Louisville Tea Party

LOW-TAX TEXAS BEATS BIG-GOVERNMENT CALIFORNIA

Despite similarities in their histories and demographic makeup, Texas and California differ greatly in terms of their respective approaches to public policy.  With its low taxes and “hands-off” economic policies, Texas’ economy is booming and the state is experiencing a population inflow.  Meanwhile, California’s recent experience has been quite the opposite, thanks to its expensive and increasingly incompetent government, says Michael Barone, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). 

California has gone in for big government in a big way, says Barone: 

• Democrats hold big margins in the legislature largely because affluent voters in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area favor their liberal positions on cultural issues.
• Those Democratic majorities have obediently done the bidding of public employee unions to the point that state government faces huge budget deficits.
• Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s attempt to reduce the power of the Democratic-union combine with referenda was defeated in 2005 when public employee unions poured $100 million — all originally extracted from taxpayers — into effective TV ads. 

Texas differs vividly from California, says Barone: 

• Texas has low taxes — and no state income taxes — and a much smaller government.
• Its legislature meets for only 90 days every two years, compared with California’s year-round legislature.
• Its fiscal condition is sound and public employee unions are weak or nonexistent. 

In the meantime, Texas’ economy has been booming.  Unemployment rates have been below the national average for more than a decade, as companies small and large generate new jobs, says Barone. 

And Americans have been voting for Texas with their feet, says Barone: 

• From 2000 to 2009, some 848,000 people moved from other parts of the United States to Texas, about the same number as moved in from abroad.
• That inflow continued in 2008-09, when 143,000 Americans moved into Texas, more than double the number in any other state; at the same time 98,000 were moving out of California.
• Texas is on the way to gain four additional House seats and electoral votes in the 2010 reapportionment. 

Source: Michael Barone, “Low-Tax Texas Beats Big-Government California,” Washington Examiner, March 7, 2010. 

ALICE IN HEALTHCARE LAND

What is most like Alice in Wonderland is discussing medical care reform in the abstract, as if there are not already government-run medical care systems in this country and elsewhere.

Yet there seems to be remarkably little interest in examining how government-run medical care actually turns out– medically and financially– whether in Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Administration hospitals in this country, or in government-run medical systems in other countries.

By all means look at other countries, but not just to see what to imitate. See how it actually turns out. Yet there seems to be an amazing lack of interest in examining what government-controlled medical care produces.

While our so-called health care “summit” last week was going on, British newspapers were carrying exposes of terrible, and often deadly, conditions in British hospitals under that country’s National Health Service. But this has not become part of our debate on what to expect from government-controlled medical care.

Such scandals are an old story under the National Health Service in Britain, one repeatedly producing fresh scandals that their newspapers carry, but ours ignore.

In addition to a whole series of National Health Service scandals in Britain over the years, the government-run medical system in Britain has far less high-tech medical equipment than there is in the United States. Neither in Britain, Canada, nor in other countries with government-run medical care systems can people get to see doctors, especially surgeons, in as short a time as in the United States.

It is not uncommon for patients in those countries to have to wait for months before getting operations that Americans get within weeks, or even days, after being diagnosed with a condition that requires surgery. You can always “bring down the cost of medical care” by having a lower level of quality or availability.

Editor’s Note:  This is an excerpt of an essay by Thomas Sowell from Tuesday, March 3, 2010.

(Editor’s Note:  As has been well-pointed out, so much of the healthcare reform debate has revolved around HOW government should accomplish it, very few people are asking IF it is the government’s role at all.   It is not.   This is yet another usurpation of state’s rights by the federal government to intrude and commandeer an industry it has no right to take over.)

“We think it’s critical that power shifts to the American consumer and away from government, employers and insurers, as evidence shows medical care prices come down when patients pay directly. Government should offer tax relief, such as refundable tax credits, to encourage private health insurance purchasing — especially for low-income families. Similar ideas, like those in the Patients’ Choice Act … are important for Americans to consider. We would do well also to consider creative ideas such as changing federal payments to state-based medicaid plans to individual vouchers or expanding health savings accounts, as has been done in South Carolina.”  (Dr. Scott W. Atlas, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor at Stanford University Medical Center, and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford).

Read more: http://stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2010/02/16/hooray-for-evan-bayh/#ixzz0fkBEeTpo

Check out the graph tracking the US’ annual budget below.  It shows where we’ve been, where we are and where we’re projected to be through the next decade.  The CBO is the Congressional Budget Office and functions as an independent entity whose purpose is to provide some semblance of accountability in the budgetary process.  The last budget surplus was in 2001.  After that, and all through the Bush years, the deficits began mounting.  Clearly, neither party can boast of their having been fiscally responsible.   But watch how the marble has rolled off the table in the past 12 months and how sharply–and alarmingly–the financial scenario worsens. 

If you had a team of experts handling your money and this was their track record, you would fire them.  Well, America, it is your money.  No wonder a Rasmussen Poll released last week states that 63% of Americans favor the standing guard in Congress being voted out come November.  This madness must be stopped. 

~Dan Blanchard

What is the Federal government’s solution to any crisis, real or contrived?  To throw money at it.  Your money.  Bucket loads of money.  Obscene amounts of money.   Money that they cannot afford because they do not have it to spend.  Take 30 seconds of your time and watch the visualization of a job crisis (and each job lost represents a hurting family in America) as it has swept across the US…inclusive of the “Stimulus.”  (Click on blue link below)

Updated 02.05.10, The Geography of a Recession

Click on the “We the People” title/link for an audio intro to a special series, “We the People,” hosted by our friend in freedom, Jim Coyle, beginning this Sunday, February 7th from 1 – 2pm on AM 970, WGTK.

“We the People”

http://elections.jeffersoncountyclerk.org/

AN ECONOMIC TIME BOMB

Weather-wise it has been a very cold January, and politically the Scott Brown Senate victory has chilled Washington even further Democrats.  But if the Democratic economic policies continue nevertheless, this year will be nothing like the bitter economic January we will be living in a year from now, says Pete du Pont, Chairman of the National Center for Policy Analysis and a former Governor of Delaware.

Government spending has already hugely increased, and so has the size and scope of government, but next year there will also be substantial tax increases for a great many Americans.  The first reason will be the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, explains du Pont:

• The top personal income tax rate will rise next Jan. 1 to 39.6%  from 35%, a hike of nearly one-eighth.
• The dividend tax rate will rise to 39.6%, more than 2½ times the current 15%.
• And the capital gains tax rate will rise by a third, to 20% from 15%.
• If the House health care bill had passed, all three of these rates would have risen to 45%.

The estate tax, which fell to zero this year under the Bush tax cuts, will return in 2011 — or sooner, if Congress acts to restore it.  Another likely tax increase will be on the income of private equity and hedge-fund managers, from the capital gains rate of 15 percent to the new higher income tax rates.  It has already been passed by the House and is supported by the Obama administration, as is an additional 10-year, $90 billion tax on banks aimed at “rolling back bonuses for top earners.”  It would affect some 50 banks, insurance companies, and large broker-dealers.

Meanwhile a number of last year’s tax deductions have disappeared due to the failure of Congress to extend them into this year, says du Pont:

• The tax deduction for state and local sales taxes is one.
• The deduction for college tuition and fees is another.
• The 50% write-off for small businesses for capital purchases–equipment, machinery or building a new plant–has disappeared as well, which will have a negative effect upon the construction of new business operation facilities.

Source: Pete du Pont, “An Economic Time Bomb,” Online Journal, January 26, 2010.

(Editor’s Note: In a faltering economy, with 26 million Americans out of work, we simply CANNOT impose a greater burden on families.  It is impossible to tax and spend our way into prosperity–Dan Blanchard)

For text:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704375604575023413871397430.html