Featured Article
More Regulation Won't Help Health Care
By Marc KilmerThe rising cost of health care and health insurance is of concern to many across the state. How should we try and achieve affordable coverage? A task force created by Governor Strickland just released recommendations that claim the way to lower health care costs is through increasing regulations on health insurance and consumers. These regulations will only raise health insurance prices, however, which will increase the number of the uninsured. That is the last thing Ohio's health care market needs.
Buckeye Voices
In
this week's Buckeye
Voices, Hamilton County Commissioner Pat DeWine joins the
Buckeye Institute's Mike Maurer to discuss the county's ambitious
public records initiative.
Charter Schools Succeeding
The
Dayton Daily News reports,
"Overall, charter schools dominated a list of top-scoring schools in
the city, and those district schools that did score well were mostly
'charter like' schools with special themes or unique programs."
In
Setting the Record
Straight on Ohio's Charter Schools, Buckeye
Institute Education Policy Director Matt Carr
writes, "Comparing charter schools to the school districts in which
they are allowed to open, one finds that they are in fact doing as well
as, and in many cases better than, their peers. In the only rigorous
value-added study of charter school proficiency rates in Ohio, charters
were found to be making significantly larger gains than the large urban
districts. A forthcoming analysis using updated proficiency rates finds
that this trend is continuing."
Payday Lending Law Blocked for Now
"A new state payday lending law hailed by consumer advocates as one of the best in the nation takes effect today, but lenders in Ohio can pretty much ignore it for now. A key section of House Bill 545 is on hold because a payday coalition filed more than 400,000 signatures with the Ohio secretary of state's office yesterday in its effort to qualify a referendum for the November ballot," according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
In A Payday Post-Mortem, Buckeye Institute analyst Marc Kilmer writes, "The payday loan ban will not solve Ohio's problems. To do that, legislators need to look at fundamental tax, regulatory, and labor reforms. Without taking steps like cutting taxes, streamlining regulations, and opening up the labor market, the state's workers will have fewer and fewer options. Ohio's politicians used payday lenders as the scapegoat this time. What industry will they target when they fail to do their duty in the future?"
NAFTA Good for Ohio
The Dayton Daily News reports, "Exporting is one of the Dayton area's specialties, [deputy assistant secretary for manufacturing for the Commerce Department Jaime] Estrada said, saying the Gem City is among the top 12 percent of all metro area exporters....In 2006, the Dayton area exported $4.2 billion worth of goods and services, up 40 percent from Dayton's exports in 2005, Estrada said."
In
Ohio and NAFTA Revisited,
Buckeye Institute advisor Joseph Zoric
writes, "Ohio is also a state that is heavily dependent on
international trade. Over twenty percent of the state's
manufacturing workers depend upon exports for their jobs. The state
ranks eighth in exports among the fifty states and exports to 205
countries around the world. In 2006, $18.3 billion of goods
were exported to Canada and $2.7 billion to Mexico. Exports to Canada
increased by 8.7% and those to Mexico increased by 13.3% from 2005 to
2006. The top five categories of exports were machinery, vehicles,
electrical machinery, plastics, and optics. These are all industries
that support high paying manufacturing jobs which benefit from expanded
trade."
Buckeye
Institute in the News
The Cleveland Plain Dealer, NBC 4 in Columbus, and Columbus Business First featured stories on the Buckeye Institute's study to elminate the state income tax. The Lancaster Eagle Gazette, the Newark Advocate, and the Mansfield News Journal were supportive of more study of the idea in editorials. The Dayton Daily News quoted Buckeye Institute President David Hansen's support of the income tax elimination in a story on how to rejuvenate the state's economy.
The Hillsboro Times-Gazette published David Kirkpatrick's article on "deschooling."
