Yesterday's edition of the Lawrence Journal-World has the headline ‘Buried treasure’ claims debunked. The headline and article refer to a report issued by the Flint Hills Center for Public Policy and covered in my post Kansas funds have large, unneeded balances. The dictionary says that "debunk" means "to expose the sham or falseness of." The article doesn't come anywhere near fulfilling this promise. The article is based on a quotation from Kansas state budget director Duane Goossen: “The key point that I would make is that while the report uses the word ‘unencumbered,’ and seems to suggest that that means somehow the balances in these funds are unplanned for, not budgeted for, or are there for the discretionary use of the agencies that hold the funds -- that is not…
A Kansas City Star editorial makes a case for higher school spending in Kansas, but is based on a premise that doesn't exist in fact. In its conclusion, the editorial states: "Kansans have always known that rigorous standards and strong, well-funded public school systems are the best routes to an educated work force." (A decisive time for Kansas schools, October 15, 2013.) The problem is that Kansas doesn't have rigorous standards for its schools. If the Star editorial writers had asked the National Center for Education Statistics about Kansas school standards, that agency might have referred the editorialists to the most recent version of Mapping State Proficiency Standards Onto the NAEP Scales. (NCES is the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education in the U.S. and…
Yesterday's Olathe Republican Party picnic featured a straw poll that provided insight into statewide and local races as Kansas nears its August 3rd primary. The annual event is very popular, and this year 430 people paid the $2 fee to participate in the straw poll. Martin Hawver, dean of Kansas Statehouse reporters, describes the importance of the event: "The picnic/poll has been closely watched in recent years because Olathe is a conservative bastion and it tends to bring Republican politics into a comfortably conservative venue from which the party’s internal strife can be measured." Voters vote only once in the poll. In the straw poll for the Republican Party nomination for United States Senate from Kansas, Todd Tiahrt outpolled Jerry Moran 315 to 112. Tom Little of Mound City and…
Saturday's Wall Street Journal contains an editorial (Leave the New Deal in the History Books) that contains a summary of the effect of the New Deal: President Roosevelt came to office much as Barack Obama will, shouldering an economic crisis that began under his predecessor. In 1933, Roosevelt's first year, unemployment hit nearly 25%, as people lost jobs and homes in towns across the country. Believing that government played a key role in restarting growth, FDR, within his first 100 days as president, created an alphabet soup of new agencies that mandated actions or controlled public spending and impacted private capital flow within the U.S. economy. At first, it seemed to be working. After four years of FDR's policies, joblessness declined to 14.3% -- still very high but heading in…
One of the duties of being a blogger on the left is constant disparaging of the source of funding or leadership of your opposition. All done, of course, while ignoring the painfully obvious problems with your own. As an example, a recent Boston Globe column -- its title is In glitzy shadows, a health reform foe lurks -- makes claims that are false. Others are actually something to be proud of, not ashamed. I don't recommend you actually read the Globe piece. As one comment left to the article stated: "What an amazingly biased and unbalanced piece." It's not worth the time. Instead, read the Examiner.com's analysis at Boston Globe falsely claims Koch Industries astroturffed Obamacare protests. At issue is the funding of Americans for Prosperity, which describes itself --…
The school of thinking known as Keynesian economics holds that government should actively and aggressively manage the economy, most importantly by stepping up spending when demand is low. Through this deficit spending, it is said that government action can increase employment. This government spending purportedly accomplishes this through a multiplier effect, as dollars are spent again and again. The value of the spending multiplier -- is it big or small? -- is an important question. Also, the multiplier effect may be different for government spending versus private spending. Now, we're starting to understand why Keynesian economics doesn't work. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Stanford economist Michael J. Boskin summarizes recent research that finds that the spending multiplier is small, and actually turns negative by the start of the second…
Decoding and deconstructing communications from KNEA, the Kansas teachers union, lets us discover the true purpose of the union. Here, we look at a dispatch from Kansas National Education Association's "Under the Dome" newsletter from March 14, 2013. It may be found here. The topic of this day was a charter school bill. Kansas has a law that allows charter schools, which are public schools that operate outside many of the rules and regulations that govern traditional public schools. But the Kansas law is written in a way that makes it difficult to form a charter school, and as a result, Kansas has very few charter schools. KNEA, the teacher union in Kansas, says: Rep. Ed Trimmer noted that a study provided by the proponents (anti-public school "think tank" Kansas…
In a refreshing change, Kansas schools have adopted realistic standards for students, but only after many years of evaluating students using low standards. For years Kansas schools have used low standards to evaluate students. That is, Kansas was willing to say students are "proficient" at a much lower level of performance than most other states. But now the new Kansas standards are more in line with those of other states, and present a more truthful assessment of Kansas schoolchildren. This is the finding of the EducationNext report After Common Core, States Set Rigorous Standards. EducationNext is a scholarly journal published by the Hoover Institution and the Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance at the Harvard Kennedy School that is committed to careful examination of evidence relating to school reform.…
"What may look like economic growth on the surface ends up being, upon closer scrutiny, an expensive exercise in the rearrangement of existing business activity." Kansas Policy Institute has released a report examing economic development in Wichita. Titled "Perspectives on Economic Development Incentives and Economic Growth in Wichita," it presents much information specific to Wichita, and specifically two STAR bond districts: Riverwalk and K-96/Greenwich Road. There is also material on economics and economic development in general. The main takeaway, according to KPI, is "... two of Wichita’s leading development projects, driven by economic development incentives, did not improve job creation." Instead, the report concludes: "To summarize, and to reiterate, two prominent government-incentivized economic development projects do not show evidence of promoting net-new economic growth. At best, the projects redirected or…
Before Jim Skelton left the council in January, none of the four men serving on the Wichita City Council had completed a college degree. The three women serving on the council set a better example, with all three holding college degrees. Of the candidates running in next week's election for four council seats and the office of mayor, less than half hold college degrees. Is it necessary to complete college in order to serve in an office like mayor or city council? Apparently none of the four men who held these offices without a degree thought so. The two running to retain their present positions -- Mayor Carl Brewer and council member Jeff Longwell (district 5, west and northwest Wichita) -- evidently don't think so, or they would not be…