Q For SD Senators Thune And Rounds: Why Do You Hate A Free And Open Internet?

     With their recent votes against implementation of an internet privacy rule that would have barred service providers from selling our browsing histories, Senators John Thune and Mike Rounds (both

The Future Of The Internet?
Ugly

R, SD) confirmed their  support for assaulting the neutrality of the internet.  A couple of years ago, when he lost his battle against maintaining the

internet's status as a public information highway, meaning the flow of information had to remain open and unfettered by service providers, Thune called a decision to retain oversight of the internet by the Federal Communications Commission "partisan . . . a power grab . . . and regulatory overreach." The telecom industry, which has provided Thune with $220,000 in direct campaign contributions since 2011 (placing the industry among his top ten contributors) took the political hit.  Its champion Thune dutifully responded.  Why Thune thought that allowing ISPs to create various channels of information with separate pricing for each of them would benefit us ordinary South Dakotans is still kind of a mystery to me.  The status quo lets us turn on our browsers and watch all the content that's out there without having to pay more for some information that's deemed "premium." I wish Thune would explain how his new set-up would be better for us.  
     I know the industry, via the new FCC commissioner, Trump-appointee Ajit Pai, claims that investment and innovation are stymied by the requirement that content should be provided on an equal-access basis.  Pai has repeatedly made that case over the years, and now that his political benefactor Donald Trump has ascended to power, Pai has his best chance ever at turning the internet into an online version of cable television.  When our Senator Thune (along with our Senator Rounds, whose $30k from Verizon makes that company his 3rd largest contributor) last month voted to repeal internet browser privacy rules set to go into effect (but delayed by the courts), the first shots were fired across the bow of consumer interests.  As to the lack of investment argument, it's really a bunch of hooey.  The telecom "group"  as of 2016 was by far the leading industry in terms of  spending, with the financial information giant Investopedia noting that in 2015 the industry "broke

out from the crowd" in terms of capital spending.  Meantime, using publicly available SEC data, The

The Fight Goes On
Keep It Free

Nation notes that overall spending by the industry is up 5% in the past two years, with some areas of spending up as much as 50%. This is not an industry that lacks for growth and development opportunities.  
     What the industry lacks, and apparently sorely desires, is the chance to wrest control of the internet from public watchdogs like the FCC and turn it into their private universe of varying contents and speeds.  I don't get how allowing service providers to control content is an improvement on the status quo, and would like an explanation from our Senators Thune and Rounds as to why they believe it is. 

Trump "Loves The Poorly Educated" So Much He Wants To Make More Of Them

   In its continuing crusade to weaken programs that help the poor,  President Trump's budget agenda wants Rapid City Area Schools to lose a significant chunk of  Title I funding. Title I of the

A Worthy Concept
It's Worth The Money

Elementary and Secondary Education Act, enacted in 1965 as one of President Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty" initiatives, provides direct federal money to schools and districts with significant concentrations of students from low-income families.  As Trump's proposed budget will cut Department of Education funding by about 14%, or about $9 billion, programs like Title I will follow suit, right down to the local level, with Rapid City public schools losing about $600 thousand from a $4.5 million annual grant.  This is in keeping with President Trump's budget, which will slash funding from 12 cabinet departments and increase it for three, Defense, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs.
      As a disabled vet I cheer the support for my brethren, but in the much bigger picture, I don't like this particular prioritization.  When it comes to veterans and defense, reducing support for our many economically-disadvantaged kids seems like a tough way to help our vets--and certainly a questionable method of paying for a Defense establishment that already spends more than the next 7 countries combined.  I wish the White House and our congressional reps would consider what we'd lose here in Rapid City (as well as every other school district in this state) if Trump's budget materializes.  Professional training and technology spending would be most immediately affected, taking away the extra attention and assets that are probably needed to give these disadvantaged kids an extra boost in school.
     Longitudinal (read:  follow-up) studies are probably impossible to find at a local level, but researchers have seen some correlation between Title I spending and individual achievement on a national scale.  Studies on academic success are a mixed bag, but a most interesting conclusion was reached in 2015 at the University of California, where researchers followed participants into their adult economic outcomes and found positive correlations between Title I funding increases and "higher earnings and work hours, reductions in incarceration" and reductions in poverty rates. The Trump administration, focused as it is on "jobs, jobs, jobs" should take note.  The link between poverty and poor academic achievement is a long standing reality in the world of public education, but as Trump, who "loves the poorly educated" should know, when it comes to economic success, the effects of good character are as meaningful as the effects of education.  If the UC researchers are correct, Title I and its strategies for developing self-motivation may have as much, possibly greater, impact on the former than it does on the latter.  
     The pedagogical magic of that connection seems clear enough to researchers.  It would be a shame to weaken an opportunity like that for South Dakota's neediest kids. 

Some Dot-Connecting Between Fairness And Efficiency

   What, again?  Governor Daugaard last week ordered immediate cuts in state agency budgets because tax receipts this year have come up short by 10-15 million bucks.  In his typical

caretaker-like fashion, the governor is being re-active when what we need is pro-active leadership.

Daugaard
Banking On Tourists

The chronic problem with the falloff in sales tax receipts in this state isn't likely to get solved by doing nothing but cutting overhead, or, more to the point, by standing around and crossing our fingers that grain and livestock prices will reverse course, go significantly higher, and pull enough revenues into this state to get the cash streams flowing again.  This rather calcified process that masquerades as policy has been the bane of the Daugaard administration for years now.  In 2014, SD forecasts for sales taxes fell significantly short of estimates, much as they have this year, with no 2017 relief in sight beyond the hope of a strong tourist season bringing in a surge of cash to help the state pay its bills.  
     Even should that occur, we're continuing to rely on broad economic and market forces beyond our control to determine our state's fiscal destiny.  Twice now in the past 3 years, forecasters have gotten it wrong and there's no reason to expect their crystal balls to get any more prescient. Meantime, our sales tax revenues fluctuate with the whims of the commodity markets, which seems amazingly inefficient, considering that taxation based on personal income would probably be a much more stable alternative.  The ag sector in South Dakota now has 76% less money to spend than it did in 2011, to the tune of around $3 billion. That debacle, as noted by our elected officials, is probably the most responsible for our sales tax woes.  Meantime, I was startled to discover in a report from

Unfair
And Inefficient

the U.S. Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis that our  personal income--derived from a wide array of non-ag related businesses in South Dakota--during the decade from 2006-2016 grew at a compound annual rate of 4.2%, substantially faster than the U.S. growth rate of 3.5%. 
     We're too self-fixated on our status as a state with no income taxes, as I often hear, but I think some comprehensive tax reform that reduces sales taxes, puts a freeze on property taxes with strict limitations on annual increases, and initiates a progressive tax on income, both personal and corporate, merits consideration.  Ideally it would result in a tax shift, not a tax increase.  Using U.S. Census Bureau data, the financial information website 24/7 Wall Street reports that income growth in South Dakota households from 2011-2015 ranged from 5% in the middle levels to nearly 10% in the upper.  The story lists us as one of the 9 states in the country where the middle class is being left behind,  income growth disparity (definitely a subject worth pursuing in another post) being a good reason why. Given the trend, a graduated income tax seems like a reasonable way to expect people making good money here to bear their share of the burden, which they now escape given our regressive and bumpy sales tax-dependent system. The dots between tax fairness and smoother government revenue streams look connectable to me.  

Repeal, Replace, Repent

      Giddy with the consequences of her recent vote to repeal and replace Obamacare, South Dakota's lone congresswoman, Republican Kristi Noem, was clear about what it meant to her.

Working?  Maybe
Thinking?  Um, I Doubt It

She said "it's a very significant day for me" because "I loved the fact that we repealed the mandates." Apparently, getting rid of those mandates was the main driver of her vote to toss ACA out altogether, circumspection about the full implications of her vote be hanged.  In their rush to create the appearance of a legislative victory for the Trump administration, Noem and her fellow Republicans in the House of Representatives abandoned all pretense of deliberation and put together a bill that even Noem acknowledges has its flaws.  She knows the House whipped up a batch of hasty pudding and even reiterates its pitfalls, particularly in the way it gives states so much leeway in developing requirements for insurers on matters like "essential services" and price protections for older and sicker folk. To questions about that, Noem plaintively responds, "I didn't get to shut the door to my office and write it myself."  Please.
     We South Dakotans have to hope that our GOP Senators Rounds and Thune can give this package a serious once-over before they go the Kristi Noem-esque rubber stamp route.  Besides the matters of making sure all of us get adequate and affordable health care, there are broader economic implications that seem to have whizzed right past the partisan heads in the House.  For one thing, the job-conscious Trump administration should consider that the growth in healthcare jobs (about 10% faster than the overall rate of job growth) in this country during the past few years has more than offset the loss of manufacturing and construction jobs.  Healthcare consulting firm Oliver, Wyman tells CNN "Obamacare was a de facto jobs program

Our Dynamic Duo
Rounds and Thune

whether it was intended that way or not." Researchers at Trump's alma mater UPenn say that the expected decrease in healthcare spending "will translate into a contraction in the healthcare sector."  

     Besides job losses, which are bound to hit South Dakota's 30,000 healthcare pros and technicians, there's the vulnerability of our rural hospitals to consider.  They've been having a tough enough time as it is, especially in states like South Dakota that have refused to expand Medicaid and bring more of its rural populations into that federal insurance pool, which would only add to the revenues of small hospitals. The National Rural Health Association notes that 70 rural hospitals have closed in recent years, with another 700 at risk as it appears that states are likely to get less federal money to treat the poor.  Can South Dakota make up the difference if that transpires? Given our perenially cash-starved fiscal status, I doubt it.  Maybe Rounds and Thune can explain what will happen to our poorer rural residents with the plan they have in mind.