A couple weeks ago, I posted here regarding the Manhattan Institute’s recent report on the improvement Ohio has made in reforming its civil liability laws. The report briefly mentions two cases in which the Ohio Supreme Court upheld recently enacted reforms of Ohio’s tort system. I discuss those two cases in more detail in the just released summer issue of the Federalist Society’s State Court Docket Watch (the article on the Ohio cases begins on page 2 under “Case in Focus”). As the Manhattan Institute’s report indicates, the recently enacted tort reforms, including placing caps on pain and suffering damages and time limits on liability, are critical if Ohio is going to be successful in making the state attractive again for investment and business activity. Interestingly, in one of the recent cases, Arbino v. Johnson v. Johnson, the portion of the decision upholding the cap on pain and suffering damages was by a 5-2 majority. Two of the justices in the majority, Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton and Maureen O’Connor, are up for reelection in 2008. If they are defeated and replaced by more activist justices, the court might then have a majority that would be willing to strike down the caps on damages enacted by the General Assembly. That would be a major step backward for Ohio.
Nothing could better demonstrate the essential problem of government. (Well, nothing short of a war.) Most of us don’t spend a lot of time on the income side of the budget issue, because that’s a whole different set of activities — changing jobs, increasing skills, all big, difficult, long term major efforts.
No, real budgeting is spent on the expense side of the ledger. It doesn’t do any good to say we need additional dollars. So does Donald Trump. The real issue is, given our dollars, how are we going to spend them?
But no, let’s not go there. Let’s just say the school funding system has been ruled unconstitutional four times and raise taxes.
The debate about payday lending has been notable for the anti-lending forces as well as those in the press (am I being redundant?) fail to grasp basic facts about the payday loan industry. I have documented that repeatedly on this blog. It seems that I have more work to do, however, based on today’s editorial in the Dayton Daily News. Let me just comment on a few of the more egregious departures from reality the editors make:
There are alternatives to payday lenders. Credit unions, for instance, and even some banks will make short-term loans for much more reasonable rates.
Really? Then why do people choose payday lenders who, in the view of these editors, rip them off? Are these consumers idiots? Well, no, since the notion that credit unions or banks are going to be making high-risk, unsecured loans at low rates to a large number of people is ridiculous. It isn’t happening now and it won’t happen when the ban goes into effect. The fact is that these high rates are necessary to provide the product that borrowers want and need.
After Sept. 1, short-term loans simply would be capped at 28 percent on an annualized basis, versus the 391 percent that can be charged now. Borrowers would pay $18 for a two-week $300 loan, not $45.
No. A 28% APR on a two-week, $300 loan is $3.23. Would you loan money to someone for that low of a rate? Would you make a profit if you did?
But when lawmakers looked into the payday businesses’ practices, they found that many customers were being encouraged to take out loan after loan because high fees were trapping them in debt.
That sounds like lawmakers actually did a study of the issue and discovered the borrowing patterns of those who take these loans. That didn’t happen. They heard from a handful of people who needed a payday loan at the time but, in retrospect, didn’t like the price they paid. But these borrowers agreed to pay the price at that time, indicating that the viewed it then as a fair price. Furthermore, there was no evidence that people were being encouraged to take out more than one loan. The plural of anecdote isn’t data. Read the rest of this entry »
The ending sentence of a rather unfocused editorial is, “Recall December 1992, the jobless rate at 7.2 percent: George Voinovich and state lawmakers increased taxes to balance the budget and preserve decisive programs. The state unemployment rate fell steadily until the end of the decade. Yes, there are worse things than higher taxes.”
I’m not quite sure of the post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning there. Why not, “Recall that Ohio and many other states rode an expansion that extended over more than 20 years largely as a result of Reagan policies on taxes,” etc. But no matter. Each sees his causation where he likes.
Gongwer reports on yesterday’s Controlling Board meeting–they’re the guys who write the checks, or cause them to be written, anyway–that “prevailing wage” is coming down the pike from Gov. Strickland.
The Strickland administration confirmed Monday it is considering a major policy change in which private companies that receive millions in state aid would have to pay prevailing wage on their construction projects.
Word of the expansion in the application of prevailing wage - the geographic pay scale usually tied to union contracts - surfaced as the Controlling Board released $2 million in Third Frontier Program grants.
Well of course prevailing wage is coming. There hasn’t been much doubt about that. This is a great reporting catch, though, the good stuff, because it’s the real meat and potatoes. Knowing something is coming is quite different from catching it when it does come.
It’s really a shame how much of government is just about shoveling money from one pocket into another, and of course the only pocket the money is being shoveled out of is yours. Our officials seem interested only in the debate over what pocket it gets shoveled into: the unions, large corporations or entitlement programs. (I wonder if there are any economists out there studying how large the politicians’ commissions are among these groups? My initial guess would be that it’s pretty constant, but that’s just to start the models going.)
As for those few of you who save anything, there is only one message for you: suckers.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer finds that Cuyahoga County had a chance to save $2 million on the construction of its juvenile justice facility. The construction of that facility is being investigated by the FBI in connection with the Jimmy Dimora and Frank Russo raid. The story speaks for itself but I figured I’d link to it because this involves state taxpayer money and you’d have a hard time hearing about this if you weren’t a Plain Dealer reader (calling the Columbus Dispatch…):
Cuyahoga County Commissioners celebrated as they signed a $2.75 million deal to buy land from Sunrise Land Co., a subsidiary of Forest City Enterprises, Inc. That deal ended a more than 14-year battle to find a home for a much-needed county juvenile detention center. There were lengthy speeches, applause and even jokes, according to a tape of that Feb. 29, 2000, meeting.
Commissioner Jane Campbell introduced her newest colleague, Jimmy Dimora, quipping that after “14 years of sturm und drang … you come here and in one year it got fixed. Want to, like, enlighten us?”
“It’s being Italian,” Dimora wisecracked. “You make people an offer they can’t refuse.”
Everyone laughed.
But the deal really wasn’t funny. Just seven months earlier, the county could have saved taxpayers more than $2 million by snatching up the property itself up before the land was sold to Sunrise.
…the EdChoice Scholarship program! And public schools! And parents! And kids! And most definitely, the free market!
Why are there so many winners this week? Because the Friedman Foundation is announcing a new report that reveals that school choice is good for everyone.
This Wednesday, the study by Friedman Foundation Senior Fellow Greg Forster of our EdChoice Scholarship Program will be released to the public. I can tell you that his research of the poorly performing public schools that lost children to EdChoice will reveal academic improvement for the kids left behind in those schools. He’s not the only researcher to determine this fact, but to have evidence here, in our own backyard, of the success of school choice is truly encouraging.
In fact, the only losers here are the opponents of school choice. When an EdChoice child succeeds at a private school - he’s a winner. When a public school student succeeds because competition improved her school - she’s a winner.
So when will the naysayers stop with the ‘doom and gloom’ reports school choice harming the public school system and get on the freedom bandwagon? When they decide kids should be the priority in education.
A solid piece from Julie Carr Smyth on the bumble-squared fiasco that erupted at the top levels of Ohio government earlier this year, when Attorney General Marc Dann bumbled his office administration and Ohio officials at all levels bumbled their response to it.
The problem, as Smyth’s piece develops, is that now the standard of government is “we’ll run around in a panic of self-interest whenever the press or anything else drives us to it.”
Seasoned observers may say it has always been so, but nonetheless, a government that is not based on law is beyond troublesome. It’s dangerous. Split, 5-4 and 4-3 decisions of high courts are a tremendous part of the problem, and so are incidents like the Dann scenario, where everyone concluded he should be hanged, they just were not quite sure for what, or when or, as far as the law goes, why. Read the rest of this entry »
The Leadership Institute is bringing a “Grassroots Campaign School” to Westerville, Ohio on August 23, 2008. The cost of the course is $20 per participant which includes course materials and lunch. Read the rest of this entry »
A couple weeks ago, I posted here regarding the Manhattan Institute’s recent report on the improvement Ohio has made in reforming its civil liability laws. The report briefly mentions two cases in which the Ohio Supreme Court upheld recently enacted reforms of Ohio’s tort system. I discuss those two cases in more detail in the just released summer issue of the Federalist Society’s State Court Docket Watch (the article on the Ohio cases begins on page 2 under “Case in Focus”). As the Manhattan Institute’s report indicates, the recently enacted tort reforms, including placing caps on pain and suffering damages and time limits on liability, are critical if Ohio is going to be successful in making the state attractive again for investment and business activity. Interestingly, in one of the recent cases, Arbino v. Johnson v. Johnson, the portion of the decision upholding the cap on pain and suffering damages was by a 5-2 majority. Two of the justices in the majority, Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton and Maureen O’Connor, are up for reelection in 2008. If they are defeated and replaced by more activist justices, the court might then have a majority that would be willing to strike down the caps on damages enacted by the General Assembly. That would be a major step backward for Ohio.
