Haftin’ to be uproared

by Rossputin | 5:16 am, November 3, 2011

H/T Eric W.

I really can’t add anything to this except to say that with each passing day, as someone who wants Democrats to do poorly the 2012 elections, I love the Occupy movement…

http://youtu.be/OW56Z-0xwIQ

Colorado voters make a stand (mostly)

by Rossputin | 7:40 am, November 2, 2011

In the only state-wide tax increase on any state’s ballot this year, Colorado voters yesterday offered a resounding “No!”.

Proposition 103 would have raised the state income tax rate from 4.63 percent to 5 percent, and the state sales tax from 2.9 percent to 3 percent, expecting to extract about $3 billion from Coloradoans over five years with the money earmarked for public education. The measure’s supporters – primarily teachers’ unions – outraised (and presumably outspent) its opponents by about 20-to-1.

Nevertheless, Prop 103 lost by a stunning margin of almost 28 percent, roughly 64 percent against to 36 percent for, with only two percent of the ballots left to be counted.

(I was a vociferous opponent of 103 on my blog and my radio show and am very pleased with the outcome.)

Although several small counties have not yet reported, at this point the measure has passed in only three of Colorado’s 64 counties, and they are exactly the three one might expect: Boulder (the center for tax-hiking liberals in the state and the home of the state senator whose baby Prop 103 was), Pitkin (location of Aspen), and San Miguel (location of Telluride.) Even in the perennially Democratic Denver, Prop 103 failed by seven percent.

The wide margin of defeat for Proposition 103 could only happen with a substantial majority – something on the order of two-thirds – of unaffiliated (independent) voters opposing the measure, something which portends well for Republican hopes in 2012 elections.

In another demonstration of common sense, Denver voters rejected, by about a 65-35 vote, Initiative 300 which, as the Denver Post explained, “would require Denver businesses to give workers one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours of work, with the amount capped at nine sick days annually for companies with 10 or more employees and five sick days annually for smaller businesses.” The measure was brought by a feminist group which really wanted to give women extra days off to deal with anything from “female issues” to marital troubles; they had to write the ballot initiative to offer the same benefits to men, which I’m sure irked the man-haters greatly. The measure was opposed by just about everyone, including Democrat Mayor of Denver Michael Hancock and Democrat Governor of Colorado John Hickenlooper.

Elsewhere, in an experiment in socialism which I predict is doomed to be a most expensive failure, Boulder voters approved, by a 52 percent to 48 percent vote, a measure which will allow the city to sever its ties with the local electric power utility and set up a city-owned utility. A companion measure which slightly increased a utility-related tax passed by 141 votes out of more than 26,000 votes cast. Can you imagine a bunch of far-left radical environmentalists (i.e. Boulder city government) who never met a carbon tax they didn’t like (or any other tax) running an electric utility? As the maxim goes, people get the government they deserve.

Separate from the through-the-looking-glass world of Boulder (and its upper-income microcosms of Aspen and Telluride), Colorado voters demonstrated not just common sense on some of the biggest ballot issues this year, but a fairly resounding opposition to the size, cost, and intrusiveness of government. If these results have the implications I think they have for 2012 elections, and if the “purple” Colorado represents the thinking of voters in other swing states around the nation, then unless things change a lot in the economy in the next year, the 2012 elections will be an anti-Democrat (even if not really pro-Republican) tsunami which could make 2010 look tame (in much the same way that 2008 made 2006 look tame for the Democrats.)

Bad economists and good capitalists

by Rossputin | 6:20 am, November 2, 2011

In the same essay that contains the famous “Broken Window” fallacy, French economist Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) cautioned us to consider “That which is seen, and that which is not seen.” His words should be required reading for any politician, elected official, or government bureaucrat:

In the department of economy, an act, a habit, an institution, a law, gives birth not only to an effect, but to a series of effects. Of these effects, the first only is immediate; it manifests itself simultaneously with its cause – it is seen. The others unfold in succession – they are not seen: it is well for us, if they are foreseen. Between a good and a bad economist this constitutes the whole difference – the one takes account of the visible effect; the other takes account both of the effects which are seen, and also of those which it is necessary to foresee. Now this difference is enormous, for it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favorable, the ultimate consequences are fatal, and the converse. Hence it follows that the bad economist pursues a small present good, which will be followed by a great evil to come, while the true economist pursues a great good to come – at the risk of a small present evil.

Needless to say, those economists who advised Barack Obama on the $787 billion (before interest) “stimulus” plan, “cash for clunkers,” or his current raft of executive orders, as well as those like Robert Reich and Paul Krugman who prescribe more of the same snake oil, would fall into Bastiat’s “bad economist” category.

Please read the rest of my article for the American Spectator here:
http://spectator.org/archives/2011/11/02/bad-economists-and-good-capita

Colorado Proposition 103 prediction

by Rossputin | 3:23 pm, November 1, 2011

[Update: Looks like I was too conservative! With 61% of the vote in, Proposition 103 is losing by 30 percent. In order to get this sort of result, there must have been a large number of Democrats opposing the measure along with almost all Republicans and a substantial majority of unaffiliated voters.]

Last night, the Colorado Secretary of State’s office reported then-current voter “turnout” (in quotes since this election in Colorado is only by mail-in ballot, and there is only one state-wide issue on the ballot) with the results broken down by party affiliation.

The numbers were:

315,333 registered Republicans
251,765 registered Democrats
183,866 ballots from unaffiliated voters

In percentage terms, this means 42% of votes cast by the end of the day Monday were from Republicans, 33.5% from Democrats, and 24.5% from unaffiliated voters.

Leaving out voters registered with smaller parties such as the American Constitution Party, the Libertarian Party, or the Green Party, voter registration in the state is about 37.6% Republican, 32.6 Democrat, and 29.8% unaffiliated.

Thus, early results show a highly motivated Republican electorate, even during an election with no named candidates and only one state-wide ballot issue.

This data implies, thankfully, tough sledding for Proposition 103 and perhaps an opportunity for the Republican “dads” running in the Jefferson County school board election. I will make no prediction on the latter, but as for the former I’m going to do a little math (or let my spreadsheet do it for me) and prognosticate about Proposition 103.

As you can see in the table below, if I assume 15% Republican support for 103 (which I think may be high…I sure hope it is), 75% Democrat support for 103 (which I also think may be high) and 40% unaffiliated support (same caveat), and if voter turnout in terms of participation by party does not change, I predict 103 losing by a 59 to 41 margin.

	R	D	U	Total
Votes	315,333	251,765	183,866	750,964
% of total	42.0%	33.5%	24.5%	100.0%
	125%
est % for	15%	75%	40%
est % against	85%	25%	60%
total % for	6.30%	25.14%	9.79%	41.24%
total % against	35.69%	8.38%	14.69%	58.76%
				100.00%

I realize this sounds like a wildly lopsided result for a measure on which the proponents massively outspent the opponents. In fact, a recent report suggests that supporters of Proposition 103 outspent (or at least outraised) the measure’s opponents by about twenty to one.

But thankfully the tax-hiking liberals were not able to manipulate the ballot or “Blue Book” description of the measure to make it sound like something it isn’t. The actual ballot reads as follows…don’t feel the need to read the whole paragraph; read a few lines and skip down to the rest of my commentary.

SHALL STATE TAXES BE INCREASED $536.1 MILLION ANNUALLY IN THE FIRST FULL FISCAL YEAR AND BY SUCH AMOUNTS AS ARE RAISED ANNUALLY THEREAFTER BY AMENDMENTS TO THE COLORADO REVISED STATUTES CONCERNING A TEMPORARY INCREASE IN CERTAIN STATE TAXES FOR ADDITIONAL PUBLIC EDUCATION FUNDING, AND, IN CONNECTION THEREWITH, INCREASING THE RATE OF THE STATE INCOME TAX IMPOSED ON ALL TAXPAYERS FROM 4.63% TO 5% FOR THE 2012 THROUGH 2016 INCOME TAX YEARS; INCREASING THE RATE OF THE STATE SALES AND USE TAX FROM 2.9% TO 3% FOR A PERIOD OF FIVE YEARS COMMENCING ON JANUARY 1, 2012; REQUIRING THAT THE ADDITIONAL REVENUES RESULTING FROM THESE INCREASED TAX RATES BE SPENT ONLY TO FUND PUBLIC EDUCATION FROM PRESCHOOL THROUGH TWELFTH GRADE AND PUBLIC POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION; SPECIFYING THAT THE APPROPRIATION OF THE ADDITIONAL TAX REVENUES BE IN ADDITION TO AND NOT SUBSTITUTED FOR MONEYS OTHERWISE APPROPRIATED FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION FROM PRESCHOOL THROUGH TWELFTH GRADE AND PUBLIC POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION FOR THE 2011-12 FISCAL YEAR; AND ALLOWING THE ADDITIONAL TAX REVENUES TO BE COLLECTED , KEPT, AND SPENT NOTWITHSTANDING ANY LIMITATIONS PROVIDED BY LAW?

The point is that in this economic environment, with people finally understanding the damage that govenrment overspending does to our economy and our liberty and the corrosive impact of public sector unions, few people will read past the first five or eight words. Nobody except the teachers’ unions and CU employees care what the tax hike revenue is earmarked for. We all just know we are in no mood for a tax hike, especially for a bill that spends money on education without one single item of education reform built in. Again, I wouldn’t be surprised if a quarter of voters will vote without even knowing that the revenue from the tax hike is earmarked for education. It just doesn’t matter what you want to spend more of my money on; you can’t have any more of it.

The worst case I can imagine on this vote is Prop 103 getting support from 20% of Republicans, 80% of Democrats, and 45% of unaffiliated voters, in which case it still loses by roughly 46% to 54% if the current turnout percentages hold. (One has to wonder whether the unions are collecting thousands of ballots – or creating them in a basement somewhere – to turn in on the last possible day, today.)

But as aggressive as it seems in political predictions, especially when the side I predict will lose has so massively outspent the other, I’m going to stick close to my earlier math and say that Colorado Proposition 103 – a bill that only a Boulder liberal or a public sector union employee could like – will lose by fifteen percent.

So long, debit card fees

by Rossputin | 11:45 am, November 1, 2011

Following the passage of the “Durbin Amendment” to the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill – an amendment which cut the fees that debit card providers can charge merchants per transaction – Bank of America created a furor by announcing a $5 per month debit card fee.

Following an outcry from customers including a Facebook-based call for “Bank Transfer Day” asking Americans to switch their bank accounts to accounts at credit unions by the end of this week, and with other banks either refusing to go along with debit card fees or canceling similar plans, Bank of America has announced it will not be proceeding with this particular fee.

To be sure, the Durbin Amendment has cost banks a couple of billion dollars, basically transferring those profits to retailers like WalMart (who were the major lobbyists for the legislation.) It’s the business equivalent of asking a sports fan facing a players’ strike whether he has more sympathy for the owners or the players; the usual answer – and my answer – is “neither.” The main reason to appreciate lower debit card fees is that they may allow retailers to lower prices; the main reason to oppose the current situation is that it was created by the unconstitutional and unwise insertion of a politician’s desires into a very competitive marketplace.

But there’s a broader point to be made: The wailing and gnashing of teeth that followed Bank of America’s ham-handed reaction to Durbin morphed, in part, into a wider rhetorical assault on capitalism. The Occupy Wall Street movement (which organizers of Bank Transfer Day explicitly distance themselves from) is calling for “more regulation including dictating what all banks can charge.”

Do you think any Occupy-er will admit or even recognize that capitalism – which is to say competition within the very competitive banking industry – took care of the debit card fee? To be sure, banks will still try to recover some of the revenue lost to Durbin, but even there competition will limit their latitude to extract fees from customers.

If I may offer my first-ever compliment of the Occupy movement, it is that their web page on the issue of debit card fees and bank regulation offers an honest description of the capitalist (which they call the Tea Party) take on the issue:

Tea Party believes Govt has no business getting involved. If a customer wants to pay, they can. If not, they can do business elsewhere. There’s no need to demonize the bank…just choose another bank and move on with your life. If the bank hopes to compete, it will lower its rates or fail and go out of business.

True, some banks may be fearing that a government intrusive enough to meddle in debit card pricing once is intrusive enough to try to do so again. But the key lesson of today’s actions by Bank of America and recent actions by other banks which had been considering similar debit card fees is that the capitalist/Tea Party view is right – or at least that the banks themselves believe it is. Again, I don’t imagine we’ll see one Occupy-er give credit (or debit?) where credit is due.

Peter Schiff talks to Occupyers

by Rossputin | 6:02 am, November 1, 2011

In this great 19 minutes of dialog, financier and capitalist Peter Schiff goes into the throngs at Occupy Wall Street to find out what they’re really about – and to show them an example of a real capitalist:

http://youtu.be/UGL-Ex1CD1c

Assaulting Cain

by Rossputin | 5:02 am, October 31, 2011

On Sunday evening, the liberal Politico web site, including their partisan Democrat hack-reporter Ken Vogel, posted a barely-sourced story alleging improper behavior by presidential candidate Herman Cain during the 1990s when he was president of the National Restaurant Association.

The short version of the story appears to be that two women for the restaurant association found some remarks Cain made, or gestures which were “not overtly sexual”, to be offensive, and that their complaints were settled with cash payments and their leaving the organization.

The alleged bad behavior, as described in the article, sounds at least as likely to have been a case of hyper-sensitive women or women looking for an easy lawsuit or payday, but we really don’t know the merits or demerits of the accusations at this point so I will not speculate on any of that.

Just a couple of points need to be made:

This is obviously similar to the accusations made against now Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. While two data points do not necessarily form a trend, the idea that opponents of conservative black men who are getting close to the levers of power would stoop to character assassination based on items which even if true say nearly nothing about the men is a sad statement about American politics – though it’s not new.

Second, the allegations are of “innuendo” and “gestures of a non-sexual nature” and the media is already foaming at the mouth whereas it was fairly common knowledge that Bill Clinton had Arkansas state troopers pick up his girlfriends and bring them to their rendezvous with him. That wasn’t just conversation or non-sexual gesturing he was sharing with those women and the media knew it but simply didn’t care. And if you want to talk about character flaws, how about being friends with Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko, but again the media doesn’t care – in part because Democrats don’t run on having any particular moral character, which is lucky because many of them don’t. Still, the double standard is stark.

Finally, people will wonder what the source of this information was to Politico. I doubt we’ll ever know, but I say here and now that if we ever learn the source, including if any Republican campaign was that source, I will work hard to make sure that the candidate whose organization went into this gutter loses any future election he ever runs in, even if it’s for assistant dog catcher.

Some liberals, such as Fox News’ Juan Williams, are already theorizing that the Romney camp was the source of this tip, that Romney has the most to gain by a damaged Cain. I hope that’s not true, and I would be surprised if it’s true, or at least if Romney would have any knowledge of such action; if there’s one area where Romney appears genuine it’s that he seems to be a decent person. As Ann Coulter said on Fox News last night, this story probably came from Democrats because they make this sort of charge without knowing or caring whether it’s true, whereas Republicans only make this kind of accusation when it is true, such as with Bill Clinton and John Edwards. I wonder if we’ll ever know where this garbage came from.

How Herman Cain responds to this will say a lot about his fitness to be president. Although I have not endorsed Cain (or anyone else) thus far in the GOP primary season, I hope that Cain’s reaction to these charges is one that would make me think he is worthy of America’s support.

Backbone Radio, October 30, 2011: Glenn Reynolds

by Rossputin | 6:04 am, October 30, 2011

For a preview of tonight’s edition of Backbone Radio including well-known blogger Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds, and author and former mayor of Shiloh, Israel,David Rubin, please see the Backbone web page here:

http://rossputin.com/blog/backbone.php/backbone-radio-october-30-2011

Paul Ryan at the Heritage Foundation

by Rossputin | 6:41 am, October 29, 2011

On Wednesday, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan gave a speech at the Heritage Foundation. This sort of talk comes from a man who realizes that good policy can be, and right now probably is, good politics.

If somehow Barack Obama wins re-election in 2012, which I don’t expect, I will support Paul Ryan for president in 2016. If a Republican wins in 2012, I will support Paul for President in 2020.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1274179818?bctid=1241818113001

University of Colorado employee bonuses

by Rossputin | 11:37 am, October 28, 2011

Following up on my note the other day about a University of Colorado employee who hopes that voters won’t find out about upcoming bonuses for CU employees because it might hurt the chances of Prop 103 passing, I have more information to offer:

The bonuses do exist, and will be 3% of annual salary for employees of divisions of the CU system that met certain budget-cutting and performance requirements, and only those employees who rank 2 or 3 in their 1-3 system of job performance (2 being meets expectations, 3 being exceeds expectations.)

Conservative Republican CU Regent Sue Sharkey offered these comments by e-mail:

Some things I would like to emphasize, the individual campuses had to meet certain goals, budget, etc. before they could give this increase, the increase is a one  time payout for targeted individuals.  This was an incentive for both, the campuses, and employees.  My thought on this as a Conservative, that employees should be rewarded for performance, not just across the board increase for all employees, and I like the fact that this put pressure on the campuses to reach budget goals, reductions, so forth…

The Board of Regents voted on this last April, the goals were to be met by the first of October.  There was no conspiracy to have this done to influence the outcome of Prop 103. Also, Ross this was voted on in Public session.

She also offered some data:

• CU’s state funding has declined by more than $55 million over the past three years and will again this year (maybe another $12 million).
• The university has addressed the situation by making significant cuts (338 positions), finding  efficiencies and targeting new revenues.
• CU employees have not had salary increases in three years; meanwhile, costs such as health care are increasing.
• Over the past three years, enrollment has grown by more than 2,000 student FTE and research funding is at record highs, but CU’s workforce has shrunk.
• CU’s workforce does more with less, and we are continually in danger of losing top faculty.
• Administrative overhead is 44 percent below the national average.
• The Board of Regents set budget targets for each campus to meet before increases were triggered.
• Increases were based on performance and were not across the board.

I appreciate Sharkey’s position here and the efforts of CU employees to do more with less. If anything these bonuses reflect the damage done to higher education by the existence of Amendment 23 which put K-12 spending on auto-pilot without requiring any increase in student performance measures to get more taxpayer money for public schools – or more precisely for teachers’ unions.

Nevertheless, it remains very interesting that a CU employee would hope (in writing) that voters don’t find out about these bonuses. And while I appreciate the sacrifices made by the CU system while K-12 spending is protected by the poorly conceived Amendment 23, nevertheless things are tough all over. Colorado suffers from more than 8 percent unemployment. Very few in the private sector are getting raises or bonuses; most are happy to still have a job. And perhaps that’s how CU employees should feel as well.

One other thing of note: Those who merited a 2, i.e. meeting job expectations, are getting the same bonus (as a percentage of one’s salary) as those who merited a 3, i.e. exceeding expectations. I don’t like that at all. If I were someone who felt a need to offer an incentive to employees during a time of budget cuts, I would have given the 2s either no bonus, or a bonus much less than the 3s got, perhaps 1 percent of salary versus 3 percent of salary.

Again, what troubles me the most is a public sector employee, whose salary is paid by the rest of us, expressing the view that he hopes voters remain ignorant about how taxpayer money is being spent – and that at least one other public sector employee seconded that view.

No doubt the “optics” of the situation are bad for the tax raisers: A bonus being paid to (some) CU employees while we’re being asked to raise our state income tax bills by eight percent sure doesn’t look good. I do not suggest rescinding these bonuses, but I remain steadfastly against Proposition 103. Instead, what we need to do is repeal Amendment 23 and restore some balance to higher education funding in comparison to K-12 funding, and at least as importantly to inject competition into the K-12 teaching system. As long as the Colorado Education Association fights against merit pay and charter schools and vouchers and the ability to fire bad teachers, voters should refuse to send one additional penny into the public K-12 system.

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