1) Facebook users spend 16 billion minutes on the website every day.

2) Facebook users click on over 1 million photographs that are hosted on the site every second.

Wow! Now that's some wizardry!

Mrs. Lykos didn't really need an introduction to the audience, as she is a well known local and state politics. She has spent her working career in law enforcement and criminal justice, starting as a police officer, then working her way through law school. Later she became a criminal court judge before eventually winning election as Harris County District Attorney.

The Wizard didn't take detailed notes on Lykos's speech, but The Wizard found Lykos to be a refreshing speaker. After having spent many years attending public meetings and lunches, and hearing untold numbers of windbag speakers and audience members talk at such events, Lykos proved to be direct and to the point. When several audience members raised their hands and started going off tangent on issues that had little or nothing to do with the topics being discussed at hand, as many people are won't to do, Lykos would get straight to the point in dealing with such people. She would summarize their remarks, answer them, and move on to the next person. She is the type of person who doesn't like people wasting their time or her time and the Wizard doesn't doubt that this comes from Ms. Lykos having spent years as a judge sitting on the bench.

Several matters Lykos touched on were:

1) The Harris County District Attorney office employs some 300 attorneys and support staff that sift through scores of thousands of cases every year, whereas Lykos told the audience that Cook County (Chicago) has more than three times as many personnel with only twice the population of Harris County.

Without having a thorough knowledge of the situation, it's hard for the Wizard to judge whether hiring more prosecutors and support staff would result in better criminal justice, or would it result in what would effectively amount to zero marginal productivity from the extra prosecutors and staff.

2) The 2010 budget for the DA's office was reduced by the Harris County Commissioner's Court from $60 million to $54 million. It blows the Wizard's mind that the DA's budget is that small. The DA's office is only 4 percent of the Harris County commissioners budget.

3) Lykos briefly addressed the issues of drugs and rehabilitation. Lykos argues that we do not do enough for rehabilitation, and that is socially costly as falling back into that kind of life often causes one's life to go downhill. On drugs, Lykos is a conservative. She flatly stated that anyone who thinks that drug legalization is the answer to the drug issue had not seen anyone on methamphetamines. Nobody brought up the crack pipe policy, though in all fairness nobody probably had that issue on their minds beforehand.

4) Lykos cited a number of prominent cases, including various sex offender cases where her office had worked with a number of local, state, federal, and international law enforcement bodies to bring people to justice. One person made a criticism on whether this was good use of tax dollars, but Lykos stated that criminals needed to be shown that fleeing would not save them from justice.

5) A regional crime lab. Lykos campaigned on support for a regional crime lab. The Wizard has written some thoughts on whether a regional crime lab would be better than what we have now for crime labs or whether we would merely be transferring the problems we have today to a new regional lab. However, Lykos did say that the City of Houston and Harris County were in negotiations over a regional lab, but more importantly she stated that the cost of a new lab would only be a few million dollars.

Just days after Lykos spoke to HPRA, the Houston Chronicle carried a story reminding the public that the Houston Police Department still has a backlog of over 4,000 rape test kits dating back to 1996, on top of nearly 1,000 new criminal cases that await DNA testing. Then came the case of Allen Wayne Porter, which DNA evidence showed could not link him to a rape crime where an eyewitness identified him as being the perpetrator.

The Chronicle story on Lykos's call for a temporary DNA lab mentioned that the Houston Police Department applied for a $1.1 million federal grant to help clear up the backlog of DNA cases under HPD's jurisdiction. That's right folks - only $1.1 million, and somehow we can't find the money to clear up backlogs of cases for rape victims. The Houston City Council recently approved a $4.2 billion budget, Metro owes the City of Houston $160 million in back payments but is still too busy wanting to build trains, and America has a federal government that is now running annual deficits of over $1 trillion per year!

Lykos mentioned that if we were to rectify this injustice to criminal victims (and the accused) - and this clearly is an injustice - then Houstonians are going to have to start lobbying Houston City Council and the County Commissioners to get this backlog taken care of.

The Obama administration and the left have long claimed that they are for "social justice" and making America a "fair" society. Lost amongst those claims however, is that the first claims - made before any others - as to why men instituted government is to protect property rights, to make sure that people can sleep in their beds at night in peace, and to seek justice for those who have been wronged through criminal acts perpetrated by others. Yet somehow we can't seem to find a few comparative nickels and dimes to better do criminal justice, while untold billions are spent through federal entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, bailing out failed corporations and Wall Street, contracts, millions of government jobs, wars, and redistributed through the tax codes. And the Wizard thinks that something is really wrong when we've lost sight of that.

Wizard

The Wizard has heard CM Stephen Costello speak twice on the Renew Houston initiative, and intends to blog about the matter, but before writing about the charter amendment campaign, the Wizard decided to quote Renew Houston itself as to why the promoters are pushing this agenda:

Houston is an aging city. Over 60 % of all drainage and streets are past their useful life; 80% will be past their useful life in the next 20 years. When a street is assigned for re-construction, it takes the city 12 years before the work will commence due to lack of funding. ...

Americans are seemingly bombarded left and right with stories of aging infrastructure that hasn't been worked on for decades, that of course needs billions of new tax dollars over and above what governments already spend to be successfully maintained. At the same time, America has witnessed spectacular infrastructure failures in recent years, including the failures of the levees in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and the collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis. President Obama's new head of the FTA, Peter Rogoff, made a speech in Boston in May 2010, where he stated that the six largest local government transit agencies in America had $50 billion in deferred maintenance of their rail lines, and now Houstonians are being told by an interest group campaign that 60 percent of Houston streets and drainage are past their useful life.

So, this begs the question: Why is it that governments, whether local, state, or federal, seemingly fail over and over and over again not to do needed maintenance on existing infrastructure? The easy answer to such a question would be, "What do you expect Wizard? Of course the gummit don't do things right! Why should this be any different? Why do you want to waste our time on this?" Well, if that's your answer, then maybe we should be privatizing public infrastructure. After all, this is an endemic problem!

But as though on queue, last month the Wizard received his most recent issue of The Independent Review. In the issue, economist Dr. John Bratland addresses the neglect of public infrastructure through comparing how a private entrepreneur handles capital (and capital goods), verses how politicians and bureaucrats spend their political and bureaucratic capital.

Dr. Bratland's article makes for great reading. Without going through the entire article, the Wizard will focus on the high points of what Bratland is saying.

Market signaling: Bratland notes that there is a distinction between capital and capital goods. Capital could be construed as everything that an entrepreneur has at their disposal in order to make judgments that help maintain, and hopefully increase, the income and profit stream of the enterprise. This includes labor, land, cash receivables, whatever. Capital goods are individual pieces of capital, including that land, labor, finance, machinery, etc. Bratland points out that the entrepreneur operates in a framework of contracts and private property rights that help guide the entrepreneur towards making the best decisions, and that the entrepreneur often faces competitive pressures and operates under some uncertainty about the future.

Bratland goes on to say that entrepreneurs will incorporate decisions on the purchase and maintenance of capital goods, based on whether they will maintain or increase the income stream. Entrepreneurs may decide, for example, to defer maintenance for a while on capital goods, if the entrepreneur judges that there will be little or no effect on the overall income stream. But, Bratland points out that successful entrepreneurs always incorporate maintenance costs into maintaining the capital goods in their purview. The entrepreneur will get market signals and feedback that help the entrepreneur make decisions on maintenance and replacement of capital goods.

Verses no market signals: Needless to say, none of this framework exists in the world of public infrastructure maintenance. Bratland points out that there is no market of exchange when it comes to public infrastructure and there are no private property rights. Most importantly, there is no market signal to indicate that a street, a freeway, a sewer line, drainage culverts, or any other element of public infrastructure needs to be maintained or for that matter be replaced! There is no income stream available to tell governments that maintaining existing infrastructure is the correct thing to do.

Politicians and bureaucrats will have, and pursue, conflicting agendas upon assuming office and during the course of their careers. Politicians may come under political or competitive pressures to keep taxes and expenditures low. Politicians may or may not be in a position to obtain substantial monies for infrastructure maintenance via the legislative process for their districts. Politicians will also spend monies on infrastructure if they can perceive that it will enhance their power, career goals, or affect roll call votes in other issues. Politicians may perceive for example, that they can gain more votes or power through voting to devote monies towards health care or education, rather than infrastructure maintenance. Politicians or bureaucrats may deny maintenance monies to other politicians, bureaucracies, or geographical areas, if it were to meet certain goals. Bureaucrats may have career goals that include obtaining jobs in academia or the lucrative private sector, which often have little or nothing to do with maintaining public infrastructure. Politicians and bureaucrats often correctly perceive that they often can gain more power, prestige, or favorable press, through building new infrastructure over maintaining existing infrastructure. Both politicians and bureaucrats may or may not be particularly publicly spirited in their actions.

But most of all, bureaucrats and politicians really are not in a position to be able to weigh whether building new infrastructure or maintaining older infrastructure is the best use of public dollars, since there is no market mechanism to guide their decisions. Making such decisions inevitably involves making some judgment about opportunity costs and social welfare, of which there are no real answers. Considering all these factors, as stunning as this sounds, neglecting existing infrastructure for years or decades and letting it go to pot could be - and often is - the best political outcome from the perspective of people who are involved in the political process.

Next, the Wizard will address the Renew Houston charter amendment.

Wizard

Yet, the Wizard does have a three day weekend to celebrate the Fourth of July. The Wizard has worked (and funded) Tea Party rallies on April 15th for the past two years, and it's not hard for the Wizard to think that a better name for April 15th is Dependence Day for many Americans: 50 million Americans collecting Social Security and Medicare benefits, 20+ million Americans are now employed by local, state, or the federal governments of the United States; some 25 percent of Americans now work for private firms that have major contracts with the United States government.

And all of this brings for the question of what are the ends of government?

The Wizard got to sitting down this evening and actually reading through the entire Declaration of Independence. It's not a tough read - only 5 1/2 pages in my pocket version put out by the Heritage Foundation. But then the Wizard started to ponder about it, and that's when things get interesting.

Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration in three parts. The first is a world famous declaration of rights:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness...

What follows is a list of grievances that the document's signers have against the King and government of Great Britain. The Declaration then concludes with The Declaration that these United Colonies are, and of Right out to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that the Colonials intended to take their place amongst the powers of the Earth.

And so it was, and so they did. Yet, the war between America and Great Britain had been going on since April 1775 with the Battle of Lexington and Concord, but this document didn't get written until July 4th 1776. A period of fourteen and a half months had gone by in between. So what gives?

Well, the overarching problem, at least from the standpoint of the British, was that Britain had been involved with an ongoing rivalry with France and her other European competitors for 250 years for world dominance before the shots were fired on the battlefields of 1775. More proximately, the Seven Years War with France and others had ended with the British having driven the French out as a major power in North America. The problem with this was that the war had left Britain deeply in debt, as wars tend to do to the regimes that get involved in them. So, then it was that the British Parliament decided that the colonials, who enjoyed the protection of the Crown, were going to have to cough up.

The problem with that was that two fold - one was that the Colonials had more or less been taking care of their own affairs for the past 150 years, and secondly, they weren't being given a voice in the decision. History would have been a very interesting thing had Parliament decided to give the Colonials some seats in Parliament in exchange for being taxed.

But the British didn't do this. Among the significant things about The Declaration is something that few people consider - who actually signed it. Look at the list of names - John Adams, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, John Penn, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Morris, Thomas Jefferson, amongst them. These were famous men, men of substance, and part of the accepted establishment. Men who are part of the establishment are not men who are going to do some half cocked off the wall thing like sign a document whereby they were pledging to throw their lives away, without some hope that they are actually going to come through with what they hope to accomplish and their skins intact.

That in turn would explain the 14 1/2 months between the time which the shots were fired on the battlefields of Massachusetts and The Declaration. The signers of The Declaration did something very interesting. By declaring that the States were now sovereign powers, they could now effectively say to all other nation states in the world that this war was not an internal affair of Britain's - a subjugation of impertinent rebels. What this was in fact was a war between sovereign powers, between the nation of Great Britain and the new America. That in turn would have helped encourage other European powers to subtly intervene on behalf of the American colonials, and hence one explanation for the interval between the actual Declaration and the start of the war was that The Declaration had a political motive to it. These conservative men would have no doubt thought that before signing this document that there could be some assurances that they could in fact expect such help from the other European powers, and hence there would be some hope that they could in fact win such a war against the greatest military power on the planet.

But there are other aspects to The Declaration to think about. The list of grievances is pretty long for one. So why did it have to be so long? One thought is that it had to be long and specific enough to enable the signers to say that there were all these grievances that we had. That's to reinforce why they were making the bold step of throwing off the shackles of the Crown and going their own way. Another is that the list would be long enough to encompass all the complaints that would unite all the the Colonials against the Crown.

Then there was the part about The Declaration that Jefferson substituted - that of property. Jefferson wrote that we had inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but not that we had inalienable rights to property. Why did Jefferson not assert this, while earlier John Locke asserted that property was essential to liberty? Well, maybe Jefferson and the rest of the signers of The Declaration didn't want people to think that this was a rich man's war. On the other hand, Enlightenment thinkers were stumbling forward to a more expansive view of humanity, and were starting to think about what owning property really meant. Readers can ponder this matter more here.

But perhaps the most important aspect of The Declaration is that Jefferson also writes that the Colonials have petitioned the King George the Monarch for Redress of their grievances, an ancient thing that humble people all over the world have resorted to since time immemorial. Yet, what has happened? Was it not impossible not to notice that the Redcoated soldiers on American soil were the King's soldiers? By what right could the Colonial rebels decide to declare their independence?

The Wizard heard John Culberson give a talk some months back whereby one of the last of the Founding generation spoke at his deathbed and stated that the reason why the average Joes took up arms against Britain was not because they had read about Montesquieu, or other political theories. It was because they had gotten used to minding their own affairs. But even that is not enough for what is happening now. The real question that the Colonials faced was - what are the ends of government? Why were we seeing the King's soldiers in our streets? Edmund Burke discerned early on that if King George and Parliament went too far with the American colonials, then the Colonials would start to wonder what this was all about, and thoughts like that are the beginnings of rebellion.

The peoples of the British Isles had been thrashing through government for many many centuries before those pesky rebels across the Water decided to ump up and declare their independence. Barely 130 years before, the British themselves had fought their own Civil War, between the supporters of Parliament and the Crown. The overall premise of governing in the United Kingdom eventually evolved into something like, "We the Parliament are the Sovereign Power in this land. We will support the Monarchy, forever, and everything we do will be done in the name of His (or Her) Majesty." Indeed, Great Britain held a general election less than two months ago that looked for a while as though they would return a hung Parliament. One aspect of this was that Queen Elizabeth herself might have had to get involved to resolve the matter, something that would awe Americans. Jefferson wrote that government derived its power from the consent from the governed, an entirely different premise from what the Colonials were being governed under.

America is having to ask that same question today - what are the ends of government? It certainly isn't to support a Monarchy until the end of time! The Progressives have had their answers for the past 100 years, and little by little they have been - well - progressing towards their goals. Progressives say that they want an America that is "fair", but what is fairness? Progressives want an America that is "just", but what is just? Progressives say that America needs to take care of its less fortunate, but by what standard are people less fortunate? More importantly, how long do people need to be taken care of, and who exactly is supposed to be taking care of people? The government? Churches? Or is it families and friends? Or are Americans to start thinking harder about their own futures and taking care of themselves?

In a similar vein, some Conservatives say that America needs to promote Democracy in the world. It will promote the safety of America they say and promote our happiness, but what is it going to take to promote Democracy? Why are we in Afghanistan, and not North Korea or China? Do the ends justify the means, and are those ends a justification at all?

And what are to be the ends of government in America? Are we to have our guns taken away, regardless of how dangerous our neighborhoods are? Are we to be told we can't smoke in a restaurant regardless of what the restaurant owner thinks? Are we told we can only eat what foods the government approves of? Are we to be told we cannot smoke some marijuana? Are we to be told we have to pay taxes because we have accumulated too much wealth? Are we to be told we can only contribute so many dollars to a politician's campaign? Then do these edicts conflict with our unalienable Rights that our Founders declared for us to possess - among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?

So why have many of my liberties been taken away? Are they really for my own good, and what is it all to you anyway? The Wizard thinks that some folks out there have some thinking to do.

Wizard

The Wizard generally doesn't get interested in what goes on in government schools, mostly because even though I pay taxes to HISD, the fact of the matter is that HISD is a government school district that has 200,000 students, some 20,000 employees, and a mob of interest groups. There really isn't too much I can do to have any influence on what goes on there. Government schools are a mess that are now effectively beyond redemption, with no end of apologists to speak up for them. Spending on government schooling has skyrocketed over the decades, but SAT test scores have effectively been either flat or declining over the past 40 years.

But none of this is what really caught the Wizard's attention. What caught my eye was that Rick Casey reported that HISD Superintendent Terry Grier got a phone call two days before Christmas from Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, as well as State Representative Harold Dutton, and HISD trustee Carol Mimns Galloway. As Mr. Casey's story made it clear, the phone call that Ms. Jackson Lee gave Mr. Grier was not exactly about wishing Mr. Grier a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

The responses to Mr. Casey's story were telling. Reader "mimi3" wrote,

The arrogance and gall of SJL to think that she can interfere in HISD affairs and tell the superintendent how to do his job is just disgusting. Obviously, she has been doing this for quite a while. It will be interesting to watch the fur fly if Grier continues to stand up to her!

This reader has a very interesting point to bring up, namely what was Sheila Jackson Lee doing yelling at the head of a local school district, presumably telling him to call off the dogs on an internal investigation into possible malfeasance within a district school? After all, HISD does stand for the Houston Independent School District.

Well, that begs to start asking what influence does Congress have over our schools? On paper, not much. 90 percent of government school funding comes from local taxpayers, and state governments. It is state governments, through their education codes, that compel kids to attend school, and set out the overall government school agenda. However, this 10 percent level of federal funding is up from the 6 percent that it was back in 2000, before President Bush came along and decided he needed to show voters that he cared about their kids through compassionate conservativism.

Where Congress does have influence is through money. Thanks to lots of payroll and income taxes, along with all that borrowing power, Congress has passed a slew of mandates and enacted plenty of programs since the 1960's. The 2009 federal budget, which had $1.5 trillion in red ink, included a $96 billion infusion from the ARRA, a $53 billion injection of federal funds into local school systems in the form of the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund, which included $5 billion for Mr. Obama's new federal program Race to the Top. Other long standing federal directives include the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which will dish out $12 billion in 2010, but has gotten criticism as yet another unfunded federal mandate amongst other issues.

So, the federal government's role in education has mostly been one of being a money dispenser, not as the primary rule maker. However, even that relatively small role is more than enough for a member of Congress to take an interest in a local school district if he or she chooses. After all, he who has the gold gets to make the rules, ergo Mrs. Jackson Lee might well have threatened Mr. Grier with cutting off federal dollars for HISD under the Stabilization Fund, from Elementary and Secondary Education Act funds, or from IDEA. But ultimately, who knows what was said, other than those who participated in the phone call? All we know is that Mrs. Jackson Lee did make the call. And why did she do it? Because she could, that's why.

The point being made here is that liberals, or others who justify federal intervention into schooling if for no other reasons than that it attracts votes, cannot expect the world to work as planned after they enact such programs. If you advocate federal intervention into government schooling, then don't be surprised when a member of Congress decides to take an interest in what otherwise is a local problem that has nothing to do with federal acts that purport to remedy some alleged social deficiency. This episode shows the dark underbelly of federal funding of local government schools, and it is something that few people care to behold. The only way we can truly rid of members of Congress not having any leverage over schools at all is to legalize freedom and pare back a massive federal government. Otherwise, it's only a matter of time before another member of Congress, or a federal judge for that matter, tries to browbeat hapless local officials or citizens into doing their bidding.

Wizard

Even though we know better our efforts are pitiful and willingness to sacrifice comfort and safety nonexistent. We are really not worthy to carry on the flame of the Revolution--and are getting the type of government we deserve.

Becky Chandler, Facebook, March 21, 2010

and

"Let me remind you this [Americans allegedly dying because of lack of universal health care] has been going on for years. We are bringing it to a halt. The harsh fact of the matter is when you're going to pass legislation that will cover 300 [million] American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people."

Congressman John Dingell, March 23rd, 2010 - discussing why Congress delayed the implementation of the individual health insurance purchase mandate embedded in H.R. 3590 until the year 2014.

But one has to wonder whether Congressman Dingell's legislation will in fact do what it was intended to do. Two weeks ago, the Wizard learned that there was going to be a last minute rally in Washington to oppose the health care bill. Upon learning about this, I volunteered to pay $1,200 for the flight of two of my friends (who subsequently made the news) to go to Washington to join the mob, and watch as Nancy Pelosi - all smiles - paraded her big gavel as she waltzed her way to the Capitol to continue - but not finish - the grand project of all Americans having to have health insurance. I stayed at home during the weekend, cut myself in several places when I fell while running a workout, and built some bookshelves for my study room to hold all the tomes I've accumulated over the years.

Yet, when I read what Ms. Chandler wrote, she struck the Wizard with words that are harder than steel. Charles Krauthammer went on television and said that Mr. Obama's health care bill will not be repealed. Why? One very good reason is that what the "Progressives" did during the sausage grinding was ugly (and possibly unconstitutional), but they were very smart. They made sure that the old folks would get all of their pills paid for right away, and that they would not be left with any donut holes, unlike that evil Mr. Bush did to them. If an attempt to repeal the bill is tried, the Democrats will tell the old folks that those evil freedom types are trying to take their Medicare from them. Progressives can get away with government rationing, but woe be to liberty and freedom types if we were to do the same. Yet, even some liberal bloggers are writing that H.R. 3590 is a bad piece of legislation, and list plenty of reasons why that's the case.

The politics of repeal are easy to understand. As long as Mr. Obama sits in the White House, the mathematics of getting a coalition together to repeal are well nigh impossible. That will have to wait until 2013. Meanwhile either lawsuits will have to commence, but more intriguing is the idea that the States should call a convention to offer and ratify amendments to the United States constitution to curb Congressional power. The state legislative races will be just as important as federal ones this November, but judging from Governor Perry's reaction to the health care bill, I doubt he will have the courage to call for a convention of the states. Governor Perry wants to sit in the White House.

And so it was that my puny efforts to defend liberty were, I suppose, not entirely for naught. I rarely watch television anymore and did not watch television on that Sunday night, but rather I took a walk to the grocery store to do my weekly shopping. It was sunny out, but cold and blustery. It was busy in the store, but there was no sign amongst the hundreds of people whom I saw that a momentous decision was being made by their federal government, something that would affect their entire lives. No shouting, no picketing in front of the store. Nothing. Just a traffic jam on Westheimer and lots of people going about their daily lives. It was as though it was just another day and that nothing had ever happened. One of the subtle ideas of the Founders was that government would be far away and out of sight. Only those who had interests, or had the interest and the fire, would care to travel and contest the issues of the day. It worked once again.

It occurred to me that if I really were to have the guts to defend liberty, I should have gone to Washington with a gun, as Becky stated. I did not. None of us did, despite baitings of our opponents and of politicians. We hold ourselves in and resolve to fight against this breathtaking assault on our liberties peacefully. We receive encouragement from sympathizers in Britain, stating that Americans must fight back, and we will. One thing that this issue has raised, is the reawakening of a titan, that of ordinary Americans starting to ask questions all over again about the meaning of the United States and its Constitution.

I have something to say about the issue of people raising objections to ordinary Americans shouting obscenities at their elected officials. An elderly black woman whom I met through the Metro Rail issue did just that to Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee back in late 2007. When she found out in that Metro had changed their rail plans to run a rail line down her street, she called up Mrs. Jackson Lee and let her have it - full bore, with guns a blazing - the only way that a Gospel filled, fiery old black woman could. The result was that Mrs. Jackson Lee dropped everything she was doing to race back to Houston, where she proceeded to call an emergency meeting with Metro brass and the community over the issue. That Saturday, I watched from the back row of an auditorium, the only white boy in an auditorium room filled with black people, as Mrs. Jackson Lee's constituents slugged it out full bore with her and Metro's brass for 4 hours over light rail. It was a night to remember.

If the passion is high enough, public officials should be sworn at. After all, public officials are in no position to be lecturing Americans about swearing.

Auto insurance verses health insurance

Many supporters of the health care bill, in speaking of its favor, have tried to raise the point that Americans are required by governments to purchase insurance for their automobile. They also have raised the issue that Congress has required that automobile makers require that Americans purchase cars with safety belts. So what's the difference between that and Americans being told they must buy health insurance? Aren't you pesky Tea Baggers a little late - like 75 years too late - to the show? We abuse the Constitution every day, so what else is new? This is the way things have been for a long time!

Well maybe, but just because Washington has been trashing the Constitution and doing business as usual since the New Deal doesn't make it right. People who make these arguments are missing some very important points. Arguing that people are compelled to buy car insurance by governments overlooks the simple observation that Americans are not compelled by law, as a matter of being a citizen of the United States, to buy cars. So if you happen to be like my downstairs neighbor, an old lady who does not work, does not have a car, and walks around to do her needed tasks, the mandate to purchase auto insurance does not apply to her.

The mandate to purchase auto insurance comes from State governments, following in the tradition that doing something like this was not an enumerated power given to Congress, and that State governments possess what are called police powers. Generally, police powers are understood where governments can act to protect the health, safety, and morals of the populace. In the case of owning and operating a car, it quickly became clear some 100 years ago that operating an automobile had many ramifications. A driver had marvelous new found mobility, freedoms, and power at his or her disposal, but they could also evade law enforcement or aid and abet illegal activities. Drivers also had it within their power to destroy the property of others with ease, and could take their own lives or the lives of others.

Clearly it was within the public interest to come to some kind of remedy to handle this matter. Therefore, State governments used their police powers to require that would be drivers pass a driving test, require them to submit to safety inspections, and they required that drivers carry insurance as a way to compensate others in the event that a driver were to cause harm to the life and property of oneself or others, but would otherwise not be able to pay. State governments also consider driving to be a privilege, and as such those privileges can be granted or taken away from you.

It has also been pointed out that the governments required auto companies to make cars come equipped with safety belts as a feature of a car. As the wikipedia entry notes, however, safety belt legislation, including requiring someone to wear a safety belt while driving, is a state matter, consistent with the idea of States wielding police powers, in this case that being of safety. But once again and more importantly, this is a separate idea from requiring someone to buy something.

Americans really need to consider very carefully the full ramifications of the claim that Congress has it within its power to compel Americans to buy something. Already, talk has been floated of requiring Americans to use their 401-k monies to buy U.S. Treasuries, and putting Americans on Social Security. Great. So all the money I've saved through my 401-k the past 15 years, and which I could give to my heirs, would be swiped from me and I would then be wholly dependent on government in my old age. If you are someone who still agrees with the idea that Congress can require Americans to buy health insurance, then what happens if you are told you must by a car or a house, all of course in the name of the common good? Even the Washington Post points out that the legislation raises non-trivial issues of federal authority over individuals, and the ideology that the common good somehow always trumps individual rights is not compatible with our deepest beliefs as expressed by our founders.

Misplaced priorities

David Brooks wrote a very interesting column after H.R. 3590 passed where he said

The Democratic Party, as it revealed of itself over the past year, does not seem to be up to that coming challenge [of cutting federal deficit spending] (neither is the Republican Party). This country is in the position of a free-spending family careening toward bankruptcy that at the last moment announced that it was giving a gigantic new gift to charity. You admire the act of generosity, but you wish they had sold a few of the Mercedes to pay for it.

Many people have questioned the Tea Party movement in one way or another. We've been labeled racists, astroturf (thanks Nancy, I'll take back my $1,200 then), amongst other things. Little do such people know that some of my friends have had to yell at social conservatives, upon hearing that gay people who wanted to be a part of the Tea Party movement were left feeling unwelcome. As Mr. Boggs stated,

We have to decide as a Party what concerns us more. The fact that the country is being driven into socialism, or who someone sleeps with.

And so it was with Obama Care. I find it breathtaking that Congress spent a year furiously battling over this issue when we have a yawning federal deficit that threatens to put us into taxation rates of 40-50 percent of all our incomes, hyperinflation, or debt repudiation. Nor have we dealt in any meaningful way with the Baby Boomer Social Security and Medicare tsunami, the first laps of water were felt this past year. Many people want job creation to be the first order of business, but job creation is very hard when you're so busy affecting change that people don't quite know what's going to happen next. But of course, if you really want to affect change, you follow the advice of Vladimir Lenin, who wrote

The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.

Will Americans finally owe up to the mess we have created since the time of the New Deal, or will we have another civil war amongst ourselves with 100 different groups pitted against each other? I don't know. All I know is that this past week, I've been up every night, far into the night, wondering about the future. I've started to read the Federalist Papers and Hayek's Road to Serfdom. We have set for ourselves, in the name of alleviating suffering, policies that encourage us to live for today and not think about tomorrow because tomorrow is not my problem - we'll leave the problem of the future to our children and anyway in the long run we're all dead. The problem with that train of thought is that there's no such thing as a free lunch, and that tomorrow has now come upon us.

I foresaw that this would happen 20 years ago, but even though I knew it would happen, it still hit me like a ton of bricks when it did happen. All I can say is that I haven't felt this afraid for my country since I grew up with the nuclear nightmare, but this time the problem is a cancer that comes from within. Our country is being ripped apart by two parties that are daring each other by walking an incredible high wire act, all while playing with fire. America, it's time to grow up.

So, the Texas primary season is over, or at least it is for those whose races did not leave them in a position to face a runoff. But with the season being for the most part over, there comes the usual grumblings and wailings from my friends about low voter turnout whenever Americans hold elections. Several months ago, after the City of Houston elections, there was the same complaint - some 15 percent of registered voters in Houston bothered to vote in the City of Houston general election for Mayor and Council. So, Felicia Cravens asks, "why don’t people vote in primaries?"

The Wizard has a confession to make. Years ago, I used to get incredibly upset about the same issue. "Why don't people vote?", I'd go screaming to myself. Don't they understand! It matters so much! It's the end of the planet if they don't vote! A woman named Jackie Juntti complains on Facebook of suffering from the battered voter syndrome.

At the same time, the leftist "progressives" have been complaining recently that America is "ungovernable", which really means that they are going absolutely bananas because the Democrats hold three out of five seats in both the House and the Senate, as well as the Presidency. Yet incredibly, the Democratic Party has not been able (yet) to push through Obama Care, nor have they been able to push through Cap and Trade.

So what has led America to this sorry state of affairs? Better yet, one might want to ask whether this is a sorry state of affairs to begin with?

First of all, we need to go back and reread the words of the Founders. Madison had done his homework when he traveled to Philadelphia in 1787. Madison knew from reading history that establishing America as a pure democracy would create a serious danger whereby the fiery passions of the public would end up invoking whipsaws of policy, egged on by the mob. The turbulence that lurks in all of us would be erupting constantly. Peace and tranquility, which is a precursor to happiness and progress, would be a rarity.

Therefore, Madison and the rest of the Founders rendered a Republic. But more importantly, they also knew that even though many Americans would declare that they love liberty and freedom, their actions would often belie their words. So, being ten steps ahead of the rest of us, as they always were, the Founders created a political system that made it very difficult to get anything done. Two bodies of Legislators, along with an Executive, and all the affected interest groups, all have to come to some kind of agreement that this is the way in which things are going to be. Passing legislation on big issues that affect large swaths of the populace in America is like trying to herd around a bunch of cats. You have to corral them all in order to get something done.

"But wait, Wizard!", comes the objection. And yes, I know, somebody out there is going to come up with some point where some President or some lower level public official did something quite easily. But people who do that are missing the forest for the trees. How many times have Presidents in America tried to push through universal health insurance? Truman, Kennedy, Nixon, Clinton, and now Obama? Remember, compulsory universal health insurance was something that was enacted decades ago by just about every other wealthy country in the world - except the United States.

That in turn should lead us to examine the political regimes of other countries. Why is it that other countries found it relatively easy to enact such legislation, whereas in America, the progressives have tried over and over and over again to reach the summit?

In the United Kingdom, for example, we don't have such lofty notions such as judicial review of laws, but rather we find such concepts as Parliamentary Supremacy. In other words, Parliaments in Britain and some other countries can make laws on just about anything they damned well please, and they can't be questioned by courts. In contrast, in the United States we have a Bill of Rights and judicial review. Governments can't always do what they want and sometimes legislation is struck down. In other words, there are more barriers in the United States to doing things, but it also means that each branch of government has to pay at least a little bit of attention on whether other branches of government will stomach what each other is doing.

Moreover, we also inherited from Britain the idea of single member representative districts, whose officials are usually elected by a plurality, an electoral system otherwise known as winner take all or first past the post. SMP style electoral systems can produce some stunning results. In the 1997 UK general elections, the Labor Party led by Tony Blair, came to power off of an election where the Labor Party won 43 percent of the votes, yet got 63 percent of the seats in Parliament. Because the Labor Party got over 50 percent +1 seats in Parliament, they got to make all the rules, and since Britain is a unitary state and not a federal state like the United States is, nearly all the power is embodied in one political body - Parliament. Parliament also controls well over 90 percent of all taxation spending in the UK, with town councils being responsible for the petty remainder. To put things bluntly, if Britons decide to elect a Labor government, they are going to get more government than they would if the install a Conservative Party government. In other words, it matters who gets elected.

In contrast, because we have a federalized nation, the political power is far more spread out and atomized in the United States. There is a central government in Washington, but there are fifty states, and thousands of towns and cities. The federal government has taken in some two thirds of all taxes since WWII, but state and local governments are responsible for the other one third. States and local governments also set rules on policing, criminal justice, land and water use matters, transportation, amongst many other issues. The result is what Madison intended - a political system where an attempt to preserve liberty and freedom to put into place by limiting the power of any one political actor or body to do damage to others. Californians may run themselves into bankruptcy and enact all kinds of kooky rules, but the fact that California is doing so is not necessarily going to harm other states or localities. Furthermore, Californians can move if they get fed up with their state of affairs and go elsewhere. In other words, our Founders set up a system where they tried to make it where it didn't quite matter so much who is in charge. How many times have you heard the old phrase, you have a choice between twiddle dee dom and twiddle dee dee?

So, we have single member legislative districts, but does it have to be this way? Of course not, and in many countries it isn't. In Germany, voters cast two votes - one for a district representative and one for a political party. 50 percent of the seats in the German Bundestag are apportioned by single member districts, and the other 50 percent are apportioned by how many votes each party receives in the election in what is called a mixed member proportional electoral system. One result is that there are more political parties in Germany, but another result is that in order to obtain a ruling majority, parties often have to form coalitions with other parties, whereas in the United States that doesn't happen. One of the two parties wins a majority and wins power, but even then, the ruling majorities in Congress are often uneasy majorities, as can be witnessed in the liberal / blue dog coalitions of Democrats that Nancy Pelosi presides over in Congress. Pelosi has big problems holding her coalition together, which again makes it hard to get things done.

Then there's the United States Senate, where as everyone knows, a band of Senators can filibuster legislation. Yes, Scott Brown's victory in the Massachusetts Senate race, making him the 41st Republican senator, mattered and it mattered greatly. Some elections do matter more than others, and sometimes when the balance of power is very precarious, as it is right now in Congress, a Senator's power can rival that of a President in certain matters. Sometimes being a Senator can be a fine thing to be, but the Senate is also the repository of where the voice of the minority is to be heard in American government. And if that minority is determined enough, it can be enough to bring matters to a halt.

But to give an example of how things could be different in American government, take the election of John Culberson in November 2008 in the Texas 7th congressional district. Mr. Culberson beat Michael Skelley by a margin of 56 - 42 percent. So a Republican wins the district, but what about the Democrats who voted against him? How are their views represented, or ask yourself whether theirs was a wasted vote? If it was a wasted vote, then why bother to vote in legislative districts where parties have incentives to gerrymander to gain as many seats as possible, packing votes into the seats held by the minoritity and cracking the districts held by the majority, thereby marginalizing the votes of many.

In a proportional representation system, there would be other ways of capturing the sentiment in that vote and people would find voting more meaningful. If there would have been five members apportioned in each district instead of one, the outcome might have been that three Republicans and two Democrats would have been elected to represent the 7th district. One thing Americans might want to consider is adding more seats to our legislatures in an effort to better capture the public sentiments of a growing population. The U.S. Congress has been stuck at 435 members for quite a while now. America gets trade offs - we lose the far edge sentiments of the left and right, but America gains stability and coherence in its government.

This state of affairs also leads into the question of whether any particular election had any meaning or not? I'll be up front: Most people are not going to know the difference, nor are they going to care, who sits on the Harris County Probate Court #3, or some other random court. In general, the higher up the political ladder, the higher the turnout rates are going to be for an election because there is more at stake. More people are going to turn out for a U.S. Senatorial election than one for a local Justice of the Peace court, because a U.S. Senator has more power than a local JP does.

Ask yourself this: In any one particular election, ask yourself what's at stake? Does a particular election have any meaning, or is it basically meaningless? How much power does a particular office holder have? In the November 2009 City of Houston general elections, what was at stake was who was going to be sitting on the deliberative body of a major city. Under Houston's form of government, the mayor has the power, hence one should expect greater competitive pressures to obtain the job verses that of a city council member.

But, here is another point: What difference was there amongst the candidates? Did any of the four candidates - Annise Parker, Peter Brown, Gene Locke, or Roy Morales propose any radical changes in city governance? Did any of them propose to sell off Houston's two main airports? Did any of the mayoral candidates propose going to Austin and asking for legislation empowering Houston to collect 20 cents of gasoline taxes to solve Houston's transportation woes? No. Did any of them propose doing away with property taxes and implementing sales taxes? No. Did any candidate propose scrapping rail and rethinking Metro Rail? The closest thing to that was Roy Morales stating that Metro was a bully and that we should examine elevated rail for safety reasons. Peter Brown was specifically going to implement greater land use controls if elected, but otherwise there was not that great of difference between the candidates.

So, if there was not that great of difference between the candidates, what else was at stake for the public in competing for a job that one person once described at the Houston Chronicle website as being a glorified dog catcher? If you had to call the fire department because your home or your neighbor's residence had caught on fire, and they showed up, would it have mattered whether Annise Parker, Peter Brown, Bob Lanier, or Roy Morales were the ones sitting in the Mayor's chair when that happened? What about your City Council member? Probably not. So ask yourself - what difference does it make to you who sits in the Mayor's chair or on council, and hence why bother to vote?

In the 2009 Texas primaries, what was at stake? Both main parties (and there are two main parties, because we have single member districts, right?) chose their candidates for the Texas legislature and Governor, but not who was going to be the Governor! And what if you are an independent voter who does not subscribe to either party? Why should you have voted?

Another issue at stake is asking how much does you vote really matter? In the 2008 Presidential and congressional elections, 60 percent of eligible Americans, over 120 million in all, voted in the Presidential election. How much of a probability is your vote going to be the one that mattered? Ask yourself the same thing in any election - in the 2006 Texas primaries, there were over 600,000 voters who voted, a far smaller number. But you still needed to ask yourself what was the probability that your vote was the one that mattered? It was non-existent.

So, do you want people to vote? It is possible to force people to vote, indeed compulsory voting is the law in a number of countries. Such laws are usually enforced by small fines, or threat of disenfranchisement if someone habitually fails to vote. But one needs to ask whether such notions are compatible with liberty and freedom. Do you want to live in a country where it is compulsory to participate in politics? Better yet, how much knowledge do people really possess about political issues? Yet compulsory voting would be compelling them to participate in the political arena.

Admittedly, this entry is a mess, but America's political system was designed to make things bland and unexciting, thereby discouraging participation in politics. Yes change could come, but it would come slowly and in increments, not through sudden explosions or radical change. Elections and voting do matter in America, but they usually don't matter as much as people think, because of systemic barriers to more political parties, of fractured government power, and barriers put in the way of the expansion of the state. By doing this, our Founders wanted people to dedicate their energies into commercialism, to solving problems through private means or by charity, and not by force of the state, and for them that was the way in which liberty and freedom would be preserved. Did it work? Well, for 140 years it generally did, but WWII changed everything.

Barring a meltdown and a revolution, which is a distinct possibility, it will take another 70 years to roll things back and even then there are plenty of interest groups and people favoring bigger government that will stand in the way of liberty, freedom, and personal responsibility. And so it goes that the great American experiment roll onwards.

Wizard

Why bother? The NEPA / EIS process, like nearly everything else the federal government does, is full of nothing but bullshit.

Wizard

The trip to Chicago

My father and I left Houston in his rather spacious automobile circa 1-2pm in the afternoon. We went over to my brother's residence where my father left him some instructions and house keys before we hit the open road. We ran into traffic congestion no fewer than five times within the first 35 miles before finally hitting some open road along I-45. We avoided the I-610 loop construction, but it was raining pretty hard that day and there were a number of accidents which were eliciting lots of rubber necking from drivers.

I had wanted to get out of Houston using U.S. 59, but I got into an argument with my father, who wanted to use I-10 to avoid the reconstruction work going on at the 610 Loop and get onto Interstate 45. We were leaving about 1pm and I told him that if we used I-45, we would run into evening rush hour traffic in Dallas. He would have none of it, so off we went, toughing it out up I-45.

The road way finally opened up somewhere around Conroe and off we went. True to form, we reached Dallas around 5pm and promptly ran into Dallas evening rush hour traffic around the point where I-45 ends and the road continues, turning into State highway 75. As with Houston, there are only either three or four lanes that go through downtown Dallas. It took a good one hour and twenty minutes to make it through Dallas and its northern suburbs before the traffic lightened up again. I was amazed how far the region had suburbanized. I spotted a new interchange that was being constructed in the outskirts of the Dallas Metro along highway 75. It will be needed.

As it was, I drove along highway 69 through Oklahoma, eventually hitting Interstate 44 east of Tulsa, which led to St. Louis. While driving along I-44, I saw a night train rolling in the opposite direction along the Interstate, reminding me that many of our roads followed where the trains ran.

We went through St. Louis around 4:00 am. I found the road network around St. Louis to be rather tricky. The interstates around St. Louis are full of turns, and the roads undulate with the terrain. If you aren't careful, then it's very easy to miss the turn offs that you're supposed to hit in order to stay on course.

I eventually made it to Lincoln Illinois by 7:30am. I let my father drive the rest of the way into Chicago. He is up there in age. I had let him drive for about 1 hour during the night, but he kept veering off onto the shoulder of the road, waking me up in the process from a brief nap. I then took back over driving until daylight, when it was safer for him to drive. We got into Chicago after 19 hours on the road.

Chicago

Many people have extolled about Chicago having an extensive mass transit system, and it does. Nonetheless, there was no doubt in my mind as my father and I entered Chicago on that snowy morning in late December that Chicago is in fact a city that is primarily built around the automobile.

We came into town and my father briefly drove around the convention center area. I saw quite a few hotels either directly connected to the convention center, or within a few blocks walking distance. The center also happened to be empty as we drove by. It reminded me that there are only so many conventions to go around and that Houston should not be wasting its energies on the convention business. We have far more pressing business to attend to than worrying about fighting over the scraps with a hundred other cities for convention business.

There was snow on the ground the entire time I was in Chicago. The temperatures hovered in the 20's during the day, and dipped into the teens at night. It was okay for a day or two, but after that I started to realize how thankful I was that I did not grow up, nor spend my adult life in Chicago.

I have a niece who is going to university in Chicago. She, like many students, has a car, but often walks with her friends to nearby restaurants and clubs. She also takes public transportation.

On the other hand, we stayed with my God parents while in the city. They never take public transportation, going everywhere by car - and yes, they have a pair of very nice cars! My sister had rented an SUV for the situation, so we mostly went back and forth between my aunt's residence and my God parents' using both vehicles. Only my mother flew into Chicago. We needed cars because it turned out that my aunt had quite a bit of stuff she had accumulated in her apartment. I ended up throwing away some 100 bags of trash in neighborhood bins before I returned to Houston and we took quite a few trips to the Salvation Army to donate items to charity.

Many of Chicago's older neighborhoods have alleyways in the back, where there are parking garages for residents. The alleyways are also where the trash bins, which are city owned, are located. Another item of interest was that in both my aunt's neighborhood and in my God parent's neighborhood, the streets were configured to be one way streets, with parallel on street parking. And yes, parking was often very hard to come by. On more than one occasion, I ended up parking over one block away from where my God parents lived. My father recalled that when the family still lived in Chicago in the 1960's, the streets in those neighborhoods were two way and there were not nearly as many vehicles parked in the street.

My God parents picked up the Chicago Tribune on the Sunday while we were there. While reading the weather pages, I was reminded of a piece of family lore. My father had a lifelong friend who shot a home movie of the blizzards of 1977-1979. For those of you who are not aware, Chicago endured three consecutive winters, 1976-77, 1977-78, and 1978-79, where the city was buried by an avalanche of snow. I recall seeing the home video, mercifully during a Houston summer, as a teenager, but had forgotten about it until I read that story. Another piece of trivia: The chief meterologist for WGN is a fellow named Thomas Skilling. He happens to be the brother of former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling.

But I digress. In 1957, the City of Chicago passed a zoning ordinance that mandated that developers provide one space for off street parking for each residential unit. It became clear to me that this mandate was not providing enough parking for Chicago residents.

We drove up and down Western Avenue many times, as that was the thoroughfare that stretched between my God parents and my aunt's residence. The street has three lanes in both directions, but the outermost lanes are taken up for parallel parking. I also noticed that there were row houses along the street in a few spots, indicating possible spot zoning since the street was obviously commercial. There were some businesses had Houston style parking, such as some CVS / Walgreen's type drug stores and some restaurants we went to. In other words, the zoning codes were clearly not uniform.

There were times where we would see clumps of pedestrians walking in the early evening hours. My father told me that it was likely that those were people who were just getting off work and heading to some neighborhood tavern or nightclub. At one point we passed under an "EL" (elevated rail line). My dad began to reminesce about his life in Chicago before we moved to Houston. He said he would often move to where there was a nearby rail station, as he did not own a car while living in Chicago until he was 36 years old. At one point I asked him how long it took for him to get to work when he lived in Chicago, and he told me about 45 minutes to an hour.

Another item of note was that gasoline prices are some 50-70 cents per gallon higher in Chicago than they are down south. This price discrepancy still held in central Illinois when we bought gas on the way home. I am not sure about why this was the case, but I would not be surprised if the matter has to do with the idea that oil and gas companies have to formulate different type of fuel due to Clean Air Act mandates. This balkanizes the gasoline markets around the country.

The trip home

My mother decided that my dad needed to go home, as he wasn't adapting well to the weather or to the problems of dealing with my aunt's death. Ergo the job fell to me to drive him back to Houston.

My dad directed me to take I-90 / I-94 towards downtown Chicago, then take I-55 south to get out of the city. I'll never forget the view of the skyline of downtown Chicago from a crowded and congested I-90 / I-94. It is not as spectacular as Manhattan's skyline, but it is very impressive. It is that broad downtown area that (at least on paper) justifies Chicago's public transportation network.

As we made it onto I-55, I encountered another amazing sight. It took driving some 30 miles south along I-55 before the traffic finally began to thin out, but that wasn't what startled me. It was that I must have seen 300-400 18 wheelers driving northbound along I-55. At some points, it looked to be that one out of every three or four vehicles was an 18 wheeler. There was a repair facility for 18 wheelers along the road, as well as several parking areas. I caught what I thought was a glimpse of a freight rail line along the way. It reminded me of how Chicago, like Los Angeles, is a vast hub for the movement of freight.

We followed I-55 through as it turned into I-40, down through to Memphis, then turned west through Arkansas on the way back. We made it to the outskirts of Memphis after 9pm, and as we did, I saw hordes of Federal Express freight trucks making their way west bound out of Memphis and into the night.

I reached Texarkana around 1:00am. TX-DOT is constructing a large interchange at the edge of town, and it took several minutes to snake our way through the construction before we hit U.S. 59 for the final drive home. I wanted to make it back into town before the morning rush hour hit with full force. That turned out to be a tough thing to do because U.S. 59, though it is five lanes in many areas, is not an Interstate road. Because of that, the road goes directly through the heart of many towns in East Texas, such as Lufkin, Marshall, and Jefferson. Every time you go through those towns, you have to slow down to urban speeds, whereas the Interstates often bypass or circumnavigate many smaller urban areas which often allows for faster travel.

We made it into Houston at 7:00am, running into rain and mildly heavy traffic along 59 as we reached 610 Loop. I turned at 610 to head towards I-10, and ran directly into the construction work that TX-DOT is doing along the route. I was glad when it was over, as it was another 19 hour drive home.

Final Thoughts

1) I did not run into much traffic congestion driving either to Chicago or back outside the major urban areas. Even St. Louis, which I drove through at rush hour, did not have too much traffic congestion. The big traffic congestion, surprise, surprise, was in Chicago, Dallas, and here in Houston. As such, I strongly believe that the Trans Texas Corridor was (and is) not necessary! The Governor and the political classes can make all the statements they want about traffic congestion, but I didn't see it along I-45, nor along anywhere else.

If Texas really needs new roadway, it would be much cheaper to simply add a lane in either direction along the right of way along I-35 or any of our other major roads. That would be much cheaper on the public coffers than cutting a quarter mile wide swath along the entire state of Texas and building a gigantic infrastructure project costing $150 billion. When doing infrastructure, it's better to make improvements to add to what's already there, if it's necessary, rather than start up gigantic new projects that often lead to disasters.

2) What is necessary is that if government is still going to be the main player in terms of infrastructure funding, then policies ideally need to be developed so that the bulk of the money goes to where the traffic congestion is at - which is the major urban areas. America already has a great road network for its towns and rural areas. What we need to do for them is simply maintain what they have.

In 2010, Congress will probably take up a new six year transportation appropriations bill. The House chair for transportation is Ken Oberstar, who has stated that he wants a massive six year appropriation bill of $500 billion, well over 50 percent higher than the cost of the previous Bush Administration era transportation bill.

Tea Party types should be thinking that considering our country's financial straits, this is utterly irresponsible. The Interstate freeway system, which was the main rationale for collecting the federal gas tax, is completed and there's no stomach in Congress to raise the gas tax. Congress has been funding transportation out of general revenues since the last bill ran out of authorization. Governor Perry might have been ambitious with the Trans Texas Corridor, but his criticism of federal transportation was cogent when he stated that the federal program had become unfocused, because so many gas tax dollars were not getting back to where they came from and they were being spent on items like bicycle trails and light rail systems.

I would argue that the federal government should reduce the gas tax to perhaps 5 cents per gallon. The federal program should go only towards the Interstate system, thereby putting the federal program into maintenance mode, and either let the state and local governments set up policies to fund their own transportation networks, or better yet let the private sector start dealing with the matter. Either way, it's more likely that America would end up with a more rational transportation network for the future and it would be part of a program to start rolling back the centralized power of Washington has drawn the ire of so many.

Wizard

And so it was that the Wizard was somewhat glad to close the book on the end of the first decade of the 21st century, discerning that maybe I'm not doing the best I can with my own life, when I learned of more awful tidings that came from the winds. I received word from a sister stating that my mother's one remaining sister suffered either a massive stroke or a heart attack. The word has it that she was walking back to her car from a night out with her friends (she had not been drinking, or otherwise been under drugs or medication). The story I've been told is that on the way back to the car, she stopped in mid stride and said, "I can't breathe!" She then collapsed to the ground on the edge of winter.

A fire station was several blocks away and help was summoned. She was brought back to life, but she had been without oxygen for many minutes. I received a call from my sister saying, amongst many things, that people are stopping by to say their last farewells and pay their respects. And so it is that the Wizard will be leaving tomorrow on a mighty drive to a far away place to see my mother's sister as she passes on.

I told my mother that her sister's meeting with the inevitable happened 27 years to the day when her own mother passed away, of fluid build up in her lungs. My mother said to me that my sister had noted this also. How strange the fates that take us.

And yet, my aunt's passing strikes me far harder than the death of my grandmother so many years ago. I did mourn all those years ago, but I've become aware that it is likely that I have fewer years left in this world than I have already lived. Yet, what have I done? Where has the time gone? What am I to do with the time I have left? How can I, in my own small way, make the world a better place than it was when I first was brought into it?

I went out on a four mile run along Westheimer the evening I heard the news. I will always remember how the sun was setting in the west as I ran home. Somehow, as I ran, it seemed to me that all the crap I deal with in my own life didn't seem to matter all that much. Indeed, it is only now, as I reach my middle age, that I am beginning to understand the true meaning of the words, may you rest in peace, because it is only at this time of my life that I've come to see that our souls never really will have true peace as long as we are of this world. I wonder - is that the origin of religion, of faith, or of the belief in God?

My aunt did not have the easiest of lives. My mother and her sisters grew up during the Depression and WWII on a family farm in a small town in southwestern Wisconsin. My grandparents eventually took regular jobs, but my aunt followed my mother to the bright lights and to the big city. Women in those days did not have all the opportunities that they do today, and she did mostly odd jobs to make do. She met her first husband, whom I barely remember, but that was not to be. However, she grew wiser and better at living as she became older and met a second man who was to be with her until he passed away five years ago.

Her second husband, I believe, was the best thing that ever happened to her. He worked in the cattle yards and slaughter houses, then drove a bus, ferrying handicapped children until he was felled by a stroke well into his 70's. They brought stability into each others' lives and they raised a foster daughter, the child of some former employers of hers, both of whom had passed onwards when the girl was small.

My aunt was wonderful at giving me Christmas clothes that I didn't want to wear, but once again she got better as she got older. I still have some sweaters she gave me from 20 years ago. They never went out of style and are nice and warm. We are supposed to go to church on Christmas Day. I think I will wear one as a tribute to her.

And so her life was. I now go to help clear what's left of her life, but the biggest thing I want to take with me are some photos or memories she may have left behind. I am sad, but in a way it was better for me that my aunt passed on before my parents did. I now have a warning of what I will feel like when my own parents leave this world forever and I know it will not be easy.

So did my aunt live a full life, and try in her own small way to make the world a better place? The answer in my own mind, no doubt, is yes she did. May she rest in peace.

Wizard

The Wizard has several items he wants to write about, but rather than belt out a long epistle at the moment, I thought I would simply drop a quick note on an announcement. The Houston Chronicle's Carolyn Feibel reported that unless a Member of Congress objected, the FTA would approve advancing Harris County Metro's so called University Line into preliminary engineering (PE) status. No FEIS has been issued by Metro on the rail line. A discussion about the issue can be read here on BlogHouston.

Well, today the Wizard received notice of a Letter from John Culberson - who happens to be my Congressman - that the Congressman intends to object to this advance of the rail line, or the western portion of it which is in the 7th Congressional district, into PE status. Culberson's 14 page letter, along with documentation supporting Culberson's grounds for objecting based on Metro's stated financial health, and pertinent news stories from KHOU-TV concerning statements from Gene Locke and Annise Parker regarding Metro's 25 percent general mobility funding, can be downloaded here.

As to what this means to the status of the rail alignment, I am not yet sure. The Wizard thinks this will cause the FTA to scrutinize Metro's ability to meet the local matching requirements, but probably will not stop the project from advancing into PE status. As always, what will really stop Metro is the massive cost escalations of Metro Rail, along with its ongoing general mobility obligations.

Houston will know who its next Mayor will be next week. Otherwise, the world rolls onwards.

Wizard.

The first of my writings concerns a rather obscure issue that should matter to all citizens of Harris County. As of late, there has been inquiry made as to whether Harris County should have a Public Defender's office, for purposes - at least on paper - of insuring that the poor and indigent have constitutionally guaranteed legal counsel available to them in the event that they are charged with a criminal offense.

The current regime of criminal defense for the poor in Harris County, which can be read in this excellent paper published by the Houston area League of Women Voters, is for a judge who is presiding over a criminal case to assign an attorney to handle the case. However, as the LWV paper states, there are two other primary methods by which legal representation can be provided for; one is via the Contract method, by which the government contracts out with a non-profit group or a law firm to provide legal counsel for the poor. What usually happens is that the firm gets a fixed sum regardless of how many cases are dealt with. The other means by which indigent defense can be dealt with is via a Public Defender's office. One of the things I learned was the nearly all other large municipalities and counties around the United States - for better or worse - employ a public defender's office. The LWV pamphlet states that as long as 30 years ago, 90 of the 100 largest counties in the U.S. had a public defenders office.

As for the meeting at the Democratic Party headquarters, it was an interesting affair. Much like the quarterly Republican Party precinct chair meetings, the D's have free food at their "brown bag" events. The bonus for the Wizard is that the Dems were holding their brown bag issue townhalls during the day, but now they're holding them in the evening.

Presiding over the evening's talk was HCDP chairman Gary Birnberg. The evening's guest speakers were State Senator Rodney Ellis and HC District Attorney (and former Houston City Council member) Vince Ryan. There were about 100 people attending the meeting, indeed it was standing room only for the crowd. There was definitely a sentiment that Bill White "would be our best candidate for Governor." One person mentioned that "it changes all of the state races."

Mr. Birnberg said that some 100 candidates had filed for Judge. Pleas were made for precinct chairs by Mr. Birnberg, who stated that it was through the PC's that you won races. Sheila Jackson Lee showed up at the meeting, and did speak, but much to my amazement, she didn't try to take up all the time at the podium.

The first featured speaker was Rodney Ellis. Senator Ellis stated that Harris County does have a Public Defender office, but that it is a federal office, not a county office. Ellis stated that "most people around the country look at Texas and think we're lost our minds." Ellis went on to say that yes, "criminal justice is a government program, and because it's a government program, there are going to be screw ups." Ellis stated that we in Texas send more to the death chamber and to prison than anywhere else. He argued that a public defender system is fairer to the accused than any other regime of indigent defense. He said, "if you're poor, you'd want a federal public defender."

Ellis also pointed out that if you have a judge making appointments of counsel to the defendant, there are conflicts of interest. So, gentle readers, where are the conflicts of interest in a judge appointed counsel system for the indigent? Two main ones: One is that the judge, in theory, has the power to hand out appointments to lawyers, like those who contribute money to that judge's political campaigns. Another possible conflict is if the lawyer is not doing too well financially and decides that he needs some cases to work on.

In a broader sense, what is it that judges campaign on when they are candidates for the post? Do they promise that they will be fair? No, they promise to voters that they will run their courts efficiently and keep their dockets clear. The issue (or danger) that arises with a court appointed attorney for the indigent is that since the object is to keep the dockets clear, if you have a court appointed attorney representing an indigent defendant, the possibility arises that if a defense attorney is hungry for cases and wants to stay on the good side of the judge (or judges) who appointed him or her to defend the client, then the court appointed defense attorney could conceivably sell the defendant short through encouraging guilty pleas, plea bargaining, or doing things that serve the interest of the judge and the attorney, rather than that of the defendant. In the words of one retired defense attorney who was present, "we're supposed to have an adversarial judicial system!", the implication being that with a court appointed lawyer system that we really don't. Instead, we have a conflict of interest.

Someone whose name I didn't get argued that the only reason why the State of Texas hasn't been sued over the issue of court appointed attorneys for the accused is that everyone points the finger at everyone else, ergo where does the fault lie within the system? Again, this issue is not a vote getter when it comes to campaign time.

Senator Ellis went on to way that corruption is something to consider, but noted that judges make nearly $100,000 per year. Ellis, who authored the Texas Fair Defense Act in 2001 (and more here), stated that a public defender office would be scalable, but noted that whether a PD office would be better than a court appointed attorney system depended on whether it was set up right and was given enough funding.

Harris County Attorney Vince Ryan then took to the podium. He largely agreed with Senator Ellis, stating that Harris County has perhaps the harshest criminal justice system anywhere to be found in America. Ryan noted that the GOP leadership is dead set against a PD system for indigent defenders, and stated that Gary Polland gets paid $250,000 per year by Republican judges.

Sheila Jackson Lee took to the podium - we couldn't have a public meeting where Sheila didn't get to talk, could we? Sheila said that "there was power in justice", and that the Obama Administration is investigating the Harris County Sheriffs department for why there were 110 deaths in prison over the past 10 years. Also being investigated are a lack of medical care of prisoners and Ms. Jackson Lee said that there needs to be a substantial mental health component in the jail system. Sheila also decried what she called "the proliferation of guns in the community."

Mr. Ryan resumed command of the podium. He stated that it costs some $50 per day to have someone in jail. A study that was commissioned for the Harris County commissioners recommended that to relieve overcrowding, there should be a Public Defender's office, it recommended that three days of time be given for every day in jail, rather than two as it is now in Harris County, that there be personal recognizance bonds allowed, and that pre-trial release be given for low risk offenders.

Another topic that was raised was bail reform in Harris County. Mr. Ryan said that twelve bondsmen get 47 percent of the bail bonds in the County. A point was raised that there should be a series of questions asked of a defendant before a defendant is allowed to obtain a pre-trial bond.

Senator Ellis resumed speaking. He argued that implementing a PD office would institutionalize knowledge on indigent defense. He believed that yes, most defendants are in jail because they are guilty, but some are in there because of their lawyers pleading them out. Ellis stated that a PD would be an appointed office, not elected. Ellis said that sixty percent of defendants are in jail because they weren't processed properly and that the average number of cases for a juvenile PD is 1,200 per year, compared to a recommended level of 150 per year. He stated this to reiterate his point that to have a functioning PD office, you need to adequately fund it. Currently the County staffs the Attorney's office with 100 lawyers with a budget of $16 million. About $30 million per year is now spent in indigent defense.

Further discussing the funding and conflict issues, Ellis asked, "when was the last time a lawyer asked to reduce a bond?" The answer was never, because they make money when a defendant stays in jail. Senator Ellis stated that 50 percent of the jail population is black and poor. He went on to say that this is obviously a political issue for him because his voting base was being eroded.

Long time defense attorney David Mitcham was present. Mitcham handed out a November 9th, 2008 New York Times story stating that public defender offices in seven states are refusing to take on cases citing heavy workloads. Mitcham argued that the problem was political, stating that the current judiciary overturned the pre-trial release regime, but Senator Ellis stated that the court appointed attorney regime was put in place by Democrats. Ellis told the audience that Dick Raycraft was all for a PD office, and that some Republicans also recognized that lawyers felt an allegiance to a judge in order to get more cases.

It remains to be seen whether the Democratic Party will adopt, as a resolution, the formation of a PD office next year, but it is on the table. The Republicans are strongly against it, witness this article by Court Koenning in the Texas Conservative Review.

So, is this political, or is this good justice? Should we have a hybrid PD office and court appointment system? The Wizard has yet to make up his mind. By the way - as a word of warning to the Republican Party. The Wizard heard a lot of talk about how Harris County was now 62 percent black and brown, and that there would be a Democrat County Judge soon. Clearly the local Democratic Party is taking it for granted that Hispanics and Blacks will vote for them in the future.

Well gentle readers, this was a long scribe. If you want to read up more on this issue here are some helpful links:

1) Here is the Texas Fair Defense Project's report on a Harris County Public Defender's office, where it is argued that a PD office will result in increased public accountability and will control costs.

2) Two stories back from 1999 from the Houston Press tell a story that the rights of defendants get compromised via the court appointed attorney system in order to keep the dockets cleared, and having defendants plea guilty to get out of prison.

3) An excellent blog entry from the always readable Murray Newman where he states that the real problem with our court system is that there are heavy caseloads and that defendants will be - in a memorable phrase - cooling their heels for a while, because of heavy caseloads. Newman also joins David Mitcham in countering the Houston Chronicle (and Senator Ellis), arguing against the establishment of a PD office.

When I initially published this blog entry, I identified the owner of the Washington Wave jitney service as Erik Ibarra. That information is incorrect and is hereby retracted. The actual founder and President of the Washington Wave jitney service is Lauren Barrash. The Washington Wave jitney service is in no way owned, operated by, or affiliated with Mr. Ibarra or his Eco Shuttle service. The Wizard formally apologizes to Ms. Barrash and to Mr. Ibarra for any confusion that may have resulted from my error.

(What follows is the resuming of my original blog entry)

Apologize for not blogging for several weeks, but I've been busy mostly on the social front.

The Washington Wave site notes that this service is the first jitney service offered in Houston in 15 years. Why is that? Much of that has to do with the barriers to entry caused by the the restrictiveness of the jitney ordinance (Chapter 46, article 6 of the City of Houston ordinances), which state that a would be jitney operator cannot operate a vehicle that is older than five years old, on top of a pile of other fees that have to be paid and rules that have to be followed. It's not hard for people to imagine that such barriers to entry make it very hard for anyone to break even on operating a jitney service, much less turn a buck.

Moving onwards, the weekend that Randal was in town, my 20 year old Honda CRX with 192,000 miles started having problems with the clutch. A consulting with my mechanic that I've been with for the past 12 years confirmed that pretty much the entire clutch, clutch cable, and probably the transmissions seals were all shot.Getting the car repaired was a cool $900, but I now have a car that can probably last another 100,000 miles if I so desire, and I've been finding I'm getting about four miles per gallon better gas mileage since the transmission work was done.

I was able to make it to and from my car mechanic's shop via Metro bus. Metro has the #81, the #82, and the #53 all at my disposal. No $130 million per mile rail lines, along with the disrupted businesses, nor the 1,500 foot radius condemnation zones needed, but here was the kicker. It was Friday afternoon and a Metro bus was stalled, dead in its tracks at the corner of South Shepherd and Westheimer. The bus driver had put out a set of blocks to indicate an out of service bus. I asked her what was the problem with the bus and she said there was a battery problem. The lost lane of traffic, not to mention the fact that her bus had broken down at the corner of a very busy major intersection, was a recipe for a major traffic tie up. Vehicles were backed up at least 50 deep back along Westheimer.

Fortunately (for me at least), there was another #81 bus just a block and a half up the road, so I waited until the next bus showed up and went home. However, the trips back and forth took 40 minutes for a five mile trip, which meant that the bus traveled an average speed of 7.5 miles per hour. On both the trip home and back the next day, fellow passengers looked at me and complained about how slow the bus was. Granted, these routes were navigating Westheimer during busy afternoons, but those passengers were looking at me as though they were hoping I could do something about the situation.

This got me to thinking about the idea of elevated transit. Last week at the HPRA meeting, Barry had an engineer from Tubular rail speak (or perhaps tout is the better word) on his product, but he didn't get away without having to answer a bunch of questions on the safety of his concept.

This has gotten me to thinking that there seems to be this idea out there that if a social decision is made to elevate transportation, it must be in the form of rail transit. But what about the idea of simply building an elevated road via double decking a thoroughfare, and allowing only buses, bicycles, and pedestrians to access it? Granted there are issues (there always are), including the cost of building anything that is grade separated, which would probably double the cost of a road built at grade.

A double decking of a thoroughfare would have to be at least 4 lanes wide, 2 wide lanes for buses, a middle lane for maneuvering, perhaps a four foot wide buffering strip for planting of vegetation, flowers, or scenery, and outside lanes for pedestrians and cyclists. There could be overhead cover provided for cyclists and pedestrians to allow for shelter against rain. Bus stops could be placed at gaps between the buffers every one-third of a mile.

A host of issues that would arise include resistance from neighborhoods (i.e. would such a project be politically feasible), constructing stairs or elevators for egress, where to put support structures for elevating a road, building the road high enough for vehicles to pass underneath, worries that such a structure would be a visual eyesore, and possibly water drainage. Costs per mile for 60 feet of elevated roadway would probably run at somewhere around $10 - 20 million per lane mile or $40 - 80 million per mile. If there were to be an elevated busway built over a freeway, then additional costs would incur from having to cross over the freeway. Here is a webpage that shows what an elevated busway might look like.

On the positive side, there would be no need for acquisition of additional right of way, but rather simple easements. There would also be no electric stray current leakage to worry about which is a substantial contributor to maintenance costs of rail lines, and some construction costs would be saved via not having to provide electrical power stations or infrastructure. Traffic congestion would ease on the streets below and motorists would not have to worry about unsafe at-grade trains going through our busiest intersections every 3-6 minutes. It's also conceivable that some property owners would build extensions to an elevated bus way from their own buildings.

If an elevated, exclusive busway were to be built over Westheimer, that would conceivably cut the travel time that I experienced a few weeks ago in half. Placing a bus stop every one third of a mile would have meant 15 bus stops to sit through on the way to Shepherd, which at twenty seconds a stop would mean a stop time of five minutes. Given that there would be segregated traffic with no stops at intersections or traffic lights to worry about, the bus could probably average 30 miles per hour between stops. That would result in an overall five mile trip of 15 minutes, or an average speed of 20 miles per hour. That would cut the overall travel time on that bus trip by more than half, and faster trips mean more transit riders. I could conceivably make a work trip to downtown within 30 minutes from where I live, and if I could do that, then I would consider regularly taking a bus to work.

A separated guideway along the elevated busway for cyclists and pedestrians would allow for getting around town without having to tear up the existing infrastructure and current business owners just might be able to survive the construction.

It's admittedly implausible that elevated busway will make it into the public discourse, but what such an idea goes to show is that in order to make public transportation (or via other methods) attractive to anyone is that transit has to be able to compete with automobiles in terms of speed, convenience, and overall safety. That means for the smart growth crowd to get what it wants, then the entire City of Houston would have to be completely redone and that's not going to be cheap. I would imagine it would be cheaper to do that via elevating the roadway, but that all depends on what you're after - improving mobility, or reshaping people's behavior.

Wizard

And so it was. Yet, it is a good thing to look over offers with an open mind. I ran into this same fellow about two weeks ago, and sure enough we started going over the idea of me buying into something along Washington Avenue. The street is brimming now, of course, with new development, the area being ripe for redevelopment.

So this past Saturday, the Wizard found himself taking a tour of Washington Avenue. There was a carnival atmosphere at the Salvation Army Thrift Store, as well as plenty of people enjoying themselves at various bars and clubs. It was a beautiful day out.

My landlord friend showed me his properties, and described the overall situation he was in. I had to admit it was a bit of gordian knot. To wit, the wine bar which I would have invested in ran into a bit of trouble with an ornery City inspector and had their outside porch ripped out. There went some of their business and the bar had to let go of several employees, and that wasn't the last of what I heard from my landlord friend, or his associates I met with that day, with regards to complaints about being a businessman dealing with the City.

But we moved onwards. We went to another of my landlord friend's properties, another of which is host to a bar. Now here is where I was really leading to with this blog entry. The bar has parking, but there is a lot along the street behind Washington Avenue that recently came up for sale. The lot is undeveloped and needs only to be cleared by its future owner. Now here's the kicker. The lot will probably go around $350,000. Adding the lot would be a bit asset to my landlord friend's property, but he's a bit tied up financially. Hence the possibility of my involvement.

But here's the catch. Ideally, we would be using the property for about 25 parking spaces, and one guy came up with the idea of putting some sand on the lot and allowing bar patrons to play some off street volleyball (this was their idea, not mine!). Now the Wizard has a degree in Economics and you can imagine what is going through my mind. How am I going recoup or otherwise justify investing over a third of a million dollars on a lot that is to be used for 25 parking spaces? That works out to some $14,000 per parking space. I'm not sure a commercial lender will look at me and say that - yes - I can carry another note like that in my current financial condition. Can I amortize something like that over 30 or more years?

Several ideas went through my mind. My landlord friend and I could charge for parking space. My partner has made it clear (as has the City) that parking - not sidewalks or walkability - is the biggest problem along Washington Avenue. Maybe parking is indeed the highest and best use for this lot and that I could generate sufficient monthly fees to justify utilizing that lot as a parking lot. Maybe it would enhance the value of my friend's property and business, thereby we could figure out a way to capture that value and get it back to me.

But ultimately, all of that is not what I'm getting at here. What I am getting at is is that it's an article of faith amongst those who are angry about automobiles or suburbanization that automobile use is subsidized and that automobile use does not pay for itself. I've often wondered how many of those gripers have actually run a business, have been faced with a real world decision on how much parking to provide potential customers, or tried figuring out how to best use a plot of land in a spot market that is both in a recession, yet is dynamic and rapidly changing.

Tom DeGregory was right. In a competitive market economy, the competition in capital markets, in the form of land, labor, and investment, is much more fierce than it is for product markets. It's not an easy thing to figure out, and as George P. Bush said the other night at an event I attended, there are no guarantees in a free market economy. Others will no doubt covet that lot of land, but such a decision on the use of that land certainly isn't something that I would trust to some starry eyed urban planner, or some moron employed in a City bureaucracy, even if the neighbors get noisy and start complaining.

Yes, I know what the answers are going to be. The planners are going to gripe about how City codes dictate how much parking there is supposed to be. They're going to gripe about strip centers and shopping malls full of acres of concrete. They're going to gripe about off street parking, a lack of sidewalks, and all the rest of it. But it still doesn't erase the dilemma I find myself in - whether to pull the trigger and buy?

Multiply this conundrum hundreds of thousands of times over and maybe, just maybe, you can begin to understand why I'm not all that thrilled with zoning or other far distant planning.

The world rolls onwards...

Wizard

Hmmm.

The Wizard is not surprised at this and neither should his gentle readers. Metro's 30 miles of light rail will most likely end up costing somewhere around four billion dollars!. What is amazing is not that Mr. Locke was able to garner campaign funds from establishment for this campaign, it's that Mr. Locke was only able to obtain $46,000 from would be light rail contractors! He should have been able to obtain many times that amount considering that billions in contracts are at stake here.

Paul Magaziner, a Richmond Avenue businessman who has become a fiery critic of rail transit, emailed an Adobe file to members of the media that showed that Metro has spent about $1.38 million on legal counsel from three politically connected law firms to defend itself in court from a lawsuit filed by a Richmond Avenue businesswoman. Why does it take three law firms for Metro to defend itself in court? Did it only cost a few thousand, or perhaps $10-20 grand to generate $1.38 million in legal billings? If so, then what a payoff!

This reminds me of an ongoing theme of the Wizard's, namely that I do not care much for campaign finance limits. The reason I don't care for them is that campaign finance limits are almost always pushed by big government advocates who are fearful that, once they've pushed through the big government they desire, they suddenly wake up to the fact that creating big government also creates the conditions for fighting over control of all that big government. In other words, how much of your time and money is it worth to you (and your friends) to be able to get what you want?

Are you one of Houston's 5,000 police officers and want a $5,000 - $10,000 per year pay raise? Then why is the Houston Police Officer's Union (HPOU) PAC only allowed to give up to $10,000 for the mayoral election? After all, we're talking about a public issue (how much police officers are paid) that would cost taxpayers $25 - $50 million per year. So, why isn't HPOU allowed to give - say - $500,000 to the campaigns of mayoral hopefuls? After all, such a figure would only cost each police officer $100 apiece and the pay off to each police officer could be 50 - 100 times that much.

Similar logic could be applied to nearly any interest group in politics, whether it be teacher's unions, fire fighter's unions, Houston Intercontinental airport operations, municipal employees, all of whom have huge financial stakes in the form of underfunded pensions and general funding for their operations. It gets even worse at the state and federal level. Some people might wail that the 2008 presidential election cost over $1 billion, but you have to remember that the federal government now has a budget of over $3 trillion! Spending $1 billion to control Congress and the Presidency is quite a bargain when you can control three trillion dollars per year of spending, as well as the armed forces, tax collecting agencies, and the regulatory powers of the federal government.

In addition to revealing how much it's worth to control government, or to have a dominant voice in government, lifting campaign contribution limits would also allow small groups of people to pool together a substantial amount of money in order to make a candidate viable. It could also help cut down on time spent raising money.

Another issue is that it always seems that interest groups seem to have a much easier time coming up with money. The Tea Party movement has to resort to selling T-Shirts at events to raise money, while insider interest groups seem to effortlessly generate money for their causes.

The whole point being made here is that for all the griping about corruption from campaign contributions, there is an argument to be made that there would not be such a need to pony up that much money for political campaigns if there wasn't so much being fought over. Bear that in mind the next time you read a story about campaign finance.

Wizard.