Happy Birthday, Milton Friedman

Today would have been Milton Friedman's 97th birthday.

If you don't know who Milton Friedman is (and even if you do), this video is a great introduction:



For more on Milton Friedman you can check out his bio, the Friedman Foundation, which he and his wife created to promote school choice, or Capitalism and Freedom, his best-selling book on the merits of freedom.

Or just YouTube Milton Friedman. He has left an amazing legacy, and his principles and ideas will always be applicable.

This is why county audits are important

I just came across the most scathing audit I've ever read. The audit was performed last year and examined the cash receipts process for the Clark County Fire Department's Inspection and Permitting function. It indicates that significant abuse and/or corruption may have occurred with regard to collecting fees by the Fire Prevention Bureau, the division of the Fire Department responsible for permitting.

Allow me to quote from the audit. Here are the audit's objectives:

The objectives of the audit are to determine whether:
• The present system of internal controls over recording of cash receipts effectively safeguard against abuse and error.
• Details of transactions supporting recorded items are complete and exist.
• Receipts are properly recorded and deposited in their entirety on a timely basis.
• Transactions are in accordance with laws, rules, and regulations.

Here are some highlights from the Internal Audit Department's findings:

Significant weaknesses exist in the present system of internal controls over the cash receipts process. The detail of transactions supporting recorded items is not always complete and in some instances does not exist. Receipts are not properly recorded in financial general ledger accounts. The receipts that were issued were deposited in their entirety and agreed to the total recorded amounts to within an insignificant difference. However, deposits are not always made on a timely basis. We further found that transactions are not all in accordance with the UFC, state statutes, or approved fee schedules.

The Bureau has also lent itself to business practices that may potentially place the Bureau in a financially liable position.

It is also apparent from the number and type of actual permits issued that many entities have not obtained required fire code permits, such as gasoline stations. Physical inspections are also not always performed for all permits issued. The Bureau has not reviewed all renewable permits to determine whether customers are operating without current permits. Reinspection fees are also not charged.

A substantial number of transactions have also been voided, without proper authorization, in attempts to adjust accounts.

Missing receipt numbers represent an internal control weakness. Missing receipts also indicate that revenue may be under recorded and funds may not be deposited. Adjustment to Prepaid Accounts may also be misstated.

These indictments are the Audit Department's way of saying that it appears inspectors have either been cutting under-the-table deals with inspectees, accepting bribes, or outright voiding transactions in the Bureau's computer database so as to pocket the permitting fees for themselves.

The issue of voided receipts is even more scandalous when one considers the total value of voided receipts.

Six voided receipts were examined. We found that voids were processed without supervisor approval for four of the receipts. The remaining two hardcopy receipts were not readily available due to organization of records. It was further noted that one voided receipt selected was deleted from the overtime receipts. This represents significant internal control weaknesses. The significance is greater when considering that transactions coded as voids amounted to $1.4 million...this represents 24 percent of $6 million receipts generated by the Bureau during the audit period for net receipts of $4.6 million.

This is the auditor's way of saying he thinks $1.4 million was stolen from county coffers as a result of corruption within the Fire Prevention Bureau.

This audit is extremely incriminating for the Fire Prevention Bureau. Moreover, it exemplifies how important the Internal Audit Department is. As I have argued in the past, funding for performance audits should be increased at all levels of government in Nevada. Not only do audit departments more than pay for themselves by reducing waste and highlighting potential corruption, but taxpayers have a right to know that their money is being used in good faith.

Isn't it Ironic?

I find it ironic that the same news sources who just two years ago were reporting on the failures of America's existing system of socialized medicine — that of the United States military — are now the lead cheerleaders trying to force that type of care onto everyone else.

Two years ago, the New York Times was reporting on "poor housing, neglect and a hopelessly complicated bureaucratic maze" at the military's premier hospital, Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Now, the editorial board is advocating for the same type of top-down bureaucratic maze to be imposed on every American, claiming "that the great majority of Americans — those with insurance and those without — would benefit from health care reform." Of course, the particular "reform" they're referring to here is not the type that would increase consumer choice and competition and drive down costs. It's the type that would nationalize the industry, lead to the destruction of consumer choice and a deterioration in quality.

In evaluating plans for a national universal health care system, it's odd that so few people are taking the time to examine the performance of the United States' existing system of socialized medicine in order to draw conclusions.

The Word podcast: Is government-run health care more efficient?

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If you're interested in health care, check out this new NPRI commentary on how the President's government-run health care program would cost Nevada thousands of jobs.

This podcast features the song "Voice from Space" by Butterfly Tea (http://www.jamendo.com/en/artist/Butterfly_Tea), available under a Creative Commons Attribution, Share Alike license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/fr/deed.en).

Did cavemen have a right to health care?

Having wrestled with the concept of how health care could be a fundamental right, I was intrigued to see this passage by Theodore Dalrymple, errr Anthony Daniels, in the WSJ:

Where does the right to health care come from? Did it exist in, say, 250 B.C., or in A.D. 1750? If it did, how was it that our ancestors, who were no less intelligent than we, failed completely to notice it?

If, on the other hand, the right to health care did not exist in those benighted days, how did it come into existence, and how did we come to recognize it once it did?

The truth, of course, is that the notion of "positive rights" is completely inconsistent with the philosophical development of the rights of man because it is a "right" that would necessarily infringe upon the rights of others.

This does not even get into the many technical problems belying the current proposals for health care "reform" that would render the system even worse than it is now.

A deal on health care?; Update: No vote before recess

Red State reports that "there is a rumor circulating in the House of Representatives that enough Blue Dogs have caved on health care for Nancy Pelosi to get the bill to the floor this week."

Click here for more.

Update: Hot Air is reporting that the Blue Dogs have successfully delayed the floor vote until after the August recess.

DC residents like DC scholarships

Democrats in Washington have all but killed the DC Opportunity Scholarship program, a voucher that awards scholarships of up to $7,500 to low-income students, allowing them to attend private schools. Unless Congress overturns its recent decision, the program will die by suffocation — the Democrats are not allowing new participants.

But how do DC residents feel about the program?

According to a recent survey, “Fork in the Road: Where does the district go in education?” by the Friedman Foundation, there is clear support for D.C. Opportunity Scholarships:

• 74 percent have a favorable view of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program


• 79 percent of parents of school age children oppose ending the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program


• 74 percent have a favorable view of public charter schools


• 76 percent of respondents viewed the public education system as “poor” or “fair.”

Interestingly, only 47 percent of respondents say they prefer a private school over other school types. Still, there is overwhelming support for both public and private educational options.

Cartoon: Meet the uninsured

A picture is worth a thousand words, or in this case a trillion dollars.



(h/t Hotair)

Socialists attack liberty

Each year the Cato Institute holds Cato University, a weekend seminar on various topics about freedom, free markets, and property rights. The Cato Institute has recently gone international, visiting Hugo Chavez’s country of Venezuela to talk with students and citizens about free markets, freedom and liberty. Naturally, free market, freedom loving capitalists visiting a socialist country where the free media has been destroyed and major businesses have been nationalized led to interesting results.

The Venezuelan government brought in the national guard, detained Peruvian intellectual Alvaro Vargas Llosa (who was attending the conference as a speaker), the minister of higher education harassed organizers claiming that they were falsely advertising the event (Cato University is not a real American university), the state-run press reported that the Cato Institute was teaching people subversive tactics on how to overthrow Chavez, while protestors claimed the Cato Institute was sponsored by the CIA.

The Cato Institute sums up the situation best,

The reaction of the Chávez regime to two gatherings of market-liberal intellectuals demonstrates how tense the situation has become in Venezuela. But it also demonstrates how necessary Cato's mission of promoting liberty is — and how fearful the ideas of liberty are for those who would wield excessive state power.

Best of the web: Searching the internets, so you don't have to

SinCityExpress: Harry Reid voted for the bill that bans travel to Las Vegas by federal agencies.

Blogger may finally find a date: RonPaulSingles.com launches.

Elizabeth Crum: Urge your congressman to read the health care bill. Now that Reid has delayed the health care vote until after the August recess, he or she should have plenty of time.

Reason TV: Video exponential increases interest in free trade. I'm just impressed they got their boss to sign off on that vid.

Michael Ramirez cartoon: Meet the uninsured.

Burt Folsom: A historical example of how to (successfully) deal with 11.7 percent unemployment.

Compare and contrast: A government apology vs. a private sector apology.

AnnOnn Everything: Sometimes I lie.

Why wait for health care?: TX Gov. Perry threatens to assert Texas' 10th Amendment rights over nationalized health care.

Surtax for health care

The Heritage Foundation has released this brief fact sheet that shows how many small businesses and tax filers in Nevada would be adversely impacted by the President's proposed surtax on income taxes. The new "surtax" would raise the top marginal tax rates by 5.4 percent in order to finance a portion of the costs of a nationalized health care system.

In Nevada, 17,200 total filers would be hit with the new tax and 10,300 small businesses would be adversely impacted by the new tax. The inevitable result? Even higher unemployment, especially among lower-income workers as the higher cost of employing those workers would, in many cases, price them out of the labor market. Sure, they can get "free" health care, but it would come at the cost of everything else.

Talk on Nevada: The politics of health care

Talk on Nevada interviews Geoffrey Lawrence, a fiscal policy analyst with the Nevada Policy Research Institute. Geoffrey explains what is happening with the current health care debate.

Type rest of the post hereFor more information on the health care debate, check out NPRI's commentary "Won't get fooled again."

So, Mr. President, what you're saying is...

Remember when President Obama warned that without a massive stimulus package, unemployment would reach about 8 percent?

Today, with the massive stimulus package in place, unemployment stands at 9.5 percent – and climbing.

Here's Obama at his July 22 press conference, making his case for government-run health care: "If we do not act, 14,000 Americans will continue to lose their health insurance every single day."

So I guess that means that if we do act, we can expect, what, about 18,000 Americans to start losing their health insurance every day?

At which point we'll no doubt hear that the health care crisis, it turns out, was much worse than the Obama administration realized.

Video: Congresswoman says her constituents would love to wait in line for health coverage

And wait they will under Obamacare. As we've laid out before, the "Public Plan" is really just a Trojan horse for a socialized, single-payer system. And when you have a single-payer system — like Canada's — you will wait and wait. And the waits in Canada have gotten worse, not better, over the years.

Canada's excessive wait times are keeping treatment from patients who need it. The first chart compares "reasonable" and actual wait times in Canada. The second and third charts show how Canada's "reasonable" and actual wait times have increased substantially from 1993 to 2008.






And just think: This decrease in service can be ours for only $1 trillion!

Congresswoman Porter may think her constituents would like to wait for health care, but she won't be waiting with them.

(h/t NetRightNation and Washington Policy Blog)

Las Vegas/Reno still on government meeting blacklist

Is Las Vegas too fabulous?

Earlier this year, President Obama specifically condemned companies who received bailouts and then held meetings in Las Vegas. As business after business — fearing political backlash — cancelled their trips and conventions here, the Vegas tourism and meeting industry took a beating at the time it could least afford it. Mayor Oscar Goodman loudly expressed his outrage and demanded that President Obama apologize.

Last week the RJ reported that Sen. Harry Reid had gotten the White House to issue a letter saying it was OK to come to Vegas for a government meeting.

Federal government workers shouldn't have to leave in the dead of night or slink off when the boss isn't looking to attend meetings in Las Vegas, say Sen. Harry Reid and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

That's Reid's take on a recent letter from Emanuel saying, "Federal policy should not dictate the location where such government events are held."

The letter from President Barack Obama's right-hand man was a response to Reid's request for a reversal of a perceived "informal federal policy" that was prompting government workers to cancel scheduled meetings and avoid booking new ones in Las Vegas to avoid any appearance that taxpayers are funding bureaucrat junkets to the biggest party town in America.

Turns out that letter isn't enough for some government agencies who fear a political backlash if they meet in Las Vegas or Reno. Instead, they're going to boring cities.

What do Reno, Orlando and Las Vegas have in common? To some pockets of the federal government, they just seem like too much fun.

Instead, employees at some big agencies, like the U.S. Department of Agriculture, are being encouraged to host meetings in more buttoned-down places such as St. Louis, Milwaukee or Denver…

Travel industry lobbyists say government policies have essentially resulted in a blacklist of banned destinations that is punishing travel-dependent states, such as Nevada and Florida. Those destinations, which have tens of thousands of hotel rooms and millions of square feet of conference space, often offer the best deals on meetings and conferences, say officials from the U.S. Travel Association.

"We get the sense that these agencies are worried about scrutiny, and in order to avoid criticism from the media they are essentially willing to spend more money and do things that they think will prevent them media scrutiny," said Geoff Freeman, senior vice president of public affairs for the U.S. Travel Association. "In the quest to demonize travel, we're killing jobs."

An estimated $240 billion was spent on business travel in the U.S. in 2007, Mr. Freeman said; the association estimates that 2.4 million American jobs rely on business travel.

In recent months, resort destinations like Las Vegas have suffered as companies have scaled back on hosting conferences and meetings. In some cases, events were canceled because of budget cuts. But in others, events were relocated to avoid the appearance of extravagance.

The letter of pardon from the White House isn't working.

But some agencies appear to be instituting their own guidelines that dictate where events should be held.

According to an Agriculture Department employee familiar with the guidelines, the agency issued internal travel guidelines in the spring that encourage employees to hold meetings in cities that display three key attributes: a travel hub; low in cost; and "a non-resort location." The employee said cities on the list with those three attributes included Chicago; Denver; Portland, Ore.; St. Louis; Washington, D.C.; Milwaukee; Phoenix and Fort Collins, Colo.

This is a perfect example of why government shouldn't pick the winners and losers in an economy.

Las Vegas, Reno and their citizens have worked hard to become two of the country's most popular convention and vacation destinations. Because people want to come here, the free-market system has rewarded Nevadans with jobs and profits.

But with government picking the winners and losers, being popular isn't enough — in fact, it's a disadvantage. If Las Vegas and Reno didn't do such a great job of meeting consumer demand, they wouldn't be targeted by politicians.

Think about that. Success is punished. Mediocrity is rewarded. Anticipating and meeting the whims of politicians replaces anticipating and meeting the wants of consumers.

Consumers, in this case government employees, are also hurt.

In this case, their pain may be limited to boredom. But what happens when the government starts deciding they want to pick the winners and losers in something like … health care? Oh, wait, we already know.

The other irony is that because Las Vegas and Reno are some of the biggest vacation spots in the world, they also have some of the best rates for meetings and conferences. But because the measure for success is now politics, that doesn't matter. And taxpayers will be left holding the bag.

I've put a call in to Sen. Reid's office to try to get his response to the WSJ article, since he was quite proud of the letter from the White House. I'll update this post if I hear anything back.

Education reform is a civil rights issue

Racial segregation in education ended with the 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Sixty-five years later, racial segregation is long gone, but a racial achievement gap still remains.

The Nevada Policy Research Institute highlighted this devastating achievement gap in its 2009 report “Failure is No Longer an Option,” noting that, while 71 percent of Nevada white students in the fourth grade read at grade level, just 47 percent of African Americans and 42 percent of Hispanic students do so.

These problems are not isolated to Nevada. The Citizens Commission on Civil Rights has been looking closely into this issue for a long time. The group's goal is to "eliminate the racial and ethnic achievement gap in public education by working to create an effective school for every child."

The Citizens Commission on Civil Rights released a report titled "National Teachers' Unions and the Struggle Over School Reform," in which it placed some of the blame for the existing racial achievement gap on the teacher unions.

Over "the last decade," notes the report, "the national leaders of the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers have made their unions implacable foes of laws and policies designed to improve public education for disadvantaged children."

As I have noted already, “education reform is a civil rights issue.”

Read my latest commentary on this issue, “In self(ish) defense: How teacher unions harm students and teachers alike.”

Empowerment laws ignored

In case you missed the latest updates on Nevada's empowerment schools (schools that control most of their own budget rather than having central office bureaucrats dictate how resources are to be used), NPRI revealed that both Washoe County School District and the Nevada Department of Education are ignoring laws requiring the creation of empowerment schools.

Unfortunately, ignoring state law is not a new phenomenon. A 2006 Legislative Counsel Bureau compliance audit of the Nevada Department of Education notes that the department had failed to comply with state and federal laws in the past. The audit found "...weaknesses allowed non-compliance with some state and federal laws, rules, regulations and guidelines, and monitoring of certain educational programs..."

Between FY 2001 and FY 2007, said auditors, the department failed to take adequate steps to oversee proper use of approximately $390 million in legislative appropriations. Laws establishing rules for revoking teacher certifications, including teachers who had become convicted criminals, were ignored, as were laws regarding employee evaluations.

We wonder, will anyone force the government to comply with its own rules?

Introducing NPRI podcasts

Just in case you can't get enough of NPRI's information via our writing and video, we are now going to be coming at you with podcasts.

Our first episode of "The Word" is about education spending in the Clark County School District. How much does the school district receive for every pupil? Well, you'll just have to listen and find out

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We will be syndicating these podcasts through ITunes as well. This will allow you to download these segments onto your personal computer or portable music player and listen to them at your convenience. Once this post is up, I'm going to set that all up, and once it's all good to go, we'll let you know how to do that.

Let us know what you think in the comments, or you can e-mail me at vj [at] npri [dot] org.

This podcast features the song "Voice from Space" by Butterfly Tea (http://www.jamendo.com/en/artist/Butterfly_Tea), available under a Creative Commons Attribution, Share Alike license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/fr/deed.en).

Will greater deficits lead to less debt?

Well, we know Joe Biden thinks the best way to get out of debt is to spend more, but most people understand this simple principle: When you're in a hole, stop digging!


And with unemployment projected to rise to at least 10 percent later this year (and it's already at 12 percent in Nevada), Obama's excessive debt can't be justified as stimulus spending, either.

Note: This is not an attempt to justify Bush's undisciplined spending. Excessive spending is a bad thing no matter which party is in power.

On health care and markets

John Stossel is one of the best at explaining the virtues of the free-market system. From his column today on the folly of government-run health care:

Politicians and bureaucrats clearly have no idea how complicated markets are. Every day people make countless tradeoffs, in all areas of life, based on subjective value judgments and personal information as they delicately balance their interests, needs and wants. Who is in a better position than they to tailor those choices to best serve their purposes? Yet the politicians believe they can plan the medical market the way you plan a birthday party.

Then it gets better:

Now focus on the spectacle of that handful of men and women daring to think they can design the medical marketplace. They would empower an even smaller group to determine -- for millions of diverse Americans -- which medical treatments are worthy and at what price.

How do these arrogant, presumptuous politicians believe they can know enough to plan for the rest of us? Who do they think they are? Under cover of helping uninsured people get medical care, they live out their megalomaniacal social-engineering fantasies -- putting our physical and economic health at risk in the process.

Will the American people say "Enough!"?

And better:

Like the politicians, most people are oblivious to F.A. Hayek's insight that the critical information needed to run an economy -- or even 15 percent of one -- doesn't exist in any one place where it is accessible to central planners. Instead, it is scattered piecemeal among millions of people. All those people put together are far wiser and better informed than Congress could ever be. Only markets -- private property, free exchange and the price system -- can put this knowledge at the disposal of entrepreneurs and consumers, ensuring the system will serve the people and not just the political class.

You’ll definitely want to read the whole thing.

Also, for a detailed, point-by-point counter to the pro-Obamacare propagandizing, check out this recent piece from the Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner:

Anyone who thinks a government takeover of the health-care system will improve quality of care has only to look at the health-care programs the government already runs: The Veterans Administration is overwhelmed with problems, Medicaid is notorious for providing poor quality at a high cost — and Medicare has huge gaps in coverage.

Worse, however, on Friday, Obama endorsed the creation of a government board with the power to dictate how your doctor practices medicine and all but endorsed the rationing prevalent in nationalized health-care systems around the world.

So much for the claim that government-run health care will lead to higher quality. Tanner also punctures two other myths the Obama administration is peddling: that government-run health care will lower costs and that those who are satisfied with their current health care plans will get to keep them. Again, the whole piece is well worth your time.

The good news is that the effort to implement this monstrosity appears to be starting to crumble. Surprised? Not me.

Reminder: Income taxes are less stable than sales taxes

Throughout the past legislative session, legislative leaders talked about how Nevada "needed" to broaden its tax base in order to avoid wild swings in tax-revenue collections.

As California nears a compromise to pass its state budget, it's worth remembering how unstable income taxes can be.

Personal income fell this year in California for the first time in 70 years, leading to a 34 percent plunge in income tax revenue during the first half of the year.

In comparison, sales-tax collections in Nevada have only fallen by 11 percent in fiscal year 2009.

Statewide taxable sales for April 2009 of $3,217,547,531 represents a 17.9% decrease over April 2008, and an 11.0% decrease for the ten months of fiscal year 2009.

With the Sun reporting yesterday that demands for government services have increased faster than expected, the governor may have to call a special session of the Legislature to close a new budget gap.

If that happens, the advocates for increasing taxes will be using the rhetoric of "broadening the tax base" to try to justify the government taking more of your money.

California's recent experience, though, exposes the inaccuracy of the tax-stability justification for enacting a new type of tax.

Announcing NPRI's Milton Friedman birthday celebration

Milton Friedman, one of the greatest economists and defenders of liberty of the 20th century, would have turned 97 on July 31 of this year.

The Nevada Policy Research Institute is pleased to announce it will hold a Freedom Dodgeball event, a celebration of Milton Friedman and his principles. To help illustrate his principles, we'll be using dodgeball to show how government regulation and taxes limit competition and hurt our schools and the economy.

Details are as follows:

Food and refreshments will be provided. And of course, there will be cake, too!

Hosted by:
Nevada Policy Research Institute and Young Voters of Nevada
Friday, July 31, 2009
6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.

SkyZone Sports
4915 Steptoe St., Suite 400
Las Vegas, NV 89122
http://www.skyzonesports.com/

RSVP REQUIRED
Tickets are limited to the first 25 people to RSVP
Please RSVP by July 30 to Victor Joecks
702-222-0642 or vj@npri.org

To help get you in the Milton Friedman spirit, watch this insightful clip of Friedman defending self-interest … or, as it's often labeled, "greed."

New study finds hybrid drivers drive more and are more dangerous

A recent study by San Francisco-based Quality Planning illustrates a very basic principle of economics. That is, when you decrease the cost of engaging in a specific activity, people will do it more often.

In this case, when increased fuel efficiency lowers the marginal cost of driving, individuals are likely to drive more. This study confirms what many economists have said for years about the hybrid craze - it will have only a limited impact on the consumption or price of gasoline because higher fuel efficiency only leads to more driving.

An interesting finding of this study is that drivers of hybrid vehicles are also nearly twice as likely to get moving violations as the average driver. Collision costs are also about 17 percent higher for drivers of hybrids than average. These are both indications that drivers of hybrid vehicles are generally more reckless than others.

This conclusion is an odd one considering that hybrids are generally smaller and less safe than the average vehicle - which generally would lead to more cautious driving. I guess hybrid owners truly are an exceptional breed!

Congressional committee rejects Obamacare

For themselves. They're still eager to force President Obama's "Trojan-horse-for-socialized-medicine" public plan on the rest of us, though.

From the Nevada Appeal:

Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev., told colleagues Thursday that members of Congress should be required to join any federal public health benefits plan created by Congress.

“I do not believe the federal government should be running health care in our country and levying massive tax increases on America's small businesses,” said Heller in urging support for an amendment to the proposed plan. “However, if this administration and the majority party are going to force government-run health care on the American people, then members of Congress should be required to enroll in that plan.

“If the government-run ‘public plan' is good enough for millions of our constituents, then it should be good enough for members of Congress,” he said.

He asked the committee reviewing the America's Affordable Health Choices Act to adopt the amendment requiring Congress to participate in the plan. The amendment, however, was rejected by the committee 21-18 …

He said he believes the legislation could result in 114 million Americans losing their current health insurance coverage.

Here's the report that backs up Heller's estimate of over 100 million Americans losing their private insurance and being forced onto the public plan (.pdf warning) if Medicare-style Obamacare passes.

Gov. Bobby Jindal details how a public plan will effectively kill private insurance in today's Politico.

A private health insurance system, otherwise known as what we have today, will not be able to compete with a taxpayer-subsidized government plan, and businesses faced with growing health care costs will opt to either lay off more workers or send employees into the government plan. One independent study already suggested that up to 119 million Americans will end up leaving their private plans for the public plan.

And once we have de facto socialized medicine, how will the government contain costs? The same way it does in Britain and Canada: Health care rationing.

And even though members of Congress won't admit it publicly, this vote to reject the public plan for themselves shows they know exactly how poorly this budget-busting program will perform.

Teacher recruitment

Dr. Jay P Greene, an education research professor at the University of Arkansas, makes an excellent point about teacher recruitment.

“If we make an appeal to prospective teachers at all,” he notes, “it is usually akin to an appeal to enter the priesthood. You’ll make the world a better place, we say. We almost never say, “And you’ll do well for yourself while doing well for others.”

The observation is valid. Other colleges within the university point to the wonderful jobs a student may move into after graduation. They highlight the pay, benefits and opportunities. But in the realm of education, it is all about sacrifice and working for others. How appealing is that?

Dr. Greene points out that teachers make pretty good wages, have high job security, and excellent benefits. While there are serious problems with the teacher pay schedule — ignoring individual excellence, for example — prospective teachers should be told they have a chance to make a good living while helping students succeed in life.

Read his comments here.

Talk on Nevada: Understanding what 'Adequate Yearly Progress' really means

Talk on Nevada interviews Karen Gray, an education researcher with the Nevada Policy Research Institute. Karen explains what it means if a school has attained Adequate Yearly Progress under No Child Left Behind (and it probably doesn't mean what you think).

For more information, check out Karen's aptly titled commentary, What 'Adequate Yearly Progress' really means.

Math and Science teachers needed

The National Council on Teacher Quality released “Tackling the STEM crisis,” a report on how to help school districts attract, hire and retain high-quality science, technology, engineering and mathematics teachers.

Some of the main recommendations:

• Raise standards for students to be accepted into teaching profession programs. The report states that even the NCAA has minimum requirements for student athletes, but that most states have none for would-be teachers. The National Council on Teacher Quality recommends only recruiting students from the top half of college graduates.

• Improve the quality of undergraduate preparedness. They suggest that math and science teachers should take advanced courses in their subjects to acquire a better understanding, even if they won’t teach that level of difficulty in the classroom.

• They also recommend creating a program to attract undergraduates with science and math backgrounds into the teaching profession. One such program is UTeach, at the University of Texas, Austin. UTeach is one of many alternative licensure programs that help students and graduates become licensed teachers without going through a traditional education college.

• Create alternative pathways to teacher licensure by allowing practitioners who may lack relevant college coursework to become teachers if they can prove sufficient content knowledge.

• Create more flexible pay schedules to allow part-time teachers/practitioners to teach specialty subjects like Advanced Calculus or Chemistry.
• Create bonus programs to attract existing STEM teachers from other states and allow them to start at higher levels on the pay scale more appropriate to their work experience.

• Create bonuses to attract teachers to at-risk schools.

• Focus professional development on content — the report notes that many teachers feel that the professional development they are required to take is not useful.

• Create tough but meaningful standards for students that also provide teachers with better and stronger curricula to teach.

Nevada already has a few of these programs in place, but it couldn’t hurt to add a few more.

Biden: ‘We Have to Go Spend Money to Keep From Going Bankrupt’

A heartbeat away.

“And folks look, AARP knows and the people with me here today know, the president knows, and I know, that the status quo is simply not acceptable,” Biden said at the event on Thursday in Alexandria, Va. “It’s totally unacceptable. And it’s completely unsustainable. Even if we wanted to keep it the way we have it now. It can’t do it financially.” “We’re going to go bankrupt as a nation,” Biden said. “Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’” Biden said. “The answer is yes, that's what I’m telling you.”

Maybe Biden needs to spend a little more time running the numbers, because the Congressional Budget Office just blew his and President Obama's cost-savings argument for government-run health care out of the water.

Answering questions from Democrat Kent Conrad of North Dakota at a hearing of the Senate Budget Committee today, Elmendorf said CBO does not see health care cost savings in either of the partisan Democratic bills currently in Congress.

Conrad: Dr. Elmendorf, I am going to really put you on the spot because we are in the middle of this health care debate, but it is critically important that we get this right. Everyone has said, virtually everyone, that bending the cost curve over time is critically important and one of the key goals of this entire effort. From what you have seen from the products of the committees that have reported, do you see a successful effort being mounted to bend the long-term cost curve?

Elmendorf: No, Mr. Chairman. In the legislation that has been reported we do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount. And on the contrary, the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health care costs.

Conrad: So the cost curve in your judgement is being bent, but it is being bent the wrong way. Is that correct?

Elmendorf: The way I would put it is that the curve is being raised, so there is a justifiable focus on growth rates because of course it is the compounding of growth rates faster than the economy that leads to these unsustainable paths. But it is very hard to look out over a very long term and say very accurate things about growth rates. So most health experts that we talk with focus particularly on what is happening over the next 10 or 20 years, still a pretty long time period for projections, but focus on the next 10 or 20 years and look at whether efforts are being made that are bringing costs down or pushing costs up over that period.

As we wrote in our letter to you and Senator Gregg, the creation of a new subsidy for health insurance, which is a critical part of expanding health insurance coverage in our judgement, would by itself increase the federal responsibility for health care that raises federal spending on health care. It raises the amount of activity that is growing at this unsustainable rate and to offset that there has to be very substantial reductions in other parts of the federal commitment to health care, either on the tax revenue side through changes in the tax exclusion or on the spending side through reforms in Medicare and Medicaid. Certainly reforms of that sort are included in some of the packages, and we are still analyzing the reforms in the House package. Legislation was only released as you know two days ago. But changes we have looked at so far do not represent the fundamental change on the order of magnitude that would be necessary to offset the direct increase in federal health costs from the insurance coverage proposals.

If this "Trojan-horse-for-socialized-medicine" public plan passes, costs, like with everything else government touches, will skyrocket. And what will the answer for skyrocketing costs be then? Health care rationing, just like in Canada and Britain.

This country needs a Total Money Makeover. I feel like Princess Leia: "Help us Dave Ramsey, you're our only hope."

(h/t Drudge and Hotair)

Video: Health rationing is your patriotic duty

At least it will be if Congress passes the "Trojan-horse-for-socialized-medicine" public plan. Costs, like with everything else government touches, will skyrocket, and the government will contain costs by rationing health care. Just like it does in Britain and Canada. And politicians will probably start using rhetoric like this to try to guilt you into accepting long waiting times for care.



Be sure to check out the companion website HealthAdministrationBureau.com for more.

Congrats to our friends at the Sam Adams Alliance for a clever video. The scary thing is some people openly want government rationing to become reality.

For another clever video on Obama's health care scheme check out Obama-care explained at Elizabeth Crum's blog.

Exit question for those of you who click over to E!'s post: Is she calling NPRI and Write on Nevada boring?

(h/t Hotair)

‘When will people learn? Democracy doesn’t work.’

Do you remember when Homer Simpson said this in an episode of The Simpsons a few years back? Yeah, I thought it was funny, too.

What’s not so funny is that more and more members of the climate-change-alarmist crowd are actually starting to adopt this line of thinking.

Bjorn Lomborg reports:

In March, Al Gore's science adviser and prominent climate researcher Jim Hansen proclaimed that when it comes to dealing with global warming, the "democratic process isn't working". Although science has demonstrated that CO2 from fossil fuels is heating the planet, politicians are unwilling to follow his advice and stop building coal-fired power plants.

Hansen argues that "the first action that people should take is to use the democratic process. What is frustrating people, me included, is that democratic action affects elections, but what we get then from political leaders is greenwash."

Although he doesn't tell us what the second or third action is, he has turned up in a British court to defend six activists who damaged a coal-fired power station. He argues that we need "more people chaining themselves to coal plants", a point repeated by Gore.

Boy, democracy just never seems to work out well for Al Gore, does it?

In any event, Lomborg also notes that even if Gore and his cohorts get the legislation they want, the impact on climate change would be negligible:

At a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars annually, [the Waxman-Markey bill] will have virtually no impact on climate change. If all of the bill's many provisions were entirely fulfilled, economic models show that it would reduce the temperature by the end of the century by 0.11C, reducing warming by less than 4 per cent.

Even if every Kyoto-obligated country passed its own, duplicate Waxman-Markey bills — which is implausible and would incur significantly higher costs — the global reduction would amount to just 0.22C by the end of this century. The reduction in global temperature would not be measurable in 100 years, yet the cost would be significant and payable now.

This gets to the most important lesson to take away from the climate-change debate. The fact that the policy isn’t going to produce any significant impact shows that the policy isn’t a means to an end. The policy is the end. This isn’t about saving us from climate change. It’s about giving the government more control over our lives. Period.

The good thing is it’s not too late to stop it — yet.

Charting government-run health care

House Republicans have unveiled this chart, which details their Democratic counterparts’ health care plan.

If you think government-run health care looks ugly, that’s because it is. And for multiple reasons, too. But at least it’s looking less inevitable than before.

Are we spending too much on higher education?

Obama and his Congress have passed bailouts for bankers, automakers, homeowners. Now the administration wants a bailout for college students?

Already boosting subsidized student loan funding, Obama apparently plans to make the Pell Grant an entitlement program. A new video from Reason.tv — “The Case Against College Entitlements” — asks some serious questions:

• Are too many kids going to college?
• Does a college degree have any value?
• Won’t subsidies to higher education lead to increasing prices in education?

Accumulating evidence is saying Yes, on all accounts.

Recently NPRI noted that UNLV and UNR spend more per pupil than most universities in the country — yet they graduate fewer than half their students within six years.

Learn more about higher education in Nevada. Check out NPRI’s Higher Education Fast Facts.

How much will Clark County spend per pupil on education in 2009-10?

A. $5,025
B. $4,750
C. $11,420
D. All of the above

And — drum roll please — the winner is...

D. All of they above

Why?

Consider this recent article from the RJ.

The superintendent of the Esmeralda County School District drives a school bus when necessary.

Staffing is so limited for the rural district that its one-room schoolhouses will close for the day if a teacher calls in sick, said Bob Aumaugher, the Esmeralda superintendent.

The school district, which served 68 students last year and has no high school, will receive $17,038 in per-pupil state funding for 2009-10, or more than three times as much as Clark County's per-student allotment of $5,025.

So initially, A. $5,025 seems like a winner. But if you skip down to the 24th paragraph you'll find out the whole story.

Clark County receives about 44 percent of its basic education funding from the state. The remainder comes from local taxes: 41.6 percent comes from 2.6 percentage points of the 8.1 percent sales tax and 14 percent comes from one-third of the property tax.

If you run the math, B. $4,750 is the amount of per-pupil funding that comes from local taxes and C. $11,420 is the total amount of per-pupil funding from state, local and property-tax sources.

So why isn't C. $11,420 the answer instead of D. All of they above?

Because, unfortunately, education-union officials and politicians often pick and choose their answers based on their own agendas.

Consider this Associated Press article that reports the same information as the above RJ article:

Legislators approved a figure of $5,251 to be spent per K-12 student for the upcoming fiscal year, $38 more than the 2008-2009 figure of $5,213. Rheault called the increase "a little deceptive" because the state had to come up with $329 million to make up for the reduced projections in local taxes.

The article fails to mention that schools receive additional money from local and proprety taxes. (The $5,251 is the average amount each county receives from the state. Clark County gets $5,025 from the state.) Unless you follow education news closely and know how many different sources there are for education funding, you would think that Nevada only spends about $5,000 per pupil, instead of well over $11,000. Even in the RJ article, you have to read until the 24th paragraph to find out that state funding is just a portion of the per-pupil funds.

For more examples of the strange ways education funding is reported, check out Numbers Game, written by my colleague (that word makes me feel old) Patrick Gibbons.

So is $11,420 the amount Clark County will spend per pupil on education this year? It'll probably be quite a bit more, but to find that out you'll have to look at the Clark County School District's financial reports.

Fortunately for us, Patrick's already done the hard work.

But how much does Nevada really spend each year on education? Officially the figure ranges between $5,000 and $7,000 per pupil, depending on who is speaking. But these figures ignore millions of dollars in education-related expenditures.

The Nevada Policy Research Institute examined the approved budgets for each county school district, as reported to the State Department of Taxation. NPRI's finding: Total spending averaged $13,052 per pupil during the 2008-09 school year. During that period, per-student expenditures ranged from a low of $10,889 in Churchill County to a high of $49,551 in Eureka County. Clark County spent $13,387, while Washoe County spent $11,393 per pupil.

By comparison, Nevada's public charter schools received an average of just $6,746 per pupil.

Now that you know the rest of the story, make sure you let others know the facts when education officials quote incomplete statistics.

The economy: Worse than we think?

So said Mort Zuckerman yesterday, writing for the Wall Street Journal:

Job losses may last well into 2010 to hit an unemployment peak close to 11%. That unemployment rate may be sustained for an extended period.

Can we find comfort in the fact that employment has long been considered a lagging indicator? It is conventionally seen as having limited predictive power since employment reflects decisions taken earlier in the business cycle. But today is different. Unemployment has doubled to 9.5% from 4.8% in only 16 months, a rate so fast it may influence future economic behavior and outlook.

Just more evidence of the stimulus’ inability to improve economic conditions. Not that anyone should be surprised.

Introducing NPRI podcasts

Just in case you can't get enough of NPRI's information via our writing and video, we are now going to be coming at you with podcasts.

Our first episode of "The Word" is about education spending in the Clark County School District. How much does the school district receive for every pupil? Well, you'll just have to listen and find out

Powered by Podbean.com

We will be syndicating these podcasts through ITunes as well. This will allow you to download these segments onto your personal computer or portable music player and listen to them at your convenience. Once this post is up, I'm going to set all that up, and once it's all good to go, I'll let you know how to it.

Let us know what you think in the comments, or you can e-mail me at vj [at] npri [dot] org.

This video features the song "Voice from Space" by Butterfly Tea (https://mail.ex1.secureserver.net/owa/redir.aspx?C=9f3f0e9ac0834ff89672e72eaf5d5fa2&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.jamendo.com%2fen%2fartist%2fButterfly_Tea), available under a Creative Commons Attribution, Share Alike license (https://mail.ex1.secureserver.net/owa/redir.aspx?C=9f3f0e9ac0834ff89672e72eaf5d5fa2&URL=http%3a%2f%2fcreativecommons.org%2flicenses%2fby-sa%2f2.0%2ffr%2fdeed.en).

Undercover video: Inside Canadian health care

Write on Nevada readers won't be surprised to hear more stories of how socialized/government health care delays coverage — with potentially fatal results.

And to destroy health care in the U.S., Pelosi and company have just announced that we are going to hit up the rich again.

Ugh. At least some kids will love socialized/government health care ─ until, that is, they actually get sick.



(h/t Hotair)

Great news: WH officials want to run health care while effectively drunk

Well, to be fair, it's not just health care. They also want to run energy policy, car companies and banks while effectively drunk.

No joke.

"We stay late every night, work weekends -- basically on 24/7," Mike Hammer, a spokesman for the National Security Council, wrote in an e-mail while on a recent trip abroad. "Not sure what example to give you but here I am at 12:30 am in Islamabad with General [James L.] Jones and answering your email," he wrote, referring to the national security adviser.

During the first two months of the administration, White House and Treasury officials tried to deal with the worsening economy almost without a break. The image of senior economic adviser Lawrence H. Summers nodding off during a presidential meeting with credit card executives became the emblem of that period.

Behind the scenes, it was even worse. The night before Obama announced the administration's housing plan on Feb. 18 in Arizona, Sperling e-mailed the final documents at 3 a.m. and asked for comments. Five people responded immediately.

Martin Moore-Ede, a former Harvard University professor, calls it the "iron man" syndrome and says the American political workplace is one of the few that still resists a mechanism for ensuring people get rest.

One study conducted for the British Parliament found that "mental fatigue affects cognitive performance, leading to errors of judgement [sic], microsleeps (lasting for seconds or minutes), mood swings and poor motivation." The effect, it found, is equal to a blood alcohol level of .10 percent -- above the legal limit to drive in the United States.

If this were a private industry, the government would have already stepped in and started regulating the amount of sleep White House staffers get.

Instead, White House officials think they are so smart that, even though they're effectively drunk, they can still run your life better than you. Unsurprisingly, they're failing.

Let's make sure these sleep-drunk government bureaucrats don't get to run any more of our lives.

Uhh, what about US?

This will make your head spin.

This is what President Obama said in a speech to the Ghanaian Parliament this weekend:

Repression can take many forms, and too many nations, even those that have elections, are plagued by problems that condemn their people to poverty. No country is going to create wealth if its leaders exploit the economy to enrich themselves...No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top...No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery. (Applause.) That is not democracy, that is tyranny, even if occasionally you sprinkle an election in there. And now is the time for that style of governance to end. (Applause.)

Clearly, President Obama gets it...at least when it comes to the developing world. Why does he not think that the same basic principles apply to advanced nations such as the United States?

The President correctly highlights the fact that private individuals do not want to invest "in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top." The President's proposed capital gains tax?...20 percent. Proposed dividends tax?...20 percent. Uh, does anyone see an inconsistency here? If the laws of economics are universal (as they are), then why does a high tax burden matter in Ghana but not in the United States?

The President is also right to point out the essential role that the rule of law plays in allowing for economic growth and prosperity. Without the rule of law, government leaders could arbitrarily change the rules of the market at will or bestow favors on their political allies. These practices could lead to mismanaged, but politically connected, firms being bailed out at the taxpayers' expense instead of being allowed to fail. They could lead to events such as the repudiation of the debt held by senior creditors in a major corporation's bankruptcy proceeding in order to transfer 60 percent ownership in the firm to a class of junior creditors who happen to have been political supporters.

Indeed, if this type of a breakdown in the rule of law were to occur, financial markets would become hamstrung. Owners of capital would become unwilling to lend without an assurance that their assets would be protected by law but instead could be confiscated by political authorities at will. To put it simply, the business and financial sectors cannot plan for the future if they don't know what the rules will be next week.

So the question becomes: Why are the rule of law and a low governmental burden essential for Ghana but actively discounted in the United States?

Could the stimulus' ineffectiveness save us from more bad policy?

That's the subject of a new commentary I have up at npri.org. I look at how the increased public perception of the stimulus as a failure has undermined President Obama's credibility on economic issues, which may complicate his efforts to win the public's trust on cap-and-trade and the governmental takeover of health care.

An excerpt:

Now, when fiscal conservatives warn that cap-and-trade would result in an increased tax burden on ordinary citizens, they'll find a more sympathetic audience. When they predict that the President's health care plan would amount to just another inefficient, unaffordable federal entitlement program, they'll be taken very seriously. That's their reward for having been proven right about the stimulus.

Read the full piece here.

"Stimulus spending" = Oxymoron

Cato's Alan Reynolds had a good article recently appear in Forbes that dispells the oxymoronic notion of "stimulus spending" by government. He points out that "stimulus spending" has repeatedly caused economic growth to decline and specifically points to the cases of India, the US and Japan - where government "stimulus" has led to two decades of lost growth.

Ireland, on the other hand, provides an example of how a sizable reduction in government spending can turn a lagging economy into an economic powerhouse.

Pentagon considering banning tobacco for servicemembers

Wow. And I thought we were supposed to smoke for the children.

I can't believe this isn't some type of joke, but there it is in USA Today.

Pentagon health experts are urging Defense Secretary Robert Gates to ban the use of tobacco by troops and end its sale on military property, a change that could dramatically alter a culture intertwined with smoking.

Jack Smith, head of the Pentagon's office of clinical and program policy, says he will recommend that Gates adopt proposals by a federal study that cites rising tobacco use and higher costs for the Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs as reasons for the ban.

The study by the Institute of Medicine, requested by the VA and Pentagon, calls for a phased-in ban over a period of years, perhaps up to 20. "We'll certainly be taking that recommendation forward," Smith says.

A tobacco ban would confront a military culture, the report says, in which "the image of the battle-weary soldier in fatigues and helmet, fighting for his country, has frequently included his lit cigarette."

Also, the report said, troops worn out by repeated deployments often rely on cigarettes as a "stress reliever." The study found that tobacco use in the military increased after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began.

Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith said the department supports a smoke-free military "and believes it is achievable." She declined to elaborate on any possible ban.

One in three servicemembers use tobacco, the report says, compared with one in five adult Americans. The heaviest smokers are soldiers and Marines, who have done most of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the study says. About 37% of soldiers use tobacco and 36% of Marines. Combat veterans are 50% more likely to use tobacco than troops who haven't seen combat.

Tobacco use costs the Pentagon $846 million a year in medical care and lost productivity, says the report, which used older data. The Department of Veterans Affairs spends up to $6 billion in treatments for tobacco-related illnesses, says the study, which was released late last month.

Along with a phased-in ban, the report recommends requiring new officers and enlisted personnel to be tobacco-free, eliminating tobacco use on military installations, ships and aircraft, expanding treatment programs and eliminating the sale of tobacco on military property. "Any tobacco use while in uniform should be prohibited," the study says.

Wow. Have these people ever served in the military or been around those in the service? Because if they had, they would understand why this proposal is laughable — unless of course they want to cut the military in half. Which, hey, maybe they do.

First, this shows (again) the dangers of the government picking the winners and losers in the economy. And federal and state governments (including Nevada's) have repeatedly chosen tobacco and alcohol as losers and saddled them with high "sin" taxes. Less than three weeks after taking office, President Obama even doubled the federal cigarette tax to pay for an expansion of SCHIP.

You can't have it both ways. If you want to tax tobacco to pay for a federal program, you can't ban it for segments of your population.

Second, the tobacco "costs" cited in the story don't tell the whole story (if the numbers are even accurate to begin with). Tobacco use causes a myriad of health problems that shorten life expectancy and save Social Security, Medicare and pension plans billions. Vanderbilt University economist Kip Viscusi found that the country gained a net savings of 32 cents for every pack smoked.

Third, if the Pentagon is serious about this proposal — again I have my doubts — why not implement it for all public employees? Again, I think the evidence shows the cost savings argument is garbage, but if that's the argument you make, you should be consistent. Let's start at the top.


Fourth, those who serve are volunteering to risk their lives to protect this country's freedom. To try to limit their ability to partake in a legal activity is more than a little ironic.

Las Vegas tourism drops in May; new room tax increase will cause more harm

From the RJ:

Fewer meetings and lower attendance at two large conventions drove local visitor numbers down again in May.

The number of visitors to the valley dropped 5.8 percent to nearly 3.2 million people, numbers released Thursday by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority show…

In Las Vegas hotels, occupancy dropped [to] 84.4 percent from 89.7 percent, with weekend occupancy dropping less than a percent to 91.8 percent.

Daily average room rates, however, dropped 28.3 percent to $96.96 per night from $135.17 per night in May 2008 as large hotel-casinos lowered rates to lure visitors.

"We think this reflects significant room discounts and aggressive marketing packages and programs that took place in May to stimulate demand into Las Vegas," JP Morgan analyst Joe Greff said in an investors note.

Note what the private sector is doing to get tourists to come to Las Vegas — it's cutting prices. It's the law of supply and demand in action.

That's what makes the hotel-room-tax increase that went into effect on July 1 so damaging.

If you recall, the first part of the billion-dollar tax increase that the Nevada Legislature passed this year was a room-tax increase. It raises room prices, which will result in fewer tourists coming to Las Vegas (than if the room tax had stayed the same). Fewer tourists mean fewer jobs for Nevada residents and, ironically enough, fewer tax dollars for the state.

This is another example of how tax increases (no matter how small) destroy jobs. And don't think our elected officials didn't know this when they passed the record-setting, billion-dollar, secret tax increase earlier this year, because they did.

Talk on Nevada: The death tax isn't dead yet

Talk on Nevada interviews NPRI Fiscal Analyst Geoffrey Lawrence on President Obama's sneaky attempt to revive the death tax. President Obama doesn't just want to revive the death tax, he wants to reinstitute it at a rate of 45 percent.

For more information, check out Geoff's commentary on the death tax, Exit fee.

Attend the "Trial of the New Century" at Freedom Fest for free

Freedom Fest, which bills itself as the world's largest gathering of free minds, has come to Las Vegas. It has started today and runs through Saturday.

And fittingly enough for an event that's all about freedom, its organizers have made one of the major events free to the public.

It's billed as "The Trial of the New Century" and will examine free-market capitalism. Emmy Award-winning economist Jeff Madrick will be the prosecutor, the Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore will be the defense counsel, and Steve Forbes, Charles Gasparino, John Mackey and Doug Casey will be the witnesses. The best part is that Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman will be the judge. I'm surprised he didn't require it to be called the "Oscar Goodman Trial of the New Century."

Regardless, it should be entertaining. The event will be held from 5 - 6:15 p.m. on Friday, July 10, at the Bally's Event Center.

I'm hoping to go if — hint, hint — my boss lets me off a little early. I hope to see some of you there.

Also that night in the Bally's Event Center, Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty will hold an event at 8 p.m. that is also open to the public.

You can find the full agenda for Freedom Fest here.

Understanding the 'stimulus'

The big question being batted around these days is: Why isn’t the stimulus working?

To ask that question is to miss the point: The truth is that the stimulus is working.

No, it’s not turning the economy around or lowering unemployment numbers. Far from it. But that was never the intent of the stimulus to begin with.

The reality is that there was nothing in the stimulus package that could reasonably be expected to result in economic stimulation. The way to stimulate the economy is to remove governmental barriers to private-sector-driven economic growth. The stimulus package did nothing of this sort — nor was it supposed to.

The purpose of the stimulus, rather, was to pay back political favors and to increase the government’s control over the economy. Remember when Rahm Emanuel said, “never let a serious crisis go to waste”? That was the whole point. The stimulus package was nothing more than an opportunistic power grab.

Those who are surprised that the economy is continuing its downward spiral, even after the stimulus was passed, simply lack a fundamental understanding of why recessions occur and how they are overcome. If you’re among the confused, the best and simplest cure for you is just to remember this: “Fixing the economy” was never the goal. The goal was to grow government and weaken the private sector.

And in that sense, it’s working like a charm.