It’s Friday!
Quotable
– “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” — C.S. Lewis
– “One of the greatest labor-saving inventions of today is tomorrow.” — Vincent T. Floss
Health Care
– Doctors around the nation were enlisted this week to post a “Dear Patient” letter in their waiting rooms urging repeal of the new federal health care law. “Our patients have always expected a certain standard of care from their doctors, which includes providing them with pertinent information that may affect their quality of life,” Georgia surgeon Hal Scherz, president and cofounder of Docs4PatientCare, writes in the Wall Street Journal. He calls the issue “stark — literally life and death for millions of Americans in the years ahead.” The doctors’ letter warns patients: “This new law politicizes medicine and in my opinion destroys the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship that makes the American health care system the best in the world.”
Taxes and spending
– From 2000 to 2009, state and local government spending grew nearly twice as fast as the private sector (while over the same period, the federal government grew even faster). Spending growth has not been uniform across spending categories, and Medicaid spending is by far the fastest-growing component of state expenditures. Source: Mercatus Center
Economy
– “Startups aren’t just an important contributor to job growth: they’re the only thing,” notes John Mauldin, citing analysis of new Census data. “Without startups, there would be no net job growth in the U.S. economy.” Mauldin maintains there is an important lesson for the states and cities that offer huge incentives to companies like Dell, Google, and Intel to locate their operations there. “The regions should, instead, be focusing on creating more startups, not providing life support to technology behemoths.” Source: InvestorInsight.com
Upcoming Events
– The eighth annual Defending the American Dream Conference takes place in Orlando Sept. 23-25. Co-sponsored by the Coalition for Property Rights, Heritage Foundation, Americans For Prosperity, Pacific Research Institute, Reason Foundation, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Washington Policy Center, Georgia Public Policy Foundation and others, this conference brings together business and community leaders, elected officials, policy experts, grassroots and Tea Party activists who are serious about how their communities grow. For information and to register for the conference, click here: http://tinyurl.com/38dc3xf
Agenda 2011
– For facts, principles, innovative ideas and background on the issues, read our candidate briefing books on Taxes and Transportation.
Transportation
– Economic Development and High Speed Rail: In June the U.S. Conference of Mayors released a report called “The Economic Impacts of High-Speed Rail on Cities and their Metropolitan Areas.” Its “sponsorship” (noted on the cover) by HSR builder Siemens was a clue that this was less of a study than an advocacy piece, the Reason Foundation’s Robert W. Poole points out. “Among its shortcomings were failure to acknowledge that while the addition of a HSR station in a big city may shift some development to there, that development likely would have occurred somewhere else in the metro area, or elsewhere in the state. This is the same kind of argument typically made for tax-supported convention centers and sports stadiums, many of which turn out to be white elephants. And it also ignored the obvious issue of opportunity costs: what else could have been done with the resources put into this particular project.” Source: Reason Foundation
– There’s an app for that: USA Today reports this week on how Internet and cell phone technology are improving transit around the nation. Wired riders no longer have to wait at the bus stop or train station until their ride turns up. Now they get real-time information from new applications linking GPS, Web and cellular technologies, along with social media such as Twitter and Facebook. Read more: http://tinyurl.com/27dke9l.
– Telework offers many potential economic benefits for workers and employers, Ken Green of the American Enterprise Institute writes in, “Should the Government Expand Telework?” Green cites Telework Exchange’s calculations that the average annual cost of commuting is $9,796 for five-day weeks, but only $3,918 for three-day teleworking, a savings to workers of $5,878. “Those savings add up: If the 79 percent of federal workers who could telework full time did so, they would save a cumulative $13.9 billionin commuting costs annually.” Read more: http://tinyurl.com/23udxas
– Visit www.gppf.org to read the Foundation’s latest commentary, “Georgia Must Move from Moderation to Innovation” by Tom Greene.
Have a great Labor Day weekend.
Kelly McCutchen
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