NH Watchdog

Grant Bosse Launches Phantom Campaign for Congress

2009-11-20T23:48:00.002-05:00

NH Watchdog has moved. Please visit NewHampshireWatchdog.org.

TGIFriedman- Big Government Part II

2009-11-20T12:03:00.000-05:00

Josiah Bartlett Center Launches News Site- NewHampshireWatchdog.org

2009-11-19T00:10:00.000-05:00

The Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy marks the one-year anniversary of its Watchdog Project by launching a news and information website designed to deliver the Center's ground-breaking reporting, commentary, and features. NewHampshireWatchdog.org will publish stories from investigative reporter Grant Bosse, Center President Charlie Arlinghaus's weekly column for the Union Leader, and updates on the Center's government transparency project overseen by Jay Flanders.

"For the past year, the Josiah Bartlett Center has provided the most comprehensive and authoritative coverage of the New Hampshire budget, the JUA Lawsuit, and how the Granite State is implementing the federal stimulus package," Bosse said. "New Hampshire Watchdog will give us a platform to share that coverage with our readers in a more dynamic and interactive way."

Over the past two weeks, the Josiah Bartlett Center has been the first to report several important stories, including the threat to the financing of Manchester's civic center, the rash of errors in the federal government stimulus oversight program that led to the creation of phantom Congressional Districts, and the impact that the health care bill under consideration in Congress could have on New Hampshire's medical liability laws. The new website will host a library for the nearly 1,500 reports filed by the Watchdog Project over the past year as well as discussion boards for public debate on state policy.

"As traditional media outlets cut back on the resources they can devote to complex stories, we're providing the depth of investigative journalism needed in a democratic society," added Arlinghaus. "As the Watchdog Project continues to grow, we're thrilled to be able to give New Hampshire residents better access to their government and its decisions."

Visit the news site at NewHampshireWatchdog.org.

The Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy is a free market think tank based in Concord, New Hampshire. For more information go to www.jbartlett.org.

Happy Blogoversary- New Hampshire Watchdog Turns One!

2009-11-19T00:01:00.002-05:00

One year ago today, the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy launched the Watchdog Project, promising to bring investigative journalism back to New Hampshire government. Over the past year, we've provided the best coverage of the state budget, the JUA lawsuit, and New Hampshire's implementation of the stimulus package.

As we enter our second year, we move our online publishing to a new platform, NewHampshireWatchdog.org. This news site will not only host our in-depth and breaking news, but provide more interactive access to our popular features, including Charlie Arlinghaus's weekly column, our Sunday Book Review, and Jay Flanders outstanding work on government transparency. Please visit NewHampshireWatchdog.org today, and reset your bookmarks.

The news site also lets you sign up for our New Hampshire Watchdog newsletter, send in news tips on stories we should cover, and leave comments both on our news stories on our blog. We hope you will find the new platform both education and entertaining, and make a daily must-read for keeping up with New Hampshire government.

See you at NewHampshireWatchdog.org.

Grant Bosse
Editor
New Hampshire Watchdog

PS- Later today, we will have breaking news on how the national health care debate could hamstring New Hampshire laws, and on the latest on inflated jobs estimates in the stimulus package.

Recovery.org removes phantom Congressional Districts

2009-11-18T18:16:00.001-05:00

The federal website set up to track how the government is spending $787 billion in stimulus money has corrected the errors in the database which showed 440 phantom Congressional Districts across the country, including three new ones in New Hampshire. Recovery.gov now shows that New Hampshire has received $285 million in the First Congressional District, $213 million in the Second, and $197 million that hasn't been assigned to either district.

Federal officials blamed the phantom districts on data entry mistakes from stimulus grant recipients. Earlier this week, the Obama Administration was forced to remove 60,000 jobs from its stimulus report card after finding 12 recipients who over-reported the number of jobs created or saved by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The Washington Examiner has found over 75,000 jobs in the stimulus report that don't exist. Reporters David Freddoso and Mark Hemingway have created an interactive map of bogus jobs, such as a $1,000 grant for a single lawn mower that is credited with saving 50 jobs.

Your Guide to the Stimulus, District by (Phantom) District

2009-11-18T10:57:00.000-05:00

Bill McMorris has compiled all 440 phantom Congressional Districts on the Recovery.org website. The vast amount of bad data in the stimulus oversight project shows that it can't honestly be dismissed as just a few typos.

A debacle of the first order

2009-11-18T09:30:00.000-05:00

Uber-blogger Glenn Reynolds sums up the increasingly ridiculous stimulus tracking website, Recovery.gov.

That whole thing has been a debacle of the first order. From the people who were supposed to return competence and transparency to the federal government.

Stimulus Help Line Advised Recipients to Enter Bad Data

2009-11-18T09:08:00.000-05:00

ABC's Jonathan Karl follows up his report on stimulus money going to non-existent Congressional Districts. He finds even more errors in the projects in actual Congressional Districts, and at least one stimulus recipient who was advised to inflate his job estimates by the Administration's Help Line.

ABC News does not allow us to embed their videos, but you can watch the report here.

NH Representatives Respond to Phantom Congressional Districts

2009-11-18T08:52:00.000-05:00

Adam Krauss at Foster's Daily Democrat has gotten reaction to this week's news of massive errors in the Recovery.org database from New Hampshire's two Representatives in Congress.

Matt Robison, chief of staff for Rep. Paul Hodes, D-Concord, said "there's no question that this was a serious mistake and an example of sloppy record-keeping by the administration and Paul Hodes believes we need real answers and an accurate picture of the situation that working families are facing."

Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, D-Rochester, said the typos were discovered because of the "unprecedented level of transparency and disclosure" at Recovery.gov. "While it is unacceptable for Recovery.gov to have any typos, I am pleased that the administration is working to immediately correct them," she said.

No reaction yet from the Congressman from the mythical 4th, 6th, 27th, and 00th Districts.

Top Dem slams Recovery.gov errors

2009-11-18T08:20:00.000-05:00

Fox News interviews Rep. David Obey, Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, about the rash of errors plaguing the stimulus oversight project at Recovery.gov.

In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, Obey called the inaccuracies on Recovery.gov "infuriating" and said the success of the government's stimulus package has been "obscured by the silly mistakes."

"In my judgment, someone who doesn't know which congressional district they're in doesn't have enough of a clue to receive taxpayer money in the first place," Obey said.

"When you put out information that turns out to be inaccurate, you shouldn't be surprised if the public says, 'Hey, do they know what they're doing?'" he added.

The new health care bureaucracy

2009-11-18T07:32:00.002-05:00

By CHARLES M. ARLINGHAUS

True health care reform will allow more options and more choices. The current plans in Washington create a central control that transfers authority from the people to the government and from the state to the federal government. Whether you believe in greater government spending or not, this is exactly the wrong approach.

Anytime Washington gets involved in any policy decision, Washington writes all the rules and tells everyone what to do. Health care is no exception. What started as a plan to find ways to cover people who don't have insurance transformed into thousands of pages of new regulations, mandates, prohibitions, oversight and general central control.

The federal government does not currently set mandates for health insurance; each state does to varying degrees. The new health care bills would transfer most of that authority to Washington. Washington will write the rules because Washington knows best.

Does Washington want to set up a few basic minimums that should be included? No. It wants to set up minimum coverage levels higher than many people's insurance today, maximum coverage levels, specific programs that every policy must include and a new administrative office to review and approve plan designs, plan changes and premium changes.

Generally, the more things a health insurance plan covers, the more expensive it is. Higher co-pays or deductibles will reduce the amount of financial risk and, therefore, the amount of the premium. More expensive plans will cover a higher percentage of "actuarial value," the amount you are expected to cost by statistical averages.

A high-deductible plan might make a lot of sense for a healthy young person, who will be covered against a catastrophe, but still have an affordable premium and, therefore, will buy insurance rather than avoiding it.

However, under the proposed reform, high deductibles are not allowed. New plans must cover at least 70 percent of value. You can keep the plan you have unless it's a budget plan. Budgets and cost-sharing are not going to be permitted. Never mind that most economists think that consumer involvement in costs is a good way to reduce the rate of premium increase.

On the other hand, while we want you to have insurance, we also don't want it to be too good. If your insurance coverage is too good, we're going to tax it. At the levels being considered in the Senate bill, New Hampshire state employees' coverage is about 25 percent too generous. In addition, about 25 percent of employers in New Hampshire give a benefit that the government thinks is too generous. Too nice to your workers? We'll tax that.

It's Goldilocks government at its best. We don't want plans that are too big or plans that are too small. Every plan needs to be just right.

Instead of Goldilocks making these judgments, we'll have a health choices commissioner. The commish will be assisted by the creation of more than 100 new bureaus and federal programs, including the Health Benefits Advisory Committee.

Our new health choices commissioner will have the authority to decide what falls into the just-right range of policy choices that are preapproved for you to choose.

Whether the final bill includes a government-run "public option" or not, the new regulations on private policies amount to more or less the same thing as the government actually running the plan. The "choices commissioner" will be able to approve or deny premiums, dictate coverage levels and "negotiate" prices. So the government will decide what coverage you can have, what it will cost and how much providers will get paid.

There are other ways to make changes in health care that don't involve a large new office in a concrete building in Washington making the rules for everyone in America.

Louis Brandeis believed that change could come from a single state serving as a laboratory of democracy to "try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country." In theory, we could watch what happened in a state like Massachusetts and decide if it would work here.

The current proposals in Washington are the exact opposite of Brandeis' approach. A giant new bureaucracy won't allow different states to experiment with different things. Limiting plans to a narrow range of choices -- not too expensive, not too cheap -- eliminates any choices and innovation even in the design of individual plans. Centralized government planning with strict limits on thinking outside the government box does not traditionally lead to innovation.

Charles M. Arlinghaus is president of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, a free-market think tank in Concord.

NH Stimulus Director responds to Phantom Congressional Districts

2009-11-18T07:30:00.000-05:00

Orville "Bud" Fitch, Deputy Attorney General and Director of New Hampshire Office of Economic Stimulus, has responded to news this week that the federal government's Recovery.gov database has created phantom Congressional Districts across the country.

Responding to an inquiry from the Josiah Bartlett Center, Fitch says he learned about the problems with the Recovery.gov database upon returning to the state yesterday.

Preliminary information is that this may stem from reports filed by folks who received funds directly from the federal government and report directly, not through the State's process. We worked hard to ensure congressional district data was accurate on the reports filed by State ARRA fund recipients. We are attempting to identify whether the non-existent congressional district data stems from input errors from these reports filed by others or if they involve entities doing work in NH who have headquarters in other states where they have the congressional districts listed. The federal reports that recipients of ARRA funds are required to submit have fields for the Congressional District where the primary work site is and also for the Congressional District where the recipient's headquarters is located. If one is not careful during input and when reading, the two could be confused.

Fitch added that he has asked his staff to look into the errors, and determine if the faulty data came from the state reports he submits or from individual recipients. Reporter Bill McMorris has found 440 phantom districts nationwide which are listed as receiving $6.4 million from the Americand Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Administration tries to explain away stimulus errors

2009-11-17T15:27:00.002-05:00

Responding to rash of errors in its tracking of the $787 billion stimulus package, the Obama Administration has mounted a defense of its $84 million web boondoggle.

Obama special adviser G. Edward DeSeve writes on the White House website that the errors are minor compared to the overall to the massive bill.

First, the mistakes are RELATIVELY few, and don’t change the fundamental conclusions one can draw from the data. Even if as many as 5-10% of the reports or 5-10% of the totals are wrong (and we don’t think it is that high), that still means the Recovery Act saved or created between 600,000 and 700,000 direct jobs in its first seven months – more than most experts predicted when it passed. And most leading experts agree that – whatever the recipient reported total should be – the actual number of jobs saved or created is about double that, because the recipient reports don’t include direct payments to individuals, the jobs created by Recovery Act tax cuts, and the jobs created when workers on Recovery Act projects spend their paychecks.

The Recovery.gov team even weighed in on Twitter, passing the blame for the slew of faulty job numbers and phantom Congressional Districts on recipients making mistakes on the reports they submitted.

Did you know? Unless an egregious error is noted, Recovery.gov posts data exactly as it is reported by recipients.

But the Board overseeing the $84 million Recovery.gov project admits it never checked to see that the data going into the database was accurate. Ed Pound is Director of Communications for the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board.

“People make errors, and we’ve found people are making errors in these reports,” Pound said…

Recipients file their reports on a password-protected site. That information is then relayed to officials who oversee the recovery.gov website to post, Pound said. Unless an egregious error is noted, Pound said they post the information exactly as it is received.

“Our job is data integrity, not data quality,” he said.

In New Hampshire, the stimulus website shows that 92.5% of all jobs "created or saved" by the stimulus are in Concord, likely the result of how state officials reported how they were spending the money to Washington. Of the 3,000 jobs reported by New Hampshire stimulus coordinator Bud Fitch, over 2,000 were public school teachers, and nearly all were working for state or federal governments.

As the Administration tries to explain away its ability to track how the government is spending $787 billion in taxpayer money, it lacks any explanation for how the stimulus has failed to meet the Administration's rosy projections, or why the same bureaucrats should be trusted with America's health care industry.

$6.4 Billion Stimulus Goes to Phantom Districts

2009-11-17T12:31:00.001-05:00

Bill McMorris, who I quoted in this morning's story on the 440 phantom Congressional Districts that received funding under the stimulus.

The site’s monitors, however, are not too savvy about America’s political or geographic landscape. More than $2 million was given to the 99th District of North Dakota, a state which has only one congressional district. In order to qualify for 99 districts, North Dakota would have to have a population of about 60 million people, almost 24 million more people than California.

The stimulus revived 8 recently retired congressional districts. Pennsylvania’s 21st District has received just under $2 million in funds. Mississippi’s 5th District and Oklahoma’s 6th received $1 million from the legislation, respectively. All three were eliminated by the 2000 census.

Many other recipients carried the banner for congressional districts that have been defunct for decades. South Carolina’s 7th took the cake, garnering more than $27 million in stimulus funds, despite being eliminated in 1930. And Virginia’s 12th District may have been written off at the start of the Civil War, but it must carry some sentimental value in Old Dominion–it received more than $2 million, according to recovery.gov.

The stimulus helped to create 35 congressional districts in Washington D.C. and the four American territories, all of which have no congressional districts. These areas received $5 of the $6.4 billion distributed to the non-existent districts.

$84 million for a great website, with tons of functionality. Too bad they didn't bother to check to see if the data going in was garbage.

Mark Steyn tours the 00th Congressional District

2009-11-17T08:20:00.001-05:00

Over at National Review Online, Mark Steyn explores the political implications of making up Congress Districts, like the Obama Administration has done with the stimulus package.

Reading those jobs numbers, I can't be the only resident of New Hampshire's Second Congressional District who dreams of relocating to the "00 Congressional District", land of 2,873.9 newly created jobs. What a great name! Because in the Obama budget you can always use a couple extra zeroes.

I like to think of it as somewhere up around the Fourth Connecticut Lake or the Indian Stream by the old bootlegging routes in from Quebec. I drive around in the forlorn hope that one day on a rutted Class VI road deep in the woods, just over the washed out culvert, I'll round the bend and see the sign saying "Now Entering The 00 Congressional District. This $47,000 sign brought to you by the America Recovery & Reinvestment Act", and the Emerald City of Oo will rise before me, its streets paved with Stimulus green and lined with dancing fountains of sparkling H1N1 vaccine and Obamatronic statues that bow as you pass by as if you're the Japanese Emperor and they sing "Be Our Guest" in a faintly metallic voice. And I'll be greeted by 2,873.9 gnarled old stump-toothed loggers with an average of 2.7 fingers between them, now federally retrained as green jobs czars, NEA performance artists, end-of-life counseling coordinators and Joe Biden speechwriters...

92.5% of all NH Stimulus Jobs in Concord

2009-11-17T07:12:00.000-05:00

According to the federal government's Recovery.gov database, which tracks how state governments are spending the $787 billion stimulus package approved last year, 92.5% of all New Hampshire jobs "created or saved" by the legislation are concentrated in the State Capital of Concord.
According to the New Hampshire summary page, the government credits the American Relief and Recovery Act with creating or saving 3,528.8 full-time jobs across New Hampshire. 3,264.4 of those jobs are listed under Concord zip codes. Outside of Concord, only a few communities have more than a handful of jobs credited to the stimulus; 37 in Manchester, 25 in Salem, 47 in Portsmouth, and 14 in Durham.

Orville "Bud" Fitch oversees Governor John Lynch's Office of Economic Stimulus. Last month, he reported that the stimulus had created or saved 3,007 full-time equivalent jobs statewide through September 30, 2009. The federal website relies on reports from individual grant recipients, as well as the state's report every three months.

The Onion covers Obama Teleprompter Malfunction

2009-11-17T06:15:00.001-05:00

You know, when you've lost the Onion...actually, they destroy pretty much everybody.

Obama's Home Teleprompter Malfunctions During Family Dinner

Stimulus Package doubles size of Congress

2009-11-17T00:01:00.006-05:00

The political appeal of the $787 billion stimulus package was that it allowed the Obama Administration to spread the money across all 435 Congressional Districts in an attempt to win votes from politicians eager to bring home the bacon in rough economic times. But reports by the Obama Administration's Recovery.gov database show that the money wasn't limited to those 435 districts. It also went to 440 Congressional Districts that don't exist.

Reporter Jim Scarantino of the Rio Grande Foundation broke the news yesterday that the stimulus tracking website listed millions in federal funds for projects in ten bogus New Mexico districts. Within hours, colleagues at other state think-tanks had published stories detailing the massive errors in their state's stimulus disclosure databases. By late-afternoon, ABC News and the L.A. Times had picked up the story, prompting an angry reaction from Democratic Congressman David Obey, who blasted the Administration's lax oversight of the nearly $1 trillion spending package.

Reporter Michael Noyes of the Montana Policy Institute investigated how his state could have received funding in 13 separate Congressional districts, when it has only one Representative.

Ed Pound, director of communications for the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, tells the Montana Policy Institute that his organization posts whatever information is reported by stimulus grant recipients, and doesn't check to make sure it's actually true.

"Our job is data integrity, not data quality," he said.

The Recovery.Gov website was set up in February with a budget of $84 million.

Overall, Bill McMorris of the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity calculates that $6.4 billion of the stimulus package has been distributed to 440 phantom Congressional Districts, which the Administration claims created over 28,000 jobs at a cost of $224,500 each.

The news of the mythical Congressional Districts comes on the heels of an admission by the Obama Administration that 60,000 jobs had to be cut from its latest stimulus report after finding faulty data from a dozen stimulus recipients.

Reported problems with the stimulus jobs data are so widespread that the Washington Examiner's David Freddoso and Mark Hemingway have published an interactive map of bogus jobs created or saved by the stimulus.

Obama Administration gives New Hampshire three new Congressional Districts

2009-11-16T15:06:00.004-05:00

Good news for all those Congressional candidates facing tough primaries next fall. The Obama Administration's stimulus package has created three or four more Congressional Districts in New Hampshire.

According to the summary of stimulus jobs "created or saved" in New Hampshire, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has created 3.2 jobs in the 6th District, zero jobs in the 4th District, and two jobs in the 27th District. New Hampshire, of course, only has two Congressional Districts.

The site also lists a whopping 2,873.9 jobs in the 00 Congressional District, which is presumably where former Celtic Hall of Famer Robert Parish lives.

Hattip: Jim Scarantino at New Mexico Watchdog, who discovered the problems with Recovery.org in his state. This appears to be a nationwide problem with the confusing reporting requirements imposed on recepients of grants under the stimulus package.

2 lawyers wrote their own meal ticket

2009-11-16T10:47:00.003-05:00

The Nashua Telegraph runs an AP story on one of the most egregious cases of rent-seeking I've ever seen.

Every lawsuit filed or even threatened under a California law aimed at electing more minorities to local offices - and all of the roughly $4.3 million from settlements so far - can be traced to just two people: a pair of attorneys who worked together writing the statute, The Associated Press has found. The law makes it easier for lawyers to sue and win financial judgments in cases arising from claims that minorities effectively were shut out of local elections, while shielding attorneys from liability if the claims are tossed out.

The law was drafted mainly by Seattle law professor Joaquin Avila, with advice from lawyers including Robert Rubin, legal director for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. Avila, Rubin's committee and lawyers working with them have collected or billed local governments about $4.3 million in three cases that settled, and could reap more from two pending lawsuits.

Basically, these two daring entrepreneurs decided to go into the subsidy farming business in California. They push through a law that not only forces local governments to write them fat settlement checks, but also shields them from the consequnces of frivilous lawsuits. Win-Win, for them.

How's Your Bailout? Automotive Edition

2009-11-16T09:33:00.001-05:00

The Wall Street Journal reports that General Motors is getting ready to pay back some of the money it borrowed from the federal government ahead of schedule. That sounds like good news, until you learn that it is paying back the loan with money cash it got from the auto bailout.

General Motors Co. plans to begin paying back a $6.7 billion loan it owes the U.S. government starting late this year, putting it on track to potentially repay the entire note by the middle of 2011, said a person familiar with the matter.

But in a move that could be controversial and risky, the car maker plans to use other money it received from the government to pay back the borrowing.

How's Your Bailout? Financial Edition

2009-11-16T09:31:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post reports that 46 firms that received money from the Troubles Asset Relief Fund, otherwise known as TARP or the federal bailout, "had missed required dividend payments to the government as of the end of September".

Analysts expect more bailed-out firms to fail in the months ahead. Others may survive but will struggle to repay the government. Steven Rattner, the former head of the government's efforts to bail out the auto industry, said recently that the full public investment in GM is unlikely to be repaid. Meanwhile, AIG is dismantling itself, selling healthy subsidiaries at what critics say are bargain prices in an all-out effort to get cash to repay the government.

About $400 billion of federal investments remain in the corporate sector, much of it channeled through TARP. Critics of the program say losses were inevitable, in many cases.

There was a reason private investors didn't want to give these failing firms their money. It was a bad investment. Congress was more than willing to invest our money, though.

The FDA is out of control

2009-11-16T00:15:00.000-05:00

I had missed this story on Friday. The New York Times reports that the Food and Drug Administration blames to ban alcoholic beverages with caffeine, unless the manufacturer can prove to federal bureaucrats that they are safe.

In a statement, the Food and Drug Administration said it had told nearly 30 manufacturers of the drinks that unless they could provide clear evidence of safety, it would “take appropriate action to ensure that the products are removed from the marketplace.” Officials did not say how long such a determination might take.

The drinks, which combine malt liquor or other spirits with caffeine and fruit juices at alcohol concentrations up to about 10 percent, have become increasingly popular among college students. In a news conference, Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, the agency’s principal deputy commissioner, said their consumption was associated with increased risk of serious injury, drunken driving, sexual assault and other dangerous behavior.

I hope the Obama Administration leaves me along the next time I enjoy an Irish coffee. Or a Red Bull and vodka. (Okay, I hate Red Bull and vodka.) The FDA appears to be operating under the assumption that they get to arbitrarily decide where their regulatory powers begin and end. They haven't bothered to find out if these products are dangerous. They don't see any need to actually present evidence to ban the products until the prove they are safe. This
"Precautionary Principle" sounds like common sense, but it is actually an insidious way to ban any behavior that regulators don't like. Proving no harm is a huge, counterfactual burden for any manufacturer to clear. The FDA's failure to approve new drugs kills more people than it saves. Now, they want to bring that same failed approach to the grocery story.

Sunday Book Review- It's Getting Better All the Time

2009-11-15T13:00:00.000-05:00

The late Julian Simon once bet doomsayer Paul Erlich that the price of a set of five precious commodities would drop from 1980 to 1990. Erlich thought that our limited resources would dwindle in the face of surging populations. Simon thought that human ingenuity would find ways to improve life for more and more people. Simon was right. He wanted to repeat the bet from 1990 to 2000, but the details were never settled. He would have won again, as the real price of the five commodities fell another 19% over the decade.

Simon died of a heart attack in 1998 at the age of 65, but his unyielding optimism in the face of the world's problem led Stephen Moore to finish Simon's manuscript, published as It's Getting Better All the Time: 100 Greatest Trends of the Last 100 Years.

How has the United States changed over the past century? Is life truly better now than it was in the past? Using statistical reports and other historical materials, Moore (fiscal policy studies, Cato Inst.) and the late Simon (business administration, Univ. of Maryland) argue that for the most part people entering the new millennium are much better off than their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. The areas covered include health, economics, race relations, safety, environmental issues, and women's rights. A number of charts and graphs, well complemented by an extensive index and a bibliography, shows the positive changes that have taken place over the past 100 years. Readers will appreciate the information provided by these colorful graphics, which readily allow for additional research on subjects of interest. (Library Journal)

Simon and Moore do not suggest that the challenges we face are not daunting, or important. Or that we can blithely ignore them as they will be inevitably solved. Rather, they provide staggering evidence that by tackling these problems with innovation and freedom, we can solve them faster and cheaper than you might think.

Expanded gambling not always sure thing

2009-11-15T12:35:00.000-05:00

Kevin Landrigan leads off his weekly column in the Nashua Telegraph by reporting a glitch in the proposal to put video slot machines at the state's racetracks.

As it turns out, VLT gaming appears to meet the definition of a state lottery game. Voters approved more than a decade ago an amendment to the state Constitution which says that all profit from lottery games has to go to education.

For the layman, the essential difference is that at a VLT, all players are competing for one big jackpot. Theoretically at least, two people sitting next to one another playing a slot machine can win the jackpot at the same time.

Gaming Commission Chairman Andrew Lietz has confirmed that he would be asking Attorney General Michael Delaney’s office for a legal opinion on this subject.

Lots of other good stuff in the column, as always.

NH Retirement System reform may hit cities and towns

2009-11-15T12:01:00.000-05:00

Shira Schoenberg leads her Capital Beat column in the Concord Monitor with some good old fashioned, green eyeshade, public policy reporting on the problems facing the New Hampshire Retirement System.

Actuarial consultant Gabriel, Roeder Smith & Co. is recommending that the retirement system raise the rates for employer contributions by an average of 22.68 percent in 2011. The increase would be lowest for state employees and highest for local police officers, firefighters and teachers.

"This is going to be a good-size hit on (municipalities') budgets," said Barbara Reid, government finance adviser for the New Hampshire Municipal Association.

Dean Michener, director of governmental relations for the New Hampshire School Boards Association put it this way: "This kind of increase is just not sustainable."

Don't worry. She's got plenty of the campaign tidbits that make the column a must-read for political junkies as well.

NH Building Aid not sustainable

2009-11-15T11:12:00.000-05:00

Karen Langley in the Concord Monitor reports on the state's Building Aid Program, which is currently funding by borrowing money to give to local school districts.

The state pays out about $45 million in partial reimbursement of school building costs annually. The money was included in the state budget's general fund until 2009, when an increasingly tortured economy pushed legislators to borrow the aid.

Borrowing the money can work as a temporary salve but would have a crippling effect if continued, the state treasurer has told members of the legislative committee commissioned to study the program. If the state continues bonding at current rates, the annual debt service will reach $50 million by 2020, said state Treasurer Catherine Provencher.

No Guarantees: Eagle Times subsidy is wrong

2009-11-15T10:23:00.002-05:00

The Union Leader comes out against the New Hampshire government backing a loan for a local newspaper.

One is the Eagle Times, the Claremont newspaper that folded earlier this year only to be reborn under a new publisher. The council agreed -- unanimously -- to have the state guarantee 75 percent of a $250,000 line of credit to the publisher. That's $181,500 for which taxpayers are on the hook if the paper goes out of business again.

This is an outrageous risk of taxpayer money.

You will get no argument from us about newspapers' value to a republic. But the civic services journalists perform are beside the point. A newspaper is a private enterprise. The state's duty is to spend taxpayer money on legitimate public services that only the state can provide. Bankrolling a business -- any business -- is not one of those functions.

Obama proposes Federal Subway Administration

2009-11-15T10:14:00.002-05:00

Is there any challenge in this country for which the Obama Administration won't seek a federal takeover?

The Obama administration will propose that the federal government take over safety regulation of the nation's subway and light-rail systems, responding to what it says is haphazard and ineffective oversight by state agencies.

Under the proposal, the U.S. Department of Transportation would do for transit what it does for airlines and Amtrak: set and enforce federal regulations to ensure that millions of passengers get to their destinations safely. Administration officials said the plan will be presented in coming weeks to Congress, which must approve a change in the law.

The proposal would affect every subway and light-rail system in the country, including large systems in Washington, New York, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

State Finance Directors Warn of More Trouble Ahead

2009-11-14T11:00:00.004-05:00

The Wall Street Journal reports that next year's state budget problems will likely be larger than this year's.

Short-term budget gaps have battered states as revenues plummeted during the recession. Aided by about $250 billion in funds from the stimulus package expected through the end of next year, states managed to close the gaps this year. But both finance directors, speaking at a Pew Center on the States event in Washington, were pessimistic about their states' futures beyond fiscal 2011.

"We're facing a cliff in 2011 when stimulus dollars run out," said Mitchell Bean, director of the Michigan House Fiscal Agency. "There is not an end in sight, even in recovery."

Welcome to the NH Blogosphere

2009-11-14T10:51:00.002-05:00

Adam Krauss has done a fine job covering New Hampshire politics for Foster's Daily Democrat. He wrote some outstanding stories on the revenue sharing debate in this year's budget. Now, he's started his posting political tidbits on a new blog called Soundings.

A Narrow Victory for the New Hampshire Economic Recovery Coalition

2009-11-13T14:23:00.003-05:00

That was a close one. Forces in Maine tried to remove our neighbors from the New Hampshire Economic Recovery Coalition by lowering Maine's income tax.

A law that would have lowered the state's income tax but imposed sales taxes on a variety of services is on hold now that opponents have collected enough signatures to place a repeal of the law on the June 2010 ballot.

Maine's secretary of state announced Nov. 9 that sufficient signatures had been collected.

The bill to revamp the state's tax system was approved by the Maine Legislature in June and signed by the governor.

Following last week's rejection of the Spending Cap, Maine is clearly doing its part to help the Granite State. But hold off on the celebratory parades in Portsmouth and North Conway. Maine voters have a chance to reinstate the lower income tax rate next year.

The Cost of Downshifting to Granite State Taxpayers

2009-11-13T14:16:00.000-05:00

Tom DeRosa asked me to stop by for the NH GOP's weekly podcast. We discussed the cost of downshifting, from the Congress to state budgets, and from the state to local taxpayers.

TGIFriedman- Big Government Part I

2009-11-13T12:15:00.000-05:00

New Hampshire may have to lift Charter School moratorium to get federal aid

2009-11-13T11:05:00.000-05:00

Kevin Landrigan reports on the Nashua Telegraph that New Hampshire officials are applying for $75 million in federal funds from the Department of Education, but might not qualify unless it lifts its Charter School moratorium.

It’s likely some state education laws will have to be changed for the state to become eligible, the state educators said.

The state has a moratorium on additional, state-created charter schools. New charter schools can still open up in the state as long as they are first approved by local voters.

The Race to the Top law encourages charter schools; Barry said existing federal advisories have warned states against having any caps on charter schools.

Maine is not eligible to apply for any of the money because there are no charter schools in that state, Barry said.

Concord lawyer honored for fighting for free press

2009-11-13T10:02:00.000-05:00

I was honored to attend last night's Nackey Loeb Dinner in Manchester to benefit the Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications. The Union Leader reports on this year's honoree for his work in opening up government records to the public.

Concord attorney William Chapman said winning the Nackey S. Loeb First Amendment Award is like getting an award for skiing. Fighting for a free press and open access to the government isn't work, he said, it's fun.

Chapman, of the Concord law firm of Orr and Reno, was honored last night at the seventh annual Loeb First Amendment Award Honors dinner at the Radisson Hotel for his 37 years of work in media law.

Chapman is considered a top authority on New Hampshire's freedom of public access and media law and has argued dozens of cases involving access to records and government proceedings on behalf of New Hampshire media outlets. Chapman also helped set the standard for protecting reporters' sources in criminal cases and public access to court and government records.

Our work on the Josiah Bartlett Center often relies on getting access to public records from state officials, who are sometimes cooperative and sometimes not. As the distinction between free speech and free press continues to diminish in importance, we are happy to salute Mr. Chapman for his life's work.

Robert Foster, the recently deceased publisher of Foster's Daily Democrat, received the annual Quill & Ink Award for his years of work putting out one of New Hampshire's finest newspapers. His contributions to journalism are noted, and will be missed.

Half done on health reform

2009-11-13T09:13:00.002-05:00

David Broder's column in the Washington Post defines the conventional wisdom in Washington. He relaibly reflects what the Inside the Beltway crowd think about politics, and even he is acknowledging that the numbers used to justify the House-approved health care bill don't add up.

But, as many sympathetic voices have been telling them: Unless you find more realistic ways of paying for the promises included in the bill, you are simply setting up the public for more frustration -- and yourselves for a political backlash.

At least a dozen health and budget experts have filled the Web and the airwaves with warnings that the House bill simply postpones the cost controls needed to finance the vast expansion of insurance coverage and Medicaid benefits envisaged by its sponsors.

Amendment X: Ethics in Colorado- Update

2009-11-12T15:28:00.003-05:00

Last month, we noted the efforts of Todd Shepard at the Independence Institute to get members of the Governor's Cabinet in Colorado to file their ethics disclosures, at required by Executive Order.

Then, we found out that Governor Bill Ritter had re-issued the order to require his Cabinet officers to file new ethics disclosures, while ignoring the missed filings.

Since then, the Independence Institute learned that Ritter's climate advisor, Alice Madden, was also on the payroll of the liberal Center for American Progress. Faced with public disclosure of this conflict, Madden has been forced to resign from CAP.

This shows why it is not only important to put ethics codes on the books, but also for independent watchdogs to hold government accountable to them.

A crusader for the public's right to know

2009-11-12T11:00:00.000-05:00

The Concord Monitor asks how much of what goes on at Town Hall should the public have the right to know?

The short answer: nearly everything.

Trouble is, reasonable - and sometimes unreasonable - people can disagree over the specifics. In New Hampshire and across the country, there will always be public officials working hard to keep the public's business from the public. That's where lawyers like Bill Chapman come in. And thank goodness.

Chapman, who has long represented the Concord Monitor and other news organizations, will receive the annual First Amendment Award this evening from the Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications in Manchester. Chapman, who has fought for open government in New Hampshire for nearly four decades, is well deserving of the honor. The beneficiaries of his hard work, after all, are each and every resident of the state - citizens who have the right and ability to learn more about the workings of their government and court system because of his efforts.

George Will warns of dollar's demise

2009-11-12T10:00:00.000-05:00

In his column in the Washington Post, George Will warns that this year's federal spending spree is endangering the long-term value of American currency.

The fiscal 2009 budget deficit, triple that of 2008, was 10 percent of GDP. Lawrence Lindsey says probable policies will produce deficits of 7 percent of GDP for a decade. Ronald Reagan's worst deficit was 6 percent of GDP and for only one year.

Lindsey -- a former member of the Federal Reserve board of governors and director of George W. Bush's National Economic Council (2001-02) -- says Americans' net worth has dropped at least $13 trillion since the recession began in December 2007. What is to be done?

Americans could suddenly begin saving substantially more, but this would deepen and prolong the recession. Alternatively, America could reflate the value of its assets by printing money. Lindsey says it is already doing that -- printing bonds promiscuously and lending money to banks at negligible rates, money that banks can use to buy the bonds. This sharply increases the money supply, which sets the stage either for inflation -- too much money chasing too few goods -- or for recovery-snuffing higher interest rates to try to prevent inflation. Or for something like Japan's lost decade -- banks pouring money into government bonds rather than the real economy.

Health Care Reform Hits Home

2009-11-12T08:15:00.000-05:00

New Hampshire Public Radio tackles health care reform this morning on "The Exchange".

Guests

* Ned Helms, director of the New Hampshire Institute for Health Policy and Practice at the University of New Hampshire
* Charlie Arlinghaus, president of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy

"The Exchange" airs from 9am to 10am, and reairs at 8pm.

Death by Government: Cuban Energy Policy

2009-11-12T00:05:00.001-05:00

Centralized planning claims another victim: Cuba's energy grid.

Cuba has ordered all state enterprises to adopt "extreme measures" to cut energy usage through the end of the year in hopes of avoiding the dreaded blackouts that plagued the country following the 1991 collapse of its then-top ally, the Soviet Union.

In documents seen by Reuters, government officials have been warned that the island is facing a "critical" energy shortage that requires the closing of non-essential factories and workshops and the shutting down of air conditioners and refrigerators not needed to preserve food and medicine.

Arlinghaus on your TV

2009-11-11T14:09:00.003-05:00

Well, if you live in the Manchester area anyway. Charlie Arlinghaus will be talking about the Verizon Wireless Arena bonds and municipal retirement stories this evening on "Two Live Joes" on MCAM, Channel 23 from 8:00 to 8:30.

N.H. Backs Bank Loan To ‘Eagle Times' Owner

2009-11-11T13:28:00.003-05:00

John Gregg has an excellent piece in the Valley News on the state loan guarantee to the new owners of the Eagle-Times in Claremont.

Donahue, who has worked at the BFA since it was created 17 years ago, said this was the first guarantee involving a New Hampshire newspaper that he could recall, but that there are “no restrictions that would preclude us from doing it.”

Gov. John Lynch, who presided over the Executive Council meeting, said in an interview after an appearance at Dartmouth College on Friday evening that he had no problems with the loan guarantee.

“It's really more of a job development, economic development type of issue,” said Lynch who said he has not met Sample and was not involved in putting the deal together. “I think it was the right thing to do, and it came up through the appropriate channels.”

The Eagle Times ran a photograph and congratulatory letter from Lynch, welcoming the return of the newspaper, on the front page of its first post-bankruptcy edition on Oct. 12. (emphasis added)

So we have a newspaper running a picture of the Governor who pushed through their financing on the front page. Why would anyone have a problem with that?

Armistice Day

2009-11-11T12:15:00.001-05:00

Posted on behalf of Charlie Arlinghaus

Today used to be called Armistice Day in remembrance of the armistice signed on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month that ended what was called The Great War in 1918. The moving poem "In Flanders Fields" was written by a soldier and is the reason we wear poppies at remembrance ceremonies.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Stimulus Numbers Continue to be Exaggerated

2009-11-11T11:56:00.003-05:00

Bill McMorris does not surprise our regular readers when he reports that the job creation numbers attributed to the stimulus package are exaggerated.

Authorities continue to overestimate the number of jobs “created or saved” by the stimulus package, according to an independent review conducted by the the Boston Globe.

While Massachusetts recipients of federal stimulus money collectively report 12,374 jobs saved or created, a Globe review shows that number is wildly exaggerated. Organizations that received stimulus money miscounted jobs, filed erroneous figures, or claimed jobs for work that has not yet started.

The review saw some agencies that had reported creating dozens of jobs created recant their stories.

“There were no jobs created. It was just shuffling around of the funds,’’ said Susan Kelly, director of property management for Boston Land Co., which reported retaining 26 jobs with $2.7 million in rental subsidies for its affordable housing developments in Waltham. “It’s hard to figure out if you did the paperwork right. We never asked for this.’’

At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, we remember.

2009-11-11T11:00:00.003-05:00

As we mark Veterans Day, and thank those among us who risked their lives to secure our freedom, it's appropriate to share our recent report on the number of veterans currently living in New Hampshire. We originally published this report on Memorial, but it is even more appropriate today. More than 120,000 of our neighbors in the Granite State served in times of war and peace. This data is from the 2007 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau.

To all those who served in the U.S. military throughout the years, we will never forget your service and sacrifice. To those serving today, God Bless and a safe return home.

NH Veterans by Date of Service

A Red Ink Trainwreck

2009-11-11T09:30:00.000-05:00

Cato's Dan Mitchell has the rare ability to translate arcane policy into plain English. His latest video tackles how the Pelosi health care bill will bust the budget.

Hattip: Powerline

Retiree hike hits with thud

2009-11-11T08:55:00.002-05:00

Tom Fahey reports in the Union Leader on the cost of shoring up municipal pension programs.

Towns, cities, school districts and the state itself could see pension costs for police, teachers and other public workers increase by an average of nearly 23 percent July 1, 2011.

Consultants for the New Hampshire Retirement System yesterday recommended the rate hike. The steep increase stems from a combination of investment losses -- 18 percent for the year that ended June 30 -- and the need to catch up with a long-term funding problem that began building nearly two decades ago.

The rates won't take effect until the NHRS board of trustees formally adopts them in September 2010. At that point, they will become a factor in budget planning for towns and school budgets. A year ago, rates were projected to go up between 25 and 35 percent.

Charles M. Arlinghaus: City's revenue sharing loss was inevitable

2009-11-11T08:48:00.002-05:00

By CHARLES M. ARLINGHAUS

The state's decision to freeze revenue sharing payments was not a criminal act. It doesn't constitute fraud. It isn't unconstitutional. It shouldn't send your town into turmoil, and it's not even a bad idea. It may have a negative impact on the Verizon Wireless Arena, but every change in state law shouldn't lead to a lawsuit.

Manchester's bond payments on the arena are guaranteed by the city's portion of the state meals and rooms tax revenue. Neither the state nor the city is on the hook for anything other than the city's share of that payment, about $4.6 million last year.

It is a risky setup for bondholders because the state meals and rooms payments are not guaranteed and have gone up and down in their short history.

The meals and rooms tax was passed in 1967 to provide additional revenue for the state, but also for the towns. The state tinkered with the share going to towns and eventually took it all. Starting in 1995, state lawmakers decided to bring back some degree of revenue sharing.

They created a formula that started small, but dedicated most of the annual rise in revenue toward increasing the share sent to the towns. In theory, the town share of the total revenue would increase until municipalities were finally receiving 40 percent of the total. Right now, they are up to about 25 percent.

In the last budget, the governor originally proposed suspending revenue sharing entirely for two years. In the end, the Legislature proposed freezing it at 2009 levels for two years.

The state canceled the other major municipal revenue sharing program anyway, and lawmakers were convinced they couldn't cut too much more without burdening towns. Manchester Mayor Frank Guinta at the time fought to restore some of the funding for fear of defaulting on the arena's bond payments.

Any revenue sharing program goes up and goes down. This program has a history over 42 years of rising, sometimes declining, sometimes disappearing entirely. Strangely, bondholders were willing to invest in a proposition secured by such an unreliable source.

If the state behaved as it had in the past, payments would go down. If it behaved as most states do in difficult economic times, payments would go down. If the state ever passed a tax cut (less likely), payments would go down.

The city's bond counsel warned the state that changes to state law might cause a lawsuit. He cited a Washington case to suggest the state can't repeal a tax the city used to pay bonds. But while a state might be obligated if it used a tax to secure a bond, it is just not reasonable to think that state action can be vetoed because of what one city decided to do with its aid payment.

Just as important, there's no reason for anyone to be surprised by this action. The governor's spokesman told the Josiah Bartlett Center when we broke the story on Monday that "Moody's raised this as a risky funding scheme when this was put together, pointing out that meals and rooms revenues are not guaranteed to be constant." There's some fear that bondholders might sue, but they knew the risks at the time and don't have much cause for surprise.

The bond counsel's proposed solution is even sillier than a lawsuit. He suggests that the old version of the law be grandfathered for any city that used the payment to secure bonds. In other words, Manchester would be rewarded for taking a risky decision, while the rest of the state would operate under a different law. Payments to your town would be frozen, but not payments to Manchester.

To be fair, paying for the arena is going to be difficult for Manchester, but every city and town in the state faced similar struggles and similar budget uncertainty. Many towns noticed the financial difficulties the state was having. I think I even wrote about it once or twice.

My own town of Canterbury is a good example of the common sense of citizen selectmen. Canterbury is not particularly frugal, just average. Our taxes have gone up by an average 5 percent each year for the last 15 years. But selectmen knew that state aid was going to be cut, so they didn't count on getting it. Instead, they cut the town budget by 6 percent, and the school budget declined as well. The end result was that our property taxes went down by 8 percent, which was needed relief to people fighting a recession.

The recession has been tough on every budget. It was expected that the state would freeze aid. The right approach is the one fiscally responsible towns have taken. Long-term obligations put pressure on the rest of your budget, but it doesn't have to stop you from cutting taxes even when state aid is frozen.

Charles M. Arlinghaus is president of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, a free-market think tank in Concord.

Amendment X: Government Transparency in Michigan

2009-11-11T00:20:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, we highlighted the fine work being done by the Show-Me Institute to open Missouri government to the public. Today, we look at the Mackinac Center's ongoing battle to shine a light on the hidden workings of Michigan's government. After been given a bill of almost $7 million for a FOIA request.

$6,876,303.90, to be exact. That's what the Michigan Department of State Police is charging for documents that I requested via the Freedom of Information Act regarding the state's handling of federal homeland security grant money from 2002 to present (see image at right). This is definitely a record for Mackinac Center FOIA requests. In fact, this may be a record for any FOIA request. Even the $3,438,151.95 down payment seems likely to be a speck above the average FOIA asking price.

The Michigan bureaucrats who are blocking public access to public records should be promptly removed from public service. Attempting to keep public data hidden away with the rouse of an unpayable price tag is obscene, and should not be tolerated by anyone claiming to value open government.

Too little focus on health costs

2009-11-10T10:00:00.000-05:00

BIA President Jim Roche writes in the Concord Monitor on the need to examine the costs of the health care bills making their way through Congress.

It's remarkable, therefore, that health care reform under consideration by our congressional delegation in our nation's capitol seems very likely to add to health care costs, not reduce them. What happened to "bending the cost curve" and eventually lowering it?

Pick your source - the Congressional Budget Office, the Lewin Group, the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, and others - they conclude that health care reform legislation under consideration will, incredibly, increase costs, not lower them.

Lots of attention is being paid to expanding government programs like Medicaid, or creating new ones like a "public option" insurance plan, to cover more uninsured and underinsured individuals. Unfortunately, the federal government's long track record of grossly under-funding health care providers for their cost of caring for individuals in existing government programs like Medicaid and Medicare makes many employers understandably concerned about expanding them or creating new ones.

More under-funding from the federal government means more cost-shifting to the business community in the form of higher health insurance premiums. How is this reform?

Amendment X: Government Transparency in Missouri

2009-11-10T08:47:00.000-05:00

Our colleague Aubrey Spalding at the Show-Me Institute found the state's transparency website lacking, since it didn't allow the public to access the data behind the spending and revenue reports it offered. So she asked for them to do better.

While MAP had readily searchable tables of employee salaries, state spending, tax revenues, and tax credits, the large databases behind those tables weren’t available for download as a whole; instead, they were exportable only in bite-sized tables. This made analyzing, say, state expenditures during the past decade impossible.

I left a voicemail; they left a voicemail. I left another voicemail. And then, on Friday, I was told that the web page was up.

That’s right, not only did the folks at MAP fulfill my request, but they thought they might as well fix this problem for everyone. Here’s the link: http://mapyourtaxes.mo.gov/MAP/Download/Default.aspx. On this page, you can download: state expenditures for the past decade, either by year or as a gigantic database; stimulus revenues and expenditures; a database of employee salaries for the past three years; and the amounts that the state has given away in tax credits during the past decade. Oh, and the spreadsheets for this year are updated each night — so you don’t get stale data.

We need to remind our state officials that such transparency is not only possible; it's necessary.

Watchdog on the Radio- Tuesday Morning Edition

2009-11-10T07:00:00.000-05:00

Grant Bosse will join WGIR's Charlie Sherman at 7:37am to discuss his exclusive story on the threat of default on the bonds for the Verizon Wireless Arena.

Mayor-elect Gatsas reacts to possible bond default

2009-11-10T00:10:00.000-05:00

(MANCHESTER) Mayor-elect Ted Gatsas says Manchester taxpayers and budget writers won't be on the hook if the bonds on the Verizon Wireless Arena default. The current State Senator and Alderman, and incoming Mayor reacted to the Josiah Bartlett Center 's report that changes in the state budget could prevent the Manchester Housing and Redevelopment Authority from making its bond payments in 2010.

In 2000, the city funded construction of the Civic Center, since renamed the Verizon Wireless Arena, through non-recourse bonds funded through the city's share of Meals and Rooms Tax Revenues. This year's budget capped those revenues for two years. Last week, Moody's Investor Services downgraded the bonds to "junk bond" status, and warned of a possible default next year. But Gatsas is confident that any problems with the arena won't spill over into the city budget.

"These bonds don't affect city's bond capacity or bond rating," Gatsas says.

Gatsas opposed the state budget when the Senate approved HB 2 in June. He spoke out at the time against cutting state revenue sharing to balance the $11.5 billion spending plan.

"The downshifting is something I had a concern with, as does every community in the state," Gatsas added. "With the JUA in question, what would be the next position that the state may take?"

The budget anticipates restoring the old revenue sharing formula in 2012, and Gatsas hopes the temporary suspension will go away as the economy recovers.

"Everyone hopes the economy is going to recover by then," Gatsas explained. "I would share the hope that the economy would change."

WMUR tackles downshifting in Health Care Bill

2009-11-09T18:48:00.002-05:00

WMUR's Josh McElveen reports on opposition to the Pelosi Health Care Bill because of its reliance on state budgets to pay for many of its mandates.

The question of what it could cost states has piqued Gov. John Lynch's interest. He spoke with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi about his concerns last week.

Analysts said they believe governors will play a major role in health care reform before anything is passed.

"There's little question that the current bill does cost-shift to the states," said Charlie Arlinghaus of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy. "The question is how much. So, I think you are going to see some pressure to try and eliminate some of that cost shifting."

Video at the link.

State Revenue Sharing Decision could Endanger Manchester Arena

2009-11-09T13:42:00.001-05:00

The state’s decision to freeze revenue sharing under the Meals and Rooms Tax could endanger the financing for the Verizon Wireless Arena in Manchester. Last week, Moody’s Investors Services downgraded the bonds used to fund the arena, held by the Manchester Housing and Redevelopment Authority, from Baaa3 to Ba2. The lower rating puts the bonds in “non-investment grade” or “junk bond” status, meaning they have only moderate security of future repayment. Manchester Mayor Frank Guinta notified Governor John Lynch of the decision in a letter on Friday.

Read the full story below:
State Revenue Sharing Decision could Endanger Manchester Arena

Mayor Guinta letter to Governor Lynch

2009-11-09T13:40:00.000-05:00

Manchester Mayor Frank Guinta's letter to Governor John Lynch concerning the possible default of bonds on the Verizon Wireless Arena.
Guinta Letter 11-06-09

Email from Moody’s Investor Services to William Sanders

2009-11-09T13:35:00.001-05:00

Notice from Moody's Investor Services on downgrading the bonds against the Verizon Wireless Arena held by the Manchester Housing and Redevelopment Authority.
Moody's Notice to downgrade bonds on Verizon Wireless Arena

Letter from Robert Beinfield to Walter St. Onge

2009-11-09T13:30:00.002-05:00

Manchester Bond Counsel Robert Beinfield's letter outlining the city's concerns with Governor John Lynch's proposal to suspend revenue sharing under the Meals and Rooms Tax.
Beinfield Letter to Walter St. Onge

$700,000 in stimulus for offshore wind turbines

2009-11-09T11:02:00.000-05:00

You know what's really going to give the New Hampshire economy an immediate boost? Offshore wind turbines! Because nothing gives small business owners an incentive to grow their workforce like a windmill, in the water. UNH is getting $700,000 from us, through the stimulus package, for an experimental program that anchors wind turbines in deep water to the ocean floor. Seacoast Online reprints the UNH press release.

Within the next year, CORE will install a wind turbine with a 25-foot diameter on a 60-foot tower floating in 170 feet of water just south of the Isles of Shoals, where a mooring grid is already in place – and permitted – from UNH's Atlantic Marine Aquaculture Center. The site is six miles offshore and one mile south of White Island. CORE researchers will equip the 10-kilowatt turbine with extensive instrumentation to measure wind, wave, and temperature effects on the turbine itself, the platform on which it floats, and the mooring lines that anchor it to the ocean floor.

I'm sure the folks at UNH are doing good work. Maybe some day, we will be getting 20% of our electricity from windmills, as the Department of Energy hopes. But does this really reach the level of an emergency stimulus package, or is it just another way for Congress to borrow from the future in order to buy support back home?

Telegraph slaps Court over cable ruling

2009-11-09T10:15:00.001-05:00

The Nashua Telegraph takes issue with a recent New Hampshire Supreme Court ruling, which decided that a landlord could not cut off an illegal cable hookup from a tenant who had stopped paying the rent.

That’s seems a bit of a stretch. Television and Internet service are not cited in the legislation, and although telephone service is protected, there is no indication that cable was a telephone provider in this case.

If the connection was illegal, as the landlord claims, then it should have been disconnected anyway, making this a poor case upon which to set such a broad precedent if that was the court’s objective.

With this ruling, the court has essentially put cable television in the same category as essentials like water, light and electricity. What’s next? “Cable stamps” for those who can’t afford a hook-up; or Internet assistance for those who qualify for fuel assistance and subsidized school lunch?

City pays consultants $200,000 to find savings

2009-11-09T09:12:00.003-05:00

Our friends at the Commonwealth Foundation pass along news that the city of Harrisburg is spending $200,000 on consultants to make the tough decisions for them.

Management Partners, Inc. suggested Lancaster needed to increase service fees and even cut staff. Of the 180 recommendations, the city acted on nearly half.

"Some of them we couldn't implement because of resistance from unions," Gray said. "Some of them we're still looking at and in the process of implementing."

The Commonwealth Foundation offers a radical, alternative approach.

Here is one suggestion: stop spending so much money on consultants ... or eliminate the budget office that can't do the job itself.

Amendment X: Education Reform in Wisconsin

2009-11-09T06:15:00.001-05:00

Bill Osmulski at the MacIver Institute reports that Wisconsin Republicans are taking up President Obama's call for education reform.

Wisconsin Republicans say they like what the President has to say about the need for education reform, even more so than state Democrats do. Only time will tell if it stays that way. Over the last 24 hours, WEAC's clout helped block sweeping merit pay reforms from passing in the legislature, while more modest changes were accepted.

Sunday Book Review- Super Freakonomics

2009-11-08T11:03:00.003-05:00

The LA Times' Gregory Hess pens a useful review of Steven D. Leavitt and Stephen J. Dubner's Super Freakonomics, the follow-up to 2005's best-seller Freakonomics.

The world, however, has changed since "Freakonomics," and now everyone questions the worthiness of economists during our current financial crisis. Can the Steves help us get our economic groove back? Yes. But let's first begin with what the authors do not claim to be, and what the book is not about -- they do not pretend in "Super Freakonomics" to be our economic saviors. They don't provide solutions to the financial crisis, subprime debt, CEO compensation or a template for healthcare reform.

Rather, the Steves wryly, humorously and almost sadistically remind us that we are slaves to our own failures to parse situations into basic economic components. They consider three key areas: first, we must understand individual incentives and how this drives strategic behavior; we also need to understand market behavior and how changes in government policy or social culture can help us to better understand individual incentives; and third, little can be understood without finding some data and thoughtfully dissecting it.

The examples the authors use in "Super Freakonomics" won't disappoint, though these are now more concentrated on edgier topics. Prostitution, terrorism and the altruistic indeterminacy of just about everything form much of the landscape in this book. Topics are simultaneously interesting and profoundly disturbing -- in other words, freaky. The book runs the gamut on prostitution -- from pimps to chimps -- teaching us about the hidden excitement of old-time Chicago family summer gatherings and that policemen enjoy more than just doughnuts on patrol. We also learn who becomes a terrorist and how they could hide themselves better from the prying eyes of cyber-profilers just by covering their spending and demographic trails. Grim stuff.

Freakonomics was a phenominal read, and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to think differently about complex problems. I haven't read the sequal yet, but I was certainly looking forward to it.

State backing loan for Claremont newspaper

2009-11-08T09:56:00.004-05:00

Further down in Kevin Landrigan's Sunday column is a note on a the Executive Council backing a loan for the new owners of the Claremont Eagle Times.

Sign of the Times

The council approved a state guarantee loan of up to $250,000 for the new publishers of the resurrected Claremont Eagle Times.

The loan is for working capital for Eagle Printing and Publishing, the company linked to the Pennsylvania media group that emerged as the suitor after its previous ownership sought bankruptcy protection four months ago.

The lenders will pay an interest rate of 5 percent for the first year and following that, the prime lending rate plus 1.25 percent.

For its part, the guarantee makes the state liable for up to 75 percent of any amount on which the group defaults.

Putting New Hampshire taxpayers on the hook for a private business is a fundamentally bad idea, especially since the loan is at the whim of elected officials rather than through an independant revolving loan fund. The implications of a newspaper existing because of the generosity of politicians is even more disturbing.

NH’s battle with feds over cash continues

2009-11-08T09:37:00.003-05:00

Kevin Landrigan reports on New Hampshire ongoing battle with the federal government over Medicaid payments.

The feds’ decision against the state’s claim was made on several grounds, among them that the state’s tax on hospital revenues used to generate bonus state Medicaid payments is invalid.

Then, state Health and Human Services Commissioner John Stephen argued that the tax isn’t on income or profit, but on hospital revenues, and therefore, an appropriate expense to claim.

For years, the state’s argument has been that the federal government has changed the rules of the reimbursement game and tried to apply them retroactively to New Hampshire.

Meet the New Press Podcast

2009-11-08T09:23:00.002-05:00

Grant Bosse joins Doug and Skip to talk about the Manchester Spending Cap, the latest Unemployment numbers, new media, and Health Care.

Part 1

Part 2

Note to Washington: Stop Helping

2009-11-07T10:40:00.001-05:00

Remember how the stimulus was supposed to keep unemployment under 8%?

Thanks to Innocent Bystanders, which updates this chart every month.

A Side Note on the Administration’s Defense of the Stimulus. The President and his economic team have claimed that the plan is working as intended, that they’re on track to save the original goal of 3.6 million jobs, but somehow, despite practically drowning in success, we’re going to have to live with high unemployment for years to come. Oh, and that everything is still Bush’s fault.

These claims have been debunked by a variety of sources, including the AP (and here), the Chicago Tribune, the Denver Post, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and blogs such as Political Math.

Federal Strings Trip New Hampshire Job Corps Center

2009-11-07T10:00:00.001-05:00

Union Leader reporter Jim Fennell reports that the U.S Department of Labor has canceled the bid process for a Job Corps Center in Manchester, following a disputer over whether union work rules would have allowed any New Hampshire firms to build it.

Anagnost said he spent most ofAC yesterday trying to find out when or if the bid process would restart. He also said he called on the help of the state's four legislators in Washington, D.C.

The Labor Department's decision came a day short of one month after North Branch Construction of Concord filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office. North Branch decried the Labor Department's requirement for a Project Labor Agreement (PLA) that the contractor contends mandates following union rules and paying into union benefit funds as a condition for bidding on the project.

The rules virtually disqualified every construction company in New Hampshire from bidding on the project. The Labor Department canceled the bid a day before they were required to respond to the North Branch complaint.

Spending Cap, Cash for Clunkers, and Unemployment

2009-11-07T07:42:00.001-05:00

Grant Bosse joins "Meet the New Press", which airs 9-11 on WEMJ, and streams live at GraniteGrok.com. Grant will be on at 9:35am. Check out their complete lineup.

The NH Watchdog, AKA Grant Bosse, the Lead Investigative Reporter for the Josiah Bartlett Center, joins us to chat the passage of the Manchester Spending Cap, the dismal October revenue report for NH, and the final numbers on the cash for clunkers debacle. Time permitting, we'll get his take on the latest unemployment figures. Stimulus saved jobs? Really?

Stimulus saves 473 jobs in district with only 290 teachers

2009-11-07T07:15:00.001-05:00

The Obama Administration is counting stimulus jobs the way Chicago normally counts voters. The Chicago Tribune investigates the Administration's jobs numbers and finds them lacking.

More than $4.7 million in federal stimulus aid so far has been funneled to schools in North Chicago, and state and federal officials say that money has saved the jobs of 473 teachers.

Problem is, the district employs only 290 teachers.

"That other number, I don't know where that came from," said Lauri Hakanen, superintendent of North Chicago Community Unit Schools District 187.

The Obama administration last week released the first round of data designed to underpin the worthiness of its economic stimulus plan, which so far has directed $1.25 billion to Illinois schools. That money has helped save or create 14,330 school jobs in the state, the administration claimed.

But those statistics, compiled initially by the Illinois State Board of Education, appear riddled with anomalies that raise questions about their validity, according to a Tribune analysis of district-by-district stimulus spending and other state data. Many local school officials were perplexed by the stimulus data attributed to their districts.

Given that's it Illinois, we can only wonder how many of the jobs "created or saved" are held by residents of local cemeteries.

Watchdog on the Radio

2009-11-06T15:46:00.000-05:00

Lead Investigator Grant Bosse will join WEMJ's "Meet the New Press" Saturday morning at 9:35am to discuss the Manchester Spending Cap, Cash for Clunkers, State Revenues, and whatever other subjects Doug and Skip bring up.

Listen Live at Granite Grok.

Mosca responds to Bouchard criticism

2009-11-06T12:13:00.005-05:00

Ed Mosca responds the Rep. Candace Bouchard's op-ed in today's Concord Monitor in our comments section. Since Bouchard led her column by claiming that "Edward Mosca gets his facts wrong", we're going to repost Mosca's complete response here.

The Representative's rant was a respnse to my op-ed, which exposed this $15 million boondongle. Just a quick response to the Representative’s rant, which is really all it deserves.

The Representative begins by claiming: “Edward Mosca gets his facts wrong.” According to her, what is a “fact” is that “Without renovating the interior, it would have been impossible to remove the asbestos and do necessary wiring and duct work.” This hardly qualifies as a fact. It is an assertion that the Representative does not support with any facts. It also begs a number of questions: Why not? Who says so? What is “necessary” wiring and duct work? That is, are we simply replacing what we have or are we doing more? Is the full $15 million in renovations necessary to remove the asbestos?

It certainly does not appear that the full $15 million is necessary to remove the asbestos. The Representative writes that: “there is only one major improvement included in the renovation plans: a sally port to safely transfer prisoners in and out of the building.” So we are not just putting things back the way they were. Of course, what is a “major improvement” and what is “minor improvement” is in the eyes of the beholder. Just how much of the $15 million in renovations necessary to remove the asbestos, and how much constitutes “major” and “minor” improvements?

The Representative cannot be taken seriously. She writes: “Furthermore, Mosca suggests this will cost the taxpayers $17 million in a year that budgets are tight. This is false and is an irresponsible attempt to scare the people of New Hampshire. The renovations will cost the state less than $1 million this year. Let's not confuse the state's biennial operating budget - the general day-to-day activities and expenses for all branches of state government - with the state's capital budget that deals with bonded projects for the construction, renovation, improvement and acquisition of buildings and facilities in the state.” What a totally fatuous argument! There is no money tree behind the Statehouse that pays for the “capital budget” versus the “operating budget.” The taxpayer pays for both.

She also writes: “the renovation of the courthouse will provide construction jobs.” Then, why don’t we build new county courthouses in every county? Indeed, why don’t we have multiple county courthouses, if building county courthouses is such a job creator? What the Representative conveniently leaves out is that jobs are lost whenever government takes money from us to “create” jobs. Has she looked at the price tag for the jobs the “stimulus” has supposedly “created”?

The Representative also misrepresents the op-ed to which she purports to be responding: “Asbestos had to be removed from the courthouse; not removing it was not an option.” Who said anything about not removing the asbestos “from the [Manchester] courthouse”? The two main points of the op-ed were that we don’t need the Manchester courthouse, given that the Nashua courthouse can accommodate both operations, and if we do keep the Manchester courthouse we shouldn’t be doing anything more than fixing the asbestos problem at a time when the Democrats out-of-control spending has bankrupted us at both the State and federal levels.

According to the Representative, one county courthouse is not an option because “During the 18 months that the court is being renovated, there will be fewer judges in the Nashua court than the judicial weighted caseload shows is needed for Hillsborough County.” Representative, do you really expect the “judicial weighted caseload” to say that the judiciary can get by with less? The judiciary, like you, believe that only the taxpayers can get by with less.

TGIFriedman- How to Cure Inflation Part III

2009-11-06T12:02:00.001-05:00

Here's the final installment of Milton Friedman's three-part cure for inflation.

If you put the bill online, people might read it

2009-11-06T10:14:00.000-05:00

And Nancy Pelosi absolutely doesn't want anyone, especially Congress, reading the House health care bill before they vote on it.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD that the speaker will not allow the final language of the health care to be posted online for 72 hours before bringing the bill to a vote on the House floor, despite her September 24 statement that she was "absolutely" committed to doing so.

House members are still negotiating important issues in the bill--whether it will provide taxpayer-funding for abortions, for example. Pelosi is pushing for a Saturday House vote, and a number of big changes will be introduced, likely less than 24 hours before the vote takes place (if in fact it does). The Rules Committee hasn't yet released its resolution, or rule, that must be passed before the bill can move from committee to the floor. The rule will set the terms of debate and determine what amendments are in order.

The bright side of a recession

2009-11-06T09:03:00.000-05:00

Governor John Lynch discusses the silver lining of New Hampshire economic dark cloud with Foster's Daily Democrat.

Gov. John Lynch told editors and managers at Foster's Daily Democrat Monday, "I think there is a silver lining. I think we need to use this economic recession that we're in as an opportunity to streamline state government and make it more efficient."

The nature of government is such that it encourages the expansion of public services — whether they are needed or not and whether or not the people are asking for them. Government in the United States has become the antithesis of sound business practices. However, there are times when government is forced to take several steps back and impose efficiencies.

Lynch's recent confrontation with the state's employees unions resulted in something good for the people of New Hampshire. Some 250 positions were eliminated, contributing to the successful ability save the state about $25 million in labor costs, as mandated by the Legislature.

Unemployment rate tops 10%

2009-11-06T08:42:00.004-05:00

According to Reuters, the national unemployment has jumped to 10.2% in October.

U.S. employers cut a deeper-than-expected 190,000 jobs in October, government data showed on Friday, driving the unemployment rate to 10.2 percent, the highest in 26-1/2 years.

The Labor Department said the unemployment rate was the highest since April 1983 and October's non-farm payrolls loss was the smallest since August last year. It revised job losses for August and September to show 91,000 fewer jobs lost than previously reported.

Analysts polled by Reuters had expected payrolls to drop by 175,000 and the jobless rate to edge up to 9.9 percent from 9.8 percent in September.

Imagine how high the unemployment rate will go if the government keeps trying to help.

Bouchard: Nothing frivolous in court spending

2009-11-06T08:07:00.003-05:00

House Public Works Chair Candace Bouchard justifies $17 million to renovate the Hillsborough County Courthouse in Manchester, when only $2 million is going towards asbestos removal.

There were significant safety concerns with the Hillsborough North courthouse that needed to be fixed. Asbestos had to be removed from the courthouse; not removing it was not an option.

Policy-makers looked at several alternatives and worked diligently to identify the most cost-effective approach to addressing this health safety issue. In 2007, the decision was made to remove asbestos from the courthouse. But after additional review and inspection, it turned out that this was not an option. Without renovating the interior, it would have been impossible to remove the asbestos and do necessary wiring and duct work.

Dolphins learn to save and invest

2009-11-05T12:23:00.001-05:00

Dolphins at a research facility in Mississippi are trained to clean their own tanks by bringing any litter they find to their trainers in exchange for a tasty reward. Sounds cute. The scary part is that not only have dolphins learned to save their litter over time to increase their yield, but they are even reinvesting their fish to bait seagulls into the tank, which they can cash in for even more fish.

Kelly has taken this task one step further. When people drop paper into the water she hides it under a rock at the bottom of the pool. The next time a trainer passes, she goes down to the rock and tears off a piece of paper to give to the trainer. After a fish reward, she goes back down, tears off another piece of paper, gets another fish, and so on. This behaviour is interesting because it shows that Kelly has a sense of the future and delays gratification. She has realised that a big piece of paper gets the same reward as a small piece and so delivers only small pieces to keep the extra food coming. She has, in effect, trained the humans.

Her cunning has not stopped there. One day, when a gull flew into her pool, she grabbed it, waited for the trainers and then gave it to them. It was a large bird and so the trainers gave her lots of fish. This seemed to give Kelly a new idea. The next time she was fed, instead of eating the last fish, she took it to the bottom of the pool and hid it under the rock where she had been hiding the paper. When no trainers were present, she brought the fish to the surface and used it to lure the gulls, which she would catch to get even more fish. After mastering this lucrative strategy, she taught her calf, who taught other calves, and so gull-baiting has become a hot game among the dolphins.

This means that dolphins now have a higher savings rate than the average American family. If Flipper starts getting involved with herring derivatives and interest-only mackerel loans, we'll be in real trouble.

Instead of a public option, give the public options

2009-11-05T08:05:00.000-05:00

In the Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby shares three ideas to make health insurance more accessible and affordable.

Tear down the barriers to buying insurance across state lines.
Under federal law, states are permitted to regulate “the business of insurance’’ as they see fit, and most have seen fit to allow the sale only of insurance policies licensed by their own insurance commissions. As a consequence, there is no competitive national market for health insurance; there are 50 state markets instead, most of which are dominated by a handful of insurers. This, says Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute, is the “original sin’’ of health insurance regulation.

When it comes to almost any other product or service, Americans would find a ban on interstate commerce and competition intolerable: Imagine being told that you could buy a car only if it was manufactured in your state. Consumers in the market for a mortgage are free to do business with an out-of-state lender; those in the market for health insurance should be equally free to do business with an out-of-state insurer.

Just like the Pilgrims: turkey, cranberry sauce, and a big screen TV.

2009-11-05T08:02:00.003-05:00

At Charlie's favorite blog, Carpe Diem, Mark Perry looks at Wal-Mart's continued contribution to America's economic recovery with its Thanksgiving specials.

We looked at the Wal Mart Economic Stimulus Plan last week.

Message sent: Restrain the city budget

2009-11-05T07:21:00.003-05:00

The Union Leader looks at Tuesday's election results, and concludes that Manchester voters want to limit spending.

In 2005, voters elected Frank Guinta over Bob Baines, who claimed that people don't mind paying taxes. In 2007, they elected Guinta over Tom Donovan, who wanted to spend more on schools. On Tuesday, by a wide margin, they elected Ted Gatsas over Mark Roy, who advocated higher spending on just about everything.

Voters also approved a charter amendment that will cap city spending and the tax rate, preventing either from rising faster than inflation. What's remarkable about the spending cap victory is that labor unions spent in the neighborhood of $30,000 on a mail, telephone and broadcast campaign to kill it. Still it passed by more than 1,500 votes.

The paper notes that Mayor-Elect Gatsas will be joined by a supermajority of Alderman who opposed the spending cap. Steve Vailancourt looks at the schizophrenic results at Red Hampshire.

Clunker pickups traded for new pickups

2009-11-05T00:04:00.000-05:00

The Associated Press does some old-fashioned investigation and finds that the Cash for Clunkers program help pick-up owners trade-in their gas-guzzling trucks, for new trucks.

The single most common swap — which occurred more than 8,200 times — involved Ford F150 pickup owners who took advantage of a government rebate to trade their old trucks for new Ford F150s. They were 17 times more likely to buy a new F150 than, say, a Toyota Prius. The fuel economy for the new trucks ranged from 15 mpg to 17 mpg based on engine size and other factors, an improvement of just 1 mpg to 3 mpg over the clunkers.

Owners of thousands more large old Chevrolet and Dodge pickups bought new Silverado and Ram trucks, also with only barely improved mileage in the middle teens, according to AP's analysis of sales of $15.2 billion worth of vehicles at nearly 19,000 car dealerships in every state. Those deals helped the Ford F150 and Chevy Silverado — along with Ford's Escape midsize SUV — climb into the Top 10 most-popular vehicles purchased with the government rebates. The most common truck-for-truck and truck-for-SUV deals totaled at least $911 million.

I've been describing the Cash for Clunkers program as a boondoogle, but I'm beginning to think debacle is bit more on the nose. What do you think?

SEA fires back at Lynch

2009-11-04T13:09:00.000-05:00

Diana Lacey launches another broadside against Governor John Lynch in this morning's Union Leader.

Lynch's layoff predictions were grossly overstated; the threat of "across-the-board" cuts was disingenuous at best. There were fewer than 300 full-time layoffs, and only in certain agencies.

Lynch gave his agency heads alternatives he would not entertain in contract negotiations. In Administrative Services Commissioner Linda Hodgdon's Oct. 27 column, she states: "Once the serious decision was made by the union to reject furloughs, the governor allowed department heads to be as resourceful as possible, and for that he should be applauded." Every taxpayer should be asking Lynch, "Why weren't you resourceful in the first place? Why did you try to take all that money from employees instead?"

State revenues off by $38 million

2009-11-04T12:02:00.001-05:00

The Union Leader reports on state revenues through October, which have come in below expectations, and added $38 million to the state's fiscal problems.

A monthly report from the Department of Administrative Services shows the state took in $204 million in taxes and other revenues last month, $12 million short of the month's budget target.

Through the first four months of this fiscal year, the state has taken in $585 million, instead of the $623 million the budget was built to have at this point. The figures include $97 million in revenue to the Medicaid program from the federal government.

The DAS report shows that overall, tax revenues this fiscal year are below last year's levels by $4.6 million, less than 1 percent. October is a major revenue producer because of the concentration of business taxes that are paid. December is the next big month on the tax calendar.

Stimulus saves 419.02 jobs in New Mexico

2009-11-04T11:25:00.001-05:00

That's not a typo. According to reporter Jim Scarantino at New Mexico Watchdog, the $787 billion stimulus package has created or saved precisely 419.02 jobs in New Mexico. Does that mean somebody is working 48 minutes per week?

The recovery.gov site is also reporting that $259 per capita in stimulus funds has been received in New Mexico.

The cost of the 419.02 jobs so far created by the 2009 stimulus funds comes to $628,990 per job.

The Obama Administration would have been much better off simply claiming credit for any positive economic signs, while saying that any negative signs would have been worse without the stimulus. Presidents always get far more credit and blame for the economy than they deserve. But by trying to micromanage the stimulus by tracking every hour of work supposedly created by government spending, President Obama has inadvertently confirmed that the only jobs government creates are government jobs, and it does so at a horrifically ineffecient rate. Give me $628,990. I promise I'll hire at least two people for that, and double the effectiveness of the stimulus.

Dispatch from the Philadelphia Airport

2009-11-04T10:45:00.003-05:00

Apparantly at the last Southwest gate in the country that hasn't put in those neat laptop desks...

Political pundits across the spectrum agree that yesterday's election results confirm whatever it is they were arguing before the election. Republicans point to comfortable wins in New Jersey and Virginia. Democrats trumpet the NY-23 Congressional special election. Clearly, the electorate and political mood of the country has changed since November 2008. It is less trusting of government intervention, and less willing to support massive public spending as a solution to every problem.

But November 2010 is as far in the future as November 2008 is in the past. Advocates for free markets and smaller government need not only to press their case, but hold politicians who won on that platform accountable.

Manchester's budget next year should be fascinating. The Queen City easily approved the Spending Cap and a Mayor who campaigned for it, along with 13 Democratic Aldermen who largely opposed the Cap, and a Cap supporting Republican in the traditional Democratic stronghold of Ward 10. And the Cap doesn't take effect until after next year's budget season, so the Board has one budget left without having to constrain its spending to the rate of inflation, but with a new Mayor who ran on a platform of holding taxes and spending down. This should be interesting.

Charles M. Arlinghaus: NH can do better than an 'F' in transparency

2009-11-04T07:16:00.002-05:00

By CHARLES M. ARLINGHAUS

New Hampshire routinely ranks among the worst states in the country on the transparency and responsiveness of its government. This one blind spot in an otherwise accountable government almost certainly contributes to the bitterness of recent policy confrontations.

In general, the people of New Hampshire have long subscribed to the philosophy that transparency, open meeting laws and public access to government records form the basic cornerstone of holding its government accountable. Our right-to-know law was an early sign of our commitment that the government is an agency of the people and its records and meetings should be readily available to us.

Our legislative Web site is a model of easy access to information, providing bill text summaries and access to any legislator's voting record with a convenient drop-down menu. In some states, watchdog groups spend hundreds of thousands of dollars developing this information privately so citizens can know what their elected officials do. Our elected officials provide it readily.
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On the other hand, much of our government's information is difficult to find or difficult to access. While the somewhat archaic language of our right-to-know law does provide access to data eventually, our state is only beginning to catch up in the technology to make that access easy.

In any state, there are two aspects of transparency. The first is the nominal strength of a state's freedom-of-information laws -- what areas are covered, what are excepted, what form the data are available in. By this measurement, New Hampshire is something of a middling state.

The Better Government Association, an Illinois-based group originally founded to thwart the growing influence of gangster Al Capone, conducts national studies. By its freedom-of-information ranking, New Hampshire's right-to-know law places us 31st in the country. It's not great, but not horrible.

The Better Government analysts also understand that state governments are a little behind the outside world in transitioning to the computer age when it comes to accessibility. In virtually every state, information is available through a gatekeeper. I am entitled to the government information, but I have to request it and wait for a bit while it is gathered, processed and sent.

In the BGA's responsiveness study -- how quickly the information is accessible, etc. -- New Hampshire received an F. To be fair, slightly more than half the states received an F, so we are not alone.

Most of us who have dealt with state administrators on right-to-know requests would not have guessed at these rankings. The administrators I've dealt with have been responsive and helpful. I think that is generally true. What we discover, however, is that many other states are doing a much better job. Part of the reason is more modern computer systems. The state's transition to a new system will dramatically improve the process.

For example, the Josiah Bartlett Center's effort to put the state's entire detailed transaction register online in a gatekeeper-free database is six months into a right-to-know request despite a strong working relationship between our staff and the state's. If I had to guess, the same data request that takes six months now will probably take days next year, after the new system is running and bugs are sorted out.

One example of why this matters is the current friction between the State Employees' Association and the administration. The SEA has become a huge supporter of placing all the state's financial information in a free and open database because so much of the union's disagreements with management are governed by information disputes.

The most recent issue happened when the union claimed the state has 1,400 part-time employees making $75 per hour. Its source is a summary statement a state department did for the Legislature. The department denied that data in a newspaper column. There's no way to know who's right without independent access to detailed payroll records. A public database would sort this out simply. However, the only option today is to submit an official request to people whose workload is stretched, and wait.

When a list of every detailed exception to the spending freeze was submitted to the Joint Legislative Fiscal Committee, legislators of all stripes eagerly pored over and questioned every check and every dollar. Easily accessible information without gatekeepers would make that kind of activity not an unusual sight, but typical and commonplace.

The current dreadfulness of our budget demands every available tool. We have the culture and soon the technology to at least be one of the states that doesn't get an F.

Charles M. Arlinghaus is president of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, a free-market think tank in Concord.

Amendment X: Buying Votes in Ohio

2009-11-03T16:18:00.000-05:00

When politicians vastly outspend their opponents on TV ads and direct mail, they are accused of trying to buy votes. Think of Jon Corzine in New Jersey today, or Michael Bloomberg in New York City, or Craig Benson here in New Hampshire a few years ago.

But Lynn Walsh at Ohio Watchdog reports that a local college Democrats group has gone a step further, and is actually paying $5 per vote.

The Ohio University College Democrats has found itself in the middle of a voting controversy. It all started with this e-mail; sent out by Kelli Galan, Vice President of Ohio University College Democrats, encouraging fellow group members to “march to the polls.”

The e-mail reminded students to vote and bring friends “in the same situation.” The e-mail went further than encouraging voting and promised money in return for voters in a specific voting ward. “Remember, if you bring a friend from 4th ward they are more then a friend, they’re 5 bucks!”

The Athens County Prosecutor is investigating the case.

Cap city spending: Amend the charter

2009-11-03T10:20:00.002-05:00

The Union Leader makes its case for approving the Spending Cap on the back of the Manchester ballot today.

Today, the people get to vote on the cap most aldermen wish would go away. The cap would do nothing more than prohibit city spending from rising faster than the inflation rate. That's it. Spending could still rise every year, just not as fast as before. There is no reason for aldermen, or anyone else, to be afraid of that minor restraint. But some people just can't stand the idea that they'll have to make tough decisions and actually set priorities when spending other people's money.

The Dead Weight Loss of Rent Seeking Behavior

2009-11-03T07:19:00.000-05:00

David Zetland teaches Environmental Economics and Policy at UC Berkley. Here he explains the strange and destructive behavior that happens when interest groups sink resources into rent seeking behavior.

In the end, he auction off the dollar for $3.75. Good work if you're in Congress.

GAO also discovers that Easter Bunny is a hoax; Santa Claus in doubt

2009-11-03T00:02:00.001-05:00

The Governerment Accountability Office has come to the stunning conclusion that taxpayers won't be getting their money back from the automotice bailout.

Taxpayers are unlikely to recover their full investment in General Motors or Chrysler, government investigators said Monday in the latest review to cast doubts that the government will recoup the $80 billion it poured into the two automakers.

The Government Accountability Office concluded that General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC likely won't be valuable enough for the Treasury Department to break even on its investment in the two auto companies that went though bankruptcy earlier this year.

Empty Cars on Commuter Rail

2009-11-02T14:41:00.001-05:00

Imagine is you will that a state wanted to build a massive commuter rail project connecting its largest city to the state capitol. In addition to hundreds of millions of dollars to build the rail line, the project would also lose millions of dollars annually, requiring taxpayer subsidies to operate. And what if the result were empty rail cars.

That's what happened in New Mexico, where reporter Jim Scarantino found empty railroad cars on the Rail Runner from Santa Fe to Albuquerque. The commuter rail line cost $400 to build, and is losing more than $13 million a year. Scarantino calculates that taxpayers are subsidizing each rider more than $10,000 per year.

In New Hampshire, the commuter rail project being pushed by the Department of Transportation would only cost $300 million to build, but we don't know how much it would lose each year.

Cash for whom? Clunkers program a lemon

2009-11-02T09:47:00.002-05:00

The Union Leader calls the "Cash for Clunkers" program a "colossal economic failure".

What that means is that instead of an average taxpayer cost of $4,000 per vehicle, as the Obama administration claims, the program's actual cost was $24,000 for each vehicle that otherwise would not have been sold.

And what did all that cash buy the American people? Detroit and the White House say it boosted auto production and stimulated the economy when it needed the most stimulating. But think about that. The government paid people $226 billion to buy cars in the summer instead of later in the year.

Using tax dollars to subsidize the destruction of functional automobiles is a remarkably silly idea, even if the government had been able to come up with some statistics to defend the program. But now we know that most of the people who trashed their used cars to get the program's benefit would have bought a new car even without the fatally flawed program.

Performance art: Your stimulus money at work

2009-11-02T09:40:00.003-05:00

The Union Leader argues that federal stimulus money would have been better used to fill in the state's budget hole than to subsidize arts programs.

So when the state recently received news that it would get $293,100 in federal stimulus money earmarked specifically to "save or create" jobs, where did it go? To arts programs, of course.

The New Hampshire Arts Council announced last week that the state will use the money to preserve 42 arts jobs (a highly questionable figure).

Among the jobs subsidized by this taxpayer money are: pianist educator, exhibition gallery assistant manager, bookkeeper, gallery manager, artistic director and office assistant. Also subsidized are eight visual artists and 16 performing artists.

The editorial points out that the money was earmarked for the arts by the NEA, and the state had no authority to transfer the cash to higher priorities.

Sustainability: The Path to Poverty

2009-11-02T00:10:00.000-05:00

Author and economist Steven Landsburg examines the case of the $10,000 suit.

Here’s a lovely suit of clothes that can be had for, oh, about $10,000. It’s the result of a project conceived by Drexel University instructor Kelly Cobb to make a man’s suit entirely from materials produced within 100 miles of her home. According to an article by Paul Adams in Wired magazine, the suit was produced by a team of 20 artisans, requiring a total of 500 man-hours.

Let’s see, that’s 500 hours of skilled or semi-skilled labor by artisans whose time is probably worth something on the order of $20 an hour. For about $10,000 I can have one made for you.

Landsburg adds that the project couldn't find 8% of the materials with 100 miles, but estimates they could have done so, and it would only have taken them a year and a half. More evidence that self-sufficiency, or sustainability, or whatever catchphrase you want to use to discourage the free exchange of goods and services, is the path to poverty. Landsburg also wrote the landmark Armchair Economist, which helped spark the Freakonomics wave of readable economics books.

Sunday Book Review- The Reagan I Knew

2009-11-01T11:12:00.001-05:00

David Pitt at Booklist tackles William F. Buckley's last book, The Reagan I Knew.

Buckley’s final book—he died while writing it—is quite deceptive. It appears to be a slight, even inconsequential chronicle of the author’s long friendship with Ronald Reagan, told through correspondence between the two men and also between the author and Reagan’s wife, Nancy. The correspondence, which spans the period 1965–98 (with one final letter, written in 2005), seems on the surface to be concerned almost entirely with mundane matters: thank-you letters written after a get-together, apologies for missed birthdays, etc. But look beneath the surface, and you’ll find a revealing portrait of two men: Reagan, a driven political contender who never gave up his decency or his sense of family, and Buckley, a tireless Reagan booster who used his many public forums to promote Reagan’s political agenda. It is also deeply fascinating to observe these two friends disagree vehemently over issues of great political import—for example, the future of the Panama Canal treaties—but they do so with civility and respect. That may have been one of Reagan’s greatest gifts: his ability to separate political and personal matters, to disagree with someone while remaining respectful and friendly. It would be easy, if you were skimming this book, to miss most of its subtleties. But it is, in truth, a deeply subtle account, full of insights not only into Ronald Reagan but also into William Buckley, his longtime friend, supporter, and (occasional) critic.

Publisher's Weekly provides a less positive review of the audio edition.

Buckley worked on this book—commemorating his 30-relationship with Ronald Reagan—up to his final days. He struggles to paint a picture of a more private Reagan, but the book sheds little fresh insight; instead, it is a scattershot compilation of Buckley's reminiscences and reprinted correspondence between the author and Ronald and Nancy Reagan. Malcolm Hillgartner performs a good balancing act, shifting from the essays to the letters with subtle changes that clearly indicate whose letter is being read. His most impressive feat is creating a clear yet subdued voice within the reading to indicate when footnotes or asides for clarification are being made.

We're going to need a bigger boat

2009-11-01T08:21:00.002-05:00

Joe Jordan at Nebraska Watchdog has blown the lid of the story of State Senator Kent Rogert who registered as a boat dealer in order to get out of paying sales tax on his 28-foot speedboat.

According to our investigation Rogert, who was elected in 2006, did not pay the sales tax because when he first registered the boat Rogert was given a dealer’s registration number: 019 AMT. Paying the sales tax on boats is not required if the owner is a boat dealer. But on Rogert’s Statement of Financial Interests, a document that many state employees including senators must file with the State of Nebraska, there is nothing to indicate that Rogert sells boats. And in a telephone interview with Nebraska Watchdog, Rogert said he is, ”… a real estate agent, not a boat dealer.”

The Lincoln Journal-Star followed up the story, and got Rogert backtracking on whether or not he's a boat dealer.

In a phone interview Monday, Rogert said it may look like he was just trying to avoid paying sales tax, but he does dabble in used boats.

Rogert, whose primary business is selling real estate, said he has not sold that particular boat, but he did buy and sell another boat this summer.

Boat dealers do not have to pay sales tax on boats they buy, but people who buy boats for their own use do.

When caught avoiding the taxes that he imposes on others, Rogert's response was the blame the reporter who broke the story.

Nebraska State Senator Kent Rogert called a Nebraska Watchdog investigation “completely inaccurate” even as questions continue to grow about Rogert’s failure to pay the sales tax on his speedboat.

I was told there would be no math- Part III

2009-11-01T08:02:00.003-05:00

The Obama Administration's War on Math continues apace. Annoyed that ABC's Jake Tapper would calculate the amount of stimulus dollar spent for every job that the Administration claims to have created or "saved", they call it "Calculator Abuse".

So let's see. Assuming their number is right -- 160 billion divided by 1 million. Does that mean the stimulus costs taxpayers $160,000 per job?

Jared Bernstein, chief economist and senior economic advisor to the vice president, called that "calculator abuse."

He said the cost per job was actually $92,000 -- but acknowledged that estimate is for the whole stimulus package as of the end of 2010.

No one seriously questions that government spending creates economic activity. But it does so by taking money out of the economy in the first place, either directly through higher taxes or indirectly through higher debt and inflation. It shouldn't be surprising that funneling $787 billion through the inefficient filter of Washington, DC would create jobs quite ineffeciently. The Obama Administration is trying to take credit for every bit of economic activity generated by its stimulus package. It should also take responsibility for the high cost of those jobs, higher taxes, higher debt, and a drag on other parts of the economy.