Michigan Right-to-Work: Economic Impact Study, September 2012
Over the past several decades, Michigan has had an extremely low rate of income growth compared with the nation, indeed the lowest rate amongst the 50 American states in the…
A Corny Waste of Tax Dollars
The Corn Palace is one of South Dakota's most famous tourist attractions, and easily the corniest waste of tax dollars anywhere in America. Located just off I-90 in the town of Mitchell, the Corn Palace is a 43,000-square-foot exhibition hall that houses concerts, proms, basketball games, rodeos, craft shows, graduations and a polka festival. What draws tourists to the Corn Palace, however, is the massive corn mural covering the building that is decorated annually with 275,000 ears of corn and tons of other colorful grains. The mural is unveiled at an annual Corn Palace Festival. This year's festival wrapped up its five-day run on Aug. 26. Despite the Corn Palace's kitsch appeal, the city-owned facility never turns a profit. As a result, approximately a third of the Corn Palace's $1.7 million operating budget comes from the pockets of taxpayers every year -- whether they visit the facility or not. This year, taxpayers will chip in roughly half a million dollars just to underwrite the financial flop. Over the past five years, Mitchell shucked $3 million in taxpayer money from residents and visitors to subsidize the operation of the 90-year-old corn-covered convention hall.
Will Taxpayers Go Cliff Diving?
Everybody in Washington, DC is talking about the fiscal cliff but nobody is doing anything about it. That is very reminiscent of Mark Twain’s old adage about the weather when he quipped, “everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.” The only difference is that politicians have an opportunity to act and prevent the country from going over the fiscal cliff. A recent headline of The Washington Post, “CBO warns of significant recession if Congress doesn’t act to avoid fiscal cliff,” should be a wakeup call if the tax cuts aren’t extended. Pretty frightening indeed, and even worse, it’s reality. Citing the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Post explains, “The nation would be plunged into a significant recession during the first half of next year if Congress fails to avert nearly $500 billion in tax hikes and spending cuts set to hit in January.”
FCC Needs a “Hands Off” Approach to Selling Bandwidth
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has made some extraordinarily questionable moves. In 2008, the FCC spent $355,000 to sponsor a NASCAR driver, David Gilliland, for three races in order to raise awareness about an upcoming switch to digital television (DTV) with the slogan “Is Your TV ready for Digital?” The brainchild behind the idea was then-FCC Chairman Kevin Martin. In a fitting piece of irony, Gilliland’s FCC-sponsored car crashed into the wall during the first race of the sponsorship. Current FCC Commissioner Julius Genochowski has not fared much better. After ramming through Net Neutrality rules (see previous blog postings here, here, and here) Genochowski threatens to stifle innovation even more with a proposed tax on the Internet. Despite these failings, Chairman Genochowski has an opportunity to make amends by facilitating the auctioning off of additional wireless spectrum. Thanks to the government’s mostly hands-off approach and staying out of the way, the wireless sector has grown by leaps and bounds and continues to satisfy and meet consumers’ demands along the way. As Congress and the FCC consider new policies that will affect the wireless industry and consumers, it must be careful to not do anything that would upset the apple cart.
Amtrak’s High Speed Train to Bankruptcy
The word, “Amtrak,” can best be described as one of the most wasteful, inefficient components of our government. For as long as most can remember, Amtrak has maintained its inability to turn a profit. Additionally, passenger travel on Amtrak only accounts for less than one half of 1 percent of all interstate travel. And despite attempts to privatize, Amtrak continues to exist as a huge black hole that mercilessly robs taxpayers. So when news recently broke about an Amtrak plan that will cost taxpayers several billion dollars, $151 billion to be exact, there’s good reason to pause and be concerned. The latest proposal is a plan to build a high-speed railway that will connect all of the major cities in the Northeast from Boston to Washington, D.C. Similar to previous attempts to expand Amtrak’s reach, this program will also end in taxpayer disappointment. While Amtrak’s status of a public-private partnership makes the situation complicated, that’s not an excuse for Washington to do nothing. Congress can and should not succumb to Amtrak’s pleas and instead work to completely privatize Amtrak. Each day Congress allows these generous subsidies to continue is a day they are failing taxpayers. A recent example demonstrates that not only does taxpayer money go to waste; taxpayers actually end up being penalized for the shortcomings of Amtrak.
Stimulus Money Used to Fund Questionable Television Ads
The Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) has been reporting on the many ways that money through The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (aka Stimulus Bill) has been spent. In 2011, TPA Senior Fellow Drew Johnson wrote about The Miccosukee Corporation, the business arm of the Miccosukee Indian Tribe, which pocketed a $20,785 stimulus handout to subsidize a summer youth employment program. The program hired five kids to perform jobs including cashier, handyman and alligator wrestler at the Tribe’s Miccosukee Indian Village (read full story here). As first reported by The Washington Times on Tuesday August 21, 2012, and subsequently by Fox News on August 22, taxpayers funded a $495,000 stimulus grant to purchase ads on MSNBC to promote green jobs training. According to The Washington Times article, “Spending reports under the federal Recovery Act show $495,000 paid to McNeely Pigott & Fox Public Relations LLC, which the Labor Department hired to raise awareness ‘among employers and influencers about the [Job Corps] program’s existing and new training initiatives in high growth and environmentally friendly career areas’ as well as spreading the word to prospective Job Corps enrollees. The firm ultimately negotiated ad buys for ‘two approved spots’ airing 14 times per week for two months on ‘Countdown With Keith Olbermann’ and ‘The Rachel Maddow Show,’ according to a project report, which listed the number zero under a section of the report asking how many jobs had been created through the stimulus contract.” Since the story first broke, numerous news outlets have picked up on the story (read here, here, here, and here)
IRS Getting Ready To Collect More Taxes for Obamacare
Let’s be honest, government comes up short in most things it does. Whether we’re talking about the quality of education, our roads and in just a few years, our health care system, time and time again the government fails to deliver and meet the needs of the American people. However, there’s one sector of government that is an outlier from the rest of the programs the government commands where the government is relatively efficient – or as efficient as a government can be. The bad news is that the efficiency is in tax collection. This revelation may be somewhat intuitive because even if government has no interest in doing anything else well, it must ensure it has a revenue source to continue its spending propensity. Given this reality, we shouldn’t be surprised to learn that IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman recently announced that the IRS will have its greedy hands prepared and ready to take more taxpayer dollars come 2014. Specifically thanks to Obamacare, the new source of revenue will be extracted from those that refuse to succumb to the government’s requirement that all Americans have health insurance.
Your New Green Life
Environmental activists regularly scare Americans about our domestic energy resources — and urge us to abandon development of them. Witness the various efforts to stop hydraulic fracturing, offshore and onshore drilling, and the like. What life would look like in this new green world, though, rarely gets coverage. Considering environmental activists aren't very secretive about their agenda, it's worth looking at the dramatically different lifestyle they envision for all of us.
Crony Capitalism is Alive and Well in Maryland
After a long night of horse trading and amendments, the Maryland House and Senate passed a bill that authorizes a sixth gaming facility (casino) and provides tax breaks for casino operators in Maryland. The big news for taxpayers out of Annapolis wasn’t that the bill was passed, but the way it was passed and the handouts included. Here are a few interesting tidbits from WBALabout the shameful way the House and Senate conducted itself, “The Senate vote came at around 12:15 a.m. today. It came 30 minutes after the House of Delegates approved the bill. The Maryland House of Delegates approved the bill by a vote of 71-58. The vote came at around 11:45 p.m. Tuesday night. This morning at 10 Gov. O'Malley signed the package, which still needs voter approval in a referendum. The 71 votes represents the minimum number of votes needed to pass a bill in the House of Delegates.”
Carbon Tax is Bad for Businesses and Consumers
As our nation’s economic recovery stands on faulty footing, the last thing Washington should propose are policies that would negatively impact businesses and consumers and in so doing harm the economy. Members of Congress should neither bend their ears nor waste their time considering such dead-end policies. Unfortunately, there’s no shortage of potential job-killing regulations or taxes that if implemented would hurt Americans and businesses. Encouraging innovation and creating a hospitable environment for industries to pursue new investments is exactly the engine that’s needed to lead our economic recovery. Any policies that may detract from this objective should be considered dead-on-arrival. Among the worst policy proposals out there are cap-and-trade and/or a tax on carbon. In June 2009, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives successfully passed a bill that sought to place an arbitrary cap on carbon dioxide emissions. Fortunately proponents of the misguided policy ultimately failed to secure the necessary number of votes in the Senate to secure its passage. Since the 2010 elections, cap-and-trade, better known and more appropriately called cap-and-tax, proposals have been shunned from political discourse. This temporary victory is just that temporary; bad policies don’t disappear. Enter the carbon tax. It’s begun rearing its ugly head again, and some conservatives are the ones starting the conversation.
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