If the U.S. government was a family, how much in debt would they be?
If you knew this family, they'd either be bankrupt or mighty close.
"If the US Government was a family, they would be making $58,000 a year, they spend $75,000 a year, & [they] are $327,000 in credit card debt. They are currently proposing BIG spending cuts to reduce their spending to $72,000 a year. These are the actual proportions of the federal budget & debt, reduced to a level that we can understand." - Dave RamseyThere are only two positions on the national debt: denial and reality. Reality: We're broke.
The numbers - and their implications - are staggering. Without a change in course, a Greece-like scenario isn't just a possibility - it's an inevitability.
We're broke. And to think, the boom in entitlement spending is just beginning. It's time to make real cuts in spending, not "cuts" to an imaginary baseline.
Read moreWho's saving our schools?
Written by Alexander Cooper, NPRI policy intern.
On July 30, Reason.TV correspondent Michelle Fields attended the Save Our Schools Rally in Washington, DC, to interview some of the protesters about school reform, including Matt Damon.
For the most part, the jargon was familiar to those accustomed to the education debate. Attendees asserted that it's always been possible to fire teachers, that teachers are paid poorly, that teacher tenure doesn't bring down education, that charter schools aren't any better than private schools, and even the totally out-of-the-ballpark claim that we shouldn't cut education funding because the worth of an education can't be quantified.
Anyone making the first claim apparently hasn't heard that, between 2000 and 2010, the Los Angeles Unified School District spent $3.5 million trying to fire just seven teachers - and only succeeded in firing four. They also probably haven't heard about New York's rubber rooms (which were ended just last year), in which teachers being considered for termination just wasted time, sometimes for months, while still receiving their full salaries. In Nevada, until the recent legislative session, it was about as difficult to fire post-probationary (or, tenured) teachers.
Then, according to Matt Damon, teachers are so poorly paid that they must already be performing their best. Teachers, however, are not poorly paid once you consider the number of hours they report working and when you count their generous benefits on top of that. The best teachers, however, often put in many more hours outside of school, and they might rightly think they are underpaid. Performance pay would align pay more closely with performance, but even that idea has met union resistance. In the Clark County School District union-negotiated contracts instead require that teachers be paid on the basis of their degree and their length of time with the school district.
The real problem with teacher salaries is that they are usually unrelated to teaching ability.
The third claim made in this video is particularly disconcerting. When asked how much money should be spent per pupil in our education system, one woman quickly responded, "Billions!"
This is absurd. How absurd? We would need to raise taxes to $51 quadrillion (rounded to the nearest quadrillionth) to fund this. (Nationwide there are 50,829,079 students as of 2009-2010.)
Regardless, more money is not the answer. Both here in Nevada and nationwide, massive funding increases have been followed by stagnant results or minute gains in educational achievement. (In Nevada alone, inflation-adjusted, per-pupil spending has tripled during the last fifty years, and we've seen where that's gotten us.)
Finally, it is worth addressing the claim that charter schools aren't any better than private schools. Studies show that although charter schools might not make a huge impact in areas with already high-performing public schools, students assigned to low-performing zoned schools are more likely to succeed when they attend a charter school, according to a study of voucher winners in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.
Parents deserve the right to select the best schools available to them - schools that pay their teachers on merit, that swiftly remove ineffective teachers, and that spend their money efficiently. It's time to recognize the importance of school choice.
Update: Changed the sentence on the time teachers work to more accurately what the Bureau of Labor Statistics studied: time teachers reported working, not the minimum number of hours they are required to work.
Also, added that this blog was written by Alexander Cooper.
CCSD fails to meet AYP; Growth model offers hope
Written by Alexander Cooper, NPRI policy intern.
The Clark County School District failed to meet AYP for the 2010-2011 school year.
Under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), all schools and school districts are required to meet certain minimum standards (to make "adequate yearly progress") set by the federal government.
One of the primary factors that goes into determining whether a school has made AYP is the performance of certain groups of students (e.g., students qualifying for free and reduced lunch, black students, Hispanic students, students with disabilities, students learning English as a second language, etc.), especially as measured by state-administered proficiency tests. If any of these subgroups fail to meet AYP, the entire school that they come from also fails.
This year, the number of subgroups increased from 37 to 45 mainly due to a new definition of "ethnicity."
The results were released for individual high schools today at a meeting of the CCSD Board of School Trustees.
For 2010-2011, only 139 of CCSD's 363 schools made AYP - down from 151 schools last year. Moreover, only 116 schools are currently labeled "adequate." All other schools are either "watch" schools (meaning that they only failed to meet AYP in the last year) or are "in need of improvement" (meaning that they failed to meet AYP for at least two years in a row or they have failed to meet AYP for at least two years but which may have met AYP during the last year).
It should be noted that NCLB demands more of schools every year; in fact, it ultimately requires that 100 percent of schools meet AYP by the 2013-2014 school year - an unrealistic expectation, as several school board trustees noted today. Additionally, scores may have decreased due to the increased difficulty of the reading proficiency exam.
For elementary- and middle-school students, AYP was set at a 65.9 percent pass rate on English/Language Arts (ELA) proficiency exams and 63.8 percent for mathematics proficiency exams. For high-school students, AYP was set at an 86.7 percent pass rate on ELA tests and at a 71.3 percent pass rate on mathematics exams. In order for a school to make AYP, the student body as a whole as well as all 45 subgroups had to either pass their proficiency exams at the above rates or increase their scores by 10 percent from last year.
This year's results are dismal, and with the legislature only enacting minor reforms, substantive improvements will now hinge on the success of Superintendent Dwight Jones' improvement plan.
The good news is that CCSD is publicly acknowledging and talking about a better type of tests - tests that measure the growth in student learning. You can learn more about value-added assessments, called the growth model in CCSD, here.
A final note: under NCLB, students are permitted to transfer from schools that have landed in the "in need of improvement" category. However, that is only if those schools are also Title 1 schools. There are fewer Title 1 schools this year, however, due to the end of stimulus funding. At this time, no high school is listed as a Title 1 school. So, unless students miraculously get a seat in a better school through CCSD's Open Enrollment program, students will be unable to leave any high schools that have failed to meet AYP for years. Elementary- and middle-school students will also be more limited in their ability to transfer under the guidelines set by NCLB.
For a list of CCSD schools and their AYP status, click here.
Problems with the US health care system
Gilbert Berdine, M.D. and medical professor at Texas Tech University, delivered an excellent diagnosis today. His diagnosis is not of a patient's particular ailment, however. It is of the ailments afflicting the US health care system in general.
Berdine details how federal and state interventions in the health care industry are directly responsible for runaway costs, less cost-effectiveness and, in some cases, poorer health outcomes.
Berdine traces how the Medicare Part A entitlement has led to a popular misperception of the role of health insurance. As I have written in the past, the major cause of skyrocketing prices for health insurance is that insurance is expected and, in many cases, mandated to cover conditions that are not "insurable." That is, health insurance is no longer used to insure against unforeseen calamity; it is used to finance the cost of routine care. As Berdine points out, this function does not constitute "insurance," it is just a socialization of costs. The only way that beneficiaries of a cost-sharing pool can benefit is to force lower-risk and lower-cost individuals into the pool - hence the impetus for a government mandate to participate in the cost-socialization scheme.
Berdine shows that the forced socialization of health expenditures is unaffordable for most households. Using data from the US Department of Health and Human Services and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, he calculates that the "the minimal cost of a fully homogenized national health-insurance policy where everything is covered, everyone is covered, and there are no preexisting conditions" for the average American household of 2.63 individuals is $20,632. The problem is that after that household has covered their taxes and food, clothing and housing costs, only $16,529 remains.
The high costs of health care socialization - a phenomenon that began long before the passage of Obamacare - can only be financed through government borrowing or money-printing. Berdine points out that payroll taxes intended to finance Medicare Part A are completely incapable of meeting the skyrocketing demand for medical services associated with the moral hazard problem of comprehensive health insurance. Forty percent of the financing for Medicare Part A today comes from general revenues while general revenues finance the entirety of Parts B and D. With the most realistic accounting assumptions, Medicare is facing an unfunded future liability of more than $100 trillion. These deficits are financed through government borrowing or money-printing, leading Berdine to conclude that the US health care system is in a credit-induced bubble.
Berdine ultimately recommends four steps to fixing the broken US health care system. The linchpin, however, is in the first recommendation:
1.Limit insurance to insurable conditions and eliminate all regulatory barriers to the provision of health insurance;
2.Eliminate the barriers to the production and delivery of healthcare, including licensing restrictions;
3.Eliminate the barriers to the production and delivery of medicines and medical technology, including patents; and
4.Eliminate the socialization of healthcare costs and the subsidies for being sick.
Great advice from someone who actually understands both medicine and economics.
Those in Washington and Carson City should be paying attention, because they have repeatedly demonstrated a failure to understand both disciplines.
NPRI responds to Ralston's inaccurate attacks
In last Friday's Las Vegas Sun, liberal pundit Jon Ralston attacked NPRI in his column and accused us of bias and partisanship. To respond to his numerous false claims, NPRI submitted the following letter to the editor to the Sun.
In his recent column ("Has think tank removed non-partisan pretense?" July 29, 2011), liberal pundit Jon Ralston attempted to disparage the Nevada Policy Research Institute (NPRI) using innuendo, a false narrative of bias dependent on cherry-picking articles and ignoring others, and a patronizing attitude that he alone knows what our organization should focus on. His attempts to twist our organization's mission, purpose and actions are not accurate or supported by readily available facts.Many thanks also to Chuck Muth for penning a stellar piece defending NPRI and pointing out that It's Not "Partisan" to Expose Abuses of Power. Chuck's piece was so good, I'm going to steal his last two paragraphs.
For the last 20 years, NPRI has promoted limited, accountable government, individual liberty and free enterprise. To accomplish these goals NPRI produces high-quality research and conducts investigative journalism focused mainly on government corruption.
As a non-partisan organization, we investigate stories and leads regardless of how powerful are the individuals we're investigating or which political party those individuals belong to. To kill a story, as Ralston suggests, just because one political side isn't going to like its implications would actually make us guilty of the very partisanship Ralston later accuses us of.
Ralston's criticism is no more than a shoot-the-messenger attack. If Assembly Speaker John Oceguera didn't want to be criticized for double-dipping and trying to cover it up - don't double-dip and try to cover it up. If Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford didn't want to be criticized for leading a potentially illegal taking of $4.2 million for the College Savings Plan - either don't take an action that could leave Nevada liable for millions in damages from a lawsuit, or return NPRI's repeated phone calls to get an explanation.
Is it partisan that these stories involved the highest ranking Democrats in the Legislature? Only if it's also partisan that NPRI has praised both Oceguera and Horsford for their stances, respectively, on transparency and opposition to a corporate income tax. Only if it's partisan that NPRI has both praised and criticized Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval for his stances on various issues. Only if it's partisan that even the highest ranking lawmaker in NPRI's Legislative Report Card scored lower than 90 percent.
Looking at NPRI's work through a partisan lens is inevitably going to lead to this kind of confusion. That's because NPRI is concerned with ideas, not individuals or political parties. If an elected official supports good tax, budget or education policy, we'll applaud him - regardless of party. If he doesn't, we'll point that out as well - regardless of political aspirations.
The same is true in our news stories. If there's a newsworthy story of corruption, a cover-up or serious legislative negligence and we come across it, we're going to write about it.
In the last year, NPRI has produced more than 500 commentaries, policy studies, news stories, press releases and blog posts and has appeared in state and national media outlets hundreds of times. If, as Ralston did, you consider only a handful of articles, you could support a variety of false narratives about us - many in direct contradiction to the one he crafted. If you consider the entirety of our work, however, our focus on our mission is clear.
Further, Ralston's suggestion that NPRI drop its investigative reporting efforts and focus only on policy research would be like someone suggesting that he drop his column and focus only on his "Face to Face" television show, because the liberal views he promotes in his column interfere with the generally neutral moderator role he has on "Face to Face."
Our organization is able to focus on more than one issue at once and, if he weren't so insistent on cherry-picking reports, Ralston might have noticed that NPRI has written repeatedly on two areas he criticized us for not addressing - the constitutional problems of the IFC and public employees serving in the Legislature, including a five-part series on the latter subject earlier this year.
He might also have noticed that in between writing news stories involving Oceguera and Horsford, NPRI has produced numerous commentaries and blog posts and even released 2010 public employee salary data on TransparentNevada.com. But those facts don't fit his false narrative.
Regardless of the distortions we face, or who they come from, NPRI will continue to stand up for sound policy ideas and expose government corruption - even if some would prefer Nevada's citizens remain in the dark.
Victor Joecks
Communications Director, Nevada Policy Research Institute
I'm sure our friends over at the conservative think tank aren't happy with being targeted by a hit piece authored by the state's leading and highly-respected political commentator this morning, but they should consider these thoughtful words widely attributed to a truly non-partisan man of peace, Mahatma Gandhi: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
Sounds like victory may be right around the corner! [Emphasis added]
Pardon our dust: NPRI's moving
Sorry, liberals: NPRI's not moving out of Nevada or Las Vegas. Nor are we even moving any of our terrific websites like npri.org (our homepage), TransparentNevada.com, WriteonNevada.com, NevadaJournal.com (our site for investigative journalism) or TweetNevada.com (the easiest way to track twitter conversations about the Nevada Legislature).
Instead, we're moving into a new and bigger office just a few miles from our current office in Las Vegas. I'm sure we'll make a more formal announcement in the near future. All that is to say: For the next couple of weeks, blogging here at WriteonNevada might be a bit slower than I'd prefer. There are about a dozen stories I want to write on right now, but you just can't do it all when you're packing and unpacking.
As an organization, we're excited to move and have a little more space, and we're also grateful. Whether you are a faithful reader or donor (or both!), thank you. We wouldn't have this opportunity without your support.
Thank you for sharing our research. Thank you for calling your lawmakers with our research and asking them questions. Thank you for your financial support. Know that the research NPRI is doing is making a huge difference. For instance, witness the reaction of these citizens to the 2010 salary data on TransparentNevada that we launched last week.
By the second week in August we should be back to full speed here at WriteonNevada, but even with the move, keep checking npri.org. We've got some great stories and commentaries coming in the next two weeks, including today's report on how the Horsford-led IFC may have illegally plundered millions from the College Savings Plan. That is a must-read story with the potential for significant legal implications.
Cook on Oceguera
Glenn Cook had an excellent story in the Review-Journal this weekend following up on NPRI's recent reporting on Assembly Speaker Oceguera's double-dipping with the North Las Vegas Fire Department. If you haven't seen it yet, check it out!
Saving the government money heals the sick
The benefits of good government aren't just financial. If you're a Clark County firefighter, they also have a remarkable healing power.
For years, many firefighters in Clark County were gaming the sick-leave system to boost their overtime pay. One firefighter would call in "sick," which would allow another one to cover his shift while receiving overtime or callback pay. The favor would then be returned at a later date. This practice was so widespread, firefighters called in sick almost twice as often as other county employees.
The Clark County Commission, led by Commissioner Steve Sisolak, started cracking down on this rampant abuse of sick leave last year. And after comparing the amount of sick leave taken this year to the same time period last year, lo and behold, the healing has begun.
About six months after an arbitrator pointed out what he thought was obvious misuse of the sick-leave system, and after Clark County adopted stricter rules, firefighters aren't calling in sick nearly as much as they used to.This sharp decline in sick leave offers even more evidence that abuse of the sick-leave system was rampant throughout the Clark County Fire Department. Let's hope the ongoing Metro and FBI investigations leave no stone unturned to find those firefighters who misused the sick-leave system to boost their pocketbooks. Their punishment should be swift and severe.
New county numbers show significant declines in sick-leave use across the board, but especially in the more isolated fire stations at McCarran International Airport and Laughlin.
The average number of sick-leave hours totaled at the Laughlin station fell 61 percent per pay period compared with 2010. At McCarran, sick-leave use per pay period fell 59 percent.
Across the department, sick-leave use this calendar year has fallen 32 percent on average per pay period. County staff estimates the declines will save taxpayers about $2.5 million if they continue. Meanwhile, it could cut into the average Clark County firefighter compensation package that averaged more than $180,000 each in 2010.
The public should remember this as well, especially the next time someone from the firefighters union tries to excuse this kind of abuse by claiming it was just a few bad apples or that it was management's fault. This was a systemic problem perpetrated by firefighters - but paid for by the public .
We shouldn't forget commissioners like Tom Collins or Chris Giunchigliani, either. Both tried to turn a blind eye to this problem.
Other commissioners aren't so sure. Commissioners Tom Collins and Chris Giunchigliani said if a problem [with the sick leave system] exists, it is management's responsibility to curb it.Most of all, the public should thank Sisolak for having the courage not to back down from this issue. Taking on a corrupt but politically powerful group like the firefighters union is risky politically, but certainly the right thing to do. Taxpayers always need someone to stand up for them, and in this case, Sisolak did that.
"If they really think people are doing this, then they have to address it. And if they don't address it, then shame on them and shame on us," Giunchigliani said.
As a result, he's not only saved the county money, he's "healed" countless firefighters.
Tanner on debt limit debate
Those following the national debate on whether Congress should raise the federal debt ceiling will find this article from Cato's Michael Tanner extremely interesting.
Tanner criticizes the obstinance of Congressional Democrats and President Obama in failing to give consideration to the modest proposal for spending reform offered by Congressional Republicans even though they have failed to produce one of their own. I find Tanner's remarks extremely poignant and have quoted them at length below:
The president did announce a budget back in February, but he has since disavowed it, and the Senate voted against it 97-0. The president also delivered a budget speech in May. But as the director of the Congressional Budget Office noted, "We don't score speeches." The president still has not submitted a new budget proposal to Congress.
Of course, he's in good company. Senate Democrats haven't produced a budget in two years. This year, in fact, for the first time in memory, even the Senate Budget Committee couldn't come up with a budget proposal. After all, time spent proposing a budget is time that can't be spent denouncing Republican "intransigence" for standing in the way of a deal.
Even if we don't know what the president is for, we certainly know what he is against. And when it comes to "Cut, Cap, and Balance," that's just about everything.
The House Republican plan is surprisingly moderate. First, it would impose $1.5 trillion in budget cuts over the next ten years. That's less than the federal government will borrow this year. Second, it would cap federal spending at 19.9 percent of GDP by 2020. That would still allow the federal government to spend 1.5 percent of GDP more than it did when Bill Clinton was president. And, finally, it would send a constitutional balanced-budget amendment to the states for consideration. The amendment would require that the federal government live within its means except during times of war or when supermajorities waive its provisions. In many ways, it is less strict than the balanced-budget provisions in place in every state except Vermont. In fact, the Republican proposal doesn't even amend the Constitution by itself; that would still require 38 states to approve it.
2010 government salaries now available on TransparentNevada
