Civitas Review Online

Max, I think I can do you one better (well, worse actually). Try this report from the National Center for Policy Analysis:

"The 2008 Social Security and Medicare Trustees Reports show the combined unfunded liability of these two programs has reached $101.7 trillion in today’s dollars! That is more than seven times the size of the U.S. economy and 10 times the size of the outstanding national debt."

It’s amazing to me that folks on the left actually continue to proclaim these programs to be shining examples of success.

"The CBO also found that if federal income tax rates are adjusted to allow the government to continue its current level of activity and balance the budget:

The lowest marginal tax bracket of 10 percent would have to rise to 26 percent.

The 25 percent marginal tax bracket would increase to 66 percent.

The current highest marginal tax bracket (35 percent) would have to rise to 92 percent!

Additionally, the top corporate income tax rate of 35 percent would have to increase to 92 percent."

If these estimates are even remotely accurate, the future looks grim indeed.

This is the saddest thing I’ve read in a long time. The worst is the quote from Mike Walden, an economist at N.C. state who actually does stuff for JLF!

"Government jobs are an important cushion for the economy when the private sector falters," says North Carolina State University economist Michael Walden. Huh? Somebody please take away this man’s Keynesian crackpipe.

Perhaps they took Mike out of context, but Lordy Lord, surely he knows about deadweight loss and the broken windows fallacy.

There was a light of reason in the article, on these dim circumstances of public sector growth:

"More hiring has nothing to do with good government or economic policy," says economist Kenneth Brown, research director at the Rio Grande Foundation in Albuquerque. "It has everything to do with government being slow to react to economic change." (HT: Hayes)
-Max Borders

North Carolinians have long considered the state’s public universities to be an engine for economic growth.  For most of us, a college education is the key to a better job and the means to a more fulfilling life. Such thinking in part helps to explain the ever-rising government appropriations for public higher education — even after adjusting for inflation and population growth. Last year, NC spent about $3.5 billion on the University of North Carolina and Community Colleges.  In the past year, state spending for UNC increased 17 percent and community college spending increased by 13 percent.

Is North Carolina getting a fair return on this massive investment of public money? Not according to a new report on North Carolina’s Higher Education System by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. Dr David Vedder, Center Director and co-author of the report, states North Carolina spends $7,153 per FTE higher education student, far above the national average of $4,871 and more than neighboring states Georgia, Virginia and South Carolina. Such high levels of public investment suggest that North Carolina’s population would be highly educated. However, the data say otherwise. Vedder writes:

In 2006 only one in four North Carolinian adults possessed college degrees, falling noticeably  (slightly more than one standard deviation) below the national average of 27.2 percent. Furthermore, North Carolina’s attainment rates have lagged behind the national average every year dating back to 1989 and even back to 1960 for every year data are available. . . A relatively uneducated population despite such a massive investment in higher education suggests great inefficiencies and wasted resources in the system.

According to Vedder, state appropriations aren’t effective in maintaining a higher educational attainment among the state’s population. Vedder writes, “North Carolina spends $10.64 per capita on higher education for every 1 percent of its population possessing a bachelors’ degree, whereas  neighboring states Virginia and Georgia spend only $6.64 and $6.61 respectively, to do the same thing.”

The problem? Waste, and there’s plenty of it— bloated faculty salaries, institutional subsidies, ballooning non-instructional costs, and rising numbers of students who attend school for several years, but never graduate.

While investment in higher education will continue to be an important issue, we’d do well to reevaluate subsidies for public higher education. A better option would be to closely link public subsidies to effective management and the realization of public benefits. Read the report and recommendations to learn more.

Jeffrey Sykes has a piece up in the Reidsville Review today that makes a lot of sense. Apply it statewide.
-Max Borders

Check out this release:

"Chicago, IL, April 30, 2008 – OutofPocket.com, a technology startup dedicated to promoting health care transparency and competition, announced today the launch of its new search engine.  The search engine enables consumers to look up prices and comparison shop for health care services by searching for price data across different websites. OutofPocket.com launched an earlier version of their website in July 2007 which provided consumers with a platform to collaborate and expose the true prices of routine health care services.  With the addition of the new search engine, the enhanced website collects health care price data from multiple sources including provider price lists, consumer contributed content, claims data from businesses, Government CMS Medicare data, websites that publish health care prices (hospitals, diagnostic testing facilities, clinics, labs, physician practices), and price transparency tools on public websites.

"Consumers need to know the true price upfront before purchasing health care services.  After researching the basic price transparency tools that are available today from providers, health plans, vendor tools and state initiatives, it was obvious that the industry lacks a robust search tool that summarizes price data across different sources," said Mona Lori, founder of OutofPocket.com.  Using collaboration to bring price transparency to health care, OutofPocket.com emerges as a leader in exposing true prices for routine health care services using intelligent search technologies.

Health care costs continue to rise each year.  Consumers are paying more of their own health care costs in the form of higher premiums, deductibles, co-pays, and out-of-pocket expenses for health care.   Increasingly, businesses and individuals, in an effort to control health care costs, are adopting consumer driven health plans.  These plans have proven effective in controlling costs; however, in order for these plans to be successful, consumers need access to meaningful tools to help them make informed decisions before purchasing health care services."
-Max Borders

Gotta love the timing of the Triangle Business News when it hit my Google Reader today.

First message:  IBM wins NC incentive to add 600 Charlotte jobs.
Very next message:  IBM to boost dividend 25%. (and do a $12 billion stock repurchase).

So why exactly do they need $10 million of our tax dollars to add jobs they were already going to add in the first place?

Good ole Gov. Hunt is on WRAL today "decrying" the use of negative ads in the Governor’s race.  Him trying to preach to others on this subject is laughable at best, hypocritical at worst.  Negative ads were perfectly fine for him to use during his many runs.  But now he says that candidates should stay positive?
Puh-lease.

Check out this Time article from 1984.  Anyone remember the "right wing death squads" ad?

The Hunt organization early this summer
ran a television advertisement linking Helms to the right-wing death
squads in El Salvador. The commercial opened with the sound of gunfire
and photos of massacred Salvadoran citizens. A picture of Salvadoran
Roberto d’Aubuisson appeared, and a narrator identified him as
"the man accused of directing those death squads." A picture
of Helms then appeared, and the narrator said, "This is the man
whose aides helped D’Aubuisson set up his political party in El
Salvador . . . Now Jesse Helms may be a crusader, but that’s not what
our Senator should be crusading for."

I guess that is what Hunt considers focusing on "positive messages."

Or how about the ad Hunt ran in 1996 (when he was up 10+ points in the polls and didn’t need to go negative) that said that Robin Hayes thought people should bathe with Lysol to keep from spreading STDs?

Was that a positive message of what he was going to do for the state, as he is advising other candidates to do?

I guess Hunt abides by the old adage of "Do as I say, not as I do" (or did in his case).

The Supreme Court did the right thing today:

In its decisive 6-3 decision, the justices upheld a lower court ruling in the combined cases of William Crawford, et al. v. Marion County Election Board, et al. and Indiana Democratic Party et al. v. Todd Rokita, et al. The plaintiffs in the case challenged a 2005 Indiana law requiring voters to present government-issued photo identification before being allowed to vote.

Now it’s time for NC to follow suit. No more voter fraud.
-Max Borders

The N & O is running a piece that discusses the various — presidential, gubernatorial, etc. — candidates’ views on immigration.

A few initial observations:

While immigration is one of the top concerns for voters, our polling indicates that concern over immigration has become less important as the economy has worsened. This indicates, of course, that voters aren’t yet making the connection that immigration has a negative impact on jobs and the economy. More to the point, voters are most worried about the economy right now.

There are not 300,000 illegal immigrants in North Carolina, but at least twice this number. The N & O seems to be using old data from the Pew Hispanic Research Center here.

Let me explain:

Based on 2005 census data, the Pew Hispanic Research Center estimated there were between 300,000 and 400,000 illegal immigrants in North Carolina.

Hispanics are thought to account for 80 percent of illegal immigrants. FAIR estimates that as of 2005, there were 405,000 illegal immigrants in North Carolina.

According to the N.C. State Demographics office, from 1990 to 2000 the Hispanic population increased by 333 percent, or 33 percent per year (net migration). In the absence of specific data from the state demographer, we also presume a net migration rate of 1.5 percent for all other illegal immigrants.

Let us assume that Hispanic population growth has slowed as the overall Hispanic population has increased. We presume a drop off of about 25 percent. This means that Hispanic population growth is now at 25 percent per year (rather than 33 percent per year).

So, 80 percent of the illegal population of 400,000 is growing at 25 percent per year. 320,000 x .25 = 80,000 for 2006

480,000 x .25 = 120,000 for 2007.

This equals 600,000.

Of course, these calculations are just a very rough estimate. Moreover, I believe border apprehensions, as opposed to Census data, provide a more accurate predictor of the illegal alien population. Using this measure, there are probably well over 1 million illegal aliens in North Carolina.

In any case, the real problem here is that we simply don’t know how many illegal aliens are in North Carolina. In our 2008 Blueprint, we recommend measures the state could implement that would help us get a more accurate count.

Other statistics used by the N & O are also either misleading or irrelevant. For instance, they assert that 3 percent of people in North Carolina don’t speak English well. Consider, though, that from 2001 and 2006, Limited English Proficiency Enrollment (LEP) enrollment increased by 67 percent.

Finally, the article gives the impression that it is unconstitutional for localities to enact measures aimed at discouraging illegal immigration. If Hazelton’s initial attempt at immigration enforcement was imperfect (the case is on appeal), the Immigration Reform Law Institute has since drafted model legislation that cities and towns can implement.

See, here, for additional examples of ordinances passed by several localities across the country.

… stay tuned for more analysis of the candidates’ views on illegal immigration.

There’s a good debate about the state of education on Cato Unbound. I particularly liked this thread from Michael Strong. A slice:

The salient question is will we do more harm, on average, allowing parents and students greater decision-making powers in education than we are already doing. It seems unlikely that parents and students would do much worse and highly likely that they will do far better over time once we have created a competitive education market.

There are several features of a prospective competitive market in education that seem to confuse some observers. First of all, education is often somewhat of a natural monopoly in many places; insofar as families have to bear the costs (in time and money) of transporting their children to non-neighborhood schools, there is often a significant implicit tax associated with all but the geographically closest schools. As a consequence, most local education markets are oligopolies rather than competitive markets.

In order to overcome the quasi-natural monopoly of local schooling, we need national educational chains that compete for the opportunity to create new schools, with national brand-name appeal and associated capitalization and focused R&D to support their particular brand advantage. KIPP, Green Dot, and others are the beginning of this trend, but they are all still developing their ability to bring quality to scale. John Merrifield explains why large scale school choice is a crucial prerequisite to reaping the benefits of innovation and how the few existing choices are largely irrelevant.

Speaking of scalable franchises, Thales Academy – for $5000 per year – sounds like a very competitive model. Parents have to decide whether they like Direct Instruction, though. But ignore the unions. It works.
-Max Borders