GOP Governor Asks Voters to Raise Their Own Taxes

By Rob Garver

May 5, 2015

Michigan voters go to the polls today to vote on Proposal 1, a referendum that would hike the state sales and gasoline taxes. An unexpected twist in the story, though, is who is backing the plan and why. Support for the proposal speaks to the declining state of infrastructure in the U.S. and the increasing urgency with which states are taking matters into their own hands.

Proposal 1 is a complex mix of policy changes that would raise more than a billion dollars to fund road construction and repair, plus hundreds of millions for education and other purposes. It would do so by hiking the Michigan state sales tax from 6 percent to 7 percent. That represents a 17 percent increase in total sales taxes Michiganders will face on taxable items.

However, the bill also abolishes the sales tax on gasoline – Michigan is one of the few states in which gas is not exempt from state sales tax – and would dramatically increase the wholesale gasoline tax. The net effect, according to the Detroit Free Press, would be an increase of between 7 and 9 cents per gallon in what consumers pay at the pump. The proposal would net about $1.9 billion per year for the state’s coffers, the majority of it coming out of the pockets of Michigan’s taxpayers. (A small percentage would come from out-of-state visitors paying taxes on items purchased in Michigan.)

Normally, a $2 billion tax hike – the biggest in the state in a generation – would be the sort of thing Republican politicians would attack mercilessly, but in Michigan, Republican Governor Rick Snyder is a strong proponent of the deal. And Snyder isn’t alone. Prominent Republican and Democratic lawmakers have thrown their support behind the measure.

The move also has significant support from the business community. Unsurprisingly, the biggest backers of the deal are the construction companies and related industries. But there is also support in the general business community, even among some companies whose products would be more expensive.

Even with substantial support from legislative leaders and businesses, though, the prospects for Proposal 1 looked poor heading into the vote today Public opinion remains generally against the proposition despite a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign by supporters that has dwarfed efforts by the opposition.

Should the vote fail, though, the state’s pothole-pocked roads and crumbling bridges won’t fix themselves, so legislators will have to find the revenue somewhere, either by increasing taxes via a different route, or cutting spending from an already tight state budget.

When Uber Isn’t Uber Enough

Meet Blade, the Uber for Helicopters in NYC

Blade

By Eric Lawrence

August 4, 2015

Uber may be convenient, but New York’s Hamptons set doesn’t always have the time or patience to deal with the traffic getting out to their summer spots on Long Island’s East End.

Blade, which calls itself “the first digitally driven short distance aviation company,” says it has a solution for those who want to get to East Hampton within the hour, or Southampton in 35 minutes: Ordering their own chartered helicopter via an app.

Once you download the app, you can select your flight time, chill out in a Blade lounge at a Manhattan heliport and then enjoy “a snack, a drink, a newspaper and lots of other fun things” on your flight. Passengers are allowed one carry-on weighing 25 lbs. maximum — but no golf clubs.

The service, which launched in May 2014, doesn’t come cheap, at $595 per seat to go to Quogue, Southampton, East Hampton, Montauk or Fire Island. Blade can also be booked for trips to Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, Cape Cod and some other destinations in the Northeast as well as to the New York area’s major airports.

The website advises that if your flight is grounded due to bad weather, you’ll be offered a ride to your destination in a chauffeured Mercedes at no extra cost.

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The Best and Worst States for Student Debt

REUTERS/Steve Dipaola

By Suelain Moy

August 4, 2015

Where you go to college and what major you pick can have huge financial consequences, but where you live after graduating can also have a big impact on how much your diploma is worth — and how well you can handle your student debt.

How likely are you to land a good paying job? How high will your living expenses be? The answers to those questions and others like them go a long way to determining how burdensome those monthly student loans payments are.

To ensure your loan doesn’t break you, experts suggest that your payment should not exceed 8 to 10 percent of your monthly income.

Unsurprisingly, the personal finance website WalletHub says, “Student-loan borrowers will fare better in states that produce a combination of lower college-related debt levels, stronger economies and higher incomes.”

To find those states, WalletHub looked at seven metrics, with special emphasis given to student debt as a percentage of average income, the local unemployment rate for people aged 25 to 34 and the percentage of borrowers aged 50 or older. Here are the 10 best and worst states for student debt. You can click on your state on the map below to see where it ranks.

10 Best States for Student Debt

Utah
Wyoming
North Dakota
Washington
Nebraska
Virginia
Wisconsin
Minnesota
Colorado
South Dakota

10 Worst States for Student Debt

Mississippi
Rhode Island
Connecticut
Maine
Georgia
South Carolina
New York
Alabama
West Virginia
Oregon

Source: WalletHub

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Why We’re Wasting Billions on Teacher Development

REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni

By Beth Braverman

August 4, 2015

School districts spend an average $18,000 per year on teacher development, and teachers devote about 10 percent of their time to professional learning, but a new report finds that such programs may not be producing any measurable results.

The report, released today by TNTP, a nonprofit aimed at addressing educational equality, finds even with development programs, teachers do not show much improvement year over year, and the performance for the vast majority (70 percent) remained constant or declined over the past two to three years.

The report’s authors believe the lack of improvement stems from low expectations for teacher development and performance, and they suggest that schools need to rethink completely the ways that they measure teacher performance and the way they conduct student development.

The study evaluated information on more than 10,000 teachers at three large school districts and a charter network covering nearly 400,000 students.

The authors report that teachers who do show improvement do not appear to be the result of deliberate, systemic efforts, and show no clear patterns that could improve development for others. “The absence of common threads challenges us to confront the true nature of the problem,” they write. “That as much as we wish we knew how to help all teachers improve, we do not.”

Rather than offer specific solutions, the authors suggest that schools redefine professional development, re-evaluate professional learning programs, and reinvent the ways they support teachers.

Happy Watermelon Day! 16 Sweet, Juicy Facts You Didn’t Know

An Asian elephant eats a watermelon on a hot day at the Everland amusement park in Yongin

REUTERS/Lee Jae-Won

By Suelain Moy

August 3, 2015

Frida Kahlo painted them and poets have celebrated them. In his “Ode to the Watermelon,” Pablo Neruda described it as “a fruit from the thirst-tree” and “the green whale of the summer.” He wrote: “its hemispheres open/showing a flag/green, white, red,/ that dissolves into/wild rivers, sugar, delight!” Abundant in summer, watermelons are by their very nature sweet and heavy, plus they’re full of vitamins: A, B6, and C. Aug. 3 is National Watermelon Day. We celebrate it here with 16 fun facts.

Watermelons are 92 percent water.
The word “watermelon” first appeared in English dictionaries in 1615, according to John Mariani’s The Dictionary of American Food and Drink.
Watermelons are related to pumpkins, as well as cucumbers and squash.
The world’s largest watermelon was grown by Lloyd Bright of Arkadelphia, Arkansas in 2005 and weighed 268.8 pounds, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
Watermelons originated in southern Africa.
They appear in Egyptian hieroglyphics nearly 5,000 years ago. Watermelon seeds were found in the tomb of King Tut.

Early explorers carried watermelons on long trips as a source of water, like canteens.
Watermelons are both fruits and vegetables.
China is the largest producer of watermelons in the world today, followed by Turkey and Iran.
The U.S. currently ranks fifth in watermelon production worldwide. Georgia, Florida, Texas, California and Arizona are the states that grow the most watermelon.
On April 17, 2007, the Oklahoma State Senate passed a bill declaring watermelon as the official state vegetable.
Over 1,200 varieties of watermelon are grown in 100 countries across the world.
Watermelons were introduced to the New World by European colonists and African slaves. Spanish settlers started growing watermelon in Florida in 1576.
One cup of watermelon has more lycopene, a pigment with antioxidant effects, than a large fresh tomato.

You can eat the seeds. And the rind. Here’s a recipe for pickled watermelon rind.
Are your muscles feeling sore? Have some watermelon before your next workout. The juice contains L-citrulline, which the body converts to L-arginine, an amino acid that helps relax blood vessels and improves circulation.

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Why Believing Donald Trump Will Be the GOP Nominee Is Delusional

U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump listens to a question at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames

REUTERS/Jim Young

By Eric Pianin

August 3, 2015

Despite his commanding lead at this early stage among GOP candidates, the 2016 nomination is anyone’s game.

It is risky to put too much stock in the latest findings, including the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Sunday. That’s because the national telephone survey of 1,000 adults included only 252 registered voters who said they would vote for a Republican, and the poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 6.17 points.

There are plenty of downsides to Trump’s candidacy – including his threat to mount a third-party campaign if he is denied the Republican nomination -- which has alarmed GOP leaders who are looking down the road to the general election.

Trump has the highest negatives of any of the top tier candidates, and a majority of Americans in the survey said they think Trump is hurting the Republican Party. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of Democrats interviewed said Trump was harming his party’s image, but nearly half the Republicans interviewed said the same thing.

Political analyst Nate Silver notes that Trump ranks just 13^th in overall favorability among Republicans in a series of national polls. “If you’re going to imply that a candidate is popular based on their receiving 20 percent of the vote, you ought to consider what the other 80 percent thinks about him,” Silver wrote recently in his FiveThirtyEight blog. “Most Republicans who don’t plan to vote for Trump are skeptical of him instead.”

What’s more, about three in four Latinos said they have a negative view of Trump – and that more than half consider his comments about lawless Mexican immigrants to be racist or highly inappropriate, according to a separate NBC News/Wall Street Journal Telemundo poll released today.

The survey of 250 Hispanic-American voters revealed widespread hostility towards Trump, with only 13 percent saying they have a positive view of him.

The Republican presidential frontrunner has said repeatedly that many Latino voters “love” and support him, and that he would win the majority of that vote if he ends up as his party’s nominee. There is little evidence in this poll to suggest Trump is dealing with reality.

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