• 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.

Government is growing ever more intrusive and arrogant, George Will argues in an important new article:

The original constitutional structure has, [law professor Elizabeth Price Foley] says, been inverted: Citizens are required to convince the courts that laws restricting liberty are “irrational”; government should be required to articulate justifications for limiting liberty. The Founders’ goal — in John Adams’s formulation, a nation of “laws, and not of men” — has, Foley believes, “been taken much too far.”

The courts, Will concludes, “incit[e] governmental arrogance by deferring to it. So judicial deference often is dereliction of judicial duty.”

While Will describes a case at the local level, this trend is particularly worrisome at the federal level, where judges have assented to the growth of an extra-constitutional administrative state. Administrative agencies, Gary Lawson ably explains, justify their broad, unchecked powers using a dubious “rationality” argument. And “constitutional law buffs know that ‘rationality’–so-called rational basis review–is code for ‘the government wins.’”

Lawson sums it up colorfully: “When the basic institutions of modern administrative governance are at stake, the Court closes ranks and hurls the constitutional text into the Potomac River.”

This isn’t to say that we need “conservative activist judges” to undo the damage. Instead, we need judges who recognize the importance of the Constitution and America’s first principles. In their decisions, former attorney general Ed Meese insists, jurists should recognize “the importance of grounding their decisions on the bedrock of original understanding instead of the shifting sands of public or personal opinion.”

At a time when Congress is trying to cut federal spending, political reporters often confuse two homophones and write “reign in spending” instead of “rein in spending.”

Here’s a visual guide to help writers distinguish the two.

A monarch reigns in one of these:

Photo: Wikimedia/​Alexandr Synytsa

An equestrian reins in one of these:

Photo: Flickr/​Katford

• Loren McDonald asks if e-mail marketers are sending too many messages and offers some ways you can tell if you’re over-sending.
• Target Analytics has released its 2011 index of non-profit fundrasing performance, based on 83 organizations. Roger Craver wants to know what these organizations’ direct marketers are doing wrong.
• You thought America had a real estate bubble? China’s central planners have built whole cities that now lie empty. Via Tim Cavanaugh.
• Dan Mitchell passes on a slightly bawdy joke about unions.
• Last but not least, Pierre LeBrun argues that Alex Ovechkin’s diminished numbers this year reflect a player newly committed to team victory over personal success. The Capitals, perhaps not coincidentally, have clinched the Southeast division for the fourth straight year.

Like many urban problems, the decline of walkable, livable urban centers can be traced to government intervention. In *Triumph of the City, *Ed Glaeser argues that restrictive zoning regulations served only to distort markets, artificially limit density and make dense areas unaffordable.

In a new article for Cato Ubound, Donald Shoup argues that minimum parking requirements—which require developers to build a certain number of off-street parking spaces—have promoted auto-oriented urban design over denser, more walkable forms:

First, parking requirements prevent infill redevelopment on small lots, where fitting both a new building and the required parking is difficult and expensive. Second, parking requirements prevent new uses for many older buildings that lack the parking spaces required for the new uses…

Removing a parking requirement is not the same, however, as restricting parking or putting the city on a parking diet. Rather, parking requirements force-feed the city with parking spaces, and removing a parking requirement simply stops the force-feeding. Ceasing to require off-street parking gives businesses the freedom to provide as much or as little parking as they like. Cities can remove minimum requirements without imposing maximum limits, and opposition to parking limits should not be confused with support for minimum requirements. Minimum parking requirements may be our most disastrous experiment ever in social engineering, and ceasing to require off-street parking is not social engineering.

Over at Market Urbanism, Stephen Smith points to a study on how parking minimums distort builders’ decisions. The study, Smith says, finds “that at least half of all non-commercial properties have more parking than they would otherwise choose, and that the excess can oftentimes be quite large.”