Charleston Daily Mail -- Short takes: Feb. 23, 2013
TO provide a backdrop for their lobbying efforts in this legislative session, the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy and the West Virginia Healthy Kids and Families Coalition released a report that shows child poverty rates have risen in West Virginia since 1969.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- TO provide a backdrop for their lobbying efforts in this legislative session, the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy and the West Virginia Healthy Kids and Families Coalition released a report that shows child poverty rates have risen in West Virginia since 1969.
That undercuts the argument for more government spending on poverty. The rise in poverty began after we declared War on Poverty.
The rise in childhood poverty came despite the fact that taxpayers have spent trillions of dollars across the nation on welfare, food stamps, public housing, free school lunches, free school breakfasts and free health care.
In addition, there are Earned Income Tax Credits - the equivalent of a negative income tax.
The Great Society isn't great because the Democratic Party rewarded dependence instead of personal responsibility. What you subsidize, you get more of.
The root cause of childhood poverty is parental poverty. What West Virginia needs is jobs.
The state needs to eliminate those taxes and regulations that drive business away.
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WEST Virginians are learning to their delight that Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin is a serious penny pincher.
This week he squeezed $5 million (500 million pennies) out of the West Virginia Film Office's program that provides tax credits to movie and TV companies that produce films and shows here.
(No, "Buckwild" did not receive this subsidy.)
Instead of setting aside $10 million for those tax credits, he plans to set aside $5 million. Hollywood will not go broke, as the most the state ever gave in tax credits in a single year was $3.7 million.
But why give tax credits to Hollywood? Why pick and choose which companies and industries receive special treatment? It's not as if a big studio is going to set up shop in Big Chimney.
Government incentives to businesses should be across the board -- through blanket tax relief, not tax credits.
***
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- TO provide a backdrop for their lobbying efforts in this legislative session, the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy and the West Virginia Healthy Kids and Families Coalition released a report that shows child poverty rates have risen in West Virginia since 1969.
That undercuts the argument for more government spending on poverty. The rise in poverty began after we declared War on Poverty.
The rise in childhood poverty came despite the fact that taxpayers have spent trillions of dollars across the nation on welfare, food stamps, public housing, free school lunches, free school breakfasts and free health care.
In addition, there are Earned Income Tax Credits - the equivalent of a negative income tax.
The Great Society isn't great because the Democratic Party rewarded dependence instead of personal responsibility. What you subsidize, you get more of.
The root cause of childhood poverty is parental poverty. What West Virginia needs is jobs.
The state needs to eliminate those taxes and regulations that drive business away.
***
WEST Virginians are learning to their delight that Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin is a serious penny pincher.
This week he squeezed $5 million (500 million pennies) out of the West Virginia Film Office's program that provides tax credits to movie and TV companies that produce films and shows here.
(No, "Buckwild" did not receive this subsidy.)
Instead of setting aside $10 million for those tax credits, he plans to set aside $5 million. Hollywood will not go broke, as the most the state ever gave in tax credits in a single year was $3.7 million.
But why give tax credits to Hollywood? Why pick and choose which companies and industries receive special treatment? It's not as if a big studio is going to set up shop in Big Chimney.
Government incentives to businesses should be across the board -- through blanket tax relief, not tax credits.
***
MAURICE Taylor might want to postpone indefinitely his next trip to Paris. Taylor is CEO of Titan International, a U.S. tire company, whose brands include Goodyear.
Taylor wrote to French Minister of Industrial Renewal Arnaud Montebourg, bluntly telling him Titan has no interest in rescuing a French tire factory.
"The French workforce gets paid high wages but works only three hours," Taylor wrote.
"They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three and work for three. I told this to the French union workers to their faces. They told me that's the French way!"
Instead, Taylor plans to make tires in China or India for sale in France.
Publication of Taylor's letter prompted indignation from liberal French newspapers. What should shake people up is the loss of any sense that one has to actually earn wages.
***
LIANG-SHIH Fan, professor of chemical and bio-molecular engineering and director of Ohio State's Clean Coal Research Laboratory, announced a breakthrough that could eliminate 99 percent of carbon dioxide emissions from coal-powered electric plants.
"In the simplest sense, combustion is a chemical reaction that consumes oxygen and produces heat," he said. "Unfortunately, it also produces carbon dioxide, which is difficult to capture and bad for the environment.
"So we found a way to release the heat without burning.
"We carefully control the chemical reaction so that the coal never burns. It is consumed chemically, and the carbon dioxide is entirely contained inside the reactor."
Were this technology to prove feasible, West Virginia's economy would get a boost equal to the introduction of hydraulic fracturing.
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