Money and Politics
Before I begin my second rant on politicians, I found a rare example of economically accurate humor. From The Onion, N. Korea Detonates 40 Years Of GDP: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/54113
Usually, my extreme position in economics finds few who will support it. Especially, it seems, with comedians. I don't know why it would be hard to make the idea that the minimum wage causes unemployment among those it is purported to help funny, but I guess it is. Anydangways, back to my second installment of State of the State: An in Depth Look at Shallow Politics.
The Race for Governor
Tommy Moore - Democrat (http://www.tommymoore2006.com/)
First of all, I want to applaud Mr. Moore for his website. While he only has three issues on it, he actually does say what he thinks about them in a bulleted list. I'll adopt that. Bulleted lists in honor of Mr. Moore. Ok, so I can't figure out how to do that.
Education
Aside from being wrong, he has all the usual hesitations on making public schools private. Not unusual and he defends those fairly well. He does however say that private schools have and I quote “NO ACCOUNTABILITY.” Which is wrong. They are obviously accountable to the rich people who send their kids there. I mean, when is the last time some didn’t expect a rich person to complain if what they paid for wasn’t up to their standard? Also, let’s talk equity between schools. There is this fear that giving vouchers will allow the rich to go to better schools (already this is a contradiction because private schools will be terrible because obviously they have NO ACCOUNTABILITY). And come on people, wake up. Schools are paid for with property taxes. The better the houses, the more property taxes, the better the schools. The rich didn’t get rich by being dumb. They know how to work around the system to make sure their kids get the education they want for them.
Health Care
Another bulleted list tells us what he has done for health care. For instance, he sponsored legislation for safety belts. Yeah! I love safety belts. I use ‘em all the time. I would never want to drive as fast or as carelessly as I do without them. No I’m serious. I would drive a lot slower and more carefully if I didn’t wear it. And don’t pretend like you wouldn’t too. Did you know that even though people survive crashes better, because they drive faster the crashes are worse and pedestrians are far worse off. Since I hate pedestrians too, good work Mr. Moore.
Aside from the seatbelt law, there’s not much more to his health care stuff. Or at least nothing specific that I can glean from his website. Everything is just how nice would it be to make sure people are healthy and wouldn’t it be great if people could get money from the government to make sure it happened. Sure great nice. But not once are the costs of such programs. In fact Mr. Moore, what is the cost of increased health care funding in terms of schools? How many teachers will you fire to make sure that the uninsured have health care? Just be up front with us politicians. There is no free lunch.
Job Creation
Mr. Moore says that he will not take a “hands off” approach to recruiting business to SC. I don’t know if he knows this, ‘cause he kind of doesn’t mention it, but it costs money to do this. Lots of money. You gotta give a little tax break here and a little subsidy there and when all is said and done you’ve fired a lot of teachers or just plain taken a lot of money from everyone in the state. I mean business is great, I love business. He also supported the “Education and Economic Development Act” which is designed to make sure that there is better communication between schools that aren’t doing so hot at teaching what businesses say that kids ought to know about. I don’t think we’d need this sort of this if schools had ACCOUNTABILITY. I mean who would send their kid to a school that wasn’t teaching them the stuff they needed to know for the job market. Oh wait. Someone who had no choice would. He also wants to expand the ports in Charleston and Jasper (I’m not sure where that is).
More to Come!