A letter to the editor in today’s Wichita Eagle under the title “Greed rules” states, in part: “There is no reason that the United States remains the only civilized nation in the world not to have a single-payer health system except that greed rules our country.”
I wonder: Is it greed to want someone else to pay for your health care?
Today’s Wichita Eagle has a story wondering if economic conditions have affected local chambers of commerce. (Has economy affected area chambers?)
In particular, Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce CEO Bryan Derreberry mentioned measures aimed at retaining members.
The context of this, besides the current economic conditions, is the shift of the local chamber of commerce away from promoting free markets, limited government, and capitalism. But today, as Stephen Moore wrote two years ago in the Wall Street Journal, “chambers of commerce deploy their financial resources and lobbying clout to expand the taxing, spending and regulatory authorities of government.”
In other words, local chambers now support big-government crony capitalism. See The Decline of Local Chambers of Commerce.
Recently I asked Derreberry a question based on Moore’s assertion. In an noncommittal response, he disputed that this transformation has taken place in the Wichita Chamber. (See Wichita Chamber of Commerce makes case for interventionism.)
An illustration of this shift is last year’s election for the third district Sedgwick County Commission seat. One candidate, Karl Peterjohn, had a long and proven record of supporting free markets, limited government, and capitalism. His opponent had no such record, and in fact, had recently presided over a large tax increase in the small town she served as mayor.
So what did the Wichita Chamber do? Support the proven fiscal conservative?
No. Its political action committee spent some $19,000 — 44% of all it spent on campaigns — on Peterjohn’s opponent.
What should the Chamber do? Abandon its present course of supporting government interventionism. Instead, support policies that will generate prosperity for everyone, which are free markets, limited government, and capitalism.
Next Monday (May 18, 2009), American Majority will be holding activist training in Wichita. This group does a great job teaching activists and candidates how to be effective.
Topics include:
I’ll even be there myself to help out a little bit.
The cost for this event is only $20, and includes dinner. It’s from 3:00 to 8:00. The poster below has all you need to know.
Wichita school funding, Wichita city property, Kansas campaigns, Great Depression, No Child Left Behind.
Grant funds middle-school rocket lessons (Lori Yount, Wichita Eagle) Grants of privately-raised money fund science classes in a Wichita school. With some $13,000 per student to spend each year, it’s still not enough to adequately fund our schools, I guess.
Wichita has no map, poor system of tracking city property (Brent D. Wistrom, Wichita Eagle) “… a disjointed records system leaves city officials and the public unable to quickly spot sellable land, say which department is responsible for upkeep or distinguish between parks, rights of way and corporate grounds the city holds title to as collateral for tax incentives, a weeks-long examination shows.”
One Way or Another, Kansas Will Have a Lot of New Faces in 18 Months A little coverage of Kansas campaigns from National Review.
Did FDR Make the Depression Great? (David Gordon at Mises Daily) A review of the new book The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal by Robert P. Murphy. “Robert Murphy demonstrates in this excellent book a penetrating ability to explain the essence of fallacious economic doctrines. As he notes, three theories offer competing explanations of the Great Depression: the Keynesian account, which stresses a lack of aggregate demand; Milton Friedman’s monetarism, which ascribes the severity of the early years of the Depression to a drastic cut in the money supply by the Fed; and, of course, the Austrian theory that Murphy himself favors.”
The Future of No Child Left Behind (Diane Ravitch and John E. Chubb in Education Next) “Diane Ravitch: It is time to pull the plug on No Child Left Behind. … NCLB has produced meager gains in achievement. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) assesses student achievement in reading and mathematics every other year. Despite the intense concentration on reading and mathematics required by the law, the gains registered on NAEP since the enactment of NCLB have been unimpressive. … Educators and the public are getting wise to the uselessness of the testing regime that has been foisted upon them. … NCLB may in reality be dumbing down our children by focusing the attention of teachers and administrators solely on basic skills. Our students are not being prepared to compete with students from high-performing nations in the world.” John Chubb disagrees. In Kansas, the NAEP scores are flat or register small gains, yet the state-managed assessments show big gains. Something isn’t right with this picture.
Cathy Feemster, Managing Editor of East Wichita News, has some great coverage of the Wichita tea party protest on tax day. Click on 2,000 ‘Tea Party’ at Grass Roots Protest for the story.
Kansas governors, renewable energy, napping, flying over New York, the Google, banks.
Governor a former GOP star (Associated Press in Topeka Capital-Journal) A quick look at the political biography of Kansas’ new Governor Mark Parkinson. “Parkinson has said his political views didn’t change so much as the Republican Party changed. He has said he plans to make no major policy or staff changes from the Sebelius administration.”
Sebelius spotted at jazz fest (Associated Press in Topeka Capital-Journal) “Sebelius said she and her husband have been coming to the annual festival for three decades, but officially, not this one. The blog said she didn’t want her attendance at Jazz Fest reported, because, she said, ‘We don’t want to appear to be frivolous.’” Personally, I don’t think taking a quick vacation in New Orleans is frivolous. I wish I could do it more often myself. But these remarks by the former Kansas Governor, now Secretary of Health and Human Services, make me wonder: is it frivolous only if it’s not reported?
Study outlines state’s renewable energy potential (Daniel McCoy in the Wichita Business Journal) “A new study from the American Council on Renewable Energy reports previous estimates for Kansas’ renewable energy future may be far less than the actual potential. According to the ACORE study, Kansas could be poised to meet a 200 percent renewable energy standard. The report found the state is currently exploiting less than 1 percent of its wind energy potential. At a peak production rate, ACORE found Kansas could be producing 19 gigawatts of wind-generated power by 2024.” Too bad this wind power can’t be produced when we really need it the most — hot summer afternoons and evenings. If we can devise a way to store all this energy, that would change the equation. Until then, we must rely on energy sources like coal. Unless, that is, Kansas environmentalists would agree to turn off their air conditioners and tell, say, Cessna to stop manufacturing airplanes when the wind isn’t blowing.
Aging Gracefully: Napping Dr. Andrew Weil makes the case for taking a nap now and then.
Official May Be Fired for Authorizing N.Y. Flyover (Washington Post) “White House press secretary Robert Gibbs pointedly refused to rule out a firing in the case of the Air Force One backup’s flight that terrified some in New York City on Monday.”
Google Unveils New Tool To Dig for Public Data (Washington Post) “Google launched a new search tool yesterday designed to help Web users find public data that is often buried in hard-to-navigate government Web sites.
The tool, called Google Public Data, is the latest in the company’s efforts to make information from federal, state and local governments accessible to citizens. It’s a goal that many Washington public interest groups and government watchdogs share with President Obama, whose technology advisers are pushing to open up federal data to the public.” This is a great idea, if it really works. Just today I tried to find the salaries of Sedgwick County commissioners and Wichita city council members, and I — someone who, if I do say so myself, is pretty handy at using the Internet — was foiled.
Feeling Secure, Some Banks Want to Be Left Alone (New York Times) As Washington pushes banks to mend their finances, the banks are pushing back. Emboldened by newfound profits and eager to shake off federal control, a growing number of banks are resisting the Obama administration’s proposals for fixing the financial system. Lenders that skirted disaster only months ago with the help of taxpayer dollars are now balking at government prescriptions.”
The Mogul Who Built Corporate America (New York Times) “Mr. Stiles is clear-eyed about his subject’s nearly amoral rapacity. He writes that [Cornelius] Vanderbilt ‘exacerbated problems that would never be fully solved: a huge disparity in wealth between rich and poor; the concentration of great power in private hands; the fraud and self-serving deception that thrives in an unregulated environment.’ But again and again in ‘The First Tycoon,’ he also defends Vanderbilt against his most vocal detractors and, whenever possible, corrects the historical record when it has portrayed him unfairly. Vanderbilt did not actually say, to give just one example, a line that was used against him at the time: ‘Law! What do I care about the law?’” I suppose this is about as balanced as we’re going to get from the New York Times. In reality, Vanderbilt faced government-subsidized competitors, and won.
In last Thursday’s edition, a reader wrote a letter explaining why the Wall Street Journal is the most important newspaper in this country. I like it so much I pay to subscribe to both the online version and the “dead tree version,” as their columnist John Fund has described it. The weekly television program The Journal Editorial Report, formerly on PBS but now on Fox News, is good, too. The host is Paul Gigot, the Journal’s editorial page editor. Here’s the letter:
The WSJ’s Early Storm Warnings
The Journal’s editorial page has an incredibly accurate track record in predicting problems that would result from bad economic policy decisions over the last 10 years. I know, because I remember your warnings about loose monetary policy in the early 2000s, the pernicious effects of the growth of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and so on.
To my knowledge, only The Economist comes close to the Journal’s record in having the foresight to warn about the root causes of the global crisis we’re living through today. Yet strangely, in my opinion, you have done a very poor job of publicizing your track record and proving that the causes of today’s problems are actually understandable and were quite foreseeable. Some regular readers like me may remember your warnings over the years, yet I doubt the majority does.
More importantly, non-Journal readers are totally oblivious to your track record. The reason this is important is that a misunderstanding of the true causes of today’s crisis may lead to disastrous new policy errors — witness Barney Frank’s new proposal on guaranteeing municipal bond issues, which you recently warned about (“Barney Frank’s Double Indemnity,” Review & Outlook, April 17).
In order to set the record straight, here is a modest recommendation: Summarize in a full page all the editorials over the last 10 years that warned against policy errors which were not addressed and led to the problems we are having today. Publish it on the editorial page and take full-page ads in competing mass print and online media . You’ll be getting recognition for your track record, bolstering your influence going forward, and educating the public at large. A win-win for you and the country.
Miguel Roman
Chatham, N.J.
From Rasmussen:
Fifty-one percent (51%) of Americans have a favorable view of the “tea parties” held nationwide last week, including 32% who say their view of the events is Very favorable. … While half the nation has a favorable opinion of last Wednesday’s events, the nation’s Political Class has a much dimmer view—just 13% of the political elite offered even a somewhat favorable assessment while 81% said the opposite. Among the Political Class, not a single survey respondent said they had a Very Favorable opinion of the events while 60% shared a Very Unfavorable assessment. … David Axelrod, a top adviser to President Obama, on Sunday characterized the protests in dozens of cities on the day federal income taxes are due as potentially “unhealthy.”
Wow. It’s “unhealthy” when people disagree with the administration’s policies. I didn’t know that. I wonder if Obama’s health care plan will refuse to provide coverage for illness induced by protest. A pre-existing condition, perhaps?
Read the entire story by clicking on 51% View Tea Parties Favorably, Political Class Strongly Disagrees.
Kansas budget, wind power, alternative fuels gone wild, newspaper bailouts, journalism entrepreneurship
House pushing big K-12 cuts (Topeka Capital-Journal) “The Republican-led House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday approved a budget-reduction plan that would trim $100 million in state aid to public schools in Kansas. The 3.3 percent reduction for the upcoming 2010 fiscal year would help balance the state budget.” With K-12 schools consuming about half of state general fund spending, it’s surprising that is all they’re asked to sacrifice.
Wind farm to provide power to Greensburg homes, businesses (Wichita Eagle) A town destroyed by too much wind now seeks to benefit from wind. Actually, it’s milking the government subsidy that will benefit Greensburg: “And NativeEnergy Inc., a leader in climate solution services, will buy about two-thirds of the wind farm’s renewable energy credits over 20 years.” It’s unlikely this would be happening without taxpayer subsidy.
Brownback backs Open Fuels Standards Act (Kansas Liberty, a subscription service) “Republican Sen. Sam Brownback today endorsed the introduction of legislation that would require 50 percent of new cars to have the capability to operate on gasoline, ethanol and methanol or diesel or biodiesel.” This is more of government trying to plan the future of the automobile industry, this time from someone who is considered a conservative.
Kerry aims to rescue newspapers (Washington Times) “Troubled by the possible shuttering of his hometown paper, Sen. John Kerry reached out to the Boston Globe on Tuesday, then called for Senate hearings to address the woes of the nation’s print media.” Bailout fever continues to spread. If you think it’s bad for the federal government to run banks and automobile companies, just think how bad things will be when the press is beholden to people like Kerry for its survival.
True/Slant Tests Another Model Of Web Journalism (Wall Street Journal) “This week, a new Web news site is entering the fray, with a novel approach to journalistic entrepreneurship, new forms of advertising, and an effort to blend journalism and social networking.” This site’s address is trueslant.com. If journalism is to survive — and let us hope it thrives — it will serve America best if it is through private initiative like this, rather than through Sen. John Kerry’s government bailouts.
Alternative Fuel Folly (Kimberly A. Strassel in the Wall Street Journal) Describes how a paper company may reap a $1 billion annual windfall by simply continuing to do what it already does. It’s an example of how government policies often produce unintended effects.