The Fact-free Gun Control Debate

By
Tim Lynch

From Thomas Sowell’s latest column:

Amid all the heated, emotional advocacy of gun control, have you ever heard even one person present convincing hard evidence that tighter gun-control laws have in fact reduced murders? …

What almost no one talks about is that guns are used to defend lives as well as to take lives. In fact, many of the horrific killings that we see in the media were brought to an end when someone else with a gun showed up and put a stop to the slaughter. The Cato Institute estimates that there are upwards of 100,000 defensive uses of guns per year. Preventing law-abiding citizens from defending themselves can cost far more lives than are lost in the shooting episodes that the media publicize. The lives saved by guns are no less precious just because the media pay no attention to them.

Read the whole thing. Go here for the Cato research that Mr. Sowell is talking about.

Topics: 
Law and Civil Liberties

National Standardizers, Time to Speak Out against Federal Coercion

By
Neal McCluskey

Maybe because it’s now hitting schools, or because it’s gotten high on the radars of Michelle Malkin and Glenn Beck, or because national science standards have raised a ruckus, but for whatever reason the Common Core is finally starting to get the national—and critical—attention it has desperately needed. Indeed, just yesterday Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) sent a letter to the Senate appropriations subcomittee that deals with education urging members to employ legislative language prohibiting federal funding or coercion regarding curricula. That follows the Republican National Committee last week passing a resolution opposing the Common Core.

It’s terrific to see serious attention paid to the Common Core, even if it is probably too late for many states to un-adopt the program in the near term. At the very least, this gives new hope that the public will be alert if there are efforts to connect annual federal funding to national standards and tests through a reauthorized No Child Left Behind Act. And there are certainly some states where nationalization could be halted in the next few months. Perhaps most important, the Grassley letter gives Common Core supporters who’ve said they oppose federal coercion a huge opening to act on their words—to loudly support an effort to keep Washington out. They can either do that, or substantiate the powerful suspicion that they are happy to use federal force to impose standards, they just don’t want to admit it.

Topics: 
Education and Child Policy, General, Tax and Budget Policy

School Choice Survives Repeal Attempt in New Hampshire

By
Jason Bedrick

Just moments ago, New Hampshire’s state senate rejected an attempt to repeal the state’s nascent scholarship tax credit law by a 13-11 vote*. The program grants tax credits to businesses worth 85 percent of their contributions to nonprofit scholarship organizations that fund low- and middle-income students attending private or home schools. The program took effect on January 1 of this year but scholarships will not be distributed until the new school year in the fall.

The support of Senate Education Committee Chairwoman, Senator Nancy Stiles, was decisive in saving the program. Last year, Sen. Stiles had voted against the school choice proposal, but she decided to oppose the repeal because she believed “it would be irresponsible to overturn it without seeing whether the legislation made a positive difference.” She also noted that without having had the opportunity to evaluate the program’s effectiveness, the opponents of the school choice program want to “rescind a program, not based on its effectiveness, but on philosophical differences. I cannot support or be a part of this effort.”

The legislative battle does not end here, however, since the NH House also repealed the scholarship tax credit program in the House version of the budget. Budget negotiations between New Hampshire’s Democrat-controlled House and Republican-controlled Senate are expected to continue until about mid-June.

The law is also being challenged in court by the Americans for Separation of Church and State and the ACLU, who claim that the school choice program violates the state’s historically anti-Catholic Blaine Amendment, which prohibits public funding of private schools. Their argument is based on a false premise, which is why the courts have ultimately rejected it wherever it has been tried. A citizen’s money is her own until it reaches tax collector’s hand. A private donation therefore does not constitute “public funding” even if it qualifies for a tax credit or deduction. While impossible to predict the future, it is likely that the Granite State courts will rule in line with other states’ interpretations of the Blaine Amendment and the U.S. Supreme Court’s understanding of tax credits.

*UPDATE: I originally reported that the vote was 14-10 to table the repeal bill. In fact, one state senator had mistakenly voted for the motion when he intended to vote against it and that was later corrected. The 13-11 vote was along party lines.

Topics: 
Education and Child Policy

Stabenow, Too, Admits ObamaCare Won’t Work

By
Michael F. Cannon
The president’s budget proposes to rescind ObamaCare’s cuts to Medicaid disproportionate share hospital payments in 2014. As I explain in a National Review Online op-ed, this proposal demonstrates that:
  1. ObamaCare is not likely to reduce uncompensated care in 2014.
  2. ObamaCare won’t reduce the deficit.
  3. Hospitals can stop crying poverty.
  4. States don’t need to expand Medicaid to protect hospitals.

Related to that, Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and Roy Blunt (R-MO) have now introduced legislation (technically, an amendment) that would rescind those cuts, thereby increasing Medicaid spending. This reinforces the four points above, especially the part about states not needing to expand Medicaid.

Interestingly, both Stabenow and Blunt are flip-flopping and/or betraying their principles. Stabenow the Democrat is repealing part of ObamaCare, while Blunt the Republican is increasing government spending.

Topics: 
General, Government and Politics, Health Care

Who Killed Gun Control?

By
David Boaz

The Establishment is very concerned this morning that the representatives of the people have resisted demands for stricter gun control measures. The president calls it “shameful.” The New York Times editorial board intones, “The Senate Fails America.” Dana Milbank of the Washington Post deplores a lack of “courage” on Capitol Hill, though some might think it takes courage to defy the overwhelming drumbeat of the national media.

Whatever the merits and popularity of the specific measures that went down to defeat in the Senate on Wednesday, I think the Establishment fails to appreciate the depth of American support for the Second Amendment. NPR and other media have lately noted a growing libertarian trend in American politics. That’s not just about taxes, Obamacare, marijuana, and marriage equality. It also involves gun rights. After each high-profile shooting, support for gun control rises. But it tends to fall again in short order, as public opinion reverts to the baseline of strong support for gun rights.

I was struck by this poll graphic in the Washington Post on Wednesday. Despite the virtually unanimous support for stricter gun control in the national media, along with other opinion shapers such as Hollywood and the universities, and despite the mass shootings that have received so much attention in our modern world of 24-hour news channels, Americans are becoming more convinced that guns make your family safer. 

 Washington Post Poll on Guns

The fact is, America is a country fundamentally shaped by libertarian values and attitudes. Our libertarian values helped to create the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and those documents in turn shape our thinking about freedom and the limited powers of government. In their book It Didn’t Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States, Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Marx write, “The American ideology, stemming from the [American] Revolution, can be subsumed in five words: antistatism, laissez-faire, individualism, populism, and egalitarianism.” If political scientists Herbert McClosky and John Zaller are right that “[t]he principle here is that every person is free to act as he pleases, so long as his exercise of freedom does not violate the equal rights of others,” then we can expect Americans to cling to their gun rights for a long time.

The New Republic’s daily email this morning asks, “Who killed gun control?” Who? The Americans.

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Political Philosophy

Don’t Bother, HEA Ostriches

By
Neal McCluskey

If this is how reauthorization of the Higher Education Act is going to go, Congress shouldn’t even bother. If, as the tone seemed to be set in House and Senate hearings yesterday, Congress won’t seriously consider even the possibility that federal student aid helps to fuel tuition inflation – much less make policy based on the massive logic and evidence backing that concern – then they might as well just quit on the HEA. And if they will accept the swiss cheese explanation that cuts in state funding drive inflation – despite its inability to explain inflation in private institutions, and public schools raising tuition about two dollars for every dollar in lost funding – then they simply aren’t serious about dealing with the crippling unintended consequences of federal “help.”

In the face of ballooning student debt and long-skyrocketing college prices, we don’t need Congressional ostriches jamming their heads in the sand anymore, pretending that their generosity with other people’s money is the solution, not the problem. Either deal with reality, or don’t bother with the HEA.

Cross-posted at seethruedu.com

Topics: 
Education and Child Policy

New GAO Study Mistakenly Focuses on Make-Believe Tax Expenditures

By
Daniel J. Mitchell

I’m very leery of corporate tax reform, largely because I don’t think there are enough genuine loopholes on the business side of the tax code to finance a meaningful reduction in the corporate tax rate.

That leads me to worry that politicians might try to “pay for” lower rates by forcing companies to overstate their income.

Based on a new study about so-called corporate tax expenditures from the Government Accountability Office, my concerns are quite warranted.

The vast majority of the $181 billion in annual “tax expenditures” listed by the GAO are not loopholes. Instead, they are provisions designed to mitigate mistakes in the tax code that force firms to exaggerate their income.

Here are the key findings.

In 2011, the Department of the Treasury estimated 80 tax expenditures resulted in the government forgoing corporate tax revenue totaling more than $181 billion. …approximately the same size as the amount of corporate income tax revenue the federal government collected that year. …According to Treasury’s 2011 estimates, 80 tax expenditures had corporate revenue losses. Of those, two expenditures accounted for 65 percent of all estimated corporate revenues losses in 2011 while another five tax expenditures—each with at least $5 billion or more in estimated revenue loss for 2011—accounted for an additional 21 percent of corporate revenue loss estimates.

Sounds innocuous, but take a look at this table from the report, which identifies the “seven largest corporate tax expenditures.”

GAO Tax Expenditure Table

To be blunt, there’s a huge problem in the GAO analysis. Neither depreciation nor deferral are loopholes.

Read the rest of this post »

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Tax and Budget Policy

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