Delaware Wins! maybe…..

From 2007 to 2008 IRS data shows while Delaware gained 1,946 households, all of our neighboring states saw their residents flee.
PA lost 5,472 households, MD lost 8,167 and 19,285 of the oppressed and overtaxed families in NJ made it out alive. Congratulations!
Most of the gains in DE were from NJ and PA. This was reported in an AP story in Sunday’s News Journal.
I know that some of the folks who fled the crazy taxes in their state are now trying to get the governments here to head down the path that ruined their former states.  Think about taxpayer funded curbside recycling as an example. They start out with universal availability and end up with higher taxes and “Green Police” as in the Audi Superbowl ad. Jersey already has them picking through your trash looking for recyclables and fining you.  Next will come sales tax.  Just a little one to start!

Welcome to Delaware, but please leave those “great” ideas at the state line!

The Stimulus has succeeded!

Well now, Matt Denn has sent the Governor a report on the Stimulus proclaimng it has succeeded.

Weo.

The report says 1,400 to 4,300 jobs have been saved or created.

Tres Bon Magnifique!

But I have to ask why don’t we know how mnay jobs it really is? Determing the number of jobs requires counting. 4 people hired here, 3 teachers not laid off. Get the Excel spreadsheet going and create some categories and add.

The office of the Lt. Gov has 5 staffers and all we can get is a guestimate?

So do we really need more of this type of success?

Bill Gates, Daily Show, Charter Schools

The following comes from The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools:

Bill Gates and Charters on the Daily Show

Bill Gates, the 2010 National Charter Schools Conference keynote speaker and Co-Chair, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, recently appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and mentioned (beginning at the 4 minute mark) the invaluable role public charter schools play to provide an alternative to the status quo in the U.S. education system by experimenting with innovative curriculum models to increase student achievement. He embodies the conference’s Innovation theme time and time again and it is with great pride that we welcome him in Chicago, on June 29, 2010 to deliver the opening address to our attendees. Register today to confirm space in the conference hotel, and ensure your chance to participate in the only national conference devoted to the charter school movement.

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As someone who is right in the middle of trying to get the capital funding necessary to open a Charter High School, John Stewart and Bill Gates demonstrate that even people with almost unlimited resources are having trouble getting the union to do what’s right for the good teachers and our kids.

US Revenues Versus Disbursements as a % of GDP — President Obama’s Budget

The President has released his budget. The overall picture is probably best understood by looking at the chart below (Source: Office of Management & Budget Historicals & Forecast).  This budget includes a freeze on discretionary non-security spending, higher taxes on wealthy Americans, reduced itemized deductions, a “financial crisis responsibility fee” paid by banks, higher taxes on companies doing business outside the U.S., higher carried interest taxes on private equity, and higher taxes on oil & gas firms. Even with these “assumptions”, the Administration projects a persistently large and growing deficit throughout the decade.  The chart shows something else as well: tax revenues are near their long-term average, but spending reaches new and higher levels relative to GDP.

Digging into the numbers, by 2016, discretionary spending will only be 10% of total spending and defense will be 19%.  That leaves another 71%, which is mandatory entitlement spending (and interest).  Entitlements include Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and much higher benefits for Federal employees compared to private sector counterparts.  Although entitlements might be a great benefit when the country can afford them; eventually, the global capacity for US debt will require very tough choices.  And the choices are: raise taxes substantially (displacing business investment leading to reduced productivity and a lower standard of living), cut entitlements (potentially reneging on promises made to existing beneficiaries), or allow the Federal debt to keep on growing (a.k.a., Japan) at whatever rates the market (China) will bear.

Bad choices all. But, the longer we wait, the worse the situation becomes…

Death in Judgment: Reflections on Capital Punishment

 “Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”- J.R.R. Tolkien

On Monday, February 1st, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit upheld the constitutionality of Delaware’s death penalty.  Executions, stayed since 2006, may now resume.

After much prayer and reflection on this issue, I must call on our Legislature to abolish the death penalty.    Although not unconstitutional, capital punishment cannot presently be justified as a criminal penal sanction. 

I understand that my views on the propriety of capital punishment do not comport with those of a majority of my Republican friends.   With that in mind, let me attempt, in brief, to lay out the factors that have influenced my own thinking on this issue.  

The moral horizon

As a conservative who believes in an enduring moral order  it is appropriate to begin this discussion with a brief examination of the morality of capital punishment in general. 

In this regard, being  a Catholic, I turn to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which states:

Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.

If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity with the dignity of the human person.

Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm—without definitively taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself—the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity “are very rare, if not practically non-existent”.

(emphasis added).  Capital punishment is not intrinsically evil or wrong, and may be permissible under rare circumstances.  The question therefore, becomes whether those circumstances exist.

One innocent life?

The first predicate to capital punishment is a criminal justice system capable of determining a guilty person’s identity and culpability with the requisite level of certainty. 

But what is the requisite level of certainty?   

From 1976 to today, roughly 1200 offenders have been put to death in the United States.  During this same period, approximately 140 convicts on death row have been exonerated of their crimes.*

These figures are troubling.   The number of individuals on death row that have been exonerated is almost 12% of the total number of offenders executed.   Thus, it stands to reason that some small percentage of the inmates currently on death row are in fact innocent of the crimes that they have been convicted for.  It is unreasonable to assume that all those who have been wrongly convicted are ultimately exonerated.  The inescapable conclusion to draw from these figures is that innocent individuals have been executed in the past, and will be again in the future.

At the same time, other data point to systemic flaws in the application of the death penalty within our criminal justice system.  In brief, there is evidence that socio-economic status, race (of the offender and more significantly, of the victim), and even geography, play key roles in who lives, and who dies. 

For example, about 90% of the criminal defendants sentenced to death could not afford to hire their own lawyer.  Puzzlingly, despite the fact that African American’s account for half of all homicide victims, more than 80% of those sentenced to death in the United States were convicted of killing a Caucasian.  Various studies have also shown that the application of the death penalty varies widely within states that permit it.  

Put simply, I do not believe that our criminal justice system is capable of establishing the identity of guilty individuals with the level of certainty necessary for capital punishment.  At the same time, I am deeply trouble by the apparent role that socio-economic status and race play in capital sentencing.  The J.R.R. Tolkien quote at the beginning of this blog speaks to this issue-  given that some on death row are innocent, we should not be so hasty to deal out death in judgment.   The risk of erroneous convictions, and the execution of innocent persons, is unacceptably high.

The Rest of the World

At the same time, the evolving Western moral consensus is clearly against capital punishment.  At present, the United States is one of the last Western democracy’s that still practice capital punishment.*

For example, as of this writing, only 3 (out of 50) nations in Europe retain the death penalty.  One, Russia, has a moratorium on further executions.  One, Latvia, has abolished capital punishment except during wartime.  Only one- Belarus- continues to practice capital punishment. 

Is that the sort of company we keep?  Is Belarus in the vanguard on human rights’  issues? Does she boast the world’s most evolved criminal justice system?  Hardly, Belarus is a third-rate petty thugocracy.    We should aspire to better. 

Speaking of the company we keep, according to Amnesty International, the United States ranked fourth internationally in the number of executions carried out in 2008, behind China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.   We were ahead of Pakistan which came in at number five, followed by Iraq, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and North Korea.  Our industrial democracy peers are conspicuously absent from this list.

Even within the United States, 15 states no longer have capital punishment.*  Delaware should join their ranks.      

Dollars and Sense

One additional argument against capital punishment is that a death sentence is more expensive than life without the possibility of parole.   

For example, a 2005 report in the LA Times found that California incurred an additional $114,000,000 per year beyond the costs of life imprisonment due to the death penalty.  Similarly,  a study from 2002 determined that the costs of having the death penalty in Indiana exceed the cost of life without parole by roughly 38%. 

These figures are not inconsequential- it would seem that a sentence of life without the possibility of parole actually saves the taxpayers money.

But what of deterrence?

The best argument summoned by defenders of capital punishment is often that it plays a deterrent role- in other words, that having the death penalty on the books reduces violent crime.

I doubt it.  First, the application of the penalty- death- is far too temporally removed from the criminal act at issue for the sanction to have much deterrent value.    Typically, years pass between the conviction, and the application of the death sentence while the criminal defendant exhausts various appeals.  Also, as noted above, the roles played by socio-economic status, race, and geography in sentencing, mitigate against any broad deterrent effect.  

Indeed, Texas alone accounts for over 38% of the capital sentences carried out in the US since 1976. Texas, Virginia, and Oklahoma combined account for well over half of the total US executions during this period. How, given this most unequal application of the death penalty geographically, can it be credibly argued that capital punishment has a deterrent effect nationally, or here in Delaware?

Conclusion

Cardinal McCarrick, Archbishop of Washington, has written that  “…the death penalty diminishes all of us, increases disrespect for human life, and offers the tragic illusion that we can teach that killing is wrong by killing.”

Even the very worst criminals among us never cease to be human beings.  Capital punishment is licit only in those rare circumstances where death is the sole effective means available to government for defending innocent lives against aggression- such as during times of extreme civil unrest/insurrection, or in the context of military justice.   None of these situations obtain in Delaware at present.  Moreover, the data shows both that innocent persons receive capital sentences at a suprisingly high rate, and that the death penalty is applied inconsistently and arbitrarily in the United States.

Delaware should join the evolving Western moral consensus on this issue and abolish capital punishment.   The law can be a teacher- here,  let the lesson be that all human life has value.

— 

*Source: Death Penalty Information Center

* About 1/3 of the world’s nations have capital punishment.  Aside from our own, the list (as of 2009) includes:   Afghanistan, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Botswana, Chad, China, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cuba, Dominica, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Guinea, Guyana, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nigeria, North Korea, Oman, Pakistan, Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad And Tobago, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, Vietnam, Yemen,  and Zimbabwe.   This is the company we keep.

* The 15 are  Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.  In addition the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands do not presently have the death penalty.

The Delaware Way endures.

Ah yes, The Delaware Way where it’s insider baseball at it’s best. One example is the classic you get me a weak opponent, I’ll get you a weak one as well. In 1980 a state representative paid his opponent’s filing fee, The opponent sat home and chilled and presto chango after the election the opponent got a state job.

I could on. Trust me I can.

However we now need to look at how the Delaware Way is practiced under our esteemed Attorny General who all of a sudden actually gives a damn about being the AG. (Friends of mine in there are so despondent they are pondering retirement. Has ANYONE called Ferris?)

It now seems according to the NJ’s reporter, a Miss Gibson, that Beau has decided that what he campaigned on no longer needs to be addressed. Namely our right to see what in the hell the state workers who work for us do with our money aka FOIA.

Governments hate the fact that the peasants can do a FOIA request, for this could mean accountability on their part. 

Beau campaigned saying he wanted more access for such requests. He even got Karen to introduce a bill. The bill went nowhere because the vested interests sure as hell don’t want more openess because that means more accountability.

See a pattern here?

Well low and behold, the bill is in someone’s desk and now Beau says it’s no longer needed. 

Here’s why, Beau has been told not to rock the cart with making FOIA more accessible. The DAG’s - deputy attorney generals – cry that they have to serve 2 masters if such a thing happens and that they can’t protect the agency they’re assigned if they have to at the same time process a FOIA request from the peasants aka the voting public.

There’s a word for this and it starts with a b. And of course there’s a phrase for this attitude, it’s called The Delaware Way.

Ned Carpenter

My good friend and great supporter, the late Ned Carpenter, had an essay in the Saturday Wall Street Journal (The link to the essay in the Journal is here). He wrote the essay when he was 17 years old, and it was read at his memorial service a year ago. I include the entire essay below. With what passes as “debate” on most blogs, today, both left and right, we could sure use some 17 year olds like Ned Carpenter, again…

BEFORE I DIE

By EDMUND N. CARPENTER, II

The following essay was written by Edmund N. Carpenter, age 17, in June 1938 while he was a student in Lawrenceville, N.J. Carpenter would go on to win the Bronze Star for his service in World War II and to a civilian career as an attorney. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he became president of Richards, Layton & Finger, a law firm. He died on Dec. 19, 2008 at age 87 and is survived by six children and 15 grandchildren:

It may seem very strange to the reader that one of my tender age should already be thinking about that inevitable end to which even the paths of glory lead. However, this essay is not really concerned with death, but rather with life, my future life. I have set down here the things which I, at this age, believe essential to happiness and complete enjoyment of life. Some of them will doubtless seem very odd to the reader; others will perhaps be completely in accord with his own wishes. At any rate, they compose a synopsis of the things which I sincerely desire to have done before I leave this world and pass on to the life hereafter or to oblivion.

Before I die I want to know that I have done something truly great, that I have accomplished some glorious achievement the credit for which belongs solely to me. I do not aspire to become as famous as a Napoleon and conquer many nations; but I do want, almost above all else, to feel that I have been an addition to this world of ours. I should like the world, or at least my native land, to be proud of me and to sit up and take notice when my name is pronounced and say, “There is a man who has done a great thing.” I do not want to have passed through life as just another speck of humanity, just another cog in a tremendous machine. I want to be something greater, far greater than that. My desire is not so much for immortality as for distinction while I am alive. When I leave this world, I want to know that my life has not been in vain, but that I have, in the course of my existence, done something of which I am rightfully very proud.

Before I die I want to know that during my life I have brought great happiness to others. Friendship, we all agree, is one of the best things in the world, and I want to have many friends. But I could never die fully contented unless I knew that those with whom I had been intimate had gained real happiness from their friendship with me. Moreover, I feel there is a really sincere pleasure to be found in pleasing others, a kind of pleasure that can not be gained from anything else. We all want much happiness in our lives, and giving it to others is one of the surest ways to achieve it for ourselves.

Before I die I want to have visited a large portion of the globe and to have actually lived with several foreign races in their own environment. By traveling in countries other than my own I hope to broaden and improve my outlook on life so that I can get a deeper, and more complete satisfaction from living. By mixing the weighty philosophy of China with the hard practicalism of America, I hope to make my life fuller. By blending the rigid discipline of Germany with the great liberty in our own nation I hope to more completely enjoy my years on this earth. These are but two examples of the many things which I expect to achieve by traveling and thus have a greater appreciation of life.

Before I die there is another great desire I must fulfill, and that is to have felt a truly great love. At my young age I know that love, other than some filial affection, is probably far beyond my ken. Yet, young as I may be, I believe I have had enough inkling of the subject to know that he who has not loved has not really lived. Nor will I feel my life is complete until I have actually experienced that burning flame and know that I am at last in love, truly in love. I want to feel that my whole heart and soul are set on one girl whom I wish to be a perfect angel in my eyes. I want to feel a love that will far surpass any other emotion that I have ever felt. I know that when I am at last really in love then I will start living a different, better life, filled with new pleasures that I never knew existed.

Before I die I want to feel a great sorrow. This, perhaps, of all my wishes will seem the strangest to the reader. Yet, is it unusual that I should wish to have had a complete life? I want to have lived fully, and certainly sorrow is a part of life. It is my belief that, as in the case of love, no man has lived until he has felt sorrow. It molds us and teaches us that there is a far deeper significance to life than might be supposed if one passed through this world forever happy and carefree. Moreover, once the pangs of sorrow have slackened, for I do not believe it to be a permanent emotion, its dregs often leave us a better knowledge of this world of ours and a better understanding of humanity. Yes, strange as it may seem, I really want to feel a great sorrow.

With this last wish I complete the synopsis of the things I want to do before I die. Irrational as they may seem to the reader, nevertheless they comprise a sincere summary of what I truthfully now believe to be the things most essential to a fully satisfactory and happy life. As I stand here on the threshold of my future, these are the things which to me seem the most valuable. Perhaps in fifty years I will think that they are extremely silly. Perhaps I will wonder, for instance, why I did not include a wish for continued happiness. Yet, right now, I do not desire my life to be a bed of roses. I want it to be something much more than that. I want it to be a truly great adventure, never dull, always exciting and engrossing; not sickly sweet, yet not unhappy. And I believe it will be all I wish if I do these things before I die.

As for death itself, I do not believe that it will be such a disagreeable thing providing my life has been successful. I have always considered life and death as two cups of wine. Of the first cup, containing the wine of life, we can learn a little from literature and from those who have drunk it, but only a little. In order to get the full flavor we must drink deeply of it for ourselves. I believe that after I have quaffed the cup containing the wine of life, emptied it to its last dregs, then I will not fear to turn to that other cup, the one whose contents can be designated only by X, an unknown, and a thing about which we can gain no knowledge at all until we drink for ourselves. Will it be sweet, or sour, or tasteless? Who can tell? Surely none of us like to think of death as the end of everything. Yet is it? That is a question that for all of us will one day be answered when we, having witnessed the drama of life, come to the final curtain. Probably we will all regret to leave this world, yet I believe that after I have drained the first cup, and have possibly grown a bit weary of its flavor, I will then turn not unwillingly to the second cup and to the new and thrilling experience of exploring the unknown.

I’m clueless.

As a rule I tend to be out of the loop or in the wrong loop when I am in one yet I am compelled to ask why are Kate and Jon Gosselin famous?

They’ve invented no cure for disease nor patented a car that runs on pencil shavings nor found a way to keep at risk kids from dropping out.

In short what exactly have they done?

Today we learn that her hair-extensions have fallen out.

There are people huddled at the Sunday Breakfast Mission right now and we’re to be filled with angst over her hair extensions falling out ???

On an added note Rev. Tom Laymon is doing the Lord’s work at the Sunday Breakfast Mission. Money is tight for many, but an extra 10.00 a month would be alot to this organization. Yes, this is a plug for a great charity serving God’s neediest.

Back to the ranting. People think Jon Stewart is Walter Cronkite, the Iranians are bettering their geography and measuring skills so they can soon rid the Middle East of the Isreali’s, our soldiers are living in towns where water comes from a stream in Afghanistan and the entire village knows who the Americans are which is always a good thing for setting that little bomb off and our current President is hell bent on making certain that we never get out of debt to the Communist Chinese. (Alexander Hamilton is weeping in Heaven right now. He warned us.)

But despite all of this we’re to be fixated on the trials and tribulations of some broad and her loser husband.

Explain to me why, for I am totally clueless.

All The President Needed To Say Was “Read My Lips”

President’s address to a joint session of Congress, Sept. 9

The plan I’m announcing tonight would meet three basic goals. It will provide more security and stability to those who have health insurance. It will provide insurance for those who don’t. And it will slow the growth of health care costs for our families, our businesses, and our government. . . . Now, add it all up, and the plan I’m proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years. . . . Most of these costs will be paid for with money already being spent–but spent badly–in the existing health-care system. The plan will not add to our deficit. The middle class will realize greater security, not higher taxes. And if we are able to slow the growth of health care costs by just one-tenth of 1% each year–one-tenth of 1 %–it will actually reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the long term.

President Obama at the GOP House Issues Conference, Jan. 29

I mean, the easiest thing for me to do on the health-care debate would have been to tell people that ‘what you’re going to get is guaranteed health insurance, lower your costs, all the insurance reforms, we’re going to lower the cost of Medicare and Medicaid, and it won’t cost anybody anything.; That’s great politics. It’s just not true. So there’s got to be some test of realism in any of these proposals, mine included. I’ve got to hold myself accountable.

“easiest thing …would have been able to tell people…” — But, Mr. President, on national television on September 9th, that is exactly what you told people. Now, in a rare moment of candor you admit that it was not true. And the Left wonders why their health care payment system “reform” is bombing? Maybe because it doesn’t add up, and the President has admitted as much…

[Quotes reported in the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web]

Healthcare Costs Rise Fastest Since 1960

In 2009, healthcare costs in the United States grew by 1.1% or the fastest rate since 1960 according to the New York Times (the whole article can be found here). To quote from the article:

A major factor in the growth of health spending was the increase in Medicaid enrollment and Medicaid spending as a result of rising unemployment. As people lost jobs, they lost private insurance, and many turned to Medicaid.

Wait a minute… Wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute… People lost their private insurance and had to switch to the government plan which forced costs to go up?!?! So, if the government provided a subsidy to these folks to keep their private insurance in a competitive market, than costs would have been lower. What a great idea. I wonder if anyone is recommending the competitive private sector as the best way to control costs.

Also, according to the LA Times, (the whole article can be found here):

…as early as next year, the country could mark another milestone as government picks up more than half of the nation’s total healthcare tab for the first time… Last year, CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) estimated that government spending on healthcare would not overtake private spending until 2016, compared with 2011 or 2012 in the current report.

Again, confirming that as the government increases its direct role in healthcare, costs rise faster than private sector options. Is this really surprising to anyone but the folks running our national government and the extreme left?

Lost in the debate is the fact that after 1 year in office, President Obama has still not nominated a Administrator for CMS. So while the government will shortly control 50% of healthcare expenses at a higher cost than private sector options there is no one in charge of the government program. Where’s Alexander Haig when you need him…