Featured Articles
Change the Climate Change Debate
By Marc Kilmer
With gas prices rising and alarm over global warming on the lips of everyone from John McCain to Sheryl Crow, it's trendier than ever to support policies to reduce gasoline usage or somehow combat climate change. In response, politicians are rushing to "do something." Congress is debating a climate change bill. State politicians in California are even looking at imposing their own greenhouse gas regulations. While they may be well-intentioned, it is hard to see how these legislative efforts will have any effect.
Getting Oil on Track
By Ken Blackwell
At this week's G8 Summit, the cost of gasoline is one of the main topics of discussion. With the price of crude oil hovering around $136 a barrel, the industrialized world is looking for answers. But none seem to exist right now.
Buckeye Voices
In
this week's Buckeye
Voices, Mike Maurer, director of the Center for Transparent
and Accountable Goverment at the Buckeye Institute, discusses
transparency and fiscal restraint with Americans for Prosperity's Jack
Boyle. Mr. Boyle is the organization's state director.
Vouchers Increase Accountability
The
Columbus Dispatch
reports, "[Governor Ted] Strickland spokesman Keith Dailey said the
governor opposes any expansion of the voucher program because he thinks
that funding private schools with tax dollars deprives the state and
taxpayers of proper oversight."
In
Accountability
and School Choice, Matthew Carr and Beth Lear write, "The
market accountability created when parents are allowed to choose the
school their child attends has proven to be an effective mechanism for
creating more responsive, more efficient and safer schools.
The track record for state control through a patchwork of rules and
regulations is far less convincing."
Higher Taxes & Higher Gas Prices
"Saved by Senate Republicans, big oil companies dodged an attempt Tuesday to slap them with a windfall profits tax and take away billions of dollars in tax breaks in response to the record gasoline prices that have the nation fuming," according to the Akron Beacon Journal.
In Congress's Answer to High Gas Prices: Raise Taxes!, Buckeye Institute President David Hansen writes, "In 1980, President Carter signed a windfall profit tax that was really just an excise tax on gasoline, in response to the gas crisis of the 1970s and the removal of price caps price controls on the energy industry. The Congressional Research Service found that by the time the tax was repealed in 1988 it helped reduced domestic production by roughly 3 to 6 percent, which thereby increased oil imports by 8 to 16 percent."
Medicaid Straining State Budget
The Columbus Dispatch reports, "The [capital budget bill] would, for the first time since 2002, tap the state's $1.1 billion rainy-day fund, spending $18.1 million to reverse some of Strickland's proposed budget cuts and up to $63 million to cover Medicaid shortfalls related to failed cost-saving efforts."
In
More Medicaid Problems
in Ohio,
Buckeye Institute analyst Marc Kilmer writes, "Instead of the
governor's contradictory approach (taking small steps to control costs
while trying to expand eligibility), the state needs to look at
fundamental Medicaid reform. The program does not serve either
taxpayers -- who foot the bill for an expensive program -- or
recipients -- who receive substandard medical care. The system does not
work for anyone and it needs to be changed."
Buckeye Institute in the News
The Cleveland Plain Dealer mentioned the Buckeye Institute in a story on a charter school alumni's graduation from MIT.
