Duane Gran’s log of thoughts

The marketplace is, frankly speaking, a mess right now. Nothing earth shattering or newsworthy in itself, but what is driving the current malaise?

In a word, uncertainty. Take the latest example where the Treasury Department is considering a program to offer fixed mortgages at 4.5%. For the past two months you might say they have done a lot of considering about:

• Bailing out automakers
• Throwing ungodly sums of money into the financial sector
• Nationalizing the main mortgage lendors
• Creating relief programs for people with upside mortgages

Like any rational person on the sidelines, I’m watching to see what happens. When I watch I don’t spend and to a lesser extent I don’t invest. Millions of people who may have planned to execute on a home purchase or refinance are likely putting the brakes on the process to find out which way the wind blows with the Treasury Department.

What we collectively face in the market is fear brought about through uncertainty. Yes, there is a liquidity crises and any number of perfectly clear explanations for why the market is slumping, but beyond that many people are simply waiting for a clear indication of public policy. I’m eager for the hand wringing to cease and to make way for something more productive, even if it means we must wade through a painful market correction.

A brilliant Guardian article teases apart the myth and reality of China’s rapid economic expansion and how corruption threatens their transition to a market economy. From the article:

The truth is that China is not the socialist market economy the party describes, nor moving towards capitalism as the western consensus believes. Rather it is frozen in a structure that I describe as Leninist corporatism - and which is unstable, monumentally inefficient, dependent upon the expropriation of peasant savings on a grand scale, colossally unequal and ultimately unsustainable. It is Leninist in that the party still follows Lenin’s dictum of being the vanguard, monopoly political driver and controller of the economy and society. And it is corporatist because the framework for all economic activity in China is one of central management and coordination from which no economic actor, however humble, can opt out.

A similar situation is present in the former Soviet Union (see my previous notes) where the mere removal of a Communist ideology doesn’t make for capitalism or the rule of law its natural replacement. The strictures of a command economy — principally corruption — remain long after party rhetoric fades.

The article is a good reminder of what makes capitalism work in America. Contract law and reward for those who succeed make the system work. China is proving that a nation can prosper and grow even under less than idea circumstances. I’m reminded of how Romania boasted of one of the fastest growing economies in Europe during the early 70s. It, like the current China economy, vexed free market advocates.

A prescient article in The Atlantic Online illustrates the complex threat and opportunity which lies ahead for North Korea, otherwise known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea:

Yet for all Kim’s canniness, there is evidence that he may be losing his edge. And that may be reason to worry: totalitarian regimes close to demise are apt to get panicky and do rash things. The weaker North Korea gets, the more dangerous it becomes. The question that should be of greatest concern to the U.S. military in the Pacific — and the question that will likely determine the global balance of power in Asia for generations — is, What happens when North Korea collapses?

A peaceful collapse, akin to what took the world by surprise in the years between 1989 and 1991 among Communist nations is unlikely in Korea. The closest analogue is the former Romanian regime of Nicolae Ceausescu, who held an iron grip on the people but lost it rapidly to insurgents. The expression on Ceausescu’s face when the people turned on him epitomized the end of his reign. I have no doubt that North Korea’s Dear Leader knows the story well. Consider the following, which was published while this essay was in draft:

More than one Chinese academic agreed that China yearned for an uprising similar to the one that swept away the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989 and replaced him with communist reformers and generals. The Chinese made an intense political study of the Romanian revolution and even questioned president Ion Iliescu, who took over, about how it was done and what roles were played by the KGB and by Russia.

Mr Kim, for his part, ordered North Korean leaders to watch videos of the swift and chaotic trial and execution of Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, the vice-prime minister, as a salutary exercise.

Kim Jung Il is betting that membership in the nuclear weaponry club will improve his negotiating power but I suspect that he will be further isolated. Iran, not surprisingly, is the only country endorsing the nuclear test. But what is the next move?

While the DPRK may have detonated a bomb they may not yet have a weapon which can be deployed at will. Some view this as a window of time to dismantle the regime before it hones its skill in delivering the weapon. Others believe the country is properly contained already, but I suspect that is little consolation to the residents of Seoul who grow weary of the sunshine policy.

Ultimately China, Russia, South Korea and Japan have the most stake in the matter, but if I were placing bets I wouldn’t be surprised if China orchestrates the collapse of North Korea.

I have steered clear of making any statements about the political race for the Virginia Senate seat, which pits challenger James Webb against incumbent Senator George Allen. However, I’m puzzled by the behavior of local GOP staffers in yesterday’s brief visit in Charlottesville by the Senator. A Daily Progress article says:

Albemarle GOP Chairman Keith Drake positioned himself in front of a Webb staffer tracking Wednesday’s event with a digital camera so that she could not get unobstructed images of Allen talking.

When the woman, who gave her first name as Joan and said she lived in Vienna, tried to hold her camera over Drake’s head, the Allen supporter turned and thrust his camera in front of hers, repeatedly blocking her view.

I have no position on personality issues which hound the incumbent, other than to say that it is bad press to appear like you have henchmen guarding you from the appearance of accountability. Every politician has to assume that their words will be heard and parsed. Given enough time on tape everyone will gaffe, but worse than indiscretion on tape may be the appearance that party loyalists are desperate to block video coverage of the Senator’s statements.

None of this should reflect poorly on the Senator, but I would think party loyalists in Albemarle County would rethink their strategy.

Update: A Hook article sheds some more light on the matter. According to Drake, who blocked the camera, Joan was being disrespectful at the event. If that is the case, then both sides need to raise the standards on decorum at these events.

Princeton researchers have made public some troubling facts about the vulnerability of electronic voting machines. The lack of any secondary record, such as a printed ballot, gives license to a hacker to manage the internal state of the device and alter the vote tally.

Technology itself isn’t the problem, but rather the process whereby these devices have been deployed live is faulty. Diebold is a private company that keeps the the design and software closed to outsiders. The Princeton researchers acquired a machine and conducted their experiments in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which prohibits reverse engineering and a variety of tinkering with closed systems. Rest assured that malicious persons with talent wouldn’t obey the law, so it is simply a matter of time for before the wrong people would expose the vulnerability. We are lucky today to read about it in a research paper, but tomorrow we may be dealing with untraceable vote fraud.

A better model would be for the government to develop electronic voting internally or to contract it to the private sector, concluding with an open system. Set up a generous prize for researchers and the lay-hacker to find and fix vulnerabilities. When such a system is refined it could be given to burgeoning democracies worldwide.

Instead, the intellectual property is locked away and held by Diebold for profit and the only external oversight comes by way of skirting the law. The integrity of our election process is at stake, and we will have sold it out if our government doesn’t reign this in.

It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they did. –Al Gore

While not wishing to exude a 10th September mindset, I feel compelled to state that I don’t feel terror on this day like I might have before. Gradually I’ve come to accept terrorism as one of a variety of dangers in life that don’t warrant sleepless nights, hand wringing or long war. The prescient writing of John Mueller speaks my mind well on the matter.

Update (18 Sept 2006): A cheeky article in Wired News make a compelling case about the real threats that abound.

The Cavalier Daily, a newspaper for students at The University of Virginia, explains its editorial position for filing a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control’s regulations on alcohol advertising. They are joined by the Virginia Tech Collegiate Times. College papers in Virginia are prohibited from advertising alcohol, presumably since the demographic is decidedly tilted toward those who are legally prevented from imbibing.

Is this a matter of free speech or one of fees and revenue? Alcohol is already a well regulated commodity and restrictions on advertising are well established in print, radio and television. Let’s consider for a moment who wins and who loses in this scenario.

I remember vividly each year arriving back on campus at my alma mater, Ball State University, to a barrage of alcohol advertising in our student paper*. In fact, one could see prominent “welcome back BSU students” signs at the local brewery’s and liquor stores. Students were regarded as a cash cow for booze purchases and the paper gladly accepted advertising revenue. Who won? The purveyors and the newspaper, but it is the student body who lost.

This isn’t to say that they had no hand in the matter. I personally contributed my (albeit small) part to the alcohol economy during college, but what is the logic of directing ads to a group that by and large is legally forbidden to purchase or consume the product? The logic, if it dare be called such, is that students will skirt the law and advertiser and newspaper alike can look the other way.

The paper offers the following defense:

By fighting for commercial speech we are defending the democratic principles of a free press and seeking to secure the paper on firmer financial ground.

Aside from the misnomer about commercial speech, their allegedly principled objection is belied by the monetary aim.

* Note: I was a columnist for the Ball State Daily News and made my disagreement with the editorial decision to accept alcohol advertising known.

A Commercial Alert bulletin warns about a new venue for advertising to children:

BusRadio, a start-up company in Massachusetts, wants to pipe into school buses around the country a private radio network that plays music, public-service announcements, contests and, of course, ads, aimed at kids as they travel to and from school.

It is shameful when we allow our public schools to become so impoverished that selling out children has become not only acceptable, but is called good policy in some circles. I was a student at a public school in 1990 when Channel One was introduced. Today the corporation has a direct conduit to 8 million students at 12,000 public schools, where they endorse soda and their own slant on the news. My efforts, naive as there were as a 16 year-old, to expose bias and propaganda fell on deaf ears. It is hard to make a principled objection to a school system when they have sold out.

More than ever we need to recognize the real harm done when school systems are bled dry or divert education funds into the pits of technology and sport.

It isn’t often that you get 250+ people, many without chairs, to attend a lecture concerning global politics in the post cold war era. Unless, of course, the speaker is Francis Fukuyama — The author of The End of History and America at the Crossroads. He is, by many accounts, the most prominent Neo Conservative in academic circles, but lately he has been unpersuaded by the rationale for war and the Neo Conservative agenda. I had the priviledge of hearing him speak at The Miller Center.

In the course of tracing the roots of Neo Conservativism from depression-era leftists, he cites three mis-applications of the Wilsonian doctrine:

1. Pre-emptive war — We have conflated our worries about stateless terrorism with the relative pre-2003 stability of Iraq. While the underlying sensibility of pre-emption — to strike first those who intend you harm — is nearly accepted fact, it hinges on solid intelligence. Furthermore, many cases of preemption require that you predict the future.
2. Benevolent hegemony — The current imbalance of political and military power is unprecedented in history, but we presume it to be the natural order. American exceptionalism, which condones our invasion of Iraq while demanding that India not invade Pakistan, is predicated on the belief that we are benevolent with our power. While many Americans believe this to be so, the contradictions inherent in the policy undermine what benevolence we proclaim to posses.
3. Nation building — If you had asked a political scientist in 1988 about a hypothetical end to Communism few would have predicted its end and nearly all would have expected it to be violent and protracted. The quiet demise of Communism set up an expectation that all enemies of America are paper tigers. This hubris has lead us into what is characterized now as a long war.

I’m a skeptic of Fukuyama’s thesis (see my previous notes) and still believe there is room in the world for grand re-ordering of society. I didn’t ask any questions, as the audience of professors, statesmen and one ambassador were better suited to the dialog. The audience was respectful but many questions probed the internal consistency of Neo Conservativism, particularly on the matter of vigorously endorsing democracy in one place (Iraq) while sanctioning obscene failures of human rights in another (Saudi Arabia). Fukuyama acknowledged these deficiencies as collateral for any administration and emphasized that devoting resources to one cause necessarily depletes options for another.

Had I wished to ask a question, I would have asked the following:

• Is the Bush doctrine Wilsonian?
• Realizing that hegemony — benevolent or not — breeds discontent among nations, what can America do to engage other nations to be part of the solution such that we are not acting as the world police?

Update: (26 May 2006): Helena Cobban, a fellow writer in Charlottesville was also at the event, summarized her experience with far more comprehension than I’ve given.

Today, while attempting to pay a property tax bill online with Albemarle County, I noticed that they have a “convenience fee”, amounting to 3% of the bill. I’m not sure what is convenient about this, but the page cites Virginia Code 2.2-614.1 as justification for the charge.

I mailed them a check. Sure, it is less convenient, but I hardly feel motivated to pay for the privilege of paying property taxes.

A report (pdf file) from Public Citizen details “how 18 families worth a total of $185.5 billion have financed and coordinated a 10-year effort to repeal the estate tax, a move that would collectively net them a windfall of $71.6 billion.” I’m not disposed to elaborate explanations or conspiracy, but the group has done an effective job of unmasking the layers of anonymity which a handful of wealthy people have used to fund a campaign to discredit the estate tax, leading to its temporary repeal.

The legislation is up for renewal in 2011, but we can hope that the congress disregards the anti-estate tax lobby’s rhetoric. See my previous notes about the history behind the re-branding of the estate tax for some context on the issue.

Update (9 June 2006): The LA Times reports that Republicans don’t have the votes necessary to make the repeal permanent. This is a victory for the 98% who would not have benefited from the repeal.

As tax day approaches, I would like to share a suggestion for our politicians who crafted this byzantine system whereby we tally our civic dues.

I propose that all members of congress should be required to prepare their own returns and certify, under penalty of perjury, that the documentation is accurate. If it’s good enough for SEC filings for our corporate executives, it should be fitting for our politicians.

A recent study (original source) reveals that advertising works:

Children who spend more time watching television and movies and playing video games may be more likely to ask their parents for toys, food and drinks they saw in advertisements, according to a study in the April issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, a theme issue on children and the media.

File this under “duh”, as anyone who gives the matter any consideration will conclude that companies wouldn’t spend fortunes on marketing with no return on value. But the study raises a larger ethical issue: Is it right to influence the purchasing habits of children?

Marketers and the apathetic are the only segment not willing to protest advertising to children, but a growing number of parents are joining the opposition as they become weary of seeing their children used as a surrogate nagging device for corporate interests. If this seems like a dramatized explanation, consider the following excerpt from The American Prospect:

The advertising industry itself has funded dozens of studies on children designed to enhance marketing effectiveness. According to Selling to Kids–an industry newsletter, unfortunately, not a watchdog group–Saatchi & Saatchi hired clinical psychologists and cultural anthropologists to record more than 500 hours of interviews and observations of children between the ages of six and 20. Increasingly, such research is taking place in schools: According to USA TODAY, grade schools in Connecticut accepted $5,000 from a company in exchange for permission to interview 10- to 12-year-old students in classrooms after school. The Gepetto Group conducts focus groups and consults with psychologists to help businesses better understand how to market to teens by exploiting their vulnerabilities. “Teens are … an oppositional subculture, interested in shutting out the adult world,” the firm’s chief strategic officer explained in a Selling to Kids interview. “[T]here are enormous opportunities for the marketer who is able to understand both the reality and fantasy of teen life.”

Advertisers have no qualms about pitting child against parent if it means increasing profits. Is there a better way? Fortunately, there is. We can follow the lead of Sweden (and Finland), which prohibits advertising to children under the age of 12. In addition to other family-friendly public policy, they believe that children should be off-limits for advertisers and that parents should maintain autonomy over purchase decisions in the home.

This sounds like an idea where Liberals and Conservatives in America may find common ground, provided that awareness prevails over apathy.

While not an impossible hurdle to overcome, the hardest aspect of Capitalism is to inject some notion of long term planning to counter balance desire for short term profits. A Wired interview with Lester R. Brown, the author of Plan B, digs into some of this tension. Brown’s life work is devoted to raising awareness about the fragility of our ecosystem to captains of industry and policy makers. The following quotation speaks volumes about our blindness to truth:

There’s a quote by Oystein Dahle close to a decade ago now, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He was for many years Exxon’s vice president for Norway and the North Sea. He said, “Socialism collapsed because it did not allow the market to tell the economic truth. Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow the market to tell the ecological truth.” That’s a lot of wisdom distilled into those two sentences.

Socialist nations, truth be told, have not had a good record on ecology either, but they generally acknowledged the failure. Intelligent people can, and will, disagree about the meaning of global warming, ozone depletion, acid rain and a variety of unsettling signposts, but our inability to craft policy to err on the side of caution is our poverty of imagination — we fail to perceive the world as it might be if nothing changes, or worse yet we consume ourselves with the present at the expense of the future.

But many bright people see it another way. The future always works itself out. They point to population explosion worry-worts and explain how the census is leveling off before war, famine and disease do the job for us. Concerned social scientists in the early 20th century predicted that America would be thigh-deep in horse manure if we didn’t restrict horse-driven transportation. Today ecologically minded persons worry about carbon dioxide emissions for the auto, which made the manure epidemic a non-issue. Maybe we will reconfigure our lifestyles before it gets too bad.

But then again, maybe there is a tipping point when we exceed the Earth’s carrying capacity after decades of expedient decisions. Caution will cost us profits today and may well make no difference in the outcome — we have no guarantees and no crystal balls. Some advocates of restraining measures, such as the Kyoto Protocol, advance them only because they bridle industry, but the majority accept restrictions on industry as necessary to achieve the long view. Left to its own, Capitalism is incapable of honestly confronting the damage it may cause for future generations.

Update 11-April-2006: A new film, curiously titled An Inconvenient Truth, will debut this Summer and features former Vice-President Al Gore.

Update 18-April-2006: After sharing this essay, Warren Meyer shared a family story to illustrate the 19th century worries over the horse population, mentioned earlier.

Much fuss has been made on the AM radio band as well as in congress about immigration. The objection is predicated on a belief that we have too many illegal immigrants. An article by Thomas Sowell, a Conservative economist, captures the essence of the anti-immigration viewpoint:

Citizen-of-the-world types are resistant to the idea of tightening our borders, and especially resistant to the idea of making a distinction between people from different countries. But the real problem is not their self-righteous fetishes but the fact that they have intimidated so many other people into silence.

He goes on to cite examples of troublesome groups, such as Russians and Nigerians, as worthy of special exclusion from entering the United States. It almost has the ring of truth and sense until you consider that any group-based discrimination denies the rights of individuals. I find the wording of the Manifesto for the Abolition of International Apartheid, authored in 1997, to be helpful in identifying the crux of the issue:

Since the end of interracial apartheid in South Africa, no longer any state in the world openly practices discrimination between humans based on the arbitrary criterion of skin colour. Today, however, another equally arbitrary criterion is still accepted and applied by virtually every state in the world. For a human individual to have been born in some a particular place, from parents of some particular nationality, and thus to possess emself some particular nationality, is a matter of chance, and cannot be taken as a non-arbitrary criterion of discrimination.

Ultimately the raging debate may be a lot of fury over nothing, as Arnold Kling, an economist, deflates the hype in pointing out that “illegal immigrants bring relatively little economic benefit and cause relatively little economic harm.” Advocates for tighter border control aren’t xenophobes and proponents for the status quo aren’t laying a welcome mat for n’er do goods. That doesn’t sound worth fighting over, but I can’t blame 500,000 people for protesting legislation that would criminalize providing services to illegals.

It’s un-Christian and I don’t think Senator Hillary Clinton was far off the mark when she said that House Resolution 4437 would criminalize the Good Samaritan. We should foster, not criminalize, our compassion and it should transcend borders.

A Richmond Times Dispatch article raises the oft-heard objection to rail service:

In its 34-year history, Amtrak has never turned a profit. It has debt of more than $3.5 billion and its operating loss for 2005 topped $550 million.

Curiously, when is the last time you heard someone exasperated over our non-profitable interstate highway system? In the last 25 years of transportation funding (1977 - 2001) , the federal government spent $782 billion on transportation, 48.4% of which went to highways, 22.4% to air, 12.3% to ports, 12.1% to transit, and only 4% to rail. Rail is the only modality held to the profit standard.

What most people intuitively realize is that all modes are profitable to society. Consider for a moment that the Virginia Railway Express eliminates one lane of traffic on Interstate-66 during rush hour. It is largely believed that gas taxes don’t account for the wear imposed by semi trucks on Interstate highways, but we presume that rapid and convenient transport of goods is a net benefit for society. Examples abound for qualitative value for all modes of transportation.

Why then, does Amtrak repeatedly get held to a means test? The short answer is that it is politically expedient, but this warrants more explanation:

• Rail closure affects the non-affluent
• The poor, to their disadvantage, generally don’t have the means or will to make their interests heard to Congress
• Even worse, the poor tend to not vote

While not exactly class-warfare, attempts to close rail service, under the auspices of cost-saving, is dishonest and is predicated on the appearance that no one cares about rail. I, and others, intend to counter both misconceptions.

Democracy Now! | Venezuelan-Owned Citgo Faces Congressional Inquiry For Offering Discounted Oil to U.S. Poor

Republican Congressman Joe Barton of Texas has launched an investigation into one of the world’s major oil companies. But he is not investigating whether any of the oil giants are engaging in price gouging at a time when gasoline and heating oil casts are skyrocketing. Instead Barton has set his sights on the only oil company that actually dared to lower its prices last year - at least for the poorest Americans. Last week Barton demanded the Venezuelan-owned company Citgo produce all records, minutes, logs, e-mails and even desk calendars related to the company’s novel program of supplying discounted heating oil to low-income communities in the United States.

Maybe there is more to the story, but it is patently brazen to look the other way as ExxonMobile posts a 38 Billion dollar profit last year and to investigate Citgo when they help the poor. Possibly it is embarrassing that a state owned company, in a Socialist nation, helps poor Americans when the invisible hand does nothing.

A cynical explanation, related to Representative Barton’s financial allegiance, comes by way of a New York Daily News article, which refers to Barton as “the closest thing on Capitol Hill to a mouthpiece for Big Oil.” He was “was second only to fellow Texan Tom DeLay in the amount of oil industry contributions” in the last election cycle.

Monied interests always play a role, but this investigation is poor form any way you cut it. In the meantime, I believe I’ll go out of my way to locate a Citgo station.

Last night I attended the ASAP meeting and was encouraged by some common ground between rail and slow growth advocates. In truth, “slow growth” may be a mischaracterization of the goals of ASAP, but I believe it encompasses the general concern about unchecked development in our rural community. See my previous notes about the issue for some background on my position. While I’m a member of C’ville Rail I don’t speak for the group in any official way. This is my personal summary of events and I’m sure others in attendance may have a different perspective.

I expected some friction but I’m pleased to say that some common ground emerged on the matter of transportation choices and priorities for activism.

Rail is something to be rediscovered, as Charlottesville used to have a wealth of choices for its citizens. As late as 1956 there were 22 passenger rail trips per day between Washington DC and Charlottesville. Today there are 2, serviced by Amtrak, and the service is unreliable to the extent that Amtrak willingly suggests that you not use the service if you really need to arrive at your destination. While we have invested in private transportation and roads over the past 50 years we have let our rail infrastructure fall apart. This leaves many people with fewer choices today than in previous years.

But is this a choice that encourages sprawl and turns Charlottesville into a bedroom community? Opinions varied at the meeting, but a vocal majority seemed to believe that this wasn’t the case for two reasons:

1. Bedroom communities seem to emerge out of a desire for affordable housing, as commuters move further outward from a metropolitan area. Charlottesville is expensive to live and it seems inconceivable that masses of people would opt to live here over more affordable communities closer to DC.
2. Charlottesville lacks professional employment opportunities to fulfill its present workforce, who commute occasionally to Washington. Rail service would make life more convenient for existing commuters, but it’s a stretch to claim that masses would move to Charlottesville when the commute time by rail would be 2.5 hours. The benefit serves those who are here, but it doesn’t seem attractive enough to draw newcomers.

Beyond the issue of choice, I think ASAP may see pragmatic reasons to not oppose rail in Charlottesville. There are higher priorities for activism, such as various connector roads and bypass proposals. Connections between rail and sprawl are tenuous, but are well established with other modes of transport. While I don’t sense that ASAP endorses intercity rail for Charlottesville, I believe the majority won’t oppose it.

David Sugar wrote an excellent article about his recent travels to Venezuela to assist them with their national directive to migrate all government agencies to free software within two years. The goal is ambitious, but mixed in with historical anecdotes he mentions the seed for this revolutionary viewpoint on IT in the public sector. Namely, after President Chavez nationalized the oil industry it was found that the IT systems were implemented with proprietary systems and the passwords were only known by the previous owners. Sugar explains the impact, as computer hackers regained control of the systems:

The Venezuelan revolution is perhaps the first revolution in history saved by computer hackers and this is one of the reasons the government is so very strong on promoting the use of free software, particularly in public administration. The Venezuelan government wishes never again to have vital infrastructure held hostage or sabotaged by agents of foreign nations.

One may disagree with the public policy of Venezuela, but they are wise to prefer open source software, all things being equal. The mandate to switch all systems to open source is less pragmatic than I would choose, but this will undoubtedly serve as a spur for innovation.

Today I made an unpleasant pilgrimage to the Department of Motor Vehicles. Days like this put a strain on my otherwise statist views, so pardon me as a I drift into some knee jerk Libertarian thoughts. I’m sure I’ll wake up tomorrow convinced that I love Big Brother and I’ll get back to thinking about how nice it would be for government to administer something or other.

Anyhow, while sitting among a throng of at least 50 people waited on by two tellers I had some time to reflect on the process. While I firmly believe the state has the right to impose auto taxes and set policy, for the sake all that is good in life I don’t see why they are in the business of administering it in a customer-facing situation. I offer up a similar scenario for comparison: auto emission testing.

In Virginia, everyone who operates an automobile is required to prove the it doesn’t belch out an extraordinary amount of pollution, unless of course, one drives an SUV in which case mere tonnage puts it in the same class with a MACK truck or a CAT back-hoe — but I digress. There are standards and penalties, typical government stuff. In my former home of Washington DC you had to go to one government operated inspection site which took the better part of the morning to complete. In Virginia you go to nearly any service station and combine the routine task with an oil change, often getting the service at no charge.

As I waited this morning it crossed my mind that we could do this with automobile registration and all manner of basic tasks performed by the DMV in the private sector. The private sector is great when it comes to dealing directly with the public and the government is suited for setting broad policy. Let’s open up automotive bureaucracy to private competition. I suspect the results would be encouraging.