A Koch Protest and a Smile

The leftists were out in full silliness mode protesting the Koch brothers near Vail on June 26. Both Progress Now Colorado and Colorado Common Cause promoted the protest, as did Colorado Pols and Colorado Independent.

I love the Denver Post's headline: "Koch brothers hold secret GOP business retreat in Vail." It was so secret it drew coverage in the largest regional newspaper. An alternative term for "secret" is simply, "private." Apparently, whenever free-market advocates meet in private, that's ominously "secret," but whenever radical leftists meet in private, that's just a fun little gathering.

I do like a comment from a Koch spokesperson quoted by the Post: "The purpose of this conference is to develop support for the kind of free-market policies and initiatives that can get our country back on the path to economic prosperity and sustained job creation."

I hope the Kochs are immensely successful in this mission, as it is precisely what the country needs. (As I have noted, because I already held free-market beliefs, I actually worked indirectly for Koch money one summer. I spent most of my time fighting unjust sentencing that disproportionately harmed African Americans.)

So what could one find at the rally? In Kelly Maher's excellent video, one can hear a Progress Now representative claiming that Paul Ryan's entitlement reforms "will basically throw Grandma out on the street." That is a bald-faced lie, which is perhaps why another protester cleverly blocked Maher's camera so that she could not continue to record the speaker making a complete fool out of herself.

Or consider the photo of a sign uploaded by Alan Franklin, which says, "Create American Jobs for Americans! Pay Your Taxes!" Because, you see, when the Kochs build a successful market business, that doesn't "create jobs." Only when they pull money out of their productive enterprises and hand it over to politicians and bureaucrats do they "create jobs."

And leftists wonder why most Americans think they are absolutely bat-guano crazy.

Another sign says the Kochs are "Wanted for climate crimes," apparently because the Kochs produce, among other things, energy to run our cars. Because, as we all know, the leftists all walked to Vail rather than drive a vehicle. (My guess is that all of the protesters use some Koch product or other.)

Finally, consider a couple of posts from Progress Now's Twitter feed. AP reporter Kristen Wyatt Tweeted, "Koch bros. fire back at protesters headed to Vail, point out that ProgressNow doesnt disclose all its donors either." Progress Now retorted, "It's all about consent. ... Our donors knowingly give to a political cause. Koch Bros $$$ comes from consumers & shareholders who didn't consent." Because, you know, the Kochs literally hold a gun to their customers' heads and force them to buy their products. And, if Progress Now is going to play the "consent" card, what about the customers who made some of their own donors fabulously wealthy? Did they consent to indirectly funding Progress Now? Some rich leftists give to leftist causes, some rich conservatives give to conservative causes, and some rich free-market advocates give to free market causes. The only thing surprising about any of this is Progress Now's self-righteous hypocrisy on the matter.

My only complaint about the Koch brothers is that they do not currently direct any of their money to me.

Why Rosen is Wrong about Vouchers

Does the U.S. Constitution support the Douglas County voucher program?

Ed Quillen and Ben DeGrow have fought it out on the origins of the so-called "Blaine Amendments," which inspired Article IX, Section 7 of the Colorado Constitution prohibiting tax funding of religious institutions.

But here my purpose is not to try to sort out that history; as I've written, "Those who do not like that language [about tax funding], it seems to me, should seek to repeal it rather than ignore it." Nor is my main goal here to discuss the propriety of vouchers, which I've done before.

Instead, I want to determine whether the U.S. Constitution trumps the Colorado Constitution in legalizing vouchers within the state. It does not.

This morning on 850 KOA, Mike Rosen offered the following argument. In 2002, the Supreme Court ruled in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris that the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion") does not rule out voucher programs that direct tax money to religious schools, so long as the government does not favor certain religious schools and makes the program available to a general class of citizen. Therefore, argued Rosen, the First Amendment trumps Colorado's Article IX, Section 7, rendering vouchers legally permissible within Colorado.

But Rosen's logic is faulty. The Supreme Court merely ruled (or so I understand) that a voucher program does not necessarily violate the First Amendment; whether a voucher program violates a state constitution is another question entirely.

The only way Douglas County's voucher program could be tossed out federally is if it were deemed to violate some aspect of the federal constitution. Nobody is arguing that. (I think a good case can be made that forcibly redirecting funds to religious institutions does violate the establishment clause, but I don't get a legal say in such matters.)

But the U.S. Constitution's relatively weak establishment clause does not prohibit states from enacting stronger rules. The proper test is as follows: Does the voucher program violate the establishment clause? If no, then does it violate the Colorado Constitution? If yes, then it is invalid. (I predict the Colorado Supreme Court will side with the ACLU in this case, and I think it will be right to do so.)

Only if Article IX, Section 7 were ruled to violate the U.S. Constitution would the latter trump the former. To my knowledge, nobody has proposed a plausible case that that is so.

Contrast the case of vouchers with that of the campaign laws. I have argued that Colorado's campaign laws violate our rights of free speech as protected by the First Amendment. Therefore, the Colorado laws, though part of the state constitution, should be invalidated by trumping federal law.

But, unless Article IX, Section 7 also violates the First Amendment -- and I don't see how it could -- then it constitutes the deciding law.

As I have suggested, the legal dispute aside, vouchers in fact violate people's basic rights of economic liberty and freedom of conscience. It is wrong to force someone to finance any religious institution against his will. And until conservatives recognize that basic point, they will at best dawdle at the edges of education reform, and they most likely they will further entrench the core injustices of "public" education.

Colorado Slips in Freedom Index

The following article by Linn and Ari Armstrong originally was published June 24 by Grand Junction Free Press.

We don't believe in grading liberty on a curve. We believe that any violation of individual rights creates an injustice, and that "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

Thus, while we are pleased that Colorado remains in the top ten freest states (we're seventh), we're more concerned that we've dropped from the number two slot in 2007. Moreover, even if we surpassed New Hampshire for the top spot, that still wouldn't mean much, competing against the likes of California, New York, and Massachusetts.

Moreover, with the federal government continuing to grow in power relative to state governments, largely turning state legislatures into conduits for federal funding, no place in the country is very free. The Founding ideal of federalism largely has been turned on its head.

Nevertheless, how state governments act very much impacts people's lives -- whether they can open businesses, how much of their earnings they can keep, whether they face persecution for peaceable activities, whether they retain important personal freedoms. So it is well worth a look.

The state rankings come from a new report from the Mercatus Center, "Freedom In the 50 States." Broadly, the study finds that "Americans are voting with their feet and moving to states with more economic and personal freedom and that economic freedom correlates with income growth."

For example, Jay Ambrose noted that the "deficit-slaughtering, budget-cutting, seriously limited government in Texas" (ranked fourteenth by Mercatus) "has added 730,000 jobs in the past decade." Meanwhile, California, ranked 48th, has lost 600,000 jobs. Guess what: economic liberty promotes prosperity, while controls and high taxes threaten it.

Indeed, as the Wall Street Journal noted, "Some 37 percent of all net new American jobs since the recovery began were created in Texas." So Texas, with about eight percent of the nation's population, has single handedly created more than a third of all the new jobs.

How is Colorado doing? Mercatus notes our population grew 4.9 percent from 2000 to 2009. Mostly our unemployment rate has remained lower than the national figure, according to Bureau of Labor statistics compiled by Google. (As of April we showed 8.8 percent "seasonally adjusted" unemployment, compared with 9.1 percent nationally.)

But we have some serious problems, reports Mercatus. The severe smoking bans here violate property rights. The state places burdensome requirements on market schools and "particularly onerous recordkeeping requirements" on homeschoolers. Moreover, the "enactment of a minimum wage helped to drag down its regulatory freedom score." Wage controls result in throwing some people out of work entirely. In addition, some of the state's gun laws remain overly restrictive.

We would add to Mercatus's list of abuses. The state continues to finance corporate welfare, despite the explicit constitutional provision against it. The energy mandates already have driven up utility bills and will continue to do so far into the future.

Protectionism, as in the beer and liquor industries, continues to screw consumers. Colorado's campaign laws violate people's rights of free speech and association.

Morever, the state's sales and use taxes create nightmares for businesses as well as consumers. (That these laws remain widely ignored indicts the laws more than the lawbreakers.) Indeed, legislators made this bad situation worse by trying to force Amazon and other online retailers to help enforce Colorado's tax laws, thereby forcing Amazon to drop all of its Colorado affiliates.

Of course on the positive side we retain the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights. Yet we found this Mercatus line odd: "Overall, Colorado has strong fiscal policies and is the most fiscally decentralized state in the country, with localities raising fully 45.5 percent of all state and local expenditures." Tax-and-spend localities further reduce economic liberty rather than augment it.

Mercatus lists some other positives about Colorado. We don't have especially onerous "sin" taxes on politically incorrect goods. Medical marijuana is legal, and "arrests for drug offenses, relative to state usage, are relatively low." And "Colorado is one of the very best states on occupational licensing and civil-asset forfeiture."

We love Colorado largely because of our traditions of liberty. Generally, our Western sensibilities guide us to keep the government out of our bedroom and out of our pocketbook. Our attitude is "live and let live." Don't hurt other people, and don't let them hurt you. We help people out, not because we are forced to, but because we assume responsibility to do so.

Mostly we want to live our own lives, the way we see fit, and achieve our own success and happiness. At least that's the ideal.

We're glad that Colorado remains in the top ten freest states. But we can do much better. We can strive to be first. And then we can realize our goal is not merely to be freer than other states, but to consistently and without failing protect the rights of each individual.

The Folly of 'Buy Local' Campaigns

Grand Junction's Business Times quotes my dad Linn in an article today exploring a "buy local" campaign.

The article by Mike Moran cites the May 27 Free Press column by my dad and me on the topic and also summarizes our review of Bastiat.

My dad told the paper, "When you start 'buying locally' and not buying the best for the lowest cost, the allocation of resources gets distorted." Specifically, the article goes on to review, spending more for the same product made locally makes the purchaser poorer and deprives other local businesses of the residual.

Moroever, Moran reviews, different "buy local" campaigns begin to compete for business. Certain Grand Junction businesses may benefit from a "buy local" campaign within the city, for example, but other businesses may lose if customers elsewhere also "buy local." The result is that people in various communities spend a lot of time and energy depriving their neighbors of business. Meanwhile, consumers foolish enough to play along get hammered with higher prices.

Now, sometimes buying locally makes sense. For example, due to the soil, climate, and large river, the Grand Valley grows excellent peaches, grapes, and other fruit. Thus, it can indeed make sense to buy those products locally, especially considering the reduced transportation costs. It also makes sense for Grand Valley producers to export their products elsewhere, such as Denver markets. Yet, somehow, the "buy local" crowd in Junction doesn't complain when Denver residents purchase those items from across the pass.

Many types of services cannot be provided at a distance. For example, my dad used to manage properties for a living, a job that requires extensive on-site labor. That's simply not the sort of job a person can hire done by somebody living at a distance. But other sorts of services can be purchased at a distance; for example, one of my friends once worked at a national hotel calling center out of Grand Junction.

An interesting exercise would be to figure out how many businesses in Grand Junction export goods or services to other cities, states, and countries, and how many Grand Junction businesses depend on spending by travelers. Yet the hypocrites preaching "buy local" hardly complain about locals selling their goods or services elsewhere or doing businesses with people from out of town.

The basis of trade is comparative advantage. Different people and different regions should make what they're good at, and exchange their produce for the goods and services others are relatively good at providing. The only thing the consumer should worry about is finding the best products at the best prices.

Individual Rights and Vouchers

Recently Colorado's Douglas County instituted a small voucher program redirecting tax money to parents and then, in some cases, to religious schools.

Today the American Civil Liberties Union announced it was joining a lawsuit against the program, declaring it "threatens church-state separation and public education."

The Independence Institute fired back claiming the voucher program promotes "parental choice and educational freedom." Moreover, the group claims, the state constitutional prohibition of spending tax money on religious schools stems from "anti-Catholic bigotry."

Regardless of the motives for the measure, in fact Article IX, Section 7 of the Colorado Constitution states the following:

Neither the general assembly, nor any county, city, town, township, school district or other public corporation, shall ever make any appropriation, or pay from any public fund or moneys whatever, anything in aid of any church or sectarian society, or for any sectarian purpose, or to help support or sustain any school, academy, seminary, college, university or other literary or scientific institution, controlled by any church or sectarian denomination whatsoever...

I cannot imagine more clear constitutional language: Douglas County may not direct tax funds to religious schools. Those who do not like that language, it seems to me, should seek to repeal it rather than ignore it.

I suppose one could (implausibly) argue that, by sending the money through parents first, it is not the government itself spending the money on religious schools. But the county knowingly approved religious schools for participation in the program.

Or one could argue that Colorado's language violates the U.S. Constitution, though that seems to me a rather difficult case to make -- especially for conservatives who typically militate against "judicial activism."

But let us for now set aside the legal question, and focus on the more fundamental question of rights.

Do religious schools, in fact, have a right to forcibly seize wealth from those unwilling to pay it, through the governmental agencies of Douglas County? For those who believe in property rights and economic liberty, the obvious answer is "no." People have the right to fund religious schools, or not to fund them, according to their own conscience.

Of course, the same point could be made about existing government schools, such as the Denver Green School which propagandizes children about environmentalism, akin to a religion. It is as much a rights violation to force people to fund an environmentalist school as a Christian school. But, about that, the ACLU will utter not a peep.

As I have suggested, if we take economic liberty and freedom of conscience seriously, there is ultimately only one way to protect people's rights: separate school and state.

Wow, I Actually Agree With Coulter on Libertarianism

Recently I mocked Ann Coulter for her silly thesis that mobs are demonic. Bad, yes. Demonic, crazy talk.

But I actually agree with her basic criticisms of libertarianism (via Matt Welch).

For example, Coulter argues, Ron Paul is wrong to think that government can simply get out of marriage. What about adoption, child custody, health decisions, and inheritance, she sensibly wonders. Back in 2007 I argued that marriage is a sort of contract, and the government properly recognizes it for all couples.


However (and inevitably), Coulter errs in writing:

Most libertarians are cowering frauds too afraid to upset anyone to take a stand on some of the most important cultural issues of our time. So they dodge the tough questions when it suits their purposes by pretending to be Randian purists, but are perfectly comfortable issuing politically expedient answers when it comes to the taxpayers' obligations under Medicare and Social Security.

Coulter is correct about libertarians; often (but not in every case) they hedge on abortion, misconstrue the significance of the marriage contract, and decline to take a moral stand on things like prostitution and heavy recreational drug use.

But Rand rejected libertarianism, and certainly Rand took tough positions on social issues, as Coulter must know.

Likewise, I cannot be accused of failing to take such tough positions. I have declared I'm not a libertarian. I've advocated gay marriage and legal abortion. I've declared prostitution to be immoral while advocating its legality (among consenting adults). Offhand I cannot think of any cultural issue on which I've not taken a stand.

Yet apparently Coulter finds it more convenient to lump all her opponents together and attribute guilt by association. What explains her sloppy reasoning? Personally, I blame Satan.

Rethinking Education Tax Credits

Should advocates of free markets and economic liberty promote such reforms as charter schools, vouchers, and tax credits for education?

In an article for the Objective Standard -- and a follow-up reply to critics -- Michael LaFerrara argues that vouchers threaten to subject nominally private schools to government controls, whereas tax credits promise to "reduce government involvement in education immediately and lay the groundwork to eliminate it over time."

LaFerrara grants that choice among government-run schools (such as the charter system) "may yield small improvements in the short term," but without achieving long-term advances in liberty. I am somewhat more enthusiastic about charter schools; Colorado has done reasonably well under a robust system of choice among traditional "public" schools and charter alternatives. Two of my second-cousins attend a good charter school north of Denver, and I've been impressed by the Ridgeview Classical School in Fort Collins. However, such reforms apparently haven't helped to improve Colorado's worst schools. Do either vouchers or tax credits offer hope for more fundamental reform?

LaFerrara opposes vouchers for the basic reason that they act as government subsidies. Vouchers pass from the hands of taxpayers, to the government, then to parents for use in schools of their choice. This creates two major problems. First, it leads to more government controls of nominally private schools. As LaFerrara summarizes, "Whoever pays the bill ultimately has the power to set the terms" -- and he gives concrete examples of how precisely this has happened with voucher programs. Second, vouchers entrench the welfare element of government education by forcibly transferring money to lower-income parents.

To LaFerrara, the key distinction of tax credits -- and he promotes a robust reform allowing anyone who pays taxes for education to direct their money to the education of any child -- is that the person earning the money spends it, and it never passes through the government. For this reason, he argues, tax credits do not inherently threaten market schools with more government controls, nor do they entrench forced wealth transfers.

However, I remain unpersuaded that a tax credit proposal such as LaFerrara proposes would remain immune from onerous government controls. Notably, the article from the Alliance for the Separation of School and State that LaFerrara cites favorably and extensively in his original article claims that "the drawbacks of vouchers are also inherent in universal tax credits." This is an issue I've wrestled with; one of the first articles I wrote for my web page criticized vouchers and tax credits, whereas an article I coauthored earlier this year more seriously entertains the potential for tax credits even while acknowledging their drawbacks.

The fundamental weakness of LaFerrara's argument is that, with tax credits, the government continues to forcibly transfer people's money to education. Yes, you can choose either to pay taxes to standard "public" schools or redirect that money to the educational activities of your choice. True, under a tax credit system such as LaFerrara describes, the money goes directly from its earner to an educational activity, rather than first pass through the government. But still the person who earns that money is forced by law to transfer it to education, one way or another. You could not, for instance, spend that money on your own (noneducational) business, a vacation, or your retirement plan.

Thus, even though a tax credit does not funnel that money through the government, it still extends the government's claims over that money. In a very real sense, the government continues to claim ownership of the funds in question. The difference is that, rather than forcibly seize those funds directly, the government directs those who earn the funds how to spend them (within broad limits). The money is not fundamentally owned by the person who earns it.

In his critical letter, Steve Plafker raises the possibility of parents spending "their" education money on going to the movies and sporting events. We can extend the examples: what about Disney Land? What about schools that teach Satanism or Islamic Jihad? LaFerrara replies, "[U]nder my proposed tax-credit program, parents would be within their rights to treat money spent on a child's trip to a movie -- or any other activity they regard as educational -- as an educational expense."

But there is simply no way a law such as LaFerrara describes would ever pass. Because tax credits in fact recognize government claims to the money in question, tax credits would inevitably extend government controls over the use of that money. Government would define acceptable uses of the funds, and the notion that a tax credit program could encompass a School for Watching Cartoons or a School of Islamic Jihad or a School for Christian Fundamentalism is a fantasy.

Consider also the rampant corruption a totally uncontrolled tax credit system would promote. Here is a hypothetical. A parent could claim the entire tax deduction, start a "school" that consists of watching free online cartoons, and then pay himself a "salary" for the entire portion of the tax credit. Again, it is simply a fantasy that a law allowing such a thing could ever pass.

A tax credit system may not threaten as severe of controls over nominally private schools, but certainly it would bring government guidance for the spending of those funds. There might be other good reasons for promoting universal tax credits for education, but tax credits will not eliminate government controls over education spending.

What, then, does real education reform look like? Advocates of liberty in education must protect and expand the liberties of homeschoolers and private schools. They must check runaway spending on government education and seek to disempower the teachers' unions.

Beyond that, the basic effort must be educational and ideological. That is, people must advocate real liberty in education, including the individual freedom to choose not to fund any educational activity. (Please keep four salient points in mind. First, currently the government forces people without children to fund education. Second, in a truly free market, many people would willingly contribute huge sums of money to education. Third, parents who do not provide their children with a basic education, as with parents who do not provide adequate nutrition, may be charged with child abuse. But, forth, many parents could ably educate their children for much less than they're forced to pay in taxes for education.) As LaFerrara recognizes, a truly free market in education remains a distant ideal. But we cannot move closer to that ideal without advocating the fundamental principles of liberty and individual rights.

Insofar as tax credits further entrench the principle that government may force people to spend their earnings on other people's education, they hinder, rather than hasten, the movement toward true freedom in education.

My 'Use Tax' Case Resolved, Tax Remains a Problem

The good news is that the Colorado Department of Revenue is no longer threatening to seize my property over "use tax" allegedly due. An agent told me over the phone today that the Department would accept the original payment of $436.93 from my wife and me as payment in full for the past seven years of use taxes.

This, then, concludes my case, which I discussed in an article last month and in a June 15 follow-up.

But the problems I had with the tax only underscore its broader problems -- problems the legislature should address.

To back up, what is the "use tax?" If you buy something from out of state without paying state sales tax on it, you're supposed to track such sales and cut the state a check for an equivalent amount.

Of course, hardly anyone actually pays this tax, and most people I've talked with have never even heard of it. But this exposes most Coloradans to potential criminal charges, property seizure, and arbitrary enforcement. That's wrong.

So you can imagine why, after my wife and I actually paid the tax, we were frustrated to suffer further harassment and intimidation at the hands of the Department of Revenue. Specifically, the Department sent us three letters, all of which claimed we still owed the entire use tax for last year. Two of the letters also claimed we owed an additional amount for 2009. The final letter threatened to seize our property if we didn't pay the 2009 amount. That's more than a little irritating, given that we had already paid the entire 2010 tax, plus the 2009 tax with an 18 percent penalty.

But apparently the Department of Revenue's idea of generating tax revenue is to relentlessly harass and threaten people who actually pay the damned tax, and totally ignore everyone else who doesn't pay it. (I'm talking about consumers; I've heard anecdotally that the state makes some effort to enforce the "use tax" among businesses.)

The other major problem with the tax, beyond the problem of enforcement, is that it's an extreme hassle to pay. Seriously, we're supposed to track all our out-of-state purchases and then calculate the tax ourselves? That's obviously ludicrous, which is why few do it.

Just to calculate and pay the initial tax, my wife and I spent 6.5 hours combined. Then we spent around two more hours responding to the Department of Revenue's first two erroneous letters. We spent an additional 98 minutes (combined) on June 15 responding to the Department's third letter. Yesterday I spent an additional 14 minutes further reviewing the matter. (I also had trouble sleeping and spent most of the day worrying about it.) Today I spent just over an hour on the phone with the Department of Revenue. Combined, my wife and I spent about 11.4 hours dealing with the tax, which transfered to the state $436.93. In addition, the Department of Revenue devoted who knows how much more time to the matter. In sum, a huge portion of the value of the tax was eaten up in the paying of the tax. And that hardly accounts for our emotional distress.

(This is aside from the obvious point that we are out the $436.93, which I am quite confident I could have spent better than the state's bureaucrats will manage.)

Thankfully, the Department's agent I reached today by phone was quite helpful and friendly, and she resolved the matter within a few hours.

What happened in our case, she explained, was that the Department's "system actually calculated penalty, interest, and penalty-interest, which is double interest." The agent said she waived all penalty and interest beyond the 18 percent we already paid, so now "there is nothing due." (I still have no idea how a person is actually supposed to calculate all the penalties and interest according to the formal rules, but apparently just paying the extra 18 percent does not necessarily cut it.)

So why did the Department claim we owed the entire 2010 tax? The agent further explained that the Department had reallocated the portion of our payment intended for that year to the additional penalties for previous years.

I do want to state publicly that I sincerely appreciate the Department's agent for working quickly to resolve the issue. (I only wish her efforts had not been necessary.)

So how should the tax be legislatively modified? At minimum, the legislature should clarify an easy-to-calculate penalty for late payments, adjusted for the degree of lateness. In my experience the existing rules are impenetrable.

However, I believe the legislature should go far beyond that and repeal the "use tax" altogether. It is a nuisance tax, inherently difficult to pay and enforce, and so it turns vast numbers of Coloradans into scofflaws, typically without their knowledge.

But, local retailers would complain, that would unfairly advantage out-of-state sellers. Therefore, as my dad and I argued last year, the legislature should simply abolish all sales and use taxes, even if done in a revenue-neutral way by increasing the income tax rate. (This would require voter approval.) Obviously that would eliminate all the problems associated with paying and enforcing sales and use taxes (including the state's malicious campaign against Amazon and other online retailers).

The fewer the types of taxes, the better.

Corporate Welfare and Tourism

Today the Denver Post published a story by Jason Blevins claiming that corporate welfare for the tourism industry is responsible for the growth of Colorado tourism. I sent him the following letter:

Dear Mr. Blevins,

Your "news" article is essentially a regurgitated news release from bureaucrats and a company paid by the state to promote tourism funding.

Why didn't you report:

a) Longwoods [the "research firm" cited in the story] is paid by the state to promote ("research") state tourism funding.

b) Longwoods has a history of exaggerating the impacts of state tourism funding.

c) This year [meaning the previous year] Colorado also had good snow and record population (drawing visits to friends and family).

No doubt state tourism funding has increased tourism to the state. But you're hardly reporting the whole story.

Thanks, -Ari

Here I add some additional points.

* As the Mercatus Center reviews, people are moving from less-free to more-free states, which also generates visits by people contemplating a move here.

* State funding for tourism crowds out private efforts to advertise tourism. Tourist attractions are perfectly free to pay for their own advertising, and to coordinate with others for broader campaigns.

* On the moral level, it is wrong to force people to finance corporate welfare for tourism against their wishes. It's the job of government to protect people's rights, not maximize tax revenues or tourism.

Use Tax Nightmare Continues

Legislative spending plus depressed tax revenues have generated a budget crunch in Colorado. So you'd expect state government to encourage people to pay taxes, maybe even seem grateful for it, wouldn't you?

But consider the incentive structure for the "use tax." If, like most Coloradans, you've never heard of the use tax (or if you pretend you haven't heard of it), then the state does nothing to you, and you go on your merry way.

Because my wife and I paid the use tax, not only for last year but for the past seven years, the Colorado Department of Revenue has sent us three erroneous letters harassing us about paying the use tax. Which we already paid. Here I continue the chronicle from my write up last month.

The last letter is dated June 13 (but received, ironically on June 15, the anniversary of the Magna Carta, which recognizes rights of due process among others). In this letter, Roxanne Huber, Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Revenue, goes so far as to threaten "seizure and sale of your [my!] personal property."

I did learn from this letter that I made a minor mistake in paying the use tax for the 2009 period. You see, according to Form "DR 0252 Web (12/03/10" (and who hasn't perused that one for a little pleasure reading), late payments carry a penalty "not to exceed 18% of the tax due, and interest." I didn't understand the "and interest" clause. I thought we just owed an 18 percent maximum penalty, so that's what we paid. But that's not the end of it.

Form DR 0252 Web refers the reader to www.TaxColorado.com (lovely domain) for additional information. I tried "Common Questions," which contains a section, "Internet Sales -- Tax Paid by Purchaser."

THIS page says that for more information I should see Form DR 0252 (which, you may recall, is where I started), or 39-26-106 C.R.S. and 39-26-202 C.R.S. Luckily, I know how to look up Colorado statutes online. So I went to Title 39, "Specific Taxes," "Sales and Use Tax," "Part 2 Use Tax." But section 202 is "Authorization of tax," so I turned instead to 39-26-207, "Penalty interest on unpaid tax."

So what does this statute say? And I quote: "Any tax due and unpaid under this part 2 shall be a debt to the state, and shall draw interest at the rate imposed under section 39-21-110.5, in addition to the interest provided by section 39-21-109..."

In other words, this is not something that any actual human being can follow.

But, according to the Department of Revenue's June 13 letter, there are actually three different sorts of penalties: "Sales tax - Late filing penalty," "Penalty-interest," and "Interest." In my case these things totaled $28, but for some reason we had received "credit" for an apparently arbitrary portion of this, making our alleged amount due $20.07.

But, as I explained to the Department, we had already paid the full tax plus an 18 percent penalty of $20.61, so we owe (at most) $8 for "Penalty-interest" and "Interest," for which we wrote a check.

To collect that $8 in "Penalty-interest" and "Interest," the Colorado Department of Revenue sent and posted a letter, and my wife and I spent a combined 98 minutes responding and then posting our own letter.

The June 13 letter also claims we still owe the entire tax for 2010 (which we already paid), plus a penalty (which we do not owe, because we paid it on time). But for whatever reason, the June 13 letter did not add that amount to the "Amount Due with This Statement."

Previously I wrote that I feel "a bit like a minor character in Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial." While I do not wish to compare the seriousness of my situation with that in the dystopian film Brazil, I cannot help also comparing Form "DR 0252 Web" to Form "Twenty-Seven B Stroke Six." Or, as my wife put it, "I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone."

In other words, the use tax is absolutely crazy.

Technology Catches Up with Harry Potter Magic

J. K. Rowling's first novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, came out June 30, 1997. The release of the series spans the 20th and 21st Centuries, and new technology has started to catch up to Harry Potter magic.

In the novels, newspapers show moving photographs. On June 29, 2007, a decade after the release of the first Potter novel, Apple released its iPhone, which brings constantly updated news, complete with video, to one's fingertips. The iPhone and similar devices are much more useful and powerful than the magical papers in Harry's world, and owl delivery seems positively primitive by comparison.

A few days ago, Technology Review published the article, "A Practical Way to Make Invisibility Cloaks" (thanks to Paul Hsieh over at Geek Press for the link).

The idea is that new production techniques allow for large-scale printing of "metamaterials," largely made of metals, which could be fashioned into things like invisibility cloaks and superlenses.

Provided politicians and bureaucrats manage to restrain themselves from crashing our economies, technology will continue to gain ground on the magic of the Potter universe. Indeed, thanks to the wonders of science and technology, we are living in the most "magical" age of human history, in which doctors can scan people's bones and hearts, people can quickly fly around the world, the average person in advanced economies owns self-propelled coaches, and we can take vast libraries of books and music around with us in pocket computers.

The Potter novels will always remain great literature -- for reasons I explain in my book Values of Harry Potter -- but technology will make the magic of the novels seem increasingly less magical. Thankfully, the deeper magic of the novels has nothing to do with casting spells or riding brooms.

Could It Be... SATAN?

Apparently Satan is making a comeback these days. First came an over-the-top silly article from First Things titled, "The Fountainhead of Satanism," in which Joe Carters claims, "[Ayn] Rand’s doctrines are satanic." The argument goes something like this: because a crazy person liked Ayn Rand, therefore Rand's ideas reflect the beliefs of the crazy person. (Thankfully, no crazy or homicidal person has every claimed to find motivation in or affinity with Christianity.)

Then I was shopping in Costco and saw Ann Coulter's new book, Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America. Perhaps, I thought, she's using the term "demonic" metaphorically, to mean something like "Many leftists are so bad they almost seem demonic." Apparently not. Flipping through the book, I found lines like this one: "The mob is satanic and Satan can only destroy." This occurs in the final chapter, titled, "Lucifer: The Ultimate Mob Boss." So, you see, the left is mob-like, and mobs are satanic, therefore, you can complete the little syllogism.

On Twitter, I mentioned that lines like the one quoted make it hard for me to take Coulter seriously. (Incidentally, I briefly met Coulter in 2006 when she spoke in Colorado.) Immediately somebody replied that mobs have put innocent heads on pikes, eaten human hearts, and strapped bombs to babies; does that not demonstrate Coulter's thesis?

My reply is two-fold. First, demonstrating that mobs generally are bad is not the same thing as demonstrating they are satanic. Second, I would point out that, in many cases, mobs have been motivated to expunge what their members thought were satanic forces in their victims. Take, for example, the witch hunts and the Inquisition.

Consider this 2009 headline from the Associated Press: "African Children Denounced As 'Witches' By Christian Pastors." The father of one of the boys allegedly possessed by demons tried to pour acid down his throat, "burning away his face and eyes." The boy died soon thereafter.

Invocations of alleged satanic activity among one's enemies prove the perfect motivator for many mobs. And is that not precisely the intended effect of Coulter's book?

I find it hard to believe that Coulter takes herself seriously when, in an interview about her book, she excoriates leftists for "their tendency to demonize all those that disagree with them." Because, you know, we wouldn't want to demonize the opposition!

But sometimes you just have to laugh at such silliness, which is why this is such a great time to review Dana Carvey's classic skit, "The Church Lady."

A Note on the Hancock Affair

Michael Hancock was elected mayor of Denver on June 7. On June 2 Complete Colorado courageously or irresponsibly (depending on one's point of view) ran a story with the following headline, "Mayoral Candidate Hancock Linked to Prostitution Ring." Soon after midnight today (June 11) the Denver Post published its own story on the matter, following stories by 9News, 7News, and other outlets.

Hancock said in a video released by the Post that he has never hired a prostitute.

The purported evidence allegedly linking Hancock to a local prostitution ring (now under investigation) comes from a former owner of the illegal service. Hancock's (misspelled) name appears in the records along with his phone number.

If Hancock is innocent, then his lawyer is doing an excellent job making him look evasive. Assuming he is innocent, this is a serious frame-up, and I'd be interested to learn what sort of possible criminal penalties the framer might be facing if caught.

I can think of a couple of scenarios by which Hancock's name and number might have ended up in the records (other than him hiring a prostitute). This is purely speculative and hypothetical on my part. But, conceivably, somebody could simply have forged the records, which would have been fairly easy to accomplish. Or, conceivably, somebody could have "borrowed" Hancock's phone to set up the initial contact, then called from a different number to hire the prostitutes. As the Post reports, the records contain the line, "Calls from diff #'s (pay ph.)."

But here my purpose is not to try to figure out the correct scenario, for I lack the evidence to do that. Instead, I'd like to make a broader political point.

It is certainly not inconceivable that some city employee has hired a prostitute. Indeed, I'd be quite surprised if that were not the case, and so would everyone else. The same general investigation has already brought down a judge, Edward Nottingham. As the Post reports, the same prostitution records "are believed to include many elite Denver professionals."

What I find disturbing about this is that Americans now expect a significant portion of the population, including a significant portion of elected officials, to knowingly break the law and then chuckle about it, whether it's hiring a prostitute or smoking a joint. And yet these same laws we openly mock in some cases destroy people's lives, whether through a nasty prison sentence, a fatal no-knock raid, or the inherent violence of the black market.

Now, as I have argued, I believe prostitution is immoral even though it should be legal. Where it involves consenting adults, it's not the sort of thing over which we as a society should be launching criminal investigations or throwing people in jail. Where it does not involve consenting adults, it is a vicious crime that should be forcibly stopped.

I do think voters should weigh whether they want to support candidates known to have hired prostitutes, just as in our personal lives we should weigh whether we want to become friends with people who hire prostitutes. Generally the answer should be no.

But, again, if we wish to live in a free society, we must restrict the field of the illegal to a small subset of the field of the immoral. The only acts that should violate the criminal code are those that violate the rights of others (and I mean the actual rights, not the make-believe "rights" to tell everybody else what to do).

Outside prostitution, certain other sorts of "victimless crimes" can be perfectly moral even though illegal; consider brewing beer during Prohibition. Come to think of it, Denver's former mayor, John Hickenlooper, now the governor of Colorado, made his name brewing beer, an activity once outlawed by the very state he now leads.

Ultimately, it does not actually much matter whether Hancock hired a prostitute. It does matter very much that whether someone becomes the target of a criminal investigation depends to a very large degree on arbitrary enforcement and blind luck.

Spending Limits Protect Against Factions

The following article by Linn and Ari Armstrong originally was published June 10 by Grand Junction Free Press.

"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner." It's mob rule; fifty-one percent of the population voting to enslave the rest. "Democracy is a form of government in which you can vote for a living instead of working for one," adds Lawrence Reed.

America's Founders feared the inherent pitfalls of direct democracy, which is why they established a constitutional republic. The U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights (in its text, if usually not in its modern interpretation) tightly controls and limits the powers of the federal government.

The Constitution establishes a purely representative government at the federal level. We vote on elected officials, and (as outlined in Article V) congress or state legislatures must initiate constitutional amendments. Moreover, Article IV, Section 4 states, "The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government." So, for instance, Colorado could not impose a hereditary line of state kings.

Does the federal guarantee of republican government render state-level popular votes void? Specifically, does it clash with the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights (TABOR), passed by voters in 1992? That's the claim of a lawsuit filed in district court and signed mostly by elected officials. The suit hopes to overthrow TABOR and allow state and local governments to tax and spend more without voter approval.

The suit favorably quotes James Madison, who argued against pure democracy in the tenth Federalist paper. However, in an article for the Colorado Springs Gazette, legal scholar Rob Natelson notes that republican governments easily accommodate some direct participation by the people.

Natelson explains, "What Madison actually was saying was that a type of mob rule identified by Aristotle (and called, in English translation, 'pure democracy') was not republican. Madison clearly thought a republic could feature direct citizen lawmaking, since in Federalist No. 63 he referred to ancient Athens, Sparta, and Carthage as 'republics.'"

In other words, TABOR, as part of Colorado's constitution, remains fully compatible with the U.S. Constitution. The politically motivated lawsuit presents a sham.

Moreover, TABOR actually helps protect against the sort of factionalism that Madison warned against. The lawsuit quotes Madison, "It may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the purpose."

The lawsuit conveniently omits Madison's next line: "On the other hand, the effect may be inverted. Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people."

This describes precisely the state of the modern Colorado legislature. "Factious tempers," "local prejudices," and "sinister designs" often rule the day at the state capitol.

For example, the legislature continues to finance corporate welfare, despite the explicit prohibition against doing so in the state constitution. And the legislature continues to impose protectionist legislation, as with the beer laws, rewarding interest groups at the expense of consumers and entrepreneurs. Most modern legislative functions involve forcibly seizing money from those who earn it to give it to those who do not.

Thus, the state legislature epitomizes the evils of faction. While Madison clearly saw the dangers of mob rule, he also warned against the comparable threat of an unrestrained legislature.

The essential characteristic of republican government becomes, then, its constitutional form, which limits the powers of government and protects the rights of the individual from abuse by factions, whether democratic or legislative. A legislature unbound by constitutional rule becomes the rapacious tool of special-interest factions.

The individual rightly claims among his essential rights his ability to work for a living, in voluntary association with others, and to dispose of the fruits of his labor by his own judgment. This is the fundamental human right most often threatened and abused by legislators, many of whom essentially institute legalized theft in exchange for political bribes.

TABOR helps to mitigate precisely this danger. Far from undermining a republican form of government, TABOR augments the constitutional protections of the individual and limits the threat of unruly factions. In requiring voter approval for new taxes, TABOR does not impose mob rule; it checks legislative abuses by the approval of the people. TABOR does not free the majority to abuse the rights of the minority; it allows the voters to stop the legislature from abusing people's rights.

We can argue about whether Colorado voters too easily amend the state constitution. We can debate whether proposed constitutional changes should first meet a test of conformity to federal and state bills of rights. But as to the status of TABOR, far from undermining our republican form of government, clearly TABOR helps to protect it.

Good Times, Mixed Ingredients

I prefer Fat Head to Super Size Me. I don't think much of anti-fast food hysteria. I regard forcing restaurants to post calories as both foolish and tyrannical. I oppose the Nanny Statist campaigns against fast food and Ronald McDonald.

Yet I also believe that ultimately consumers drive production, and smart consumers demand full disclosure from producers. (The government rightly steps in to punish fraud.) Consumers should spend their money wisely and insist on quality goods.

Therefore, after I drank a yucky strawberry-banana shake from Good Times Burgers, I contacted the company to lodge a complaint and figure out what was wrong with it. Christi Pennington, an "executive assistant" with the company, helpfully provided me with full nutritional details.

Generally I like Good Times. I have regarded the best burger for the money in the Denver area is a bacon "bambino" burger (at $1.39 last time I checked), times two (and throw away the top buns). And generally I like the custard there.

A quick look at the ingredients indicates why the custard is pretty good whereas the shake was pretty bad. Here are the ingredients for the "custard base:" "All-Natural: Milk, Cream, Sugar, & Egg Yolks & Grade A Milk Powder." (The ingredients come from a document dated September of 2010.) Relatively wholesome (though of course a lot of sugar is bad for you, and most Americans eat way too much of it).

Contrast those ingredients with the ones found in "strawberry syrup:" "High Fructose Corn Syrup, Strawberry Puree, Artificial Flavors, Citric Acid, Sodium Benzoate (preservative), Cellulose Gum & Artificial Colors (red 40 & blue)."

So, in other words, my "strawberry"-banana shake was actually a corn shake with several added chemicals, and a bit of strawberry. Gross.

Good Times lists the meat as "Meyer All Natural, All Angus," which is good. However, I got nervous when I saw a listing for soybean oil immediately beneath the listing for meat. So I asked about this. Thankfully, Pennington replied, "No we do not cook the meat in oil at all." That's good, because as a rule I regard all vegetable fat as suspect.

Unfortunately, Good Times continues to add hydrogenated fat to a number of its products. Everyone agrees that's horrible for you. You can get all sorts of conflicting dietary advice, but one of the well-documented and universally accepted claims is that hydrogenated fat is bad.

And yet Good Times serves up hydrogenated fat in all of the following products, according to the ingredients lists Pennington sent me: bambino bun, chicken dunkers, crispy chicken filet, onion rings, mushrooms in sauce, onion tanglers, cake cone, cheesecake (a custard flavor), cherry hearts, cookie dough, graham cracker, Heath English toffee, hot fudge, Oreo cookies, polar chips, pound cake, waffle cone, and whipped topping.

So I won't be buying any of those items from Good Times! I mean, come on: you can make regular buns without hydrogenated fat but not bambino buns? How about you just get rid of the crappy vegetable oil altogether?

While we're on that topic, I was relieved to read that AMC pops its popcorn in coconut fat, not vegetable fat. (The coconut, along with the avocado and the olive, is a fruit. My general view is "fruit fat good, vegetable fat bad." Notably, you can find the former, but not the latter, in nature.) I think those calling for vegetable fat as a replacement for coconut fat are simply idiots who don't know what they're talking about. Thanks, AMC, for not subjecting your customers to unhealthy vegetable fat! (That said, popcorn is not inherently a health food! But that doesn't mean moderate consumption is especially bad for you.)

When I make a strawberry banana milkshake, here are the ingredients I use: frozen strawberries, bananas, cream, and milk. (Sometimes I add commercial but quality ice cream, though I've decided to stop buying that.) When I make popcorn, I use popcorn, butter, and a little salt.

Perhaps a representative for Good Times would care to leave a comment here when the restaurant has decided to at least phase out hydrogenated fat.

So be a smart consumer, take responsibility for your choices, and don't go crying to government to do your thinking for you. Because once you authorize politicians and bureaucrats to micromanage your life, there will be no stopping them. And that is the single most pressing threat to your health and safety.

Denver Post and NREL, Meet Bastiat

Let's play the game of "spot the economic fallacies" in today's editorial by the Denver Post, which essentially advocates corporate welfare. (This follows a slanted news story on the same topic.)

The Post claims that the tax-funded National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden has created "efficient" solar film, windmill blades, and office buildings. What's the fallacy? A more technically "efficient" gadget is not necessarily economically efficient to produce; often it is not. If solar and wind were cheaper than alternative sources of energy, then they would not need subsidies and mandates to "succeed." And if companies can save money through greater energy efficiency, they'll be more than happy to spend their own money figuring out how.

But the Post's main argument is that subsidizing NREL creates jobs. What's the economic fallacy? It's what Bastiat and Hazlitt refer to as the problem of the unseen. What is seen are the jobs associated with NREL spending. What is unseen are all the jobs lost by forcibly transferring that wealth. When people pay higher taxes, and when the federal government sucks money out of market investments through deficit spending, that money is no longer available to fund what consumers want and investors see as the more productive opportunities. The result is that jobs shift from more-productive to less-productive ends, destroying wealth.

The wrinkle is that cutting federal spending only for Colorado would screw Colorado taxpayers more by forcibly transferring their wealth to less-productive jobs in other states. The solution to that is to cut spending in every state -- or to simply stop forcing Colorado taxpayers to finance corporate welfare in other states. As I noted earlier this year, on net Colorado gets screwed in the wealth redistribution game, which costs the state net jobs.

There are obviously some people on the Denver Post's editorial board who are not utterly ignorant of basic economics. Why not let them formulate the articles pertaining to economics?

Prendergast On the Media

In preparation for a Hugh O'Brien Youth Leadership event June 4, I asked several regional journalists about their successes and their views on whether the media report or make the news. Westword's Alan Prendergast adds his comments below.

Hi Ari,

Sorry I didn't reply to this sooner, but last week was pretty crazy. Too late for your presentation, but maybe not for your blog, I would simply add to the pile with this:

1. Success can be measured all sorts of ways, but I'm particularly proud of our Columbine coverage from 1999-2005 or so, because it was an ongoing effort to provide answers to families that were being lied to or simply ignored by public officials and their lawyers. By the same token, I consider much of our prison coverage a success because it shines a light where few journalists choose to go, and at least lets people running the system know that somebody could be watching. Links would be the Crime and Punishment and Columbine Reader archives on our site.

2. I don't think there's much "making" of the news, in a strictly manufacturing sense. But it's also naive to suggest that reporters are mere conduits of information who don't consciously shape (and possibly redact) the information they present. I like to think of journalism as a demonstration of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, or at least that part of it which suggests it's impossible to observe an event without altering it in some fashion, the way shining a light on electrons changes their behavior.

Alan Prendergast

Free Colorado's Beer and Liquor Markets

At a recent Liberty On the Rocks event, Kris Cook and I argued in favor of free markets in beer and liquor sales. The event was actually a debate, but, as the other participants didn't actually believe their stance, I didn't want to include that footage.



We make the following basic points:

* We have a moral right to buy and sell what we please, from whom we please (within the context of consenting adults), by voluntary association.

* The Colorado laws prohibiting (most) grocery stores from selling regular beer, wine, and alcohol violate our rights to protect a special interest.

* Because of the law, Colorado consumers pay higher prices and suffer loss of convenience. But, because a small group artificially gains wealth by the law, it lobbies to maintain it.

* Claims that establishing a free market would lead to less safety or less beer selection constitute bogus fear-mongering. Other states without the restrictions don't experience those problems.

* Likewise, claims that establishing a free market would "cost jobs" constitute gross ignorance of basic economics. A free market would instead direct resources to more highly valued uses, thereby creating more wealth.

On Making the News

Yesterday I discussed media with the students participating in the Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership Program. This is a group of very smart and articulate kids; the idea is to gather together nearly 200 students from across Colorado for a weekend of talks and leadership activities.

I must say I found this group to be a tough and even slightly intimidating audience. I was a fill-in speaker (as somebody else had to cancel), so I signed up only late Wednesday night. I had a busy schedule the next three days, limiting my preparation time. (Brad Beck, whom I know from Liberty Toastmasters, drafted me; he's on the board of the organization.) When I walked into the room about half an hour early, the students were cheering and playing some sort of game, and I realized I had not correctly envisioned the setting. This was more like a pep rally, not a lecture hall.

But I gulped and took the microphone, determined to make the presentation as interactive and engaging as I could. Before my segment I saw several students stand to offer their views on a couple of topics, and this gave me the idea to simply ask them to answer the question of the day, "Do media report the news or make the news?" Hands quickly shot up. Three students arose to offer their views, and I was struck by how similar their answers were to those of the professional journalists who had replied to the same question. The first student talked about the selectivity issue; the second argued that media both report and make the news. More hands went up, but after the first three I decided to plow ahead with my own notes.

(I do encourage people to read the interesting replies I posted Friday from Jason Salzman, Michael Sandoval, Ed Quillen, Ken Clark, and David Harsanyi. I even tried to get Salzman to come out to the event, but he had a prior engagement, so I thought that I could at least bring in a variety of views.)

So, do the media report the news or make it? As an example of simple reporting, I mentioned the Denver Post's story of the police hunt for a man who kidnapped and assaulted a Denver girl. Some sorts of stories are more amenable to straight reporting, and they're difficult to slant.

However, the media certainly do "make the news" in a couple of different ways. They can make the news in the sense of pushing a story into community discussion, as by reporting an instance of political corruption. And they can make the news by pushing a story into wider media coverage (as Salzman did with his reporting of Scott McInnis's water articles).

Then I added a third category: journalists can sometimes "make up" the news as well, and that's uniformly bad. They can either skew the reported facts, or they can omit obviously relevant facts.

The problem is (and the students pushed this point pretty hard in the question-and-answer period) that journalism inherently involves judgment calls both in the selectivity of what to report and of how to present a story. I used as an example another Denver Post story: "Rep. Lamborn backs bid to unplug National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden." I noted that story selected the following source as its first quote: "'NREL is a crown jewel in the world of renewable energy,' said Leslie Oliver, a spokeswoman for Perl mutter. 'It's providing a lot of jobs; those are things we need to be fostering.'" I pointed out that this would have been a much different story if the headline had emphasized the effort to trim federal spending, and if the first quote had pertained to saving our children and grandchildren from a crushing national debt. So definitely this story is slanted, but is that bad?

One great thing about the modern internet age, I pointed out, is that we have unprecedented access to alternative media sources. With this comes the ability to interact with the media, and even join the media, in remarkable ways. If we don't like what a paper is covering, or how they're covering it, we may interact with journalists, write blog posts, etc.

I had a forty minute time slot, and the idea was for me to talk for half that time. But immediately after I finished with my (more or less) prepared remarks, I realized I should have shut up much sooner to allow for more questions. Maybe twenty kids lined up to pepper me with tough questions, and the moderators had to turn some students away due to time constraints.

One student asked me whether the media should be more positive. I wasn't sure what that meant, I answered; is it being "negative" to hammer a corrupt politician? The student clarified she was asking about selecting more positive stories from among all the many possible stories. I answered that, yes, I'd like to see more reporting about interesting people in business and the nonprofit world. I mentioned a Wall Street Journal article about George Mitchell, who has dramatically expanded U.S. production of natural gas, as an example of something I found very positive and inspiring.

I got a question about libel; does that not solve the problem of "making up" the news? I answered that libel laws can protect people against the most egregious cases of malicious lying, but if the bar is set too low everyone will cry "libel" over any alternative interpretation of the facts. Plus (though I'm not sure I explained this point well) a story can be technically accurate in every detail but still fundamentally distort reality by dropping context and omitting the relevant facts. (Elsewhere I made this point by invoking Rita Skeeter, the corrupt journalist from the Harry Potter series. I was pleased to see the students are Potter fans.)

At one point I mentioned censorship ultimately remains the greatest threat to a society's future, but I didn't explain this as well as I might have. The essential point, as Ayn Rand pointed out, is that so long as we retain freedom of speech, we have the ability to fight for the ideas we believe in. There's always a chance, always hope, so long as we remain free to articulate our views. Moreover, censorship invariably accompanies various other governmental abuses, and, by blocking criticism of the government, makes greater abuses inevitable.

I suggested the students take the time to fully appreciate the advantages of the modern internet age. Their parents, I pointed out, were born before the age of home computers. Now most of the students have the ability to browse the internet on portable devices, putting the world's newspapers -- and many alternative news sources -- at their fingertips. I suggested that the students think seriously about how they can engage the media in order to help direct the course of the culture. These students certainly have the informed eloquence to do so.

Do Media Report the News or Make the News?

I was invited to address participants in the Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership Program in an upcoming event. The topic: "Do the media report the news or make the news?"

My invite came on short notice (as I'm replacing a speaker who had to cancel), and I wondered how much time I could free up for preparation. But then it occurred to me that it would be both easier for me and more useful for the students if I simply asked some of Colorado's journalists what they thought. While I was at it, I figured, I might as well compile the answers for the web page.

I contacted around twenty people, expecting only a few replies (especially given the short notice). I'll update this page if I get additional responses. I asked journalists to mention their top media successes and to answer the question about reporting versus making the news. (By the way, if you're a Colorado journalist and I did not contact you, feel free to send me your answers anyway.)

Please note that the text beneath a writer's name was written by that writer, not by me, and I may not agree with all the comments.

*** Jason Salzman ***

"Do the media report the news or make the news?"

Both. Media outlets are not passive transmitters. They are run by people who make decisions about whom to investigate, what to feature, how to allocate staff time. The staff at mainstream news outlets reflects prevailing values and norms, so the decisions of media staff, on what to cover, are often in line with prevailing opinion of what might be considered news.

Here are a few successes.

1. BigMedia Investigation Leads to Release of McInnis Water Articles. In May, BigMedia pointed out that Scott McInnis divulged, in a radio interview, that he'd received $150,000 from the Hasan Foundation to write a series of articles on Colorado Water issues. It was known that he'd received Hasan money, but what he'd actually done for the foundation was a mystery. BigMedia called on reporters to ask McInnis and the Hasans to release the articles. Journalists didn't do this, so BigMedia wrote a series of articles, like this one, trying to find the missing articles.

BigMedia was almost certainly first media entity to interview the Hasan Foundation and the McInnis campaign about the articles and to ask for their release. BigMedia was the first media entity to report that McInnis was paid $300,000 to write the water articles, not $150,000, as had been previously reported in the Denver Post. The early BigMedia investigation, pushing for the release of the articles, was cited by the Denver Post's Ed Quillen, whose June 3 column contained the first mention of the water articles that appeared in The Denver Post:

“Scott McInnis, a Republican candidate for governor... received approximately $150,000 from the Hassan Family Foundation, for which, as he explained on a radio program, 'I wrote a series of in-depth articles on water' that 'could be used in a series for education on water in Colorado.' I follow water stuff fairly closely, and I never saw the work. Jason Salzman, former media critic for the Rocky Mountain News, talked to everybody who might have reasonably encountered this hydrologic epic, and came up empty; McInnis' office did not respond to his questions."

Aliya Hasan, daughter of Malik Hasan and board member of the Hasan Family Foundation, told BigMedia that she didn’t think McInnis’ water articles, which later were found to be plagiarized, would have been released without the media criticism from BigMedia. [Editor's Note: See my article about more recent developments in the case. -AA]

2. BigMedia Pushes Media to Illuminate Buck As Extreme Social Conservative. BigMedia had been monitoring talk radio shows and pressuring the hosts to ask tougher questions of conservative guests. So, when Ken Buck won the GOP primary and little was known about his social agenda, BigMedia was positioned to report what Ken Buck had been getting away with saying on talk radio and to push the mainstream media to report on Buck’s virtually unknown right-wing agenda. In August, two days after Buck won the primary, in a blog post titled, "Talk Radio Does Great Job of Illuminating Buck as a Deep Social Conservative," BigMedia was the first media entity to lay out, for mainstream journalists, Buck's positions on social issues and to call on major media to inform readers of his right-wing views.

When the media refused to do this, BigMedia documented that major media, including the Denver Post (as well as local TV news), had ignored Buck’s position that, for example, abortion should be banned, even in the case of rape and incest. BigMedia continued to push journalists to report views that Buck had expressed on talk radio early in the year versus the views he articulated later in the campaign. And when the media claimed that Buck's critics were the only ones talking about social issues, BigMedia corrected reporters, pointing out the fact that Buck talked about them early and often during the primary.

3. BigMedia's Report, "Jane's Free Ride," Pushes Denver Post to Quote Norton More Often. In April, the project spotlighted the Denver Post's almost complete failure to quote U.S. Senate candidate Jane Norton directly. This report, and subsequent updates, led to more frequent and direct quotations of Norton.

4. Associated Press reports that co-speaker at Palin event had history of bigotry. In April, the project called on the media to report that Sarah Palin would be appearing in Denver with a retired general, William Boykin, who had a history of making bigoted statement about Muslims. Subsequently, the Associated Press reported, "Sarah Palin is used to drawing opposition, but it's someone else on stage with her Monday in Colorado that has people talking." That person was Boykin, who said that America's Islamic enemy was "Satan," the AP pointed out, using research that appeared in the project's blog postings.

5. Business Journal reporter agrees to investigate State Rep. Conti's false claims in newspaper. In February, after the Denver Business Journal ran an article reporting Rep. Conti's assertion that vending companies lost jobs due to legislative action, the project researched the topic and showed Conti's claim was not supported. The Journal's reporter agreed to investigate, time permitting, but the issue never surfaced in the legislature, so follow-up was not called for.

*** Michael Sandoval ***

Successes include:

Ariel Attack and "smashtroturfing" from 2009.

National blogosphere exposure of the Danny Dietz memorial controversy -- beating the Denver Post.

Sen. Michael Bennet and "nothing to show for it" -- two attack ads and above the fold on Drudge.

I consider these the top media successes given the legs that each had in their respective category. The "smashtroturfing" story had national implications (it was the summer of townhall angst against Obamacare) and Dem Chair Pat Waak blamed Tea Party "hate" for the incident, when in fact it was a far left transgendered anarchist paid $500 in 2008 to canvas for Democrats by an SEIU-front 527 supported by CoDA donors Stryker and Gill. This combined on-the-fly investigative reporting and social media crowdsourcing.

The Danny Dietz memorial story was a barely a blip on the radar until national-level bloggers, steered by my original blog post, began to swarm on the issue, prompting a story in the Denver Post, reaction from then Rep. Tancredo, and a general consensus that the memorial was entirely appropriate. This story was a combination of news gathering from various sources before the FB/Twitter era, and pushing the story out to national level bloggers who could force local media to react.

As for Sen. Bennet, merely calling him on something he had said at campaign events all year but failed to get much notice by local media was a big story -- here's an appointed senator saying that for $14 trillion in debt, the USA had little to show -- and I found the audio that confirmed him saying it. The impact was at least two separate attack ads on Bennet -- independent and certainly not coordinated -- after the story made it to Drudge. Numerous other articles and coverage followed.

Regarding the nature of the media:

A good journalists finds or undercovers the real story, whether through meaningful questions, hard-nosed investigative reporting, or by ferreting out angles or themes that might be missed by an average "beat" reporter. When it comes to political news, it is often less a question of "making" news than it is a question of story choice. The criticism of media, both left and right, is not "commission" of making the news or manufacturing outrage -- though that is often the case. It is more a question of what is "omitted" -- the unflattering stories that go unreported in favor of one side or the other. Good journalists do more than simply chase the ambulance, they try to find the smoking gun, the critical witness, or the key evidence to a story, eschewing a simple regurgitation of he said, she said press releases. If they "make" the news, it is in the sense that they give a story legs, and drive the news cycle until the next story replaces it.

*** Ed Quillen ***

Two recent columns may have affected public policy. One criticized Scott Gessler's request for more authority to investigate the almost non-existent prolem of non-citizens voting (the legislature did not act) and another hit on the proposal to make pseudoephedrine available only by prescription (the notion died, and I think was the only one to write about it).

Going back to 2003, as best I know I was the only columnist, at least in a Denver paper, to oppose the Referendum A water grab, and it went down by a 2-1 margin. It's rare that I feel that good about an election.

Regarding the media, there's a common saying in the trade that "Newspapers don't tell people what to think, but they do tell people what to think about." I can't say much about other media, as I've never worked outside of print.

The correct answer is likely "both." There's lots of news you don't make -- police blotter, public meetings, courts, the routine stuff you cover. And there's some you generate with investigative reporting or good feature-writing, bringing something new to public attention.

These days, so many events are not spontaneous, but more or less staged and scripted and you're not doing your readers any favors if you just report the event -- in that case you're being manipulated by the choreographers.

My personal attitude, when I'm practicing journalism instead of punditry, is that if I encounter another reporter, I should look for a different story. I abhor pack journalism, and I can see why Sarah Palin has so little respect for the business when there are so many folks assigned to follow her bus around. Of course, if you ignored her, you'd get angry phone calls about how you were conspiring with the Muslim Brotherhood to silence a great patriotic voice or whatever.

So a lot of the crap you find in the news is there because squeaky wheels get greased.

*** Ken Clark***

I have only been in the media a very short time; so far my biggest success has been pulling off the "Grass Roots Radio Colorado" contract with Crawford Broadcasting. I was told that it could not be done, especially by two guys with zero radio experience and more importantly, in a "major market." Well, we proved them wrong by hosting the show for over six weeks straight (an audition if you will), after which Crawford agreed to a contract. Now Jason Worley and I are permanent fixtures on 560 KLZ.

Beyond that, we are gaining quite a following by attacking issues that no one else on radio will go after. Now, I'm told, all of the elected officials holding state office either listen to the show or assign staffers to keep them informed of the issues we dissect. Our success is attributed to the fact that we stand on principle and will carry the water for no party or elected official. We are equal opportunity attack dogs. That being said, we much prefer going after progressives, it's just sad that some of them are on "our side." Plus, we like to have fun.

Second, although Liberty Ink Journal is no longer in print, this was my first venture into media. Stephanie Anderson and I decided that there was a need for a publication that actually spoke the truth about issues and could help inform the masses as to what was happening to them. In that regard we were a huge success as we had quite a following and people still remember the magazine, and we still have the online version.

Regarding the media: The "media" neither make the news nor do they report the news, or should I say facts. They decide what the best way to "sell" their position is and that is what they report as news.

If the media reported the news the way that it was intended to during our founding and the drafting of the First Amendment to the Constitution, we would not be in the mess that we are, our society would not be made up of 47 percent takers, and there never would have been a need for the "Liberty Movement."

The media are every bit as corrupt as the Federal Government and they have morphed into what I like to refer to as the "Ruling Class" along with elected officials in both parties. [Editor's note: presumably Clark is referring to the major print and television media. -AA] They decide what we need to know, they decide what the truth is, they decide what society should think, and the sheep swallow it hook line and sinker. ...

That is why it is imperative that the internet and sites like the PPC, talk radio, blogs, etc. remain engaged and continue to get the truth about what is happening to this country out. This is the only way we will ever win back our Republic. The truth is out there, we just need to find it and make the masses understand it.

*** David Harsayni ***

Does media report or make the news? Both. But there is no such thing as "media" or at least there is no such thing as a media that acts as one voice. It's too democratized. So, sometimes it makes it, sometimes it doesn't. It depends on the sensibilities of the outlet.

Shermer Explains 'The Believing Brain'

Arch-skeptic Michael Shermer spoke at Tattered Cover May 31 about his new book, The Believing Brain. With permission, I filmed the presentation, and I've edited three selections.

In the first video, Shermer explains the basics of how people tend to find patterns both where they are real and where they are not. We need science to tell the difference, he argues.



In the second video, Shermer argues that people tend to find agency even in complex systems and inanimate things.



Finally, Shermer explains people's tendency to mentally construct agencies and project them into the world.



Shermer also offered some fascinating insights into political battles, specific conspiracy theories (deathers, birthers, truthers), and the importance of free-trading liberal democracies (broadly understood) for preserving the peace and keeping dangerous people from gaining power. For all that and more, you'll have to read his book!