The Gospel of Paul

The title of Kimberly Strassel's recent WSJ piece on Ron Paul...

Ron Paul is no compassionate conservative. His supporters love him for it.

If there's been a phenomenon in this Republican presidential race, it's been the strength of a fiery doctor from Texas and his message of limited government. As the GOP front-runners address crowds of dispirited primary voters, Mr. Paul has been tearing across the country, leaving a trail of passionate devotees in his wake...

Mr. Paul isn't going to be president. He trails in national polls, in no small part because his lack of a proactive foreign policy makes him an unserious candidate in today's terror world. But his success still holds lessons for the leading Republican candidates, as well as those pundits falling for the argument that the future of the GOP rests in a "heroic conservatism" that embraces big government. Mr. Paul shows that the way to many Republican voters' hearts is still through a spirited belief in lower taxes and smaller government, with more state and individual rights...

In contrast, we have President Bush and much of the Republican representation in Congress...

"Compassionate conservatism" was a smart move on George W. Bush's part, maybe even necessary to win. The GOP was dogged by a reputation as the heartless party, amplified by the 1995 government shutdown and the clunky Dole campaign. And it had learned from the success of welfare reform that message matters. Many Republican voters believed Mr. Bush's "compassionate conservatism" was just that: a way of selling conservative reforms. Tax cuts would help the working poor. Vouchers would help minority kids. Charities would fare better getting people off drugs than government bureaucrats. Mr. Bush got his tax cuts, but voters found out too late that he was no small-government believer....

Strassel's wrap-up...

If Mr. Paul has shown anything, it's that many conservative voters continue to doubt there's anything "heroic" or "compassionate" in a ballooning government that sucks up their dollars to aid a dysfunctional state. When Mr. Paul gracefully exits this race, his followers will be looking for an alternative to take up that cause. Any takers?

tidbits on politics from Harpers

The Harpers Index is a limited but interesting monthly pile of data. From December's list...

On contributions to 2008 presidential campaigns:
-from the oil & gas industries: $1,727,000

-from the education industry: $6,406,000

-rank of Ron Paul among Republican candidates receiving the most money from U.S. service members: #1

Other stuff:
-% of Democrats who think Hillary is proposing to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq within a year: 76%

Romney misses op on vouchers

From Carrie Lukas in the Heartland Institute's School Reform News (a longer version appeared in National Review Online)...

Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) had an opportunity to help deliver a victory at the ballot box in Utah in November, when voters decided whether to repeal the state’s universal school voucher program....

[Statewide] Vouchers have a poor track record at the ballot box....

Romney was uniquely positioned to lend a helping hand: His popularity in a state where more than 60 percent of citizens share his religion is obvious. While on the campaign trail, Romney has stated he supports school choice and vouchers. Skeptics might note that as governor, vouchers were not a priority for Romney.

The Utah initiative gave Romney the opportunity to prove his bona fides as a strong school voucher supporter at a critical time. By urging his supporters to give this program a chance, he could ensure that more parents control where their kids go to school and help Utah become a national model for universal school choice.

Hey, maybe Romney should have received the NEA's endorsement instead of Huckabee!

Mike Huckabee and Kenneth Copeland

From World...

POLITICS: Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee is sticking by his "dear friend," charismatic TV "prosperity gospel" preacher Kenneth Copeland of suburban Fort Worth. Copeland, who will turn 72 this week, has supported Huckabee, and Huckabee was a guest on Copeland's five-day TV special last week. A former Baptist pastor and two-term Arkansas governor, Huckabee told Time that Copeland operated his ministry with the utmost integrity "as far as I know." Copeland and his wife, Gloria, are leaders of one of six prominent television ministries asked by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, to provide information on their finances to the Senate Finance Committee by December 6.

And Mike has questions about Mitt Romney's religious beliefs?

The (New/Tax) War Between the States

And this time, the South (and the West) are winning...

From the WSJ, an op-ed piece by Arthur Laffer (of Laffer Curve fame) and Stephen Moore (from Club for Growth)...

A record eight million Americans moved from one state to another last year. Where is everyone going, and why? The answer has little to do with climate: California has arguably the nicest climate of any state in the nation -- yet in this decade more Americans have left the Golden State than entered it.

Migration patterns instead reveal which states have the most dynamic and desirable economies, and which are "has-been" states. The winners in this contest for the most valuable resource on the globe -- human capital -- are generally the states with the lowest tax, spending and regulatory burdens. The biggest losers are almost all congregated in the Northeast and Midwest. Liberals contend that tax rates, regulations, forced union laws and runaway government spending don't matter when it comes to creating jobs, high incomes and a higher quality of life. People tell us otherwise by voting with their feet.

Liberals generally claim to embrace logic, reason, and evidence. One would hope they'd do the same here...

The American Legislative Exchange Council has just released a study we've done that presents a 2007 Economic Competitiveness Rating of the 50 states, based on 16 economic policy variables, including taxes, regulation, right to work, the legal system, educational freedom and government debt. Over the past decade, the 10 states with the highest taxes and spending, and the most intrusive regulations, have half the population and job growth, and one-third slower growth in incomes, than the 10 most economically free states....

Of all the policy variables we examined, two stand out as perhaps the most important in attracting jobs and capital. The first is the income tax rate. States with the highest income tax rates -- California and New York, for example -- are significantly outperformed by the nine states with no income tax, such as Texas and Florida. As a study from the Atlanta Federal Reserve Board put it: "Relative marginal tax rates have a statistically significant negative relationship with relative state growth."

The other factor for attracting jobs and capital is right-to-work laws. States that permit workers to be compelled to join unions have much lower rates of employment growth than states that don't. Many companies say they will not even consider locating a factory in a state that does not have a right-to-work law.

Our study also finds that states with antigrowth tax and spending policies don't just lose people. Noncompetitive states like New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois and New Jersey are plagued by falling housing values, a shrinking tax base, business outmigration, capital flight and high unemployment rates, and less money for schools, roads and aging infrastructure. These factors of decline hurt the poor the most.

Liberals often claim that their policies help the working poor and those in the middle class. That's rarely the case, in practice-- as evidenced (again) here...

Finally, Laffer and Moore's punchlines...

Auto and other manufacturing jobs are still being created in America -- but in Alabama, North Carolina and even Mississippi. It has to be infuriating to Northeasterners to learn that people and businesses are "trading up" by moving out of their region to the likes of Georgia and Alabama. But they are.

The states losing population are in effect suffering from a slow-motion version of the economic sclerosis that paralyzed much of Europe in the 1980s and '90s, particularly France and Germany with their massive welfare systems. At least the European socialist nations are finally starting to change their taxing and spending ways to win back jobs.

No such luck in this country. Five of the states near the bottom of our competitiveness ratings -- Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey and Wisconsin -- have enacted major tax increases in the last two years. Maryland and Michigan just raised business and income taxes on upper-income earners, while arguing that raising the cost of doing business will attract more businesses. More likely it will induce companies to stay away, and people to move out.

Democrats as slow and hypocritical tax-cutters

What an odd combo...

The Democratic House voted to reduce income taxes on some in the middle- and upper-middle income classes-- by freezing the growth of the Alternative Minimum Tax. (GOOD) But they did it so slowly that it messes up the IRS timetable for producing its forms. (BAD) And it did so by dismissing its campaign promises to observe "paygo" rules-- matching tax cuts with tax increases elsewhere. (UGLY...sort of)

Click here for a newspaper article and a WSJ editorial along with my commentary...

Hoosier Eugenics: A Horrible Centennial

I posted an essay on eugenics on SchansBlog.com.

I'm really proud of it. The history is very interesting; the philosophical and religious links are provocative; and the contemporary applications are important and wide-ranging.

I hoped the longer version would find a home at a larger newspaper, but there haven't been any takers yet-- not surprising given its length (1800 words). The longer version as well as a shorter version was released to newspapers state-wide today.

Enjoy! eric

Romney, Huckabee, religion, politics and voting...

When do the religious beliefs of a political candidate matter? (Cross-posted at SchansBlog.com-- with comments.)

Or to be more specific:
1.) At what point do those beliefs become fodder for other candidates?
2.) At what point should those beliefs matter to voters?

In the past week, there has been much analysis and some gnashing of teeth about Romney's "Kennedy-like" speech on his religious beliefs and its connection to politics, Huckabee's awkward comments on Mormonism, and a common (misguided) understanding of "separation of church and state".

My answers to the questions above:
1.) Rarely if ever. Candidates should speak to the implications of those beliefs-- through particular policy positions. At best, it's bad form.
2.) Quite a bit-- although the extent to which this should occur falls along a spectrum.

Three thoughts here:
-If religious beliefs explicitly connect to policy positions, then the underlying religious beliefs are quite relevant. For example, people were concerned (improperly, I think) that the theology and eschatology of Reagan and Bush would influence policy toward Israel and nuclear war.

-One's policy positions are connected to one's values-- overtly religious or subtly religious, pseudo-religious, or otherwise. So, to say that one can ignore religious beliefs is at least somewhat incoherent.

-At some level, it matters in that religious beliefs can connect to general competence. For example, what if a candidate was a Scientologist? Or what if they have strange super-natural beliefs about horoscopes or the "luckiness" of the number 13? I would find it difficult, with good reason, to vote for someone like that!

unions "less important than we think"?

From Morton Marcus (hat tip: News-Tribune)...

I think he means that unions cause less damage than is commonly thought. Assuming competitive markets, the flip side of that is that they don't yield as much benefit as their proponents believe either. (This is similar to policies like the minimum wage: if the wage floor increases wages significantly above equilibrium, it will yield benefits and costs for the affected population; if not, it won't!)

Uncle Uriah Marcus visited us on Thanksgiving. It took over a week to recover. He blames "the @#%$# unions" for most of our state's woes. Uncle Uriah asserts "them big unions scares businesses away from Indiannie."

A sample of his views:

High property taxes: It's the teachers' union fault because they keep pushing up their earnings and reducing their responsibility.

Well, it does contribute somewhat. We know that 1/4 of the recent 24% increase in property taxes connects to increased local spending-- and much of that is on schools, and some part of that is connected to that interest group. States with prevailing wage laws have it worse-- unions support laws that reduce their competition, increase their effective wages, and increase taxes.

From there, Marcus points to a litany of other (at most) minor issues-- before pointing to the political impact of public sector unions.

Government: Union members vote as they are told to, as a block, and thus can destroy or make any candidate in any election, anywhere in the state.

Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration. But beyond that, there is some/much truth to the claim: it is politically risky to run counter to the desires of a potent special interest group! Depending on the state/region-- and especially within local politics where fire and police interests are so strong-- this can be anything from a modest to an overwhelming issue.

What do unions bring with them? One thing is a questionable certainty: union members earn more than their non-unionized comrades. In 2006, the premium earned by union members was 30 percent over those not in unions. But that may not be comparing comparable jobs.

It may be that the specific industry is more important than the presence or absence of unions in determining wages. For a fair comparison, we'd have to have data for union and non-union workers doing the same jobs, in the same places. Rather than unions scaring businesses from Indiana, may be the firms already here which pay high wages discourage new entrants.

It should be noted that Marcus is careful here with data that are often abused.

What's the bottom line?

Unions-- as labor market cartels-- are good for those who supply labor (workers) in those markets. But as with other cartels-- especially when they have a legislative agenda to benefit themselves at the expense of others-- there are significant social/economic costs for consumers, taxpayers, and other workers. In particular, at the end of the day, unions are pro-union not pro-worker per se.

Are unions a primary explanation for economic growth or its absence? No. But how can artificially higher wages and taxes be a good thing for an economy? The larger issue is that pro-union legislation is typically correlated with other policies which are harmful to an economy. (I'll blog on this, based on a recent WSJ article, shortly.)

Democrats, PAYGO, and "fiscal conservatism"

An op-ed in Monday's WSJ...

The Paygo Farce
Democrats admit it was all a big confidence game.

"Democrats are committed to ending years of irresponsible budget policies that have produced historic deficits. Instead of compiling trillions of dollars of debt onto our children and grandchildren, we will restore pay-as-you-go budget discipline."--Speaker Nancy Pelosi, December 12, 2006

Well, as Emily Litella, the half-witted Gilda Radner character on Saturday Night Live, would have put it: "Never mind." Last week Congressional Democrats formally renounced their ballyhooed budget pledge to offset any new tax cuts with other tax increases or spending cuts. We're delighted to see this false promise go, but there's a larger lesson in this failure for the tax and spending battles of 2008.

Senate Democrats gave up on "paygo," as it's called, when they realized they lacked the votes to offset the $50.6 billion cost of protecting more than 20 million middle-class taxpayers from getting whacked by the Alternative Minimum Tax this year. They've spent the year floating all kinds of tax increases to make up the difference. But in the end they passed an AMT relief bill without a penny to pay for it. Paygo is now pay gone.

C-ya...

We should stress that this is the right decision for the economy and the federal budget. The AMT was never supposed to hit the middle class, and it only does so now because the Democrats who designed it failed to index it for inflation and raised AMT rates under Bill Clinton in 1993....

Politicians aren't typically good about seeing the long-term consequences of their actions, indexing things to inflation, and so on.

But paygo shouldn't be allowed to expire without everyone kicking sand on its grave. That's because it has been nothing but a confidence game from the very start. Paygo doesn't apply to domestic discretionary spending, and it doesn't restrain spending increases under current law in entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid. Its main goals are to make tax cutting all but impossible, while letting Democrats pretend to favor "fiscal discipline," a la Ms. Pelosi's boast above.

Boom!

In fact, the paygo farce has been unfolding all year. Since the day they took the gavel, Democrats have been using gimmick after gimmick to evade it. The Schip bill for health care, for example, includes a spending "cliff" that disguises its actual cost. It assumes spending would rise to $14 billion in 2012, but then pretends the costs would fall to less than half that level in 2013--which just so happens to fall outside the five-year budget scoring window. Some $60 billion in spending over the next 10 years were hidden through this ploy.

Gimmicks? Congress? Fiscal conservatives?

Then there is the House farm bill awaiting action in the Senate. That spending marathon includes between $5 billion and $10 billion in fictitious paygo savings by shifting the date of farm aid payments from one year to another. If a Fortune 500 CEO did that sort of thing, he'd be indicted.

Maybe that's why they like Social Security too. In addition to being a brutal "investment" for the working poor, it's actuarially unsound.

House Democrats realize how humiliating this all is, so they're still vowing to make paygo work. Especially embarrassed are the so-called Blue Dog Democrats for whom "fiscal discipline" is a coat of political protection. John Tanner of Tennessee is so upset he says the Senate paygo abdication "is bordering on criminal," and about 30 Blue Dogs are threatening to vote against AMT repeal without offsetting tax increases. They'd have more credibility if they also opposed the various fiscal gimmicks in the Schip and farm bills, not to mention the 2008 Congressional budget outline that exceeded President Bush's budget request by $22 billion....

Blah, blah, blah...It'll be interesting to see how the "Blue Dogs" spin this.

The larger relevance of this episode concerns the 2008 campaign. Hillary Clinton in particular has made paygo a major campaign theme because it makes her sound like a fiscal conservative while helping to justify tax increases. But, lo, guess who was missing on Thursday when the Senate voted 88-5 to ignore paygo on the AMT? None other than the candidate herself, along with Chris Dodd, Joe Biden and Barack Obama. To quote another Saturday Night Live character, "How convenient."

Good stuff...

an irony of biblical proportions

From FoxNews.com, excerpting a longer story from the London Times...

Chinese Factory Set to Become World's Largest Bible Producer

The only authorized Christian publisher in China is celebrating a milestone on Saturday as the 50 millionth Bible rolls off the presses, according to a report in the Times of London.

Demand for the Bible is soaring in officially-atheist China, at a time when meteoric economic growth is testing the country's allegiance to Communist doctrine, the Times of London reports. Now, the demand in China for Bibles is such that Amity Printing, a joint venture between Chinese Christian charity and the United Bible Societies, a Protestant organization, can barely keep pace.

Early next year it will move into a new, much larger factory on the edge of the eastern city of Nanjing to become the world's single-biggest producer of Bibles.

"This platform has been built as a blessing to the nation. It will print Bibles for China for as long as it takes to do it," said New Zealander Peter Dean, of the United Bible Societies.

In careful adherence to China's laws that prohibit evangelizing, the Bible is not on sale in mainstream Chinese bookshops but through a distribution system managed by the official church, such as stalls set up for people attending morning service, according to the Times of London report.

Additional details in the article from the Times-- on the numbers, the rampant growth of Christianity presumably among younger people in China (and the implications for one's eschatological views), and the religious baggage of the "Cultural Revolution"...

Of the 50 million Bibles Amity has printed, 41 million were for the faithful in Chinese and eight minority languages. The rest have been for export to Russia and Africa. Sales surged from 505,000 in 1988 to a high of 6.5 million in 2005. Output last year was 3.5 million and is expected to rise in 2007.

One of Mr Dean’s bestsellers is a pocket Bible, a version not suitable for the older generation to read and which may indicate a rapid expansion in the number of new, younger believers. He cited a surge in demand during the Sars crisis in 2003, but refrained from commenting. The enterprise has clearly flourished through its discretion and careful adherence to China’s laws that prohibit evangelising...

A country where the Communist ideology has lost much credibility is seeing an upsurge in conversions to Christianity. Li Baiguang, a prominent lawyer and Christian activist who was received by President Bush at the White House last year, said: “Rising wealth means that more and more people have been able to meet their material needs, the need for food and clothing.

“Then they are finding that they need to satisfy their spiritual needs, to look for happiness for the soul. In addition, they are seeing a breakdown in the moral order as money takes over. Thus, more and more people are turning to Christianity.”

In the ultra-leftist Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1976, Bibles were burnt as tomes of superstition. Much has altered since the 1980s when government policy required tourists and visitors not to bring in Bibles “in excess of personal use”. Many faithful took to smuggling the book into China to meet demand....

It is such a sensitive issue that Chinese officials denied rumours recently that China would ban international athletes from bringing in Bibles to the Olympics in Beijing next August. However, the official Olympic website states: “Each traveller is recommended to take no more than one Bible into China.”

Drew Carey on govt vs. private provision of roads

From ReasonTV.com, Drew Carey on Gridlock: Hell on Wheels...
(please excuse Drew's "french" at the end)

An earlier post of mine on the potential privatization of roads...

Daniels reform proposal and local spending

From Jeff Abbott, an adjunct scholar with the Indiana Policy Review Foundation-- in the Ft. Wayne Journal-Gazette (hat tip: Jeff/NA News-Tribune, although it's not on their website)...

Abbott makes an important point: changing the process, without changing the actors, the incentives, or the information is unlikely to result in markedly different (or better) outcomes.

Indiana has a petition-remonstrance process that allows local taxpayers a say in whether a proposed bond issue will be allowed to proceed. Less than one-half of such remonstrances, however, are won by protesting taxpayers. Gov. Mitch Daniels has proposed replacing this with a referendum process whereby voters would decide proposed school bond issues up or down. But will it be any better?

The answer depends on the data used in whatever process is adopted.

Both sides of a proposed bond issue typically play to emotions. The school boards piously proclaim “it’s for the kids” and that the future of the community rests upon the approval of the proposed project. The remonstrators might just as loudly proclaim that businesses will leave and many retirees, poor people and even middle-class residents will lose their homes to foreclosure because they won’t be able to pay the higher property taxes.

School bond issue campaigns in Indiana are always long on rhetoric and short on facts. What is needed is just the opposite. The referendum process as proposed by the governor may be just as doomed as the current petition-remonstrance process. That is because it doesn’t matter which process is used.

Substantial changes in data collecting, data analyzing and data dissemination need to occur. Data need to speak directly to the question: Can a particular community afford the school bond issue before it?

The criteria and guidelines used by the state and local school boards are inadequate to answer that question....

Three indexes have been constructed to help a community address those questions: 1) a school-district affordability index; 2) a community-affordability index; and 3) an individual and family affordability index. These indexes incorporate 54 possible quantitative measurements as criteria for determining affordability.

Without the use of such quantitative data, regardless of whether the governor’s reform is approved, Indiana school bond campaigns will continue to be long on rhetoric and short on facts-- to the detriment of Indiana citizens who must ultimately make decisions on school-construction issues.

The longer version-- a "white paper"-- is available here-- through the IPR's website.

educational spending and results in Clark County

A little bit of arithmetic...

There are about 11,000 public school students in the GCC district. (Another website said there were 10,000, but we'll go with the larger number.)

According to an article in the C-J this morning, the GCC public school budget is nearly $75 million.

At present, we're spending about $6,800 per public school student-- $170,000 for a classroom of 25 students.

GCC's ISTEP results are below-average for Indiana-- in reading and math, in every grade level.

From KY with love: more subsidies for corporations and special interest groups

Ford recently received $60 million in taxpayer subsidies...

For excerpts on the C-J article about this-- along with my analysis-- see my lengthy posting on this at SchansBlog...

Enjoy!

Huckabee takes a beating from Novak

A long but good and powerful indictment from Bob Novak on Mike Huckabee's limited conservatism... Some excerpts:

Who would respond to criticism from the Club for Growth by calling the conservative, free-market campaign organization the "Club for Greed"? That sounds like Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich or John Edwards, all Democrats preaching the class struggle. In fact, the rejoinder comes from Mike Huckabee, who has broken out of the pack of second-tier Republican presidential candidates to become a serious contender -- definitely in Iowa and perhaps nationally.

Huckabee is campaigning as a conservative, but...he is a high-tax, protectionist, big-government advocate of a strong hand in the Oval Office directing the lives of Americans. Until now, they did not bother to expose the former governor of Arkansas as a false conservative because he seemed an underfunded, unknown nuisance candidate. Now that he has pulled even with Mitt Romney for the Iowa caucuses with the possibility of more progress, the beleaguered Republican Party has a frightening problem on its hands.

The rise of evangelical Christians as the motive force that blasted the GOP out of minority status during the past generation always contained an inherent danger if these new Republican acolytes supported not merely a conventional conservative but one of their own. That has happened now with Huckabee, a former Baptist minister educated at Ouachita Baptist University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. The danger is a serious contender for the nomination who passes the litmus test of social conservatives on abortion, gay marriage and gun control but is far removed from the conservative-libertarian model of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan....

Admitting the difficulty of nation-building and reducing our political goals in Iraq

cross-listed on SchansBlog...

My analysis of Gov. Daniels' poll numbers

cross-listed at SchansBlog...

Democrats as the political party representing the rich

Cross-listed at my blog: a report on Democrats representing the wealthier districts-- and commentary from me on the ways in which they fail to support the working poor and middle class...

Bella!

From my blog on the movie, Bella...