Rodent Regatta

Dear Robbie and Chip:

I just don’t know how to thank you for the front-page story today singing the glories of the new state budget and increased funding for education and kindergarten. I think it’s great that the single moms quoted in your story will be getting more money. And thank God we no longer ask them penetrating questions about their personal circumstances. I mean, who are we to pass judgment on them just because they want our money? If they say they need my money, they need my money, no questions asked. After all, it takes a village, a village newspaper, village reporters and the village treasury to raise a family.

And thank goodness you didn’t call me or anyone like me for a pithy quote.

I might have said something about the average Arizona household already paying $190,000 in k-12 public education taxes over the adult lives of the heads of the household. Since the average household has two kids, that comes to $95,000 per kid, even when using the new math taught in government schools. Such a statement would have rained on your chirpy piece and upset your bedmate, the NEA. Or I might have said that I will spend an additional $65,000 to exercise my constitutional and natural right of religious freedom to send my kid to Catholic school. That comes to $255,000 for 12 years of education. What a deal! Am I a compassionate classical liberal, or what?

Worse, I might said that my wife and I already fork over half of our income to the government and then asked how much more you and your single moms think it would be fair for us to pay in taxes. Egad! That would have been mean-spirited and selfish, just like those troglodyte Republican legislators that your employer makes fun of all the time for sticking up for taxpayers instead of tax takers. Grr, I get angry just thinking about those meanies.

By the way, do you know the Italian, Spanish, French and German words for ”stinky unbalanced reporting”?

Regards,
Craig J. Cantoni
Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT)

The state is that great fiction by which everyone
tries to live at the expense of everyone else.

—Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)

NEA Calls For Higher Spending on Food
by Craig J. Cantoni
May 19, 2004

The National Eating Association (NEA) concludes in a new report that American families are not spending enough on food and that the United States will not remain competitive in the 21st century unless the government increases per-person spending on groceries and restaurant meals.

NEA president Frank Furter had lunch at the White House yesterday to discuss the problem with President Kerry, who spoke to reporters afterwards. ”It’s a national disgrace that Americans are spending only 15 percent of their income on food, including ketchup, compared to 45 percent 100 years ago,” said Kerry. ”I’ll be asking Agriculture Secretary Hank Heinz to speed up the implementation of the Leave No Child’s Behind Behind program.”

Silly, isn’t it? But it is no more silly than the National Education Association’s unrelenting focus on per-pupil spending and its complete silence about what a public education costs the average household. Without knowing the cost, it is impossible for consumers of education to know if they are getting good value for their money and to make cost-benefit tradeoffs.

Over the last few months I have been asking audiences and individuals if they know what they pay in public education taxes. So far, no one has known.

I’ll give the answer momentarily, but first, imagine asking a homeowner what he paid for his house and getting this response: ”I dunno, but I want to pay more because the National Association of Realtors says that spending on homes isn’t high enough in this country.”

Some people mistakenly believe that the amount on their property tax bill that goes to public education is the total of what they pay in school taxes. Because it’s hidden, they don’t realize that when they pay for their dry cleaning at the neighborhood dry cleaners, the price includes a portion of the school tax that the store owner pays. Similarly, the portion of school taxes that is funded from state revenue is hidden in income and sales taxes.

It is just the opposite for parochial school parents like my wife and me. We know exactly what we pay. For example, we pay $3,700 a year in parochial school tuition for our son. By the time he graduates from high school, we will have paid about $60,000 for 12 years of Catholic school.

Because we know what we pay, we are able to make cost-benefit tradeoffs. For example, we don’t want his school to build a cafeteria, although our kid has to take his lunch and eat outside. And we don’t want class sizes reduced by 50 percent to the size of the classes at the nearby public school. Because we know what we pay, we value his education more than if we didn’t. And because we value it more, we and other parochial parents expect our kids to behave better and study more than their public school friends.

That expectation is the primary reason that parochial schools can deliver a superior education at lower cost. Public schools, on the other hand, suffer from the problem of the commons. As is the case with public housing, when the collective pays for something, the individual doesn’t have the same sense of ownership and personal responsibility that he would if he paid for it himself. Like magic, writing a mortgage check or a tuition check every month dramatically changes one’s perspective on spending and makes the individual much more cost-conscious.

For that reason, the NEA and its allies in the establishment media do not want Arizonans to know that the average Arizona household pays about $3,200 per year in public school taxes. And since the heads of the household pay school taxes over their adult lives, that comes, on average, to a whopping lifetime total of about $190,000. For a family with two kids, that’s $95,000 per kid, or about $35,000 more than what it will cost my wife and me for our son to attend 12 years of Catholic school.

The total is higher in other states. In Washington State, for example, it is about $240,000. Would Washington State families pay that much if they were writing tuition checks to cover the amount? To answer that question, imagine the parents of one child writing a check for each of the 12 years that their kid attends public school. That would come to $20,000 per check ($240,000/12). If that didn’t trigger rioting in the streets, at least there would be demands for greater efficiency and effectiveness in public schools and more parental responsibility.

And that explains why politicians, the media, the NEA and the rest of the education establishment focus on per-pupil spending instead of telling taxpayers what they pay in public school taxes.

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Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com

Teeter-totter Reporting at the Arizona Republic
by Craig J. Cantoni
May 17, 2004

A front-page story in today’s Arizona Republic was more unbalanced than a teeter-totter with Shaq on one end and a jockey on the other.

The story was about an election tomorrow on raising taxes in Scottsdale to purchase more preserve land. There were just over 23 column-inches that quoted proponents or that put the tax in a favorable light. Conversely, there were about ten column-inches that quoted opponents or that put the tax in an unfavorable light, and those inches were near the end of the story on the second page.

This two-to-one ratio and placement are par for the course in the establishment press in stories on tax increases and government spending. Such coverage explains why federal, state and local spending continues to far outstrip inflation and population growth, and why federal spending alone costs the average household $20,000 per year.

The story begins…

”Arizona voters will decide the fate of thousands of coyotes, kit foxes and sky-high saguaros…”

How’s that for objectivity and balance? The opening would have readers believe that thousands of coyotes and kit foxes will die if the tax isn’t passed. This is creative writing, not reporting. A neutral opening would have gone like this: ”Scottsdale voters will be going to the polls tomorrow to vote on a sales tax for more preserve land.”

The reporter goes on to say that voters ”will do more than weigh in on the future of unspoiled land.” She doesn’t say that power lines run through part of the ”unspoiled” land under consideration.

Later, the reporter writes, ”The votes come in the middle of a conservation crisis.”

Oh really? Although the reporter didn’t mention it, 85 percent of the land in Arizona is already off limits to development, a 20,000-acre regional park is next door to Scottsdale, and a 2.8 million-acre national forest is only 10 minutes away. That hardly constitutes a conservation crisis, regardless of the outcome of the vote. It would have been more accurate for the reporter to write, ”Arizona already has a glut of preserve land.”

Then there are the accompanying photos. One is of a blooming ocotillo framing a stand of saguaros on undeveloped land. Below that photo is a photo of a housing development, taken from a perspective that makes the development look as overbuilt as Manhattan. The third and last photo is of a diamondback rattlesnake.

There were no photos of the coyotes, rattlesnakes and bobcat that have been seen in my development. Nor were there any photos of the cacti in my backyard, which are much more abundant than the cacti on the undeveloped parts of the neighboring Salt River Pima Indian Reservation.

The story did not mention the curious fact that the information ballot for the vote that was mailed weeks ago to voters contains 13 pages of arguments in favor of the tax and not one against it. How did that happen? Don’t look in the Republic’s news pages for an answer. And don’t look there for an expose on how spending advocates virtually assured themselves of victory by tying the vote to a phony public safety issue and by scheduling the vote for a special election, when voter turnout will be low, thus making it easier for proponents to get a majority of the votes.

Newspapers used to be for the little guy. Now they sit on the end of the teeter-totter with the big spenders.

• * * * *

Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com

Many times I’ve linked to the seven deadly diseases for business that were originally written by W. Edwards Deming. In the last decade I’ve come to think of these same seven diseases as afflicting our nation. Each of the seven correlates with a national trend. Number six is ”excessive medical costs.”

This morning Craig Cantoni addresses the bizarre thinking that some are doing concerning health care in this country. The May 4 op-ed he cites truly was excellent. Craig adds to the excellence with this:

The Third Reich Plan
for
Nationalizing American Health Care
by Craig J. Cantoni
May 17, 2004

I despair. When the retired head of underwriting for New Jersey Blue Cross and Blue Shield writes a letter to the editor of The Wall Street Journal calling for nationalized health care, there is little hope of stopping the incremental socializing of American medicine.

The letter was published in the May 14 edition in response to a brilliant May 4 op-ed that correctly said that a consumer market is the cure for what ails U.S. health care.

The op-ed explained, as one of mine did in the Journal in 1997, that a consumer market was mortally wounded 60 years ago when misguided government policy resulted in most Americans getting their health insurance from their employers instead of buying it directly, as they do in the case of such other necessities of life as food, shelter and clothing. The coup de grace was delivered 39 years ago with the enactment of Medicare.

Even a freshman economics students understands that a consumer market does not exist when the consumer sits on the sidelines as third parties make buying decisions for him. But for some reason, a business executive who worked for one of the third parties does not understand this economic fact. Or perhaps he understands it but is rationalizing his lifetime of working in an industry that cozied up to the government and treated consumers like second-class citizens. Maybe that is why he was silent in his letter about the Blues being accused of restraint of trade.

In one of the worst cases of cognitive dissonance ever seen, the letter writer wrote this gem: ”Yet the crisis in health care finance and access has been brought on in large part by market forces—an employer-based delivery system that has left 40 million low-wage and laid-off workers uninsured.”

He has it exactly backwards. It was not market forces that tied one’s health insurance to one’s employment. The real culprits were wage and price controls in 1942 that gave employers an incentive to begin offering health insurance in lieu of wages, subsequent National Labor Relations Board rulings that made health insurance a union bargaining right, tax rules that gave employees a tax advantage over the unemployed and self-employed, and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act that gave employees of large corporations protections from expensive state mandates not afforded the average working stiff.

That doesn’t sound like a free market to me.

The letter writer saved his most startling and erroneous conclusion for last. He said that Medicare is a good model for nationalizing American health care because it is ”99% private.” Gasp! That’s enough to take your breath away.

Medicare is as private as industry was under the Third Reich. When Hitler was asked why he hadn’t nationalized German industry, he replied that he didn’t have to because he controlled the industrialists. Similarly, over 100,000 pages of Medicare regulations and price controls dictate what health care providers can charge and offer patients. And it is a little-known fact that Americans cannot opt out of Medicare once they begin to accept Social Security payments.

Fortunately, the Third Reich was defeated. Unfortunately, there is little hope of defeating the nationalization of American health care, not when former insurance executives fail to understand the difference between markets and socialism, and between freedom and coercion.

• * * * *

Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and consultant. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com

The Futility of Debating Utopians, Do-gooders and Progressives
by Craig J. Cantoni
May 13, 2004

There is nothing more frustrating and futile than trying to have an intelligent debate with utopians, do-gooders and progressives. Debating them about such articles of faith as suburban sprawl, education funding and mass transit is as frustrating and futile as debating someone from the religious right about a religious belief.

A case in point:

I recently spoke at a public meeting in Scottsdale, Arizona, where I recited statistics showing how government spending has grown much faster than inflation and population over the last decade at the local, state and federal levels. I went on to use the planned light-rail system for Phoenix as an example of unnecessary spending, saying that for an astronomical cost of $2.3 billion, which is equivalent to the annual income of about 50,000 families, the system will actually increase pollution and have a negligible effect on traffic.

As expected, the reaction of the audience was immediate and hostile, since most attendees were utopians, do-gooders or progressives. Upon hearing my remarks, they squirmed in their chairs and got the same pained look in their faces, as if all of them were suddenly in need of Preparation H.

One man grimaced and responded, ”Well, I moved here from Chicago and therefore support mass transit.”

Huh? Apparently, his ”logic” went like this:

I’m from Chicago.
Chicago has mass transit.
Chicago and Phoenix are identical in age, layout and climate.
Therefore, mass transit is a good thing for Phoenix.

Or maybe his logic went like this:

I moved from Chicago to Phoenix.
Phoenix is a better place or I wouldn’t have moved here.
Phoenix has lower taxes or I wouldn’t have moved here.
Therefore, let’s turn Phoenix into another Chicago.

Whatever his logic, it was futile to argue with him, because he was clearly someone who ”thinks” with his emotions instead of with reason and facts. Accordingly, he didn’t dispute my facts, offer countervailing facts or ask me to identify the sources of my facts. He simply believed that mass transit was a good thing and wasn’t about to let facts overrule his feelings. End of discussion.

Another attendee said he supported higher taxes, especially for public education. I asked him if he knew how much he pays in public education taxes. He admitted that he did not. I then posed the same question to the rest of the audience. No one knew the amount.

Judging from their blank expressions, the attendees didn’t get my point, which I thought was obvious—namely, how can someone support paying more for something without knowing what it costs in the first place?

Since they didn’t get the point, I went on to tell them how much the average household pays in public education taxes in Arizona. It is $3,200 a year, or close to $190,000 over the adult lives of the heads of the household. Since there are on average two children per family in Arizona, that comes to $95,000 per child. Ninety-five thousand!

Those facts transformed the blank stares of the audience back to their original pained expressions—not because the attendees now knew the astronomical cost of public education and were angry over the education establishment and the media keeping the number a secret. No, the pained expressions were directed at me, because I had the temerity to question one of their most sacred beliefs—that public schools don’t have enough money. End of discussion.

Another speaker on the panel with me had the audacity to question why the audience was in support of raising the sales tax to purchase more preserve land in Scottsdale at a starting cost of $500 million, especially in view of the fact that the current sales tax is above the national average, that there are thousands of acres of preserve land in the city already, that a 21,000-acre regional park is next door, and that a 2.8 million-acre national forest is 10 minutes away—all in a state in which 85% of the land is closed to development.

The audience responded with platitudes, bromides, cliches and canards about sprawl and development. One attendee expressed anger over the ”greed” of a developer who had bought land from the state at an auction years ago and now will only sell it to the city for a preserve at the current market price, which is almost twice as much as the original purchase price. I thought about asking her if she would be willing to sell her house to the city for half its market value, since she isn’t greedy like those greedy developers. I also thought about asking her if she lives in her car, since she is opposed to development. But I knew that the points would only produce more pained expressions.

Another speaker on the panel, a courageous city councilman who is running for mayor, made the point that the city can’t afford to do everything that everybody wants—that tradeoffs have to made and priorities set. More pained looks. He should buy a case of Preparation H. He’ll need it after he gets screwed at the polls by the utopians, do-gooders and progressives for telling the truth about city spending.

I didn’t stay after the meeting to speak one-on-one with the attendees, but I have after many other meetings, where I’ve asked utopians, do-gooders and progressives such questions as:

”Where do you get your news?” Typical answer: ”In the local paper and from local and network TV.”

”So to get another perspective, you don’t read publications like The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Reason Magazine or studies from the Cato Institute?” Typical answer: ”No.”

”How do you know that Arizona ranks low in school spending?” Typical answer: ”It’s been mentioned many times in the local paper.”

”So if it’s printed in the paper, it’s true?” Typical answer: ”I didn’t say that.”

”In view of the fact that my wife and I pay half our income in taxes, how much more do you want us to pay to support the higher taxes you want for your program?” Typical answer: ”Well, I don’t think anyone should pay that much in taxes.”

”Okay, so how much should we pay and where will the money come from for your program if we’re currently paying too much?” Typical answer: ”Uh … well … umm … I’d have to give that some thought.”

”Have you ever taken a course in economics?” Typical answer: ”I had a boring course my freshman year of college.”

”Who is your favorite economist?” Typical answer: ”I’d have to think about that.”

”How about Milton Friedman, F. A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises?” Typical answer: ”I don’t know them.”

”Since you apparently hate corporate greed and fraud, what about the millions of Americans who petition the government to take their neighbor’s money for themselves? Or how about well-off seniors who have persuaded the government to send their prescription bills to their kids and grandkids? Aren’t they greedy? Or what about the government saying that there is a Social Security trust fund when there is no such thing? Isn’t that the biggest fraud ever?” Typical answer: ”You’re comparing apples to oranges.”

In closing, the worst thing about utopians, do-gooders and progressives is not their irrationality, false logic, intellectual contradictions and ignorance of economics and facts. It is their belief that anyone who dares to question the merits of their pet causes is a mean-spirited, close-minded right-wing extremist. That’s why trying to have an intelligent debate with them is an exercise in futility.

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Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com