The Kansas Meadowlark again stirs up controversy in reporting on the travel of Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius.

The "rates" charged for flying an aircraft like this are, in my opinion, totally misleading. The rate may reflect the actual variable costs involved for the time the plane is in the air. I believe, however, that the rates do not account for the fixed cost of owning an asset worth some $4 million.

Read the article here: Friend of Gov. Kathleen Sebelius? Did you get to fly the State of Kansas Executive Aircraft with Kathleen to the NCAA basketball tournament in San Antonio?

(By the way, Meadowlark, I like your switch to a WordPress blog. I especially like that now your site publishes an RSS feed, which I subscribe to.)

Here's an update by The Kansas Meadowlark on the abuse of franking by the Kansas Senate Majority Leader, Anthony Hensley of Topeka.

Update on Franking Abuse by Kansas Senate Minority Leader Hensley: $53,564 on 161,277 franked pieces

Remarks delivered to Wichita City Council, May 6, 2008. Listen here.

Smoking ban supporters claim that they have the right to go to bowling alleys, bars, and other such places without having to breath secondhand smoke. That's false. No one has the right to be on someone else's property on their own terms. The property owner controls those terms. If the bar owner lets the band play too loud (or maybe not loud enough), or the restaurant is too dimly lit, or the floor of the steakhouse covered with discarded peanut shells, do we want to regulate these things too?

Some have compared a smoking section in a restaurant to a urinating section in a swimming pool. This comparison is ridiculous. You can't tell upon entering a swimming pool if someone peed in it. You can tell, however, upon entering a bar or restaurant if there is smoking going on.

Some make the argument that since we regulate businesses for health reasons already, why not regulate smoking? Without agreeing with the need for these regulations, the answer is this: First, these government regulations don't necessarily accomplish their goal. People still become ill from food, for example. But there is some merit here. Just by entering a restaurant and inspecting the dining room and the menu, you can't tell if the food is being stored at the proper temperature in the restaurant's refrigerators. But you can easily tell if there's smoking going on.

A system of absolute respect for private property rights is the best way to handle smoking. The owners of bars and restaurants have, and should continue to have, the absolute right to permit or deny smoking on their property. Markets -– that is, people freely making decision for themselves -– will let property owners know whether they want smoking or clean air.

The problem with a smoking ban written into law rather than reliance on markets is that everyone has to live by the same rules. Living by the same rules is good when the purpose is to keep people and their property safe from harm. That's why we have laws against theft and murder. But it's different when we pass laws intended to keep people safe from harms that they themselves can easily avoid, just by staying out of those places where people are smoking. For the people who value being in the smoky place more than they dislike the negative effects of the smoke, they can make that decision.

This is not a middle-ground position, as there really isn't a middle ground here. Instead, this is a position that respects the individual. It lets each person have what they individually prefer, rather than having a majority -- no matter how lop-sided -- make the same decision for everyone. Especially when that decision, as someone said, will "tick off everybody." Who benefits from a law that does that?

Wichitans for Effective Education wish to remind the residents of USD 259 (the Wichita, Kansas public school district) that on February 11, 2008, the board of USD 259 passed a resolution declaring that a special election was to be held today, May 6. That resolution asked the citizens of this community to approve a $350 million school bond proposal. On April 7, on the advice of an allied citizens group, the board decided the election should be delayed until some yet-to-be-known date.

The board originally argued that it was imperative to vote as soon as possible instead of waiting for the August primary or November general elections, even though the special election would cost $75,000. As evidence, Chief Operations Officer (now interim superintendent) Martin Libhart delivered to the board on January 28 a presentation titled "Time Is Money" which explained that if the bond issue election were delayed until November, the cost of building just one high school would increase by $360,000 -– far more than the cost of the special election.

The district also argued that if the election were delayed until August or later, the opening of the new high school would be delayed by one full school year.

Nevertheless, on April 7, the board abandoned these arguments.

Much effort went into preparation for the May special election. News outlets devoted extensive coverage. Three citizens groups formed to campaign for and against the bond issue. Expenses were incurred.

Opposition groups have had to deal with a shifting landscape of facts emerging from USD 259. We relied on figures supplied by USD 259 regarding the costs of building safe rooms, only to be told we didn't understand the true situation. We relied on figures published by USD 259 in its most recent Comprehensive Annual Financial Report reporting school capacity and enrollment, only to be told those numbers are out-of-date.

Sometimes getting any information from USD 259 is difficult. We asked for a count of classrooms and portables for the last two school years and were told that information is available at a cost of $860, with most of that cost paying for 40 hours of staff time. Since school overcrowding is one of the reasons given by USD 259 as the need for this bond issue, we wonder why these figures are not readily available.

The changing schedule of the bond issue election as well as the unreliable facts provided by USD 259 make it difficult to thoughtfully consider the merits of any proposal at this time. With the possibility of looming economic recession and the lack of a permanent superintendent in place to lead the Wichita schools, perhaps the best idea yet is to pull the question altogether. This would give the district time to research and locate all significant data, and then both opposing and supporting groups could base their decisions on accurate and timely information.

Part of the Wichita Eagle opinion watch series.

A writer in the April 2, 2008 Wichita Eagle presses the case for passenger train service in Wichita. But there are several problems with the writer's argument.

The writer makes this claim: "With Kansas' vast wind resource, we could power our trains with no fossil fuels." Yes, there is a lot of wind in Kansas. But it doesn't blow continuously. What does the writer suggest we power the trains with at those times? Until there is an economically feasible method of storing the electricity generated by wind, we will be reliant on traditional methods of power generation. Wind can only be a supplement.

The writer admits that high-speed passenger train service will require a lot of public money. That's okay, he says, as we presently spend a lot on our roads and traffic systems. The government-built and owned roads are frequently criticized, however. The fact that we've spent a lot on them -- with often unsatisfactory results -- is not an argument in favor of more government involvement in transportation systems. There is, in fact, a small movement towards more private highways, and there are persuasive arguments that all roads and highways should be privately owned.

If there is in fact a demand for high-speed rail travel in Kansas and the United States, let private entrepreneurs, rather than government, lead its development. That's the best way to have a system that meets the needs of customers, rather than the needs of politicians and government bureaucrats.

I wonder if the writer remembers that the government does have a track record of owning and operating a railroad. That's Amtrak, and having mentioned that, I believe no more needs to be said.

Part of the Wichita Eagle opinion watch series. An audio broadcast of this article may be heard by clicking here.

A letter writer in the April 27, 2008 Wichita Eagle makes the case that investment in USD 259 (the Wichita, Kansas public school district) has a good return.

By way of comparison, the writer argues that the Wichita airport, having been built with public funds, represents "an investment return." Whether it represents a good return on investment the writer doesn't say, but I believe he means that the airport was a good investment of public funds.

The mere fact that the airport exists, however, doesn't prove a good return on investment. Since the airport is owned by government and doesn't calculate its profit or loss in a competitive market, we can never know how wise is the "investment" made in the Wichita airport.

Then the writer really gets off track. He speaks of "my own school bond issue within my family," that being day care, preschool, K through 12, then a degree at the University of Kansas and a master's degree. These activities are all voluntary choices that the writer and his family made. Taxation by the government, however, is not voluntary. The writer might also be reminded that it may be a voluntary choice to attend the University of Kansas, but the people of the State of Kansas have no choice but to fund its operations.

Finally, the writer states "Some opponents of the school bond issue have even said the kids in USD 259 don't need tornado shelters. That is ridiculous." It is true that 60 schools in the Wichita school district don't have safe rooms, and this situation is the result of decisions made by the school district and its board. They had an opportunity to build more safe rooms as part of the bond issue in 2000, but they decided to spend the money on other things. Similarly, each year the district has a large capital budget to spend, and each year they decide to spend it on things other than safe rooms. Blame for the lack of storm shelters, therefore, rests solely with the Wichita school district. They have decided that other things are more important.

On May 1, 2008, the Americans For Prosperity Hot Air Tour made its stop in Wichita, Kansas. It was too windy for the big hot air balloon (who could have guessed that might be the case in the Kansas springtime?) but the speakers spoke as planned, and that's the important part of this event.

Some photos that I took may be viewed here.

Some of the material from AFP:

Climate alarmists have bombarded citizens with apocalyptic scenarios and pressured them into environmental political correctness. It’s time to tell the other side of the story.

Climate Schemes Mean Higher Taxes

• A cap-and-trade system would amount to a $1.19 trillion tax hike over the next ten years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
• Energy taxes would drive gas over $8.00 per gallon and more than double electricity bills, according to a study by the American Council for Capital Formation.
• Revenue from energy taxes or permit sales will be used by bureaucratic central planners to pick politically-favored but horribly ineffective alternatives, like ethanol.

Cap-and-Trade is a Massive Job-Killer

• The hundreds of billions of dollars of economic activity destroyed by the cap-and-trade tax scheme translate into millions of lost jobs for American workers.
• We would trade millions of productive private sector jobs, for a smaller number of jobs created by a government regulatory scheme.

Climate Alarmism Threatens Freedom

• The inevitable result of energy regulation is centralized control of the economy and our lives. The government has already banned incandescent light bulbs even though replacements, compact fluorescent bulbs, contain toxic mercury.
• California wants to place radio control devices in thermostats so the government can set the temperature in homes and businesses.
• Higher energy costs will increase the price of any product that is transported to market; these effects will ripple through the economy. Food prices have been especially hard hit, with milk prices up 20% in the last year.
• State climate panels want to return to 55 MPH speed limits.

Radical Proposals will have Very Little Impact

• Cap and trade policies are already failing to reduce CO2 emissions in Europe. In fact, emissions covered under their legislation in Europe have gone up according to the think tank, Open Europe.
• Even if the cap and trade scheme actually reduce emissions in the United States – despite failures in Europe, climate models show that the reductions would have an impact of approximately 0.1 degree Celsius in the year 2100.

Low-Income Families will be Hit Hardest

• Low-income families pay a much larger share of their income on goods that will be affected by these policies.
• Higher energy and food prices are a genuine hardship for low-income Americans, even if they are an affordable indulgence for Al Gore, who already spends tens of thousands of dollars on his home energy bills.

From our friends at the Flint Hills Center for Public Policy in Wichita, Kansas.

Universal Preschool Wastes Money, Imperils the Good Society
Short-term benefits, politicization of childhood await public funding

(WICHITA) - If K-12 schools fail to graduate one in four students on time, does it make much sense to enroll children in public programs at an even younger age? That's one problem with proposals for universal, taxpayer-funded preschool, as outlined by a new report issued by the Flint Hills Center for Public Policy. Read "Plato's Republic on the Plains: Should Kansas Really Embrace State-Financed Early Childhood Education?" at www.flinthills.org.

"On the one hand, you've got to applaud the desire to 'do something' to improve education," says John R. LaPlante, Education Policy Fellow of the Kansas-based think tank. "But what we see is that the longer children stay in school, the worse off they do. We should fix the K-12 system through competition and expanded school choice rather than enroll infants and toddlers in public programs that are often run through those same schools."

The study reviews the weaknesses of reports used to justify universal preschool programs, including methodological shortcomings. The benefits seen in preschool programs tend to be focused in lower-income children and fade out in a short time-hardly a prescription for a universal program.

In addition to experimental and economic problems, universal preschool poses a moral question: Do children belong to parents or do they belong to society and the state? Plato called for some children to be reared not by parents but by the collective. The impulse to use government to fix children's lives for the societal good may have at first a moral foundation, but it violates foundational truths about American society and the meaning of limited government.

Part of the Wichita Eagle Opinion Watch series. Audio is available here.

The school bond issue in Wichita and those occurring in surrounding districts overlook one crucial necessity: a fair wage for teachers. They are critically underpaid for all levels of education, service and abilities. (From The Wichita Eagle Opinion Line, April 27, 2008)

This writer is misinformed on several levels.

First, bond issues such as the one proposed by USD 259, the Wichita, Kansas public school district, are usually reserved for capital expenditures, such as constructing buildings. Ongoing expenses such as salaries are not considered as part of a bond issue. The writer might also remember that in August 2007, the Wichita school district raised property tax rates to pay for an increase in teacher salaries.

Then, who can determine what constitutes a "fair" wage? I know of no teachers who were forced to accept the jobs they filled. We can only presume that both the teacher and the school voluntarily entered into an agreement, with the wage to be paid as part of that agreement.

But the issue might be a little more complex. For one thing, most public school teachers work under a collective bargaining agreement which specifies the wages to be paid for teachers, based on their length of experience and educational credentials. There is little or nothing that most teachers can do to escape that pay scale. It works both ways: there are excellent teachers who are underpaid compared to the value they generate through their efforts and skill. At the same time there are poor teachers who are overpaid when compared to good or average teachers.

Related is the fact that public school teacher wages are not set in a free market by willing participants on both sides. Whenever teachers get a raise, it is inevitable that letter writers and opinion line callers will express outrage at having to pay for a raise in teacher pay. That's characteristic of coerced transactions: many taxpayers don't like to see their taxes go up. But that's usually the only way that public school teacher pay can be raised.

The public schools, also, have the same problem as does any public agency: they are not able to perform economic calculation to properly evaluate their use of resources. They are not able to calculate profit or loss, so we really don't know if they use inputs -- such as the taxpayer funds used for teacher salaries -- wisely.

Besides, the myth that teachers are underpaid relative to other jobs has been exposed for just that. Jay Greene, in the book Education Myths, reports that based on U.S. Department of Labor data for 2002, accounting for the number of hours worked, school teachers earned about $31 per hour. That is more than architects, economists, biologists, civil engineers, mechanical engineers, and chemists.

Kimberly A. Strassel of the Wall Street Journal explains a mess of John McCain's own making, and which confirms to me that he is not suited to be President of the United States: McCain's Campaign Finance Revelation.

"The Arizonan may not yet fully understand that money is speech." writes Ms. Strassel.

As Thomas Sowell recently said: "Senator John McCain could never convince me to vote for him. Only Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama can cause me to vote for McCain."

Paul Jacob, in a Common Sense commentary writes about David Boaz's article in the Wall Street Journal (available at the Cato Institute) which describes the effort to obtain a customized Starbucks card with the phrase "laissez-faire" printed on it.

The request was rejected. But the socialist slogan "people not profits" was accepted by Starbucks, as was the United Farm Workers slogan "Si Se Puede." ("Yes we can," adopted by Barack Obama's presidential campaign.)

Here's what you find if you read Starbuck's mission statement: "Embrace diversity as an essential component in the way we do business."

It seems that some political ideas are more "diverse" than others.

Remarks delivered at a public hearing for the Sedgwick County solid waste management plan, April 24, 2008. Sedgwick County, Kansas, home to the City of Wichita, is considering a mandatory household recycling program. Or, perhaps people won't be forced to recycle, but they will be required to pay for the cost burden that recycling places on communities.

You may listen to this article in audio form by clicking here.

The economist Frederich Hayek tells us that the price system communicates all the information we need to know about the relative value of things. The price system allows people who don't know each other to coordinate their activities in the most effective and efficient way possible. The price system is truly a miracle.

If you want to see what happens when the price system is not allowed to work, usually because a government attempts to manage prices, just look at the former Soviet Union and other planned economies. The economist Thomas Sowell relates this story:

The last premiere of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, is said to have asked British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher: How do you see to it that people get food? The answer was that she didn't. Prices did that. And the British people were better fed than those in the Soviet Union, even though the British have never grown enough food to feed themselves in more than a century. Prices bring them food from other countries.

The price system can do its work only when free people trade with each other freely under a system where property rights are respected. Any attempt by governments to manage prices leads to inefficiencies that manifest themselves as shortages, waiting lines, surpluses, and black markets. The emergence of these problems lead to calls for even more government interventionism to fix the very problem the government caused by interfering with the price system. It can be a never-ending cycle.

How does this apply to recycling in Sedgwick County?

In some cases the price system tells us that recycling is a beneficial use of resources. About 75% of automobiles are recycled, and used cardboard is often recycled in commercial settings. That's because the price paid for these recycled items is high enough that, in these contexts, recycling can be profitable. That's the price system at work. It tells us that the best use of an old car is to recycle it, and the same goes for cardboard boxes at the grocery store.

A household setting is different. Households usually have to pay to engage in recycling. The prices that recyclers can get for these recycled goods doesn't cover the cost of collecting them from households, as evidenced by the fact that in Wichita households must pay someone to pick up recyclables. That's the price system at work again. Its sober assessment is that in the context of households, recycling is a waste of resources. That waste can be tremendous. Orange County, Florida, for example, spends roughly $3 million per year to collect recyclable goods from households, but sells them for only $56,000.

What about running out of landfill space? If landfill space were truly scarce, the price system would tell us so, because landfill operators -- if there is a free market for landfills -- could charge high prices for accepting trash. But evidently, they can't.

So the price system tells us sometimes recycling is a good use of resources, and sometimes it isn't.

A mandatory recycling program or one where people have to pay fees even if they don't actually recycle their household goods amounts to the government attempting to override the price system. It is attempting to manage the price system through government interventionism. These policies, should Sedgwick County implement them, will cause citizens to suffer the same inefficiencies that all planned economies have demonstrated, if on a smaller scale.

Recently a USD 259 (Wichita, Kansas public school district) board member made this statement: "I know there are kids from many Catholic schools that have come to public schools when the Catholic schools have kicked them out."

This attitude reflects a common perception or myth: that private and religious schools kick out the misbehaving students they don't want to deal with. Since the public school system, by law, must accept them, these problem students are a reason why the public schools have such a difficult task. So goes the story, anyway.

I have read that this perception is false, so I decided to do some investigation on my own. The Kansas State Department of Education website can supply the number of students expelled from schools each year, not only for the public schools, but for some private and religious schools too.

As it turns out, the average number of students expelled from the Wichita Catholic Diocese schools is a little less than five per year. The Diocese covers an area much larger than Wichita, and presumably some of these expelled students didn't live within the boundaries of USD 259. Given that, plus the fact that there just aren't very many students expelled from the Catholic schools each year, accepting them can't be much of a burden to a large school district like the Wichita public schools.

The statistics I looked at are revealing in another way: expulsions, adjusted for the number of enrolled students, are much more frequent in the Wichita public schools. For the eleven years shown in the following table, the Wichita public school system expels students at a rate nearly ten times higher than does the Wichita Catholic Diocese.

I wonder if the USD 259 board member who made the statement quoted at the beginning of this article is ignorant of these facts. Or perhaps the board member simply believes, without critical thought or investigation, the myths told about public schools. Or perhaps there is another explanation.

When Bob Corkins, a lawyer with no classroom experience, was named Kansas Commissioner of Education in 2005, newspapers editorialists and education bureaucrats throughout Kansas condemned the action. How could a person with no classroom experience and no traditional education credentials possibly manage the state's schools?

"Bob's in way over his head," said Winston Brooks, superintendent of USD 259, the Wichita public school district.

But what about Martin Libhart, the man who succeeds Winston Brooks, if only as the interim superintendent? According to a news release on the USD 259 website: "Because Libhart does not currently possess a district level leadership certificate, the district is working with the Kansas State Department of Education for a restricted certificate as permitted by the department." (emphasis added)

It seems that lack of formal credentials was not an obstacle to the promotion of Mr. Libhart. But Mr. Libhart has worked for the Wichita public school district for 20 years, and it seems that loyalty is now paying dividends. Evidently it is enough to overcome his lack of classroom experience and traditional education credentials -- the same inexperience that made Bob Corkins, in the minds of Kansas education bureaucrats, unfit to serve.

What exactly did Mr. Libhart do for the Wichita school district? Again, from the USD 259 news release: "During his 20-year career in the Wichita Public Schools, Libhart served for 13 years as director of the Facilities Division prior to being appointed chief operations officer."

It seems, however, that the facilities and operations of the Wichita school district are managed somewhat less than efficiently. I say this because if you submit a records request asking the district how many classrooms and portables the district owned for the previous two years, you may get this answer, as did one citizens group:

The information is available. In order to prepare the information, it will require 40 hours of staff time @ $20.00 and 300 copies @ $.20, for a total cost of $860.00.

The Wichita public school district is telling us that in order to count the number of classrooms it possesses, it will take someone an entire workweek to produce this number. Does it seem like the district is effectively managing its resources when it will take one week to simply count the number of classrooms?

From Denis Boyles's column at Kansas Liberty, calling the consistency and judgment of Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius into question (admittedly, a small task):

If there are at least some scientific studies that show gambling’s bad for you, and none that show that carbon dioxide’s bad for you, why is the governor of Kansas hugging casinos and banning power plants?

Read the entire column here: Feedlot Environmentalism.

By the way, the new book Superior, Nebraska: The Common Sense Values of America's Heartland by Denis Boyles is wonderful. I recommend it to all with an interest in Kansas politics.

From our friends at Kansas Liberty:

The Kansas Supreme Court is a private club filled with people you've never heard of until they pass some tax you have to pay or invent some law you don't want. There is a way to fix this, but you won't like it, says Denis Boyles.

Read the full story at Kansas Liberty.

Professor Stephen J. Ware of the Kansas University School of Law writes this in a Lawrence Journal-World editorial:

What makes the Kansas Supreme Court selection process unusual is not that it’s political, but that it gives so much political power to the bar (the state’s lawyers). Kansas is the only state that gives its bar majority control over the commission that nominates Supreme Court justices. It’s no surprise that members of the Kansas bar are happy with the current system because it gives them more power than the bar has in any of the other 49 states and allows them to exercise that power in secret, without any accountability to the public.

His research paper may be read here: www.fed-soc.org/kansaspaper.

An argument opponents of the proposed Holcomb Station coal-fired electricity generation plant make is that its water usage is excessive and will lead to, depending on who is speaking, little water left for other uses. Even drinking water, according to some critics, could be threatened.

Together, the proposed plants will use 16,000 acre-feet of water -- about 5.2 billion gallons – annually. While that seems like a tremendous amount of water, especially in dry western Kansas, we should put that water usage in context before making judgments.

According to the Kansas Water Office, in 2006, 3,496,586 acre-feet of water was used to irrigate 3,066,602 acres, a rate of 1.14 acre-feet of water per acre. In Finney county, where the Holcomb plant is located, water use for irrigation is a little higher. The average usage for 2002 to 2006 was 1.31 acre-feet per acre.

Using the Finney county rates, we find that the 16,000 acre-feet of water usage by the proposed power plants is enough to irrigate 12,215 acres of crops.

While 12,215 acres of crops may seem like a lot, Finney county alone had 227,297 acres under irrigation in 2006. So the water usage by the proposed plants amounts to 5.4% of just Finney county's water use for irrigation. For the entire state of Kansas, it's less than one-half of one percent of the water used for irrigation.

So while 5.2 billion gallons of water seems like a lot, it's not much more than a few drops in the bucket, figuratively speaking, of water use for irrigation in Kansas. The economic value of the electricity the Holcomb plant expansion will generate, however, is large.

The Kansas Meadowlark reports on Franking Abuse by Kansas Democratic Legislative Leadership:

Recently both the Kansas House Minority Leader, Dennis McKinney, and Kansas Senate Minority Leader, Anthony Hensley, abused their nearly unlimited budget to mail items to Kansas voters. These mailings had less to do with helping inform constituents about what is going on in the Kansas legislature, and more to do with getting certain Democrats re-elected this year.

A reliable source tells the Meadowlark that House Minority Leader Mckinney will reimburse the State for postage for his recent mailings. However, the Senate Minority Leader has not made a pledge to repay taxpayers for his franking abuse, even though taxpayers paid a hefty sum for his recent needless mailings.

Actual amounts for these mailings will be published here when available.

Read the entire story here at The Kansas Meadowlark website: Franking Abuse by Kansas Democratic Legislative Leadership

This is an excerpt of a speech given by Walter E. Williams on February 6, 2005 at Hillsdale College. The complete speech, titled "The Entrepreneur As American Hero," can be read here: http://www.hillsdale.edu/imprimis/2005/03/.

At this juncture let me say a few words about the modern push for corporate social responsibility. Do corporations have a social responsibility? Yes, and Nobel Laureate Professor Milton Friedman put it best in 1970 when he said that in a free society “there is one and only one social responsibility of business -- to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.”

It is only people, not businesses, who have responsibilities. A CEO is an employee, an employee of shareholders and customers. The failure of the corporate executive community to recognize this, and its willingness to engage in activities unrelated to the pursuit of profits, means national wealth will be lower, product prices will be higher and the return on investment lower.

If we care about people’s wants, rather than beating up on profit-making enterprises, we should pay more attention to government-owned non-profit organizations. A good example are government schools. Many squander resources and produce a shoddy product while administrators, teachers and staff earn higher pay and perks, and customers (taxpayers) are increasingly burdened. Unlike other producers, educationists don’t face the rigors of the profit discipline, and hence they’re not as accountable. Ditto the U.S. Postal Service. It often provides shoddy and surly services, but its managers and workers receive increasingly higher wages while customers pay higher and higher prices. Again, wishes of customers can be safely ignored because there’s no bottom line discipline of profits.

Here’s Williams’ law: Whenever the profit incentive is missing, the probability that people’s wants can be safely ignored is the greatest. If a poll were taken asking people which services they are most satisfied with and which they are most dissatisfied with, for-profit organizations (supermarkets, computer companies and video stores) would dominate the first list while non-profit organizations (schools, offices of motor vehicle registration) would dominate the latter. In a free economy, the pursuit of profits and serving people are one and the same. No one argues that the free enterprise system is perfect, but it’s the closest we’ll come here on Earth.

Wichita Area Chapter Americans for Prosperity Dinner Meeting

Monday, April 28, 2008
6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.

Program:

Does trade create wealth and prosperity?

How a private citizen can get involved in local grassroots politics?

Location: Spangles Restaurant, 612 S. Broadway, Wichita, Kansas
(On the northeast corner of Kellogg and Broadway in downtown Wichita)

There is no cost for this program. Dinner and refreshments are optional from the Spangles menu on an individual ticket basis in Spangles private meeting room. (No food or drinks brought in please.)

Guests are welcome and encouraged!

RSVP optional but appreciated to John Todd, Wichita AFPF coordinator
john@johntodd.net, (316) 312-7335 cell

Remarks delivered to the Wichita City Council, April 15, 2008. Audio is available here.

Mr. Mayor, members of the city council, I ask that you not vote to approve this request for a tax abatement, and that you cease this practice altogether. Alternatively, I ask that you adopt a practice that will help realize the costs of these actions.

It is no doubt difficult to compete with other states when they offer huge gifts to companies in order to lure them to their state. That's a problem that needs to be addressed at a different level of government.

The matter before you now, however, is not the same. This company is not threatening, to my knowledge, to leave our area if the tax abatement is not granted. It appears they would build this facility even if the tax abatement is not granted.

The harmful effect of this tax abatement is this: When someone escapes paying taxes, someone else has to make up the difference. While the tax abatement being considered at this moment is relatively small, many are large, and when companies appear before this body week after week asking for tax favors, it adds up.

This same effect applies to the other governments that are affected: Sedgwick County, the Wichita public school district, and the State of Kansas. When one person does not pay, someone else has to pay more.

These special tax favors expose an inconsistency: business and government leaders tell us all the time that we must "build up the tax base." Granting these tax favors destroys that base.

Now I don't blame this company for asking for this tax favor. When councils, commissions, and legislatures indicate their willingness to grant these, businesses respond. So this company, of which I am a shareholder, by the way, is simply responding rationally to its environment.

But some of these companies that are asking for tax favors have problems with consistency. The president of this company has testified in favor of higher taxes to pay for building a facility that his company will benefit from. Now his company asks for relief from paying the taxes he wants others to pay.

As long as this body is willing to grant tax abatements and other special tax favors, I propose this simple pledge: that when the City of Wichita allows a company to escape paying taxes, that it reduce city spending by the same amount. By following this simple rule, the City can be reminded of the cost of granting special tax favors, and the rest of us won't have to pay for them.

As the annual tax deadline is here, we should take a moment to examine our level of awareness of the taxes we pay.

Many families don't pay any federal income tax. According to a study by the Tax Foundation (link: http://www.taxfoundation.org/ff/zerotaxfilers.html) 58 million households, representing some 122 million people, or 44 percent of the U.S. population, pay no federal income tax. I made a few calculations, and Kiplinger's TaxCut software for 2004 shows that a family with two children and $40,000 income (that's approximately the median household income in Wichita), taking the standard deductions, pays $0 federal income tax.

These families probably do pay quite a bit in the form of Social Security tax, but as we're told, that's not really a tax. Instead, it's the government saving for our future retirement. At least it tells us so.

For those who do pay taxes, they often aren't aware, on a continual basis, of just how much tax they pay. That's because for wage earners, federal and state taxes are conveniently withheld for us on our paychecks. Many people, I suspect, look at the bottom line -- the amount they receive as a check or automatic bank deposit -- and don't really take notice of the taxes that were withheld. This makes paying taxes almost painless.

For local property taxes, anyone who has a mortgage probably has these taxes incorporated into their monthly mortgage payment. Renters pay them as part of their rent. Everyone who trades with a business pays them, as taxes are part of what goes into formulating prices.

An alternative would be to eliminate the withholding of taxes from paychecks and from monthly mortgage payments. Instead, each month or year the various taxing governments would send a bill to each taxpayer, and they would pay it just like the rest of their periodic bills. In this way, we would all be acutely aware of just how much tax we pay.

A curiosity is that many people are happy during tax season because they get a refund. And they're delighted to get that refund, so much so that many will pay high interest rates on a refund anticipation loan just to get the money a little earlier. The irony is that by adjusting their withholding, they could take possession of much of that money during the year as they earn it.

The other people happy during tax season are tax preparers. As a country we spend an enormous effort on tax recordkeeping and compliance. Another study by the Tax Foundation estimates that in 2002 we spent, as a nation, 5.8 billion hours and $194 billion complying with the federal tax code. (5.8 billion hours is equivalent to about 2,800,000 people working 40 hours per week, 52 weeks per year.) By simplifying our tax code, we could eliminate much of this effort, and return that effort to productive use.

Since tax withholding from paychecks and mortgage payments reduces our awareness of just how much tax we pay, it's unlikely that governments will stop the withholding of taxes and submit a bill to taxpayers. Instead, it's left to ourselves to remain aware of how much we are paying.

Recently members of Wichitans for Effective Education asked USD 259, the Wichita public school district, this question:

How many classrooms (and portables) are there in 2007-08? For 2006-07?

This would seem a fairly simple question for the school district to answer. After all, part of the district's argument for the proposed bond issue in 2008 is that schools are overcrowded. To make that assessment, the district must have some measure of its capacity.

Here's the answer that we received from the clerk of the board of USD 259:

The information is available. In order to prepare the information, it will require 40 hours of staff time @ $20.00 and 300 copies @ $.20, for a total cost of $860.00.

The district is telling us that in order to count the number of classrooms it possesses, it will take someone an entire workweek to produce this number. Does it seem like the Wichita public school district is effectively managing its resources when it will take one week to simply count the number of classrooms? It would seem that this number should be readily available, as it is an important measure of the district's physical plant and capacity.

By the way, the man in charge of these facilities, the district's chief operations officer, has been named interim superintendent.

In a column in the April 6, 2008 Wichita Eagle, columnist Mark McCormick writes about the proposed $350 million bond issue for USD 259, the Wichita public school district, and states: "For the average Wichitan, taxes will rise about $45 a year." How he arrived at this figure is unknown. He may be referring to bond supporters' claim that the taxes on a home worth $100,000 will increase by about $40 per year. But that's quite different from what Mr. McCormick stated.

The actual figure might be computed this way: According to reporting in Mr. McCormick's newspaper, the proposed bond issue is estimated to cost $590.6 million in principal and interest over 20 years. The state of Kansas will pay about 25%, so the residents of USD 259 will have to pay only $443 million. That's about $22 million per year. Divide that by the 311,228 people living in USD 259 (not the city of Wichita, as that's a different political subdivision) and you get, in round dollars, $71. (It's really more, because USD 259 residents will pay taxes to the State of Kansas just to get some of the bond issue paid for.)

But let's don't quibble over the amounts. What's more important is that Mr. McCormick attempts to trivialize this expense by comparing it to ten other expenditures that people may make, such a buying cable television or coffee at Starbucks. What Mr. McCormick evidently fails to recognize is that each of the ten expenditures he cites are voluntary transactions that people may make or choose not to make. USD 259, however, collects its revenue not through voluntary transactions, but through taxes. People don't have a choice whether to pay. There is a big difference between what Starbucks does to generate revenue and what the Wichita public school district does.

But even this is not the worst of Mr. McCormick's column. By far the worst part of this column is his endorsement of the delay of the bond issue election from May 6, 2008 to some unspecified future date. This action by the Wichita school board and Citizens Alliance for Responsible Education (CARE) teaches a terrible example about the value of integrity and sportsmanship to the young people of Wichita. Nothing that the bond issue could build is more valuable than these lessons. I hope that in time and with due reflection that Mr. McCormick will change his mind about his endorsement of this action.

In an article published in the April 10, 2008 issue of The Bond Buyer newspaper, USD 259 (Wichita public school district) vice president Lynn Rogers is quoted as follows:

School board vice president Lynn Rogers said he supported the delay, but believes the bonds will be approved whenever the election is held.

"I don't think if will make any difference if we have an election in May, in August, or in November," he said.

"I've had 20 sessions with groups in the past couple of weeks, and nobody has been negative, except those from the anti-bond groups who always show up," Rogers said. "I don't think this delay is going to affect us."

I have a few questions:

If Mr. Rogers believes the bond issue will be approved no matter when the election will be held, then why did he vote for the delay? His board as well as the staff and superintendent of USD 259 vigorously argued for the special election to be held in May. Why? The district claimed large savings would accrue from the early election. Also, an August or November election would delay the opening of a proposed high school by one full school year.

If Mr. Rogers believes the bond issue will be approved by voters on any election date, why is he willing to forgo these cost savings? And why is he willing to delay the opening of a high school by one year? Or were these facts they used to make their case really just fiction?

The board of USD 259 and the Citizens Alliance for Responsible Education, a group supporting passage of the bond issue, also claim that a delay is needed so that they have time to make their case to the voters. According to Sarah Olson, co-coordinator of CARE: "We don't think there is sufficient time available to adequately inform Wichita voters on the merits of the bond issue." But both she and Mr. Rogers claim that the response they received from groups they've been to is positive.

So why, again, the need for the delay and the loss of the savings we were told only an early May special election would bring?