into a breach in that wall of separation with the ACLU to fight House File 179.

HF 179, “An Act including members of the clergy as mandatory reporters of child abuse, and making penalties applicable,” was introduced into the Iowa legislature by a Republican and a Democrat. The sponsors are supposedly an evangelical Christian and a Baptist, respectively. The bill would require members of the clergy to be mandatory reporters of child abuse, just like doctors, teachers and cops are now. There is an exception for information obtained during religious confession.

Nobody wants children in Iowa to be abused, so what can the problem be with this proposed law? The ACLU of Iowa lists several.

For one, ACLU-IA explains, the bill makes an exception for “penitential communication”, which means “confession.” Since the Catholic Church is the only one that has formal rules about seeking penitence through a clergy member, religious counseling in other religions would be open game. (This may be why the Catholic Conference is the only religious group to have endorsed the legislation so far.)

Since Iowa is always shorthanded on psychiatrists and family counselors, the minister is often a small town’s first responder for family crises. Do we really want to discourage people from talking to their minister for fear of immediate police involvement?

Another problem is, what is “a member of the clergy?” The bill defines it as “a person authorized by ordination, licensing, or other form of entitlement of the religious group or sect with which the person is affiliated to provide pastoral care and counseling to the group, sect, or others.” Huh?

Some churches have more formal training and accreditation procedures for their clergy than do others. In some churches all members are considered “ministers.” In the end, the state would have to issue some kind of standards on who is and who is not clergy, if the law is to be enforceable. See the wall crumbling?

All in all, the bill would open up a huge can of First Amendment worms regardless of what clause your group likes to focus on. Let’s hope that these two unlikely allies, conservative Christians and the ACLU, like Churchill and Stalin, can crush the common threat. Then they can get back to clobbering each other.

Federal Stimulus Package: Part Two

As debate continues on the federal “stimulus package” in Congress, I continue to discuss four possible objections to it: 1) It won’t work. 2) We can’t afford it. 3) It will be rife with waste, fraud and abuse. 4) It will drive up inflation. In Part One, we saw the poor track record of Keynesian “stimulus.” Let us continue:

2. We can’t afford it.


The Treasury currently lists the total public debt as $10.7 trillion. To clarify how much a trillion dollars is, keep in mind that it took from the founding of our country to 1987 for our government to accumulate ONE trillion in debt. Since 1987 we’ve added another 9.7 trillion.

And the pace is accelerating. We added about a trillion dollars to that debt in 2008 alone, and we’ll probably add almost TWO TRILLION of additional debt in 2009. With levels of debt like this, it’s amazing that Congress should need convincing to NOT add on almost another trillion of debt in a single bill, especially with the coming tsunamis in Social Security and Medicare spending as baby boomers retire.

How much money is in this bill? Here are some factoids from the Heritage Foundation:

  • The $900 billion Senate bill is equal in size to the entire economy of Australia. It is twice the size of oil-rich Saudi Arabia.
  • That is enough money to provide every current high school Junior and Senior student a four-year education at a private university, and still have $150 billion to spare.
  • The House spending bill last week of $819 billion is equivalent to borrowing $10,520 from every family in America. This borrowed money equals what the average family spends on food, clothing, and health care in an entire year.
  • 2010 spending from this bill would more than double New Deal spending in 1936, in today’s dollars. Despite doubling federal spending, unemployment after the New Deal was enacted remained above 20 percent until World War II.

Whether you think the stimulus is a good idea or not, our children will be staggering under the weight of its debt into the foreseeable future.

3. It will be rife with waste, fraud and abuse.

Like most of the Senators and Representatives now voting on it, I have NOT read the stimulus bill. Nor do I need to in order to know that whatever version passes will be full of wasteful spending, dirty deals and political paybacks.

Wasteful spending? How about $88.6 million for new construction for Milwaukee Public Schools? Due to declining enrollment, MPS currently has 15 vacant schools and no plans to build more. I guess no one told Congress.

How about $650 million for the digital television converter box coupon program? Or $248 million for furniture at the new Homeland Security headquarters. Or $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts. While American families and businesses are tightening their belts, Congress has taken theirs off. You can search the bill at http://readthestimulus.org

In this bill there will also be plenty of ways for Congress and President Obama to pay back those who helped them get elected. Some are speculating that, as the bill is currently written, groups that backed the Democrats, such as Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and MoveOn.org could receive millions, if not billions of stimulus dollars. It’s easy to see that the Democrats are as concerned with “stimulating” their political fortunes as they are the economy.

4. It will drive up inflation.

Most of us don’t think much about inflation. It’s just kind of there, like gravity, death and taxes. We should think about it.

Inflation is not the yearly increase in prices. That is just the symptom. Inflation is the increase in the amount of money in circulation every year, causing the money itself to be worth less and less.

It’s not a hard idea to conceptualize. Imagine that you’re holding an authentic 1952 Mickey Mantle baseball card. Worth some dough, right? Now imagine that you wave a magic wand and create 820 billion more. Guess what happened to the value of each one.

Now imagine that you’re holding a dollar bill. Congress is going to wave its magic wand and conjure up 780 billion to 900 billion more just like it. Guess what happens to the value of each one. (I borrowed and paraphrased this analogy from Ron Paul, by the way.)

As this wave of new money washes across the economy it will be worth less and less. This aspect of the “stimulus” bill will hurt everyone in the country, but especially the poor who already have a hard time stretching their dollars without having them shrink more than usual.

Those of us in our 30’s or younger have never had to deal with the ungodly inflation that America had in the 1970’s and 80’s. We might want to prepare ourselves.

So, there are four possible objections to the stimulus package. It won’t work. We can’t afford it. It will be rife with waste, fraud and abuse. It will drive up inflation.

I thought about adding a fifth objection, that the stimulus bill is unconstitutional, that Article I, Section 8 gives Congress no authority to do most of what the bill spells out. But 10th Amendment federalism is already a dead letter. I’ll honor it’s memory by not disturbing it now.

Federal Stimulus Package: Part One

Debate continues on the federal “stimulus package.” The House passed an $820 billion package last week that ballooned to over $900 billion in the Senate. Currently it appears that that might get trimmed to a “svelte” $780 billion. Regardless of what the grand total ends up being, as I see it, there are four reasons not to like the stimulus package: 1) It won’t work. 2) We can’t afford it. 3) It will be rife with waste, fraud and abuse. 4) It will drive up inflation. Let’s consider each of these in turn.
1. It won’t work.
The history of Keynesian “stimulus” is not promising. Daniel J. Mitchell, a Senior Fellow at Cato Institute, lists numerous examples of Keynesian failures. For instance Herbert Hoover, at whose feet the Great Depression is popularly laid, was no free-market libertarian. He increased taxes, imposed protectionism, and increased regulation of private markets. Most importantly to this debate, he increased federal spending by 47% in four years. None of these big government policies kept the Depression from knocking at the door.

Hoover’s replacement was the Keynesian poster child Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The New Deal wrapped federal tentacles around every aspect of private business. The top tax rate was hiked to 79%. FDR boosted government spending by 106% from 1933 to 1940. Still unemployment remained high and economic output didn’t recover until we ramped up during World War II. A recent study by Lee E. Ohanian and Harold Cole of UCLA suggests that New Deal policies prolonged the Depression by 7 years.

The Keynesian idea of tax rebates, wherein people are given money taken from other people, to stimulate the economy has been tried several times. President Ford tried it during the 1970’s and President George W. Bush tried it in 2001 and 2008, all with lackluster results. Bush was also the biggest spending president since LBJ, but his prolific spending apparently hasn’t helped the economy.

Mitchell also uses the experience of Japan to illustrate the folly of stimulus through government spending. He writes: “[T]hroughout the 1990s [Japan] tried to use so-called stimulus packages in an effort to jump-start a stagnant economy. But the only thing that went up was Japan’s national debt, which more than doubled during the decade and is now even far more than Italy’s when measured as a share of GDP. The Japanese economy never recovered, and the 1990s are now known as the ‘lost decade’ in Japan.”

I already wrote about the fallacy of job “creation” by public works projects in “Rebuild Iowa Wisely,” using a favorite passage from Henry Hazlitt, so I won’t rehash it here.

All these reasons and more led a group of 300 of the nations’ top economist (including 3 Nobel laureates) to sign on to a full page ad in national newspapers, denouncing Democrat’s bloated stimulus package. (See ad at the right.)

All signs point to this stimulus as being not only a failure, but a damned expensive one.

3 Good Bills In Des Moines

The Iowa legislature is now in session and there is the usual assortment of bills that will raise taxes and increase regulations on hapless Iowans. But amidst this tidal wave of bad bills are at least three good ones.

House File 74, the “Iowa Taxpayer Transparency Act of 2009,” would mandate that the state establish a website with a “searchable budget database website for the public to access the details of the expenditure of state tax revenues and a searchable tax rate database for the public to access the details of each tax rate for all taxing districts in the state.” In other words, you would be able to look up where the state is spending all its money and also figure up how much all the various levels of government are bilking you on taxes.

Modeled after one of President Obama’s few signature pieces of legislation while in the U.S. Senate, this bill was introduced by Republicans in the Iowa legislature (probably in the hopes that some of Obama’s mojo will rub off on them). Currently nine other states have followed Obama’s lead and set up state government transparency sites of their own. Interestingly it’s only a few Democrats opposing it here in Iowa, presumably because their fingerprints will be all over the wasteful spending that will be discovered because of the website.

The estimated cost would be about $40,000 for the website. (That’s a government estimate, so it will be higher.) But if it helps taxpayers and watchdog groups keep Iowa government on the fiscally straight and narrow path, it will quickly pay for itself.

Ed Falier Jr., President of Iowans for Tax Relief, had this to say about the new bill: “Iowans for Tax Relief agrees with President Obama and we endorse his call for change. The people are the consumer of government, and all Iowans should be able to find out exactly how their tax dollars are being spent. I want to thank the bill sponsors who are here today and ask all other Legislators to honor the agenda of our new President and support swift passage of this bill.”

House File 116 cleans up language in current law dealing with transporting firearms. Let’s say you’re one of the many new gun owners who went out and bought their first gun because you think the Obama Administration is going to ban them soon. You go to the local shooting range to practice. Knowing that it is illegal to transport a LOADED weapon in your vehicle, you pull the magazine of ammo out of the gun, put the gun in its case and into the trunk. You toss the magazine into your glove compartment and head home.

You just broke the law! According to the way it’s worded now, a loaded detachable-magazine is considered a loaded weapon, even if it’s not IN the weapon. HF 116 would change that, making it harder for recreational shooters to inadvertently become criminals.

Also dealing with firearms is House File 86, “An Act relating to the justifiable use of reasonable force.” Under current law, Iowans have a duty to flee from criminal attack before being “justified” to use deadly force outside their home. The proposed law would specify that “a person has no duty to retreat, and has the right to stand the person’s ground, and meet force with force, if the person believes reasonable force, including deadly force, is necessary under the circumstances to prevent death or serious injury to oneself or a third party, or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.”

So good guys could legally stand their ground, and it would become the criminal’s “duty” to run like hell. Often called the “Castle Doctrine” (because “a man’s home is his castle”), it is an old concept based on English common law.

Despite cries from alarmists that such laws (which they cleverly call “Make My Day Laws”) will lead to constant bloodbaths, at least 19 other states have adopted Castle Doctrine laws of one sort or another without any problems.

Since these three bills only benefit taxpayers and common citizens, there is a risk that they will be pushed aside in favor of bills that are supported by powerful special interests. Please write your State Representative and ask him or her to support one or all of these bills. You can find your Rep here.

Iowa City: First Things Last

On January 22 an unidentified man assaulted a 7-year-old girl outside of an Iowa City school. The man ( an adult, black male with a shaved head, 5 feet 9 inches and of medium build) ran off and is still at large.

Watching the local evening news, I’ve noticed similar stories of street crime coming from Iowa City (I.C.) on a pretty regular basis, at least every month. Mine is a fairly rural area where such events still make the news. The crime scenarios coming from I.C. are usually pretty similar: a pedestrian victim is attacked on or near a street or walking trail. I wondered if I.C. has a crime problem and, if so, why?

Iowa City, as I’ve noted in other posts, is probably the most liberal town in Iowa. This is no doubt due to it being home to the University of Iowa (UI). The University is the city’s biggest employer and is so marbled throughout the community it’s hard to tell were UI ends and the city government begins.

What about I.C. is so liberal? I.C. has led the way in new “health regulations,” from public smoking bans to drinking bans. I.C. has been most noticeably supporting (and licking it’s chops about) the prospect of a new Iowa law allowing cities to impose income taxes on it’s citizens. It is proudly home to one of Iowa’s few remaining abortion mills.

The community’s central pillar, UI, is a typically liberal public university. It embraces “diversity” in all its forms, except for white skin. When a black female student was arrested for sending threatening emails in 2000, UI’s then Vice President and spokeswoman Ann Rhodes famously declared that white guys between 25 and 55 are the root of most evil.

The instructor of a required course at UI forced students to watch videos of gay sodomy, even after several protested. (Gays should be allowed to do whatever they want, just don’t force our kids to watch it!) The UI school of law is currently facing a lawsuit alleging that it discriminates against conservatives. (We libertarians might want in on that action.)

Back to crime in I.C.: I wanted to know if the stories I was always seeing on the news were just anecdotal or did I.C. have crime rates higher than others. Looking online I found that neighboring Cedar Rapids had per capita crime rates higher than I.C. in all categories except for forcible rape and aggravated assault.

Believing that these two crimes, particularly rape, might be problematic for college towns, I decided to compare I.C. with the towns housing Iowa’s two other public universities, Ames and Cedar Falls. I used crime statistics for 2006 from areaconnect.com.

Of the three towns, Iowa City had the highest per capita rates in forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, and vehicle theft. Ames, home of Iowa State University, led in burglary and larceny theft. University of Northern Iowa’s hometown of Cedar Falls didn’t lead in any category. (That was surprising since Cedar Falls borders Waterloo, which had relatively high crime rates across the board.) None of the three college towns had any murders in 2006. Confirming my suspicion, all three college towns were above the national average on forcible rape.

I.C. has higher per capita violent crime rates than other similar Iowa college towns. If I was an I.C. taxpayer I would be angry that my city government always had the time and resources to harass smokers, bar owners and Wal-Mart, but can’t keep the streets safe.

If the local government won’t defend its citizens, you would think that they would at least allow them to defend themselves. Not so!

While Iowa allows citizens who have passed background checks and safety courses to apply for a permit to carry concealed firearms, it is up to the county sheriff whether or not to issue the permit. Some sheriffs simply refuse to issue them to anyone. This map from IowaCarry.org shows the issuance policy of each county. As you can see, Johnson County (of which I.C. is county seat and largest city) is red, meaning it is all but impossible for a citizen to get a permit. Of course even if you do get a concealed carry permit, you can’t carry your gun on campus. Only deranged killers like Gang Lu are allowed to do that.

There are reams of statistics suggesting that an armed citizenry lowers crime rates. Denying citizens the means to defend themselves is the exact wrong answer.

A study by the Carter Justice Department found that of attempted rapes, 32% were actually committed. If the woman was armed with a gun or a knife only 3% of the attempted rapes were successful.

When faced with a spree of rape in the 1960s, Orlando Florida set up a course to teach women how to use guns. It was highly publicized in the local press. Orlando’s rate of rape dropped by 88% in one year (while remaining constant in the rest of the state). Those in I.C., who pride themselves on “empowering” women, would never stand for such a course.

As a libertarian, I disagree with liberals on matters of limited government and economic freedom, but I AGREE with them on many matters of personal freedom. So I don’t mean to pick on liberals in general or Iowa City in particular. Rest assured, if I see evidence of a major Iowa town that is as consistently and buffoonishly conservative as Iowa City is liberal (perhaps one that finally outlaws that oh-so-phallic Chapstick) I’ll let you know, dear reader.

In the mean time, Iowa City residents and city council members need to decide whether Wal-Mart or the thugs roaming its streets represent a greater threat to the populace. They might want to ask the parents of a certain 7-year-old girl.

Rebuild Iowa Wisely

As I noted previously, I just started reading the classic “Economics In One Lesson” by Henry Hazlitt. Although it was originally written in 1946, the subject matter seems to be torn from today’s headlines. Chief among these are the many “make-work” projects being advanced by the ruling Democrats.

Not to be outdone by President Obama’s national public works plan, our own Iowa Governor Chet Culver has trotted out his own $700 million infrastructure plan. “In an effort to stimulate economic growth during this recession, create good private sector jobs, and address unmet infrastructure needs, I propose the creation of the Rebuild Iowa Infrastructure Authority,” Culver said in his recent Condition of the State speech. “But when I say infrastructure, I’m not just talking about bridges and roads. I mean all infrastructure: rail, trails, public buildings, water and sewer treatment facilities, the utility grid, and telecommunications, too.”

After the 2008 floods and tornadoes, there is definitely no shortage of infrastructure that needs fixed. But what about the two primary goals, stimulating economic growth and creating jobs, that Culver listed even before “address[ing] unmet infrastructure needs?” Culver boasted that “for every $100 million spent on highway construction alone, more than 4,000 new jobs are created!” He predicts that if the legislature spends as much as he hopes, 28,000 jobs would be created.

Will any bill like this really “stimulate economic growth” and “create good private sector jobs?” Economist Hazlitt would say, “NO.”

In the chapter “Public Works Mean Taxes,” Hazlitt uses the erection of an otherwise unneeded bridge as his example of a typical government make-work project. He writes: “It is true that a particular group of bridgeworkers may receive more employment than otherwise. But the bridge has to be paid for out of taxes. For every dollar that is spent on the bridge a dollar will be taken away from taxpayers. If the bridge costs $10 million the taxpayers will lose $10 million. They will have that much taken away from them which they would otherwise have spent on the things they needed most.

“Therefore, for every public job created by the bridge project a private job has been destroyed somewhere else. We can see the men employed on the bridge. We can watch them at work. The employment argument of the government spenders becomes vivid, and probably for most people convincing. But there are other things that we do not see, because, alas, they have never been permitted to come into existence. They are the jobs destroyed by the $10 million taken from the taxpayers. All that has happened, at best, is that there has been a diversion of jobs because of the project. More bridge builders; fewer automobile workers, television technicians, clothing workers, farmers.”

In other words, if you need a bridge (or park or community building), then build it. But do so because you need it, not to “stimulate” the economy or create jobs. It will do neither.

The necessity of many of the projects covered in Culver’s plan is unquestionable. Iowa’s infrastructure took a pounding last year. But some of the projects should give taxpayers pause.

Mass transit projects such as “light rail” are often expensive boondoggles for governments that build them. (This fact was even lampooned in an episode of The Simpsons wherein an unscrupulous traveling salesman sells the gullible Springfielders on the idea of building a monorail.) I don’t know if Culver is referring to light rail when he mentions rail, but it wouldn’t surprise me. There’s been talk about it.

Even Iowa Public Radio would get some of Culver’s $700 million largesse, as would the governor‘s residence.

Culver pointed out that “unlike the federal government, [Iowa] can’t deficit spend. And, we’re not going to tax our way out of this, like California or New York.” Culver instead proposes to fund the $700 million by selling bonds. That means $700 million in state debt that will be need to be repaid over 20 years. So Culver does plan to “tax our way out of this,” although through delayed taxation rather than immediate taxation. Thanks, you Big Lug!

We have $620 million in “rainy day funds” and now is obviously a good time to use some of it. Governor Culver proposes taking $43 million from the fund: $20 million for property tax replacement, $10 million in “Jumpstart” assistance, $5 million in non-profit assistance, $5 million for individual unmet needs, $2 million for the Rebuild Iowa office and $1 million for skills training. Why not withdraw a little more and skip the bond debt?

I don’t doubt that Iowa needs to spend a lot of money to rebuild. I just hope that the Iowa legislature spends that money carefully and wisely.