Reports the Arkansas News Bureau’s John Lyon:

Forestry Commission Director John Shannon and Tim Leathers, deputy director of the state Department of Finance and Administration, told a legislative panel that the governor plans to ask for about $2.7 million in supplemental aide for the commission.

The request will include about $1.2 million to repay the federal government for grant money the agency improperly spent on ongoing expenses and about $1.5 million to keep the agency going through the end of the fiscal year.

Shannon said last month he told 36 employees of the 298-person agency they will be laid off Jan. 13 because of a $4 million shortfall.

Read Lyon’s whole piece for the sordid details as to how we arrived at this impasse.

But the key question, as presented in the headline to this post: Just what DOES it take for an agency head to lose his or her job in the Beebe administration?

After all, in recent months, we’ve seen reports of tens of millions of dollars in waste from the Department of Workforce Services, and now the state Forestry Commission is limping thanks, in part, to some highly questionable accounting practices. Yet the agency leadership just keeps bumbling along from one catastrophe to the next. Quick! Someone find me one more example of malfeasance so we can officially deem it a trend!

The crowning quote in the tale comes from DFA’s Tim Leathers, who here raises the use of the evasive bureaucratic passive voice to something near an art form. Leathers explains the effect of those aforementioned improperly spent grant funds:

State officials have said they recently learned that the federal money was overcertified, or counted twice, and was not authorized for ongoing expenses.

“You had overspending as a result of that,” Leathers told legislators today.

Indeed! “You had overspending.” But no one one was actually accountable for that overspending. It simply….happened. “You” had it. It—this overspending—it was “had,” by someone, that someone being “you.” QED.  No further questions, please.

Let’s run an experiment: Go f**k something up disastrously in your job, and then come back to your bosses and tell them you can fix it up if they’ll only give you some more money. Oh, I don’t know, let’s say, $2.7 million. Let me know how that works out for you.

Oh, if only John Brummett were still alive to write a column about how this is really all the fault of legislative Republicans and the Tea Party, or something. RIP, John Brummett (1946-2011). 

Some Lawmakers Leery of Aid Request for Forestry Commission (Arkansas News Bureau)

NYT story on concealed carry permits misfires

“Gun Permit Holders Commit Crimes”!! That is the breathless headline over at the Arkansas Times, where Max Brantley points to a New York Times review of  concealed carry permit holders in North Carolina that found “more than 2,400 permit holders were convicted of felonies or misdemeanors” over five years.

Golly, 2,400 sounds like a whole bunch. Say, how many of these gun permit holders are there in North Carolina, anyway? Seems like we should get some sense of the statistical scope of this matter if we’re to determine its seriousness.

Hm, let’s look. The original NYT story Max links says North Carolina has “more than 240,000″ concealed carry permit holders. Which means that, just working from their top line numbers, somewhere around 1 percent of these permit holders have been convicted of felonies and misdemeanors.

So I guess it’s true, as Max’s headline has it—gun permit holders commit crimes. But you know who else commits crimes? Other people! People who don’t have gun permits.

There’s nothing in the NYT story, aside from a series of scary anecdotes, to help us determine if these permit holders have a greater propensity to commit crimes, or a greater propensity to commit more violent crimes. Drilling down a little further, Reason Magazine’s Jacob Sullum arrives at a conclusion that differs dramatically from that of the NYT report:

So 0.2 percent of them are convicted of a non-traffic-related offense each year, about 0.017 percent are convicted of a felony, and only 0.005 percent are convicted of a gun assault. The Times concedes that the number of permit holders convicted of crimes “represents a small percentage of those with permits.” More like “tiny.” By comparison, about 0.35 percent of all Americans are convicted of a felony each year—more than 20 times the rate among North Carolina permit holders. It seems clear these people are far more law-abiding than the general population, a finding consistent with data from other states. Such data are not surprising, since law-abidingness, as measured by a clean criminal record, is one requirement for a carry permit.

Max looks at the spread of handgun ownership and arrives at this taunting two-word conclusion: “Feel safer?” Well, maybe you should—after all, even the NYT was reporting a few months ago on how crime watchers are “baffled” by the “steady decline in major crime.” Could that decline have anything to do with the fact that “it is easier than ever to carry a handgun in public,” as the NYT story states? Perhaps.

Or perhaps that’s too glib and simplistic an interpretation of what is, no doubt, a complex social phenomenon. But it’s hardly more glib and simplistic than Brantley’s practice of assuming there’s an incipient Travis Bickle lurking in the soul of every gun owner.

Further reading: Instapundit offers a terrific rundown of the critical response to the “shoddy journalism” of the NYT review.

Guns in Public, And Out of Sight (New York Times)

NYT Scare Story About Carry Permit Holders Shows They Are Remarkably Law Abiding (Reason.com)

What was once a corporate headquarters has been repurposed as an environmentally friendly office building for state agencies.The building opened  in 2010, and touted with great fanfare as a monument to green construction and 21st century efficiency.

But nearly two years later, the solar panels are not operational, due to an abstruse legal contract dispute I won’t even pretend to understand, reports the Arkansas News Bureau’s John Lyon:

In operation for nearly two years, a key component of the building’s environment-friendly character — a solar array expected to generate as much as 3 percent of the building’s energy needs — has yet to be switched on because of an unrelated contract dispute between Arkansas Tech University and Entergy Arkansas.

“At some point we’ll have an agreement of some sort and get these babies hooked up,” said Joe Holmes, spokesman for the Arkansas Economic Development Commission, of which the energy office is a division.

Last month, the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of the Inspector General testified to Congress that, upon review, much of the DOE’s stimulus spending had been “less than optimal,” citing the various obstacles to wise investment of the funds. Presumably, paying a half million dollars for a solar array that sits dormant for two years (and counting!) would fall under the heading of “less than optimal.”

My favorite part is that once they’re working, those babies are expected to generate “as much as 3 percent of the building’s energy needs.” I like to think Lyon had his tongue firmly in cheek in breathlessly emphasizing that really not particularly impressive at all detail. Brave New World!

Switch remains off for solar panels until legal dispute settled (Arkansas News Bureau)

*ANSWER: NO. There is no more perfect metaphor for the dead-end pipe-dream thinking of “green jobs” spending than the solar panel array, purchased with $550,000 of federal economic stimulus funds, outside the renovated Dillards building on West Capitol.

Credit where due: Rep. Tim Griffin, Republican of Arkansas’ Second District, is a co-sponsor of the REINS Act and has been kicking some ass in taking the fight to the regulators. This somewhat offsets my previously published annoyance at his being a supporter of the rotten SOPA Internet censorship bill (BOOOOOOOOOO!!!). Somewhat.

Anyway, all the Arkansas House Republicans (Griffin, Rick Crawford, Steve Womack) voted for the bill, while lone Democrat Rep. Mike Ross voted against. Now it goes to the Democratic Senate, which probably means it’s pretty much dead for now, so I guess that was a lot of fun.

To read the reactions from the bill’s Democratic opponents in news accounts, you might gather this proposal is a GOP attempt to drag the United States back to the medieval era, forcing you to drink poisoned Vitamin Water and your children to work in a coal mine. The reality is that it would bring a modest amount of needed accountability to the regulatory process by requiring Congress to approve or reject, without changes, particularly costly or burdensome executive rules and regulations (i.e., those with an economic impact of $100 million or more).

For a more nuanced take on just what the REINS Act would do, read this study by smart law person Jonathan Adler published by the libertarian Cato Institute (PDF). Adler reviews the literature and concludes:

Federal regulation reaches nearly all aspects of modern life and is pervasive in the modern economy. Much of this regulation may be necessary or advisable, and nothing in the REINS Act would hinder a sympathetic Congress from approving new federal regulations. In all likelihood, however, the REINS Act’s congressional approval process would prevent the implementation of particularly unpopular or controversial regulatory initiatives. The primary effect of the legislation would be to make Congress more responsible for federal regulatory activity by forcing legislators to voice their opinion on the desirability of significant regulatory changes.

Well said, Jonathan Adler! In addition, this recent piece on the bill from Reason.com explores the pressing question, “Should voters have more voice in the regulatory process?” (SPOILER ALERT: Yes.)

I’ll note that, while the debate over regulatory reform often reflects the dreary and predictable partisan divides that dominate, well, everything these days, the recognition that the regulatory process is burdensome and costly has actually become more broadbased.

Consider: Obama appointed legal eagle Cass Sunstein, a critic of endlessly growing rules and regs, to head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Sunstein made a big production in August of  dropping and/or revising various regulations. This effort was praised by the liberalish/nonpartisan/goo-goo Brookings Institution, where they noted that regulatory reform would spur private sector job growth, even if it was greeted with yawns by a lot of business groups. But at least it was a start. The question is, will there be a second act?

Also: Arkansas’ own former Sen. Blanche Lincoln, a Democrat, is heading up the Small Businesses for Sensible Regulation coalition. So perhaps there is common ground for Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, to come together to head off this onerous burden of an ever-growing mountain of government rules and regulations, yes? Yes? No? OK, I’ll be over here, not holding my breath.

Would the REINS Act rein in federal regulation? (Cato Institute; PDF)

Should voters have more say in the regulatory processes that drastically affect their lives? (Reason.com)

But is that true? Will the feds, in fact, be running the Arkansas health benefits exchange?

Not so fast! The short (6 minute) interview at the top of the page with Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, casts doubt on that claim. Cannon argues that, should states decline to establish exchanges, it puts the feds in a bind, as they’re not authorized to offer “premium assistance” (tax credits, subsidies, etc., needed to make Obamacare viable) in federal exchanges under section 1321 of the law. The short of it is that the inability to provide premium assistance will drive up costs and undermine the exchange as people decline to participate in the system. That’s some section, that section 1321.

Cannon covered this issue in more detail in a Wall Street Journal op-ed  last month, co-authored with Jonathan Adler, explaining how the premium assistance glitch could serve to undermine the entire law:

The law encourages states to create health-insurance exchanges, but it permits Washington to create them if states decline. So far, only 17 states have passed legislation to create an exchange.

This is where the glitch comes in: ObamaCare authorizes premium assistance in state-run exchanges (Section 1311) but not federal ones (Section 1321). In other words, states that refuse to create an exchange can block much of ObamaCare’s spending and practically force Congress to reopen the law for revisions.

The Obama administration wants to avoid that legislative debacle, so this summer it proposed an IRS rule to offer premium assistance in all exchanges “whether established under section 1311 or 1321.” On Nov. 17 the IRS will hold a public hearing on that proposal. According to a Treasury Department spokeswoman, the administration is “confident” that offering premium assistance where Congress has not authorized it “is consistent with the intent of the law and our ability to interpret and implement it.”

Such confidence is misplaced. The text of the law is perfectly clear. And without congressional authorization, the IRS lacks the power to dispense tax credits or spend money.

Oh, Obamacare, you are a disastrous gift that keeps on disastrously giving, in all your rickety, shoddily designed, half-assed glory. Don’t ever change! Just please go away, forever.

How States Can Shut Down Obamacare (Cato Institute Daily Podcast)

Another Obamacare Glitch (Wall Street Journal)

Today’s focus: The tanning tax!

While cobbling together the health care reform bill in 2009-2010, Congresspeople hit upon the idea of slapping a 10 percent excise tax on indoor tanning services. It wasn’t a big piece of the pie, projected to raise a relatively piddling $2.7 billion over 10 years. But the money had to come from somewhere, see, because it turns out that all this free health care is gonna cost an arm and a leg.

The government started collecting the tax in July 2010; it was projected that in the 2011 fiscal year, the feds would pull in a smooth $200 million. But it’s just never that simple, is it? As USA Today reported a few weeks back:

Using an April 2010 Indoor Tanning Association estimate, the IRS initially projected the tax would be due quarterly from roughly 25,000 stand-alone tanning salons, plus spas, health clubs and beauty parlors.

But the inspector general report found that actual tax returns filed for the first three quarters through March 31 averaged just above 10,300.

Tanning tax receipts for that nine-month period totaled $54.4 million, the report found. That was below projections by the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, which had estimated the tax would raise $50 million in the last three months of fiscal year 2010 and $200 million for the full 2011 fiscal year.

So instead of collecting $200 million for the full fiscal year, the IRS had pulled in less than $55 million in the first nine months of the year. (I haven’t yet found a report of the final total for the fiscal year, but let’s assume they didn’t make up the $140 million shortfall in the last three months of the year.)

I checked with John Overstreet, who heads up the Indoor Tanning Association (ITA) in Washington, D.C., for some background on the tax. Overstreet noted that the tanning tax was a fallback position, slipped into the reform package after lawmakers abandoned a proposed excise tax on Botox injections in the face of resistance from pharmaceutical manufacturers and doctors.

“It was really a poster child for how not to make tax policy,” he said. “The tax code was being used to punish one industry for the benefit of another.”

And the new tanning tax has had a negative impact on his industry nationwide: “You can’t increase prices by 10 percent without affecting demand,” he said.

Overstreet says 12 percent of the indoor tanning businesses in Arkansas have folded in the last three years, based on his association’s figuring: In 2008, Arkansas boasted 284 salons; by 2011, that was down to 251. Most of these are small independent operations, and more than half are owned by women, according to ITA.

OK, so that’s maybe a few dozen salons that shut down, give or take, some of which closed before the tax went into effect, so we can’t necessarily attribute the dynamic entirely to the tax. But it’s tough to argue how slapping a 10 percent tax on an industry’s services in the middle of a recession could do anything to help that industry thrive.

To fill out the picture, look at Sun Ergoline in Jonesboro, which manufactures tanning beds. In March 2010, the company told ace reporter Charlie Frago of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette they’d be cutting jobs and reducing hours for other workers due to a decrease in demand for their products, which an Ergoline spokesman attributed to the tanning tax. I’ve contacted the company to ask about how that’s shaped up since the tax went into effect. I’ll update if/when I hear back from them.

Meanwhile, legislation was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives earlier this year to repeal the tanning tax. Arkansas’ own First District Congressman Rick Crawford (R) is a co-sponsor.

Oh, well, that’s your Obamacare, right there, it’s all for the greater good, and after all and as always…there is no bad news.

 Underdone: Tanning tax revenue falls short of estimates (USA Today) 

UPDATE: No sooner had I posted this then I saw this piece on the Daily Caller from John Kartch of Americans for Tax Reform, discussing how the tanning tax and other tax hikes in the health care reform bill are killing jobs. Let’s block quote it!:

There is evidence in the report to suggest that the tanning tax has caused over 1,000 employers to go out of business. For the quarter ending Dec. 31, 2010, there were 10,677 excise tax returns filed with the tanning tax; for the quarter ending March 31, 2011, there were only 9,628.

Makes you wonder how many people lost their jobs, how many business owners closed their doors, how many thousands of extra hours were spent on tax compliance rather than customer service, all because Obama and co. “needed money to make the bill work.”

It DOES make you wonder that! Good point, John Kartch!

Obamacare’s 21 tax hikes are killing jobs (The Daily Caller)

State Insurance Commissioner Jay Bradford issued a tear-stained news release today (PDF) announcing the death of the (unlamented) state exchange, the demise of which he attributes to “legislative opposition” (read: opposition from minority Republican lawmakers).

Oh, but if only Arkansas had had a Democratic governor in the statehouse and Democratic majority in the legislature, who might have forestalled this sad development by selling voters on the urgent need for a state-level health insurance exchange!

Oh, wait…riiiiight.

Anyway, this is the end of an era and now the federal government is going to run the health insurance exchange, maybe? Except that’s how it was going to be all along anyway, for all practical purposes, because the feds would be writing all the regulations and calling the shots, really, and no one could actually explain just what the difference between a state-level exchange and a federal exchange might be. And Arkansas can probably take over the exchange later, right? There is no bad news, etc. 

Meanwhile, Arkansas Democrats are weeping crocodile tears, as they think this development gives them a bully club to use against GOP candidates in next year’s campaigns. That is something they seriously appear to believe, because apparently Arkansas voters care very deeply whether the Obamacare exchange is administered by the federal government or state government, yes? It is a known fact that the 2012 election will turn on this very question, and no other.

I have casually spoken to several GOP lawmakers, asking if they are worried about this devastating line of attack. I found that a small percentage are worried about that. I estimate it as somewhere in the neighborhood of zero percent are worried about that.

Cue inevitable lament from superannuated liberal newspaper columnist about how the politicization of this issue by Republican lawmakers is utterly unconscionable, while the politicization of this issue on the part of Gov. Mike Beebe is the very mark of a savvy master straddler. Normally John Brummett would write that piece, but a couple of months back he retreated behind the walls of Fort Hussman. No one’s heard from him since.

Oh, Max Brantley at the Arkansas Times is worked up over this, too, with his customary mix of subtlety and carefully considered insight. He attributes the Republican opposition to Obamacare to “racism,” because that is an explanation that makes sense. Go read his post and then call 911, because, seriously, I’m pretty sure he’s having an aneurysm.

UPDATE: More from The Tolbert Report, including responses from GOP Minority Leader Rep. John Burris and Lt. Gov. Mark Darr. Jason also gets a couple of rogue Democratic lawmakers, Rep. James McLean and Rep. Nate Steel, on the record talking trash about setting up the exchange.

So wait, does that mean opposing the health care exchange is the bipartisan position, and supporting it is now the rigid partisan position? Sounds about right, but don’t tell Democratic-lockstep blogger and noted ridiculous person Michael Cook.

State Health Insurance Exchange ‘Quashed’ (Talk Business)

What we’ve seen thus far has not presented a strong case for the efficacy of stimulus measures. For instance, on Tuesday we looked at the shortcomings of U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) stimulus funding, which DOE’s own inspector general declared to be “less than optimal” in recent Congressional testimony.

And the hits, they just keep on coming!

In 2010, the Arkansas Dept. of Workforce Services (DWS) received $4.8 million in stimulus funding from the U.S. Dept. of Labor (DOL) Employment and Training Administration (ETA), part of a $500 million green jobs package, to establish the Arkansas Energy Sector Partnership (AESP).

The AESP was pitched as a career development program to “train Arkansans in energy-efficient building, construction and retrofitting; renewable electric power; and energy-efficiency assessment,” as a May 2010 news release from DWS explains.

Eighteen months later, the program’s reported progress in Arkansas offers little reason to celebrate. According to the state’s report on stimulus progress (PDF), that program has spent more than $2.72 million (rougly 46 percent of the total) in order to create a reported 7.07 jobs as of the end of September.

By the Numbers

Worse yet, the program appears to be falling short in enrolling trainees. Look at the numbers, according to the DOL Inspector General report issued at the end of September (PDF). This is from page 19 of the IG’s report:

• At its launch, the AESP aimed to recruit a proposed 2,800 Arkansans for training in the program.
• However, as of June 30, 2011, only 538 were enrolled in the training program statewide.
• The AESP’s target was that 1,792 Arkansans would  complete the program—as of June 30, only 177 (less than 10 percent of the target) had completed training.
• The AESP’s target is to have 1,523 Arkansans employed in green jobs as a result of this program. As of June 30, only 6 were reported to be employed, with an additional 5 listed as having “entered in training-related employment.”

(Those numbers in the DOL report are from June 30. I’ve requested updated numbers from DWS to determine if there has been additional progress since. UPDATE: DWS provided revised numbers for their counts, which I’ve included after the jump.)

DOL Inspector General: “Limited Performance Targets Achieved”

Based on my reading, this doesn’t look like a failure on the part of DWS, which has farmed out the funds in grants to a variety of two- and four-year colleges and non-profits. (There are plenty of good reasons to beat up on DWS—I can think of, oh, maybe 161 million of ‘em. This just probably isn’t one of them.)

In fact, the problems with the implementation of this training program in Arkansas are the same problems the program has nationwide, according to the DOL.

The IG’s report I referenced above (PDF) assesses the program’s green jobs spending, and their conclusion is not reassuring, based on the title alone: “Recovery Act: Slow Pace Placing Workers into Jobs Jeopardizes Employment Goals of the Green Jobs Program.”

What does the IG conclude? That the overall green jobs program spearheaded by the ETA is a failure, and that what money has not been spent should be returned:

However, with 61 percent of the training grant periods elapsed and only 10 percent of participants entered employment, there is no evidence that grantees will effectively use the funds and deliver targeted employment outcomes by the end of the grant periods….

We recommend that the Assistant Secretary for Employment and Training evaluate the Green Jobs program; and in so doing, obtain an estimate of funds each grantee will realistically spend given the current demand for green job-related skills and the job market for green jobs. Any of the remaining $327.3 million of funds determined not to be needed should be recouped as soon as practicable and to the extent permitted by law so they can be available for other purposes. (Emphasis added)

In explaining the need for economic stimulus funding three years ago, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers emphasized that it should be “timely, targeted and temporary.“  At the very least, the green jobs training program has failed the “timely” part of that equation. This New York Times piece offers more on the shortcomings of green jobs training, and this NYT report from August highlights how the promise of the green economy hasn’t delivered.

So let’s chalk up another failure for the twin chimeras of stimulus spending and green jobs. Turns out they’re less than optimal.

Number of Green Jobs Fails To Live Up to Promises (New York Times)

Inspector General: Green Jobs Program Falls Short, Should Return Funds (New York Times)

Recovery Act: Slow Pace Placing Workers into Jobs Jeopardizes Employment Goals of the Green Jobs Program (Report from U.S. Department of Labor Inspector General; PDF)

UPDATE: I got a response from DWS communications director Kimberly Friedman, who notes some adjustments to the numbers reported above. One thing that jumps out is that DWS appears to have changed the originally proposed number of enrollees downward from the initial proposed target of 2,800. The stated goal, according to Friedman’s statement below, is now 2,240. So sometime between launching the program and now, they reduced their target by 20 percent.

One noteworthy point that Friedman emphasizes is that there’s a lag time in reporting when they submit results to DOL, which may help to account for some disparity in the numbers. (It’s not the first time we’ve seen a gulf between numbers reported by the state and numbers reported by the Dept. of Labor). It still doesn’t solve the problem of the need for “timeliness” in launching stimulus programs, but that’s another argument for another day.

I’m including Friedman’s statement in its entirety below:

The U.S. Department of Labor awarded Arkansas $4,866,479 to work with two-year colleges and apprenticeship programs in developing and implementing energy efficiency training. The amount of funds expended through Oct. 31, 2011, is $2,348,077.42.  (This is the most current figure we have.)

Arkansas received its funding in March of 2010. In turn, the Arkansas Energy Sector Partnership reviewed proposals from two-year colleges and apprenticeship programs to offer energy efficiency training. Sub-award grants were awarded to the two-year colleges and apprenticeship programs beginning in the summer of 2010, concluding in the fall of 2010. After working with industry to determine training needs, the two-year colleges and apprenticeship programs then developed curriculum, trained instructors, purchased equipment and enrolled students. The program curriculums and training programs started in February 2011, with more beginning this semester.

The AESP course catalogue can be found [here]. It includes 92 courses at two-year colleges and six specialized trainings through apprenticeship.

The AESP goal is to have 2,240 participants enter training. As of today, 1,230 have enrolled in training, which is 54.9 percent of the enrolled in training goal. AESP anticipates that the two-year colleges and the Arkansas Apprenticeship Coalition will meet the AESP training goals.

Since training began in February 2011, many participants have not yet completed training.  To date, at least 456 participants are employed, which is 30 percent of our entered employment goal.  The number of people employed is likely much higher.

The two-year colleges and apprenticeship programs conduct the training and track employment outcomes. They then enter the data into a U.S. Department of Labor tracking system that DOL made available in December 2010.  A lag time often exists between when a two-year college or apprenticeship program completes training and tracks employment and when the information is entered into the DOL data tracking system. We are currently providing technical assistance visits to each two-year college and the Apprenticeship Coalition to assist them with using the DOL data tracking system.  We have completed eight visits in the past month and will complete the remainder by mid-January, with the overwhelming majority of technical assistance visits completed by the end of 2011.

AESP anticipates that the two-year colleges and Apprenticeship Coalition will meet all of the AESP goals before the completion of the grant. The grant ends at the end of January 2013, which is more than a year from now.

AESP also had early success with a small pilot program in cooperation with Entergy’s energy efficiency program last semester. Nineteen job-seeking participants who participated in the pilot, or 82 percent, are employed after the program. One participant received $1.50 more an hour over the usual starting wage due to the training. AESP is continuing that training this semester.

Also, [here] is a local news story that explains the mobile unit that apprenticeship programs are using to train participants around the state. The Apprenticeship Mobile Unit has been featured by DOL nationally and in national trade publications.

Let’s return to those halcyon days of 2009. Things were simpler then, weren’t they? Our nation’s city centers weren’t occupied; Conan O’Brien was kicking off what I’m sure will be a multi-decade run hosting the iconic “Tonight Show”; and a brash young president took office and restored our sense of hope by crushing the shit out of a bunch of cars.

You recall Cash for Clunkers, right? The Washington Post Wonkblog’s Brad Plumer points us to this handy study that provides the last word on that dandy little program, which was part of the 2009 economic stimulus package. That last word: Failure.

Or as Plumer concludes with a touch more charity, “Even if the program did have some benefits, it’s hard to argue that it was an efficient way to dole out cash.”

The Cash for Clunkers Scam

The program paid out up to $4,500 to consumers who traded in an old gas guzzler in favor of a newer, shinier, more efficient vehicle. The “clunkers,” often just a few years old, were scrapped. (A YouTube genre of perfectly good vehicles being destroyed arose in response.).

In Arkansas, more than 5,400 vehicles were traded in and subsequently destroyed, according to this Detroit News interactive map that tells you how the program performed in each state. Neat!

Skepticism of the program in 2009 was largely drowned out by credulous reports like this, from one Little Rock TV news outfit, or by interviews with auto dealers who were excitedly anticipating a bump in sales. We were so much more innocent in those times.

Meanwhile, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, in a fit of euphoria, declared Cash for Clunkers “wildly successful” because it ran out of money much more quickly than anticipated. (Rule: “Popular” is not the same thing as “successful,” a distinction too frequently overlooked by both the right and the left.)

But the program mostly succeeded in getting people who planned to buy a new vehicle anyway to shift their consumption a few months earlier, in order to take advantage of the federal subsidy, the analysis by Resources for the Future (PDF) found. Little lasting stimulus effect was seen.

More Plumer:

So were the naysayers right? It seems so. A newly updated analysis from economists at Resources for the Future finds that the actual benefits of the program were pretty meager. The paper examined U.S. car sales using trends in Canada as a control group, and estimated that about 45 percent of cash-for-clunker vouchers went to consumers who would have bought new cars anyway. In the end, the program boosted U.S. vehicle sales by just 360,000 in July and August of 2009 and provided no stimulus thereafter. What’s more, the program increased average fuel economy in the United States by just 0.65 miles per gallon.

Lessons Learned

Why pick at the scab of this relatively small ($3 billion, which in today’s world is “relatively small”) program that ended two years ago? Here’s why, Jack:

1) Since we again find ourselves in the grip of stimulus-mania—this time dressed up as the “American Jobs Act”—it’s worth revisiting the failures of yesteryear to ensure they’re not repeated. And while there’s no “Cash for Clunkers” component in the recent jobs proposal, so far as I’ve seen, let’s be on guard for another soft-soap sales job of this type.

2) Autos weren’t the only “clunkers” subject to subsidies, rebates and replacement under the 2009 stimulus package—it was just the splashiest and most appallingly wasteful example. The Arkansas Energy Star State Appliance Rebate Program, for instance, distributed $2.74 million in rebates over an eight month period in 2010 to encourage purchases of new energy efficient refrigerators, washers and dryers, water heaters and so forth.

The old appliances? They were recycled. Subsidizing the destruction of perfectly good assets is a sad aim for government policy, though you can sell anything these days if you wrap it in the righteous mantle of “green energy.”

You can read the full study here (PDF). I tried to work my way through it but had to bail out when I hit this:

I was told there would be no math.

Was ‘Cash for Clunkers’ a Clunker? (Washington Post/Ezra Klein’s Wonkblog)

Video clip courtesy of The Tolbert Report

Oh, Andrew Breitbart, you madcap right-wing provocateur! The Americans for Prosperity Arkansas team and KARN Radio welcomed Breitbart, publisher of the Breitbart.com family of news sites and relentless stirrer-up-of-shit, to North Little Rock today for a speech focusing on the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement.

Breitbart kicked off his lunch speech to roughly 100 people with the frank admission that he’s “a biased journalist” and “completely unobjective.” He then wasted no time in laying out his case against the Occupy movement, which in various cities nationwide has included incidents of violence, rape, anti-Semitism and, uh, pubic lice (checks notes…yep, that’s what he said). Breitbart maintains a running “rap sheet” of OWS incidents on his Big Government site.

“This is Woodstock on violent and crazy steroids,” declared Breitbart, who’s also called for New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to shut down the Zucotti Park demonstration, the movement’s ground zero, as a public safety threat.

Breitbart presents the OWS movement in operatic and hellish terms, much at odds with the coverage given the movement elsewhere. (By comparison, the Occupy Little Rock encampment has so far been about as edgy and provocative as a convocation of youth pastors.)

But if there’s one thing that gets Breitbart more exercised than “the institutional left,” it’s what he describes as the double standard compared to how the Tea Party has been covered.

“[The Tea Party was] supposed to be violent, according to the Department of Homeland Security,” Breitbart said. “And we were supposed to be racist, but Herman Cain is the Tea Party frontrunner.” His goal: “I want to show the world who these people are, who the institutional left is.”

Jason Tolbert of the esteemed Tolbert Report, who kindly provided the video clip above, was also on hand and talked to Breitbart about the sexual harassment charges against GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain. Go check out his post.

#OccupyWall Street: The Rap Sheet, So Far (Big Government) 

Breitbart to Cain: Put Your Cards on the Table (The Tolbert Report)