NCPA | Daily Policy Digest

THE TAXPAYER'S PERSPECTIVE

10 Oct 2008 07:49:58 CDT

All eyes may be on the Presidential candidates in the final weeks before Election Day, but a comprehensive guide from the 362,000-member National Taxpayers Union (NTU) shows that further down the ticket, voters will decide on more than 100 fiscal policy-related ballot measures -- including efforts to eliminate or significantly reduce state income taxes, limit property taxes and impose "good government" reforms.

NTU identified 106 ballot questions in 34 states that would affect taxpayers. Measures that could lower taxes or control government include:

Massachusetts' Question 1, which would repeal the state individual income tax by 2010.
North Dakota's Statutory Measure No. 2, which would lower the state corporate income tax by 15 percent and cut the state personal income tax in half.
Arizona's Proposition 105, which would require a majority of electors to pass tax- or spending-hike plans.
South Dakota's Initiated Measure 10, which would prohibit taxpayer funds from being used for lobbying and create an online state spending database.

Rasmussen noted that it's not all good news for limited-government advocates. Tax-hike questions will be on many ballots, including sales tax increases in Colorado and Minnesota. Colorado voters also will decide on Amendment 59, which would effectively undo the state's Taxpayer Bill of Rights, the strongest taxpayer protection in the country. Another troubling trend is that Colorado, Ohio and Wyoming feature measures that would make it more difficult to qualify future initiatives and referenda for the ballot.

Source: "General Election Ballot Guide: 2008, the Taxpayer's Perspective," National Taxpayers Union, October 6, 2008.

For text:

http://www.ntu.org/main/press.php?PressID=1058&org_name=NTU

For more on Taxes:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/?Article_Category=20

WINDS ARE DOMINANT CAUSE OF ICE SHEET LOSSES

10 Oct 2008 07:49:57 CDT

Wind-induced circulation changes in the ocean are the dominant cause of the recent ice losses through the glaciers draining both the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, not "global warming," according to two new studies.

The first study, published in Nature Geoscience, found that there has been a rapid acceleration of several outlet glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica; most notably, Jakobshavn Isbræ, a large outlet glacier feeding a deep-ocean fjord on Greenland's west coast, which went from a slow thickening to a rapid thinning in 1997:

Researchers found a sudden increase in subsurface ocean temperature in 1997 along the entire west coast of Greenland, suggesting that the changes in Jakobshavn Isbræ were triggered by the arrival of relatively warm water originating from the Irminger Sea near Iceland.
They traced these oceanic changes back to changes in the atmospheric circulation in the North Atlantic region.
In conclusion, they predict that future rapid dynamic responses of other outlet glaciers to climate change will require an improved understanding of the effect of changes in region ocean and atmosphere circulation on the delivery of warm subsurface waters to the periphery of the ice sheets.

The second study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, focused on the delivery of Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW) to the inner continental shelf around Pine Island Bay (Antarctica). The most significant result was that temperature changes in CDW related to regional wind forcing:

Easterly winds over the shelf edge change to westerlies when the Amundsen Sea Low migrates west and south in winter/spring.
This drives seasonal on-shelf flow, while inter-annual changes in the wind forcing lead to inflow variability on a decadal timescale.
A modeled period of warming following low CDW influx in the late 1980's and early 1990's coincides with a period of observed thinning and acceleration of Pine Island Glacier.

Source: Paul Biggs, "Winds are Dominant Cause of Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheet Losses," Climate Research News, October 3, 2008; based upon: David M. Holland, et al., "Acceleration of Jakobshavn Isbræ triggered by warm subsurface ocean waters," Nature Geoscience, September 2008, and Malte Thoma, "Modelling Circumpolar Deep Water intrusions on the Amundsen Sea continental shelf, Antarctica," Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 35, 2008.

For Climate Research News text:

http://climateresearchnews.com/2008/10/winds-are-dominant-cause-of-greenland-and-west-antarctic-ice-sheet-losses/

For Nature Geoscience study:

http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v1/n10/abs/ngeo316.html

For Geophysical Research Letters study:

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008GL034939.shtml

For more on Global Warming Science:

http://eteam.ncpa.org/issues/?c=science

For more on Global Warming:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/?Article_Category=32

CLIMATE DISTORTING U.S. ENERGY POLICIES

10 Oct 2008 07:49:56 CDT

Proponents of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) have largely ignored natural climate influences; yet, the evidence is overwhelming that natural factors control the climate and that the greenhouse effect from rising carbon dioxide, while certainly present, is insignificant and as yet undetectable. Instead of pushing forward the current energy and climate policies floating around Congress, the nation's goal should focus on rational energy policy -- one that accepts that fossil fuels and CO2 present no threat, says S. Fred Singer, an atmospheric physicist and professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia.

We should seek to make energy cheap and secure, continues Singer. Lowering energy costs promotes economic growth and advances societal goals of greater prosperity and a safer and cleaner environment.

Moreover:

A rational energy policy for the United States must make increased use of domestic coal, which is secure and relatively low cost.
Today's technologies allow us to burn coal and capture almost all the resulting pollution, making coal a "clean" fuel.
Additionally, coal plants have become more efficient at converting British Thermal Units (Btus) into electric energy; as we move toward integrated-gasification, combined-cycle technology, the efficiencies can approach 60 percent or higher, particularly when co-generation, which uses the waste heat, is included.
The high capital costs thrust upon nuclear generation should be lowered considerably by streamlining the licensing process and eliminating the delays that arise from litigation against constructing nuclear reactors.
Considerable cost savings also can be achieved by standardization and, most importantly, by factory production of major components rather than onsite construction.

Further, there are a wide variety of reactor designs available throughout the world, says Singer, including: pressurized-boiling water reactors; a Canadian design that uses heavy water; high-temperature, gas-cooled reactors; pebble fuel, which was pioneered in South Africa and is finding applications in China; and an ultrasafe reactor of Swedish design known as PIUS.

Source: S. Fred Singer, "Climate Distorting U.S. Energy Policies," American Oil & Gas Reporter, September 2008.

For text:

http://sepp.org/Archive/NewSEPP/Climate_Distorting.pdf

For more on Global Warming Impacts and Responses:

http://eteam.ncpa.org/issues/?c=impacts-and-responses

For more on Global Warming:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/?Article_Category=32

DEMOGRAPHY DEFEATED: FLORIDA'S K-12 REFORMS

10 Oct 2008 07:49:55 CDT

The 10-year impact of Florida's education reforms has had a remarkable effect on Florida's test scores, says the Goldwater Institute.

Between 1992 and 1998, Florida's already low fourth-grade National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading scores were declining.
By 1999, nearly half of fourth-graders scored "below basic" on the test.
But by 2007, less than a decade after the reforms were enacted, 70 percent of fourth-graders scored basic or above.

When broken down demographically, the true effect of these reforms can be seen, say researchers:

Florida's Hispanic students now have the second-highest statewide reading scores in the nation, and African-Americans score fourth-highest when compared with their peers.
In fact, the average Florida Hispanic student's score is higher than the overall average score for all students in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia.
Moreover, Florida Hispanic students eligible for a free or reduced-price lunch under federal poverty guidelines also outscore the statewide averages of some of these states.
Florida's African-American students outscored two statewide averages for all students in 2007 and were within striking distance of several more.

Florida's success proves that demography is not destiny in K-12 education, with the right set of reforms, say researchers.

Source: Dan Lips and Mathew Ladner, "Demography Defeated: Florida's K-12 Reforms and Their Lessons for the Nation," Goldwater Institute, Policy Report, No. 227, September 30, 2008.

For text:

http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/Common/Img/Demography%20Defeated.pdf

For more on Education Issues:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/?Article_Category=27

INTERNATIONAL ADOPTIONS

10 Oct 2008 07:49:54 CDT

Adopting children overseas is a problematic path to parenthood, says Miller-McCune Magazine. Often, children put up for adoption live in orphanages, but that is no guarantee they are, in fact, orphans. In a number of impoverished countries, working parents who are unable to care for their kids use such facilities as low-cost boarding schools. Some consent to international adoptions, but many, learn to their horror, that their child has a new set of parents on the other side of the world.

In December 2007, the United States joined 70 other nations in ratifying the Hague Convention on Protection of Children, a set of regulations intended to curb unethical adoption practices. But several nations where child placement is big business have yet to sign on, which effectively means adoption proceedings between those countries and the

United States that were not initiated by April 1 have been frozen.

Based on reports from two of the nations -- Guatemala and Vietnam -- the timeout is more than warranted:

The spring, the American embassy in Vietnam released a report alleging pervasive corruption and baby selling in the country.
In July, police arrested the heads of two health centers who allegedly forged birth certificates to facilitate overseas adoptions.
In Guatemala, DNA tests indicated a baby about to be adopted by an American couple in July had been kidnapped from her mother 14 months earlier.
Experts have long suspected that some of the nearly 5,000 Guatemalan children adopted by Americans each year were stolen and sold to so-called "baby brokers," but this was the first kidnapped child positively identified by the nation's new, mandatory DNA testing.

Does this mean the system is working? Not really, because even though authorities promise to investigate everyone involved in international adoptions, with big money at stake -- overseas parents pay up to $30,000 to adopt a Guatemalan child -- the potential for corruption remains, says Miller-McCune.

Source: Editorial, "Adopting a New Policy," Miller-McCune, October 2008; based upon: Natalie Cherot, "International Adoptions Struggle for Hollywood Endings," Miller-McCune, January 2, 2008.

For text (second story):

http://www.miller-mccune.com/article/688

For related article:

http://www.miller-mccune.com/article/125

For more on Social Issues:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/?Article_Category=28