Taxpayers vs Bureaucrats, Part XLI

I've avoided this topic in recent weeks because it's too depressing, but this story is too outrageous to ignore. The County of Los Angeles has 199 bureaucrats who "earned" more than $250,000 last year. According to Census Bureau data for 2008, the median household income in the county was 55,000, Here's a blurb from the L.A.Times about incomes of the bureaucratic gilded class.

Nearly 200 Los Angeles County employees earned more than a quarter of a million dollars in 2009, according to a list of the county's top earners released late Monday in response to a Public Records Act request from The Times. The highest earners list was dominated by physicians and other medical personnel, but also included county firefighters and a handful of top sheriff's employees. Some of the best-known names on the list belong to elected officials — although none of the five county supervisors, who make $178,789 a year, qualified. ...The Times requested the base salary, overtime and "other earnings" for county employees whose total annual pay exceeded $250,000. "Other earnings" can include bonuses for special skills or responsibilities or unused benefits cashed out as taxable income, among other things. ...Overtime played a big role, with only 65 people making the list on base salary alone. Thirty workers made more than $80,000 in overtime. Twenty-two of them work for the county Fire Department, four work for public hospitals, two were psychiatrists for the Mental Health Department, and two were physician specialists for the Sheriff's Department.

Heads, They Win; Tails, We Lose

State and local politicians have rigged the property tax system so they always come out ahead. When home values are rising (even if incomes are flat), they automatically collect more revenue. Sometimes they even decide to reduce the tax rate, though rarely if ever by enough to compensate for the rise in home values. But when home values are falling, that's almost always an excuse to impose a higher tax rate so that the bureaucrats don't have to worry about tightening their belts (that's a role reserved for us peons). The Tax Foundation has a new report showing that politicians collected more than 4 percent more money from property taxes even though home values dropped by 16 percent.

The recession that began in December 2007 was precipitated by a financial crisis which in turn was triggered by the popping of a real estate bubble, particularly in residential property. And indeed, property values did decline dramatically. The Case-Shiller index, a popular measure of residential home values, shows a drop of almost 16 percent in home values across the country between 2007 and 2008. As property values fell, one might expect property tax collections to have fallen commensurately, but in most cases they did not. Data on state and local taxes from the U.S. Census Bureau show that most states' property owners paid more in FY 2008 (July 1, 2007, through June 30, 2008) than they had the year before (see Table 1). Nationwide, property tax collections increased by more than 4 percent.

Gross Abuse of Police Power

Here's a very disturbing story I saw on Instapundit. A cop arrested a woman for the supposed crime of not getting off her own front porch. Apparently, the cop didn't like the fact that she was observing - and perhaps even filming on her cell phone camera - a traffic stop. If there is any justification for what the cop did, it certainly is not apparent from the full story. What's particularly disturbing is not just that the cop made a seemingly abusive arrest, but that a judge then convicted the woman. Libertarians instinctively will be skeptical of the government in this case, but I hope that viewed is widely share. Our Founding Fathers gave us a Constitution that limited the power of government, and there should be a clear and compelling reason before an individual is stepped on by the police power of the state. If you rob, rape, and murder, those are good reasons. Standing on your court and filming a traffic stop doesn't pass that test.

The resisting-arrest conviction last week of Felicia Gibson has left a lot of people wondering. Can a person be charged with resisting arrest while observing a traffic stop from his or her own front porch? Salisbury Police Officer Mark Hunter thought so, and last week District Court Judge Beth Dixon agreed. Because Gibson did not at first comply when the officer told her and others to go inside, the judge found Gibson guilty of resisting, delaying or obstructing an officer. Gibson was not the only bystander watching the action on the street. She was the only one holding up a cell-phone video camera. But court testimony never indicated that Hunter told her to stop the camera; he just told her to go inside.

Great Moments in Local Government

Here's another remarkable story illustrating the incompetence of government. A bureaucrat in Norfolk, VA, got paid for 12 years (including benefits) without ever showing up for work. Depending on the agency, this may actually have been a good thing (I wish IRS bureaucrats did this), but it certainly shows how taxpayer money gets wasted when nobody is accountable and there is no bottom-line incentive to use money effectively.

A Community Services Board employee collected a salary with benefits for 12 years and never showed up for work, several City Council members said Wednesday. The head of the agency refused to identify the employee but acknowledged in response to inquiries from The Virginian-Pilot that an employee was "on the board's payroll who had not reported to work in years." Maureen Womack, the agency's executive director, said she fired the employee, informed the board that governs her agency and asked City Attorney Bernard A. Pishko to investigate the matter earlier this summer. Pishko's investigation is nearly complete and will soon be turned over to the Norfolk police, she said. Womack also refused to divulge the employee's salary. The council also was told in a recent closed meeting that at least one other staffer, a Community Services Board supervisor, is being investigated for alleged complicity. ...Councilman Tommy Smigiel said recent revelations about the Community Services Board employee and other matters, including the profligate use of a city credit card by the Commissioner of Revenue and the purchase of a cell phone with city funds for a gang member by an assistant to the city manager, are doing "serious damage" to Norfolk's image.

Great Moments in Government Incompetence

I take second place to nobody in my view that government is horribly incompetent, but I even I'm shocked by this story I saw linked on Drudge. According to a news report out of Indiana, students who take the government's driver's ed class are four times more likely to crash than those who don't take the classes. There almost certainly must be other factors that account for this surprising difference, as suggested in the excerpt below. After all, even I don't believe bureaucrats can turn people into more dangerous drivers. At the very least, though, this presumably shows that government classes have no positive impact. Maybe the right way to deal with young drivers is to put parents back in charge, backed up by the discipline of auto insurance rates determined by market forces. How's that for a radical idea?

Indiana lawmakers say they are puzzled by a study that shows teenagers who take driver's education classes are more likely to crash than those who do not take the classes. The Indiana BMV released the study that it says shows current drivers under 18 who took driver's ed had nearly four times the crashes than those without the training. Some lawmakers say it might be time for an overhaul. The state's drivers ed program has not changed in the past 30 years. But the BMV says the numbers might be skewed by the fact that teens with driver's ed get their permits earlier and have more time on the road.

America's Greediest State and Local Governments

I ran across two interesting lists showing how politicians at the state and local level are often just as bad as the ones in Washington, DC. First, Forbes has an article identifying the 10 states with the highest income tax rates. The top rate is a big deterrent to entrepreneurs and investors, but it's also important to look at the income level where the top tax rate takes effect. Yes, Hawaii, Oregon, and California have terrible tax policy, but Iowa, Maine, and Washington, DC, deserve special scorn for raping the middle class.

Hawaii: 11% (income over $400,000 (couple), $200,000 (single))
Oregon: 11% (income over $500,000 (couple), $250,000 (single))
California: 10.55% (income over $1 million)
Rhode Island: 9.9% (income over $373,650)
Iowa: 8.98% (income over $64,261)
New Jersey 8.97% (income over $500,000)
New York: 8.97% (income over $500,000)
Vermont: 8.95% (income over $373,650)
Maine: 8.5% (income over $39,549 (couple), $19,749 (single))
Washington, D.C.: 8.5% (income over $40,000)

Looking at the other major source of revenue for state and local governments, the Tax Foundation identifies the cities with the highest total sales tax rate - a number that often includes three separate levies by state, county, and city governments. Here are the top 10. Or should I say worst 10?

Birmingham AL 10.000%
Montgomery AL 10.000%
Long Beach CA 9.750%
Los Angeles CA 9.750%
Oakland CA 9.750%
Fremont CA 9.750%
Chicago IL 9.750%
Glendale AZ 9.600%
Seattle WA 9.500%
San Francisco CA 9.500%

One thing that stands out is that California is on both lists, which helps explain why the state is such a basket case. Seattle deserves a special mention because at least there is no state income tax in Washington.

Last but not least, it's worth mentioning that there's no sales tax or income tax in New Hampshire. Live Free or Die!

Great Moments in Local Government

Julie Murphy is obviously a dangerous criminal. What else would you call a 7-year-old girl who does something as dangerous and illegal as operating a lemonade stand without getting a $120 temporary restaurant license? Fortunately, the health and safety of the people of Multnomah County were protected when an alert bureaucrat shut down her lemonade trafficking operation.

It's hardly unusual to hear small-business owners gripe about licensing requirements or complain that heavy-handed regulations are driving them into the red. So when Multnomah County shut down an enterprise last week for operating without a license, you might just sigh and say, there they go again. Except this entrepreneur was a 7-year-old named Julie Murphy. Her business was a lemonade stand at the Last Thursday monthly art fair in Northeast Portland. The government regulation she violated? Failing to get a $120 temporary restaurant license. Turns out that kids' lemonade stands -- those constants of summertime -- are supposed to get a permit in Oregon... "I understand the reason behind what they're doing and it's a neighborhood event, and they're trying to generate revenue," said Jon Kawaguchi, environmental health supervisor for the Multnomah County Health Department. "But we still need to put the public's health first." ...After 20 minutes, a "lady with a clipboard" came over and asked for their license. When Fife explained they didn't have one, the woman told them they would need to leave or possibly face a $500 fine. Surprised, Fife started to pack up. The people staffing the booths next to them encouraged the two to stay, telling them the inspectors had no right to kick them out of the neighborhood gathering. They also suggested that they give away the lemonade and accept donations instead and one of them made an announcement to the crowd to support the lemonade stand. That's when business really picked up -- and two inspectors came back, Fife said. Julie started crying, while her mother packed up and others confronted the inspectors. "It was a very big scene," Fife said.

Taxpayers vs Bureaucrats, Part XXXVII

If you have municipal bonds issued by the city of Los Angeles, you may want to dump them while there's still time. The LA Times reports that one-third of the city's budget in 2015 will get consumed by pensions and benefits for retired bureaucrats.

The cost of retirement benefits for Los Angeles city employees will grow by $800 million over the next five years, dramatically eroding the amount of money available for public services to taxpayers, according to a report issued Tuesday. In a bleak assessment delivered to members of the City Council, City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana said pensions and health benefits for current and future retirees would jump from $1.4 billion next year to at least $2.2 billion in 2015. ...By 2015, nearly 20% of the city's general fund budget is expected to go toward the retirement costs of police officers and firefighters, who now have an average retirement age of 51. The figure was 8% last year. Once civilian employees are factored in, nearly a third of the city's general fund could be consumed by retirement costs by 2015, Santana said.

Government Intervention, Favors for the Rich, and Economic Damage

Whether we're looking at TARP bailouts, Obamacare, or tax loopholes, a common theme is that politicians implement a policy by arguing they want to help the less fortunate. When the dust settles, however, it is often the case that politically well-connected rich people are the big beneficiaries. The overall economy tends to be weaker, meanwhile, and the specific sector suffers because of resource misallocation, so poor people actually fall farther behind. A good example is rent control. The Wall Street Journal has an editorial citing the case of Bianca Jagger to illustrate how the law has become a giant rip-off that deprives landlords of their property rights while lining the pockets of the elite. Those lower on the income scale, by contrast, suffer because of a housing market crippled by government intervention.

Jetsetter and social activist Bianca Jagger has lost her legal bid to keep her knock-down-price rental at 530 Park Avenue. A New York state judge last week ordered Mick's ex to pay $708,600 in back rent and other fines to her landlords. Ms. Jagger spent nearly 20 years in the two bedroom apartment—rent-stabilized at $4,600 a month. But then she complained about poor upkeep. The landlords in turn noted that Ms. Jagger, in the U.S. on a tourist visa, shouldn't pay the lower rent since New York isn't her "primary residence," one of the criteria under rent control laws. A state appeals court sided with them in 2008 and last week another court upheld the decision and said she could be evicted. As part of the fine, the judge ruled that Ms. Jagger owes $246,468 for the "fair market use and occupancy" over the years she was in dispute with the landlords. They said the apartment would have gone on the open market for $8,800 a month. The case sums up the insanity of regulating prices in one of the world's most competitive and dynamic real estate markets. Rent control, a "temporary" World War II-era measure that survives into this century, creates housing shortages, drives up prices for non-rent control real estate and contributes to middle class flight. As Ms. Jagger perhaps found out with her moldy apartment, artificially keeping down rents gives landlords the rational financial incentive to skimp on upkeep. Worse than that, rent control disproportionately subsidizes the affluent. A Harvard University study in the late 1980s found that rent-controlled apartments were in some of the cities best neighborhoods, that 94% of its tenants were white and roughly three-quarters were families without children.

Budget Deficits Force Local Governments to Do the Right Thing for the Wrong Reason

There are legitimate reasons for local governments to own land, but surely it doesn't make sense for them to hold on to surplus acreage. Better to get that land back in private hands, where it will be used for some productive purpose. This is why the downturn does have a silver lining. A handful of local governments are so anxious for more property tax revenue that they are going out of their way to make extra government-owned land available to private owners at rock-bottom prices. Ideally, they should have privatized their holdings years ago, but better late than never. Here's a blurb from the New York Times about this development.

Give away land to make money? It hardly sounds like a prudent scheme. But in a bit of déjà vu, that is exactly what this small Nebraska city aims to do. Beatrice was a starting point for the Homestead Act of 1862, the federal law that handed land to pioneering farmers. Back then, the goal was to settle the West. The goal of Beatrice’s “Homestead Act of 2010,” is, in part, to replenish city coffers. The calculus is simple, if counterintuitive: hand out city land now to ensure property tax revenues in the future. ...Around the nation, cities and towns facing grim budget circumstances are grasping at unlikely — some would say desperate — means to bolster their shrunken tax bases. Like Beatrice, places like Dayton, Ohio, and Grafton, Ill., are giving away land for nominal fees or for nothing in the hope that it will boost the tax rolls and cut the lawn-mowing bills. ...Officials acknowledge that the benefits sound modest, in the thousands of dollars annually, but say the revenue is needed. “What is the value of a lot to us if it’s empty?” said Tom Thompson, the mayor of Grafton, where an offer of 32 city-owned lots, promoted with a television advertising campaign, has quickly led to eight takers so far. “This is strictly financial — a way to go upstream from the trend.” In Dayton, officials are offering thousands of vacant, foreclosed or abandoned properties under certain conditions for nominal fees — $500, in many cases, to cover the cost of recording fees or $1,200 if the city must initiate tax foreclosure proceedings. The prospect of city savings on mowing fees alone is enormous: each year, Dayton spends $2 million to cut grass on the properties.

Noncompliance Leads to a Victory for Liberty

I'm glad I read Instapundit, because my day has been made brighter by the news that Arizona's statists have given up on their money-grubbing speed camera program. Here's a cheerful story which explains that widespread noncompliance was the key.

Dozens of photo-enforcement cameras on freeways throughout the state are coming down this week. A total of 76 cameras will cease operation on Thursday. ...While the cameras have done a good job at snapping speeders, drivers have been ignoring the tickets. According to the Department of Public Safety, the cameras led to more than 700,000 tickets in the first year of operation. Many of those people, however, never paid the fines. ...Any driver who ignored a photo-enforcement ticket was supposed to have been served. One problem was that process servers were inundated and simply couldn't get to everybody. If a person was not served, his or her ticket became invalid after three months. The speeding tickets should have generated about $90 million in the first year of the program. About one-third of that was actually collected.

And here's a website with further details, including about how one group of activists were vandalizing the revenue cameras. As the person who wrote the article says, "I say to the people of Arizona: Bravo! How very American of you."

The State, as an institution, thrives on confrontation. The best antidote is peaceful non-compliance. Simply ignore the State, disengage, and the State is rendered impotent. Through the highway camera system, it was hoped that an additional burst of revenue would roll in. Instead, it became a massive drain on the state's budget. Not only did it not bring in the hoped-for revenue, it didn't even make enough money to pay for expense of installing and maintaining the cameras. The citizens simply ignored the tickets that arrived in the mail. The state of Arizona doesn't have the money nor the resources to follow up on the unpaid tickets. To top that all off, a group of activists went around vandalizing the traffic cams '" icing on the cake.

Allow me to conclude with my personal experiences. I've been nailed by speed (revenue) cameras twice. In both cases, the speed limits were set absurdly low. In one case, it was a 45-mph limit on a stretch of interstate highway. In the other case, a 25-mph limit on a six lane major artery. Sadly, I had to pay. But the real outrage is that there is no plausible explanation for those speed limits/camera placements other than to rip off drivers. I just hope someday I have jury duty and the case is about somebody arrested for vandalizing a camera.

Taxpayers vs. Bureaucrats, Part XXXVI

Even I am shocked about how politicians and bureaucrats are bilking the poor people of Bell, California. I wish I had this example reported by Bloomberg for my video on overpaid bureaucrats, but mostly I hope that taxpayers rise up in revolt against the way the insiders are scamming the system and ripping off society's productive outsiders.

Hundreds of residents of one of the poorest municipalities in Los Angeles County shouted in protest last night as tensions rose over a report that the city’s manager earns an annual salary of almost $800,000. An overflow crowd packed a City Council meeting in Bell, a mostly Hispanic city of 38,000 about 10 miles (16 kilometers) southeast of Los Angeles, to call for the resignation of Mayor Oscar Hernandez and other city officials. Residents left standing outside the chamber banged on the doors and shouted “fuera,” or “get out” in Spanish. It was the first council meeting since the Los Angeles Times reported July 15 that Chief Administrative Officer Robert Rizzo earns $787,637 -- with annual 12 percent raises -- and that Bell pays its police chief $457,000, more than Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck makes in a city of 3.8 million people. Bell council members earn almost $100,000 for part-time work.

Taxpayers vs. Bureaucrats, Part XXXV

Oakland politicans have created a fiscal crisis by spending too much money. This has caused strife with the police union according to a San Francisco paper. The details of the fight are not very remarkable, but I was stunned to read that the average compensation for a cop is $188,000 per year. I have plenty of sympathy for cops (at least the ones who protect life, liberty and property rather than the uniformed bureaucrats who monitor speed traps and harass pot smokers and hookers), but I am 99 percent confident that taxpayers could attract just as many competent officers at a much lower cost.

The council voted last month to lay off more than 10 percent of the police force to cope with what officials describe as an unprecedented financial crisis. The $407 million general fund budget for the fiscal year that began July 1 represents a decline of $69 million since 2005, and public safety now accounts for three-fourths of discretionary spending. With the average officer's salary and benefits totaling $188,000 a year, City Councilman Ignacio De La Fuente, a union leader himself, has described the situation as "unsustainable."

Red Light Cameras Are a Dangerous Government Ripoff

Radley Balko's Reason article explains how local governments install red-light cameras in ways that increase accidents because they are greedy for more revenue:

...the Florida Public Health Review published a research paper that concluded the cameras "actually increase crashes and injuries, providing a safety argument not to install them." In particular, there has been a dramatic increase in rear-end collisions, suggesting that people are slamming on their brakes to avoid a ticket. Similarly, a 2005 Washington Post report found that after the city installed its traffic light cameras, collisions at the camera-equipped intersections went up rather than down. But the cameras brought the city $32 million in revenue. So rather than halting the program, the city chose to expand it. A number of researchers have shown that lengthening yellow lights at crash-prone intersections is much more effective at preventing collisions than issuing automated citations. (The North Carolina Urban Transit Institute, for example, came to that conclusion after an extensive study funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation. Other studies along those lines have been conducted by the Virginia Department of Transportation, the Texas Department of Transportation, and North Carolina A&T.) But lengthening yellow lights doesn’t add cash to city coffers, so few jurisdictions have considered it. ...at least six cities have been caught shortening yellow lights after installing cameras at intersections, putting motorists in more peril while simultaneously picking their pockets when they unexpectedly run through red lights. ...Until media reports and citizen complaints prompted a change in the law, motorists in Washington, D.C., who wanted to challenge an automated ticket had their claims heard not by a government court but by the same company that received a percentage of every fine collected. Such policies have sparked a backlash: As of December, 15 states and nine cities had banned automated citation cameras.

Great Moments in Local Government

A number of years ago, I read about a good samaritan who got in trouble for plowing a street so his neighbors weren't trapped by snow. The local government didn't like being exposed for incompetence. More recently, I watched a documentary about the Air Florida crash in Washington in the early 1980s, which featured a civilian jumping in the water to rescue a woman while a bunch of bureaucrats were apparently frozen into inaction by procedural rules. Fortunately, the hero in this case didn't get in trouble for unauthorized rescuing. The same can't be said, unfortunately, for a rafting guide in Arkansas who was arrested for coming to the aid of a 13-year old girl. This story was linked on Instapundit, and Glenn Reynolds appropriately noted that the bureaucrats must have been pissed that they were exposed for incompetence.

Clear Creek sheriff's deputies on Thursday arrested a rafting guide for swimming to a stranded young rafter who had tumbled from his boat on Clear Creek. Ryan Daniel Snodgrass, a 28-year-old guide with Arkansas Valley Adventures rafting company, was charged with "obstructing government operations," said Clear Creek Sheriff Don Krueger. "He was told not to go in the water, and he jumped in and swam over to the victim and jeopardized the rescue operation," said Krueger, noting that his office was deciding whether to file similar charges against another guide who was at the scene just downstream of Kermitts Roadhouse on U.S. 6. Duke Bradford, owner of Arkansas Valley Adventures, said Snodgrass did the right thing by contacting the 13-year-old Texas girl immediately and not waiting for the county's search and rescue team to assemble ropes, rafts and rescuers. "When you have someone in sight who has taken a long swim, you need to make contact immediately," said Bradford, a 15-year rafting guide and ski patroller from Summit County. "This is just silly. Ryan Snodgrass acted entirely appropriately. These guys came to the scene late and there was a rescue in progress. They came in and took over an existing rescue. To leave a patient on the side of a river while you get your gear out of the car and set up a rescue system you read about in a book is simply not good policy."

Taxpayers vs. Bureaucrats, Part XXIX

This story from Philadelphia, which I saw on Reason's Hit and Run blog, is one of the worst examples I've ever seen of government bureaucrats bilking taxpayers. The City Manager, who already receives an absurdly extravagant salary and hasn't even been on the job for 2-1/2 years, was able to get a guaranteed $50,000 annual pension in exchange for a one-time cost of less than $125,000. Unless she is already in her 80s, that means she will get an astoundingly high rate of return. I'm too lazy to do any calculations (and I would need her age anyhow), but I'd be surprised if she's not getting a 20 times higher return than the rest of us peasants are receiving on our IRA(s and 401(K)s.

Camille Cates Barnett will get nearly $50,000 annually from the city pension fund for the rest of her life after June 30, when she leaves her post as Philadelphia's managing director after two years, five months, and 24 days. On the same day that a City Council committee moved to close the loophole that allows short-time employees such as Barnett to buy credit in the city's pension fund based on public service elsewhere, the Board of Pensions and Retirement revealed that Barnett had done just that. Barnett has paid $122,303 to become vested in the pension plan, according to the Mayor's Office and the Pension Board, a privilege unionized employees are entitled to only after serving five years. ...Barnett could not be reached for comment Wednesday night. She previously declined to comment on her plans. Barnett's salary this year is $181,693, making her one of city government's highest-paid public officials. Mayor Nutter has not named her successor.

Great Moments in Local Government

Given the times we live in, it's not unreasonable for a teacher to be concerned about a student drawing a picture showing the teacher being shot. But when the student is an autistic boy with the mental capacity of a third grader, perhaps it's a tad bit of an overreaction to have the boy arrested and charged with making terroristic threats. I don't have any proof, but I have a strong suspicion this kind of stupidity is more likely to happen in government schools with unionized teachers:

A 14-year-old autistic boy was suspended and charged with a felony over a picture he drew in school, MyFoxAtlanta reports. The boy's mother said he was in a special needs class when he drew a picture of two stick figures, one of which was holding a gun. The eighth grader's picture depicted a stick figure with a gun that was labeled "me." The figure was shooting another figure that had his teacher's name above it. The boy has been suspended and is now facing criminal charges. "They've pressed felony charges for terroristic threats," said the teen's mother, Karen Finn. "It's that sweeping zero tolerance, and I think it's ridiculous." Finn said her son, Shane, drew the picture on the page of a school assignment where his teacher would easily see it. She said her son is autistic and has the mental capacity of a third grader, and he doesn't really understand why he's in trouble.

Greetings from NYC

In town for a speech tomorrow morning (will also be on Fox and Friends at 8:15). Saw this on my walk to the hotel.

Is the city government really this greedy? Or is there something so horrible about idling that it requires outlandish fines?

Great Moments in Local Government

We should always remember that the federal government may be the biggest problem, but that does not mean that state and local governments should be exempt from scrutiny. A good (or perhaps I should say bad) example of bone-headed stupidity by bureaucrats and politicians outside of Washington comes from Texas. A local school bureaucracy has given a student detention for the horrible offense of eating a piece of candy her parents packed in her lunch. That clearly was a stupid move by the local official, but don't forget that state officials also deserve some blame for a state law that limits so-called junk food in schools. I can understand if states (or, more preferably, local governments) try to serve healthier foods in cafeterias, but the foods that parents prepare for their own kids are not any business of politicians and bureaucrats. Period. Case closed:

A third-grader at Brazos Elementary was given a week’s detention for possessing a Jolly Rancher. School officials in Brazos County are defending the seemingly harsh sentence. The school’s principal and superintendent said they were simply complying with a state law that limits junk food in schools. But the girl’s parents say it’s a huge overreaction. “I think it’s stupid to give a kid a week’s worth of detention for a piece of candy,” said Amber Brazda, the girl’s mother. "The whole thing was just ridiculous to me." Leighann Adair, 10, was eating lunch Monday when a teacher confiscated the candy. Her parents said she was in tears when she arrived home later that afternoon and handed them the detention notice. According to the disciplinary referral, she would be separated from other students during lunch and recess through Friday. Jack Ellis, the superintendent for Brazos Independent School District, declined an on-camera interview. But he said the school was abiding by a state guideline that banned “minimal nutrition” foods. “Whether or not I agree with the guidelines, we have to follow the rules,” he said. The state, however, gives each school discretion over how to enforce the policy. Ellis said school officials had decided a stricter punishment was necessary after lesser penalties failed to serve as a deterrent.

Government Is a Racket to Enrich Bureaucrats and Rip Off the Rest of Us

Every experience I've had with speed cameras has been negative. That's hardly a surprise, but the other common experience is that they always are set up in places where the speed limit is absurdly low (a 45-mph limit on a stretch of interstate highway in DC is a good example). As one might suspect, there is considerable evidence that greedy and corrupt governments use cameras as a revenue generator. But cameras are not a necessary component of speed traps. Here's a story from Michigan about how local governments are ignoring state requirements to set reasonable speed limits solely because the bureaucrats want to rip off motorists:

Metro Detroit motorists who exceed posted speed limits may not be breaking the law, because in many cases the limits themselves are unlawful, according to one of the state's top traffic cops. Four years after the passage of Public Act 85, which requires municipalities in Michigan to conduct studies to set proper speed limits, most cities, villages and townships have not complied, according to Lt. Gary Megge, head of the Michigan State Police Traffic Services Section. One likely reason, said Megge, whose section advises communities on how to set proper speed limits, is that communities want speeding ticket revenue, and failing to conduct the required speed studies allows them to keep enforcing their speed limits that Megge calls "artificially low." ...Ferndale Police Chief Michael Kitchen admitted revenue was the reason behind his recent decision to step up traffic enforcement. "We have to write more tickets in order to avoid layoffs," Kitchen said. ...Kitchen admitted that the 35-mph speed limit on the most heavily-driven roadway in Ferndale -- Woodward Avenue near Nine Mile -- is likely too low. "That speed limit would probably be 45 mph if they ever did a speed study," said Kitchen, adding that Woodward falls under MDOT's jurisdiction.