Walter in Denver

 I've often wondered what became of Bob Glass, one of my favorite radicals. He's back in Colorado and starting his own radio show.

Big Tent Democrat posting at Talkleft, states, "Only a right wing ideologue could write about the Media's left bias."

 ROTFLMAO, I ponder if a fish knows it's wet. I'm sure Big Tent Democrat (lawyer Armando Llorens) is well read and well educated, so I can only assume he doesn't know what left bias looks like. So here's a quick example from local news last week. This story was carried by both 9 News and the Denver Post:

 DENVER - Records show one of Colorado's largest trucking companies has been licensing most of its fleet out of state for 13 years to avoid paying Colorado sales taxes and emissions fees.

The practice by Western Distributing Transportation Corp. has cost Colorado millions of dollars in sales tax during the state's worst budget crisis in decades, according to a 9Wants to Know investigation.

Whether or not this is against rules and regulations is still being determined.

"If Colorado wants the business, they need to change the law and change it to a responsible fee and a bunch of us Colorado carriers would be glad to move it back to Colorado. But Colorado has priced themselves out of it," said Dino Guadagni, vice president of Western Distributing.

Western Distributing opened for business in 1933 and maintains a fleet of 235 trucks and 345 trailers at its headquarters on York Street in Denver. While the signs on the truck doors say Denver, Colorado, their license plates say Wyoming.

Where to start on this nasty little piece of reporting? I'll note the use of the word cost, as if unpaid revenue is an expense to the state. More:

According to the Colorado Motor Carriers Association, it cost $11,749 for a new truck tractor in Colorado, or twice as much as Wyoming, which cost $5,559. The association also claims that Colorado has the highest sales tax of any surrounding state.

"I love this state but I'm not going to overpay for what's not duly owed to them," Guadagni said.

However, IRP officials in Wyoming and Colorado say that the company is breaking the spirit of the trucking regulation, if not the actual regulations themselves. Wyoming is conducting an audit of the company to see if it's legally allowed to license its fleet in Wyoming.

"It is absolutely not the intent of the IRP to allow somebody to go to a foreign jurisdiction and rent a little room and put a temporary employee... with a phone or a fax that is transferred to another location in another state," said Jaki Berry, the IRP program manager for the Colorado Department of Revenue. "That is not the intent behind what we are doing."

Naturally the IRP program manager doesn't want anyone losing tax revenue. Note no one knows if the trucking company has done anything illegal, it's just that the state of Colorado wants the money. Most importantly, the tax rates are arbitrary and do not reflect any expense to the state, as evidenced by the disparity of rates between the states. Does anyone believe a truck in Wyoming costs half as much road expense as Colorado? You would think the numbers would be reversed due to poulation density.

 Why would 9 News think they need to 'investigate' the trucking company for doing something legal? More:

The company has been paying ownership taxes and registration fees to Colorado through an apportionment plan set forth by the IRP. Wyoming collects those fees and then distributes a percentage back to any state depending on the number of miles the trucks have driven there.

However, because the company is licensing in Wyoming, it has not been paying Colorado sales, RTD and local taxes, or title and emissions fees on its 235 trucks or power units. The company has also not been paying registration fees, sales tax or annual ownership taxes for its 345 trailers to Colorado.

"What they're doing is basically looking for a tax haven. They've turned Wyoming into a St. Kitts apparently," Carroll said. "They're making money here and they're using our roads and putting a burden on our roads and we should not have to pay for their desire to find a safe tax haven."

Carroll says Colorado really could have used the company's tax money over the past few years.

"We have 126 bridges that are completely unsafe and dangerous, much like the bridge in Minneapolis that fell about two or three years ago," Carroll said. "I would like for them to pay their taxes here... like they're supposed to."

This story came to 9NEWS through a newstip.

Gotta love that last line. Couldn't be anyone with the state trying to do some arm twisting via the media.

 But we read there that the company pays for its mileage, and we can assume they pay fuel tax as well. It's far from established that the company isn't paying its own way on Colorado roads.

 This story could have been written with an entirely different bias, with a headline like 'Colorado Trucking Company Finds Shelter in Wyoming,' subheaded 'Usurious tax rates in Colorado force company to look for loopholes.'

 So we see here a general leftist bias to the story, including pro tax, anti business, and pro bureaucrat elements.  They imply that whatever arbitrary tax the government decides to enact creates a moral obligation on the part of the citizenry to pay - apart even from a legal obligation to pay it. Does anyone disagree that constitutes a bias?

 Here's my bias - kudos to Wyoming in creating some competitive tax rates.

 

 I see Ezra Klein has something against "once-exclusive country clubs." I suppose that's just standard lefty envy and egalitarianism. He's referring to this Washinton Post article, Feeling the Squeeze, Exclusive Country Clubs Get the Common Touch. From which:

Last month, Uniontown Country Club opened its dining room to the public for the first time -- a change that has blurred the social hierarchy in this mountain town south of Pittsburgh. The economic crisis and shifting demographics have left Uniontown, population 13,000, without enough wealthy residents to sustain a private club, so now UCC caters to the everymen it was created to exclude. Instead of handpicking its members from a waiting list, UCC advertises in the local paper, has relaxed its dress code and features a menu designed for what the new chef calls "budget-conscious eating." Out: the filet mignon for $30. In: super nachos for $7.95.

"We've gone from chichi to Chi-Chi's," one member says.

The same shift is affecting country clubs everywhere, including in the Washington region, where some have cut initiation fees, others have eliminated them and a private Ashburn club opened to the public just last week. The National Golf Foundation has identified more than 500 clubs at serious risk of closing, and a recent survey of club managers showed that twice as many members resigned during the past 12 months than during a typical year.

In western Pennsylvania alone, six clubs have staved off bankruptcy recently by opening at least partially to the public. Most of them share a plight similar to that in Uniontown, where a declining population and the recession have combined to make recruiting new members nearly impossible.

That's to be expected in this economy. As a longtime golf course employee, my first concern is the jobs lost as these clubs close or cut back. 500 clubs at risk means several thousand jobs at risk. But if Ezra or the Post have any concern about that they aren't voicing it. Continuing:

Consistency is what has drawn the Clusses to the club every Wednesday for the past 50 years, and they hold fast to their routines. They sip white wine in their home's sunroom before dinner and then drive two miles uptown to UCC. They enter through double doors into a sprawling front room adorned with a brick fireplace, a dusty grand piano and three bouquets of fake flowers. Creaky hardwood floors announce their arrival, and two staff members walk out to greet them.

"Hello, Mr. Cluss."

"Hello, Mrs. Cluss."

Every corner of the UCC building is filled with Cluss family memories, because the couple have come here at least once each week since Charles took over his father's lumber company and bought a membership in 1953. Outside is the golf course where Charles spent his weekends and the pool where Mimi relaxed under a pink umbrella, the benefits of exclusivity for which the Clusses paid more than $2,500 a year.

Whoa! What was that? $2,500 per year? I thought this was about an exclusive club for the wealthy? What kind of garbage is the Post peddling here? $2,500 per year is an affordable alternative to public golf. Taking a guess here, I'll surmise that the majority of the members at Union Country Club are middle class golfers, people who play a lot of golf and actually save money by paying a little over $200 per month for a family membership.

 According to the National Golf Foundation, at the end of 2007 there were 4415 private golf courses in the US. I'd guess there's several thousand more which blend membership and public play, as UCC is now doing. That means hundreds of thousands of Americans have golf course memberships - not a terribly exclusive number. The greens fee at an average public course (again according to the NGF) is $40. If the couple in the the Post story play once a week they save about $1600 a year by joining that country club. That's a good deal, and a price that's likely to attract people who are avid golfers and not terribly interrested in exclusivity.

But large numbers of middle class Americans owning private golf club memberships wouldn't fit the Post's narrative, would it?

 1921, the depression that never happened.

 Thomas Sowell with a great quote in Reason Magazine -

The only encouraging thing about public reaction to the crisis is that going by polls citizens seem to have more misgivings about some of these policies than politicians or the media. Still, though there have been studies that indicate the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression by years, what is also clear is it was enormously popular. FDR was elected four straight times, and more than once without ever having brought unemployment down to single digits. An economic disaster does not necessarily mean a political disaster. If we could raise the average level of understanding of economics to what Alfred Marshall had in 1890, the vast majority of politicians would be voted out of office.

I read that a few days ago and was reminded of it when I came across this -

Rep. Alan Grayson was standing in the middle of Disney World when it hit him: What Americans really need is a week of paid vacation.

So on Thursday, the Florida Democrat will introduce the Paid Vacation Act -- legislation that would be the first to make paid vacation time a requirement under federal law

.

It's such a painfully bad idea, but Grayson is being taken seriously by the press and other members of congress. And apparently voters think he's OK, too.

H/T Vodkapundit.

 

 Blaming "the Jews."

 His Venezuela is more systematically brutish and repressive than I thought. How sad for the country.

 Update: Looking through the comments at the above linked post, I see several commenters doing just that.

 Which party would that be? Can you believe the um, Libertarian Party?

 From a press release last week:

 America's third largest party urged the White House Wednesday to more closely monitor crossings at the United States' border with Mexico, and keep out persons infected with "swine flu."

"The Libertarian Party Platform is clear, Libertarians support control over the entry into our country of foreign nationals who pose a threat to security, health or property," said Donny Ferguson, Libertarian National Committee Communications Director.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee the Obama administration will not try to stop infected individuals from crossing the United States-Mexico border, claiming that since there are already isolated cases of the virus in the U.S, there is no need to try and stop widespread dissemination of the virus by newly-entered carriers in areas where it did not previously exist.

"I'm sure people across the United States appreciate the Obama White House announcing there is no need to stop the virus from being introduced to their community since it's already in places like New York and Houston," said Ferguson.

A Mexico City toddler who traveled to Texas with his family to visit relatives died in a Houston hospital Monday evening, the first confirmed death in the U.S. from swine flu.

 

"That is typical of the irresponsibility of the Obama White House," said Ferguson.  "While doctors and hospitals should be focused on mitigating the virus here, as Secretary Napolitano stated, Barack Obama also has a responsibility to ensure infected people don't flee into the United States and spread the virus here."

"There is no reason to allow possibly infected people to cross the border.  They can wait until they are cleared as healthy," said Ferguson.

In case you're new to the concept of libertarianism, this isn't it. This is the opposite, what is sometimes referred to as statism. 

 It's even more disturbing to see that the LP is here reacting to what may be a false panic, the sort of ruse that nannyists and statists of all stripes use to impose top-down controls on a free society. And amazingly, the LP is on their side.

Will Wilkinson ;

 What in tarnation is this man [David Brooks] talking about? Where is this Republican Party of "untrammeled freedom and maximum individual choice"?

The Economist reminds us again of how the economy got to where it is-

BANKERS, frauds, predatory insurers: there has been a stampede to punish the villains of the global meltdown. Yet one culprit is not only rarely seen as an offender, but is also being cosseted and protected. Governments' obsession about home ownership has contributed as much to the meltdown as any moustache-twirling financier.

The bust began in America's housing market and soon spread to government-sponsored institutions created to increase home ownership, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Part of the problem came about because of policy. In most rich countries the state subsidises private housing. Some places (America, Ireland and Spain) give tax relief on mortgage-interest payments. Others, such as Britain, eliminate or lower the tax on capital gains from sales of someone's main house. Still others use state-backed outfits to direct credit to housing or to make it easier for first-time buyers or the poor to buy their own homes. Subsidies are not to blame for everything--the housing bubble affected a range of markets regardless of how much they were subsidised--but the distortions aggravated the boom and bust by making housing artificially attractive.

 [note that America also gives capital gains tax exemptions and aids to first time home buyers - W.]

[...]

Government backing sucked money into housing, boosting prices. Since millions use their homes as collateral for general loans, the house-price boom also exaggerated the consumer boom while it lasted, and amplified the bust when that came. Perversely, public policy even undermined the very things governments were trying to encourage. Housing policy aims at boosting savings. Yet home-equity loans and "negative amortisation" mortgages boosted spending.

 And the likely course of action is more of the same.

 

 The Colorado legislature's strategy in a nutshell: Look! Those people have money! Let's take it!

 It makes a citizen proud, no?

 Ari Armstrong has won $10,000 for his efforts as a blogger.  If only I had some way to compete. Maybe if I had my own blog...

 Seriously, he richly deserves it. He's tireless.

 It takes some guts to for Mr. Wilkinson to write this in a major publication-

 So here we go. My name is Will Wilkinson. I smoke marijuana, and I like it.

I wish more people would say the same. I can't, so I will say I don't smoke marijuana, but I have no desire to prosecute or imprison people who do so. Furthermore, I regard those who do wish to prosecute marijuana users to have a moral defect.
 

New version of Movable Type has been installed. Thanks Matt! Comments are down until the bugs are worked out.

All in all it's a good move, and long overdue.

Tomorrow evening you can meet several of your favorite Colorado bloggers at Rocky Mountain Blogger Bash MMIX.1 which will be held at the Wynkoop downtown. I will be there, too.