Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog

Trump the (convenient) conservative

May 10, 2017

US politics
Erick Erickson has the proper attitude toward Donald Trump:

I maintain a healthy skepticism toward President Trump’s Administration. I must concede he has surrounded himself with a lot of good, competent people. His appointments within the executive branch have been stellar. I must also concede that increasingly many of his gut level reactions are recognizably conservative. But I also think his Twitter behavior, lack of strategic planning, protectionism, and strong man rhetoric do him more harm than good. His White House political operation, being the dog that caught the car, now thinks it can play traffic cop, and I see no concerted effort under way to mitigate leftwing energies headed into 2018.

All that said, and said largely to avoid the inevitable arrows and rocks thrown when saying something nice about President Trump, let me also say this.

Winston Churchill said of himself, “I am not a pillar of the [Church of England] but a buttress – I support it from the outside.” Donald Trump is serving, to various degrees, as a buttress to conservatism.

The media has fixated on how little his administration has gotten done. I think they should be fixated on how many things he has rolled back. It is hard to advance down the field when you’re reshaping the field. It is hard to move forward while rewinding. The President is systematically undoing much of the last eight years on the regulatory front. He has enabled solid conservative political operatives to go into the executive branch and undo many of the regulations Barack Obama’s merry band of leftwing progressives championed. He has issued executive orders to mitigate damage caused by Barack Obama. To the extent he has signed legislation, he has signed legislation to repeal various Obama era regulations and statutorily prohibit such regulations being enacted in the future.

That’s a pretty big win by advancing no fronts, but rather shrinking previously expanded fronts.

Then there is the judiciary. The President is sending up a series of extremely conservative jurists to pile into the federal judiciary. These are, more often than not, men and women on the young side who have established conservative pedigrees. Their paper trails make it less likely they will go wobbly in the future.

What Donald Trump cannot do, they will do. They will ensure Washington stays in check and the constitution does not breathe.

On taxation, the President wants to lower the corporate income tax rate to 15%, which should have long ago happened. It is a pretty bold plan for restructuring the tax rate and we should not ignore his alterations to the personal income tax rate as well. Though it will be difficult to get it all passed through congress as designed, it is a very bold step in the right direction.

Government spending, in light of the tax plan, needs to be reconsidered and constrained. I still believe debt and deficit matter. Likewise, the President continues to ignore his promise to religious voters on the matters of religious liberty that most affect people of faith today. There is much to do and many improvements that can be made.

But no man is perfect. On top of that, we should all acknowledge that the American voters had enough of career politicians making promises and breaking them. Instead, they chose a complete outsider with no government experience reasoning he could be no worse. To be sure, he makes different mistakes, has different errors, and is more prone to the impolitic, but is he really worse than those who came before him screwing up everything in their wake?

Thus far it seems not. It just seems different.

We should be willing to hold the President accountable and criticize where warranted. But we should also be willing to praise where warranted. And on multiple fronts the President is serving as a buttress to the conservative agenda. But for him, in these areas, the walls would collapse. He should be applauded for that.

I am starting to subscribe to the theory that compares Trump not to Bernie Sanders (each party’s leading outsider), but to Bill Clinton. Recall how Clinton, shall we say, evolved between 1993, when he was elected with a Democratic Congress, and 2001, after six years of a Republican Congress. Clinton has always been about Clinton, and Trump is about Trump. Trump has a Republican Congress, so he’s acting like a Republican. There’s a message there about the 2018 elections.
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Two votes for the Kooyenga plan

May 10, 2017

Wisconsin politics
The gas and income tax plan of state Rep. Dale Kooyenga (R–Brookfield) has at least two supporters.

First, UW–Milwaukee Prof, Jay Miller:

Let’s start with a simple proposition. The purpose of taxation is to raise revenue for government to function. Period. Yet legislators continually distort this proposition by using the tax laws to reward or penalize all sorts of behavior. Hence, the mind-numbing complexity we have today at both the federal and state level.

To the rescue comes Rep. Dale Kooyenga (R-Brookfield). He and his GOP colleagues in the Assembly have struck a blow for simplicity by proposing a tax and transportation plan for Wisconsin that is both bold and long overdue.

The plan would shrink, over the next decade or so, our four income tax brackets that currently range from 4% to 7.65% to a single flat tax rate of 3.95%. At the same time, it would wipe out (or reduce) a variety of tax credits, fees and the partial capital-gain exclusion that differentiates between sale of farm assets and other types of capital gains. To top it off, the plan also would eliminate the execrable state alternative minimum tax. (Wisconsin is one of only a handful of states with such a tax.)

All these special provisions that pockmark our tax laws bedevil the ordinary taxpayer, if not providers of tax software and professional tax preparers. Ironically, they often don’t achieve their intended purpose of enhancing economic activity or someone’s notion of fairness, but stymie it because of the time and expense spent trying to decipher what they mean. Good riddance, I say.

The Legislative Fiscal Bureau projects that the tax cuts, when fully implemented, would cost the state over $2 billion annually. This is a bad thing? That means over $2 billion more in taxpayers’ pockets to invest or spend, as they see fit. Moreover, the cuts could lead the way for a possible influx of small business owners and entrepreneurs from, say, financially beleaguered Illinois who would add to the state coffers with new taxpaying jobs.

Critics claim that the net result for some middle-class taxpayers is that their income taxes actually would increase (due to the loss of credits, etc.). In response, Kooyenga wisely has said he is willing to make adjustments to ensure that doesn’t happen. The larger point remains this: regardless of whatever tweaking is warranted, the underlying concept is a sound one that ought to go forward.

For 2017, the Tax Foundation ranks Wisconsin’s overall business tax climate 39th out of 50 states — and its individual income tax burden 43rd. I might add that this dubious distinction holds despite the fact that Scott Walker has been governor for the last six and one-half years.

Compare Wisconsin with two states commonly viewed as being progressive or at least politically moderate: Washington (two Democratic U.S. senators, a Democratic governor and legislature partially controlled by Democrats) and New Hampshire (two Democratic U.S. senators). Neither has an individual income tax except, in the case of New Hampshire, on investment income. Although Washington charges a steep sales tax, New Hampshire has none at all. Not coincidentally, they both rank in the top 20 with respect to overall business tax climate.

Wisconsin need not go that far to be competitive, but it must do a lot better than it is now. The income tax part of Kooyenga’s plan offers that opportunity.

Insofar as the rest of the plan is concerned, its virtues are a bit more mixed, but still positive. It would apply the state’s 5% sales tax on gas, while reducing the per-gallon gas tax by 4.8 cents and the state mandate that now requires retailers to mark up gasoline prices. Some say the net effect would not lead to a price increase at the pump, whereas others, including Walker, dispute that.

The particular worry is that over the short term, taxes might increase in the aggregate because the income tax reductions would phase in over a longer period. That is especially worrisome to Walker because it now appears he plans to run for a third term as governor next year.

What motivates Kooyenga and others to impose a sales tax on gas, however, is to raise revenue in the least painful way, and reduce borrowing, for long-deferred road repairs. The problem with Wisconsin’s habit of more and more borrowing is that now repayment of debt consumes over 20% of the state’s revenues.

Here again, however, Walker seems to be interested in the short term, i. e, November 2018.Toward that end, borrowing can be disguised more easily than a tax increase, even one that is potentially offset by other tax and cost reductions. (Walker has proposed $500 million more in borrowing in his budget proposal to partially close a shortfall in the transportation fund.)

Another intriguing part of the plan is to seek federal approval for collecting tolls on interstate highways in Wisconsin. That, too, could go toward defraying road construction costs. Why not have drivers (or their employers) who actually use those roads — including a large number of out-of-staters — bear a portion of such costs?

Of course, most Democrats cringe at the notion of an income tax cut. Even some Republicans scoff at Kooyenga’s plan, such as Sen. Luther Olsen (R-Ripon), who compared it to “Rube Goldberg.” Wrong, Senator Olsen. What we have now is of the Rube Goldberg variety, with punishing taxes, blinding complexity and overreliance on ultimately self-destructive borrowing. Kooyenga’s plan starts to lead us out of this morass. Kudos to him.

Next, gas station owner Krist Atanasoff:

Through hard work over many years I’ve earned the trust of my repeat customers and I am now the proud owner of 37 gas stations in Wisconsin and 36 gas stations in Michigan. The gas I sell at all the stations comes from the same wholesaler, so the cost is identical in both states. It would be a reasonable expectation that the Michigan price of fuel would be higher since the Michigan gas tax (which does include sales tax) is five cents higher than Wisconsin’s gas tax.

However, the opposite is true. Our gas stations in Wisconsin sell fuel at a higher price than Michigan.You read that right.

Despite Michigan’s higher tax, our prices in Wisconsin are higher. Today the price of our fuel in in Land O’Lakes, WI is $2.41 versus our station 8 miles away in Watersmeet, MI where our gas is $2.25, a 16 cent difference.

Trust me, I’d like to offer lower prices to my Wisconsin customer. But a dumb state law forbids it.

So why are the prices in Wisconsin higher? The Minimum Markup law.

Wisconsin is one of two states in the country that specifically identify and protect the profit margin on the sale of gas. The Wisconsin law mandates a 9.18 percent markup. I’d like to compete with my peer s , not only on cleanliness and service, but on price. But I can’t.

Fortunately, the recently-announced Assembly Transportation Reform plan “The Road to a Flat Tax,” would at least lower the state minimum markup law to three percent. This is significant drop and will absolutely positively lower the price Wisconsin residents pay for gas. I assure you, at my gas stations consumers will see lower prices at our pumps compared to today’s pre-reform prices if Wisconsin adopts the Assembly Transportation Plan.

In 2011 Wisconsin Republicans passed Act 10 to not only fix a pressing budget gap, but to initiate long-term reforms that would strengthen budgets for the long-term. The Assembly transportation plan is the Act 10 of the transportation fund. The plan corrects bad policies relating to an extremely lucrative and unique advantage for Wisconsin’s petroleum industry which also cost taxpayers significant money.

As a petroleum marketer, I don’t want the crony capitalist protections so many in our industry want. I just want to compete without government favor.

Kooyenga’s plan includes a $2 billion tax cut, as opposed to Walker’s less than $600 million tax cut. In this chronically overtaxed state, guess which tax plan is preferable.
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Presty the DJ for May 10

May 10, 2017

Music
You may remember a couple weeks ago I noted the first known meeting of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Today in 1963, upon the advice of George Harrison, Decca Records signed the Rolling Stones to a contract.

Four years to the day later, Stones Keith Richard, Mick Jagger and Brian Jones celebrated by … getting arrested for drug possession.

I noted the 54th anniversary May 2 of WLS in Chicago going to Top 40. Today in 1982, WABC in New York (also owned by ABC, as one could conclude from their call letters) played its last record, which was …

Four years later, the number one song in America was, well, inspired by, though not based on, a popular movie of the day:

(more…)
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Preexisting demagoguery

May 9, 2017

US politics
Politico reports, in contrast to what you’ve read:

Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price on Sunday defended the health care legislation just approved by the House against charges that many people with pre-existing conditions could have trouble getting insurance or see their premiums rise.

Asked about the staunch opposition to the bill, particularly its provisions dealing with pre-existing conditions, Price said on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “What I believe they are not recognizing is this is a different and, we believe, better way” to cover those individuals.

“I think it’s absolutely true that the president is fulfilling his promise to the American people,” Price said, “and that is to make certain that every single American has access to the kind of coverage that they want for themselves and for their family, not that their government forces them to buy, and make certain that we ensure that individuals with pre-existing illnesses and injuries and conditions are covered, but covered in a way that they want. Again, not that Washington forces them.”

“Look, nobody wants folks who have a pre-existing illness or injury not to be covered,” Price went on. “We want to make certain that we can do it at a lower price and broader choices for patients. So, that again, they’re able to see the doctor that they want to see. They’re able to go to the hospital that they want to go to and to the clinic that they want to go to, not that Washington forces them to participate in.”

The goal, Price said, “is make certain that every single person has health coverage.”

“Our desire is to make certain that we have a system that works for patients,” he said, “not for government, not for insurance companies, but for patients. That’s the goal.”

Need more explanation? (Capitals, boldface and italics are the writer’s.)
Let me begin this post by stating I am a licensed independent insurance broker with no allegiance to a single company or lobbyist group. I represent my CLIENTS and MYSELF and my goal is to find suitable and affordable insurance products that people will want so I can make a living and so that I will have happy customers who will refer me to friends and family. That is my only agenda. If people don’t have good insurance options and don’t want to buy it I don’t win. Basically if they don’t win I don’t win. …
What exactly are “Pre-Existing Conditions”? The Democrats would have you believe it includes hangnails and that those mean Republicans are going to have everyone evaluated for hangnails and if they find one on you they will throw you off of your current insurance. This is of course not true. First off “Pre Existing Conditions” don’t even apply to about 85% of the population. If you are in one of the following categories “Pre Existing Conditions” don’t even apply to you.

If you have Medicare or a Medicare Advantage Plan (65+Seniors & under 65 Disabled)

If you have Military health benefits through VA benefits or Tri Care

If you have Medicaid

If you have insurance through your employer and do not allow a gap of 63 days between your old plan and your new plan

If you have individual insurance and do not allow a gap of 63 days from your old plan to you new plan

So if you are in one of these categories you cannot be underwritten for those types of plans.

So What are Pre Existing Conditions then and who DO they apply to?

Now that we have covered who Pre Existing conditions DON’T apply to and now that we have determined that the majority of the country will be unaffected by this change in the law lets look at what Pre Existing conditions are who WILL be affected by the changes in the law.

Who needs to pay attention to the Pre existing condition law changes?

People who are uninsured and have gone more than 63 days without insurance

People who allow their insurance to expire and do not secure new insurance coverage within 63 days

Remember these are NOT Seniors, Disabled, Medicare, Medicare Advantage, VA benefits, Tri Care or Medicaid people. It also NEVER applies to a group health insurance plan through an employer. This is for private individual or family insurance only for non disabled people who make ABOVE poverty level. These are NOT old people, disabled people or poor people.

What the heck are “Pre Existing Conditions” anyways?!

Pre Existing Conditions are not hangnails. Heck, they are not even high cholesterol. Pre Existing conditions are major illnesses/conditions like Cancer, Aids or Diabetes. Epilepsy is a condition that some companies will cover and others will not. Some companies will deny an entire policy based on Pre Existing conditions, while other companies might only impose a rider on the condition itself and cover the rest of your care (Ex: you injured your back, chiropractic or orthopedic benefits may be limited). Some companies may issue a policy but have a waiting period until the Pre Existing condition is covered.

OK, now that we know that, some people may be ok with a limited policy but other people who are sick and need immediate care might need something more. What are their options?

WHERE DO THE FOLKS WITH PRE EXISTING CONDITIONS GO?

So what happens to these folks with Pre Existing conditions? Do we send them to Mars? Do we leave them to die in the streets like Bernie Sanders says? Of course not. There will be “High Risk Pool Insurance Plans” that cover people with Pre Existing conditions available under the New GOP health law.

What are “High Risk Pool Plans”?

High Risk Pool plans are not a totally new concept. Before Obamacare, High Risk Pool plans were available in 33 states in the US. The problem was 17 states did not have this option. The plans were largely successful in the states that did have them. Under the new Republican all 50 states will have one. The High Risk Pool plans are there for people who get denied by an insurance company for a Pre Existing condition or have a rider issued for that Pre Existing condition. The person will receive a letter of denial from the insurance company with instructions on how to apply for the High Risk Pool plan. The plans will be run by the states with block grant funding from the Federal Government. This insurance will be GUARANTEED ISSUE and IMMEDIATE COVERAGE for the Pre Existing condition and other healthcare needs.

So alas, NOBODY WITH PRE EXISTING CONDITIONS WILL BE LEFT IN THE COLD WITHOUT COVERAGE.

States will even have premium assistance available for lower income members to help afford the monthly payments.

So what else is in this bill besides Pre Existing conditions modifications and who will it affect?

Because the bill repeals Obamacare, the $700 billion that was stolen from Medicare & Medicare Advantage will be returned to those programs. The folks on Medicare & Medicare Advantage (Seniors & Disabled) will be helped.

Insurance companies will be able to offer a wider variety of plans. Because the bill repeals Obamacare’s taxes on insurers and repeals the “mandated benefits” packages people will once again be able to choose plans with higher ow lower deductibles and choose what they want their plans to cover. This will stop people from paying for things they will never use (pediatric dental, maternity care, etc.) You can still get those covered if you want them but you will no longer have to buy plans that include benefits you will never use.

Abortions are no longer mandatory coverage.

New applications for Medicaid will only include people UNDER THE POVERTY LEVEL. Under Obamacare, people above poverty level were allowed to get Medicaid under the Medicaid expansions in states that took the expansions. This will cease. It will not kick off the people who got Medicaid from the expansions though. They will be “grandfathered in”.

If you go more than 63 days without insurance or let your current plan expire and do not get new coverage within 63 days, an insurance can choose to charge you 30% more on your premium. It pays to keep your insurance if you can. This does not mean that you WILL be charged 30% more, it means that they CAN choose to. Keep in mind though there will be more competition for your business so companies will try to keep rates low to get new customers.

Premiums will be lower overall for most people. Especially if you are healthy or younger. With more plan choices and less pressure on insurance companies to cover large bills from extremely sick members, the premiums will plummet for a good portion of the population.

Tax Credits will help people afford their insurance. Republicans have included a “Tax Credit” system based on age and filing status. For example a single 30 year old male would get a $2,000 tax credit to help with healthcare costs.

Health Savings Accounts will be expanded. Limits for HSA deductions will increase under this plan. This will lower your tax burden.

Association Health Plans will be allowed again. Association plans are group health plans from organizations such as fraternal organizations, professional organizations etc. You or your family cannot be denied coverage for Pre Existing conditions on these plans. These are wonderful for folks who don’t get insurance through their employer. Group rates are sometimes lower than individual rates for health insurance.

CONCLUSION

In Conclusion this bill stops robbing Peter to pay Paul. It is much more fair in pricing and rewards responsible consumer behavior. It does all of this while still protecting our poorest, sickest and most vulnerable consumers.
U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R–Washington):

Hearing late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s emotional monologue this week about his son’s condition and his family’s experience in the moments after his birth, I had a flashback to the day my son was born and we learned he had Down syndrome.

My husband and I had a lot of questions about Cole’s future. Whether he’d have health care shouldn’t have had to be one of them. When you’re facing years of doctor’s appointments, you want to know that having a preexisting condition, such as an extra 21st chromosome or a heart defect, won’t prevent you or your loved ones from accessing the care you need.

Protections for children such as Cole Rodgers and Billy Kimmel have long existed, as they should. And despite what people are saying, House Republicans aren’t seeking to strip these protections — or anyone’s protections — away.

It’s the people we love — our children, friends and neighbors — who are the inspiration behind our American Health Care Act, which we passed in the House on Thursday.

We’re working hard to build a health-care system that puts the American people back at the center of their health decisions. We’ve had conversations — tough conversations — with people from all walks of life, and we’ve passed a bill that we’re confident will improve lives.

When Obamacare was introduced, Republicans and Democrats knew the status quo wasn’t working. But Republicans rejected the notion that to help 2 million people with preexisting conditions get access to care, we needed a 2,000-page bill that transformed one-sixth of the economy.

At each point of our process to repeal Obamacare, we have not lost sight of our responsibility to the most vulnerable in our communities. Safety nets and protections are important and must be maintained for those who need them most. Our plan accomplishes this mission in two key ways: by guaranteeing that access to health coverage can’t be denied for people with preexisting conditions, and by empowering states to innovate with new models for better patient outcomes at a lower cost.

This bill isn’t perfect. It doesn’t include every single component I wanted. But it came down to the AHCA or the continued disaster of Obamacare, which was an easy choice. The AHCA is a major improvement, because a federal one-size-fits-all approach to health care isn’t the answer. A major feature of our plan is returning control to states, through both funding and reducing red tape, which empowers them to innovate and to stabilize costs.

With Obamacare, our health- insurance system relies on younger, healthier people subsidizing the costs of the older and sicker. As a result, insurance costs consistently increase to cover the costs of people who are considered “high-risk,” namely those who are sick or who have preexisting conditions. High-risk pools and reinsurance programs at the state level address this concern and have been successful in the past. Our plan establishes a program to provide federal resources for states to create high-risk pools, reduce out-of-pocket costs or promote better access to services.

States know better than the federal government how to allocate and manage resources to address the needs of their people. Our plan allows states to serve and provide financial support directly to vulnerable populations, including people with preexisting conditions. We’ve seen this system work before — just look at Maine. After the state created an “invisible” high-risk pool (“invisible” because it did not cordon off people with preexisting conditions from the traditional market) and relaxed its premium rating rules in 2011, people with preexisting conditions continued to have access to health care and their premiums were cut in half. Young and healthy people could finally afford to enter the market, and prices stabilized even further. This approach was more personal, reasonable and innovative than anything a bureaucrat in D.C. could have imagined.

To me, protecting people with preexisting conditions isn’t just good policy — it’s a personal mission.

The American Health Care Act may or may not be what Congress should pass. But there is no question that staying with ObamaCare is not an option. eHealth debunks myths:

Myth #1: Obamacare could simply be left as is.

In fact, the cost of coverage under Obamacare has been spiraling out of control. People who get subsidies under Obamacare may be shielded from the true cost of coverage, but unsubsidized middle-income Americans have seen their premiums increase 99% since 2013, the year before Obamacare took effect.

The number one reason for these spiraling high costs is because young people have not signed up for Obamacare. Having young, healthy people insured is critical to the success of Obamacare and they’re enrolling at about half the anticipated rate.

In addition to this, several major health insurance companies have pulled out of the Obamacare market in the past year, saying it’s too difficult to do business under current rules.

Myth #2: People with pre-existing conditions will lose their coverage or pay more.

In fact, people who have health insurance and want to make changes to their coverage during open enrollment or after a qualifying life event (birth of a child, job loss, marriage, death, divorce, move, etc.) cannot be charged more for health insurance because of a pre-existing condition.

That said, if someone went uninsured and waited until they got sick to enroll in a health insurance plan, the MacArthur amendment to the AHCA gives states the authority to try to prevent that from happening.

One of the things a state could do, under this amendment, would be to allow insurance companies to charge people with pre-existing conditions more money for their health insurance, if they’ve been uninsured for an extended period of time.

Those higher charges can last a maximum of one year.

The AHCA also provides $138 billion to help states cover the high cost of caring for people with pre-existing medical conditions.

Myth #3: It takes private health insurance away from people.

In fact, while some people could find that they are no longer eligible for Medicaid, many Medicaid enrollees who are currently ineligible for subsidies to purchase health insurance on their own, may be able to receive tax credits and buy their own coverage under the AHCA.

It’s also important to note that more people who are eligible for Obamacare opt out, instead of enrolling. 6.5 million pay Obamacare’s uninsured tax penalty and another 12.7 million file hardship exemptions. By comparison, only 18 million people have signed up for private insurance under Obamacare.

The AHCA also includes massive Medicaid reform that gives states the authority and flexibility to manage their Medicaid programs more efficiently to meet their population’s needs. One example of the success of this approach is in Indiana, where Medicaid reforms have led to higher satisfaction, increased use of preventive care, and a reduction in E.R. visits, all at a reduced cost. …

BONUS MYTH: The AHCA is not the law. The United States Senate will make changes. Many pundits speculate that the Senate will provide more funding for Medicaid and lower-income Americans.

As I wrote, this, or what the Senate comes up with, or the compromise between the AHCA and the Senate version may or may not be the correct approach to ending ObamaCare. But a debate about the AHCA should take place with facts, not fearmongering (which is the only thing Democrats are good at) and lying.
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Presty the DJ for May 9

May 9, 2017

Music
The number one single today in 1964 was performed by the oldest number one artist to date:

The number one single today in 1970:

The number one British single today in 1981:

(more…)
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Creative class claptrap

May 8, 2017

Culture, US politics
I have written here previously about the false promise of community development strategies based on attracting the so-called “creative class.”

Now, its discoverer finds problems, as the Washington Post reports:

Richard Florida is rethinking things.

Since publishing the best-selling book “The Rise of the Creative Class” in 2002, Florida has used his considerable speaking and writing heft to push mayors, urban planners and company executives to cater to tech-savvy young professionals.

His argument, in short, was that in order to save themselves from post-industrial ruin, cities needed to attract the best young talent in computer programming, engineering, finance, media and the arts so their towns could build economies based upon the venture capital and start-up companies the new workforce would produce.

Often taking a cue from Florida’s mantra, real estate developers dialed up hip but tiny apartments designed for creative millennials and outfitted them with coffee bars, gyms, pool tables, bocce courts, pool decks and fire pits. Mayors invested in better sidewalks, bike lanes and business incubators aimed at nurturing the new arrivals and keeping them around longer.

Somewhere along the way, however, Florida realized that the workers he so cajoled were eating their cities alive.

In places like New York, San Francisco, Seattle and arguably Washington, the mostly white, young and wealthy “creative class” has so fervently flocked to urban neighborhoods that they have effectively pushed out huge populations of mostly blue-collar and often poor or minority residents.

“I think, to be honest, I and others didn’t realize the contradictory effect,” Florida said Tuesday at a panel discussion. He said he realizes now that prompting creative types to cluster in small areas clearly drove living costs to such heights that low-income and oftentimes middle-income households have been forced elsewhere, creating a divide he did not anticipate.

“We are cramming ourselves into this limited amount of space. And at the same time that the super-affluent, the advantaged, the creative class — we could go on and on [with what to call them] — the techies, global super-rich, absentee investors, invest in these cities, they push others out … and it carves these divides,” he said.

How much of the boom American, Canadian and European cities have experienced can be attributed to Florida’s influence is difficult to discern, but the popularity of his book and its sequels, along with his founding of the CityLab website in partnership with Atlantic Media, plus numerous speaking gigs, made him a household name in planning and business circles. In 2007, for instance, he shared a star turn with futurist Alvin Toffler and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Thomas Friedman at a National Conference of the Creative Economy, hosted by the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority.

Last week’s event, held at Union Market in Northeast Washington, drew a crowd of more than 500 people and must have felt like something of a reunion for people who have reshaped Washington since dysfunction and governmental malfeasance drove Congress to temporarily put the city under the authority of a financial control board in 1995. Two former city administrators and three D.C. planning directors attended, dating back to former mayor Anthony Williams’s administration.

But as inequality has deepened in top cities, writers on class and poverty have begun to take sharper aim at Florida’s theory, calling the “creative class” a fallacy and a failed experiment, not because he was wrong that investing in cities would help draw the creative class, but because he argued that doing so would benefit cities at large.

So although he still champions investments in urban areas, at the panel event Florida said the criticism had made a mark. “To be seen as the neoliberal devil, foisting gentrification on cities, is not a situation I like to be seen in,” he said.

Like any good ideas man, Florida has a new idea to fix the old idea, and a book to go with it, called The New Urban Crisis. In an excerpt published on his web site, Florida explained the turnaround in his thinking.

It became increasingly clear to me that the same clustering of talent and economic assets generates a lopsided, unequal urbanism in which a relative handful of superstar cities, and a few elite neighborhoods within them, benefit while many other places stagnate or fall behind. Ultimately, the very same force that drives the growth of our cities and economy broadly also generates the divides that separate us and the contradictions that hold us back.

I’m going to repeat part of a post on this subject in 2012:

Florida has an ideological message here too, as Steven Malanga pointed out:

But most important, to a generation of liberal urban policymakers and politicians who favor big government, Florida’s ideas offer a way to talk economic-development talk while walking the familiar big-spending walk. In the old rhetorical paradigm, left-wing politicians often paid little heed to what mainstream businesses—those that create the bulk of jobs—wanted or needed, except when individual firms threatened to leave town, at which point municipal officials might grudgingly offer tax incentives. The business community was otherwise a giant cash register to be tapped for public revenues—an approach that sparked a steady drain of businesses and jobs out of the big cities once technology freed them from the necessity of staying there.

Now comes Florida with the equivalent of an eat-all-you-want-and-still-lose-weight diet. Yes, you can create needed revenue-generating jobs without having to take the unpalatable measures—shrinking government and cutting taxes—that appeal to old-economy businessmen, the kind with starched shirts and lodge pins in their lapels. You can bypass all that and go straight to the new economy, where the future is happening now. You can draw in Florida’s creative-class capitalists—ponytails, jeans, rock music, and all—by liberal, big-government means: diversity celebrations, “progressive” social legislation, and government spending on cultural amenities. Put another way, Florida’s ideas are breathing new life into an old argument: that taxes, incentives, and business-friendly policies are less important in attracting jobs than social legislation and government-provided amenities. After all, if New York can flourish with its high tax rates, and Austin can boom with its heavy regulatory environment and limits on development, any city can thrive in the new economy. …

Except that …

But a far more serious—indeed, fatal—objection to Florida’s theories is that the economics behind them don’t work. Although Florida’s book bristles with charts and statistics showing how he constructed his various indexes and where cities rank on them, the professor, incredibly, doesn’t provide any data demonstrating that his creative cities actually have vibrant economies that perform well over time. A look at even the most simple economic indicators, in fact, shows that, far from being economic powerhouses, many of Florida’s favored cities are chronic underperformers.

Exhibit A is the most fundamental economic measure, job growth. The professor’s creative index—a composite of his other indexes—lists San Francisco, Austin, Houston, and San Diego among the top ten. His bottom ten include New Orleans, Las Vegas, Memphis, and Oklahoma City, which he says are “stuck in paradigms of old economic development” and are losing their “economic dynamism” to his winners. So you’d expect his winners to be big job producers. Yet since 1993, cities that score the best on Florida’s analysis have actually grown no faster than the overall U.S. jobs economy, increasing their employment base by only slightly more than 17 percent. Florida’s indexes, in fact, are such poor predictors of economic performance that his top cities haven’t even outperformed his bottom ones. Led by big percentage gains in Las Vegas (the fastest-growing local economy in the nation) as well as in Oklahoma City and Memphis, Florida’s ten least creative cities turn out to be jobs powerhouses, adding more than 19 percent to their job totals since 1993—faster growth even than the national economy. …

It’s no coincidence that some of Florida’s urban exemplars perform so unimpressively on these basic measures of growth. As Florida tells us repeatedly, these cities spend money on cultural amenities and other frills, paid for by high taxes, while restricting growth through heavy regulation. Despite Florida’s notion of a new order in economic development, the data make crystal-clear that such policies aren’t people- or business-friendly. The 2000 census figures on out-migration, for instance, show that states with the greatest loss of U.S. citizens in 1996 through 2000—in other words, the go-go years—have among the highest tax rates and are the biggest spenders, while those that did the best job of attracting and retaining people have among the lowest tax rates. A study of 1990 census data by the Cato Institute’s Stephen Moore found much the same thing for cities. Among large cities, those that lost the most population over a ten-year period were the highest-taxing, biggest-spending cities in America, with per-capita taxes 75 percent higher than the fastest-growing cities. Given those figures, maybe Florida should have called his book The Curse of the Creative Class.

My favorite demographer, Joel Kotkin, added after the 2010 election, which reversed much of the 2008 election, which Kotkin called “the triumph of the creative class”:

A term coined by urban guru Richard Florida, “the creative class” also covers what David Brooks more cunningly calls “bourgeois bohemians”–socially liberal, well-educated, predominately white, upper middle-class voters. They are clustered largely in expensive urban centers, along the coasts, around universities and high-tech regions. To this base, Obama can add the welfare dependents, virtually all African-Americans, and the well-organized legions of public employees. …

In contrast, the traditional middle class has not fared well at all. This group consists of virtually everyone who earns the national household median income of $50,000 or somewhat above. They tend to be white, concentrated outside the coasts (except along the Gulf), suburban and politically independent. In 2008 they divided their votes, allowing Obama, with his huge urban, minority and youth base, to win easily.

Since Obama’s inauguration all the economic statistics vital to their lives–job creation, family income, housing prices–have been stagnant or negative. Not surprising then that suburbanites, small businesspeople and middle-income workers walked out on the Democrats last night. They did not do so because they loved the Republicans but because the majority either fears unemployment or already have lost their jobs. Many were employed in the industries such as manufacturing and construction hardest hit in the recession; it has not escaped their attention that Obama’s public-sector allies, paid with their taxes, have remained not only largely unscathed, but much better compensated. …

The middle class is a huge proportion of the population. Thirty-five million households earn between $50,000 and $100,000 a year; close to another 15 million have incomes between $100,000 and $150,000. Together these households overwhelm the number of poor households as well as the highly affluent.

In contrast, the “creative class” represents a relatively small grouping. Some define this group as upward of 40% of the workforce–largely by dint of having a four-year college degree–but this seems far too broad. The creative class is often seen as sharing the hip values of the Bobo crowd. Lumping an accountant with two kids in suburban Detroit or Atlanta with a childless SoHo graphic artist couple seems disingenuous at best. In reality the true creative class, notes demographer Bill Frey, may constitute no more than 5% of the total.

As (apparently) a member of the creative class, I say that any politician who creates an economic development strategy based on 5 percent of the population deserves to be unemployed by the voters. (See Cieslewicz, Dave.) Official Madison has failed to notice that its quality of life is dropping like a rock due to the uncool issues of crime and schools, but on the other hand Madison is also increasingly unaffordable to live in. None of that is particularly friendly for families, regardless of how many parents they have in the house. Nor is substandard job growth.

There is only one demographic group worth pursuing: Families with children. No unit of government should spend 1 cent on attracting non-parents.
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Presty the DJ for May 8

May 8, 2017

Music
Today in 1954, the BBC banned Johnny Ray’s “Such a Night” after complaints about its “suggestiveness.”

The Brits had yet to see Elvis Presley or Jerry Lee Lewis.

The number one British single today in 1955:

Today in 1965, what would now be called a “video” was shot in London:

(more…)
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Presty the DJ for May 7

May 7, 2017

Music
The number one single today in 1966 was presumably played on the radio on days other than Mondays:

Today is the anniversary of the last Beatles U.S. single release, “Long and Winding Road” (the theme music of the Schenk Middle School eighth-grade Dessert Dance about this time in 1979):

The number one album today in 1977 was the Eagles’ “Hotel California”:

(more…)
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Presty the DJ for May 6

May 6, 2017

Music
The number one British album today in 1972 was a Tyrannosaurus Rex double album, the complete title of which is “My People Were Fair and Had Sky in Their Hair … But Now They’re Content to Wear Stars on Their Brows”/”Prophets, Seers & Sages: The Angels of the Ages.” Really.

(more…)
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The vassal decided to vacillate on deciding when to put up the trellis, which the bailiff in official raiment found to be a bagatelle, but was sheer drudgery

May 5, 2017

History, Madison
A high school classmate of mine who works in history found this this week:

This is from the Wisconsin State Journal 40 years ago Wednesday. (Pause while I wipe the tears from my eyes and loudly blow my nose over The March Of Time!)

The previous Saturday, April 30, 1977, I won the Madison City Spelling Bee in my third attempt. In those days, at least in Madison, if you won your elementary- or middle-school spelling bee you advanced to the city spelling bee. I won my spelling bees at Kennedy Elementary School in fourth and fifth grade, but obviously failed to win at the city level until I won my first Schenk (now Whitehorse) Middle School spelling bee in 1977.

Spelling bees were the first kind of competition in which I did reasonably well. Spelling bees are analogous to competing in a non-relay track event or swimming race, in that your success is based on what you do in comparison to what others do. Since I sucked (and still do) at athletics, and never was a very good musician, this was my thing for five years growing up.

Spelling today is, if not a dying art, then a seriously ill art, given creative spellings in the business world (“Kwik Trip”), spellcheck in word processing applications (though spellcheck doesn’t pick up homophones, a correctly spelled incorrect word), and abbreviations in social media. (IMHO. SMH. BTT.)

The 1977 bee was, for me, somewhat of a white-knuckle experience toward the end, even though I was a grizzled veteran of spelling bees by then. Similar to team sports, winning a spelling bee requires some luck in getting words you can spell (or at least correctly guess) and your competitors getting words they could not spell. My first city spelling bee in fourth grade was a two-and-done; the second word I got was “trellis” (a frame or structure of latticework used as a support for growing trees or plants), which I had never heard of, and that ended that. One year later, I got up near the top 10, but lost on “raiment” (clothing). In my fourth city spelling bee, in seventh grade, I finished 13th on “vacillate” (to waver in mind or opinion), another word I had never heard of. (I studied, but I guess I didn’t get down toward the end of the dictionary. As it was, I think I learned more words by reading them than being told to spell words in a dictionary.)

The word “thespian” probably doesn’t show up often in a sixth-grader’s vocabulary, so when I heard it it sounded to me like, well, a gay actress, but I figured out it ended with “=pian” and not “-bian” and got it right. Shortly thereafter the runner-up missed her word, I spelled it correctly, and then I got “vassal” (according to Dictionary.com “a person granted the use of land, in return for rendering homage, fealty, and usually military service or its equivalent to a lord or other superior”), another word not found in a sixth-grade vocabulary. (In those days, again with only one person advancing to the next level, if speller A missed his or her word, speller B had to spell that word correctly and then another word.) The first four letters were easy enough, but not the last two — “-al,” “-il” or “le”?

To quote the ancient knight in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” I chose … wisely. I got to bring home a traveling trophy that was half as tall as I was, and got on the front page of the Wisconsin State Journal, along with a story in the Monona Community Herald (which I would end up working for, but you knew that).

A week later, I departed the state spelling bee after spelling “bagatelle” (something of little value or importance), again not a word in a sixth-grader’s vocabulary, correctly. The first eight letters seemed obvious, but was there a silent E at the end? I got to the last L, stopped, heard no reaction, and added the E. A woman sitting in the front row protested, and the judges decided that I meant “bagatell” instead of “bagatelle.”

Two years later, as longtime readers know …

… I returned to state as the city bee winner.

(Note, by the way, how fashions changed between 1977 and 1979. Plaid pants gave way to polyester disco shirts and pants, and though I hadn’t ditched the glasses yet, there was a lot more hair, though not as much as in the previous year.)

The story quotes me as saying that “declaration” and “drudgery” were two words I had a little difficulty with spelling. Truth be told, I really didn’t, other than to make sure I had the letters in the correct order. Winning the previous school bee made me 5-for-5 in winning school spelling bees, and apparently I was the first person to win two Madison spelling bees. (A girl in that 1979 bee became the first to win two consecutive city spelling bees. Interestingly, she was hearing-impaired.)

The state spelling bee the week afterward at my future high school went sort of like my first city spelling bee, a two-and-done, though on a word that, had I thought about it for a couple of seconds, I would have spelled correctly — “bailiff.” The night before I attended my middle school’s eighth-grade dessert dance, and sl0w-danced with five girls, three of whom I’d had crushes on at some point (along with perhaps half of the other girls in what would become the Class of 1983). So on Saturday afternoon my head was still back in Friday night. And that ended that, because there are no spelling bees in high school.

The bee format appears to have changed to where more than just the winner moves on. Wisconsin’s top three state-bee spellers advanced to the national bee. Advancing to the national bee appears to be now based on some sort of population formula, or perhaps number of organizations willing to sponsor a regional bee, given that Wisconsin had three national contestants, Iowa had two, and Illinois had 18. It’s kind of become like expanding the baseball playoffs from including only division winners to adding wild-cards, where, like the 1997 and 2003 Marlins, 2002 Angels, 2004 Red Sox, 2011 Cardinals and 2014 Giants, teams can win the World Series without winning their division. (Or the 2010 Packers, winners of Super Bowl XLV as the last NFC playoff team.) The state bee also had a rule, since rescinded, that if you won the state bee you couldn’t compete anymore. (From what I’ve read most national bee winners are not first-time national competitors, which makes sense.)

For those who haven’t moved on to something else by this point, you might be asking (other than why the hell did I write this) what I got out of the whole experience. (Other than embarrassment every time I misspell a word, though mistyping a word isn’t exactly the same thing as spelling it wrong.) It was the first experience in my life of being sort of locally famous, which as those who have achieved some fame know is a mixed blessing. With the exception of friends of mine (and you know who you are, Ruste), few of my classmates appeared to care much, though adults in my two schools did. (On my last day at Schenk, a teacher — not one I’d had for a class — actually thanked me for bringing positive recognition to the school. I didn’t know what to say.) Something similar happens now because my photo has been in publications I work for (and my face has shown up on TV), and it’s one of those strange experiences where more people know me than I know them.

Was it fun? Well … it was not like my UW Band experience or a successful athletic accomplishment (the latter certainly not based on personal experience, of course) in which your first thrill is the accomplishment and then you realize what a great experience you had along the way to that accomplishment. I certainly didn’t hate it (some people can spell well but don’t do well in bees because they get excessively nervous in competition), but I can’t say I have fond memories of, say, school spelling bees or traveling somewhere with my mother giving me words out of the dictionary to spell. The experience for me was just what it looked like: (1) walk up to microphone, (2) spell the word, (3) go back to your seat, (4) watch others spell correctly or not; lather, rinse, repeat. I remember the spelling bees where I won fondly (not that I think about them often), and the ones I didn’t win I don’t remember fondly. (Athletic competition is sald to provide more lessons in losses than in wins, in the sense that failures can teach more than successes. I’m not sure that translates to spelling bees — if you don’t know a word, you don’t know it — except that if you lose that could mean you needed to study more, or, in the case of the 1979 state bee, try focusing on what you’re supposed to be doing instead of something else.) Spelling wasn’t fun; winning was fun, and when I won, I was the only winner.

The experience also taught me that being smart (or, as the British put it, “clever”) isn’t really valued in our society. (Anyone who thinks this is a recent phenomenon due to the current president has not been paying attention well before now.) Part of it probably is that there are a lot of people who are threatened by someone who can do something better than that person can. Americans like to think of ourselves as a society striving for equality, but we also like to think of ourselves as a meritocracy, and the two concepts are somewhat at cross-purposes to each other. Part of it as well probably is because some smart people unintentionally make people feel inferior, or (particularly if they’re young) haven’t figured out interpersonal skills to not do that. (Some people, such as myself, like to claim that they don’t care what people think about them, but that’s not likely to be true.) Harry Truman famously said the world is run by C students, so intelligence does not necessarily translate to leadership skills; nor does it necessarily lead to sense or wisdom, as, well, whatever political debate you choose to cite proves.

Last year for the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Time magazine did an online where-are-they-now feature. One spelling bee champion became a spelling bee coach. None profiled did what I did, go into journalism, one of the few lines of work that actually appreciates spelling ability. (Or where you get nailed for lack of spelling ability. However, the standard in print journalism is to write at an eighth-grade level, and words in more advanced spelling bees are well past eighth grade.)

Not in the Time story was Joanne Lagatta of Clintonville, the first and only Wisconsinite to win the national bee. (On “inappetence,” lack of appetite, and “antipyretic,” a drug used to combat fever.) She is now a pediatric physician, certainly a better profession for the world than journalism, though I wonder if she can use both of those words in the same sentence, such as “She gave her patient an antipyretic in part because the fever had caused her patient inappetence for several days.” Of course, given the rare use of those words, most people probably wouldn’t know what she was talking about, similar to the sentence in the title of this blog.
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