The State of the Union

The State of the Union from the Right Side

snippets of articles in the news today

LA Times, Colorado voters reject raising taxes to support education

In what could be a harbinger of the 2012 election, Colorado voters Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected a measure that would have raised nearly $3 billion for education by temporarily increasing state income, sales and use taxes. With 59% of the projected vote counted, Proposition 103 was trailing 65% to 35%, the Associated Press reported.

The debate over the measure closely mirrored recent rancor in Washington over the question of whether more spending will revive a moribund economy or slow down a nascent recovery. A likely swing state in 2012, Colorado is a particularly interesting place to see which argument voters’ cotton to. Its population is well-educated, with more than one-third of residents older than 25 holding at least a bachelor’s degree. But the state’s unemployment rate has been stuck around 8%, and a solid share of the electorate finds taxes distasteful, passing a major tax-limitation measure in 1992. Opponents said the state’s economy was too fragile to withstand higher taxes, which would have expired after 2016, and that throwing money at education wouldn’t necessarily improve its quality. There is no correlation between education funding and education outcomes. In fact, if there is any correlation at all it is negative. The highest per-capita spending on K-12 education is Washington DC. Washington DC schools are also the lowest performing schools in the nation. Consequently, the idea that more money will translate into higher academic performance cannot be supported. The public education system in the US is broken beyond repair. There is a way to increase academic performance but raising taxes to give more money to incompetent public school administrators is going to do nothing to raise academic performance. There is no causal relationship between the two. The Colorado voters were very wise not to throw their money away. It would have made them poorer and it won't help the students one bit. The former School Board head, Michelle Rhee, was tossed out of her job because she tried to dump poor performing teachers so she could give performance bonuses to excellent ones. She was fought tooth-and-nail by the Teachers Union and they endorsed a new mayor so he would dump Ms Rhee when he was elected. So DC still pays a high per-student tax and gets the same lousy results - but the Teachers Union protected the status quo and all of the many lousy teachers. NYT: Nearly 15% of the U.S. population relied on food stamps in August, as the number of recipients hit 45.8 million. Food stamp rolls have risen 8.1% in the past year, the Department of Agriculture reported, though the pace of growth has slowed from the depths of the recession. The number of recipients in the food stamp program, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), may continue to rise in coming months as families continue to struggle with high unemployment Federal Reserve officials are poised to downgrade their outlook for the U.S. economy.

NYT: Bloomberg strikes tougher tone on Occupy Wall Street  City may take "action" against protesters disrupting quality of life. Bloomberg, whose tone has become seemingly less sympathetic to the protestors as the occupation continues, said the demonstrators should be blaming Congress — not Wall Street — for the nation's economic woes. Powerful assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has had enough of Occupy Wall Streeters peeing and pooping on the streets - and drumming, local lawmakers who represent lower Manhattan demanded Tuesday that Mayor Bloomberg crack down on quality-of-life infractions by those encamped at Zuccotti Park. Is it possible that the same folks who called OWS the Democrats Tea Party are wishing they could eat those words? One only has to look at the pictures and listen to the nonsense.
Tuesday