Polling the self-selected

The political world is filled with polls that are targeted toward audiences that agree with the questions.  These polls are generally sent only to those who are predisposed to "positive" answers to the questions.  The Democratic National Committee does it.  The Republican National Committee does it.  News media with a particular slant do it.  Political offshoots of all kinds do it.

I generally avoid polls of all kinds, no matter what the source.  I don't even like the follow-up calls from businesses with whom I plan to buy again and again.

My Congressional Representative, Chip Cravaack, is one of the worst offenders in the biased presentation of polls.  His latest is about "What Would You Cut", a list of three items he would like to cut from the budget - replacing TSA employees with private contractors, dispose of excess baggage scanners, and "Terminate a National Science Foundation program aimed at shaping public opinion on climate change".  On the last he writes, "A review of prior grants made by the program shows a repeated pattern of funding activities intended to sway public opinion on a controversial topic about which the facts remain in heated dispute."  The controversy is coming from those who ignore the facts and have a lot of money to lose if there is to be a serious mitigation of climate change.

This particular poll is at http://cravaack.house.gov/press-releases/cravaack-what-would-youcut/ as of 2012-05-15.  Cravaack's staff will probably reuse this URL for a subsequent poll.

Rather than submit my answers, I sent the following webmail to Rep. Cravaack:

"With regard to your "What would you cut" email and many others, please have a chat with Bill Frenzel on how to communicate with constituents.

Rep. Frenzel wrote facts about what Congress was doing, not what he wanted constituents to agree with.

Each one of your "What would you cut" items makes it very clear what you want constituents to answer.

There are many much larger costs for things that are not really needed but have large constituencies supporting them.

I hope I don't have to tell you what these are; that would tell you what my biases are."

Bill Frenzel was the Representative from the suburbs of Minneapolis.  He would be considered a RINO by today's Republicans.  He wrote quite interesting newsletters about Congress that hardly ever touted what he was doing.

Low cost government leads to higher costs

You can find an interesting examination of the push for less government and what it really costs by listening to  "What kind of country" on This American Life.  It includes interviews with Grover Norquist and government official and private citizens in Trenton NJ and Colorado Springs CO.

My sense is that the anti-government, anti-tax rhetoric has gotten so out of hand that people don't look at the true cost of some of the measures.  Supposedly by privatizing city services you can cut costs because the private company pays less to its employees.  But is anybody counting the profit that the private company expects.  People will be willing to pay $350 per year to have street lights turned back on but are unwilling to pay $200 to keep all city services running.  Because a hotel has a smaller percent of its expenses in wages and benefits, doesn't mean that a city should have the same percent of its expenses in wages and benefits.  Maybe if we compared a city to a software company, we would find that the city had a smaller percentage of its expenses in wages and benefits.

If you have time, I recommend listening to "What kind of country" to the end.  I used the time to finally clean my desk.

Do those calling for efficiency really want efficiency?

As I've said before, many who call for efficiency generally mean government agencies doing more for even less money.  But then some of these same people complain about the cost of doing something more efficiently.

For example, light rail is more efficient than bus service.  Except for articulated buses, buses with a single driver are limited to carrying about forty passengers.  On the other hand, a light-rail car can hold sixty passengers, and at peak times more cars can be added, greatly increasing driver efficiency.

However, many who want efficiency don't want to subsidize light rail or any public transportation.  They don't want to "take away" people's "freedom" to drive cars.  One vehicle, one driver: is that efficient?  In order to accommodate all these vehicles, their drivers expect government to build bigger, wider faster highways.  Oh yes, these drivers don't want them to be toll roads; that would make them more inefficient.  Of course, these roads are so convenient that more and more drivers use them eventually slowing traffic!  And of course, the taxes dedicated to the roads are insufficient, and so other taxes have to pay for them.  And the base for local taxes to pay for them has been reduced because houses and businesses have been removed to make way for ever wider highways.  Think of how many hundreds of houses would fit in an interchange like 35E and 694 in the Twin Cities.  And bulldozing houses in the cities means that houses have to be built farther out, which means more people have to drive longer distances to get anywhere, which means bigger highways have to be built, ...

Extreme anti-tax people think all roads should be privatized.  Let's see, the roads will need devices to scan for paid subscriptions, and toll booths to collect from non-subscribers.  Can you imagine having a toll booth every few blocks?  That would certainly decrease efficiency. Of course, over time all the toll roads in an area would be run by a company that does not answer to the public, only its shareholders.  To increase profits, the company would have to decrease maintenance.  Since the customers have no other choice, they will have to put up with the bad roads.

Be careful what you ask for!

This was inspired by Steve Elkins' "Not every enterprise can do more with less", Star Tribune, 2011-08-01.

Financing the post office, where are the strict constructionists?

Once again, with the changing means of communicating, the U. S. Postal Service is in financial trouble.  Many think it shouldn't be subsidized but privatized.  This can lead to some Constitutional fun.

The U. S. Constitution merely says that "The Congress shall have the power … to establish Post Offices and post Roads;…"

Does "establish" mean "set up" or "operate"?  How is it financed?  Should it be self-funded or are Post Offices" part of the "General Welfare"?

All we know is at the time of the writing of the Constitution, the only means of communicating were either face-to-face or putting words on paper and sending them to other people.  One of the means of putting words on paper was called "newspapers", and the Founders considered newspapers so important to having an informed citizenry that they subsidized the postal delivery of newspapers (Post Office Act of 1792).  So, from the beginning, the Post Office was not self-supporting and was not intended to be.

The writers of the Constitution did not foresee the telegraph, the telephone, the Teletype, radio, television, and the Internet; all means of expanding the distribution of information (or misinformation).  Maybe the Internet should be subsidized to have an informed citizenry.  Of course, it is subsidized in a way.  Government organizations from local to international provide websites for public access to information.  But these sites are maintained by government employees.

We do have a slightly subsidized Internet - it's called public libraries, many which have free, albeit limited, access to the Internet.  Of course, free libraries and free Internet require taxes, which we can have none of.

What a long way we've come from

“However firmly liberty may be established in any country, it cannot long subsist if the channels of information be stopped,” Massachusetts Senator Elbridge Gerry stated in his fierce defense of providing federal subsidies to newspaper postal distribution in 1792.

– "The History of Transparency – Part 1: Opening the Channels of Information to the People in the 18th Century"

BTW, we have the wish to limit information all over the political map.  The Obama administration want to get authority to eavesdrop on the Internet.  See "U.S. Tries to Make It Easier to Wiretap the Internet", Charlie Savage, New York Times, 2010-09-27.

Again, where are the strict constructionists?