NoCoPolitics.com

Follow the Money: Climate Change in Colorado

How much are you willing to shell out each year to fund climate change projects?  Colorado activists want your money, and they're planning to go to the ballot to get it.. 

Colorado homeowners and businesses would pay a fee on global warming emissions - with the money set aside for renewable-energy projects - under a proposal that may go before voters in November.

Clean Energy Progress, an activist group, unveiled its proposed ballot language Wednesday. Under its plan, a Colorado household with average energy use would pay about $2.50 more a month on its bill. A big- box retailer would pay roughly $1,300 a month more.

Patio Heaters - Heating the Globe (according to the EU)

The Daily Mail: "EU bid to ban patio heaters (even though they don't harm the planet)"

Industry experts say a ban on outdoor heaters could cost the pub and catering trade £250million a year in lost business.

Euro MPs are today due to vote on a resolution calling on the European Commission to set a timetable for abolishing goods with low energy-efficiency ratings, with outdoor patio heaters specifically mentioned.

Sub Prime

Here's an interesting dialogue from Instapundit on the sub prime crisis.

Are We Paying Attention Colorado?

So much for California's health care reform.

Arnold Schwarzenegger's "universal" health-care plan died in the California legislature on Monday, in what can only be called a mercy killing. So let's conduct a political autopsy, because there are important lessons here for the national health-care debate.

...

The idea was that Mr. Schwarzenegger would set a national precedent, leading to a groundswell for reform in Washington.

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So much for that. The California legislature is probably the most liberal this side of Vermont, and even Democrats refused to become shock troops for this latest liberal experiment. Mr. Schwarzenegger and Democrats in the State Assembly did agree on a compromise plan in December. But on Monday, only a single member of the Senate Health Committee voted to report the bill to the full chamber -- and thus it joined a graveyard full of state "universal" health-care failures.

Like collapses in Illinois, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, this one crumpled because of the costs, which are always much higher than anticipated. The truth teller was state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, who thought to ask about the price tag of a major new entitlement amid what's already a $14.5 billion budget shortfall.

An independent analysis confirmed the plan would be far more expensive than proponents admitted. Even under the most favorable assumptions, spending would outpace revenue by $354 million after two years, and likely $3.9 billion or more. "A situation that I thought was bad," Mr. Perata noted, "in fact was worse."

British Health Care (yet again)

From Investors Business Daily:

A quick explanation for the bad teeth:

Since April 2006, one in every 10 dentists have stopped offering treatment under Great Britain's national health care system. Who can blame them? The government changed its contract with 21,000 dentists almost two years ago, and the result was more work for the dentists and limits on their earnings.

Because of the shortage, 2.7 million Britons have gone nearly two years without dental work.

Go read the whole thing.  Here's an extended quote.

Still think British-style nationalized medicine is the way to go? Then consider these examples of government health care failure:

• Britons who use the NHS aren't allowed to buy with their own money new and effective medication that the government can't afford.

Those who do will be forced out of the state-run system.

The Economist reports that "a tidal wave of costly new drugs is about to break" — 40 of them to treat just cancer — in the next few years. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, which decides which treatments are cost-effective enough to be dispensed by the NHS, will "reject most or all of them," a London cancer specialist told the magazine.

• Premature deaths in the U.K. due to deficiencies at the NHS topped 17,000 in 2004, more than in Spain, France, Germany and the Netherlands, says a study from the London-based Taxpayers' Alliance.

It's not that 2004, the last year for which data are available, was unusually tough. It was an improvement over the previous 23.

• A Canadian Medical Association study says that long waiting times, a hallmark of the socialist system that also is pitched as a model for the U.S., costs that country's economy $15 billion a year.

The loss is due to patients' and caregivers' absences from work, the increased costs of extra appointments, and drugs that patients need while they wait for treatment.

The FairTax, Explained

Bruce Bartlett: "Why the FairTax Won't Work"

Health Care Mandates

San Francisco once again fulfills its role as the testing ground for bad liberal ideas.  This time, we get to see what happens when government mandates that small businesses either provide health insurance or pay into a government pool.

From Openmarket.org:

NPR reporter Elaine Korry spoke with restaurateur Dan Schroeder, an Association member, who described the new paperwork requirements as an “accounting nightmare,” since he’s got different types of employees working for him. Schroeder pays health insurance for his 49 employees — many of whom are part time — but the city decided that the level of coverage he provides doesn’t cost enough, so he may have to pay as much as $70 more per employee.

Here's a link to the original NPR report.

British Health Care (again)

Finding horror stories about the British "universal" health care system is almost too easy these days.

From the Telegraph:

Smokers, heavy drinkers, the obese and the elderly should be barred from receiving some operations, according to doctors, with most saying the health service cannot afford to provide free care to everyone.

Stimulus

So what makes the best stimulus package?  Tax cuts.  From a DC Examiner editorial.

If somebody grabbed your wallet and then handed you back a $20 bill, would you be grateful? Realizing the money was yours to begin with, you would probably call the cops rather than thank the thief.
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In fact, government has only our money or money it borrows from lenders. The problem is it costs the government a major portion of every dollar it takes from us in collecting it and paying the interest on dollars it borrows. Why not just let us keep our money in the first place?

For a real economic stimulus, look no further than the Bush 2003 tax cuts, which lowered the tax rate on capital gains and offered businesses other incentives to invest and hire more workers. Derided in the media as a “tax cut for the rich,” the 2003 tax cuts’ positive results were felt throughout the U.S. economy.

By reducing taxes, President Bush rewarded people who worked harder and invested more, thus generating tremendous economic growth.

Unintended Consequences

The authors of Freakonomics had an article in the New York Times last week about some of the unintended - and harmful - consequences of some of the most well-intentioned government programs.

Acemoglu and Angrist found that when the A.D.A. was enacted in 1992, it led to a sharp drop in the employment of disabled workers. How could this be? Employers, concerned that they wouldn’t be able to discipline or fire disabled workers who happened to be incompetent, apparently avoided hiring them in the first place.

... and ...

Consider the Endangered Species Act (E.S.A.) of 1973, which protects flora and fauna as well as their physical habitats. The economists Dean Lueck and Jeffrey Michael wanted to gauge the E.S.A.’s effect on the red-cockaded woodpecker, a protected bird that nests in old-growth pine trees in eastern North Carolina. By examining the timber harvest activity of more than 1,000 privately owned forest plots, Lueck and Michael found a clear pattern: when a landowner felt that his property was turning into the sort of habitat that might attract a nesting pair of woodpeckers, he rushed in to cut down the trees. It didn’t matter if timber prices were low.

Their conclusion:

So does this mean that every law designed to help endangered animals, poor people and the disabled is bound to fail? Of course not. But with a government that is regularly begged for relief — these days, from mortgage woes, health-care costs and tax burdens — and with every presidential hopeful making daily promises to address these woes, it might be worth encouraging the winning candidate to think twice (or even 8 or 10 times) before rushing off to do good. Because if there is any law more powerful than the ones constructed in a place like Washington, it is the law of unintended consequences.