Voice For Liberty

Tag: Featured

  • Sedgwick County economic freedom accountability index

    Sedgwick County economic freedom accountability index

    A new initiative to provide residents of Sedgwick County with more information about their elected county commissioners.

    Indexes of voting behavior are common at the national and state levels. These indexes let voters examine how elected representatives have actually voted, rather than having to rely on their rhetoric and campaign promises. Indexes also provide a useful institutional memory.

    Based on my experience on producing the Kansas Economic Freedom Index for several years — a service now provided by Kansas Policy Institute — Sedgwick County will have such an index.

    It’s a timely launch, as this week Sedgwick County commissioners will consider a matter that merits inclusion in this index. The item, if passed, will restart the Sedgwick County Health Department’s travel immunizations program. More information from the county commission is available here.

    Some of the criteria to be considered in building the index include these, in draft form:

    • Increasing or reducing the overall tax burden.
    • Expanding or contracting agencies, programs, or functions of government.
    • Expanding or reducing government’s power to regulate free market activity.
    • Expanding or reducing government’s role in health care.
    • Improving or harming the environment for economic growth and job creation.
    • Expanding or reducing individual property rights.
    • Protecting the integrity of elections.
    • Rewarding or harming specific individuals, business firms, industries, organizations, or special interest groups.
    • Creating or eliminating functions that can be performed by the private sector.
    • Increasing or decreasing long-term debt.
    • Increasing or decreasing government transparency and open records.
    • Using government funds for political purposes.
    • Encouraging or discouraging citizen participation in government and decision-making.

    Why is economic freedom important? Here’s what Milton Friedman had to say in the opening chapter of his monumental work Capitalism and Freedom:

    The Relation between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom

    It is widely believed that politics and economics are separate and largely unconnected; that individual freedom is a political problem and material welfare an economic problem; and that any kind of political arrangements can be combined with any kind of economic arrangements. The chief contemporary manifestation of this idea is the advocacy of “democratic socialism” by many who condemn out of hand the restrictions on individual freedom imposed by “totalitarian socialism” in Russia, and who are persuaded that it is possible for a country to adopt the essential features of Russian economic arrangements and yet to ensure individual freedom through political arrangements. The thesis of this chapter is that such a view is a delusion, that there is an intimate connection between economics and politics, that only certain arrangements are possible and that, in particular, a society which is socialist cannot also be democratic, in the sense of guaranteeing individual freedom.

    Economic arrangements play a dual role in the promotion of a free society. On the one hand, freedom in economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself. In the second place, economic freedom is also an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom.

  • GDP by state and industry

    GDP by state and industry

    An interactive visualization of GDP for each state, by industry.

    The Bureau of Economic Analysis is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce. BEA describes its role as “Along with the Census Bureau, BEA is part of the Department’s Economics and Statistics Administration. BEA produces economic accounts statistics that enable government and business decision-makers, researchers, and the American public to follow and understand the performance of the Nation’s economy. To do this, BEA collects source data, conducts research and analysis, develops and implements estimation methodologies, and disseminates statistics to the public.”

    One series BEA produces is gross domestic product (GDP) by state for 21 industry sectors on a quarterly basis. BEA defines GDP as “the value of the goods and services produced by the nation’s economy less the value of the goods and services used up in production.” It is the value of the final goods and services produced.

    In describing this data, BEA says “These new data provide timely information on how specific industries contribute to accelerations, decelerations, and turning points in economic growth at the state level, including key information about the impact of differences in industry composition across states.” This data series starts in 2005. An announcement of the most recent release of this data is at Gross Domestic Product by State: Third Quarter 2016.

    I’ve gathered the data for this series for all states and regions and present it in an interactive visualization using Tableau Public. The data is presented in real dollars, meaning that BEA adjusted the numbers to account for changes in the price level, or inflation.

    In the visualization, you may use several different presentations of the data and filter for specific states, industries, and time intervals. Besides a table of values, the series are presented as percentage change over time since the first values, so that growth, rather than magnitude, of GDP is shown.

    Click here to open the visualization.

    Example from the visualization. Click for larger.
  • From Pachyderm: Congressional candidates

    From Pachyderm: Congressional candidates

    From the Wichita Pachyderm Club this week: A forum for Republican candidates vying to fill the vacant position of former Congressman Mike Pompeo, who is now Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Ths program was moderated by Kelly Arnold, who is Chairman of the Kansas Republican Party.

    Candidates appearing were, in order of initial appearance:

    • Wichita City Council member Pete Meitzner
    • Kansas Treasurer Ron Estes
    • Former Congressman Todd Tiahrt
    • Donald Trump adviser Alan Cobb
    • Attorney George Bruce
    • Aerospace engineer and radio host Joseph Ashby

    This program was recorded February 3, 2017. Republican delegates will meet to select their candidate on February 8. The election is April 11.

  • WichitaLiberty.TV: Blight, guns, testimony, and KPERS

    WichitaLiberty.TV: Blight, guns, testimony, and KPERS

    In this episode of WichitaLiberty.TV: Co-host Karl Peterjohn joins Bob Weeks to discuss the fight on blight and property rights, guns on campus, availability of testimony in the Kansas Legislature, and KPERS, our state’s retirement system. View below, or click here to view at YouTube. Episode 137, broadcast February 5, 2017.

    Shownotes

  • Analysis of proposed tax changes in Kansas

    Analysis of proposed tax changes in Kansas

    Proposed changes in the Kansas motor fuel tax and sales tax on groceries affects households in different ways.

    As part of a revision to the tax regime in Kansas, a bill proposes to raise the motor fuel tax and reduce the sales tax on most types of groceries. (Restaurant meals would not be affected.) The bill is HB 2237.1 It implements most or all of the elements of a plan called “The Path Forward.”2

    Excise taxes (the motor fuel tax) and sales taxes are usually regressive, meaning that their impact is felt most severely by lower-income households.3 Data shows that as income rises, so too does spending on motor fuel and food at home. But the rise in spending is not proportional to income. For example, data from BLS (see below for references) tells us that households in the lowest quintile of income spent an average of $939 per year on motor fuel and oil in 2015. For the highest quintile of households, spending was $3,226.

    But when we look at this spending as a percent of household income after taxes, for the lowest quintile spending on motor fuel and oil represents 8.2 percent of income. For the highest quintile, it is 2.3 percent. A similar pattern holds for purchases of food for home consumption.

    Because of this relationship, taxes on the sale of gasoline and food affect lower-income households proportionally more. What I have done is to estimate the additional cost, as a percent of after-tax income, of the proposed motor fuel tax. As can be seen in the nearby chart, the additional cost ranges from 0.39 percent of income for the lowest-income households to 0.11 percent for upper-income households. This difference, a factor of 3.5, illustrates the regressive nature of sales taxes, and the gasoline tax is just that — a sales tax.

    HB 2237 Additional Tax Cost as Percent of Income After Taxes. Click for larger.
    The bill proposing the increase in gasoline tax also proposes a reduction in the food sales tax rate from 6.5 percent to five percent. That tax is also regressive. In 2014, as Wichita was considering adding one cent per dollar to the sales tax already paid, my analysis of spending found this: “The lowest income class of families experience an increase nearly four times the magnitude as do the highest income families, as a percentage of after-tax income. This is the regressive nature of sales taxes illustrated in numbers.”4

    HB 2237 Sales Tax Savings as Percent of Income After Taxes. Click for larger.
    A nearby chart shows that the savings from the proposed lower food sales tax ranges from 0.07 percent for high-income households to 0.33 percent for low-income households. This is consistent with the regressive nature of sales taxes: They affect low-income households greatest — when raised, and also when lowered.

    HB 2237 Net Cost as Percent of Income After Taxes. Click for larger.
    Another chart shows the summative effect of the higher fuel tax and lower food sales tax. Of interest, the net effect is highest for the middle 20 percent of households. Note that considering these two taxes, the effect of the proposed bill is to raise taxes for everyone.

    Show the math

    The Bureau of Labor Statistics, a unit of the U.S. Department of Labor,5 has data for household expenditures on gasoline and oil. This data is available for five intervals, or quintiles, of income.6

    Then the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the statistical and analytical agency within the U.S. Department of Energy,7 has gasoline prices. It doesn’t have them for Kansas, but it does for the Midwest.8

    From these two values, we can calculate the number of gallons of gasoline purchased for each income level. Here, we lose a bit of validity, as the BLS data is for purchases of gasoline and oil. But it’s the data we have, and purchases of gasoline surely dominate purchases of motor oil.

    Once we have the number of gallons of gasoline purchased, we multiply by the proposed eleven cents per gallon additional tax. This produces the extra gasoline sales tax cost per household. This is a static calculation and assumes no change in the number of gallons purchased due to the higher cost from the tax, or from any change in gasoline prices for any reason.

    Then, the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey also holds income after taxes for the five income levels. Simple division gives us the percent of household income that the additional tax represents.

    The BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey also holds data for spending on food at home for the five income levels. From that, we can multiply by 1.5 percent to estimate the amount saved if sales tax on food falls to five percent from 6.5 percent. As with purchases of gasoline, this is a static calculation and assumes no change in behavior from reduced sales tax on groceries. Simple division gives us the percent of household income that the tax savings represents.

    Then, we can subtract the food sales tax savings from the additional gasoline tax costs to produce a net calculation.

    —
    Notes

    1. Kansas House of Representatives, Committee on Taxation. HB 2237, Concerning taxation; relating to income tax, rates, determination of income, tax credits; motor fuels tax, rates, trip permits, distribution; sales and compensating use tax, food and food ingredients. http://www.kslegislature.org/li/b2017_18/measures/hb2237/. ↩
    2. Riseupkansas.org. *The Path Forward.” http://riseupkansas.org/the-path-forward/. ↩
    3. “A regressive tax is a tax imposed in such a manner that the tax rate decreases as the amount subject to taxation increases.” Wikipedia. Regressive tax. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regressive_tax. ↩
    4. Weeks, Bob. Wichita sales tax hike would hit low income families hardest. https://wichitaliberty.org/wichita-government/wichita-sales-tax-hike-hit-low-income-families-hardest/. ↩
    5. Bureau of Labor Statistics. About BLS. https://www.bls.gov/bls/infohome.htm. ↩
    6. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Consumer Expenditure Survey. https://www.bls.gov/cex/. ↩
    7. Energy Information Administration. Mission and Overview. http://www.eia.gov/about/mission_overview.php. ↩
    8. Energy Information Administration. Midwest Regular All Formulations Retail Gasoline Prices (Dollars per Gallon). http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=EMM_EPMR_PTE_R20_DPG&f=A. ↩
  • Fake news, meet fake research

    Fake news, meet fake research

    Do you think we have a problem with fake news? Let me introduce you to fake research.

    Think of the term “peer-reviewed research.” What comes to my mind is the academic or scientific researcher, wearing a white lab coat, dispassionately and impartially following the data and experiments down whatever path they lead.

    But it isn’t always that way. Retraction Watch tracks research papers that have been retracted. There are a variety of reasons for retractions. Honest mistakes are made, yes. But striking is how much outright and blatant fraud exists in the academic publishing world. Here is a sampling of some articles from Retraction Watch:

    “A physicist formerly based at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for faking data.” (U.S. gov’t physicist sentenced to 18 months in prison for fraud)

    “Do you know the difference between a group of researchers in the same field who cite each other’s related work, and a group of authors who purposefully cite each other in order to boost their own profiles?” (How to spot a “citation cartel”)

    “In October, the Journal of Biological Chemistry retracted 19 papers coauthored by cancer biologist Jin Cheng, formerly at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida. That’s something you don’t see every day.” Also: “It’s every researcher’s worst nightmare: a manuscript gets rejected during peer review, then shows up later — published by one of the reviewers.” (Top 10 Retractions of 2016)

    “When it comes to detecting image manipulation, the more tools you have at your disposal, the better. In a recent issue of Science and Engineering Ethics, Lars Koppers at TU Dortmund University in Germany and his colleagues present a new way to scan images. Specifically, they created an open-source software that compares pixels within or between images, looking for similarities, which can signify portions of an image has been duplicated or deleted.” (Sleuthing out scientific fraud, pixel by pixel)

    “The situation should sound familiar to readers who follow such “sting” operations: Spears submitted a fake paper to the so-called “predatory” journal, it was accepted one month later with no changes, and published.” (Surprise! Paper retracted after author tells journal it’s a “pile of dung”)

    And, to top it off:

    And today, we bring you news of an effort by John Bohannon, of Science magazine, to publish fake papers in more than 300 open access journals. Bohannon, writing as “Ocorrafoo Cobange” of the “Wassee Institute of Medicine” — neither of which exist, of course — explains his process:

    The goal was to create a credible but mundane scientific paper, one with such grave errors that a competent peer reviewer should easily identify it as flawed and unpublishable. Submitting identical papers to hundreds of journals would be asking for trouble. But the papers had to be similar enough that the outcomes between journals could be comparable. So I created a scientific version of Mad Libs.

    The paper took this form: Molecule X from lichen species Y inhibits the growth of cancer cell Z. To substitute for those variables, I created a database of molecules, lichens, and cancer cell lines and wrote a computer program to generate hundreds of unique papers. Other than those differences, the scientific content of each paper is identical.

    The result? 157 journals accepted the paper and 98 rejected it. (Science reporter spoofs hundreds of open access journals with fake papers)

    Retraction Watch has a blog. You can subscribe to email updates. Also, you can keep informed on Facebook and Twitter. An upcoming project is completing a database for tracking retractions.

  • Availability of testimony in the Kansas Legislature

    Availability of testimony in the Kansas Legislature

    It is easy to provide Kansans with written testimony from the Kansas Legislature. At least I think so.

    On the Kansas Legislature website, each committee has its own page. On these committee pages there are links for “Committee Agenda,” “Committee Minutes,” and “Testimony.” When I looked at these pages two years ago, I found that in most cases there is no data behind these links.1 I do not know what the statistics would be if I repeated the analysis for this year.

    But the written testimony and informational presentations provided to committees are of interest and value to citizens. Most committees — perhaps all — require conferees to supply a pdf or Microsoft Word version of their testimony in advance of the hearing. These electronic documents could be placed online before the committee hearing. Then, anyone with a computer, tablet, or smartphone could have these documents available to them.

    As an illustration, a bill from last week, SB31, was of interest to many in Kansas.2 But the page for the committee that heard this bill holds no testimony, for this bill or any other.

    I’ve gathered the written testimony on SB31 and present it as a single pdf file for ease of handling. I combined the files and formed an index using PDF Split and Merge Basic, which is free and open source. I shared the file using Google Drive, a free service, or very inexpensive if additional storage is required. I can’t tell you how much time it took to accomplish this task, as I was interrupted several times during the process. If pressed, I’d estimate no more than ten or fifteen minutes.

    You may access this document here. I can’t tell you how much time it took to accomplish this task, as I was interrupted several times during the process. If pressed, I’d estimate no more than ten minutes.

    —
    Notes

    1. Weeks, Bob. Availability of testimony in the Kansas Legislature. https://wichitaliberty.org/kansas-government/availability-testimony-kansas-legislature/. ↩
    2. Weeks, Bob. In Kansas, the war on blight continues. https://wichitaliberty.org/kansas-government/kansas-war-blight-continues/. ↩
  • Activate Wichita, an embarrassment

    Activate Wichita, an embarrassment

    A communications initiative of the City of Wichita brings embarrassment to our city.

    At one time Activate Wichita was touted by Wichita city officials as an “online conversation about the future of the Greater Wichita metropolitan area.”

    It’s described on its companion Facebook page as: “Activate Wichita is an innovative new way to be heard on the issues you’re passionate about. Whether your passion is local arts, the environment, or employment creation, you can log on and voice your opinion and local leaders will respond. Together communities come up with solutions and vote on the best course.”

    For a system designed to be an interactive conversation, there aren’t many people talking. And maybe I didn’t look diligently enough, but I didn’t see local leaders responding.

    At one time Activate Wichita had some activity. Then it changed. There was a different design. All the old content was gone. There was very little new content.

    In December 2015 I inquired to the city and was told that My Sidewalk, the company that provides the software that runs Activate Wichita, made changes to improve the system. I was also told: “While the City has not used Activate Wichita as extensively in 2015 as in previous years, our staff has been working with the My Sidewalk support team to learn how to best make effective use of the new design as part of City engagement initiatives. The Library has a series of engagement conversations in planning for 2016. We expect increased use from several other departments as well.”

    Whatever plans the city had for Activate Wichita in 2016, it doesn’t look like they materialized. As of today, there is only one active item on Activate Wichita, from March 2016. Or it could be March 2015; it doesn’t say. The companion Facebook page for Activate Wichita has only three posts since the middle of 2016, with the most recent from August.

    The harm of Activate Wichita

    This lack of attention to these communication initiatives might not be very important except that the city prominently features Activate Wichita. An inviting graphic appears prominently on nearly every page at wichita.gov, the city’s website.

    The banner on almost all City of Wichita web pages, showing activate Wichita link.
    If someone using the wichita.gov city website happens to click on the Activate Wichita logo, they would see something that can be described — charitably — as pathetic. Think of someone considering moving to Wichita, or a company planning to locate or expand in Wichita. Think of people already in Wichita. Is Activate Wichita the impression the city wants to make?

    Remember, Activate Wichita is prominent on the city’s website. The city devotes precious web space to promoting it. I can understand that reviving Activate Wichita into something useful is time-consuming.

    But minimizing the damage should be a snap. Just remove the Activate Wichita link from the city’s website. When Activate Wichita is revived, restore the link.

    By the way, did you know the city increased the size of its communication staff by hiring a Strategic Communications Director? He’s been at work almost two years.

  • Wichita check register

    Wichita check register

    A records request to the City of Wichita results in data as well as insight into the city’s attitude towards empowering citizens with data.

    As part of an ongoing transparency project, I asked the City of Wichita for check register data. I’ve made the data available in a visualization using Tableau Public. Click here to access the visualization.

    Analyzing this data requires a bit of local knowledge. For example, there is a vendor named “Visit Wichita” that started to receive monthly payments in March 2015. What about payments for January and February? Those were made to a vendor named “Go Wichita,” which changed its name to “Visit Wichita.”

    Similarly, there are payments made to both “Westar Energy” and “Westar Energy — EDI.” These are the same entities, just as “Visit Wichita” and “Go Wichita” are the same entity. To the city’s credit, the matching pairs have the same vendor number, which is good. But resolving this requires a different level of analysis.

    There are interesting entries. For example, the city had been spending a few hundred dollars per month to the Kansas Turnpike Authority. Then in July 2015, the city paid $3.7 million to KTA. A quick search of city council agenda packets didn’t reveal any reason for this.

    Of note, it looks like there were 1,475 checks issued in amounts $20 or less over a period of nearly two years. Bank of America has estimated that the total cost of sending a business check ranges from $4 to $20.

    The records request

    Wichita spending data from 2013.
    Wichita spending data from 2013.
    The city supplied this data in an Excel spreadsheet, in an arrangement that can easily be analyzed in Excel or loaded into other programs. This is a step forward. Three years ago, Wichita could supply data of limited utility. What was supplied to me was data in pdf form, and as images, not text. It would be difficult to translate the image data into machine-readable text, and even more difficult to reorganize it to a useful arrangement or format for analysis.

    Denver open checkbook.
    Denver open checkbook.
    In 2015 had to pay $24.00 to the city for this data. That’s a problem. It is by now routine for governmental agencies to post spending data like this, but not at the City of Wichita. Upon inquiry, city officials told me that the present financial management system “does not include many modern system features such as an ‘open checkbook.’” An “open checkbook” refers to a modern web interface where citizens can query for specific data and perhaps perform other analysis. An example is Denver’s open checkbook.

    While the next-generation Wichita financial system will probably have such a feature, there’s no reason why citizens can’t experience some of the benefits now. The spreadsheet of spending data like that I paid for could easily be posted on the city’s website on a monthly basis. People like myself will take that data and make it more useful, as I did. There is no reason why this should not be happening.

    Fees

    When I learned of the fee for these records in 2015, I asked for a waiver, sending this to the city’s records official:

    I’d like to ask for a waiver of the requested fee. I ask this because check register data is an example of records that many governmental agencies make freely available on their websites. The Wichita Public School District and Sedgwick County are two local examples.

    I’d like to also call attention to the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, which allows for fee waivers in some circumstances: “…fee waivers are limited to situations in which a requester can show that the disclosure of the requested information is in the public interest because it is likely to contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations and activities of the government and is not primarily in the commercial interest of the requester.”

    I suggest that the records I am requesting will indeed “contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations and activities of the government,” and that it is in the public interest of the people of Wichita that these records be freely available.

    I received an answer:

    Mr. Weeks,

    Your request for waiver of fees is denied. KORA allows fees to be collected prior to finding and producing the document you seek. KSA 45-218(f). The extensive statute setting out how fees are to be determined, KSA 45-219, does not contain any provision for waiver in the manner you suggest.

    The City will provide the document to you upon payment as invoiced.

    Sincerely,
    Jay C. Hinkel,
    Deputy City Attorney

    Mr. Hinkel is absolutely correct. Governmental agencies in Kansas have the right to charge for records, and the Kansas statutes do not mention the waiving of fees as do the federal statutes. But the Kansas Open Records Act does not require cities to charge for providing records, especially for records that the city should already be providing. Especially when citizens are willing to take that data and make it better, at no charge to the city.

    (For the most recent records request, the city waived its intended fee of $24.00, noting this waiver is for the current request only. The city acknowledges that it temporarily misplaced my request, and as a result, was late in responding. I believe that is the reason for the fee waiver.)

    Wichita’s attitutude, from top down

    Hinkel provided a lawyer’s answer. Here, however, is the public policy the city promotes, from a Wichita city news release from 2013:

    “The City Council has stressed the importance of transparency for this organization,” City Manager Robert Layton said. “We’re honored to receive a Sunny Award and we will continue to empower and engage citizens by providing information necessary to keep them informed on the actions their government is taking on their behalf.”

    The importance of transparency. The city wants to empower and engage citizens by providing information. Well. I offered to “contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations and activities of the government,” but had to pay to do so.

    When I asked city officials for clarification of why I had to pay to receive these records, communications staff told me: “I should note that the City has won multiple awards for openness and citizen participation, but City leaders recognize this work is never done. They strive each and every day to become more open and transparent and will continue to do so.”

    I must disagree. This is not “open and transparent.” This is not how to “empower and engage” the people of Wichita. Not even close.

    The city lags far behind comparable agencies in providing access to data. It’s been almost two years since the city expanded its staff by adding a Strategic Communications Director. It doesn’t seem that this has helped to provide information to citizens.