Why CCSD's capital campaign is a bad deal for taxpayers
Earlier today, the Clark County School District announced that Rex Bell and Lincoln elementary schools would be replaced if voters approve a $669 million tax increase in November. I used that news to remind voters, once again, that spending money on facilities doesn't increase student achievement but will dramatically harm some hurting Nevada families.
NPRI comments on CCSD capital campaign announcement
LAS VEGAS - In response to the Clark County School District announcement that Rex Bell and Lincoln elementary schools would be replaced if voters approve a $669 million tax increase in November, Victor Joecks, communications director at the Nevada Policy Research Institute, released the following comments:
A quality education doesn't come from a building. It comes from a system with effective teachers and where parents can choose the best options for their children. Because there is little to no correlation between spending on buildings and student achievement, it is disappointing to see district officials push a plan that will not improve student learning but will burden parents with new taxes.Read more:
This is especially tragic for the parents who will lose their homes if this tax increase passes. We must remember the many parents who, after struggling for years to pay their mortgage, will find that this tax increase would be the straw that breaks the camel's back and causes them and their children to lose their home.
While district officials are claiming poverty, the school board recently approved spending $6.6 million on a luxury item - a gym for a high school that already has one.
Read moreHow deep America's fiscal hole is
Have you ever seen a child try and escape an uncomfortable situation by closing his eyes and pretending he's not there? When I read honest and stark descriptions of how perilous America's fiscal situation is, like this one penned by five senior fellows from Stanford University's Hoover Institution, I feel like that kid.
I just want to close my eyes and make it all go away.
Did you know that annual spending by the federal government now exceeds the 2007 level by about $1 trillion? With a slow economy, revenues are little changed. The result is an unprecedented string of federal budget deficits, $1.4 trillion in 2009, $1.3 trillion in 2010, $1.3 trillion in 2011, and another $1.2 trillion on the way this year. The four-year increase in borrowing amounts to $55,000 per U.S. household. ...Think raising taxes on those oh-so-terrible rich people is going to solve this problem? In a great column yesterday, the Review-Journal's Glenn Cook destroys that notion.
This is all bad enough, but where we are headed is even worse.
President Obama's budget will raise the federal debt-to-GDP ratio to 80.4% in two years, about double its level at the end of 2008, and a larger percentage point increase than Greece from the end of 2008 to the beginning of this year.
Under the president's budget, for example, the debt expands rapidly to $18.8 trillion from $10.8 trillion in 10 years. The interest costs alone will reach $743 billion a year, more than we are currently spending on Social Security, Medicare or national defense, even under the benign assumption of no inflationary increase or adverse bond-market reaction. For every one percentage point increase in interest rates above this projection, interest costs rise by more than $100 billion, more than current spending on veterans' health and the National Institutes of Health combined.
Worse, the unfunded long-run liabilities of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid add tens of trillions of dollars to the debt, mostly due to rising real benefits per beneficiary. Before long, all the government will be able to do is finance the debt and pay pension and medical benefits. This spending will crowd out all other necessary government functions.
The Whopper to End All Whoppers is President Obama's claim that his tax plan will pay down the country's staggering $16 trillion national debt. ...Cook also details how the Buffet Rule is nothing more than cynical "political gimmick."
Obama says we can get there by making the wealthy "pay a little more." "Millionaires and billionaires" will cover the bill, he says. But his plan, as represented, doesn't even come close.
The president wants to sunset the Bush tax cuts for individuals earning at least $200,000 and households earning at least $250,000, but keep the lower rates for everyone else. He also wants to reduce the deductions available to those households, raising their income taxes even higher. He proposes increases in the capital gains and dividends tax rates on top of the 3.8 percent Medicare tax on investment income that's part of ObamaCare.
All those tax increases combined will yield an estimated $140 billion per year in new federal revenue, getting the president almost 13 percent toward a balanced budget.
So is there a way out or should we just curl up into the fetal position as we await the seemingly inevitable? Fortunately, the aforementioned "senior fellows" have the solution.
The fixes are blindingly obvious. Economic theory, empirical studies and historical experience teach that the solutions are the lowest possible tax rates on the broadest base, sufficient to fund the necessary functions of government on balance over the business cycle; sound monetary policy; trade liberalization; spending control and entitlement reform; and regulatory, litigation and education reform. The need is clear. Why wait for disaster? The future is now.As F.A. Hayek says in round two of his epic rap battle vs. John Maynard Keynes, "Friend, the party is over. The long run is here. It's time to get sober!"
We are not the 16 percent!
Every week, NPRI President Andy Matthews writes a column for NPRI's week-in-review email. If you are not getting our emails, which contain our latest commentaries and news stories, you can sign up here to receive them. Just enter your email in the box on the top right.
For today's week-in-review email, Andy asks, "Do you belong to the government?".
Would you say no to a 16 percent pay raise?
Better yet, would you respond to being offered a 16 percent raise with hurt feelings, righteous indignation and an insistence that such an insulting offer represented an affront to the cause of social justice? If you were a teacher-union boss in the City of Chicago, you would.
The spectacle now unfolding in the Windy City is only the latest example of a teacher union publicly debasing itself, though to be sure, it's a particularly striking one. Despite already being among the highest-paid teachers in the country (average salary: $76,000, plus benefits), members of the Chicago Teachers Union have responded to the board of education's offer of a 16 percent raise over four years by ... going on strike.
To those of us living in the real world - you know, the one beset by ongoing economic and financial strife, in which most folks feel lucky even to have a job - this is absolutely nuts. But in the world of the teacher unions, it makes perfect sense to demand that already-strapped taxpayers cough up ever-exorbitant sums of money to keep the party going. To say that a 16 percent raise wasn't enough is to miss the point. To the unions, it's never enough.
It's important to note, however, that this strike isn't solely about money, or even primarily so. What's really sticking in the union's craw is a recently adopted system of teacher evaluation, which union leaders fear may lead to the dismissal of ineffective teachers (re: dues-payers). Nothing so horrifies a union boss as the idea of accountability for performance.
And indeed, in that regard, what's happening in Chicago is hardly anomalous. NPRI's Geoff Lawrence penned a commentary this week describing how a union-backed organization staged a protest at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., to voice outrage over the screening of a movie called Won't Back Down. The movie, Geoff writes, "details the struggle of dedicated parents to transform a failing public school using 'parent-trigger' laws" which "allow parents to force major changes at a single school if more than 50 percent of the schools' parents sign a petition urging the change." Not surprisingly, teacher unions have fought tooth-and-nail against these accountability-enhancing parent-trigger laws all across the country.
It's not just with parents that teacher unions want to duck responsibility, either. As we've seen here in Nevada, the union bosses don't even want to be held accountable to their own members. You may recall a recent effort here at NPRI to inform Clark County teachers of their right to opt-out of the teacher union if they chose to do so. Even more memorable was the hysterical response our effort drew from the union brass.
Exasperating as this all may be, those of us who champion serious education reforms ought to be welcoming these public displays of union fatuity.
For decades, as union bosses have resisted meaningful changes to the status quo while clamoring for higher expenditures on public education, they've insisted that their sole motivation has been a concern for "the children." It is, of course, a preposterous claim, especially in light of union resistance to accountability measures - since the evidence shows clearly that teacher quality is the single most important school-controlled factor in student achievement.
So it's nice to see the unions discredit themselves more thoroughly and effectively than any white paper or policy analysis ever could.
In the end, all of their antics will simply reinforce, in the public eye, an incontrovertible truth: We can placate the teacher unions, or we can improve education for children. We cannot do both.
Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend.
Andy Matthews
NPRI President
Remember, if you'd like to receive the latest from NPRI, sign-up for our emails here. Enter your email address in the box on the top right.
Snort: CCSD says it's totally cool Obama didn't pay his campaign bill for four years
Yesterday, the Las Vegas Sun ran a story on Presidential campaigns reimbursing (or not) the Clark County School District for events held in CCSD buildings.
There were three things I loved about this story. First, it contains much of the same information as this Nevada Journal story, written by reporter Karen Gray, that came out ... two months ago.
Second, reporter Tovin Lapan buries this nugget in the middle of the story.
In 2008, Obama was in Las Vegas frequently for his campaign and racked up a bill of over $53,000 with the Clark County School District for seven events, two of which were large rallies with more than 15,000 attendees at Bonanza and Coronado high schools that occupied the schools for entire weekends, according to the School District.Yes, you read that right. At the same time Obama wanted to spend more taxpayer dollars on education, the Obama campaign took four years to pay its bill to a school district that cries poverty at every opportunity.
The Obama campaign paid about half the bill at the time but left a significant portion unpaid, (CCSD spokeswoman Amanda) Fulkerson said. The campaign paid the balance this year.
Of course, if you read Nevada Journal, you knew about that two months ago.
Third, this quote from Fulkerson justifying the Obama campaign's four-year delay in paying its bill is hilarious.
"During the 2008 campaign, the Obama campaign used quite a bit of our facilities, and the campaign team at the time incurred the charges as opposed to paying them upfront. With the dissolution of the campaign, there were outstanding fees. We were in contact with their people, and we are a government entity that is used to things happening slowly, so it was not extremely concerning. The new bill eventually got paid," Fulkerson said. (Emphasis added.)If being four years late on a bill is "not extremely concerning" to CCSD, let's see what happens to an average citizen who is even 4 months late paying his property tax.
In her story, Karen digs through Fulkerson's spin and shows how CCSD violated its own policies to benefit Obama.
However, CCSD's official written policy, number 3613 R (see page 16 (C) and (D)), requires that after receiving the budget department's notification of all direct and indirect costs, the accounting department will create a detailed estimate, which "... must be paid before the event can be scheduled." (Emphasis added)Why are CCSD officials protecting the Obama campaign? Does covering for Obama have anything to do with CCSD's recent decision to apply for Race to the Top dollars after saying earlier this summer that Race to the Top wasn't worth the federal strings?
"All fees must be paid to the Accounting Department," states another section, "before the event can be listed on the master schedule."
However, in contradiction of this written policy, CCSD invoiced the Obama campaign after the events. Additionally, those invoices were not even created until weeks after the district had received payment from the campaign.
I don't know, but CCSD officials have violated their own policies in order to benefit the Obama campaign.
Why government workers shouldn't be allowed to strike
Exhibit A: The "fun" striking teachers in Chicago are having after rejecting a 16 percent pay increase over four years. While these union members have a grand old time, parents of the district's 350,000 students are scrambling to keep their kids safe.
Exhibit B: This terrific op-ed by Hillsdale College professor Paul Moreno, who details why lefties in the first half of the twentieth century, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt, opposed government unionism.
FDR pointed out the obvious, that the government is sovereign. If an organization can compel the government to do something, then that organization will be the real sovereign. Thus the National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act of 1935 gave private-sector unions the power to compel employers to bargain, but the act excluded government workers. It declared that federal and state and local governments were not "employers" under its terms. (Emphasis added.)
When teachers' union bosses place themselves above children
So teachers in Chicago public schools have decided to leave the children they are responsible for out on the street while they fight against accountability?For those who haven't followed the situation, the Chicago Teachers' Union is entering Day 2 of its strike today and children attending Chicago Public Schools have nowhere to go. (The 45,000 children attending the area's charter schools are in better luck, though, because teachers at those schools recognize that a strike during classroom hours wouldn't be "fair to the children," according to this article in the Chicago Sun-Times. Apparently, their peers at the traditional public schools aren't hung up with such concerns.)
So what's at the center of this dispute? Is the school board trying to strip away teachers' retirement or health benefits? Is it trying to reduce teacher pay? Surely, for teachers to leave their classrooms and take to the streets, they must be in danger of losing something significant, right?
Not really. Although the Chicago school district faces a projected budget deficit of $3 billion over the next three years, they've offered what amounts to an average raise of 16 percent over the duration of the next 4-year union contract.
You read that right. The CTU was offered a 16 percent raise and took to the streets in anger. How many Nevadans have been offered a similar pay raise in the past few years? Could you imagine taking to the streets and making children pay because of your outrage at such an offer?
What's really at stake here isn't about pay, of course. It's about accountability. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (former Obama Chief-of-Staff) has taken a page out of the Obama Education Department and insisted that student performance play a role in teacher evaluations. Indeed, it's not just the Obama White House and federal education Secretary Arne Duncan who believe that teachers' should be measured, in part, by their ability to improve the academic performance of their students. Nearly every education researcher or advocate from Left to Right (outside of the union camp, that is) has reached similar conclusions.
After all, if public education is meant to benefit the students involved, then success should ultimately be measured by whether students are benefitting, right?
But the CTU will have none of it. As they see it, the purpose of a public education system is to dispense jobs and goodies to adults and not to help children. That's why this Reason video, aptly titled "The Machine," is particularly poignant.
To its credit, the Nevada State Teachers' Association didn't have the gall to go this far when the 2011 legislature, at the behest of Gov. Brian Sandoval, voted to require that student performance account for at least 25 percent of future teacher evaluations in Nevada. However, its representatives did fight vigorously to make the requirement subject to collective bargaining agreements at the district level, so that local union representatives would later be able to quash the new accountability requirements.
Thomas Jefferson believed that an educated populace was indispensable to the preservation of the republic, which is why he was such a fierce advocate for public education. That legacy of American public education, however, was focused on providing children with the means to be successful in life and contribute meaningfully to society. It wasn't about dispensing patronage or other goodies through a shamefully political process.
It's time we return to that legacy because education is too important to be subverted by special interests.
Do you belong to the government?
Every week, NPRI President Andy Matthews writes a column for NPRI's week-in-review email. If you are not getting our emails, which contain our latest commentaries and news stories, you can sign up here to receive them. Just enter your email in the box on the top right.
For today's week-in-review email, Andy asks, "Do you belong to the government?".
I shudder to think that anyone in this country would answer yes to that question, but at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, the party played this video. It's a short video, so I encourage you to watch it and listen, and to take particular note of the statement that "government is the only thing we all belong to."
Yes, you heard that right.
Astonishingly, when Revealing Politics asked some convention goers about this statement, they didn't repudiate it or redefine it. Indeed, they accepted it, and offered some further comments on how it made them feel.
I urge you to watch their video, but I wanted to offer a sampling of the comments:
Democrat: Regardless of where you live, you're going to be owned by someone at some point.These comments certainly provide additional context to President Obama's "If you've got a business, you didn't build that" line. After all, how can you really build anything if you belong to the government?
Democrat: We all do belong to the government, if you're a U.S. citizen.
Democrat: Who knows? I haven't never had another feeling. So I can't tell you how it feels not to belong to the government.
Interviewer: So how do you feel about the community message that we all belong to the government? Democrat: Well, I believe that, but unfortunately, the Republicans don't.
What we have here, my friend, is a complete perversion of the American social contract. As the Declaration of Independence states so eloquently, people don't belong to the government. Rather, people create governments to protect their God-given rights:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. - That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...Or, as Frédéric Bastiat, the 19th Century political economist and philosopher, wrote in The Law:
Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.While this fall's elections are very important, the need to confront our nation's fundamental philosophical divide is even greater, and transcends any single election. We must - at appropriate times within our circles of influence - help our friends, family members, co-workers and other associates understand the history and meaning of our nation's founding documents, as well as the proper role of government those documents so brilliantly articulate.
What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense. ...
If every person has the right to defend - even by force - his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right - its reason for existing, its lawfulness - is based on individual right.
One tool I'd like to recommend is a series of classes on the U.S. Constitution offered by Hillsdale College. The courses, including an Introduction to the Constitution, Constitution 101 and Constitution 201, are college-level classes (available online) that offer a convenient way for citizens of all ages to learn the true history of our nation's paramount governing document. Even better, the classes are free. (Learn more at http://constitution.hillsdale.edu/.)
If you take one of the classes (or if you have already), I'd love to know what you think. If we're going to effectively counter the mindset of those who think that "government is the only thing we all belong to," learning about the ideals that inspired our nation's founding is a great place to start.
Take care, and I'll see you next time.
Andy Matthews
NPRI President
Remember, if you'd like to receive the latest from NPRI, sign-up for our emails here. Enter your email address in the box on the top right.
TransparentReno now has payroll data, continues to be a model other governments should emulate
Pop quiz. If you're looking for payroll data for a city of Reno employee, what website should you go to?
While I'll never tell you that TransparentNevada isn't a great place to find that info, the payroll database launched this week by the city of Reno is another excellent source of info.
Reno's database features year-to-date salary and benefits data (TransparentNevada has last year's information), which, I believe, is going to be regularly updated throughout the year. TransparentReno's salary data base also goes back to 2009, which is great. Another handy feature is the ability to export the data as an Excel or CSV file.
The one thing I'd like to see added is the ability to search by name without having to download an entire file or sort a huge list. That's the most popular feature on TransparentNevada, and I think Reno's citizens would appreciate that as well.
That said, TransparentReno continues to be a model for other cities and counties around Nevada.
Great job Reno!
As NPRI's Steve Miller said in February, when Reno launched its online checkbook:
Congratulations to the city council and City Manager Andrew Clinger for opening up city finances to the average citizen, for their commitment to transparency and for setting an example that all other government bodies in Nevada should soon follow.
Atlas Shrugged II trailer
I know you're excited!!!
A small victory for freedom: Las Vegas tables food truck restrictions
The Las Vegas Review-Journal has the full story here, but I'm assuming you know the background, so here's reaction from food truck owners gathered by Kyle Gillis with Nevada Journal. As a bonus, this video includes a great story in defense of free enterprise from Councilman Steve Ross.
Unfortunately, this victory for freedom is likely short lived. I have no doubt some brick-and-mortar restaurant owners will again appeal to government to use its coercive power to limit the freedom of their competitors. As French economist and political philosopher Frederic Bastiat writes in The Law, far too often government's authority is unjustly used to pick winners and losers in the economy.
The Complete Perversion of the LawIf you have never read The Law, a short, brilliant book on just government, it is available for free online here. Read it to find out why one perversion of the law - if not stopped immediately - inevitably leads to many.
But, unfortunately, law by no means confines itself to its proper functions. And when it has exceeded its proper functions, it has not done so merely in some inconsequential and debatable matters. The law has gone further than this; it has acted in direct opposition to its own purpose. The law has been used to destroy its own objective: It has been applied to annihilating the justice that it was supposed to maintain; to limiting and destroying rights which its real purpose was to respect. The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. And it has converted lawful defense into a crime, in order to punish lawful defense.
How has this perversion of the law been accomplished? And what have been the results?
The law has been perverted by the influence of two entirely different causes: stupid greed and false philanthropy.
