"Bring on higher taxes"????
The lead story in today's print edition of the Las Vegas Review-Journal boasted the provocative title "Bring on higher taxes." The article refers to a new statewide poll commissioned from Magellan Research by the R-J in conjunction with 8NewsNow and PBS. Poll results supposedly demonstrate statewide support for higher taxes, but this claim is based upon a pyramid of misrepresentations.
For those who have not followed the Great Budget Debate of 2011, many policymakers have overblown the size of the reported budget deficit that the legislature will face next year, ballooning the number to $3 billion. What is often not reported, is that this figure assumes that state government should increase spending by more than $1.5 billion. The new spending, financed through tax dollars taken from struggling Nevadans, would be used, in part, to provide across-the-board pay raises for the privileged class in government. This overblown figure is a direct result of Nevada's flawed budgeting process and further underscores the need for immediate reform of the budgeting process itself along the lines outlined by NPRI.
To be fair, poll respondents were apparently not informed of the frequent misrepresentation of the state's fiscal position. It appears they were asked how they would prefer the state respond to a (false) $3 billion shortfall. Even given this false premise, however, respondents overwhelmingly declared a preference for spending reductions at the state level.
Responses to the very first question indicate that Nevadans prefer, by nearly a 2-to-1 margin, spending reductions to tax increases. Respondents selected some form of spending reduction as their first preference in 57.1 percent of cases while only 32.3 percent wanted to "raise taxes and fees for both individuals and corporations."
Of course, this simple polling result is misconstrued by breaking up the preference for spending reductions into various sub-categories while leaving the tax increase option as a whole for comparison purposes. This manipulation will no doubt allow the state's leftist advocates to trumpet the poll's results as support for tax increases. However, the results to this poll are undeniably clear: Nevadans overwhelmingly prefer some form of spending reduction to tax increases.
One can only imagine what the results may have been had respondents been provided with the correct information - that the $3 billion shortfall is a product of lawmakers' desire to increase spending by more than $1.5 billion. Had respondents been informed of the blatantly disingenuous charade designed to misrepresent lawmakers' desire for increased spending, it is likely that jaded respondents would have shown an even higher preference for spending reductions.
Read moreKlaich: We're not fat, we're big boned
News 4 in Reno lets Chancellor Dan Klaich get the last word in on university bloat, which is unfortunate, because I had such a good comeback line.
Klaich claims, accurately, that UNR and UNLV are less bloated and more efficient with staffing than other universities. NPRI has never disputed that.
But like almost all universities, UNLV and UNR have been dramatically increasing the size of staff - specifically, highly paid non-educators (whom NSHE does not want to call "administrators"). In fact, UNLV and UNR are increasing the number of highly paid non-educators faster than the student body.
Worse still, they've increased the number of employees per student and the dollars per student, but neither UNLV nor UNR can graduate 50 percent of its students after six years.
But back to Klaich's bragging about the bloat - or non-bloat, as he see's it.
Is being more efficient than the average four-year university really something to celebrate? As I told Victoria Campbell from News 4, what Klaich is doing is akin to "bragging about being 150 pounds overweight instead of 200 pounds."
There is still a lot of work to be done - namely, graduating educated students rather than providing university jobs for adults.
Recognizing journalists who have accurately reported Nevada's budget situation; UPDATED
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article showing how almost everyone in Nevada - elected officials, media members and citizens - has been incorrectly describing Nevada's budget situation.
Read the article for more details, but basically my point is that Nevada's widely reported $3 billion, 50 percent budget shortfall is a myth: Nevada's projected budget deficit is $1.5 billion, or about 20 percent.
In the introduction of my article, I listed a handful of the many media outlets that had misrepresented Nevada's budget situation. (Note: I don't think most media members intentionally tried to mislead the public. They were either reporting the common narrative or the distortions of Andrew Clinger, the state budget director.)
Since the truth about Nevada's budget situation is now readily available, I'd like to list the reporters who have either accurately described Nevada's projected budget deficit or acknowledged that the $3 billion figure is disputed. They deserve praise. In the interest of accuracy, I hope the rest of Nevada's journalists follow their examples.
- Matt Kozar, "Is NV's $3 bil projected shortfall a gross overestimate?" KVBC, September 14, 2010
- KKOH 780 AM, Reno, September 14, 2010
- Barbara Kusak, News stories on KDWN 720 AM, Las Vegas, September 15, 2010
- Ed Vogel, "Think tank sees inflated shortfall," Las Vegas Review-Journal, September 16, 2010
- Sean Whaley, "Assembly Majority Leader wants to eliminate Nevada revenue volatility, teacher tenure," Nevada News Bureau, September 20, 2010
- Editorial board of the Lahontan Valley News, "Recession has ended - or has it?" Lahontan Valley News, September 21, 2010
- Steve Sebelius, "Finally somebody in the governor's race shows some ba... oh, wait, no, nevermind," Las Vegas CityLife, September 23, 2010
- Jon Ralston, "The taxing elephant in the room," Las Vegas Sun, September 29, 2010
- Ray Hagar, "Brian Sandoval, Rory Reid agree on taxes, but economic visions diverge," Reno Gazette-Journal, October 16, 2010
- Stephanie Carroll, "Commissioner wrap-up," Lahontan Valley News, October 21, 2010
- Editorial board of the Reno Gazette-Journal, Consolidation is critical to the future of Washoe County residents, Reno Gazette-Journal, October 30, 2010
This list is probably - I hope - missing quite a few names. Know of any other journalists who deserve public recognition for being accurate? List their names and links to the articles in the comments and I'll add them to the list.
Update: Added Steve Sebelius to the list.
Update (10/18/10): Added Ray Hagar to the list.
Update (10/22/10): Added Stephanie Carroll to the list.
Update (11/12/10): Added Reno Gazette-Journal editorial board to the list.
Also as Andrew Clinger has now publicly and clearly stated that the budget deficit is $1 billion, I'm going to stop updating this list. The truth is no longer hidden or confusing and reporting it should be the norm.
Congratulations and thanks to the journalists on this list for recognizing and reporting on this accurately before many others did.
NPRI's 'Piglet Book' exposes millions of dollars of government waste in NV
Sweetheart deals are often the province of the well-connected. In Las Vegas, this is especially true. In April 2009, former Las Vegas City Councilman Michael McDonald purchased a 3.9-acre parcel from the City of Las Vegas for $1.3 million. Then, in a second transaction that was recorded at the same time, McDonald turned around and immediately sold the parcel to a supermarket chain for $3.1 million.The Piglet Book is filled with many more examples of government waste, so be sure to read the whole thing.
City officials knew that McDonald intended to immediately sell the land for substantially more than he was purchasing it, yet agreed to sell the parcel to their former colleague for less than the appraised value.
McDonald had already been convicted of violating city ethics laws involving a land deal while serving on the city council in 2000. At that time, McDonald had pushed for the city to purchase the Las Vegas SportsPark, partially owned by his employer.
The sweetheart deal granted to McDonald by the current city council is especially significant because the city faces a reported $80 million general fund deficit for fiscal year 2011 that could potentially require mass layoffs and a reduction of services.
And if you're interested in hearing more about government waste, be sure to tune into Casey and Heather on KDOX 1280 AM. They're interviewing Geoffrey Lawrence, the study's author, today at 10:15.
'Waiting for Superman' praised by the ... Huffington Post?
His [Davis Guggenheim's] new film, Waiting for Superman, which screened Thursday night at the Silver Docs Festival in Silver Springs, Maryland, and opens this September, is nothing less than a wake-up call to all Americans. It is both a searing indictment of our education system and a desperate call-to-action to save our struggling schools.There's a lot more goodness in the article (and tantalizing, but heartbreaking, descriptions of the film), so be sure to read the whole thing.
According to the film's grim statistics, the crisis is more severe than most of us realize. Public schools are failing millions of American children with 1.2 million dropping out every year. We have doubled the per-pupil federal spending, but achievement has flatlined, and this generation of Americans will be the first to be less literate than the previous one. And while the United States was once the world's gold standard for academics, we now rank 25th in math and 21st in science among 30 developed nations.
Our schools are a disgrace, and rather than intelligence or character, a child's destiny is often determined by his or her zip code. ...
This is a dangerous movie, particularly for the teachers' unions. Guggenheim argues that the main problem with schools is bad teachers; but tenure, built into the unions' contracts, prevents schools from getting rid of them.
Also read John Nolte's recent piece on education: 'Waiting for Superman': If you really want 'social justice,' demolish the teachers' unions.
And if you haven't seen it yet, watch the trailer!
More teachers
President Obama wants public schools to hire 10,000 new math teachers nationwide. Andrew Coulson of the Cato Institute asks why? The last few million new public school employees haven't done much for student achievement. Maybe its about getting more due paying members to help fund political campaigns for things that have nothing to do with education?
Danny Tarkanian is factually wrong
Nevada is suffering through the worst economic crisis in our state's history. Where our state leads the nation, we do so in unenviable categories: unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcies. Our $6.5 billion state budget is projected to have a $3 billion deficit. Yes, you read that right -- Nevada can only fund a little over half of its current obligations.Tarkanian is effectively saying that Nevada is only projected to collect $3.5 billion in the next biennium. And that statement is 100 percent, totally false.
For the current, 2009-11 biennium, Nevada's general-fund budget is about $6.4 billion. For the next budget cycle, both Andrew Clinger, the governor's budget director, and Russell Guindon, senior deputy fiscal analyst at the Legislative Counsel Bureau (which is cited in Rory Reid's budget plan), have confirmed to the Nevada Policy Research Institute that they project Nevada will collect more than $5 billion in taxes - and this assumes that the 2009 legislative session's temporary tax hikes will expire.Tarkanian's mistake - assuming Nevada is only going to collect $3.5 billion in the next biennium - is easy to make, because Andrew Clinger, Nevada's budget director, has created that impression through a series of misleading and false statements. And the media - understandable, but incorrectly - has reported that number wide and far.
In the real world, $5 billion minus $6.4 billion equals a deficit of $1.4 billion. But government accounting is not quite in the real world.
Instead, government accounting works like this: $5 billion minus ($6.4 billion budget plus a $1.5 billion spending increase) equals a $2.9 billion deficit.
What? You didn't know Nevada's projected "$3 billion shortfall" is based on an assumed $1.5 billion - or 23 percent - spending increase over the current biennium? Well, you're not alone. Few do. And those who do, excluding NPRI, rarely say so publicly.
Although it's an easy mistake to make, it's still 100 percent false. It's also very politically powerful for Nevada's leftists.
I can't emphasize enough how important this $3 billion, 50 percent budget myth is to the narrative that Nevada's leftist legislators are using and will use to justify tax increases in 2011.
It'd be like having a debate over how good of a spouse you are and then discussing this question: "When did you stop beating your husband/wife?"
You can't win if you answer that question, because the false assumption is built into the question itself.
In a similar way, conservatives/libertarians can't win a budget/no-new-taxes debate if we're forced to assume a projected budget deficit that doesn't exist.
Remember, the $3 billion projected budget deficit is a myth, and before you discuss Nevada's budget or taxes, that fact needs to be made perfectly clear.
Right to economic freedom
Awesome: 'Waiting for Superman' scores big at the box office
For anyone not familiar with this movie, Patrick featured the trailer for "Waiting for Superman" in a post last week. "Superman" is a documentary about America's education system that *gasp* shows the failings of the current system and its impact on children, and shows how reformers can and are making a difference.
The movie opened in a limited release, and audiences have begun to eat it up.
"Waiting for 'Superman,'" a new documentary about America's education system, took flight in limited release over the weekend, grossing $141,000 in four theaters for one of the best per-screen averages ($35,250) of the year.Paramount, the distributor, is expanding the film's release to 10 cities this week, and the movie should be available nationwide in a few weeks.
Directed by David Guggenheim, who won an Oscar for Al Gore's 2006 climate change call-to-action documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," "Waiting for 'Superman'" takes a critical look at failures in the public school system and their effects on American schoolchildren. The movie, produced by Jeff Skoll's Participant Media and Philip Anschutz's Walden Media, has gained considerable traction in the mass media, with Oprah Winfrey dedicating an entire show to the film.
It's currently scheduled to be released in the Las Vegas area on Oct. 22.
I, personally, can't wait to see it, and I hope you'll do the same. I'm looking forward to the movie putting a face on the education reforms we've written so much about.
Also worth reading: The Heritage Foundation's thoughts on "Waiting for Superman" and Obama's hypocrisy on education reform.
Are you coming? Steve Forbes speaking at NPRI dinner Thursday
The Nevada Policy Research Institute's 19th Anniversary Celebration is this Thursday, September 30, 2010.
Steve Forbes is going to be the keynote speaker, and it's going to be a rocking great time. If you aren't one of the several hundred people who've already registered, what are you waiting for?