Unleash Prosperity Hotline #980

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Unleash Prosperity Hotline
Issue #980
03/20/2024
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1) Louisiana: You're Next on School Choice

We won’t rest this year until the entire South region is one giant school choice zone. Talk about a competitive advantage over other states!

We’re getting there. Two weeks ago Alabama enacted its first-ever education freedom bill. Georgia has passed a “foot in the door” bill that expands school choice for families in failing districts. In Texas, six incumbent Republicans opposed to school choice were defeated outright in recent primaries, and four more are in tough runoff elections.

This week House members in Baton Rouge introduced a bill to expand school choice by creating The Louisiana Giving All True Opportunity to Rise (LA GATOR) Scholarship Program, which would fund private school scholarships for special education and lower-income students (below 250 percent of the federal poverty level) and – if funds are available – smaller scholarships for all students.

Democratic governor John Bel Edwards had squashed this bill for the past two terms, but he’s out now and Governor Jeff Landry — a Republican — tells us that he’s fully on board.

None of these bills are radical expansions for ALL families, but they are setting a precedent that education dollars should follow the kids.

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2) State and Local Government Spending Is Booming Too

Investment advisor and Fox Business News commentator Stephanie Pomboy has alerted us to some bad news: state and local government spending is soaring nearly as rapidly as the $7 trillion federal budget. It’s no secret that the States were primary recipients of the lavish Federal spending during and after the pandemic.

But after two years of swimming in cash, Pompey finds: “Surpluses have evaporated and, in many of the largest states, large deficits are emerging. California has gone from a $56b surplus in 2022-3 to a $73b deficit.” New York, Illinois, and New Jersey have also seen surpluses vanish.

This comes at a time when local tax receipts have turned negative year-over-year for the first time since after the Great Recession.

It’s noteworthy to us that the biggest deficits are showing up in the blue states that received massive federal handouts, partied like it was in 1999, and are now facing the day of reckoning.

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3) In Britain the Labour Party Is Embracing Supply Side Economics!

What a contrast between the tax and spend Democrats in the U.S. and the British Labour Party – which is abandoning its traditional "soak the rich" policies. Maybe that’s because Britain is teetering on the cliff of recession.

The hero here is Rachel Reeves, who will become Treasury Secretary if Labour wins this year’s election. In a major policy speech last week she compared the economic ailments facing Britain to those of Margaret Thatcher:

“As we did at the end of the 1970s, we stand at an inflection point, and as in earlier decades, the solution lies in wide-ranging supply-side reform to drive investment, remove the blockages constraining our productive capacity, and fashion a new economic settlement, drawing on evolutions in economic thought.” Call us gobsmacked at her call for “supply side” solutions.

One driver of this growth message: if present trends continue, the former Communist nation of Poland (which is growing at 3.6% a year) will be wealthier than stagnant Britain in 2030.

This new embrace of a growth vision from the Labour Party is happening at the same time that the Biden Democrats in America are sprinting to the radical socialist left.

Biden has proposed raising almost every tax on the rich: the highest income tax rate, the corporate rate, the capital gains rate, and the dividend tax, while proposing a new wealth tax on unrealized capital gains. Reeves promises no wealth taxes or increases in capital gains tax or the top income tax rate of 45 percent. She wants to relax rules on building in the Green Belts that surround British cities.

The free-market Adam Smith Institute calls many of Labour’s ideas “serious, innovation-focused, positive.”

We’d like Ms. Reeves to travel across the pond and share some of her ideas with Janet Yellen.

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4) New York Quality of Life in Freefall

A massive survey of NYC residents by the Citizens Budget Commission replicates 2017 and 2008 surveys and finds some ugly trends.

This table shows the percentages of respondents giving a positive response. Only 21.7% of New Yorkers now feel safe riding a subway at night. Just 10.7% think the city spends tax dollars wisely.

The top concern by far is crime:

No wonder every measure of domestic migration shows people fleeing NYC in droves. Bring back Rudy!

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5) Justin Trudeau Proposes Punishing "Hate Crimes" Before They’re Committed

Our justice system tries to punish those responsible for crimes after the crimes have been committed.

But in the 2002 Tom Cruise movie "Minority Report" the authoritarian government apprehends people under a "pre-crime" program, in which clairvoyants claim foreknowledge of their criminal activity.

Now science fiction may become a reality in Canada.

A federal court found in January the Trudeau admin. unconstitutionally used a state of emergency order to freeze the bank accounts of 2022 COVID lockdown protestors.

It has now proposed a law giving judges the power to put someone under house arrest if they fear they could commit a hate crime in the future.

Under this proposal, anyone who is feared to be a danger to minority groups could have their internet use restricted and be required to wear an electronic tag.

Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative opposition leader, is aghast at the proposal. He warned it “risks misuse or overuse by police, and unfairness to accused persons in court”.

It used to be you had a presumption of innocence. But under this law, innocent until proven guilty has morphed into guilty before you’ve even committed a crime.

If this dangerous law to prevent “hate crimes,” holds up, we can practically guarantee America’s “woke” progressives will be seeing to import it to the United States in short order.

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6) March Madness Begins

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