One common bond connecting the different pieces of the liberal domestic agenda together is the belief that people must accept that they will be forever be paying more and more to the government to receive less and less. Consider the major domestic issues facing the United States right now…
- Education: Liberals see nothing odd when continuing tax-increases greater than the rate of inflation are needed just to preserve the existing system (hello, Portsmouth, Cranston, and East Providence, for starters). Neither school choice as a more rational way for allocating resources, nor the weak correlation between education spending and education outcomes is worth discussion.
- Healthcare: Liberals generally favor a government takeover of the healthcare system a) so they can provide universal coverage by increasing the price of healthcare without improving the breadth of services available to the people doing the paying and b) so they can use the power of government to control costs by limiting treatments.
- Retirement security: Liberals do not believe that changes in the basic structure of social security should be considered. They believe that government will always be able to shore-up the existing system by raising taxes and/or reducing benefits by tinkering with cost-of-living adjustments and moving up the retirement age.
The fact that contemporary liberalism, when addressing the three biggest domestic issues of the day, combines an affinity for centralized bureaucracy with an uncritical attitude towards social systems that deliver ever-diminishing returns is no coincidence. It is the natural result of the version of liberal ideology than came into being in the 1960s and 1970s…
- Tenant #1: America is experiencing an inevitable historical decline. Sure, America had a good run for about 300 years or so, mostly because of favorable geography, a lack of hostile neighbors and good luck. But that part of history is now over. Paying more to receive less will be the norm for the foreseeable future.
- Tenant #2: Average people can’t be trusted to deal with the ramifications of the great decline, so their lives need to be directly managed by government as much as is possible. It is only the elites within government who possess the necessary wisdom to properly cushion people from the effects of America’s shrinking role in history.
- Liberal Democrats tend to believe that people will not follow, unless they are directly paid off directly in some fashion. That’s why (historically), Democrats have tended to be more tolerant of corruption than Republicans.
- Liberal Republicans, on the other hand, tend to believe in their own ability to convince people that they are the natural leaders of society. They believe they can make a compelling argument that they’re the managers who will make big government work for everyone.
This letter to the Projo, which links to righttax.org, makes a point worth hearing:
[Open full post]In Rhode Island public schools are funded by a combination of state-supplied money and funding generated by cities and towns via property taxes. Unfortunately, in Rhode Island we rely too heavily on the property tax to fund our schools.
The second problem with Rhode Island’s property-tax laws is their impact on existing homeowners. In 2006 the General Assembly enacted a new limit on property-tax levies, limiting levy growth from the present 5.25 percent to 4 percent by 2013. Unfortunately, this law does nothing to limit individual property assessments. So even if a city does not increase its property-tax rate, your property taxes will go up every time your property is “re-evaluated.”
The Providence Journal’s recent editorial on technology and the cultural slide has an outdated ring to it:
Computers are “extending” our intelligence through a panoply of electronic devices. But whether we are creating anything of more value is debatable. We spend more and more of our lives hitting computer keys but not more time thinking, and the general level of culture does not seem to be rising — indeed it seems to be sinking into an attention-deficit-disordered world wherein, to paraphrase Henry Ford, history has become “bunk.”
As I see it, the actual culprit behind the Projo’s complaints is the television, and computers — and high-tech in general — are undoing some of the damage done. In years past, for instance, we bloggers and blog readers would have had no outlet for direct interaction to matters of politics and society encouraging us to mold the items rushing past us into debate-grade arguments. Around the jobsite, my young coworkers — who used to quote inane movies back and forth — are discussing strategies for advancing in open-ended videogames — some taking as their objective the building of entire civilizations, others remaining less edifying, but still involving transnational interactions and a sort of cybermaturity that comes with building a successful identity and orchestrating long-term plans.
As for the culture, overall, I’d say that things have been sliding for so long that it’s difficult to tell whether the curve is continuing, leveling, or even beginning to turn up a bit. A crassness developed prior to the computer era on which leeches such as pornographers have better been able to capitalize. Technology also offers, however, an opportunity to decrease the passivity in the activities of the young and old alike. If in the format of a game, children can create, record, and mix music, for example, it might draw out their own unique qualities, whereas their elders’ MTV merely layered corruption upon their gasping souls.
[Open full post]If no one has even one percent of the knowledge currently available, not counting the vast amounts of knowledge yet to be discovered, the imposition from the top of the notions favored by elites convinced of their own superior knowledge and virtue is a formula for disaster…what the political left, even in democratic countries, share is the notion that knowledgeable and virtuous people like themselves have both a right and a duty to use the power of government to impose their superior knowledge and virtue on others.
…
If no one has even one percent of all the knowledge in a society, then it is crucial that the other 99 percent of knowledge — scattered in tiny and individually unimpressive amounts among the population at large — be allowed the freedom to be used in working out mutual accommodations among the people themselves.
These innumerable mutual interactions are what bring the other 99 percent of knowledge into play — and generate new knowledge.
That is why free markets, judicial restraint, and reliance on decisions and traditions growing out of the experiences of the many — rather than the groupthink of the elite few — are so important.
Dan Yorke just had Warwick City Councilman Steve Merolla on to talk about why the City of Warwick has eschewed an additional $1 million in cost-savings by deciding to stay with Blue Cross/Blue Shield instead the cheaper United Healthcare as manager of the City’s employee healthcare plan. (The “manager” distinction is important–Warwick pays its own claims, the healthcare provider only administers it. That means a claim rejected by the provider can be appealed to the City, which can decide to pay it anyway).
Merolla stated there were many city employee union members in attendance at the meeting and they made it clear they would be unhappy if United was chosen. Merolla himself was threatened by someone in the gallery at the meeting (he’s filed a police report). It’s Merolla’s belief that this intimidation was a factor in why the majority of the City Council ignored the recommendation of it’s own, appointed consultant and voted to stay with BC/BS and cost the City of Warwick nearly $1 million.
Finally, Yorke asserted that BC/BS is bought an paid for by unions. Currently, there are three union members on the BOD, including Chairman of the Board, Frank J. Montanaro, President of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO.
Yup, they sure are changing things down there in D.C. Drudge reports:
After losing a string of embarrassing votes on the House floor because of procedural maneuvering, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has decided to change the current House Rules to completely shut down the floor to the minority.
The Democratic Leadership is threatening to change the current House Rules regarding the Republican right to the Motion to Recommit or the test of germaneness on the motion to recommit. This would be the first change to the germaneness rule since 1822.
In protest, the House Republicans are going to call procedural motions every half hour.
House Minority Whip John Boehner’s reaction:
“This is an astonishing attempt by the majority leadership to duck accountability for tax-and-spend policies the American people do not want,” Boehner said. “The majority leadership is gutting House rules that have been in place for 185 years so they can raise taxes and increase government spending without a vote. House Republicans will use every tool available to fight this abuse of power.”
Last November, House Democratic leaders promised the most open, ethical Congress in history:“[W]e promised the American people that we would have the most honest and most open government and we will.” (Nancy Pelosi press stakeout, December 6, 2006)
“We intend to have a Rules Committee … that gives opposition voices and alternative proposals the ability to be heard and considered on the floor of the House.” (Steny Hoyer in CongressDaily PM, December 5, 2006)The rules House Democrats are seeking to change have not been changed since 1822.
Republicans have already achieved significant legislative successes on the House floor with 11 consecutive “motion-to-recommit” victories that exposed flaws and substantively improved weaknesses in underlying Democrat bills. But rather than living by the same rules which have guided the House of Representatives for 185 years, Democrats are proposing to change the rules in order to game the system and raise taxes and increase spending without a House vote. What are House Democrats afraid of?
Here’s more about the Motion to Recommit.
[Open full post]RI Future contributor Te boldly comes out in favor of including cross-district choice in the discussion of how to improve primary and secondary education in Rhode Island…
Reforms like the cross-district choice plan former Providence School Board Member Julia Steiny proposed in a Projo article last week deserve a closer look. The plan would tie funds to students, not districts. Receiving schools would have to accept students so their student body approximated the state’s demographics. (Massachusetts and Vermont already have similar programs in place.)One possible model for a public choice plan is the system used by the San Francisco Unified School District since 2001. Lisa Snell described the program in a Reason Magazine article published last year…
School choice may be no silver bullet, but hand-wringing about how it will destroy our public schools just isn’t productive. The demand is there: in Providence, the Paul Cuffee Charter School has a 9% acceptance rate — lower than most Ivy League universities. And with a citywide dropout rate above 30%, you don’t have to be a cynic to recognize the system is broken anyway.
Imagine a city with authentic public school choice — a place where the location of your home doesn’t determine your child’s school. The first place that comes to mind probably is not San Francisco. But that city boasts one of the most robust school choice systems in the nation….Readers prone to experiencing a gag reflex whenever the word “choice” is mentioned in a sentence containing the word “school” should take note of two things…
In San Francisco, [a] weighted student formula gives each school a foundation allocation that covers the cost of a principal’s salary and a clerk’s salary. The rest of each school’s budget is allocated on a per student basis. There is a base amount for the “average student,” with additional money assigned based on individual student characteristics: grade level, English language skills, socioeconomic status, and special education needs. These weights are assigned as a percentage of the base funding. For example, a kindergartner would receive funding 1.33 times the base allocation, while a low-income kindergartner would receive an additional 0.09 percent of the base allocation. In 2005–06 San Francisco’s base allocation was $2,561. Therefore, the kindergartner would be worth $3,406, and the low-income kindergartner would generate an additional $230 for his school….
San Francisco’s system produced significant academic success for the children in the district. Miraloma Elementary…has seen test scores for second-graders in English language improve from 10 percent proficient in 2003 to 47 percent proficient in 2005….Such gains have been made throughout the school district. Every grade level in San Francisco has seen increases in student achievement in math and language arts, and the district is scoring above state averages. (Fifty percent of San Francisco seventh-graders were proficient in language arts in 2005, compared to 37 percent proficiency statewide.) Even high schools, the most intractable of all schools, appear to be improving….
These gains have been made even as students who used to be excluded from standardized tests are increasingly being tested. In the last year of Superintendent Bill Rojas’ administration, 1998–99, only 77 percent of the district’s students in the tested grades were included, with kids who were deemed likely to bring scores down left out whenever possible. In 2003–04, 98 percent of students in the tested grades were included.
- San Francisco isn’t exactly known as a bastion of right wing, Milton Freidmanesque free-market philosophy, and
- Though I’m not endorsing public choice specifically for this reason, a couple of other communities that have implemented public choice programs have seen a growth in public school enrollment at the expense of private schools. From Ms. Snell’s article…
In Seattle, the public school district has won back 8 percent of all students from the private schools since implementing the new system. In Edmonton, where it all began, the public schools are so popular that there are no private schools left. Three of the largest private schools voluntarily became public schools and joined the Edmonton district.
Kudos to State Rep’s Carol Mumford (R, Scituate/Cranston) and Peter Kilmartin (D, Pawtucket) for today’s op-ed in the ProJo in which they propose raising the Rhode Island inheritance tax threshold from $675,000 to $1 million.
Protection of assets acquired over a lifetime, coupled with a desire to leave the next generation a small inheritance, now preoccupies the middle class. Once the purview of the rich seeking to preserve their inheritances, tax planning is now causing middle-class people to vote with their feet…
Small-business owners and farmers, who are bound to Rhode Island, do not enjoy the luxury of this choice. Most businesses in this state are small operations employing fewer than 10 workers. Many are family-owned. When the owners die, their children who inherit are faced with financial dilemma. They must either sell the business to pay the inheritance tax or borrow an exorbitant amount of money to keep the business family-owned. These are the choices that hamper small Rhode Island businesses from growing one generation to the next.
They also make a good point about how the children of farmers are faced with paying an “exorbitant amount” of taxes to keep the farm or sell to developers. Additionally, to add a bit of irony, Mumford and Kilmartin point out that:
[A] strange dance occurs with groups wishing to preserve open space. These groups, financed with state and local tax dollars, move to purchase the development rights, so that crucial open space can be preserved and inheritance taxes can be paid.
Wouldn’t it be better to allow the families to continue farming from one generation to the next? It is shortsighted to collect inheritance taxes with one hand, and with the other to pass out state dollars to purchase development rights.
The same burden is imposed upon those who inherit long-held family cottages on the coast. And they continue:
In the best of all worlds, Rhode Island would eliminate the inheritance tax altogether.
If the tax were eliminated, median family income in Rhode Island would certainly rise. Small-business owners would be able to make long-term decisions knowing the next generation would profit. Small business could grow into a Rhode Island big business, employing far more than the current number of fewer than 10. The frugal members of the middle class who have amassed a small estate through hard work and a growing real-estate market would not be chased away. Family farms could remain family farms.
Would these problems completely disappear if the inheritance tax threshold were raised to $1 million? No, probably not, but it is a good beginning!
I’d think that if the House Whips for both parties are on the same page, legislation has a good chance of passing.
[Open full post]The budget disgrace
of Mike Napolitano.
A case for recall.
Not only did Cranston Mayor Michael Napolitano propose a FY 2008 budget that asked for a maximum tax-increase while offering no funding increase to the school system, but according to a Cranston Herald letter-to-the-editor from former City Finance Director Jerome Baron, the proposed budget also underfunds Cranston’s pension system…
The city’s pension for this year ending June 30, 2007, is properly funded at $21,723,021. The actuarially required amount for next year goes down by over $900,000 and continues to go down every year. Despite the huge Napolitano tax increase, the mayor is “under-funding” the pension budget by $1.7 million above and beyond the legitimate savings of more than $900,000. This is a giant step backward toward the ill-advised funding method of pay-as-you-go, under which instead of decreasing each year, the pension contribution will increase each year until 2024 when it will total over $26 million instead of the $19 million that would have been required if the responsible policies of the last four years had continued. The taxpayer will pay an additional $7 million in that one year alone, and get absolutely NOTHING in return.So if Cranston is underfunding its school system AND its pension system, where’s all the money going?
And if anyone from the state GOP is reading this, I’d like to propose this message campaign for the 2008 election season: “Mayor Michael Napolitano: The leadership you get when you pull the straight party Democratic lever.” [Open full post]
I don’t see how the education funding report that Marc just noted fits with all that’s come before into a sustainable plan for the future.
We know that officials from both urban and suburban communities seem to have convinced themselves that the purpose of new state education “funding formula” is to provide a bigger share of aid to their communities. They can’t all be right.
We also know that the state is in a $450 million dollar budget hole for next year. As a result, the legislature is apparently seriously considering flat-funding education aid. The deficit is structural, meaning it’s going to be there next year and the year after, unless there is a either a fundamental restructuring of programs to reduce costs, or a tax increase that will push Rhode Island towards becoming the most highly taxed state in the nation.
Lately, the legislature has been averse to tax-increases.
But according to Jennifer Jordan‘s Projo article, even though it can’t afford a simple 3% increase in education aid this year, the legislature is moving forward with a proposal that would increase the state’s share of spending on education and maybe increase education spending overall.
It adds up to three obvious possibilities for the near future of Rhode Island…
- The legislature is now being pulled in so many contradictory directions, it’s going to get paralyzed and change nothing.
- There’s a honking-big tax increase being planned.
- One set of communities is going to grab a whole bunch of state aid away from another set of communities and hide it under layer upon layer of formulas and bureaucracy and tax-shifts, in the hope that the communities losing funding won’t notice until it is too late.