Criminal Reform Makes Sense

Posted on November 14, 2018 by matt ohern
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(Editor’s note:  Criminal Justice Reform is an important issue which crosses the red and blue political lines and brings significant parts of the conservative and liberal communities together for the good of our society. The First Step Act highlighted by Governor Huckabee will be voted on in the U.S. Senate before Christmas. It passed the House earlier this year by an overwhelming bi-partisan vote.  This column outlines what that law would do.)
Criminal justice reform is an issue close to my heart.  For the almost 11 years that I was Governor of Arkansas, not a day went by that I didn’t deal with prisons, inmates, clemency requests or some other aspect of our criminal justice system.  Many people may not realize that one in three American adults has some type of criminal record and more than two million Americans are currently in state and federal prisons.  And it is not just these individuals who are affected by our criminal justice system.  Each of their families – including the 2.7 million children with a parent behind bars – and their communities are intertwined with the outcomes of our system.
A couple decades ago, “tough on crime” was an applause line. It sounded good, but in reality, it didn’t make sense. It was tough on taxpayers, families, and communities. The policy led to a system that excelled at punishment but was sorely lacking when it came to rehabilitation.
It costs more money to put a person in prison for a year than it does to put them in college and pay for full tuition, room and board, books, and even some spending money. Locking folks up without a plan for rehabilitation means that we are simply warehousing people in a very expensive prison system. With 77 percent of inmates rearrested within five years of being released, we need to find a better way.
The FIRST STEP Act, introduced by Representatives Doug Collins (R-GA) and Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), provides a path to redemption and second chances. The Act creates new, evidence-based risk and needs assessment tools to help prepare incarcerated individuals to reenter their communities as law-abiding, productive members of society. The bill overwhelmingly passed the House of Representatives in May and is in the Senate to consider and vote on the bill.  Senator Grassley has been a champion for smart criminal justice reform, and can play a pivotal role in moving this bill in the Senate.
The reality is that 95 percent of people in prison will eventually be released. However, even after someone has paid their debt to society, the tolls of incarceration are extensive and far-reaching, limiting opportunities for employment, housing, financial stability, and education. Faced with these challenges, the cycle of crime too often repeats itself, putting communities at risk.
Without addressing why people ended up in prison our corrections system is mostly a place where more criminal skills are learned.  And upon release, the former inmate who cannot find a job ends up committing more elaborate crimes.
The bill works to address the root causes of criminality while equipping offenders with the tools to turn their lives around permanently. Eighty-eight percent of inmates in the Arkansas system were there for a drug or alcohol related crime. They either committed the crime while they were drunk or high or committed the crime to get drunk or high. Treating the underlying problems of criminality, such as addiction, will lead to better outcomes when the individual is released after serving their sentence.  That may mean treatment for addiction, meeting mental health needs, education, or job training.
In my experience, faith-based programs have shown to have long-term success rates in helping people turn their lives around.  The FIRST STEP Act partners with faith-based and nonprofit groups to expand workforce programming and address addiction. Through a process of repentance, forgiveness, restitution, and redemption, criminal behavior is changed from the inside out for lasting and rewarding change.
Americans benefit from a criminal justice system that improves public safety, strengthens families and communities, supports victims, and protects taxpayers.  Prison reforms such as the ones in the FIRST STEP Act inspire a culture of respect for every life and removes barriers to transformation so that people can go from prison to paycheck.

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A looming technology-security minerals crisis?

Posted on November 1, 2018 by matt ohern
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In 1973 OPEC countries imposed an oil embargo to retaliate for US support of Israel during the Yom Kippur War. Drivers endured soaring gasoline prices, blocks-long lines, hours wasted waiting to refuel vehicles, and restrictions on which days they could buy fuel. America was vulnerable to those blackmail sanctions because we imported “too much” oil – though it was just 30% of our crude.
The fracking revolution (horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing) and other factors changed that dramatically. The United States now produces more crude oil than at any time since 1970.
But now we face new, potentially far greater dangers – because we import up to 100% of dozens of metals and minerals essential for wind turbines, solar panels, and a vast array of defense, security, automotive, computer, communication, electrical grid, battery and countless other technologies. Two dozen of them come 60% to 100% from China, Russia or mines controlled by those two countries … and where child labor, worker safety, human rights and environmental standards are minimal to nonexistent.
Recent Defense and Interior Department reports have identified literally hundreds of ways US industries and military readiness are acutely vulnerable to supply interruptions for these rare earth and other exotic materials. Equally troubling, 90% of the world’s printed circuit boards are produced in Asia, more than half of them in China; that presents still more risks that competitors and enemies are establishing more ports of entry (on top of highly professional hacking) into industry and defense computer systems.
And now the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change absurdly claims American (and global) fossil fuel use must be slashed from over 80% of our energy today to zero by 2050 – and replaced by renewable energy. That would raise our dependency on these metals and minerals, and their costs, by orders of magnitude. It would severely impact every facet of our economy, security, defense and personal lives.
Just building the wind turbines, solar cells and high-tech transmission systems for billions of megawatt-hours of electricity would require incalculable quantities – and money. Batteries to back up all that electricity for windless and sunless hours, days or weeks would require vast additional quantities.
Thankfully, volcanic and magmatic activity, plate tectonics and other powerful geologic processes have blessed America with metallic and other mineral deposits unsurpassed almost anywhere else in the world. We likely have all these essential materials right under our feet. Incredibly, insanely, the United States is the only nation in the world that locks them up, makes them inaccessible under almost any conditions.
Federally controlled lands are especially problematical. Not only are they our most mineralized regions. We have no idea what is actually there. And we are not permitted to evaluate their mineral potential, in order to make informed, rational decisions about how they should be managed – to balance environmental protection and preservation against the raw material needs of a modern industrialized, technological nation.
A 1975 report found that 74% of federal lands were totally or effectively closed to exploration for and development of critical minerals, because of pro-wilderness, anti-mining, anti-energy laws, regulations, bureaucratic roadblocks, environmentalist lawsuits and court decisions.
An updated 1994 study (conducted after 78 million acres had been transferred to the State of Alaska and Alaskan Natives) concluded that 71% of federal lands were still off limits: 427 million acres; our best mineral lands; a land area equal to Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming combined! Since then, the situation has worsened steadily, especially during the Obama years. Even supposedly available lands are mostly inaccessible, because bureaucrats refuse to issue permits.
Perhaps worst of all, much of this steady lockdown resulted from a concerted, irresponsible effort to place lands in wilderness and other highly restrictive land-use categories – often with the deliberate purpose of preventing anyone from ever assessing or accessing their critical and strategic mineral potential. A recent US House of Representatives committee memorandum summarizes growing congressional concerns.
A groundbreaking book – titled Groundbreaking! America’s new quest for minerals independence – will soon provide persuasive reasons why we must reexamine the policies that brought us to this untenable and unsustainable point in American history. In concise, plain language, geologist Ned Mamula and Silicon Valley expert Ann Bridges explain why we must literally break ground in these areas … and drill down to find out what minerals are in them. Their key points must be pondered, absorbed and acted on by all who care about our security and prosperity.
* We won the oil and gas energy war, but a growing minerals and metals dependency imperils our future.
* America is undeniably endowed with mineral riches, but we have no idea what we have or where it is located, because we are not permitted even to look for, map and evaluate deposits. In fact, we cannot even mine major deposits when we know their precise location, composition and value. We need to know as much about subsurface values as we do about surface values, if we are to make informed decisions.
* American jobs, prosperity and security have always been based on “mineral wealth.” Some of our major cities and many of our major industries (including Silicon Valley) exist because of metals and minerals.
* We are at great risk now, because we are 50-100% reliant on foreign countries for the exotic minerals and metals needed to satisfy our addiction to computers, cell phones and other high-tech gadgetry, for virtually every civilian, industrial, medical, communication and defense application imaginable.
* China and Russia supply enormous quantities of our most critical and strategic materials – and could easily use them as leverage if the US challenges their hegemonic goals in Asia, Europe or the Pacific. The wealthy, powerful, increasingly radical environmental industry exacerbates these vulnerabilities.
* Chapters devoted to rare earth metals, uranium and copper-molybdenum-gold explain the politics, economics and corruption surrounding their stories, and how certain politicians and pressure groups actually want to de-industrialize America and reduce our living standards and global power.
* Excessive laws, land withdrawals run amok, costly and interminable environmental review and permitting processes, and other factors impose severe constraints on US viability and sustainability. Constantly changing technologies mean constantly changing materials needs and renewed exploration.
* Australia and Canada protect their precious environmental heritage while also utilizing their precious metals and minerals heritage. The United States must apply these lessons in devising better ways to handle land withdrawals, environmental reviews and permitting – with the White House, Congress, universities and the private sector leading the way on public discussions and positive initiatives.
* Alternatives to fossil fuel energy, high-tech equipment of every description, nearly everything we use in our daily lives is tied to the exotic, strategic and critical minerals we have so cavalierly made off limits.
* Except for national parks and certain other places, federal lands must be surveyed and explored by government agencies and private sector companies using aerial and ground-based induced polarization, magnetometer and radiometric technologies, grid soil analyses and equipment literally carried in backpacks. Good prospects must then be evaluated further using truck and helicopter drilling rigs, to collect core samples and other information needed for deciding an area’s highest and best uses.
* It’s time to launch a groundswell of support for more responsible policies, disrupt the status quo, and turbo-charge US mining, job creation, job and industry preservation, and long-term national security and defense readiness. Failure to do so violates the most fundamental principles of national security and responsible government.
The needs of current and future generations are at stake, because prolonged disruptions of our access to these minerals would lead to the collapse of Silicon Valley and many other industries, severely compromised defense capabilities, and the disruption or even destruction of almost every sector of our computer-dependent economy and society.
President Trump, his cabinet, members of Congress, military and industrial leaders, regulators, citizens and environmentalists need to read this book (coming in December). Above all, they need to recognize that modern mining technologies, techniques and regulations enable us to develop the minerals and metals we so critically need, while preserving the scenic, wildlife and environmental values we cherish.
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New Commuting Data from Census ACS Data

Posted on November 1, 2018 by matt ohern
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The American Community Survey data on vehicle ownership and commuting mode choice were released last month by the U.S. Census Bureau. The headline finding was that the fraction of those working mostly at home nationwide—5.2%—now exceeds the national average for those commuting by transit—5.0%. This has been true of a growing number of medium and large metro areas for quite a few years, but this is the first time it’s been reported on a national average basis.
Comparing commuting modes over time reveals considerable stability in most of the mode shares. Consider the changes between 2005 and the new 2017 numbers:

 
 
 
 
 
The “other” category includes taxi and ride-hail companies, and although the latter have displaced a lot of taxi service, the national average for that whole category is still not much more than 1%.
The largest group of people now in the active workforce is the Millennial generation. They were supposed to be giving up car ownership and getting around by walking, biking, transit, and ride-hailing. But it’s difficult to see much evidence of those alleged trends in the overall statistics (though figures for individual cities may show different patterns).
The other fascinating feature in the new ACS data is the stability in vehicle ownership, albeit with a slight rise in the fraction of multi-vehicle households and a resumption in the trend (post-recession) of an ever-smaller number of zero-car households (from a high of 9.3% in 2012 to 8.6% in 2017. Three-vehicle households have increased from 19.8% in 2005 to 21.5% in 2017, with two-vehicle households decreasing slightly from 38.2% in 2005 to 37.1% in 2017. So far, at least, the United States is still a car-owning society.
(This article first ran in the October issue of Surface Transportation Innovations.)
(This article first ran in the October issue of Surface Transportation Innovations.)
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In Wisconsin, better make sure your butter has been graded

Posted on November 1, 2018 by matt ohern
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Wisconsin has a butter grading law. Let’s start there.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit ruled that Wisconsin’s butter grading law does not violate the Commerce Clause, the Equal Protection Clause nor the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
Why should you care? We’ll get to that shortly.
The Appeals Court, in Chicago states the Due Process and the Equal Protection clause “allows states great latitude in regulating the economy, provided the decision is not wacky.” In fact, the Court cites another case claiming “Courts bend over backward to explain why even the strangest rules are not that far gone.”
Minerva Dairy, a family-owned dairy in Ohio, produces Amish-style butters in slow-churned batches. The dairy uses fresh milk supplied by its pasture raised cows to make slow-churned butter. The Ohio dairy has sold its artisanal butters to consumers in every state.
In 2017, Wisconsin’s Department of Agriculture received an anonymous complaint that Minerva Dairy butter was being sold in Wisconsin and had not had its butter graded by a Wisconsin-licensed butter grader.
Minerva Dairy also has not had its butter graded through a voluntary USDA grading system.
A Wisconsin U.S. District Court ruled Wisconsin has a statute protecting butter which is “…rationally related to the state’s legitimate interest in consumer protection and does not discriminate against out-of-state businesses.”
Wisconsin’s butter-grading law recognizes four grades of butter. AA must have a “fine and highly pleasing butter flavor”. Grade A must have a “pleasing and desirable butter flavor”.  Grade B butter must have a “fairly pleasing butter flavor”. And it will not surprise you Wisconsin has a Wisconsin Undergrade butter. This is butter that “fails to meet the requirements for Wisconsin Grade B“.
Wisconsin takes its butter very, very seriously.
The state’s butter grades are specified in the state’s Administrative Code. The butter grades described above are “…based on an examination for flavor and aroma, body and texture, color, salt, and package.”
The regulation requires butter to be graded on 18 flavor characteristics, eight body characteristics, four color characteristics and two salt characteristics.
It does not stop here. There are even licensed butter-graders in Wisconsin.
To be a butter-grader an applicant must take a butter-grading exam at the University of Wisconsin or at a butter-making facility. An applicant must take a written test on butter making and must have experience at a butter plant. No formal education or experience is required to take a butter exam, but most applicants do have previous experience at making butter. One can even take a short course offered by the Center for Dairy Research at the University of Wisconsin. Applicants have a 90% pass rate on the butter-grading exam, and the license received is renewable every two years by paying a $75 fee.
There are presently 12 licensed Wisconsin butter graders. And, there is an appeal process for all butter producers who might dispute a licensed butter-grader in Wisconsin.
Minerva Dairy asked a Wisconsin U.S. District Court to declare that Wisconsin’s butter-grading law is unconstitutional and sought an injunction to prevent Wisconsin’s Department of Agriculture from enforcing the butter-grading requirements just described. The court said an out- of-state butter producer could be graded on butter, and the cost of traveling to Wisconsin was not a sufficient burden on the Ohio dairy. Minerva lost its case in both U.S. District Court and in the U.S. Court of Appeals in the 7thCircuit, for the reasons stated in the first paragraph of this blog. Both courts ruled that Wisconsin’s law does not discriminate against out-of-state butter producers.
One court finding is particularly important to all in agriculture.
Wisconsin’s butter-grading law does not violate the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. The Supreme Court has inferred the existence of a “dormant” commerce Clause that limits states’ abilities to restrict interstate commerce.  The Court “held Wisconsin’s butter-grading statute does not expressly discriminate against interstate commerce.” It states, “The labeling requirement applies to all producers whether they reside in-state or out-of-state.”
Moreover, the Court found Wisconsin’s statute is neutral and allows any party to apply for a butter-grading license whether they reside in-state or out-of-state.
Finally, the Court ruled it was only concerned “…with regulation that discriminates against out-of-state firms.”
(This article first ran in Farm Futures on October 16, 2018.)

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Can Charter Schools Reverse Richmond’s Enrollment Decline?

Posted on October 31, 2018 by matt ohern
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Virginia is notorious for its hostility toward charter schools. In the Old Dominion, charter schools must be approved by local school boards, which see educational alternatives as a threat rather than a potential blessing. Virginia has a grand total of eight charter schools, compared to 88 in New Jersey, a state with comparable school enrollment.
Among the commonly cited reasons for opposing charter schools is that they siphon away money from non-chartered public schools. The questionable assumption here is that existing schools can do a better job with the money than the charter schools can.
In the City of Richmond, which has the worst schools in the entire state (excepting possibly Petersburg), the School Board has permitted two charter schools, including one for kids with cognitive disabilities. According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, a strong majority of school board members opposes creation of any more.
“In order to deliver on the promise of the American dream, we must aim for a public education system where every school is a good school,” said Kenya Gibson, who represents the city’s 3rd District, when running for School Board last year. “Corporate reforms, including the charter industry, are antithetical to this goal.”
Here’s a question for Gibson and others who oppose charter schools: Which drains more resources from Richmond Public Schools — a couple of charter schools or a school system that is so atrociously bad that every parent who can afford to do so sends their kids to private school or moves to a neighboring county?
The chart above, created by John Butcher of Cranky’s Blog fame, shows how enrollment remains strong in elementary schools, nine of which meet the benchmark for accreditation on the reading tests. Then in middle schools, educational attainment plummets — and, not surprisingly, so does enrollment. Each student who leaves represents the loss of thousands of dollars in state funds. How much money is the school district bleeding because of this exodus?
What if creating a charter middle school helped reverse plummeting enrollment and brought more money into the school district? When you have the worst schools and worst academic attainment in the entire state, isn’t it time to try something new?
(This article first ran in Bacons Rebellion on October 31, 2018.).
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