Photo: Flickr/coltera

• Municipalities are contracting out various public services like libraries and parking enforcement to private enterprises, and the Washington Post outlines some of the challenges of this approach. Unfortunately, the Post inaccurately describes this as privatization, which is when government divests itself entirely from a current function. Contracting the function while maintaining ultimate responsibility for its provision is simply outsourcing.
• Stephen Smith points out that when it comes to “privatization” of government parking facilities, “the ‘owners’ are barely even allowed to set their own prices, nevermind decide to use their land for, *gasp* something other than parking.”
• Adam at PlayNice.ly looks into what’s required to establish a merchant account for credit card processing. Smashing Magazine covers the same ground and suggests a few payment processors. Fundraisers should take special note of Adam’s warnings about PayPal, which may impose long-run costs hidden by its easy setup.
• The reliably progressive StreetsBlog argues that it would be a mistake to cut federal funding for bike paths and rail transit, which it argues are cost-effective. But even if a program is cost-effective, does that mean the federal government ought to spend money on it?
• Last but not least, Oregon lawmakers rick-roll the legislature:

  

In a crowded field of 2011 pranks that includes elaborate videos and even browser extensions, LinkedIn’s prank is perhaps the subtlest and thus the funniest. They added historical figures and fictional characters to their “people you may know” tool, including Albert Einstein, Robin Hood (“Activist/ Chief Fundraiser at Nottingham”) and J. R. R. Tolkien. Unfortunately, you can’t actually add these people to your network, but it’s a fun gesture nonetheless.

In one scene, a half-dozen “Green Police” officers surround a man who fails to sort his garbage correctly. Government agents also arrest homeowners for “offenses” like using unapproved light bulbs and running hot-tubs at impermissible temperatures. Later, agents shut down a highway to search cars for environmentally-unfriendly contraband. This is perhaps the best, and funniest, argument I’ve seen against the increasingly intrusive green agenda.

Yet the ad turns out to be for carmaker Audi and — implausibly enough — in support of the green agenda. At the end, an Audi driver bypasses the highway checkpoint because his car meets with government approval, and a tagline is superimposed: “Green has never felt so right.” Audi admits in a press release that the ad is tongue-in-cheek, yet they also praise the work of the “real Green Police,” the nanny-state bureaucrats around the world who enforce environmental pieties.

If Audi intended to draw on consumer sympathy for green technology to drive car sales, this ad missed the mark. What viewers are sure to remember are the images of the government devoting tremendous resources to impose arbitrary environmental rules on ordinary Americans. These images are sure to resonate all the more since the ad isn’t really so far-fetched: not only are there real “green police,” the federal government is considering new measures to enforce its intrusive emissions regulations. As one friend quipped, “I have never been so moved not to recycle.”