Michigan Tax Cut Delay Could Cost Jobs
According to an economic model used by the Mackinac Center, delaying a long-planned cut in Michigan's income tax could cost the state nearly 3,000 jobs it would otherwise have.
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Sharks in the Delivery Room
In an editorial today, the Wall Street Journal speaks well of tort reform in Texas. Earlier this year, the paper says, the state limited non-economic damages in lawsuits. Texas Medical Liability Trust, which insures 42 percent of all Texas doctors, says it will lower premiums for malpractice insurance by 12 percent on January 1. Insurance companies that left the state have talked of returning. Nationally, obstetricians have been especially hard hit by rising malpractice costs; in 150 counties in Texas (out of 254) there is no obstetrician. Perhaps some will return if the cost of doing business goes down.
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"This is Socialism."
Illinois Lt. Governor Pat Quinn is sending out his staff to each of the state's 102 counties, asking them to place an advisory question on the Fall 2004 ballot.

The Daily Herald describes the plan this way: "Quinn is hoping for an advisory referendum seeking to double the state income tax for people making more than $250,000 and then splitting that money evenly between schools and homeowners." Homeowners would get a check for roughly $210 each year, while government-owned schools would get another $1.2 billion annually.

While a few board members suggested that this was a move to prod a discussion on school finance, one went straight for the philosophy of progressive taxation. "So basically this a redistribution of wealth. This is socialism," said John Noverini, a Republican from Carpentersville.

It also sounds suspiciously like a vote-buying scheme: "raise taxes on those guys, and you get the goodies."
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Student Debt: Credit Cards and Other Loans

Blogger just ate my words. Don't you just hate it when that happens?

Here's a shorter version of what disappeared into the ether. It's possible to get an abortion as a minor. It's possible, at age 18, to risk one's life as a member of the armed forces. But the attorney general of Minnesota thinks that the state ought to tell a college student what the limit on his credit card should be.

One could argue that credit card issuers prey on young adults, causing them to run up terrible debts for worthless purchases. Of course, one could also argue that the state itself takes students to a similar end through the higher education system, which too often features high fees (driven by too many staff who don't teach) and coursework of dubious quality, financed, on the student's part, by loans that will take years to pay off.
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Self-Defeating Virtue
Oklahoma has produced two of the best advocates of a smaller federal government, JC Watts and Tom Coburn. Both have voluntarily term-limited themselves.

Today's Wall Street Journal had a review of Coburn's book, "Breach of Trust." Coburn, a physician, says "Power is like morphine. It dulls the senses, impairs judgment, and leads politicians to make choices that damage their own character and the machinery of democracy." Coburn retired after a mere three terms, because, as the Journal says, he feared contracting "Potomac Fever."

If the adage "knowledge is power" holds true in legislatures, Coburn's story illustrates one problem facing advocates a more modest government. A longer history in the legislature gives a member more contacts, more history to draw on, a greater knowledge of procedures, and so on. In short, your chances of "getting something done" (good or bad) increases--all other things equal--the longer you are in office.

But the longer you are in office, the greater chance you run of being infected with the Power Virus, and thus harming the cause you meant, at the beginning to advance. (In the view of some newspaper editorialists, this is known as "growing in office.")

So the limited-government movement ought to be self-consciously term-limited. In that situation, though, its legislative adherents will, on the whole, be less skilled in the game than those who would ever increase the size and scope of government.

Those who favor political society, rather than the civil society, as the solution to many ills (real and imagined), which is why they tend to oppose term limits.
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Clowning Around with Tax Dollars
Wisconsin is home to the circus; perhaps that's why some legislators are treating tax dollars as funny money, available to pass out in the name of fun.

The Circus World Museum in Baraboo is bankrupt, and there is a proposal to give it $1.5 million a year in taxpayer money. It's being sold as a smart management move, of course: "We will not allow one of the major tourist attractions in the State of Wisconsin to go under and cost the state as much as $75 million in tourist dollars annually," said four legislators, Republicans all.

Let's see. There are millions of dollars put into the economy by SC Johnson, Harley-Davidson, SC Johnson, and auto manufacturing plants. State dollars for them, too? I've been a tourist in Wisconsin, and have stopped at McDonalds a few times. How about some green for the golden arches?
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Milwaukee Takes a Dump, Again
In Milwaukee, "An estimated 40 million gallons of partially treated sewage was dumped into Lake Michigan" during a heavy rain. This is hardly the first time something like this has happened, though apparently it's fairly unusual in December.
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Smoking Ban Defeated in DC
The right to do something stupid is still alive in Washington DC. And I'm not talking about yet another federal study on, say, why rats have sex.

The DC city council has turned back a proposal to ban smoking in bars and restaurants. Critical to the decision, a moderate Republican who "suddenly discovered her inner Ayn Rand" (What an interesting turn or phrase) and started poking holes in the arguments in favor of the ban.

For example, "When antismoking activists claimed that most bar patrons wanted smoke-free environments, she told them to 'put your money where your mouth is' -- go into business themselves and capitalize on that demand."
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Courage = Raising Taxes?
Colorado's Taxpayer's Bill of Rights (TABOR) is a constitutional amendment that requires governments to get voter approval for any new tax increases. It also limits increases in tax revenue to an amount equal to inflation plus population growth. (Anything above that must be refunded.)

Call it the battle of the think tanks. The Independence Institute sings the praises of TABOR, while The Bell Policy Center wants to undo much of it.

Also giving TABOR a bad rap was Governing magazine, in its February "Performance Report" on the states. So concentrated is the report on making life easier for budget officials that it gives only lip service to the possibility that state budget woes are due to excessive growth in spending. While it concedes that selling voters on program cuts can be hard, the word "courageous" is limited to those who seek to increase tax rates.

More courageous, perhaps, is the elected official who is willing to explain why it may be time for civil society to take back some of the responsibilities now assumed by government. Contrary to what President Bush has said (I'm paraphrasing from memory), it's bad policy to assume that when somebody hurts, government must act.
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Taxed to Talk
My sister-in-law pointed out something interesting about her cell phone bill: it's very highly taxed. Here's the breakdown:

• Cost of service--$100 (actually, $99.99, but let's round up.)


• Government-required fees and taxes: $20.34.


• Tax rate: 20 percent.

And to think that plain old sales tax is usually 4-9 percent (depending on your jurisdiction), while the lowest federal income tax is in the mid-teens.

I imagine that landline service is also very highly taxed--which is why governments would love to tax VOIP (Internet-based phone calls).
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Technology Impairing Competition in Politics
The Christian Science Monitor discusses gerrymandering, or the drawing of legislative districts for political advantage. It's a bipartisan game with a long history. But advanced software and data mining techniques have made an uncertain "art" into an engineering trick. The result? Elections whose results are increasingly known in advance.
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How Reliable are School Testing Results?
There are, in the main, two ways to reform schooling. One is to increase parental choice through tuition tax credits, vouchers, open enrollment, and the like. The other is to stay within the local-monopoly (your child's school is determined by where you live) model and increase the use of standardized tests.

The No Child Left Behind act relies heavily on the latter approach, and that's got some schools concerned. Says the Chicago Sun-Times, "Schools across the region say state test data coming out next week is riddled with errors, including some that could ultimately lead to sanctions under the federal No Child Left Behind law."

The Tribune (registration required) says that the errors have "forced the Illinois State Board of Education to consider allowing individual schools to make last-minute changes to the data--10 days before the information is supposed to be made public." Most of the difficulty appears to relate to students opting not to participate in the racial identity game. (NCLB penalizes schools for achievement discrepancies among specified racial or ethnic groups.)
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Death Penalty Gets Attention in Minnesota
The recent disappearance (and likely kidnapping and murder) of a college student has revived suggestions, by Governor Tim Pawlenty, that Minnesota bring back the death penalty, which it abolished in 1911.

The fellows at Powerlineblog (attorneys all) defend the idea. They take a local newspaper columnist to task for comparing Pawlenty to the leader of a lynch mob. The final thought: "Capital punishment is one way of making sure that some vicious criminals never have the opportunity to find another victim."

And from a related post:
"The infrequency and delays with which the death penalty is applied necessarily make arguments about deterrence -- other than the ontologically certain deterrence achieved as to the particular offender in a given case -- difficult to resolve."
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In Defense of TABOR
Colorado has one of the strongest measures to restrain excessive growth in government spending. It's called TABOR, or Taxpayers Bill of Rights. It's been under attack, and John Caldara, president of the Independence Institute, has a reply to the critics.
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Trial Lawyers Inc.
The Manhattan Institute has a website devoted to the issue of tort reform as well as the effects that trial lawyers are having on business and public policy. It has some interesting stats on the first page. Fees going to trial lawyers exceed 2 percent of GDP. Wow!
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