Revenue surge doesn’t match rhetoric
THE announcement this week that Oklahoma’s state gross receipts to the treasury have hit an all-time high would normally be celebrated from the rooftops by state politicians. But for the most part that hasn’t happened, perhaps because the tax collection surge contrasts so starkly with the “sky is falling” rhetoric of so many.
State government’s budget year runs from July to the end of the following June. In the just-concluded 2018 fiscal year, gross receipts to the treasury increased by $1.2 billion, or 11.1 percent, compared with 2017. Gross receipts have experienced positive growth for 15 consecutive months. Twelve-month collections have been higher than the previous period for 11 months in a row now.
Just $308.5 million of the $1.2 billion increase was due to tax increases approved by the Legislature in 2017. Put another way, collections would have surged dramatically even had no tax increases been approved.
Some lawmakers will argue that a little less than half of gross receipt collections are deposited into the state’s general revenue fund, which is used for legislative appropriations. Yet much of the remainder is separately apportioned “off the top” by lawmakers and spent outside the appropriation process, and the disbursement of much of the total amount is still controlled by legislators through state law.
Regardless, tax collection growth suggests lawmakers’ claims of imminent financial doom had more in common with Chicken Little’s warnings in the original folk tale than lawmakers would like to admit.
Straw ban
The city of Seattle has banned the use of plastic straws and utensils in bars and restaurants, supposedly to reduce waste and prevent marine plastic pollution. The city’s 5,000 restaurants are now expected to use reusable or compostable utensils, straws and cocktail picks, and city officials are nudging eateries to switch to paper. If this sounds a tad hare-brained, that’s because it is. As the New York Post noted in an editorial, “those supposedly moreeco-friendly straws made from plant-based materials also take forever to decompose. If they end up in the ocean, they’re just as likely to harm sea creatures as plastic ones.” The Post also notes that “making paper straws creates more air pollution — plus you often have to use more than one, after the first gets too soggy.” Thus, the ban is more about virtue-signaling that generating measurable environmental improvement.
Sears’ last stand?
Readers of a certain age will recall poring over the Sears catalogue as a child. The catalogue is long gone, and Sears stores may soon join it as a mere memory or source of nostalgia. This week, Sears Holding announced it was closing the last of its remaining traditional Sears stores in Oklahoma City, which was one of its last stores in the state. Yet this development is part of the creative destruction of the marketplace. At one time, Sears was an innovator and pioneer in mail-order merchandise, bringing goods to consumers faster and cheaper than what was previously possible. Competitors that couldn’t keep up closed their doors. Today, Sears is on the other side of that equation, struggling to stay on the forefront of consumer service. That’s hard on Sears employees, of course, but ultimately it’s to the benefit of consumers.
San Francisco’s decline
This is a recurring story, but San Francisco’s decline due to left-wing policies continues unabated. The San Francisco Tribune reports a major medical association is pulling its annual convention out of the city due to safety concerns. “It’s the first time that we have had an out-and-out cancellation over the issue, and this is a group that has been coming here every three or four years since the 1980s,” Joe D’Alessandro, president and CEO of S.F. Travel, told the newspaper. The convention drew 15,000 attendees and pumped $40 million into the local economy. The Tribune reported that post-convention surveys showed the medical group’s members were “afraid to walk amid the open drug use, threatening behavior and mental illness that are common on the streets.” Given the political climate of that city, things will likely get worse before they get better.
Windfall? Not quite
Oklahoma’s new medical marijuana law calls for sales of the product to be taxed at 7 percent, with revenues primarily going to finance the regulatory office. If excess revenue is generated, 75 percent would go to the state’s general fund for common education and the rest would go to the Health Department for drug and alcohol rehabilitation. That’s a big if. In California, a recreational marijuana law took effect Jan. 1. During the first quarter of the year, The Associated Press reported this week, the state reaped $34 million from cultivation and excise taxes, “putting it on pace to fall well below the $175 million forecast for the first six months.” A major reason why is the black market — shops that have registered with the state are being undersold by outlets that don’t charge their customers taxes. Is there a reason to think something similar won’t occur here?
Not happy with Schumer
Constituents of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., weren’t pleased when he failed to show up at a town hall at his Brooklyn synagogue. Shortly before the meeting was to begin Monday, Schumer’s office informed attendees that plane trouble had him grounded in Utica, which is upstate. A local group had been trying for almost a year to meet face-to-face with Schumer. The “my plane is broken” excuse didn’t sell with many. “The man is either a coward or he’s incompetent,” one man told The Nation’s Raina Lipsitz. Another attendee said the result — a tele-town hall — was unacceptable. “You can’t literally phone it in,” she said. A longtime constituent said to Lipsitz, “He can’t show up in his own district, his own synagogue?” and added, “Does he want to be Joe Crowley?” Crowley, a 10-term Democratic House member from New York, recently lost his primary by 15 points to 28-year-old a political newcomer.
Wild attacks
The left’s attacks on potential Supreme Court nominees have been over the top the whole time, but the “Why Courts Matter” Twitter account, part of an effort run by officials with the liberal Center for American Progress, managed to exceed even wild hyperbole with an attack on Judge Amy Coney Barrett. The group tweeted that Barrett had “sided against an African American worker in favor of a company’s ‘separate-but-equal arrangement,’ flying in the face of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” Writing at National Review Online, Charles C.W. Cooke noted several problems with this attack. For one thing, Cooke said, the decision referenced “was not written by Amy Barrett.” In fact, Barrett was “not present on the threejudge panel that rendered the verdict,” and Barrett “didn’t even take her place on the Seventh Circuit until November 2017 — five months after the case was concluded.” But other than that …