Civitas Review Online

As reported in today’s N&O, back-to-school shoppers are gearing up for some tax-free shopping this weekend.

At the risk of raising the ire of bargain shoppers across the Tar Heel State, the notion of a "sales tax holiday" is simply bad tax policy. One of the primary tenants of sound tax policy is to apply a consistent rate of taxation to similar behavior. This tax "holiday" scheme clearly violates that tenet. If a shopper buys $100 worth of school supplies today, they face a 6.75% tax rate. If another shopper buys the identical $100 worth of school supplies tomorrow, they pay no tax. 

Favoring such a specific behavior (i.e. buying specific items on a specific weekend) is also inherently unfair. Targeting a specific group of consumers equates to punishing the rest of the consumers who are denied a lower overall sales tax rate that could be achievable without this gimmick. What about parents of children not yet of school age? What about families who are traveling or otherwise busy this weekend and can’t get to the store to take advantage of the tax exemption? Or what about parents with children in year-round schools? As the article notes:

"Parents with kids in year-round schools usually miss the tax savings because their schools start earlier. Myra Dean of Raleigh, mother of 15-year-old Brandon Collins, said she hasn’t been able to take advantage of the holiday.

"We miss it every year because he has always been in year-round school," she said. "It’s not fair."

A better policy would be to stop rewarding such a specific group of shoppers and offer broad-based relief for all North Carolinians. 

It’s been quite an amusing week to watch the Mainstream Media try to figure out how they are going to cover the National Enquirer’s accusations that former NC Sen. John Edwards visited his baby momma and child at a Beverly Hills hotel last week.

Obviously everyone sees the smoke, but it’s almost been like the media’s hands are tied to investigate whether there is actually fire.

It’s the type of salacious story the MSM usually loves to jump on (see Larry Craig), but for one reason or another, they haven’t really reported on the accusations made by the National Enquirer.  In fact, it was reported that some newspapers had instructed their reporters to not saying anything on the story.

So the story has become, how does the media handle the story.  Instead of reporting on the accusations, the media is reporting on how the media is not reporting the story.

It’s interesting though that the media will pick up and run with other "scandals" that brake on less reputable sources (not that the Enquirer is reputable, mind you) like blogs before they dig any deeper into the Edwards situation.

In a speech earlier this month before the North Carolina Association of School Administrators, Bev Perdue charged that – if elected — Pat McCory would blow a $1.2 billion hole in North Carolina’s education budget.

Bev should go back to school and re-take math. Her numbers don’t add up. First, Perdue charges McCory’s opposition to the Education Lottery would mean a loss of $350 million in revenue for the schools. Let’s be realistic, even with a Republican governor, what are the chances of reversing the lottery legislation?
    
Perdue, also charges that school vouchers would use up to $900 million in public funding to pay for private schooling.  The calculation is curious: 166,363 (private school students in North Carolina) x $5274 in state aid to each child = $877,398,462.  Does $877 million = $900 million?  I guess Perdue thinks so. What the heck, it’s the government and it’s only $23 million. Close enough I guess. 

The Office of Non-Public Schools lists private school enrollment in NC at around 97,000.  My guess is the 166,363 figure includes about 69,000 home school students.  For the record The Office of Non-Public Schools does not include home school students in estimates of private school enrollment.

The $900 million cost estimate includes ONLY students already enrolled in private or home schools. Most certainly, vouchers would allow public school students to pursue better educational opportunities elsewhere.  There isn’t the time to estimate the number and the exact impact here, but there are many reasons to believe that vouchers — rather than hurting the public schools — would actually benefit public education. If overcrowding is as pervasive as we are led to believe, a decline in students should be welcome.  The migration should also lead to a reduction in staffing (the greatest percentage of budget expenditures). In many cases, these changes can actually help to improve student teacher ratios and revenue per student.  Equally important, since many private schools actually spend considerably less than the state to educate students, vouchers may also work to save taxpayers money.

The claim that vouchers will take $900 million from the public schools is pure fiction. Since when do the public schools have greater claim on tax dollars than tax payers?  If vouchers are going to students already enrolled in private schools, how is money being removed from the public schools? Perdue fails to recognize that by providing education to thousands of students, private and home schools actually save the public schools at least $900 million. It is important to point out “publicly-funded” education should not simply be defined as government schools. Publicly-funded schools should be as different in organization and outlook as the public it serves.

No doubt Perdue’s remarks are motivated by the belief that support for the “v” word is still political suicide in North Carolina. But is this true?  A July 2008 Civitas DecisionMaker Poll, found 51 percent of NC voters said they would be more likely to support a candidate who supports school vouchers. Similarly, the same poll in June found that 64 percent of voters support a system of education tax credits that can be used at any private or public school. Those numbers reflect a big shift in thinking.  McCory would do well to emphasize those numbers and the need to bring our education policies in line with changing public sentiment.

Last Friday, Civitas wondered about the curious timing of the attorney general’s release of a letter from the Department of Homeland Security stating that North Carolina must decide for itself whether to admit illegal aliens into its community colleges. Did Attorney General Cooper time his office’s response to coincide with the end of the 2008 session, thus relieving legislators of their responsibility to vote on this question?

One piece of evidence suggests he did. Note that the letter from the Department of Homeland Security is dated July 9, 2008. The two-paragraph response from the AG’s office is dated July 24. The session ended on July 18.

It seems, then, that the attorney general’s office sat on the letter for a full two weeks before taking action.

Wouldn’t it have been better if the General Assembly had decided this issue once and for all? Wouldn’t it be better, moving forward, to ask the General Assembly to do so? — rather than punting to an anonymous (excepting Bev Perdue and Richard Moore) state board?

As necessary, replace "France" with "N.C.", "sun" with "cost-effective energy" or "imported furniture" and so on.)

A PETITION From the Manufacturers of Candles, Tapers, Lanterns, sticks, Street Lamps, Snuffers, and Extinguishers, and from Producers of Tallow, Oil, Resin, Alcohol, and Generally of Everything Connected with Lighting.

Gentle[folk]:

You are on the right track. You reject abstract theories and little regard for abundance and low prices. You concern yourselves mainly with the fate of the producer. You wish to free him from foreign competition, that is, to reserve the domestic market for domestic industry.

(Read on…)
Max Borders – channeling Frederic Bastiat

A must-read for people fed up with the state of transportation in this state. Where to start?:

A good place for state
officials to begin the reform process is to admit that they have in fact failed and that the state institutions assigned to solve transportation prob­lems have not been as effective as they should have been. The state officials should also acknowledge that they may need to rebuild the entire system from the ground up so that it will serve the citizens better rather than serving leading legislators or privileged interest groups that seek to divert state transporta­tion funds to other purposes, including unproduc­tive pork-barrel transportation projects.

-Max Borders

Our progressive friends will continue to ignore the hard facts of reality when it comes to healthcare. We won’t. Consider this post from Joe Coletti in reference to the public sector’s share of healthcare expenditures. Some staggering figures:

• "The public sector accounted for 56.1 percent of health spending within the civilian noninstitutionalized population."
• Tax subsidies made up 30¢ of every government dollar [not including institutionalized or Medicare Part D recipients].
• "Even among families with incomes greater than four times the poverty level, public spending accounted for 45.8 percent of total spending."

It’s amazing that people on the left can wake up in the morning, look themselves in the mirror, then go along straightfacedly to claim that healthcare in America is a) somehow free-market, b) requires more government interference and subsidy, and c) people aren’t getting enough government support for healthcare.

Let’s repeat: "Even among families with incomes greater than four times the poverty
level, public spending accounted for 45.8 percent of total spending." And while crying for yet more, they never once care to look at the very policies that are driving up health care costs.
-Max Borders

Environmental activists – you know, the ones who pressed for SB3 (the mandated renewables bill of 2007) – are whining because Duke Power is introducing higher fees (rates) due to "Save-a-Watt" — a demand-side propaganda tool designed to get people to use curly-cue light bulbs.

You see, programs like Save-a-Watt satisfy the SB3 mandate requirements. Likewise, Progress Energy has just been approved for a rate increase of 16+ percent. Now the very environmentalists who brought you these rate increases a la subsidies of useless renewable boondoggles, are complaining about the very rate increases a third-grader could have told you were coming.

The next time one of these environmental statists (such as environment North Carolina)(watermelons) comes to your door begging for activist cash, hand them your energy bill and demand an explanation. Tell them, they owe you money.

(Update: Apparently, NC PIRG was against SB3 all along, so I have removed the link to their site and the reference to their quote in the paper. We should give them credit on this one, while opposing the rest of their policies, such as light rail advocacy. Environment North Carolina, who came to my door bragging about their support of SB3, still gets to be called a watermelon group, however.)
-Max Borders

Good piece on roundabouts… one question, though: how much do they cost?
-Max Borders

You be the judge. Here’s the press release.