by Scot Mussi | Feb 8, 2011 | News and Updates, Uncategorized
Last night the Arizona Senate Judiciary Committee heard a bill that, if passed, would refer to voters in November 2012 a proposal to prohibit taxpayer-funded elections. It’s a straightforward amendment to the Arizona constitution that effectively bans the current practice known as Clean Elections, which allows candidates running for office to receive public funds to pay for their campaigns. It also makes crystal clear to voters what they are being asked to do.
The only opposing testimony of the government-run system came from the government. The Clean Elections Commission tried to persuade lawmakers that this effort was somehow sneaky and misleading because the language of the bill didn’t explicitly repeal Clean Elections. The lobbyist for the Clean Elections Commission chimed in that polling results showed that if voters were asked to repeal Clean Elections it would fail. But if voters were asked to ban public funds from going to political campaigns, it would probably pass. He said this with a straight face. It wasn’t lost on anyone in the room why he knows this since supporters of the Clean Elections system used the same methodology to come up with their name. Publicly-funded campaigns? No. Clean Elections? Yes.
“Clean” is not synonymous with “publicly-funded” no matter whom you ask. Clean is the opposite of dirty. Clearly, some voters hoped that a ballot question titled Clean Elections would clean up the negative ads people everywhere claim to be tired of. Of course, publicly-funded campaigns did not stop or even slow down negative ads. Instead negative ads were financed by the public, whereas before they were financed by private individuals.
The backers of Clean Elections who are crying foul over the wording amendment have no one to blame but themselves. There can be no more honest description of what the amendment does.
by Scot Mussi | Jan 24, 2011 | News and Updates, Uncategorized
MSNBC liberal talk show host Rachel Maddow likes the word “awesome.” On HBO’s Real Time with Bill Mahr, Maddow teamed up with Pres. Reagan’s former budget director David Stockman and poured a bucket-full of bunk about Reagan’s economic record. Wall Street Journal editorial board member and senior economics writer Steve Moore ably and adroitly defended Reagan’s economic success.
MADDOW: “The top 1% of of the country’s income went up roughly 80%. The bottom part of the country went down.”
FALSE: Between 1981 and 1989 (Reagan years), the poorest 20% of Americans saw their real family incomes rise 6%, the next quintile rose 8%, the 3rd quintile rose 10%, the 4th quintile rose 15%, and the richest 20% saw their real family incomes rise 20%.
By contrast, in the years preceding Reagan (1973 – 1981), the poorest saw their incomes DROP 5% and the next quintile saw a decline in real incomes by 2%. The poor got richer under Reagan.
MADDOW: “From 1980 – 1990, the richest 1% saw their incomes go up 80%. The median wage in the country over 10 years went up 3%.”
FALSE: Between 1981 and 1989, real median household income rose 11%, from $37,000 to $41,000 (Census Bureau, 2008 Statistical Abstract of the United States, Tables 670 and 671).
MADDOW: “So if you were rich, Reagan was awesome! And if you were anybody else it sucked.”
TRUE AND FALSE: If you were rich, the Reagan years were awesome. If you were anybody else, it was awesome for you, too. Why?
- From 1981 to 1989, the U.S. economy produced 17 million new jobs, or roughly 2 million jobs each year. In the 1990s, another 26 million jobs were added.
- The poorest 20 percent of Americans experienced a 6 percent gain in real income in the 1980s after suffering a 5 percent decline in the 1970s.
- Black Americans saw their incomes grow at a slightly faster pace (11 percent) than whites (9.8 percent) in the Reagan years.
- By 1989 there were 5.9 milion more Americans whose salaries exceeded $50,000 a year than there were in 1981 (adjusting for inflation).
- There were 2.5 million more Americans earning more than $75,000 a year, an 83 percent increase.
- The number of Americans earning less than $10,000 a year fell by 3.4 million workers.
- The stock market more than tripled to 3,000 (!) by the end of the Reagan years.
- The percentage of all workers who owned stock rose from 16% of all workers in 1980 to 26% by the end of Reagan’s term.
Yes, the deficit exploded. But it’s tough to blame the deficit on Reagan’s tax cuts since real federal revenues grew by 24 percent. No, spending was the real culprit. The cumulative increase in defense spending from 1981 to 1989 ($806 billion) was larger than the entire cumulative increase in the budget deficit ($779 billion) in those years.
Finally, when given the opportunity to concede Moore’s points about the strength of the economy during the 1980s, Stockman unfortunately only talked about the deficit.
Here’s the clip.
by Scot Mussi | Jan 18, 2011 | News and Updates, Uncategorized
We’ve written before about the failures of film tax credits. Here’s another post. If there are better examples of tax policies gone bad, I’d love to see them. Check this one out that ran in the Boston Globe.
Mass. tax credits used to cover movie stars’ wages
January 12, 2011 03:29 PM
Associated Press
A quarter of the tax breaks given movie companies under Massachusetts’ film tax credit program have gone to help cover the salaries of millionaire movie stars.
An Associated Press review of a Department of Revenue report on the program found that $82 million of the $330 million in film spending eligible for the tax credits in 2009 went to pay the salaries of nonresident actors earning more than $1 million.
Under the program a film production can apply for a tax credit equal to 25 percent of a film’s production and payroll costs. In 2009 film companies applied for a total of $82.4 million in credits.
Critics have complained the state shouldn’t be giving tax breaks to Hollywood stars, but supporters say that without the program, there would be virtually no feature films shot in Massachusetts.
by Scot Mussi | Jan 18, 2011 | News and Updates, Uncategorized
Lost in discussion about Gov. Brewer’s FY11-12 budget proposal is the fact that she proposes to control future state spending by limiting revenue (and expenditure) growth to an ongoing 10-year rolling average. While we would prefer a limit based on the state’s population and inflation, this is a positive foray into controlling future state spending with a couple of important caveats.
First, the spending limit needs to be constitutional. The constitution, in fact, already has a spending limit, although it is so high that its meaningless. After all, if the current limit didn’t control spending when revenues jumped 50% over a three-year period, it will never control spending. Arizona needs a constitutional limit with the appropriate flexibility to allow a legislature to override the limit with a supermajority vote.
Second, the governor’s proposal would direct any “surplus” (revenues that exceed the spending limit) in the following manner:
- Debt reduction
- Rollover reduction (another form of debt)
- Filling the Rainy Day Fund
- One-time capital projects
- Tax rebates
To begin with, how state revenues are appropriated are decisions that should be left to the legislature, period. Having the constitution yet again direct where appropriations go is partially what got us into this mess to begin with. However, because the first three priorities can reach an end point (debt can be paid off, for example), there is a compelling argument to take care of those items first, as long as it doesn’t encourage new debt.
Items number 4 and 5, however, should be left to the legislature. There should be no requirement enshrined in the constitution (assuming the limit were constitutional) that one-time capital projects be funded at all, let alone in favor of reducing taxes. Again, prioritizing spending is the job of the legislature.
Finally, when it comes to reducing taxes, rebates are the worst way. Sending checks to people who have already worked to earn their after-tax dollars is better than a kick in the shin, but it does nothing for economic growth nor does it provide any incentive to work to earn that next after-tax dollar.
The legislature should be able to decide whether to give rebates, reduce tax rates across-the-board, or spend it on one-time capital projects. A robust debate would ensue and frankly, that’s ok.
So while improvements to a new state spending limit can and should be made, Governor Brewer deserves credit for intending to leave a solid fiscal reform as part of her legacy.
by Scot Mussi | Jan 7, 2011 | News and Updates, Uncategorized
If you thought Pres. Obama was a died-in-the-wool liberal, who would risk his presidency (and the number of Democrats in Congress) on his ability to ram through as much of a leftist agenda as quickly as possible, you were right. But if you’ve also concluded that he was no Bill Clinton in the sense that he would not triangulate like Clinton and that Obama simply did not possess the ability make a political shift toward the center in order to get re-elected, well, we’re all about to find out.
Now that the mid-terms are over, Obama is taking practical steps to demonstrate that his official team (i.e. those who work for him in the White House) will shape his campaign. Obama is now courting big business, he’s hired as his chief of staff a businessman who criticized Obama’s financial markets regulations, and other similar changes are expected. The message: I will listen. The reality? Who knows?
Presidents can re-invent. Obama already got his health care bill, and the financial oversight bill, and the stimulus, and so forth, so the first two aggressively liberal agenda years weren’t a total waste. Then came the elections, which were clearly a referendum on his agenda. The bully pulpit is powerful, however, and he knows it. Just because the first two years were repudiated, doesn’t mean the next two won’t be rewarded. People can often have short memories. So if Obama has decided that to remain viable he needs to moderate his positions, and if he’s also decided that indeed wants to be viable, then a Clinton-like pivot is forthcoming.
by Scot Mussi | Dec 17, 2010 | News and Updates, Uncategorized
There’s been much discussion about ASU professor Paul Bender’s eligibility on Arizona’s Independent Redistricting Commission. Bender appears not to qualify because he is the Chief Justice of the Fort McDowell Nation Supreme Court (commissioners generally cannot have held any other public office within the previous three years).
But there’s another and more obvious reason Bender should not be on the commission. It seems he has an agenda that doesn’t comport with the language of Prop. 106, which is now part of Arizona’s constitution.
Bender told the Yellow Sheet Reports, “I was really disappointed in the results of the first commission. The primary purpose was to get politics out of it and to make more competitive, less-safe seats – more districts in which there is real competition – to see who would win. The first commission reduced the amount of competitive districts rather than making it larger. I really believe this is an important
process, and believe it’s important to get it going right in Arizona.”
Bender is flat wrong. It may have been the intent of Jim Pederson, who financed Prop. 106 and later ran as a Democrat for U.S. Senate, to have more competitive districts (i.e. fewer districts held by conservatives), but whoever crafted the language for Pederson didn’t make competitiveness a high priority.
ARTICLE IV, PART 2, SECTION 1, PARAGRAPH 14 states:
(14) THE INDEPENDENT REDISTRICTING COMMISSION SHALL ESTABLISH CONGRESSIONAL AND LEGISLATIVE DISTRICTS. THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE MAPPING PROCESS FOR BOTH THE CONGRESSIONAL AND LEGISLATIVE DISTRICTS SHALL BE THE CREATION OF DISTRICTS OF EQUAL POPULATION IN A GRID-LIKE PATTERN ACROSS THE STATE. ADJUSTMENTS TO THE GRID SHALL THEN BE MADE AS NECESSARY TO ACCOMMODATE THE GOALS AS SET FORTH BELOW:
A. DISTRICTS SHALL COMPLY WITH THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION AND THE UNITED STATES VOTING RIGHTS ACT;
B. CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICTS SHALL HAVE EQUAL POPULATION TO THE EXTENT PRACTICABLE, AND STATE LEGISLATIVE DISTRICTS SHALL HAVE EQUAL POPULATION TO THE EXTENT PRACTICABLE;
C. DISTRICTS SHALL BE GEOGRAPHICALLY COMPACT AND CONTIGUOUS TO THE EXTENT PRACTICABLE;
D. DISTRICT BOUNDARIES SHALL RESPECT COMMUNITIES OF INTEREST TO THE EXTENT PRACTICABLE;
E. TO THE EXTENT PRACTICABLE, DISTRICT LINES SHALL USE VISIBLE GEOGRAPHIC FEATURES, CITY, TOWN AND COUNTY BOUNDARIES, AND UNDIVIDED CENSUS TRACTS;
F. TO THE EXTENT PRACTICABLE, COMPETITIVE DISTRICTS SHOULD BE FAVORED WHERE TO DO SO WOULD CREATE NO SIGNIFICANT DETRIMENT TO THE OTHER GOALS. (Emphasis added.)
The first commission followed the letter of the law. The result ended up being fewer contested general election campaigns. Republicans and Democrats held safer seats, but Republicans held even more than before Prop. 106. It was a stinging defeat for Pederson.
Bender doesn’t intend to similarly follow the letter of the law. Before competitiveness can move up the chain of priorities, it must be weighed against the potential detriment to the other goals. In other words, the other five goals have higher priority. As a constitutional law expert, Bender knows this. It doesn’t matter what he or other commissioners want. Drawing district lines according to the constitution is pretty clear cut. As someone who sat through many of the statewide hearings 10 years ago, I know there isn’t much wiggle room after the first five goals are met.
Bender is not eligible because of his position with the Fort McDowell Supreme Court, and he is not qualified because he intends to sidestep the constitution in order to fulfill his own agenda.
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