No, It Is Not OK To Vote In Two States In One Presidential Election

Posted on by Patrick Ishmael

Project Veritas is a 501(c)(3) whose mission is “. . . to investigate and expose corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud, and other misconduct in both public and private institutions in order to achieve a more ethical and transparent society.” One of the issues the organization covers is voter fraud, and this week the group released a troubling hidden camera video that appears to show a campaign worker helping a “voter” — in reality, a Project Veritas representative —vote twice: in person in one state, and by absentee in another state. It is illegal to vote in two (or more) states in a single presidential election, but as the video shows, the barriers to this kind of fraud are extraordinarily low.

Voter fraud is real. Yes, sometimes campaign workers are truly mistaken about what the law is when it comes to voting in this country. But whether the staffer in Texas was unaware that what the camerawoman was “attempting” is illegal, or the staffer was in fact willing to turn a blind eye to the fraud she knew she might be assisting, the takeaway from the situation is the same — that not only is voter fraud a genuine problem, but that it is far too easy to perpetrate. This is unacceptable.

RELATED: The Show-Me Institute and the Federalist Society have partnered to put on a debate about voter ID and voter fraud later this month. It is scheduled for 6 p.m. on Thurs., Oct. 25 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Clayton and features John Fund of The Weekly Standard and Denise Lieberman of Advancement Project. The event is open to the public.

Disease* Runs Rampant In Missouri Public Schools

Posted on by James V. Shuls

Baumol’s disease is running rampant in Missouri public schools. Before you jump in the mini-van and rush to school to pick up your children, let me clarify. Baumol’s disease is an economic term, which describes the tendency of labor-intensive industries to continually have rising costs without achieving similar gains in production, i.e., they spend more, but do not produce more.

Recently, Matt Ladner wrote a series of blog posts about Baumol’s disease in public education. Ladner is certainly not the first to point out this problem. Jay Greene even touched on the topic this week in The Wall Street Journal.

I have seen the numbers nationally, but I wanted to bring it home for Missourians. So I constructed my own graph that demonstrates the Baumol phenomenon in Missouri’s public schools.

The graph was constructed using the Digest of Education Statistics Table 194 and results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). NAEP data are only available after 1992 and the tests are typically taken every other year.  The Digest of Education Statistics data stop in 2008-09. Thus, the graph presents the results from 1992 to 2008. When there were gaps between years, I linearly imported the figures.

Since 1992, Missouri has seen nearly a 40 percent increase in per-pupil spending. Yet we have seen little in terms of increases in academic achievement. This is the very picture of Baumol’s disease: increasing cost with very little improvement in output.

Is there a cure for Baumol’s disease? I think so and I will highlight a few in my next blog post. For now, I will leave you with a thought. If a real disease was running rampant in our schools, there would be immediate action. Yet we have a real economic disease that is plaguing our schools and little is being done. We cannot continue operating an educational system that is plagued with Baumol’s disease.

Reforming Healthcare by Seeding Free Market Formation

Posted on by John C. Goodman

On September 27, 2012, the Show-Me Institute co-sponsored the latest lecture in the economic speaker series at the Saint Louis University John Cook School of Business.

In this talk, renowned health care expert John C. Goodman explained, with humor and lively examples, how the problems with health care in the U.S. stem not from too little regulation, but from too much. Dr. Goodman also described a path to improving health care by allowing markets to work.

Kansas Governor Earns ‘A’ On Fiscal Report Card; Missouri Governor Gets ‘C’

Posted on by Patrick Ishmael

On Tuesday, the Cato Institute published the latest edition of its Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors, a biennial analysis of how America’s governors did in maintaining fiscal sanity at the state level. As the study’s author Chris Edwards explains, the report card “examines state budget actions since 2010. It uses statistical data to grade the governors on their taxing and spending records —governors who have cut taxes and spending the most receive the highest grades, while those who have increased taxes and spending the most receive the lowest grades.”

Not unexpectedly, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback received an “A” — in fact, the only “A” among the states that border Missouri. Edwards makes particular note of the massive tax cuts Brownback enacted this year, lowering personal income taxes and ending taxation on income derived from certain businesses. As Rex Sinquefield and I observed last Friday, that move was a big, big play for Missouri businesses that the state must address. Edwards also highlights the fact that Brownback “signed into law needed pension reforms for state workers, and he has abolished some state agencies.” The governors in Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Iowa also earned good grades, each scoring a “B” on Cato’s report card. It is worth reiterating: This is all occurring on Missouri’s doorstep.

And Missouri’s governor? Citing in part “Tax Credits as a Tool of State Economic Development Policy” — a Show-Me Institute study — Edwards assigned Gov. Jay Nixon a grade of “C,” noting that while taxes have not really risen in the state, “tax incentive disease runs rampant in Missouri, as it does in many states.” (Indeed, Missouri’s love affair with tax incentives is unfortunately bipartisan.) Interestingly, the ratings of governors in our nine-state region, generally speaking, get worse the farther east you go.

govfisc

You can find Cato’s full study here.

The Thing That Everybody (Apparently) Can Agree On . . .

Posted on by Michael Rathbone

Last week, the presidential debate took its place among notable sparring contests, perhaps rivaled in anticipation only by Ali-Frazier I. Despite the sharp exchange of verbal blows, both men seemed to agree on one thing, the need to lower the corporate income tax. It was great to hear both candidates recognize that our federal corporate income tax rate of 35 percent is too high.

The Show-Me Institute has discussed the merits of eliminating the Missouri corporate income tax. A lower or non-existent corporate tax rate will leave corporations with more of their money to invest in new projects or to hire new employees. Lower corporate taxes would allow taxing jurisdictions to be more competitive compared to neighboring jurisdictions with higher tax rates. Lowering the corporate tax rate would also be fairer than special incentives and tax credits because it would apply equally to all corporations instead of certain companies that politicians favor.

Both Gov. Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama stated in the debate that they would like to “pay for” a corporate income tax cut by closing loopholes and exemptions. In an upcoming paper for the Show-Me Institute, my colleague Patrick Ishmael and I propose eliminating Missouri’s corporate income tax. In order to ensure that Missouri’s revenues are not negatively impacted, Patrick and I propose that Missouri phase out the issuance of economic development tax credits, which have their own set of problems.

It appears that lowering the federal corporate tax rate has now become a bipartisan idea. Hopefully, it can be a bipartisan idea here as well. If Missouri wants to avoid going down for the count, it should move forward with corporate tax reform.

Dispute About Parking Stirs Up Trouble In The Ozarks

Posted on by David Stokes

In case you have not heard, there is trouble brewing at the “Party Capital of the Lake of the Ozarks.” It is a big brouhaha over parking and reminds me of the final scene of Reservoir Dogs, where everyone is pointing a gun at someone else, then they all shoot — and everyone gets shot. There were no winners in that fight, and there are no winners in this one.

This dispute is wonderful — if you happen to be a policy analyst at a free-market think tank who is paid to study such lunacy. For everyone else, the problems that the overall parking predicament has caused near the Shady Gators and Camden on the Lake at 7-Mile Cover has been enormously frustrating.

To review, a Transportation Development District (TDD) was formed in 2008 to operate parking lots in the area for customers of nearby businesses. Businesses that collect the tax and pay into the TDD (Camden on the Lake) got tired of people parking there but going to businesses that do not pay into the TDD, such as the wildly popular Shady Gators. The TDD instituted a parking charge for parking in the lots. Some people refused to pay the parking charge and started parking on the neighborhood streets. Residents complained. The police started writing tickets for parking violations on residential streets nearby. Vandals started removing the “No Parking” signs, thus making it impossible to write tickets. All the while, the TDD did a poor job of filing proper financial reports. With no ability to enforce “No Parking” rules and the continuance of the fee to park in the lots, more and more people parked in the surrounding neighborhood. Total chaos has ensued. Simple enough issue, right?

Every action in this series is understandable, except the vandalism and the late reporting. It is predictable under economic theory, and it is solvable through enforcement of property rights and reliance on market forces. Here are a few key facts to consider. First, there is no right to free parking. Second, you deal with congestion issues either with price or with capacity. Third, other people have property rights, and if you violate them (by parking in a residential area, etc.) you should expect a reaction. Finally, people will attempt to free-ride when possible, but good policy and enforcement of property rights can help make people pay for the goods they chose to consume (i.e.. parking).

To restate the problem: Businesses like Camden on the Lake have an obvious interest in making it easy for customers to patronize them, but they do not want to pay for people to patronize other stores. So the operators of Camden on the Lake started charging customers of Shady Gators, among others, to use the lots. Shady Gators complained, because they were getting the best of all worlds: free customer parking at no cost to them. This is the classic free-rider problem.

What is the solution? First, abandon the TDD and privatize the parking lots. The private sector is fully capable of operating parking systems. The TDD just gives businesses the ability to pay for their lots via taxes instead of their own charges. Second, respect the property rights of residents. Like Chicagoans who live near Wrigley Field and rent out their garages on game days, residents who choose to allow and charge for parking on their property should, of course, be able to do so. But those who do not wish to have business parking in front of their homes should have the “No Parking” restrictions enforced. Third, (and this is the obvious part) allow market forces to come into play and expand parking capacity. If businesses want the same level of customer demand to continue, it will be worth it to them to purchase additional property for parking or build another level on the current lot. If there is a strong demand for parking (and there clearly is) firms and entrepreneurs will meet that demand. The government should neither subsidize, via TDD, nor block, via zoning, the expansion of private parking to serve the customer needs for the 7-Mile Cove.

David Stokes is a policy analyst at the Show-Me Institute, which promotes market solutions for Missouri public policy.

What Is Public Education?

Posted on by James V. Shuls

Most people believe in public education. We understand that a well-functioning society needs an educated citizenry. But what is public education?

Public education is an idea. It is the idea that all kids, whether wealthy or poor, deserve to have access to an educational system that will equip them for life; a system that will enable them to achieve to the highest levels. Yet for some reason, we have come to equate the idea of public education with the standard system of delivering public education, traditional school districts.

Yesterday morning, I had the pleasure of attending a breakfast event at KIPP Inspire Academy. The featured speaker was Mike Feinberg, one of the founders of the original KIPP school in Houston (see him here on Oprah). Feinberg pointed out that the traditional method, where we draw attendance zones around schools and assign students to those schools, is not “god’s gift to public education.” We have not miraculously found the very best way of delivering public education. Traditional school districts are only one method of delivering education to students and that method leaves families with very few options.

All schools, whether public, charter, homeschools, or private can be part of the idea of public education. Because all schools that educate students are contributing to the public good.

Some people want to pit school choice against “public education.” The truth of the matter is that school choice is liberating public education. School choice is about giving the public more say in where their kids go to school. It is about making schools accountable to families, not the government. After all, the idea of a high-quality public education should not be limited to attendance zones.

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