With the decision last night by the Orange County Commissioners that they were not going to put the transfer tax on the ballot this fall, it meant that the big three Triangle counties (Wake, Durham and Orange) have all deferred on putting the tax on the ballot this year.
Funny thing is, it was the representatives of those counties (Orange – Hackney, Durham – Luebke, Wake – Weiss) who were most adamant about giving the counties the option of the transfer tax. I thought these counties were "so desperate" for new revenue to deal with growth that they had to have the transfer tax? What happened?
Hmm… Liberal representatives in safe seats, insulated from voter backlash against raising taxes vs. county commissioners who, in many cases, have to run county-wide and face the voters.
I guess we know who won.
This is an excellent piece on some of the issues in healthcare reform. Those who blindly blame greedy corporations for our healthcare woes never look to the actual source of all the pathologies — the government.
Coletti doesn’t go as far as to accuse the left of trying to destroy healthcare markets with regulation. For the record, I do. Lemme borrow from an upcoming piece I wrote:
I believe the majority party actually knows about these pathologies. In fact, I believe they are making concerted efforts at the state and federal levels to exacerbate these problems in the name of consumer protection and insuring children. Whether through expanding children’s Medicaid into the middle class (which drives up premiums), increasing the number of state mandates (which drives up premiums), or limiting competition through keeping the tax code intact (which drives up premiums), the party in power is using regulation to crank down the government vise in anticipation of a final outcry from Americans who are tired of paying these rates and who have no idea why it’s happening. And with that outcry, they will then be able to sell America a single-payer system like Castro’s.
North Carolinians, exposed as they are to Atlantic hurricanes, can look to the experience of certain segments of New Orleans for direction. Or at least we can ask the question: why has the Vietnamese community come out so much better than other communities in the Big Easy? This study by folks at the Mercatus Center (pdf) offers some answers. I gather refusal by that community to depend on government caretakers is one reason for their phenomenal comeback. (Bottom up. Not top down.)
It’s often said that most illegal immigrants are decent, hardworking folks who only want to come to America to work. But what happens when they have to break the law in order to obtain employment? During a recent raid at Smithfield Foods in Tar Heel, North Carolina, investigators found that 86 percent of workers arrested for immigration violations had also stolen identities from American citizens. Likewise, during a raid conducted last month at a Fresh Del Monte plant in Portland, Oregon, authorities found that 78 percent of illegal alien workers were using a stolen Social Security number. But don’t expect the federal government to do anything about this problem anytime soon. Money collected from mismatched names and Social Security numbers goes into an Earnings Suspense File (ESF) administered by the Social Security Administration. Currently the fund contains more than $420 billion in uncollected earnings.
After all that Easley has wrought, he might actually do something right.
From DailyTech:
Medical researcher Dr. Klaus-Martin Schulte recently updated this research. …[H]e examined all papers published from 2004 to February 2007. The results have been submitted to the journal Energy and Environment, of which DailyTech has obtained a pre-publication copy. The figures are surprising.
Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers "implicit" endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no "consensus."
The figures are even more shocking when one remembers the watered-down definition of consensus here. Not only does it not require supporting that man is the "primary" cause of warming, but it doesn’t require any belief or support for "catastrophic" global warming. In fact of all papers published in this period (2004 to February 2007), only a single one makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results.
It starting to look like the so-called ACC "consensus" is the creation of an alarmist media and a left wing hungry for a good reason to redistribute wealth. -Max Borders
Steve Turner’s teaser follow-up at the Progessive Pulse is worth a read, and the comment section is happening. Check it out. This is a long overdue conversation between market liberals and redistributionist progressives. -Max Borders
Charter schools rob money from the public schools. That’s an oft repeated claim from charter school opponents and from many of those who favor retaining the current cap on charter schools in North Carolina. Is the claim true? A new Issue Brief from the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools and authored by Bryan Hassel and Matthew Arkin of Public Impact Consulting, responds to that question – and five other myths about the financial impact of charter schools – with a resounding “No.” Rather than being a financial drain, Hassel and Arkin argue that charter schools actually spur public investment in education. The authors point out many schools attract planning and development grants specifically designed for charter schools. Moreover, they also demonstrate that charter schools are often quite successful at raising private funds for public education. Illinois is cited as an example. There, for every $10 in public funding, charter schools bring in an additional $1.78 in private funding.
Hassel and Arkin succeed in doing what charter school advocates in North Carolina need to do: attack alleged criticisms head-on. And, in so doing, charter school proponents effectively re-frame the debate in terms of the unique advantages and positive benefits charter schools provide. Currently, close to 5,200 students are on charter school waiting lists. Is there a more compelling reason for lifting the ban?
The politicians are all in a tizzy about Raleigh’s water shortages. Maybe they could use, oh, I don’t know: PRICES!
Prices allow people to make rational responses to scarcety. Water markets are the best way to conserve water and institute prices (Duh.) Brian Balfour has pointed out on this blog before that if we go to a single payer healthcare system, our country’s medical system will mirror Raleigh’s water crisis. Markets work folks. Call it "market fundamentalism" if you like, but shortages are rarely, if ever, a problem where there is a market free of price caps, controls, and socialist rationing.
Check out a kind of expose I did here for Capital Research Center and their excellent GreenWatch team. In it I discuss the National Commission on Energy Policy, particularly their mild-mannered approach to pillaging the energy sector and monkeying with the economy — all for the sake of "bipartisanship".
You can see how our infinitely wise N.C. General Assembly got the intellectual fodder for a monstrosity like SB 3.
-Max Borders