Tag Archives: California

News

Berkeley high school to close science department to eliminate racial disparities

10 Comments

Story from East Bay Express. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

The proposal would trade labs seen as benefiting white students for resources to help struggling students.

Berkeley High School is considering a controversial proposal to eliminate science labs and the five science teachers who teach them to free up more resources to help struggling students.

The proposal to put the science-lab cuts on the table was approved recently by Berkeley High’s School Governance Council, a body of teachers, parents, and students who oversee a plan to change the structure of the high school to address Berkeley’s dismal racial achievement gap, where white students are doing far better than the state average while black and Latino students are doing worse.

Paul Gibson, an alternate parent representative on the School Governance Council, said that information presented at council meetings suggests that the science labs were largely classes for white students. He said the decision to consider cutting the labs in order to redirect resources to underperforming students was virtually unanimous.

Berkeley is probably the most liberal place in the United States, (located near San Francisco, CA). They best reflect the thinking of radical secular leftists who value equality of outcome far more than liberty and excellence. Rather than introducing educational reforms like merit-based pay, standardized testing, and expedited firing of underperforming teachers, they instead punish success with wealth redistribution.

News

Ontario deficit to hit $25 billion as tax revenues plunge

1 Comment
map-canada-political
Political Map of Canada

The problem with the left is that they think that the producers will just keep producing in the face of massive tax hikes and government spending. Sorry, but producers curtail their producing when they get to keep less and less of the fruits of their labor. Dalton McGuinty, the Liberal premier of the province of Ontario, is a prime example of this ignorance of incentives.

Consider this story from the National Post. (H/T Joanne from Blue Like You)

Excerpt:

Falling revenues and a burgeoning $24.7-billion deficit will force Ontario’s Liberal government into a new era of fiscal restraint, provincial Finance Minister Dwight Duncan said yesterday.

[…]According to economic figures released yesterday, Ontario is spending $4.8-billion more this year than it predicted just seven months ago. The increased spending includes $4-billion in auto-sector assistance and an additional $650-million to fund the province’s H1N1 response. Program spending has also risen by $812-million.

Tax revenues, meanwhile, are falling dramatically. They now stand at $5.8-billion less than the government predicted in last spring’s budget. Corporate taxes are $2.65-billion — or nearly one-third — lower than projections, while personal income tax is down $2.43-billion, or 10%.

[…]Conservatives, who have watched as the Liberals raised spending by nearly 60% over their first six years in office, were skeptical about the new pledge of austerity.”Dalton McGuinty is hard-wired to increase your taxes and increase spending,” Conservative leader Tim Hudak said. “The reality is, the only way to get spending under control is to change government.”

[…]One analyst said the province’s massive deficit is heightened by the growing size of Ontario’s health-care sector, expected to account for half the budget by 2015.

Earlier this week I blogged about the Federal Conservative Party of Canada, which gained two seats in the 2009 by-elections, bringing them to 145/308 in the House of Commons. They need 155 to have a majority.

States like New York and California are running into the same taxing and spending problems here at home. Even the Democrat Governor of Ohio Ted Strickland is in trouble, and threatening to cancel scheduled tax cuts.

News

Residents of New York and California flee high taxes and regulations

6 Comments

Here’s a funny story from the New York Post. (H/T National Review via ECM)

Excerpt:

On top of the city and state payroll tax, Social Security and Medicare [small-business owner John Logue] pays for employees, Logue said the city also hits him with a slew of permit fees. He recently had to pay $50 to obtain a certificate to collect sales taxes for the city and the state. In the past, it was free. He also pays the city to have a restaurant certificate, an exhaust-system permit and an illuminated-sign permit.

Logue said his [government-issued] water bills have also increased by nearly 50 percent in the last three years. Currently, he pays $1,600 every three months to the city.

“I’m getting to the point where I’m thinking about leaving New York,” he said.

And Kevin D. Williamson adds:

If you want to know where the future is headed, look where the people are going. And if you want to know where the people are going, check with U-Haul. Here’s an interesting indicator, first noted by the legendary economist Arthur Laffer: Renting a 26-foot U-Haul truck to go from Austin to San Francisco this July would cost you about $900.

Renting the same truck to go from San Francisco to Austin? About $3,000. In the great balance of supply and demand, California has a large supply of people who are demanding to move to Texas. There’s a reason for this.

Yes, prices rise when there is a high demand and supply is the same.

I once had a job interview at Fidelity in Boston, MA, and I remember going up the elevator with someone who commuted in every day from New Hampshire to avoid the taxes. And I remember thinking – this guy probably votes Democrat like everyone else in Boston.And shortly thereafter, New Hampshire turned blue and is now somewhere down in the gutter.

Why do Democrats do this to themselves? Anyway, the whole country will be like New York and California if more of these crappy bills pass, and where will we run to then? We’ll be stuck until the next election, and it serves us right. I think a good long period of suffering under Obama is just what we need to learn the importance of economics – the hard way.