Institute for Public Plunder on Arizona

email | By Craig J. Cantoni

[hsmomx3]

The Sunday, January 16, 2005, edition of the Arizona Republic published what it called an "objective" report on how Arizona compares to other states. The report was written by the Morrison Institute for Public Plunder, located at Arizona State University.

Oh, I got the name wrong? You say that the correct name is the Morrison Institute for Public Policy?

I'm so embarrassed. My apologies to the staffers at the Institute.

In my defense, the word "plunder" must have crept into my subconscious from years of reading Institute reports that advocated central planning, higher taxes, bigger government, and remaking Arizona and metro Phoenix into the kind of places preferred by ... well, preferred by public-payroll policy wonks (PPPWs) who are on the receiving end of government largess and have never had to meet a payroll or compete in business and risk losing their money when their predictions are proven wrong.

I shouldn't have jumped to a conclusion based on the Institute's history. Instead, I should have taken an objective look at what the PPPWs wrote in the three-page Arizona Republic article to determine if the word "policy" or the word "plunder" should be in the Institute's name. Let me do that now. I'll begin by listing a representative sample of what the PPPWs see as the policy choices facing Arizona, interspersed with my comments. I'll then follow with an analysis of the statistics used by the PPPWs to come up with their policy choices.

Representative Policy Choices of Public-Payroll Policy Wonks:

- "Expanding state-funded, voluntary, all-day kindergarten throughout the state."

Comment: And when that fails, the PPPWs will recommend pre-kindergarten. And when that fails, pre-pre-kindergarten.

- "Providing appropriate resources to all schools to apply "best practices" at such milestones as third grade, eighth grade and the first year of college to increase achievement and completion rates."

Comment: Huh?

- "Developing more options for financial aid for higher education among low- and middle-income students of any age."

Comment: In other words, more money and career opportunities for the ASU PPPWs, who didn't say anything about how financial aid and other subsidies have caused the cost of higher education to increase faster than inflation.

- "Expanding health insurance coverage to all Arizonans."

Comment: Does the above mean socialized medicine?

- "Focusing on disease prevention and wellness for most of the public, while intensely managing chronic illnesses, such as diabetes and heart disease." - "Becoming prepared to support the health needs of an older Arizona." - "Increasing the number of trained health care workers and those in related professions."

Comment: Is it just me, or do you also see a recurring theme here? So far, government, not the market, is going to fix everything, which is an interesting position, especially relative to health care, given that the government destroyed a consumer market in health care 63 years ago. Let's see if the theme continues.

- "Identifying specific sources of revenue, other than the state's General Fund, for specific public programs and services."

Comment: In other words, since the General Fund fluctuates according to how the economy is doing, the public-payroll public policy wonks want to have dedicated funding sources that continue to head north when the economy heads south. Isn't this how the federal government developed a $73 trillion deficit in Social Security and Medicare?

- "Developing, attracting and retaining an educated workforce for the knowledge economy." - "Enhancing the support system for a robust knowledge economy, including overall quality of life, health care, arts and culture, and environmental protection."

Comment: In their regurgitation of central-planning platitudes, bromides and cliches, the PPPWs left out motherhood and apple pie.

- "Removing barriers to commercializing university technology and life science research."

Comment: The head of the new ASU biotech research center recently was asked when he was going to start delivering on the promise of the center bringing in revenue. He responded that the center had already delivered on the promise by acquiring federal grants. Only those on the public payroll believe that transferring taxpayer money from one public pocket to another increases revenue.

- "Increasing workers' skills to qualify them for higher-paying jobs."

Comment: If this sounds repetitious, it is.

- "Expanding opportunities for affordable, quality child care to provide greater work and education options for parents and a good start for children."

Comment: Hmm, it didn't take the PPPWs long to recommend pre-kindergarten, as I predicted a couple of minutes ago.

- "Expanding health insurance coverage, one of the greatest concerns for low-income workers."

Comment: Didn't they already recommend socialized health care for everyone?

- "Increasing access to affordable housing, again to support stable employment and career development."

Comment: And don't forget that each affordable house should come with affordable motherhood and apple pie.

- "Creating more preschool opportunities for low-income children."

Comment: Is there an echo in here?

Well, so far, the word "plunder" matches the Morrison Institute's ideology. Let's now look at the statistics cited by the Institute's public-payroll policy wonks.

Most tellingly, the PPPWs devoted only two paragraphs to taxes in the three-page article. Let me quote one of the two misleading paragraphs in its entirety:

"By fiscal 2000, Arizona ranked 37th in the percentage of personal income it tapped for revenues, 23.1 percent compared with the U.S. average of 25 percent. In the same year, Arizona's state and local per capita revenues ranked 48th in the nation."

Funny thing, but the Tax Foundation ranked Arizona 30th in tax collections per $1,000 of personal income. That puts the state 10 places higher than New Jersey, which ranked 40th and is where I lived for 10 miserable years. And it puts the state14 places higher than my home state of Missouri, which ranked 44th.

Incidentally, do you know what states were in first and second places? Hint: The answer is not New York and Massachusetts, which ranked 29th and 23rd, respectively. The answer is Hawaii and New Mexico. Apparently, the PPPWs want Arizona to catch up to these two economic dynamos.

The PPPWs continued their statistical sleight of hand with this comment: "According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2000, the latest year for which comparative statistics are available, state and local governments in Arizona spent $5,319 per capita compared with the national average of $6,208, placing it 39th among the 50 states."

Of course, the PPPWs believe it is a bad thing for the state to rank below the national average in government spending, and they want to make the case for higher spending. That's why they didn't cite statistics in the paragraph above on government spending as a percentage of personal income, which would have moved the state higher in the rankings.

Regarding public education, as expected, the PPPWs dragged out the canard that Arizona ranks 47th in "per-pupil spending on current operations." Actually, Arizona ranks in the middle when teacher tenure, cost of living, personal income and capital expenditures are considered. This is not to suggest that I agree with the PPPWs that academic achievement is directly related to per-pupil spending, however it is measured. It isn't. To the contrary, academic achievement is directly related to race and family make-up, two variables over which the state has little control, other than not implementing social policies that increase out-of-wedlock births, single-parent families and moms "marrying" the state instead of the fathers of their children -- all of which increase poverty, school dropouts and academic problems.

Also as expected, the PPPWs focused on per-pupil spending and not on what the average Arizona household pays in public education taxes. The heads of the average household will pay approximately $190,000 over their adult lives in public education taxes. Since the average household has 1.9 children, that comes to $100,000 per child. Is there some reason that the PPPWs don't want Arizonans to know this figure?

Regarding health care, the public-payroll policy wonks cited statistics published by a comrade organization, the leftist United Health Foundation, which uses such factors as high school graduation levels and the percent of public health dollars spent on public health to determine a state's "Health Index Ranking." It does not use such factors as social policies that increase the number of out-of-wedlock births, single-parent families, and men who behave like musk-crazed buck deer.

I could go on, but I'll end here by retracting my apology. After reading the three-page article, I was right to use the word "plunder" instead of "policy" in the Institute's name. ________

Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (www.haalt.org). He can be reached at either ccan2@aol.com or haalt1@aol.com.

[handy old one]

It's starting to look alot like .... Plunder was the right word after all.