BuckeyeBlog

Although it goes by the name of “campaign finance reform,” efforts to regulate campaign contributions and spending are little more than attempts by politicians to abridge the freedom of people to engage in politics. Often liberals have supported these schemes, but in this election Senator Barack Obama’s fundraising activities should shatter this liberal support of these efforts. At least that’s what Buckeye Institute Board member Bradley Smith says in an excellent piece in yesterday’s Washington Post:

Obama’s epic fundraising should put to rest all the shibboleths about campaign finance reform — that it is needed to prevent corruption, that it equalizes the playing field, or that tax subsidies are needed to prevent corruption.  …

When one side is being outspent, its partisans naturally want to limit the fundraising of the other side. But if we really are concerned about “fairness,” the best approach is probably to remove restrictions on fundraising altogether, rather than limit the speech of those who are raising money successfully. …

We should consider it a healthy thing when Americans support their political beliefs with their dollars. What we see in this election is that contributions don’t really cause “corruption” and that we don’t really want the government deciding who has spoken too much and who has not spoken enough. If Obama’s fundraising shows us the emptiness of the arguments for campaign finance “reform,” he will have done us a great service, in spite of himself.

The Cato Institute recently released its Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors: 2008. Ohio Governor Ted Strickland received a letter grade “B” for his taxing and spending records. According to the report:

Governor Strickland succeeded in his goal of passing an expanded homestead exemption under the property tax. He is also following through on a phased-in replacement of Ohio’s corporate franchise and business property taxes with a gross receipts tax. The plan is supposed to result in a large net tax cut for businesses. On spending, the governor supports large increases in the education budget and is pushing an expensive debt-financed energy plan. But with the state facing a budget deficit this year, the governor is taking steps to trim spending.”

It’s a pleasure to see Mike Curtin writing. He says, in general, Ohio is showing good fiscal restraint. He includes a nice gem that one might expect from the author of the Ohio Politics Almanac: That what we widely call today “House Bill 920″, by which we refer to the idea that property tax collections are fixed, so that, on average, rates are adjusted downward (or upward) as values increase (or decrease), began in 1878. That’s good stuff.

I’m not too sure about his case, though. He argues that Ohio has been “highly responsible” in managing its finances and cites several good bond ratings of various entities. (I can’t help but wonder if they’re the same rating agencies that handled all the banks and insurance companies that are electing Barack Obama?)

It’s not at all clear that relying upon citations to local tax votes is good grounds for arguing budget responsibility. We already know that people spend their own money more carefully than they do other people’s money, and given the chance to vote on their own taxes, they are slow to say yes. The real problem lies where the legislators can spend money by legerdemain, which is in the Rube Goldberg world of state and federal finance (to which Curtin does allude) and the world of court orders.

Certainly it’s true that Ohio has managed, moderately responsibly, its past two state budget cycles, one under a Republican governor and one under a Democrat governor. But before that? From 1998 to 2007 the state averaged a 6 percent annual increase in total spending, according to data in the 2007 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report. Exclude the most recent year, 2007, as being the responsible period, and a zero year due to a recession, and the average increase has been more than 7 percent per year.

How about growth in Ohioans’ per capita personal income? For 1997 to 2007, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, it averages 3 percent–half the growth in state spending.

Twice the rate of state spending growth as per capita income growth? That’s not responsible. That’s irresponsible. It’s spending beyond our means.

I recorded a Buckeye Voices podcast with Case Western Reserve University Law Professor Jonathan Adler today. He and his wife, Christina, provide an in-depth analysis of the Ohio Supreme Court’s recent evolution in this new paper recently published by the Federalist Society.

The Adlers make a persuasive case that the Ohio Supreme Court has dramatically improved over the last decade, due in large part to activist justices retiring and voters replacing them with justices who exercise restraint from the bench.

The folks at the House of Bradlee must not have gotten the memo. Commissar Waxman might have them “fired” if they’re not careful.

Read the whole thing. Excerpts below.

Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a headline you’ll never see. It’s doubtful the question will ever be posed. But, boy oh boy, the markets? Why, they’re stinkin’ with error! Stinkin’!

Check out the loaded innuendo in this story in the New York Times (excerpted and absurdities highlighted in the “read more” section below). The Wall Street Journal and AP do a bit better, but for a much more honest and capable discussion of the quotes, try this Globe and Mail story.

It’s all remarkable, really. People pretend that probabilities don’t mean probabilities, and that government causes us to walk in eternal sunshine. Eternal grey drizzle, is more like it. (Meanwhile, can we get Waxman on record to talk about Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid? If everyone thinks this is bad, wait until the dollar and t-bills collapse. Heck, Waxman might still be in office when that happens.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Governor Strickland is admirably on message. From a viewpoint of either the Democrat Party, which is irrelevant to me but important to the policies that the major parties tend to promote, or anti-choice ideology, which is quite important to a free-market think tank, this is a good thing.

On the other hand, for anyone who believes in individual choice and free markets, it’s a bad thing. The point, of course, is that ideology is different from methods that promote or attack the ideology, and the governor has good game.

Here’s one of the central themes and memes, which the governor is quick to support: “I continue to believe for-profit charter schools are bad for the system.”

That’s a two-fer. Profits are bad. Oh, you know, it’s okay for jobs and things that are subservient to the public interest, and of course we want *you* to have tons of money and support, but the rest of those people are just stinkin’ rich, selfish and corrupt, unlike us good people in government, who are here to help you. Second, of course, is the awful beating on charter schools. It shows, at root, that the governor isn’t such a nice guy after all, in that at the very least he’s willing to put union interests above any number of individual children. How contemptible is that?

Where is the Ohio Republican Party on this issue? AWOL. I’ve lost track of it, but party pooh-bah Bob Bennett was recently reported to have said that the party is about enabling candidates, not about positions on issues.

Guess what happens when one party is consistently on message with anti-choice ideology, and the other party is consistently disparaging any message? Well, you don’t have to guess, you just have to observe. For the rest of his life, Bob Bennett will be hailed as one of the greatest party chairs of either party in Ohio history. And his achievements? That he kept the seats warm. And, uh, don’t go golfing, unless it’s okay to, uh, do so.

State Auditor Mary Taylor deserves some serious kudos for this effort, which so far as I can tell, has not yet been remarked by any of the state’s news leaders: “Taylor will convene a workgroup to study the potential implementation of XBRL in Ohio. The workgroup will consist of local government officials, certified public accountants and business professionals.”

Unfortunately, anything to do with numbers, accountants, and, Lord help them, CPAs tends to induce some serious snooze-condition. But this stuff is big.

One of the keys to transparency today is the Internet, and for now the lingua franca of the Internet is XML. XBRL is an XML adaptation. Even if that’s gibberish to you, here are the two important things to know about that: (1) it’s “open” source, which means anyone, anywhere can read it and adapt it, and (2) it’s machine readable.

These two things together allow both public access and creativity. All these Internet billionaires that we read about some three to six times a year are becoming billionaires because they are finding hidden value in ways to reformat information. Opening up data in a standard, accessible format, is big, big, big.

Congratulations to Auditor Taylor for recognizing this and promoting it.

Anyone who is inclined to explore this in further detail can find more information at a site dedicated to the topic, http://www.xbrl.org/Home/.

During the debate over payday lending “reform” in the state, I’m amazed at how misinformed the editors at Ohio’s newspapers are on this subject. The editorials they write blasting payday lending make a variety of statements that have little or no basis in fact. Today’s editorial from the Toledo Blade is no exception.

Take this claim: “Loans still will be available to people who need them but at an interest rate that, while still high, will be comparable to that charged by credit card companies. Unscrupulous lenders will simply be prevented from profiting excessively from the misfortunes of people with few resources.” For one, the idea that these loans will still be available after this “reform” goes into effect is contradicted by other jurisdictions that enacted similar laws. These types of short-term loans dried up in those places and they will in Ohio, too. Two, payday lenders make a profit between 3% and 8%. How is that “excessive”?

The editors also claim that lenders “take advantage of personal misfortune by charging usurious interest rates that often trap their customers in a cycle of debt.” They take advantage of personal misfortune the same way that grocery stores take advantage of hunger. Yes, people who have personal misfortune turn to payday lenders. Giving people a way to address this personal misfortune is the same as giving people a way to address their hunger. Furthermore, there is no basis to call payday lending “usurious” nor is there any proof that they trap people in a “cycle of debt.”

It’s unfortunate that these completely false statements permeate the media’s view on payday lending. I thought editors would have more regard for being factually correct. I guess I was wrong.

There is a lot of talk in liberal circles about instituting universal pre-school. It’s touted as a way to help kids improve their education skills (or, if you’re cynical, it’s a way for government bureaucrats to get their hands on your kids a few years earlier), but it will cost a lot of tax money. As someone who went to pre-school and hated it, I am skeptical about the need to expand it, but perhaps I’m letting my personal preferences get in the way of social engineering.

The Buckeye Institute’s Beth Lear wrote about the push for universal pre-school in Ohio here. Reason magazine recently produced a short video tackling the subject: