Our economy is so intertwined and interdependent that it is impossible for the government to guide it in any direction without setting off a long chain of consequences. This is another example of the folly of centralized economic planning. As I've written in the past, to determine the true value of ethanol, remove all subsidies for producing it and the corn used to make it, and end the tariff on imported ethanol. Very rapidly the market will tell us just how much a gallon of ethanol is worth. Dan Mitchell summarizes The Wall Street Journal: The shine is off corn ethanol, and oh, what a comedown it has been. It was only in January that President Bush was calling for a yet a bijillion more gallons of the wonder-stuff in…
Energy investor T. Boone Pickens has changed his mind about government subsidy of energy markets -- again. Until recently Pickens has been promoting federal legislation titled H.R. 1380: New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions Act of 2011, or NAT GAS act. The bill provides a variety of subsidies, implemented through tax credits, to producers and users of natural gas. The goal is to promote the use of natural gas for a transportation fuel, particularly for long-haul trucks. Now, according to reporting in Politico, Pickens said about the transition to natural gas "It's going to happen, and you don't have to have Washington do it, thank God." Later in the article Pickens is quoted as saying "You don’t have to have a tax credit; it’s going to happen." Before promoting…
As campaign chair for Tax Fairness for All Wichitans, I'm very concerned that the campaign is accurate and truthful in everything it does. I insist on adhering to that standard, starting with myself. Now that the Wichita Eagle has published its fact checking article (Fact-checking claims on the Ambassador Hotel vote), I can say that this goal has been met. While the Eagle took issue with one of my claims, upon closer examination, there really is no issue at all. But the same can't be said for the claims made by the "Vote Yes" side. That side of the issue is championed by a group named "Moving Wichita Forward," managed by Sheila Tigert. While the Eagle article said there were "three instances where semantic liberties have been taken with the…
News that Kansas Senator Jean Schodorf is leaving the Republican Party after her primary election loss has been treated as mostly a political story, which it certainly is. More important, however, is the potential for new policies and laws regarding Kansas schools that hold the promise of helping Kansas schoolchildren and families. Senator Schodorf's most notable cause has been education. As chair of the senate education committee, she has been in a position of tremendous influence over education policy in Kansas. We should examine, then, the results of Kansas education policy. This summer Kansas received a waiver from the main provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. As part of the waiver, Kansas agreed to create a teacher evaluation system that includes student achievement as a significant factor…
While Kansas schools perform well in comparison to other states, there is much room for improvement, as the country as a whole does not do well in teaching students to their full potential. School choice programs, either through vouchers or tax credit scholarships, would help Kansas students do even better, and would help close the gap between low-performing students and the rest. Last week Kansas Policy Institute and The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice held a press conference discussing school choice and other school reform measures. KPI and FFEC recently launched the "Why Not Kansas" initiative to educate Kansans on the need to reform the state's K-12 educational system to allow Kansas schools to continue to improve. Due to travel problems, the FFEC representative was not able to attend. One…
Kansas legislature website. It's getting better, and now has -- by my recollection -- all the functionality of the site it replaced. But there are still some issues. The search feature uses a Google site-specific search, which is good in many ways. But trying to find if there's any legislation this year concerning sales tax? Not so easy. ... The rosters of members are displayed in panels of 12 members of a time. For the House there are 11 such panels. I wonder on which panel I'll find the member I'm looking for? ... Too many documents are still being delivered in OpenOffice doc format, which many people will not be able to use. Kansas smoking ban. The Hutchinson News has reported and editorialized on the statewide smoking ban. In…
Yesterday's award of $2.5 million by the City of Wichita to aircraft manufacturer Hawker Beechcraft to ward off a threatened move to Louisiana stands out as an example of corporate welfare given for its own sake, and not in response to any real threat. Hawker will also ask Sedgwick County for the same amount, in addition to receiving $40 million in credits and incentives from the State of Kansas. It was widely reported that Hawker had received an offer, said by some to be worth as much as $400 million, to move to Louisiana. But that offer was not a valid threat of Hawker leaving Kansas, as in a December 2010 television news report, Louisiana's governor said "they couldn't guarantee the number of jobs that would have been required for…
Last week USA Today carried an editorial by an Alexandria, Virginia school teacher that contains an unfortunate misunderstanding of the term competition as it applies to economics and education. The writer is Patrick Welsh, who is a member of member of USA Today's Board of Contributors. The article is Schools can't manage poverty. In the article, Welsh makes one of the most inept analogies that I've ever seen. Here's the heart of it: Being an English teacher, I prepared a little analogy to ask him about the rationale for labeling schools on the basis of Adequate Yearly Progress. Duncan's biographies often mention that he was co-captain of the Harvard basketball team during the 1986-87 season, his senior year. I reminded him that that team won only seven games and lost…
On election day, Wichita city council member and mayoral candidate Jeff Longwell appears to have ducked an inconvenient vote and would not say why. At his Wichita mayoral campaign announcement last November, then-council member Jeff Longwell called for a moratorium on the use of forgivable loans until a new policy is implemented. [1. Wichita Eagle, 2015. Economic Development Among Mayoral Candidate Jeff Longwell’s Priorities For Wichita. Accessed April 16 2015. Available at www.kansas.com/news/local/article393829.] At other times he called for the end to traditional cash incentives, telling the Wichita Eagle “I think that we have to get away from the traditional cash incentives that we’ve been using and look for better ways to grow jobs in this community.” [2. Wichita Eagle, 2015. Jeff Longwell, Sam Williams Advance In Race For Wichita…
Will "traditional," "reasonable," "moderate" Kansan Republicans be defeated in the August 7, 2012 Kansas primary? Would that defeat be good or bad for Kansas? Kansas newspapers have featured an op-ed by H. Edward Flentje of the Hugo Wall School of Urban and Public Affairs at Wichita State University. (A referendum on Brownback, July 27 Winfield Courier.) His tone, as is that of many newspaper editorials appearing through the state, is that it is vital to preserve the "traditional" moderate Republican approach to Kansas government, as it is those who "believe government has a more affirmative role in assuring a high quality of life for Kansans." The implication, made explicit later on, is that the rise of a conservative majority in the Kansas Senate would be bad. Here's one area in…