It’s Friday!
Events
– February 22: Rod S. Martin, a founder of PayPal and education philanthropist, keynotes the Foundation’s Leadership Breakfast at 8 a.m. Wednesday, February 22, at the Georgian Club. The topic is, “Education, Entrepreneurship, and How Technology is Transforming the World by Transforming Both.” The cost is $25 to attend this event. Register by Monday, February 20. For more information and to register, go to http://tinyurl.com/7qabyqr.
– Listen to one of America’s foremost experts on tax policy, the American Legislative Exchange Council’s Director of Tax Policy Jonathan Williams, co-author of “Rich States, Poor States.” The event is sponsored by Americans For Prosperity on February 16 at noon across the street from the State Capitol. Registration and details here:http://georgiadayatthecapitol2012.eventbrite.com/Quotes of note
– “Even if taxes on income were otherwise the most unexceptionable, the adoption of the principle of graduation would make them about the very worst that could be devised. The moment you abandon, in the framing of such taxes, the cardinal principle of exacting from all individuals the same proportion of their income or of their property, you are at sea without rudder or compass, and there is no amount of injustice and folly you may not commit. – Economist John Ramsay McCulloch writing in 1845
– “The great religions, which are also great intellectual systems, have always recognized the conditions of the natural order. They enjoin charity, benevolence, as a moral obligation, to be met out of the producer’s surplus. That is, they make it secondary to production, for the inescapable reason that without production there could be nothing to give.” – Writer Isabel Paterson in “The God of the Machine,” 1943
Foundation TV: Watch former leader of Greenpeace and CASEnergy Co-Chair, Dr. Patrick Moore’s discussion this week on “An Update on the Nuclear Renaissance.” The event was broadcast live on the Internet from our new headquarters. You can view events on our YouTube page.
– Thanks to automation and technological advances that have vastly increased American productivity, goods that took 1,000 American workers to produce in 1950 now take 177. Source: Shikha Dalmia writing at TheDaily.com
– “Facebook’s IPO will give average investors the chance to participate in any future earnings growth, which is a nice change from the current norm. Most fast-growing companies these days stay private to avoid the onerous regulatory burdens and reporting requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley, et cetera, and Facebook has heretofore been no different.” Source: Wall Street Journal
Tax and Spending
– “Run up spending and debt, raise taxes in the naming of balancing the budget, but then watch as deficits rise and your credit-rating falls anyway. That’s been the sad pattern in Europe, and now it’s hitting that mecca of tax-and-spend government known as Illinois. Though too few noticed, this month Moody’s downgraded Illinois state debt to A2 from A1, the lowest among the 50 states. This wasn’t supposed to happen.” Only a year ago, Illinois raised individual income taxes by 67% and the corporate tax rate by 46%. They did it to raise $7 billion in revenue, as the Governor put it, to “get Illinois back on fiscal sound footing” and improve the state’s credit rating. Source: Wall Street Journal
– Many states are debating major income tax cuts this year, including Oklahoma, Kansas, South Carolina, Idaho, Maine, Nebraska, New Jersey and Ohio. Where is Georgia?
Education
– School choice lowers crime. A new study of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina school choice program finds that high-risk students commit about 50 percent less crime as a result of winning a school choice lottery.
– Was the funding formula for Commission Charter Schools fair? Decide for yourself after reading our explanation and let us know what you think.
Health Care
– A provision of the health reform law intended to tax health insurance companies to help fund coverage expansions will end up costing the states themselves about $13.6 billion and the federal government about $24.8 billion.
– The Foundation has worked on several major health care reforms over the last six months, including an innovative medical malpractice reform and a series of free market health care ideas. We hope the General Assembly will take the initiative to be a leader in free market health care reform and show the federal government that innovation is best left to the states.
Social media
– This Week in The Forum: The Forum published two articles after the Georgia House rejected a charter schools constitutional amendment resolution. I wrote that it’s time to stop focusing on the needs of adults and start focusing on what is in the best interest of students. Forum Editor Mike Klein wrote that Georgia is precariously close to earning a reputation as a state that prefers education entitlement to innovation. The Forum also covered this week’s fourth annual Georgia Logistics Summit where the emphasis was on dredging the Savannah River and Harbor to accommodate super large supertankers.
Visit www.georgiapolicy.org to our latest commentary, “Georgia: Lacking The Courage To Be A Leader In Education Reform” by Al Meyers.
Have a great weekend.
Kelly McCutchen
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