The Buckeye Institute's Center for Transparent and Accountable Government today released an online database of Ohio State University employees earning more than $250,000 a year.
If
you've turned on your TV lately, you've probably seen Governor Ted
Strickland talking about why the federal government should be giving
Ohio and other states a cash infusion. Much like the auto company
executives who trekked to Capitol Hill late last year, Governor
Strickland is going hat...
In his Sunday column, George Will writes about a study by Byran O’Keefe and Dr. Richard Vedder (an Ohio University professor and scholar with the Buckeye Institute) that illustrates how the Supreme Court’s expansion of the concept of “disparate impact” affected higher education. In 1971 the Supreme Court expanded the 1964 Civil Rights Act to outlaw any employment qualification tests that may have a “disparate impact” on minority groups, regardless of whether these tests were actually discriminatory.
Mr. O’Keefe and Dr. Vedder illustrate how this led to more employers requiring college degrees for employees. As Will puts it:
This is, of course, just one reason college attendance increased from 5.8 million in 1970 to 17.5 million in 2005. But it probably had a, well, disparate impact by making employment more difficult for minorities. O’Keefe and Vedder write:
“Qualified minorities who performed well on an intelligence or aptitude test and would have been offered a job directly 30 or 40 years ago are now compelled to attend a college or university for four years and incur significant costs. For some young people from poorer families, those costs are out of reach.”
Indeed, by turning college degrees into indispensable credentials for many of society’s better jobs, this series of events increased demand for degrees and, O’Keefe and Vedder say, contributed to “an environment of aggressive tuition increases.” Furthermore they reasonably wonder whether this supposed civil rights victory, which erected barriers between high school graduates and high-paying jobs, has exacerbated the widening income disparities between high school and college graduates.
Griggs and its consequences are timely reminders of the Law of Unintended Consequences, which is increasingly pertinent as America’s regulatory state becomes increasingly determined to fine-tune our complex society. That law holds that the consequences of government actions often are different than, and even contrary to, the intended consequences.
Unions and their allies in Congress have been pushing legislation for the past few years that would undermine a variety of worker and business owner protections currently in the law. The so-called “Employee Free Choice Act” would actually undermine employee free choice by making it much harder for workers to vote by secret ballot in unionizing votes (anyone see the potential for abuse there?). It would also impose mandatory arbitration on workers and employers in the event of an impasse during contract negotiations. The only things that have stopped it from passing this year were President Bush’s opposition and the Republican miniority in the Senate. Next year Bush is gone and there are far fewer GOP Senators. It’s quite possible this legislation will become law.
The National Labor Relations Act strips employers of basic common law rights, including the right to refuse to deal with the union. It imposes on employers (and unions) a duty to bargain in good faith toward a contract. But this duty does not force agreement. Either side is free to walk away from any deal it does not like. Unions can strike, and firms can lock out workers. Today’s law, accordingly, restricts arbitration to interpreting existing agreements, not to making agreements from whole cloth.
The EFCA takes away the employer’s right to walk. Now the successful union, backed by direct government power — i.e., mandatory arbitration — can force itself on the firm. Yet the proposed law does not let any court block the deal or ensure that the mandated terms offer a reasonable return on its invested capital. (Even modern rent control statutes require that much.)
The government-chosen panel could well impose terms that might cripple the firm competitively. Consider that the takings clause surely prevents the government from forcing any person to buy real estate for twice its market value from a seller. That same principle applies to this labor law: No government should be able to force a firm to hire labor at $50 per hour when the company is not willing to pay half that much.
The Director of the Buckeye Institute’s 1851 Center Maurice Thompson shares more about the facts in the case of Stowers v. Boggs, as well as just some of the constitutional issues at stake. Listen here on BuckeyeVoices, the Buckeye Institute’s podcast service.
Much has been published on this incident since, but you can hear directly from the Stowers themselves in this interview:
The Buckeye Institute’s 1851 Center for Constitutional Law is filing suit today against the Ohio Department of Agriculture and other government agencies citing seizure of private property without compensation, unlawful exercise of administrative authority and unlawful application of state police power, among other violations of freedoms guaranteed by the Ohio Constitution.
Buckeye Institute President David Hansen and Education Policy Director Matthew Carr spoke with 1370 WSPD-AM’s Brian Wilson Thursday during a Liberty and Learning tour. Listen as they discuss the recently released Buckeye Institute roadmap to educational success, “A Child-Centered Solution to School Finance in Ohio,” charter schools and education transparency.
The Buckeye state has been a leader in reforming the asbestos liability system, which has wreaked havoc on courts across the country, especially in manufacturing states like Ohio. This week the Ohio Senate took another significant step toward improving the system by passing Senate Bill 370. The bill now goes to the Ohio House of Representatives for its consideration. If the House passes the bill next week, it will go to Governor Ted Strickland to be signed or vetoed. According to a recent Toledo Blade article, Strickland may have some reservations about the legislation.
Mr. Strickland said it’s premature for him to say how he will respond until he sees the final bill. “I will look at it very, very carefully and will try to make the best judgment regarding my response, if in fact it does pass,” he told The Associated Press in Cleveland this week. “I will likely oppose an effort to limit an individual’s right to seek justice and redress under the law.”
As outlined in my recent Buckeye Viewpoint, Ohio has led the nation in reforming asbestos liability to address abuses of the system by plaintiffs’ attorneys and preserve the ability of truly injured plaintiffs to recover in the future. Senate Bill 370 is narrowly tailored to address the situation where plaintiffs attempt to “double dip” by seeking to recover a second (or even third) time for the same injury from different parties. Accordingly, the bill does not “limit an individual’s right to seek justice” in any way.
An idea birthed at the Buckeye Institute was turned into a House Bill earlier this year. House Bill 534, sponsored by Representatives John Adams and Tom Collier, had a second hearing in the House Ways and Means committee yesterday.
Dr. Richard Vedder, a well-known, Ohio economist, testified in support of the bill. His entertaining and insightful testimony along with his slide presentation helped the Representatives understand the history of our economic problems and its link to our tax policy. Ohio has continually fallen behind the rest of nation in terms of economic growth and income wealth since the introduction of the income tax. The states without a state income tax constantly out-produce and out-earn the Buckeye state.
Dr. Samuel Staley of the Buckeye Institute and the Reason Foundation shared information detailing how the policy change would help Ohio’s economy improve by attracting business and human capital. Ohio lags the nation in both areas, and has moved up to 5th place nationwide for highest state and local taxes.
Kudos to those supporting this import policy initiative: Representatives Setzer, Wagner, Brinkman, Dolan, Huffman, Fessler, Zehriner, Goodwin, Bacon, Combs, Batchelder, Hottinger, Hite, Uecker, Wachtmann, Widowfield and Coley. Pursuing this level of change takes courage - but courage and a serious paradigm shift in policy are absolutely necessary if Ohio is truly going to turn around.
As the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports, the federal government approved (in a roundabout way) Ohio’s expansion of the state government’s health insurance plan for children. Governor Strickland pushed to expand the program to families up to 300% of the federal povery level and the General Assembly gave unanimous approval last year. With the state facing a huge deficit, however, there are questions about whether this is a good use of taxpayer money.
Last year I wrote an article explaining why this type of health care expansion is a bad idea:
it is likely that a large number (perhaps a majority) will either leave or refuse to sign up for private health insurance to use the government program. A few studies have been done recently about how government health care programs “crowd out” private insurance. That is, having a free or essentially free government program leads people to choose it over private coverage. One estimate put this number as high as 60 percent — or, six out of ten children signed up either had or would have had private coverage. Others put the number between 25 percent and 50 percent. …
Unfortunately, for those children who lose private insurance and switch to government health care, they will find that the quality of their care will decrease. Patients with Medicaid often have trouble finding doctors and report they would rather be on private insurance. It makes no sense for the government to set up incentives to move to lower-quality care.
While it may sound like a good idea, the reality is that the kids being covered by this expansion don’t really need it. The vast majority already have coverage and it’s very likely that most of those covered by this program expansion would be used by families that would otherwise have insurance coverage. It’s a bad idea even if the state had a surplus. In a fiscal climate like Ohio is facing today, however, it’s ridiculous that anyone would even entertain it.
Speaker Husted has officially announced the failure of SB 57. Prior to session, it was widely believed that the bill would pass. With the amendment came the failure, and parents and special needs children can thank the unions, education bureaucrats and complicit politicians on both sides of the aisle.
The issue is not dead - the Buckeye Institute, freedom-loving Legislators, school choice organizations, charter schools, parents and children must continue to correct false information, spread the truth about school choice and keep fighting the good fight.
Apparently, one member’s voting button would not work, so not everyone was able to vote on SB 57 who was present. What does this mean? If the member is there, his or her vote will be counted in the final tally. Where does that leave SB 57? Again, regardless of whether it passes or fails today, the Gardner amendment has, most likely, succeeded at killing opportunities for school choice and thus opportunities for success for thousands of special needs children.
