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Second Wichita School Bond Commercial Released
Read more: Second Wichita School Bond Commercial ReleasedWichitans for Effective Education has released the second in a series of Wichita school bond issue advertisements. Visit the Wichita School Bond Channel at YouTube for more videos.
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Wichita School Bond Cost Could Rise in a Big Way
Read more: Wichita School Bond Cost Could Rise in a Big WayUSD 259 (Wichita public school district) officials have estimated that the interest rate for the proposed Wichita school bond issue would be 4.75%. With the recent turmoil in credit markets, I think it’s impossible to forecast with any degree of certainty what interest rates on long-term bonds might be over the next few years when…
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Are We Angry Only Because We Were Caught?
Read more: Are We Angry Only Because We Were Caught?In his column Welcome to ‘Moral Hazard’, Wall Street Journal editorial writer Daniel Henninger writes: For behind it all sat Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, running mortgage liquidity into the nation’s neighborhoods like an open fire hydrant. Several years ago, when the Journal’s editorial board met with Fannie Mae’s top executives and pressed the issue…
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Will Credit Crisis Affect Wichita School Bond Issue?
Read more: Will Credit Crisis Affect Wichita School Bond Issue?In Toledo, Ohio, there’s a school bond issue on the ballot this year. My friend Maggie Thurber wonders Does ‘credit crisis’ bode ill for arena and school bond issues? No one has any idea of what the market for loanable funds — the credit markets — will look like for the next few years. If…
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How a Sub-prime Lender Influences Kansas Energy and Environment Policy
Read more: How a Sub-prime Lender Influences Kansas Energy and Environment PolicyIn an American Thinker article titled How allies of George Soros helped bring down Wachovia Bank, you can read about the business activities of Herbert and Marion Sandler: Herbert and Marion Sandler, a New York lawyer and Wall Street analyst respectively, bought a small California thrift in 1963 and built it into GDW [Golden West…
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Still more Kansas National Education Association candidate questions
Read more: Still more Kansas National Education Association candidate questionsThe “Kansas Political Action Committee,” a group associated with the Kansas National Education Association (KNEA, the teachers union) has a questionnaire it asks candidates for the Kansas legislature to complete. After reading a few of these questions, it became clear to me that the questions are formulated to advance the interests of the teachers union…
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Wichita School Bond: Information Request
Read more: Wichita School Bond: Information RequestIn support of the proposed Wichita school bond issue, USD 259 officials and their supporting campaign group make a lot of claims. Unfortunately, Wichita news outlets, for whatever reason, don’t spend a lot of time investigating these claims. It’s left to citizens to make inquiries. So I do. Here’s one sent to Wendy Johnson, Division…
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Should a Beat Journalist be a Layman?
Read more: Should a Beat Journalist be a Layman?Keeping TIFs from a public tiff by Wichita Eagle business reporter Bill Wilson on the Eagle’s Business Casual blog contains some comments that are troubling to me. In these comments, reporter Wilson wrote this: “Instead, a TIF, to this layman, actually is a government bet on the success of a development.” (emphasis added) Now I…
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Our problem is the manager of our money
Read more: Our problem is the manager of our moneyThink of it: Nothing is more vital to capitalism than capital, the financial seed corn dedicated to next year’s crop. Yet we, believers in free markets, allow the price of capital, i.e., the interest rate on loanable funds, to be fixed by a central committee in accordance with government objectives. We might as well resurrect…
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Our Economic Past — Equality, Markets, and Morality
Read more: Our Economic Past — Equality, Markets, and MoralityFree markets may yield odd results and certainly unequal outcomes, but the greater opportunities and prosperity have made the tradeoff worthwhile for American society. From Our Economic Past ~ Equality, Markets, and Morality by Burton Folsom, Jr., posted at the Foundation for Economic Education.
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Booted from White House Conference Call
Read more: Booted from White House Conference CallMy friend Leslie Carbone was Booted from White House Conference Call. By the way, Leslie is the author of Slaying Leviathan: The Moral Case for Tax Reform, which will be published in May 2009. I can’t wait.
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Wichita School Bond: Was Safety Important in 2000 at College Hill Elementary?
Read more: Wichita School Bond: Was Safety Important in 2000 at College Hill Elementary?Today, three College Hill Elementary School staff members (Casey McConnell, Kathleen Endsley, and Jacqueline Henning) write to the Wichita Eagle with this complaint about their school, and a question too: But like many schools in the district, it does not have a safe room for use in a tornado warning. … It has been stated…