Not that we expect the clowns and criminals who run state government in neighboring Illinois to care, but we do hope, for a moment at least, they cast their collective gaze north of the border to Wisconsin.
Something is happening there that Illinois’ governor and most of its legislators no doubt will hardly be able to grasp. Ditto for legislators in California, New York and other fiscally dysfunctional states.
Wisconsin recently has been holding down spending and taxes, and the state has gone from a budget deficit of more than $3 billion to a projected budget surplus.
Imagine! Setting spending priorities and stopping further raids on the pocketbooks of businesses and individuals has achieved what more spending and higher taxes could not.
The Wisconsin-based MacIver Institute has the story, based on the Wisconsin Department of Administration’s latest budget projections.
One of the most dreaded days of the year is approaching … tax day. This year Tuesday, April 17 will be the last day people can file their taxes. It is also the Tax Foundation’s Tax Freedom Day, which calculates that Americans had to work more than a quarter of the year just to pay all the nation’s taxes for the year. 
According to the Tax Foundation, Tax Freedom Day arrives “four days later than last year due to higher federal income and corporate tax collections. That means Americans will work 107 days into the year, from January 1 to April 17, to earn enough money to pay this year’s combined 29.2% federal, state, and local tax bill.”
The Tax Foundation says that it “is a vivid, calendar-based illustration of government’s cost, and it gives Americans an easy way to gauge the overall tax take. Conceived by Florida businessman Dallas Hostetler in 1948, he deeded the concept to the Tax Foundation upon his retirement in 1971. In 1990 sufficient data became available to calculate a separate Tax Freedom Day for each state.”
[click to continue…]
As a Chicagoan I often wonder why when the national average gasoline prices are reported they are 
often so much lower than the Chicago average. Even prices in neighboring states seem to be cheaper? So why the elevated prices for Chicago?
Well, you may have guessed the main culprit: taxes. Huge arrays of tax levies are stacked on top of gas’s retail price. The federal excise tax on gasoline is 18.4 cents per gallon; the IL excise tax is 19 cents plus 0.3 cents for underground storage tank fund and 0.8 cents for an environmental impact fee. But all that’s not even the half of it!
Illinois is one of only seven other states that charge sales tax on gasoline. Gas prices in most state are assessed at a fixed number of cents per gallon. Meaning no matter how crazily oil prices rise, consumers pay the same built-in tax in those states. This is not the case in Illinois however and when gas prices rise for all of America, they rise even faster in Illinois. Normally sales tax in Illinois is at 6.25% however if the gas is mixed with ethanol, which all of it is, gas is taxes at 5%. But Illinois goes even a step further, allowing counties and municipalities to tax gasoline. City, country and regional transportation authority sales tax add another 2.8% after the ethanol discount.
[click to continue…]
The title of this post is an analogy that the Wall Street Journal’s Dan Henninger uses to describe the modern Democrat’s vision of the citizen’s proper relationship to the state. And it’s an excellent one to make in his always must-read regular column.
What prompted that turn of phrase by Henninger was the introduction of the House Republican budget this week by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) — the most serious budget by Congress in our lifetimes. It is the only budget I have seen that (at long last) takes seriously the fiscal impossibility of continuing an entitlement culture in America — a fantasy that anyone paying attention could see was unsustainable years ago. Ryan is the first House Budget Committee chairman to finally say the truth. That took real political courage. Good for him, and the nation will be better off for it.
But back to Henninger’s theme. Most Americans don’t think of tax policy as defining the character of what this country is about. It’s natural to think: “It’s too mundane. It’s too ‘green eyeshade.’ It’s too hard to understand. Besides, only people with a lot of money care about tax policy. Me? Just give me enough money to buy something nice with my tax return.”
But that view misses the bigger and vital picture. Federal tax policy defines, in the most basic way, the relationship the ruling class establishes with those they govern. And that dynamic, no matter what tax bracket you’re in, matters. A lot. Does your government have first and ultimate claim on your time and labor? Or does your government acknowledge and respect that your finite time and labor are your own — to put toward the advancement of yourself and your family — and seek to only take from you what is absolutely necessary? In short: Who’s aims are paramount? Yours as a free citizen, or those of the state?
Henninger addresses that by quoting Paul Krugman of the New York Times:
[click to continue…]
Last Sunday’s New York Times had an article highlighting the implementation of the new teacher evaluation system being put in place in Tennessee. The system is part of the Race-to-the-Top attempt to drive education reform in the states by dangling federal cash for reforms.
As you read the article, you should begin to realize why “reform” fails and why many people in both the Government Education Complex and Education Transformation* movement find these rules so absurd.
There simply is no way that a federal bureaucracy (or any bureaucracy, for that matter) can devise a unified system of teacher evaluation. There are too many variables, and teachers are correct to be skeptical of this top-down approach to their craft.
For example, the first few paragraphs of the article expose the unworkable nature of the evaluation process.
Steve Ball, executive principal at the East Literature Magnet School in Nashville, arrived at an English class unannounced one day this month and spent 60 minutes taking copious notes as he watched the teacher introduce and explain the concept of irony. “It was a good lesson,” Mr. Ball said.
But under Tennessee’s new teacher-evaluation system, which is similar to systems being adopted around the country, Mr. Ball said he had to give the teacher a one — the lowest rating on a five-point scale — in one of 12 categories: breaking students into groups.** Even though Mr. Ball had seen the same teacher, a successful veteran he declined to identify, group students effectively on other occasions, he felt that he had no choice but to follow the strict guidelines of the state’s complicated rubric.
“It’s not an accurate reflection of her as a teacher,” Mr. Ball said.
What a shock. A principal knows his teachers better than the federalized check list. Wonders never cease.
[click to continue…]
As the gradual implementation of Obamacare continues and debate over the intelligence of socialized medicine mounts, the budgetary malaise of the current Medicaid system should be a red flag to supporters of the President’s health care plan. The current degree of governmental control over healthcare is proving calamitous for states with financial troubles, and the expanded bureaucracy that is Obamacare will only make matters worse.
The contradictions and logistical maladies manifest in government-controlled healthcare have never been more evident than in the recent series of cuts in the Pennsylvania Medicaid apparatus. Over the next nine years, $1.2 trillion in reductions will mean the elimination of care for 150,000 people (43,000 of which are children) and more than 80,000 in job losses.
The uncertain economy has meant a surge in those receiving Medicaid across the nation, but since the summer of 2011, Pennsylvania has seen a steady decline because of the Department of Public Welfare’s (DPW) efforts to cut those no longer living in state and those who are dead or otherwise ineligible for aid. Patient advocates are saying otherwise, calling the cuts “disastrous.”
The bureaucratic nightmare that the cuts have unleashed on eligible patient care could be called Orwellian, as Pennsylvania’s push to close the backlog of cases has resulted in an overload for an already understaffed DPW. Hundreds of thousands of pending cases were “reviewed” in a matter of weeks, and technical omissions that would regularly necessitate simple clarification from the patient, such as lack of information, resulted in the cancellation of thousands of cases.
But the bureaucratic incompetence doesn’t end there.
[click to continue…]
Culturally and politically, the United States and Great Britain have much in common; a shared heritage, similar economic and foreign policy goals, and a recently, a mutual proclivity toward socialized medicine. As opposition to Obamacare continues to mount in the U.S., an examination of how socialized medicine is fairing in light of global financial troubles is necessary.
The UK’s National Health Service, or NHS, established in 1948, is experiencing massive cutbacks, to the tune of $31 billion by 2015. As the Service’s 2011/2012 budget is approximately £106 billion pounds, such cuts are already taking a toll.
In order to compensate for its losses, the NHS is reducing the number of treatments given and medical personnel employed. Surgeries deemed to be “non-lifesaving” are being postponed, waitlists for simple procedures are growing longer and longer, and more than 50,000 doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals will be let go in the next four years, according to The Telegraph.
It makes sense then, that those unable or unwilling to postpone surgeries or submit to months of waiting seek out private “self-pay” services instead. As the Daily Mail points out:
[click to continue…]
In the midst of state budgetary turmoil, it is not surprising that legislators are turning to unconstitutional regulatory measures in the pursuit of a few extra tax dollars. Arkansas, Connecticut, Colorado, North Carolina, and Rhode Island are among those states that have attempted to force Amazon.com to collect taxes on Internet sales. The tax has become a reality in Illinois, with Gov. Quinn’s signing of the “Mainstreet Fairness Act.” The online retailer has challenged and resisted these attempts at taxation, shutting down its affiliates program in the aforementioned states in retaliation.
Justifying the selective elimination its affiliates, Amazon points to the economic losses that are starting to add up as a result of these regulations. In a letter sent to its affiliates in Arkansas and Connecticut on June 10 2011, the company asserted that the increased regulatory efforts are the work of “big box retailers” hoping to harm the competition:
[click to continue…]
Last week in the New York Times, economist Paul Krugman called for higher taxes than the Clinton era, citing how increased revenues need to be in the picture and not just spending cuts.
Krugman writes:
The long-run budget outlook has darkened, which means that some hard choices must be made. Why should those choices only involve spending cuts?
Some conservatives would respond by saying the outlook has darkened because of spending. Intuitively increased revenue would just encourage inefficient government. But let’s give Krugman the benefit of the doubt by accepting his point that a combination of increased revenue and lower expenditure will yield a more expedient strategy to lower the deficit.
[click to continue…]
Good stuff from Heartland’s podcasts this week, 
including a discussion on the departure of Don Berwick from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Click the links below to listen, and subscribe on iTunes so you get the latest podcasts as soon as they are produced. (Search for “Heartland Institute” in the iTunes store.)
ON EDUCATION: Author and economics professor Bryan Caplan joins the School Reform News Podcast to make The Case Against Education, also the title of his upcoming book. Many educators, particularly college professors, cannot possibly teach students the skills they need for employment, he says, which is a good reason to rethink education subsidies and the push for all students to attend college or even learn the same things. Find Bryan online at EconLog and his personal website. Listen here.
ON HEALTH CARE: Ben Domenech discuss the departure of Don Berwick from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, his controversial views on government controlled healthcare, and how his legacy will be impacted by the fate of Obamacare. Listen here.
ON ENVIRONMENT: James Taylor discusses his Forbes column, Climategate 2.0: New E-Mails Rock The Global Warming Debate on the Cari and Rob Show. Listen here.
[click to continue…]
