Government – Page 133 – artdiamondblog.com

Omaha Government Displays Pretentious Concrete Donuts: Is Dog Poop Next?

The city of Omaha is forcing its citizens to endure four concrete donuts that are sometimes called "Sounding Stones" and sometimes called "art." Source of photo: online version of Dane Stickney. "ART MOVEMENT; Some neighbors don’t want sculpture in Elmwood Park." Omaha World-Herald (Sat., Nov. 17, 2007): B1.

I believe that all art should be private art. But if the government is going to force art on us, at least they should commission art that most find enjoyable to look at.

Tom Wolfe in The Painted Word skewered the pretension of modern "artists" whose "art" is not intended to please, but is intended to make some obscure philosophical point.

If somebody wants to privately finance such activity, fine. But don’t force the rest of us to finance it through taxation.

(p. 1B) “So is this where they’re putting Stonehenge?”
Stan Hille was walking his dog through Elmwood Park when he stopped to ask me the question. He thought I was a city employee.
“Yes, it is,” I said as I stood near one of the gravel pads awaiting Leslie Iwai’s gigantic five-piece sculpture “Sounding Stones .” “But you don’t sound excited.”
“Well, I guess I’m not,” he said, stopping to contemplate art. “This thing just reminds me of that old question: ‘When is art not art?’ ” Hmm. Great question. Ancient question. I suggested it might not be art until people, especially a commission of people, tells you it’s art. Or, if it’s big, it’s art. Or, if you make something and then say there’s some meaning to it, then maybe it’s art.
As we pondered, Hille’s dog defecated.
“Perhaps if I can find some meaning in this poop, then maybe it’s art,” I told him as I rubbed my chin.
The retired UNO professor and Dundee resident absorbed my genius. “Perhaps,” he responded, rubbing his chin also.
But, alas, I could find no meaning. “Perhaps its lack of meaning is its meaning,” I then argued, sounding not unlike French philosopher Jacques Derrida. “It’s post-postmodern ironic poop.”

. . .

For Hille and others around Elmwood Park, the bigger question seems to be aesthetics.
Elmwood Park is a quiet forest setting. Is this really the place for large chunks of concrete, no matter what they mean?
“It just doesn’t seem to fit,” Hille said.
I’m with him on that. “Sounding Stones ” might make more sense, or at least be better received, in the midst of, say, modern architecture, not nature.
You know, perhaps put it downtown, where it could look like it fell off the old Union Pacific building.
But if “Sounding Stones ” does end up in Elmwood Park, whichit most likely will, I’m guessing it still will end up being a positive move.
Because, as with Hille and me, it’s going to get people thinking and talking about art.
And even when you’re looking at dog droppings, taking time out of the day to contemplate art can’t be a completely bad thing.

Yes, Robert, it can be "a completely bad thing" if you have alternative uses for your time.

For the full commentary, see:

Robert Nelson. "Rocky art may lead to heavy thoughts." Omaha World-Herald (Nov. 21, 2007): 1B.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

USDA Sugar Allocations and Tariff System “Keeps the Price at a Fairly High Level”

Sugar beats unloaded in Scottsbluff, Nebraska at Western Sugar in 1999. Source of photo: online version of the Omaha World-Herald article cited below.

In the article excerpted below, why does Chet Mullin of the Omaha World-Herald care only about beat growers, but not about sugar consumers?

The International Sugar Organization predicts a sizable global surplus of the sweet stuff this year. If the prediction comes true, will it hurt sugar beet growers like those in Nebraska’s Panhandle?

The answer is no, according to Paul Burgener, agricultural economic research analyst at the University of Nebraska’s Panhandle Research and Extension Center in Scottsbluff.

"We have allocations (for sugar production) and we also have a tariff system for imports, and between the two, the USDA manages supply and keeps the price at a fairly high level," Burgener said.

For the full story, see:

CHET MULLIN. "Sugar surplus won’t harm beet growers." Omaha World-Herald (Tuesday, July 17, 2007): 1D & 2D.

Measuring Trends in Government Corruption

Source of graph: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A6) Africa, often stereotyped as a place of epic corruption and misrule, emerges in a World Bank report as a continent of great variety, with some countries — Tanzania, Liberia, Rwanda, Ghana and Niger — making notable progress over the past decade, and others — Zimbabwe, Ivory Coast and Eritrea — moving backward.

The report, released yesterday and based on the most comprehensive data on governance in more than 200 countries, found that not just poor countries struggled with corruption and flawed government.

. . .

The report, “Governance Matters, 2007: Worldwide Governance Indicators 1996-2006,” was written by Mr. Kaufmann and the World Bank researchers Aart Kraay and Massimo Mastruzzi. It was posted on the Internet at www.govindicators.org. Data came from an ideologically diverse array of groups that included Freedom House, Transparency International, the Heritage Foundation, Reporters Without Borders and the State Department.

“This is the best data source on governance now,” said Steven Radelet, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a Washington research group. “It is of huge importance in development. Ten years ago, there was no data. Fifteen years ago, we didn’t talk about this stuff.”

. . .

The report found that the gains and losses balanced out such that the average quality of governance worldwide over the past decade was little improved.

For the full story, see:

CELIA W. DUGGER. "World Bank Report on Governing Finds Level Playing Field." The New York Times (Weds., July 11, 2007): A6.

(Note: ellipses added.)

Communist China’s “Greatest Folly”: Renewable Energy Dam

"Liu Jun leaving his home in Miaohe, China, near the Three Gorges Dam. All of the village’s residents are being relocated." Source of caption: p. A1 of print version of the NYT article quoted and cited below. Source of photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) JIANMIN VILLAGE, China — Last year, Chinese officials celebrated the completion of the Three Gorges Dam by releasing a list of 10 world records. As in: The Three Gorges is the world’s biggest dam, biggest power plant and biggest consumer of dirt, stone, concrete and steel. Ever. Even the project’s official tally of 1.13 million displaced people made the list as record No. 10.

Today, the Communist Party is hoping the dam does not become China’s biggest folly. In recent weeks, Chinese officials have admitted that the dam was spawning environmental problems like water pollution and landslides that could become severe. Equally startling, officials want to begin a new relocation program that would be bigger than the first.

The rising controversy makes it easy to overlook what could have been listed as world record No. 11: The Three Gorges Dam is the world’s biggest man-made producer of electricity from renewable energy.

. . .

(p. A12) The Communist Party leaders who broke ground on the Three Gorges project in 1994 had promised that China could build the world’s biggest dam, manage the world’s biggest human resettlement and also protect the environment.

. . .

(p. A13) In the isolated mountain villages above the reservoir, farmers have heard nothing about a new resettlement plan. For many farmers, the immediate concern is the land beneath their feet. Landslides are striking different hillsides as the rising water places more pressure on the shoreline, local officials say. . . .

. . .

Around daybreak on June 22, Lu Youbing awoke to the screams of her brother-in-law and the sickening sensation of the earth collapsing. Her mountain farmhouse in Jianmin Village buckled as a landslide swept it downhill. In all, 20 homes were demolished. Five months later, Ms. Lu is living in a tent, fending off rats and wondering where her family can go.

“We have nothing left,” she said. “Not a single thing.”

Winter is approaching, and she is trying to block out cold air — and rats — by pinning down the tent flaps with rocks. Villagers have been told that more landslides are possible. Ms. Lu lives with her second husband and their two children. They are too poor to buy an apartment in the city or to build a new home on higher ground. Local officials gave them the tent. Villagers have donated clothes.

The tents are pitched on the only available flat land — a terrace with a monument celebrating efforts by local officials to improve the environment.

“We don’t know about winter,” she said. “This is the only option we have. What else can we do?”

For the full story, see:

JIM YARDLEY. "At China’s Dams, Problems Rise With Water." The New York Times (Mon., November 19, 2007): A1, A12-A13.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: online the title of the article is "Chinese Dam Projects Criticized for Their Human Costs.")

"The Three Gorges Dam is projected as an anchor in a string of hydropower “mega-bases” planned for the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

77,000 Die from Lack of Tort Reform

Source of report cover image: http://www.pacificresearch.org/pub/sab/entrep/2007/Jackpot_Justice/index.html

(p. A18) How does the legal system extract such an astounding amount from our economy? We applied the rent-seeking theory of transfers from economic science to pick up where past studies — including the highly regarded Tillinghast-Towers Perrin study — leave off. We began by examining the static costs of litigation — including annual damage awards, plaintiff attorneys’ fees, defense costs, administrative costs and deadweight costs from torts such as product liability cases, medical malpractice litigation and class action lawsuits. The annual static costs, $328 billion per year, are well in excess of previous Tillinghast estimates.

But $328 billion is only the beginning. After all, litigation doesn’t just transfer wealth, it also changes behavior, and often in economically unproductive ways. Any true estimate of the costs of America’s tort system must also include these dynamic costs of litigation — the impact on research and development spending, the costs of defensive medicine and the related rise in health-care spending and reduced access to health care, and the loss of output from deaths due to excess liability.

. . .

Based on data from previous studies, we determined that more than 77,000 people would have been alive today and contributing to the workforce, but are not because of a failure to enact comprehensive tort reforms in the states. The cost of foregone output from these lost workers is more than $7 billion each year.

What we’re left with, then, are annual dynamic costs of $537 billion resulting from our litigation system. Add that to the static costs of $328 billion and you arrive at the total of over $865 billion per year.

For the full commentary, see:

LAWRENCE J. MCQUILLAN and HOVANNES ABRAMYA. "The Tort Tax." The Wall Street Journal (Tues., March 27, 2007): A18.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

McQuillan, Abryamyan, along with Anthony P. Archie, have co-authored a report entitled Jackpot Justice: The True Cost of America’s Tort System that elaborates on many of the issues sketched in the commentary excerpted above. You can download a free PDF copy at: http://www.pacificresearch.org/pub/sab/entrep/2007/Jackpot_Justice/Jackpot_Justice.pdf

Cost of Government Grew by 20% Since 1975

Source of graph: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. C3) After dipping briefly in the first years of this decade, taxes are growing again around the world, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said yesterday.

Taxes in 2005 equaled the previous peak year of 2000, the organization said, when by one measure 36.2 percent of gross domestic product in 30 industrial countries, including the United States, went to taxes at all levels of government.

The organization, which is based in Paris, said that when final figures are in for 2006, they will most likely show a new peak.

The report defines taxes as “compulsory, unrequited payments to general government.”

The cost of government has risen by about 20 percent since 1975, when taxes accounted for less than 30 percent of the gross domestic product of the organization’s member countries.

. . .

Taxes in the United States — from the federal income tax and Social Security tax to local property levies — rose to 28.2 percent in 2006, from 25.6 percent of gross domestic product in 1975, the O.E.C.D. said. It reported that American taxes peaked at 29.9 percent in 2000, slipped to 26 percent in 2004 and then began rising again, a finding consistent with recent statistical tables released by the Internal Revenue Service.

For the full story, see:

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON. "Taxes in Developed Nations Reach 36% of Gross Domestic Product." The New York Times (Thurs., October 18, 2007): C3.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

New Farm Bill Is Sweet for Sugar Industry, but Sour for Sugar Consumers

"Sugar being processed at the Louisiana Sugar Cooperative mill in St. Martinville, La." Source of caption and photo: online version of NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. C1) A little-noticed provision in the new farm bill working its way through Congress would oblige the Agriculture Department to buy surplus domestic sugar caused by the expected influx of Mexican sugar next year. Then the government would sell it, most likely at a steep discount, to ethanol producers to add to their fermentation tanks. The Bush administration is fighting the measure.

Sugar producers say the cost would be relatively low and the plan would help keep prices at a level they consider fair. As a side benefit, the deal would allow the nation to produce more ethanol to mix with gasoline, displacing some foreign oil, they say.

But ethanol producers are unenthused. And the plan is drawing fire from opponents of agricultural subsidies and from longtime critics of the sugar in- (p. C4) dustry, who complain that producers already have one of the best deals in American agriculture.

“It’s a tax burden without a benefit that distorts both the ethanol market and the food-ingredient market,” said Richard E. Pasco, counsel for the Sweetener Users Association, a lobby group for food companies that use sugar. “And guess who will pay the price? Taxpayers and consumers.”

. . .

The measure would be grafted onto an existing sugar policy so complex that even many farmers have trouble understanding it. The government limits the supply of sugar through production quotas and import restrictions, and it uses financial mechanisms to set an effective price floor.

The system does not cost taxpayers money directly, a point of pride for the industry. But it costs consumers money in the form of higher sugar prices. The system has been subjected to withering criticism for decades, but the sugar lobby has clout on Capitol Hill. Sugar producers donated $2.7 million in campaign contributions to House and Senate incumbents in 2006, more than any other group of food growers, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington group.

The new farm bill would retain much of the existing system, which sugar producers defend on the ground that virtually every country with a domestic sugar industry has strong protections. But it would add more guarantees, including one that would assure American producers 85 percent of the market no matter how much sugar comes in from abroad.

For the full story, see:

CLIFFORD KRAUSS. "Seeing Sugar’s Future in Fuel." The New York Times (Thurs., October 18, 2007): C1 & C4.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

Source of graphic: online version of NYT article cited above.

Hong Kong Dim Sum Lovers Rebuke Government

"Wong Yuen enjoying breakfast at a Hong Kong restaurant. The government, he says, "shouldn’t be telling anyone how dim sum should be served."" Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

Longtime dim sum lovers are indignant.

"The government is putting its thumb on every part of citizens’ lives, and it shouldn’t be telling anyone how dim sum should be served," said Wong Yuen, a retired mechanic and truck driver who says he has eaten dim sum every morning for the last two decades. "People can make their own decisions. If it’s unhealthy, they can eat less. They don’t need the government to tell them."

For the full story, see:

KEITH BRADSHER. "HONG KONG JOURNAL; Dim Sum Under Assault, and Devotees Say ‘Hands Off’." The New York Times (Thurs., April 28, 2005): A4.

Incentives for Organ Donations Would Save Lives

Sally Satel is a medical doctor and a resident scholar at the Amerrican Enterprise Institute. Source of photo: http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.25785/pub_detail.asp

(p. A12) At the annual meeting of The American Society of Transplant Surgeons this winter a straw poll revealed that 80 to 85% were in favor of studying incentives for living donors, according to society president Arthur Matas. In 2003, the American Medical Association testified on behalf of legislation that would have permitted pilot studies of incentives for deceased organs.

The public seems receptive as well, according to a new Gallup poll on attitudes toward donation of organs after death. The most striking results were among 18 to 34 year olds wherein an impressive 34% said that incentives would make them "more likely" to donate while 6% said less likely. . . .

. . .

The idea of combining organ donation with material gain can make people queasy. Yet the mix of financial and humanitarian motives is commonplace. No one objects, for example, to a tax credit for charitable contributions–a financial incentive to complement the "pure" motive of giving to others. The great teachers who enlighten us and the doctors who heal us inspire no less gratitude because they are paid. An increase in the supply of kidneys will ameliorate suffering and prevent needless death. This is more important than whether an organ has been given freely or for material gain. . . .

For the full commentary, see:

Satel, Sally. "Doing Well By Doing Good." The Wall Street Journal (Fri, March 16 2007): A12.

(Note: ellipses added.)

Texas Shows Tort Reform Works

"Dr. Donald W. Patrick, executive director of the Texas Medical Board, with applications for medical licenses sent to it." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted, and cited, below.

HOUSTON, Oct. 4 — In Texas, it can be a long wait for a doctor: up to six months.

That is not for an appointment. That is the time it can take the Texas Medical Board to process applications to practice.

Four years after Texas voters approved a constitutional amendment limiting awards in medical malpractice lawsuits, doctors are responding as supporters predicted, arriving from all parts of the country to swell the ranks of specialists at Texas hospitals and bring professional health care to some long-underserved rural areas.

The influx, raising the state’s abysmally low ranking in physicians per capita, has flooded the medical board’s offices in Austin with applications for licenses, close to 2,500 at last count.

“It was hard to believe at first; we thought it was a spike,” said Dr. Donald W. Patrick, executive director of the medical board and a neurosurgeon and lawyer. But Dr. Patrick said the trend — licenses up 18 percent since 2003, when the damage caps were enacted — has held, with an even sharper jump of 30 percent in the last fiscal year, compared with the year before.

“Doctors are coming to Texas because they sense a friendlier malpractice climate,” he said.

For the full story, see:

RALPH BLUMENTHAL. "After Texas Caps Malpractice Awards, Doctors Rush to Practice There." The New York Times (Fri., October 5, 2007): A21.

“Merchant Generator” Leads Nuclear Renaissance

Source of graphic: online version of the WSJ article quoted, and cited, below.

(p. B1) In a move that could mark the beginning of a nuclear-power revival, a New Jersey-based energy company today plans to submit an application to build and operate two new reactors. The request, the first submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 31 years, comes from an unlikely source: NRG Energy Inc., a company that has never before built a nuclear plant.

The application — for a two-reactor addition to the company’s existing South Texas nuclear station — could offer the first full test of the nuclear agency’s new licensing process, which has been under development since the 1980s. The new process allows companies to submit a single application for a construction permit and conditional operating license, eliminating the risk that a firm could build a plant but not be allowed to run it.

. . .

(p. B2) . . . , the industry has regained momentum, partly because other forms of power generation have continued to show significant flaws. Coal-fired plants undermine efforts to combat global warming. Many natural-gas-fired plants rely on a fuel with volatile prices. And renewable energy mostly comes from intermittent forces like wind, rain and sunlight.

This first application comes from a somewhat unlikely source; NRG is a so-called "merchant generator," a company that makes electricity and sells it on the open market. NRG has never built a nuclear plant, and because it doesn’t own a utility, has no ratepayers to whom it could bill the estimated $5.5 billion to $6 billion expense.

"We’re like the uncola," says David Crane, NRG chief executive in Princeton, N.J.

. . .

So far, it appears merchant generators think Texas provides the most promising market. Deregulation in that state has resulted in a sharp run up in wholesale power prices since 2004. A recent decision by Dallas-based TXU to abandon efforts to build eight coal-fired plants could result in shrinking electricity reserves in the coming years, creating an environment receptive to operators looking to bring large units online and sell such units’ full output.

For the full story, see:

REBECCA SMITH. "Nuclear Energy’s Second Act? Bid to Build Two New Reactors In Texas May Mark Resurgence; NRC Gears Up for Many More." The Wall Street Journal (Tues., September 25, 2007): B1 & B2.

(Note: ellipses added.)