Blood on My Hands?

I've said and written some unflattering things about federal workers over the years. Back when I was a spokesman for Citizens Against Government Waste, a fiscal watchdog group, and later, when I wrote the weekly "Waste and Abuse" column for Insight Magazine, I regularly penned pieces that cast federal workers in an unflattering light. I didn't always have to ferret these stories out; they mostly just fall in your lap, so pervasive is waste and mismanagement at the federal level.

Did all that work make me complicit in murder? That's the message coming out of Washington this morning.

Did all my "government-bashing" -- all my disrespecting of the dedicated men and women, "public servants" all, who labor tirelessly on my behalf in thankless government jobs -- help lay the predicate for the murder of census worker William Sparkman, who was found dead on Sept. 12 in the Daniel Boone National Forest? It just might have, says Bill Schauman, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 2782, in today's Washington Post.

"Perhaps, if more of our leaders had talked over the years about the dedication of the federal workforce, and shown us more of the appreciation and trust we deserve, this terrible event might not have happened," Schauman told the Post. Other union leaders quoted in the story were more cautious about making such connections. But John Berry, who runs the Office of Personnel Management, ratchets up the rhetoric again by suggesting that Sparkman may have been the victim of "domestic terrorism." "We cannot tolerate essentially domestic terrorism, if that is what this is," he said. "But until we understand the law enforcement investigation, we don’t know."

The Post further inflames the situation by trotting out some context-free statistics about crimes against federal workers (or in which federal worker are involved), leaving the inference that there's some political component to the crimes, though this is not supported in any way.

The Post:

"It is a federal crime to attack or kill a federal worker during or because of their job and government employees regularly face threats due to the nature of their work. Officials insist they have no information suggesting Sparkman was targeted because of his federal employment, but the slaying has raised concerns about the safety of federal employees.

The Justice Department had filed 277 such cases against 299 defendants as of August, according to spokesman Ian McCaleb. It prosecuted 303 cases against 330 defendants in FY '08, 326 cases against 348 defendants in FY '07 and 313 cases filed against 329 defendants in FY '06. McCaleb could not provide details about specific employees or agencies targeted or the number of successful prosecutions.

Union leaders have suggested that statements by lawmakers and commentators about the federal workforce may also be to blame."

So watch what you say about federal workers, everyone. Your critiques just might be egging on "domestic terrorism" and instigating cold-blooded murder.

Roll over, Barry Goldwater

Just a little news item from my old home state of Arizona -- link -- indicating that it's no longer the sort of place that the state's most iconic politician, the arch-conservative Barry Goldwater, would recognize or celebrate.

Nearly 200 new laws went into effect today in Arizona -- not one of which makes Arizonans more free, more self-reliant, more prosperous. And this is just the work product of one legislative season. This churning out of new laws, assembly line fashion, goes on year after year, decade after decade -- incrementally chipping away at America's claim to being "the land of the free." It's not just happening in Arizona; it's happening in every state in the union. Not all the new laws are bad; just most of them. Arizona won't be measurably better off tomorrow than it was yesterday because of all the new rules. The opposite is probably true.

Roll over, Barry. This isn't the Arizona you knew.

Move Over Hybrid Hotshots . . . .

. . . there's a new privileged class favored by social engineers: story.

Giving the Devil its Due

It's fashionable in right wing circles to slam the Washington Post for being a left-wing rag. On most days, it lives up to that reputation. But the paper's editorial page has broken ranks with the hard left on at least one important issue, school choice. And it deserves credit for that.

The Post has lent rhetorical support to controversial D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, in her epic battles to turn around one of the worst systems in the country -- a national disgrace unfolding right in the shadow of the capitol dome. And the paper has come to embrace school choice, including charter schools and voucher programs, as important options for urban students trapped in failing systems.

Tomorrow's Post editorial touts the now-demonstrated benefits of charter schools for underprivileged kids, while slamming teachers unions for their hidebound opposition to this public school innovation. It's almost like reading The Washington Times, but better -- since it will be read, and hopefully taken to heart, by tens of thousands of hard core liberals over a cup of coffee tomorrow morning.

Three Cheers for "The Kelo Curse"

Maybe there is a just God out there after all.

Four years after the U.S. Supreme Court approved the bulldozing of a New London neighborhood, so the city could hand the land to a company promising more tax revenue, the city has yet to profit from its act of theft. Instead, the cleared lots still stand vacant, like a gaping wound. The company, and all the promises it made, never materialized. New London is no better off today than before it embarked on this notorious abuse of eminent domain. The wages of sin . . . is vacant lots.

And I for one, in a slightly malicious way, hope the "Kelo curse" will continue.

Here's the AP:

Conn. land vacant 4 years after court OK'd seizure

NEW LONDON, Conn. — Weeds, glass, bricks, pieces of pipe and shingle splinters have replaced the knot of aging homes at the site of the nation's most notorious eminent domain project.

There are a few signs of life: Feral cats glare at visitors from a miniature jungle of Queen Anne's lace, thistle and goldenrod. Gulls swoop between the lot's towering trees and the adjacent sewage treatment plant.

But what of the promised building boom that was supposed to come wrapped and ribboned with up to 3,169 new jobs and $1.2 million a year in tax revenues? They are noticeably missing.
Proponents of the ambitious plan blame the sour economy. Opponents call it a "poetic justice."
"They are getting what they deserve. They are going to get nothing," said Susette Kelo, the lead plaintiff in the landmark property rights case. "I don't think this is what the United States Supreme Court justices had in mind when they made this decision."

Kelo's iconic pink home sat for more than a century on that currently empty lot, just steps away from Connecticut's quaint but economically distressed Long Island Sound waterfront. Shortly after she moved in, in 1997, her house became ground zero in the nation's best-known land rights catfight.

New London officials decided they needed Kelo's land and the surrounding 90 acres for a multimillion-dollar private development that included residential, hotel conference, research and development space and a new state park that would complement a new $350 million Pfizer pharmaceutical research facility.

Kelo and six other homeowners fought for years, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2005, justices voted 5-4 against them, giving cities across the country the right to use eminent domain to take property for private development.

The decision was sharply criticized and created grassroots backlash. Forty states quickly passed new, protective rules and regulations, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Some protesters even tried to turn the tables on now-retired Justice David Souter, trying unsuccessfully in 2006 to take his New Hampshire home by eminent domain to build an inn.

In New London the city's prized economic development plan has fallen apart as the economy crumbled.

The Corcoran Jennison Cos., a Boston-based developer, had originally locked in exclusive rights to develop nearly the entire northern half of the Fort Trumbull peninsula. But those rights expired in June 2008, despite multiple extensions, because the firm was unable to secure financing, according to President Marty Jones. In July, backers halted fundraising for the project's crown jewel, a proposed $60 million, 60,000-square-foot Coast Guard museum.
The poor economy meant that donations weren't "keeping pace with expenses," said Coast Guard Foundation president Anne Brengle.

The group hopes to resume fundraising in the future, she said.

Overall, proponents say about two-thirds of the 90-acre site is developed, in part because of a 16-acre, $25 million state park. The other third of the land remains without the promised residential housing, office buildings, shops and hotel/conference center facility.

"If there had been no litigation, which took years to work its way through (the court system), then a substantial portion of this project would be constructed by now," said John Brooks, executive director of the New London Development Corp. "But we are victims of the economic cycle, and there is nothing we can do about that."

A new engineering tenant is moving into one of the office buildings at 1 Chelsea St., and a bio tech firm with as many as five employees is getting ready to move into an existing building on Howard Street, Brooks said.

Kelo, paid $442,000 by the state for her old property, now lives across the Thames River in Groton, in a white, two-bedroom 1950s bungalow. Her beloved pink house was sold for a dollar and moved less than two miles away, where a local preservationist has refurbished it.

Kelo can see her old neighborhood from her new home, but she finds the view too painful to bear.
"Everything is different, but everything is like still the same," said Kelo, who works two jobs and has largely maintained a low profile since moving away. "You still have life to deal with every day of the week. I just don't have eminent domain to deal with every day of the week, even after I ate, slept and breathed it for 10 years."

Although her side lost, Kelo said she sees the wider ramifications of her property rights battle.

"In the end it was seven of us who fought like wild animals to save what we had," she said. "I think that though we ultimately didn't win for ourselves, it has brought attention to what they did to us, and if it can make it better for some other people so they don't lose their homes to a Dunkin' Donuts or a Wal-Mart, I think we did some good."

Scott Bullock, senior attorney for the Institute for Justice, argued Kelo's case before the Supreme Court. He calls "massive changes that have happened in the law and in the public consciousness" the "real legacy" of Kelo and the other plaintiffs.

The empty land means the city won a "hollow victory," he said. "What cities should take from this is to run fleeing from what New London did and do economic development that is market-driven and incorporate properties of folks who are truly committed to their neighborhood and simply want to be a part of what happens," he said.

Watch Your Behind . . .

The eco-prohibitionists are coming for your toilet paper now: Washington Post

For Charter Schools, Failure Is An Option

As a charter school supporter, I've watched with dismay as a once-renowned area charter school network, Cesar Chavez, has spiraled into disorder, scandal and disappointment for parents, students and teachers. It's too early to say exactly what went wrong. I hope some enterprising local journalist takes the time to tell the story in full. It appears there were problems in the network's upper ranks, which have now cast shadows over everyone below.

But the disappointment of parents and students, along with independent efforts to salvage some elements of the network, indicate that the schools still have strong support among customers, despite problems at the top.

The silver lining to every story of a charter school failure is that these schools are allowed to fail -- that they are held accountable for poor performance, unlike most conventional schools, that blithely carry on, in perpetuity, even when they aren't performing up to par. Such failures are rare. But they do occur. And that's okay. For every charter school that flounders and fails, three or four or five are flourishing. On balance, these school are still serving students well, as a mountain of new evidence shows, and despite what some blinkered critics say.

For charter schools, failure is an option. Maybe that's why so many succeed.