Anonymous asked: Space Exploration!
I am a huge fan of space exploration. The challenge in using it for a government good example is there hasn’t been a clear ROI for the US yet, or at least I am still looking for some concrete numbers on the ROI of the research and whatnot. If you have any sources that you can point me to, I would be forever grateful!
Anonymous asked: Here in NYC, I'd nominate 311 as an example of Government Good.
Agreed! But I am only doing Federal government programs. But as a New Yorker, man I love 311.
voteamerica2012 asked: Hat tip to the Government where and when it does what the Founding Fathers envisioned--keep up the good work! Best Wishes for a Happy New Year!
Thank you! Just read “Where does the money go” about the US Budget - I strongly recommend it for everyone - and it gave me some really good ideas. Looking forward to some new posts in the new year!
Winter’s here and it’s time to ski! What’s one of the largest dangers facing skiers today? Avalanches! Terrifying! Deadly! They can strike anywhere and at any time. And, in these, the US Government is here to help.
Via the US National Forest Service, the US Government maintains the National Avalanche Center, an awareness and monitoring system to warn skiers throughout the US if there is an avalanche risk where they are thinking of skiing. They’re doing some seriously cool stuff. In collaboration with the Swiss, and the Cold Regions Research And Engineering Laboratory, they’re developing the SnowMicroPen, a sweet weird high tech instrument that probes within the snow and measures it in 250 different ways each millimeter. That’s pretty awesome.
Then there’s research. In partnership with Montana State University and the Swiss again (we seem to get along well with the Swiss when it comes to avalanches), the NAC is working on tackling problems of measuring the variability of the snowpack at several scales. They are also researching shear quality and whether tracking it can help improve test results and predictions. They’re helping with a project that is focused on analyzing faceting - or crystallization, and whether weak facets adjacent to hard crusts creates avalanche conditions. It also runs models on data collected at its avalanche monitoring locations and runs them against avalanche records to make sure that the predictions are accurate.1
So that’s all pretty awesome. But it goes further. The thing about avalanche monitoring is it needs to be coordinated. There’s the Forestry service, but there are also tons of individual, private avalanche monitoring systems. The US Government publishes and maintains standards so that all of the systems work in the same way, and are comprehensible to skiers. It works with the American Avalanche Association to make a directory of all the Avalanche centers across the US - from Alaska to New Hampshire. This is available at Avalanche.org. It works with these parties as well to maintain the North American Public Avalanche Danger Scale, to make sure everyone knows what the various warnings mean and that they are standardized.2
So, then, of course, there is cooperation with other countries. For what American ski bunny doesn’t occasionally want to go to Canada and have a run? And what good would it do if you got there and you couldn’t understand the avalanche warning systems and got yourself killed? Beginning this winter, America and Canada collaborated on an improved avalanche monitoring and unified warning system to normalize the two systems. This is an improved system over the last one, which issued warnings, but did not communicate other important factors such as the likelihood of triggering an avalanche and how big it may be. They spent five years developing and testing the new systen - the US Forest Service, the Colorado Avalanche Center, the Canadian Avalanche Center and Parks Canada.3
Thirty six people died in avalanches in the US in the winter of 2007-2008, with 33 of the fatalities involving skiers, backpackers, snowmobilers, etc. The government continually works to minimize this number. It works with private and other public organizations, augmenting and coordinating their efforts but not duplicating them. It’s a pretty rad model of the government stepping in where needed. It provides funding to some non-profit avalanche centers in states like Colorado and Utah, and also maintains its own avalanche center coordinated out of Idaho.4 It applies the money where most efficient, and does only what it needs to do to keep the citizenry safe. Awesome.
Anonymous asked: Regarding the national parks as a government good topic, I generally agree with a strong footnote. The user fees that have been enacted since the late '90's are turning the national parks into the playgrounds of the rich. If the parks have public value, they should be commonly accessible to the public (not that the we all should have un-fettered access to run wildly about, but that we should all have the a common opportunity to access). Onymously @denmermr
I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and I think examples like this are still worthwhile, as they sort of illustrate the differences between when good government applied to something and when it didn’t.
do-you-get-it-now asked: Hey love this idea. My (first) two cents: I think the National Parks are an incredible example of government done right. Had a chance to see a few of them, but would love to hit them all eventually.
The national parks are DEFINITELY on the list. I have actually bought a book about the history of ‘em, so I wanted to read that first. But my book queue is getting away from me. But soon!
In 1912 the HMS Titanic sunk in the North Atlantic on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England to New York City. More than 1,500 people died, making it one of the worst maritime disasters in peacetime history. The Titanic was equipped with an emergency radio, with which it broadcast a distress call continuously during its slow sinking. The first ship to arrive was the Carpathia, approximately four hours later. Afterward, it was discovered that the USS Californian was nearby, but its radio had been turned off, as the ship had stopped for the night. The knowledge of this missed opportunity gave rise to the Radio Act of 1912, the first US Governmental law giving the US Government the authority to regulate the wireless spectrum, and require that all vessels must continuously listen for distress signals, and that radio stations must be licensed.[1] The Radio Act of 1912 was the precursor to the Radio Act of 1927, which gave birth to the US Radio Commission, the precursor to today’s Federal Communications Commission, or FCC.[2] The first licensed radio station in the United States was KDKA in Pittsburgh, PA, receiving its license under the auspices of the Radio Act of 1912 in 1920. Other stations had operated earlier - most notably KCBS in San Francisco, in 1909, and 9XM (now WHA) in Madison, WI, which operated under a US Experimental License.[3]
From these beginnings, the FCC has continually managed the electromagnetic spectrum on behalf of the people of the United States. The wireless spectrum is a finite resource - there are only so many frequencies that can be broadcast within. In order to ensure that radio stations do not overlap, and, thus, are both unintelligible, the spectrum must be managed to ensure that radio stations do not interfere with one another. The US Government manages this process in the United States, issuing licenses via the FCC and managing the spectrum for all possible uses via the National Telecommunications And Information Administration, the NTIA and its Office of Spectrum Management.[4]
This job has become enormously complicated as technology progresses. What started as a simple system to ensure that radio stations don’t interfere with one another now has to contend with a bewildering array of uses for the wireless spectrum: AM Radio. FM Radio. Satellite Radio. Television. Microwave ovens. Cordless phones. Garage door openers. Mobile phones. Radio astronomy. The US Military. GPS. Wi-fi. WIMAX. NASA’s communication with its space stations. Satellite communications. Airplane communications. Ground control. The number of uses of the wireless spectrum has grown enormously, and managing the bandwidth has become extraordinarily complex. Additionally, the US Government must coordinate with neighboring governments to ensure that all of these devices work well near our borders and do not interfere with devices on the other side of the border. This is done through coordination with governing bodies such as the Organization of American States (via the IATC)[5] and the United Nations, via the International Telecommunications Union Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R), which maintains a worldwide database of all wireless frequencies and their uses.[6]
It’s a monumental task, and requires constant, active management. The migration from standard, analog television broadcasting to digital HD television is one example. The old analog television standard used a very large chunk of the radio spectrum, especially given all of the new uses humanity had invented for it. In migrating to digital, the old, analog spectrum could be freed up, and licensed out once again for new uses. It was a hellaciously complicated task, taking decades. Each television station was given a digital station, and they were required to broadcast on both frequencies for several years before finally making the switch, under Barack Obama’s administration, to pure digital. Additionally, coupons were sent out to millions of Americans allowing for the purchase of a convertor box to allow their older, outdated equipment to work with the new digital channels.[7] The newly-freed up spectrum was then auctioned off, raising over $16 billion, and more than paying for the entire transition.[8]
Debate has raged continually through the years about the best way for the Federal Government to manage the wireless spectrum, and the FCC continually experiments with different, more productive ways to manage the spectrum. In the old days, licenses were applied for and granted, before the FCC moved over to an auction-based model. In 1985 the FCC opened up the “ISM Band” (industrial, scientific and medical) frequencies for unlicensed use of many devices, allowing for free experimentation and development of devices such as Microwave Ovens, Wi-Fi, wireless local area networks, cordless phones and bluetooth. Today, the FCC is experimenting with an industry coalition on the intelligent, software-based dynamic management of the frequencies known as “white spaces,” allowing for even more capacity.[9]
Today, there are over 320 million mobile phones in the US. 300 million microwave ovens. 13,000 radio stations. 220 million television sets. A bewildering array of radio telescopes, communication satellites, bluetooth headsets, garage door openers, etc. And, to quote Steve Jobs, “it all just works.” We don’t have to think about it. The government handles it for us.
Notes:
[1] http://earlyradiohistory.us/1912act.htm
[2] http://www.cybertelecom.org/notes/history_wireless.htm
[3] http://jeff560.tripod.com/first.html
[4] http://www.ntia.doc.gov/legacy/osmhome/osmhome.html
[6] http://www.itu.int/ITU-R/terrestrial/pub-reg/faq/index.html
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DTV_transition_in_the_United_States
[8] http://www.rcrwireless.com/ARTICLE/20080321/SUB/594478393/700-mhz-auction-ends
[9] http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/hardware/white-space.ars/1
Editor’s note: I admit that this entry, while not a joke, is slightly off-topic for this blog. It was, however, Alaska day last week and I grew up there. So I figure it’s worth a look and worth reminding people Alaska is more than Sarah Palin.
———
One hundred and forty-four years ago this week, a company of American dignitaries, diplomats and 250 soldiers arrived at Fort Sitka, in the Russian America. At 3:30 PM on October 18, the soldiers were called to “present arms”, a salute was fired, and the Russian flag began to be lowered off of the Governor’s house at Castle Hill. The flag stuck. A soldier was sent up to untangle it. The soldier failed. Another soldier was sent up, and a third. Finally the flag was freed and lowered. Another salute was fired, this time with the Russian soldiers leading the way, and the American flag was hoisted in its place. The Russian captain then said to the American captain, “by authority from his Majesty the Emperor of Russia, I transfer to the United States the Territory of Alaska.”* The Alaska purchase, first agreed to eight months earlier and often referred to as “Seward’s Folly,” was complete.†
Alaska was purchased from Russia for $7,200,000. With Alaska being nearly 600,000 square miles, this worked out to about 1.8 cents an acre. This price was possible because Russia feared losing Russian America - primarily Alaska but including settlements as far south as Hawaii and California. The Russian government was in a tight financial situation, and had recently fought the Crimean War with the British. With the British now colonizing land ever-closer to Russian America in British Columbia, there was a concern in the Russian Government that if they did not sell Russian Americas, the British would ultimately annex them. Thus, they figured, it was better to be paid for the loss, shore up their finances, and, if possible, put a buffer - The United States - between Russia and their recent enemy. Playing it safe, in 1859 the Russians approached both the US and England about purchasing Alaska. The British expressed indifference, and with US in the middle of the Civil war, it was not in any position to undertake such a large purchase. The Russians re-entered negotiations with the US following the Civil War in 1867‡. The Russian Foreign Minister to the United States, Eduard De Stoeckl, and the US Secretary of State, William Seward, sealed the deal in an all night session on March 30, 1867.
Contrary to popular belief, reaction to the purchase was generally positive at the time, and many Americans saw the potential for riches from Alaska . There was a minority, of course, who considered the purchase a waste of money, and believed that the colony was so vast it would take generations to ever sufficiently populate it. Concerns were also expressed about the native population - America was already having difficulties with the native populations of the continental US, and legitimate concerns were expressed about exacerbating the problem. The senate was called into a special session to approve the treaty. Many republicans opposed the purchase, dubbing it “Seward’s Folly,” although their opposition appeared to be more rooted in their hostility to Presiden Johnson than the merits of the treaty. Nonetheless, the senate approved the purchase by a vote of 37-2.§
Less than 20 years later, an American prospector named George Cammack and his native family and friends discovered gold on Bonanza creek in the Yukon territories. News reached the United states by 1887 in the shadow of the bank failures and recessions of the 1880’s. When the first successful prospectors returned to San Francisco and Seattle from the Klondike it set off a massive stampede of prospectors to Alaska. Over 100,000 people set off for Alaska, though only 40,000 ever made it, with many of them starting businesses supplying the prospectors along the way. Alaska’s population, over the course of the gold rush, grew from 40,000 to 240,000 people, and Seattle, Portland and Vancouver experienced significant growth as a result as well. A total of 860,000 pounds of gold were mined in the Klondike - today worth over $22 Billion. Even using the most liberal translation of what $7.2 million in 1867 is worth today, the Klondike Gold Rush, on its own, more than paid for the purchase of Alaska, several times over‖.
And then there are the other massive resources discoveries that have happened in Alaska since: the discovery of gold elsewhere in Alaska - Nome in 1988 (3.6 million ounces, worth over $5 billion today), north of Fairbanks in 1902 (8 million ounces by 1910). Mineral discoveries continue to be made, with For Knox operating near Fairbanks, producing over 10 tons of gold a year, and the Pebble Mine being discovered in the 1980’s, estimated to contain over $300 billion worth of minerals.¶ The Talon Mine, near Livengood, Alaska, is estimated to contain over 20.6 million ounces of gold.**
Alaska also proved to be monumentally abundant in fish, now leading the nation with the value of its commercial catch, abundant in salmon, crab, shrimp, halibut herring and cod.† Lumber also proved to be of great importance.
And then there was oil. Oil was discovered by the Americans in northern Alaska as early as 1919‡‡. In 2009, the US Geological Survey estimated that potentially as much as 22% of the world’s oil and natural gas could be located beneath the Arctic. Prudhoe Bay on Alaska’s North Slope has proven to be the highest yielding oil field in the United States, producing about 400,000 barrels of oil a day, and as much as 2 million a day in the 1970’s. Prudhoe bay originally contained more than 25 billion barrels of oil, more than doubling that of the next largest field in the US.‖‖
Alaska became a state in 1959. Despite concerns over how the state would finance itself, with a low population and, thus, a low tax base, the state has prospered since, thanks to its rich natural resources. Despite giving out cash to every alaskan since 1982, today the state sits on a cash surplus in excess of $40 billion thanks to its oil reserves and wise investing - the fund had a return in excess of 20% in 2011. ¶¶
The management of the state of Alaska before and since statehood is not without controversy. Much of the state - including the two largest tracts of undisturbed land in the United States - remains under federal ownership and management. Differences of opinion on the exploitation of Alaska’s natural resources abound. Commercial exploitation often ran rampant, such as the “Alaska Syndicate,” a monopolistic effort by JP Morgan and Simon Guggenheim to exploit the region’s resources. Many species were overfished and over-hunted. Evironmental damage abounded - open pit mining is common in Alaska. The battle over the ability to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge rages on.
Nonetheless, the financial return on investment alone is extraordinary. Additionally, Alaska has proven valuable in the national defense, assisting in the lend-lease supply lines to Russia and the defense of America against Japan during World War II and a valuable asset during the Cold War.
The purchase of Alaska is, today, widely regarded as a spectacular move for the United States by its government. No real opposition exists today, nor are there any widely-held beliefs that the purchase was a mistake. Alaska generally avoided most of the problems with relations with the native population that the rest of the country experienced, through the passing of the Alaska Land Claims Settlement Act. Over 148 million acres of land (45% of the state) and nearly a billion dollars cash was repatriated to ownership by the natives in the form of corporations, paying out dividends to all native Alaskans to this day***. In turn, the natives legally abrogated their claims to the land. No serious dissent exists today around the settlement. Not even the Alaskan Independence Party, which stands for the eventual independence of Alaska from the United States disputes the wisdom of the purchase.
There have been some arguments that the purchase of Alaska was of only nominal benefit for the US Government - that the amount returned to the US Treasury was only slightly more than spent, and came at a later date†††. David Barker of the University of Iowa argues that much of the economic activity that took place in Alaska would have taken place anyway, thus the return on investment to the global economy was nominal. These arguments strike me as missing the point, at least in terms of our government doing good for its citizens. Indeed, they call out an opposite finding, in my mind: all of this economy and wealth generation would have happened anyway, and it would have happened to people other than Americans. For just over $7 million, the US in effect claimed a massive amount of economic activity for its people, not its own government coffers. The fish that were caught and sold were sold by Americans, to Americans. The oil revenues were recouped by American citizens and the Alaskan government, now run by Americans. In terms of spending a small amount of money to redirect a large amount of wealth creation to American citizens, the purchase had a staggeringly positive impact.
Copyright law and the balancing of the rights of all parties involved in the creation and consumption of musical works is one of the thorniest and most challenging aspects of good government in a society. Most societies want the creator of a work to be properly compensated, but at the same time, societies view their music as their own - and they want to be able to hear it when they want to, play it live, sing it at parties, and hear it on the radio (and Rdio!). A balance needs to be struck, and ideally it would be a balance struck once, for everyone, ensuring a fair playing field for all.
Ask yourself: why is it that I have to wait for The Beatles to come to iTunes (or Rdio!), and The Beatles have some say over that, but they don’t have a say over when I hear “Hey Jude” on the radio, when I can go see my friend’s band cover “Hey Jude” or when my friend’s band wants to put that cover on their CD? The answer? Compulsory (or statutory) licensing.
Compulsory licensing is the process by which the government, either by law or through a special court, decides the rates at which artists get paid for the performance of their work. This removes the ability of the artists to block a person from listening to their song, or from someone else performing their song, or for someone to play their song on the radio (and awesomely jukeboxes - there’s a compulsory license for jukebox royalties).
It’s not hard to imagine what the world would be like without compulsory licensing, because we can see it in places on the internet. We have the ability to compare and contrast royalty systems that have had the government step in and clean them up and ones that haven’t. Compare, for example, radio to Rdio. Rdio, I should explain before I run this joke out, is an internet music website that allows users to pick and choose what songs they want to hear. And indeed, it is this ability that makes it so that Rdio is not subject to compulsory licensing. This means that Rdio can’t just let you play any old song you want and pay the band a fixed royalty, like regular old radio does. If you call your favorite radio station KSUA, and ask to hear the Beatles, there’s a good chance a DJ will answer and say “sure!” and play it, just like that. There’s nothing stopping them. It’s perfectly legal. And the Beatles get paid. This is because our government has instituted a system to make sure everyone’s needs are addressed.
If you want to hear The Beatles on Rdio, however, Rdio has to go and find The Beatles and negotiate a deal with them. They have to get their permission and negotiate a royalty rate with them. Given how many bands are out there, and how many different people my own rights to a single song let alone a whole album, this becomes an insanely labor intensive process. And every Rdio competitor (such as Spotify, or iTunes, or Amazon) has to also go and negotiate with all of the bands. It’s monumentally labor intensive, and it makes it so we all end up choosing whichever music service has our favorite bands, and none of them have all the bands.
While the government has not instituted compulsory licensing in interactive music services, they have in many other places. In the past, in some countries, a musician had to get permission and pay a royalty just to perform a song in a theater. Given America’s deep history of jazz, remix, covers, and rendition, you can see how this would be a total mess. Additionally, some artists have made some songs their own, even if someone else had written them and released them previously. Many of us love Carl Perkins version of
“Blue Suede Shoes,” but it’s not inconceivable to imagine, in a world without compulsory licensing, the inability for any of us to purchase or listen to Elvis Presley’s version, should Carl or his estate deny Elvis the rights to publish his version. Compulsory licensing ensures Americans can buy a nice copy of Elvis’s version of “Blue Suede Shoes,” and that Carl Perkins and his estate get paid a fair share.
Just this one point: think of all the songs you love that someone else performed first. Imagine them not being available: Bowie’s “China Girl.” Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah.” Rod Stewart’s “Downtown Train.” No Doubt’s “It’s My Life.” That moody version of “Mad World” at the end of Donnie Darko. The Flaming Lips covering all of “Dark Side of the Moon.” Half of Greg Dulli’s oeuvre. Covers albums! No Metallica’s Garage Days Revisited!
During the dawn of the internet (well, okay, not the dawn, but 1995), the Government took the first steps to bring compulsory licensing to the internet, setting a licensing mechanism for streaming, non-interactive internet radio. This means if you or I wanted to start an internet radio station we could. We could play anything we wanted, and the artist would get paid. The lack of a similar mechanism for interactive internet listening is something we could choose to bemoan, and indeed, I’d love to see it happen. But it does help starkly illustrate just how important, useful and vital compulsory licensing is.
It should also be noted that compulsory licensing isn’t just a set of laws. Courts were formed. Boards set up. People get paid to maintain it. It is a government expense that we pay through our taxes to ensure the music we love is available to all. It effects every one of our lives, and touches upon the jobs of millions of people. It’s also a constant work in progress - the law is constantly revised and tweaked, a constant tug-of-war between the public need and the creator’s interests.
A blog of good things the government has done through the years.
