Best of the lot:

How an accidental tax deduction came to be thought of as the foundation of homeownership in the United States.

And a lengthy article about economist Edward Glaeser's research on the connection between housing prices and land use regulations.

Homeowners, he points out, have a strong incentive to stop new development, both because it can be an inconvenience and also because, like any monopolist, stopping supply drives up the price of their own homes. "Lack of affordable housing isn't a problem to homeowners," Glaeser says; that's exactly what they want. "The thing you want most is to make sure that your home is not affordable if you own it. And for that reason, there's absolutely no reason to think that little suburban communities with no businesses that are run essentially by their homeowners will make the right decisions for the state as a whole, for the business in the area, for the country as a whole."

But, compared to Appalachia, Va., most have, at best, only a pale imitation of a fiefdom:

APPALACHIA -- A sweeping indictment alleges a town election fraught with fraud, with two candidates and their supporters buying votes with beer and cigarettes, stealing mail-in ballots and voting repeatedly for themselves in the name of a deceived electorate.

The indictment returned Thursday by a Wise County grand jury contained more than 1,000 violations of election laws -- about two crimes for every vote cast in the May 2004 election in Appalachia.

At the center of the alleged conspiracy is Ben Cooper, the mayor and acting town manager of this small town in far Southwest Virginia.

According to the 300-page indictment, one of the goals in electing Cooper and his two running mates to town council was "the control of the town of Appalachia by one person, Ben Ellis Cooper."

Not only did Cooper and his allies buy and steal votes to accomplish that goal, the indictment alleges, but they also used their stolen mandate to create a corrupt police department that was given the authority to harass their political enemies.

In one case, Cooper is charged with settling a personal grudge by directing police officers to seize money and property from an enemy's home in an illegal search.

Two police officers were among the 14 defendants charged Thursday.

Read the whole appalling story.

Much worse is a case in which the subsidized activity itself is the stupidest sort of resource wasting make-work that has no useful purpose whatsoever. In a case like this, society would literally be better off if we just gave the rent-seekers the money and asked them to do nothing in return.

At Economist's View Mark Thoma points to a Time magazine article exposing rent-seeking of the second type. Mark excerpts the article, here is an excerpt of his excerpt:

When oil prices fell, ... the synfuel credit remained on the books, dormant, until a group of enterprising entrepreneurs came across it in the 1990s and saw a way to transform coal into gold. The coal can look and burn like regular coal. The IRS rule for transforming coal into synfuel--and getting the tax credit--requires only that the substance be chemically altered in some way. The alchemy that satisfies the IRS is a simple process: some plants spray newly mined coal with diesel fuel, pine-tar resin, limestone, acid or other substances--a practice that industry critics call "spray and pray." Other operators mix coal-mining waste with chemicals, coat it with latex and blend it with untreated coal to form briquettes. ... Those synfuel operations were a far cry from the state-of-the-art plants that Congress had envisioned ...

For owners and operators, the whole point isn't creating a profitable new energy resource ...; it's about collecting the tax subsidy. Progress Energy Inc. ... reported ... that in 2002-04 its synfuel-production losses added up to $400 million. No problem: the company claimed $852 million in tax credits, magically transforming a money-losing operation into a money-making business with $452 million in profits--courtesy of the American taxpayer. .... And Progress Energy is not alone. ...

I've still got a long way to go, but I feel like a hundred tons have been lifted from my back. Last night I got the best night's sleep I've had in six months.

Maybe, just maybe, this will start resembling an actual working blog in the near future.

The two main articles:

District Dodges Spending Laws
Companies Snare Contracts With Connections, Not Competition

Lavish Spending, Little Reward
D.C. Agencies Gave Contractor Millions for Projects but Scant Oversight

A page with other related resources:

Blank Check

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- The state Revenue Department is taking a closer look at taxpayers that may have inflated charitable contributions.

The state already has found land deals that raised questions. Now the tax agency its audit to other types of property, such as donations of art and buildings.

Burnie Maybank, the Revenue Department's executive director, first started looking into contributions of land using conservation easements after reading a 2002 Washington Post article about abuses in those donations.

...

Maybank's audit found about $375 million in land easements had been claimed as charitable deductions from 1999 to 2003. Maybank says most were legitimate donations but some weren't. In June, Maybank testified before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, saying that seven golf courses reported land they donated was worth a total of $125 million. One property alone was appraised at $40 million.

The Revenue Department says it found 10 pieces of donated property where owners should not have taken charitable tax deductions, including seven golf course. Maybank notes that five of those were in exclusive, gated communities.

Auditors found instance where a landowner bought property and within a year gave it to a land trust at more than twice the purchase price. On tax forms, people are supposed to declare what they paid, but Maybank says taxpayers often leave that part of the form blank.

The Revenue Department has told owners of a half-dozen golf courses they owe thousands in back state taxes. And the agency has notified 120 other South Carolina taxpayers that it has questions about their non-cash charitable deductions.

Maybank decided to widen the audit after the Revenue Department found some land owners donating other property to other charities besides land trusts. The Internal Revenue Service was asked for a list of all non-cash charitable deductions claimed by South Carolina taxpayers from 2001 to 2003.

...

The Joint Economic Committee has released Tax Distribution Analysis and Shares of Taxes Paid--Updated Analysis.

From the JEC abstract:

IRS data for 2003, the most recent available, show that the top half of taxpayers ranked by income continue to pay over 96% of Federal individual income taxes while the bottom half accounts for just less than 3.5%. The data show the highly progressive nature of the Federal income tax.

Well... Actually, no it doesn't show that. To measure progressivity we need to know what percentage of total income is earned by the top half of taxpayers. The JEC doesn't provide income distribution data in the report. Without that data, the data they do provide doesn't really tell us much.

After Tennessee tested its eighth-grade students in math this year, state officials at a jubilant news conference called the results a "cause for celebration." Eighty-seven percent of students performed at or above the proficiency level.

But when the federal government made public the findings of its own tests last month, the results were startlingly different: only 21 percent of Tennessee's eighth graders were considered proficient in math.

Such discrepancies have intensified the national debate over testing and accountability, with some educators saying that numerous states have created easy exams to avoid the sanctions that President Bush's centerpiece education law, No Child Left Behind, imposes on consistently low-scoring schools.

A comparison of state test results against the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federal test mandated by the No Child Left Behind law, shows that wide discrepancies between the state and federal findings were commonplace.

In Mississippi, 89 percent of fourth graders performed at or above proficiency on state reading tests, while only 18 percent of fourth graders demonstrated proficiency on the federal test. Oklahoma, North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Alaska, Texas and more than a dozen other states all showed students doing far better on their own reading and math tests than on the federal one.

... states are allowed to use their own tests in meeting the law's central mandate - that schools increase the percentage of students demonstrating proficiency each year. The law requires 100 percent of the nation's students to reach proficiency - as each state defines it - by 2014.

States set the stringency of their own tests as well as the number of questions students must answer correctly to be labeled proficient. And because states that fail to raise scores over time face serious sanctions, there is little incentive to make the exams difficult, some educators say.

...

Other educators and experts give different reasons for the discrepancy between state and federal test results. A Standard & Poor's report this fall listed many reasons for such differences, among them that the National Assessment is a no-stakes test, while low scores on state tests lead to sanctions against schools.

The report noted that the National Assessment is given to a sampling of students, whereas schools administer state tests to nearly all students. The tests serve different purposes, with the federal one giving policy makers a snapshot of student performance across the nation, while state tests provide data about individual performance. Because of these differences, some state officials say it is unfair to compare the test results.

That would be a good defense if we were talking about a difference of a few percentage points. But we aren't, so it's not.

An earlier post on the same subject.

In the days after Hurricane Katrina destroyed his New Orleans neighborhood, Bruce Norwood was in a rush to get back home.

He wanted to help rebuild his city. Never mind that he is 48, suffered a minor stroke this year and has high blood pressure. He thought he had desirable skills: He had been a construction worker and a house painter for years.

But now Norwood is settling into a one-bedroom apartment in North Potomac. He has been a deli sandwich-maker at a Giant supermarket in Rockville for almost two months. And he is near family members -- also evacuees -- just as he was in New Orleans: He lives next door to a nephew, less than a mile from one sister and 10 miles from another sister.

"There's no reason to leave here," he said. "I'm comfortable. I'm very comfortable."

...

He still hopes to return to New Orleans someday, when it is back to normal. But he doesn't think it will happen soon. He said expects to stay in Maryland for another year or two.

Two thoughts:

1) The longer he stays in Maryland, the less likely he is to move back to New Orleans.

2) The larger the number of people who wait for New Orleans to get "back to normal" before they move back, the longer it will take for N.O. to get back to normal.

A lot of items appear useful to other disciplines as well.

HT: Detour

UPDATE: Alternate link for :
Cox (2000) "The "Big 5" and Other Ideas for Presentations"

With Many Chambers, Choice Isn't So Simple: Businesses Shop for Best Fit Before Joining

In Prince George's, Four Voices Sing Same Song: Business Boards Share Message but Stay Apart

Kilgore Endorsement Falls Flat in Fairfax: PAC Picked Republican, but Kaine Won Big

I've no time for extended comment other than to point out:

(1) If "business" was truly a monolithic interest group there would be no need for multiple chambers in a community,

(2) In competing for members, groups offer many different incentives, not just lobbying activity, and

(3) As pointed out by Mancur Olson, if the non-political incentives are attractive enough, then the political goals of leaders and the rank-and-file may diverge.

In the voice model, residents compare the performance of their own local officials (with regard to public services and taxes) to those in other communities. If they find performance lacking in their own community, then they exercise voice (including voting at the ballot box) to bring about needed improvements.

Both models depend on access to information about other communities. If you lack that information, then have no basis for comparison. If you don't realize how bad things really are in your own home town, you are less likely to move or to complain.

So what? Well, it looks like Hurricane Katrina has provided a shock to the quantity of information that New Orleans residents possess about performance in other communities:

TALK to the people trickling back here, and it becomes apparent that before the hurricane, many had about as much experience living elsewhere as Ignatius J. Reilly, the protagonist in one of the seminal novels about New Orleans, "A Confederacy of Dunces," who had set foot outside this exceedingly rooted city only once (and rued doing so).

But after tasting life elsewhere, they are returning with tales of public schools that actually supply textbooks published after the Reagan era, of public housing developments that look like suburban enclaves, of government workers who are not routinely dragged off to prison after pocketing bribes.

Local leaders have realized for weeks that they must reckon with widespread anger over how they handled the relief effort. But it is dawning on them that they are also going to have to contend with demands from residents who grew accustomed, however briefly, to the virtues of other communities.

Many evacuees seem to be arriving with less tolerance for the failings of a city that under its glitzy makeup has long had an unsightly side. They do not want New Orleans to lose its distinctive character - after all, that is one reason they are back and vowing to rebuild. But they say their expectations have changed.

"What's wrong with our school system, and what's wrong with the people running our school board?" asked Tess Blanks, who had lived here all her life before fleeing with her husband, Horace, to the Houston area, where they discovered that the public schools for their two children were significantly better. "Our children fell right into the swing of things in Texas. So guess what? It isn't the children. It's the people running our school system."

...

Mayor C. Ray Nagin, who had styled himself a reformer before the hurricane, also acknowledged the new perspective.

"New Orleanians are very territorial people," Mr. Nagin said. "Some people had never left town. So they had no perspective of what was better from the standpoint of quality. They are going to come back with a different perspective of what should be and what could be. And I think that is going to put pressure on all of us as elected officials."