Inefficiency, Errors, Rotten Service: Free Market at "Work" in Health Care

Our legislature is pretty much ignoring health care this session (thanks for all your time, Zaniya Project members). Funny how the big issues don't get any attention from the Legislature, or at best, as with education, get pushed back to the frenzied end.

Maybe the legislators are just afraid to face the ugly fact that the free market is simply sinking health care into a deeper and deeper crisis. I know, free marketeers, worldview change can be hard to take. But here's another gentle reminder that the free market is not the solution to all of problems, courtesy of Dr. Sheila Suess Kennedy. No egghead abstractions from this Indiana University professor of law and public policy, just a story about how her new health insurance provider lost her paperwork and couldn't fill her prescriptions:

When I went on line to order, there was no sign of my prescriptions. I called the customer service line and got a recorded message telling me that they were "experiencing unusually high call volumes, with very long waits." The message suggested I call back. So I did, and got the same message. Eight times, over six weeks, by which time I was running out of medications.

I emailed three times; no response. (I did get a form reply a month after the first email.) So I waited on the phone for a "customer service" representative. When I explained I was unable to order online, she said, "Oh, the first time, you have to call." When I asked how I was supposed to know that, since it was information that appeared nowhere, she changed the subject. When I asked why call volume had been "unusual" for six weeks, she said it was always like that at the beginning of the year. (Evidently, hiring more people to handle this annual "unusual" volume hadn't occurred to them.)

She didn't know why my prescriptions hadn't been transferred. My doctor called in new ones. Still nothing. Another call, another hour. "Oh, our servers went down. Have your doctor call again." He did. Nothing. I finally went to my local pharmacy and shelled out the larger copay. When I have three hours to spare, I'll call again [Dr. Sheila Suess Kennedy, "Free-Falling in Health System," IndyStar.com, 2008.02.18]

"Insurance company overhead averages 25 percent," Dr. Kennedy points out. That extra dough goes toward executive salaries, ad campaigns, and vigorous lawyering aimed at finding new and improved ways to deny coverage to as many paying customers as possible. Dr. Kennedy concludes, "Could government possibly do worse?"

At least with government, we can vote the bums out.

Big Oil, Peak Oil: Rounds Not Looking Forward

"Rounds Looking Forward to the Hyperion Project," reads the headline in this mornings Yankton Press & Dakotan. The headline is oddly deceptive. Governor Rounds and all those eager to tear up Union County farmland and install a sprawling refinery suffer from a stunning inability to look forward... really forward.

How far forward is our governor looking to embrace an industry whose sunset is in sight? Oil production will peak -- it may already have peaked. Oil is finite. So is the lifetime of the oil industry. If built, the Hyperion refinery and the TransCanada pipeline will go idle in our lifetimes. Are we so determined to fill our present lives with all the oil we can burn that we will mortgage our children's lives to pay for technology and industry destined to become obsolete by the time our children need it? Are we so short-sighted that we will remain dependent on the products of Big Oil until the pipes run dry and then leave our kids to figure out their own solutions?

The rhetoric from Governor Rounds, Hyperion, TransCanada, and the rest Big Oil's boosters is utterly devoid of any acknolwedgement of the finite nature of the oil industry. Many of us will be around to see the refineries and pipelines stop adding value to our economy. We will see the mess we are left with: land permanently removed from agriculture through construction and contamination, prohibitively expensive to dismantle and clean up.

Want to look forward, Governor Rounds? Look forward to a day when, wishingly by foresightful choice but more likely by overconsumptive crisis, South Dakota has no oil to burn. What can we do now to prepare for that inevitability? What can we do to lay the foundations, not for Big Oil donations for our Congressional campaigns, but for our great-granchildren's energy security? What can we do to make our great-grandchildren say "Thank you" rather than "What the hell were you thinking?"

Build an oil refinery? Build an oil pipeline? Those aren't the right answers, not for our great-grandchildren.

Why would a truly forward-looking people put so much emphasis on Big Oil, a 200-year anomaly in the economic history of mankind? Why would we not prioritize uses of our land -- sustainable agriculture, wind power, solar power -- that have the potential to serve our great-grandchildren at least as well as they serve us?

Look forward, Governor Rounds. Look forward, South Dakota. Look forward not to increased tax revenues and "hopefully stabilized" oil prices in 2011; look forward to a healthy prairie where our great-grandchildren can still afford to live and work and eat in 2101.

LAIC Housing Study Coming Up -- Will We Learn from Our Neighbors?

The Lake Area Improvement Corporation, that fine embodiment of government intervention in the free market, releases its long-awaited housing study this week (Wednesday Feb 20, as announced by new LAC president Mike McDowell at the LAIC's annual meeting last month). We'll find out what sort of Five-Year Plan our economic development Politburo has come up with to help more folks call Madison Home Sweet Home.

Does Madison have a housing shortage? The city commission thinks so, at least enough to take on over $200K in debt and lock up increased tax revenues for 15 years to subsidize the development of maybe a dozen housing units in the new TIF district in southeast Madison. Our man Hunter has expressed the opinion that we might solve our housing shortage by focusing on renovating existing units first rather than building new. Get everyone up to code, revamp all those narrow 1900 staircases, and rewire those old houses to handle all of today's modern electronics. (I'll be Jon is advocating electrical upgrades just so more people can get online, read the Madville Times, and boost the number of referrals to his own website. ;-) ) Hunter's argument fits with my previous statements that we have lots of prime residential spots, especially in our bustling downtown, that just need some work to make them real draws.

Some of our neighbors are taking different approaches to their housing situations. The economic development folks in Plankinton are offering free land to workers willing to move in and build instead of commuting from Mitchell or elsewhere. (30 lots offered, 11 taken already!) That's a good community building strategy: it's nice to have workers drive to town to put in their hours in your factories and other facilities, but folks who live in town send their kids to your school, serve in community organizations, and are around on Saturday to help their neighbors. Plankinton recognizes that it's not enough to throw money at big corporations to build your community: instead of playing the Toyota lottery to draw one big employer, you might get as much bang for your buck by investing in housing to draw a few dozen workers and their families to become your neighbors.

Over in Howard, the Miner County Community Revitalization group has taken out a $250K loan to renovate an underused apartment complex. The Howard folks appear to be following a philosophy laid out by Aberdeen City Commissioner Clint Rux, who argued that Aberdeen's focus on TIFs for new housing skews toward the professional class and ignores the needs of the general workforce. Rux holds that folks who are moving to town for a new job aren't looking to buy a new house right off the bat. They want to get to know the town first, make sure they like the new job and milieu, and bank some cash before they tie themselves down with a mortgage. Given that it takes a month or two to close on a house, even the folks who know from Day 1 they're ready to settle will still need temporary digs.

Which route will the LAIC prescribe in its housing study? Which way will the LAIC throw its money: toward big developers and new houses on the edge of town, working families and affordable apartments and houses, or something Unexpected™?

Obama's Hope and The Perfect Paradox

Professor Schaff brews an odd mix of politics and theology this Sabbath. He strikes a Clintonesque tone, criticizing all this fluff and nonsense about hope. He cites Charles Krauthammer, who, remarkably, likens Obama to organized religion, that worldwide sham turning salvation into a commodity (I wonder what Krauthammer thinks of the the hucksters selling "The Truth Project" DVDs for $179 at a Bible study near you. I also wonder when Sibby will brand allegedly good conservative a Marxist for his anti-religion comment.)

Lest you think liberal academia has finally caught up with the good professor, Dr. Schaff quickly turns to a more theological critique of Obama's hope mantra. Schaff turns to Georgetown government professor Patrick Deneen, who mentions Pelagianism and Montanism (two labels sure to resonate with the electorate ) before appealing to the worthy Augustine:

...the greatest critiques of just these sorts of inappropriate and unrealistic aspirations to "repair the world" or "make time different" have not been secular -- which has often adapted this kind of belief in the form of political ideology -- but rather, orthodox belief, particularly the main Christian tradition firmly established by Augustine during the early Church. Insisting upon the distinction between the City of God where the heart can rest and salvation lies, and the City of Man, which is inescapably marked by the stain of Original Sin and the inexpungable human lust for dominion ("libido dominandi"), Augustine chided heretical contemporaries against the belief in perfectibility in this world, cautioned against the belief that salvation lie in our power to achieve, and urged upon his contemporaries a realism and humility regarding what is possible in the realm of politics. Most importantly, Augustinian realism clarifies the distinction between "hope" and "optimism," the former which is closely aligned to humility and modest expectations for what is possible in the saeculum, the latter which inclines toward over-confidence in the human power of transformation and perfection. Hope resists ideology and overinvesting in the prospect of political transformation; optimism either results in ideology resistant to the hard data of reality with attendant abuses by political elites, and ultimately elicits in optimism's close kin, disappointment, cynicism and despair [Patrick Deneen, "Hope Against Hope," What I Saw in America, 2008.02.15].

We can only hope the pious folks trying to return abortion to the November ballot will read those lines, put down their petitions, and go home, humbly ending their own overinvestment in the power of political transformation.

Deneen refers to Obama's language of hope as "salvific and heretical." Heretical to urge people to work for a better world? To dare suggest we fight bad guys? To try?

Evidently. And Deneen applies this view to every candidate for President:

Indeed, what marks above all the fundamental similarity of all the candidates in the current election season is the absence of any such theologically-informed realism based on belief in the two cities of Augustine....

Double-check that paragraph: it doesn't say "similarity of Clinton and Obama" or "similarity of all liberals." It says "fundamental similarity of all the candidates." If Schaff is attempting to cite Deneen as a reason to vote for someone other than Obama, he fails to notice that Deneen sees all the candidates as heretics.

Deneen even sees this heresy in our right pious current President:

In this sense, amid our readiness for "change, we should recognize a deeper consistency between the appeal of one who would "heal the world" and the messianism that has so often colored the language of our current President. Particularly pronounced in his Second Inaugural, President Bush declared that it was now the permanent intention of the United States to support freedom everywhere, with the "ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world." The war in Iraq was undertaken for many and mixed reasons, but among them certainly -- and perhaps underlying most deeply the optimism that informed the belief in the best-case scenario following the invasion, rather the possibility of a worse- or worst-case scenario -- was this belief in the capacity of our nation to be the agent of the expulsion of "libido dominandi" from the world.

Am I to believe the Republicans' Saint Ronald (Reagan, not McDonald) is a heretic as well, for inspiring Americans to believe they could seek that "shining city on a hill"?

By Deneen's reasoning, Obama's "hope" is not only heretical false optimism but a practical recipe for disillusionment. After "the disastrous Presidency of G.W. Bush," says Deneen, "the expectations for transformation... will run so high as to exceed the capacity of any political leader to realize." So again, Deneen does not support any argument that any candidate is better than another: in his eyes, Obama does no worse than anyone else in the field.

Schaff's knock at Obama and Deneen's whole spiel thus lack any prescriptive force. Deneen's critique doesn't offer us any choices for President, or for politics in general. If Obama's a heretic, then so is every candidate -- heck, every blogger, for that matter. Why do you think we write? I tread on thin ice presuming to divine Dr. Schaff's motivations, but I suspect his match mine and PP's, Sibby's and Todd's: we write because we think we can make a difference, clear up some ignorance, persuade at least a few folks to vote a certain way that we think will make the world better. Heretics all, I guess.

But maybe the real heretic is Deneen himself. The doctrine of human fallibility tells us we're not perfect and never will be, it doesn't then tell us "Therefore, trying to do good is futile, so just sit around and wait for the Apocalypse." Far from it:

To be a Christian is to live under the sign of him who "came from heaven down to earth," to live under the sign of his cross and resurrection, and thus to wait hopefully, patiently, on this earth by making it a better place and to challenge the world, through one's vocation and the church to do the same [Gerhard O. Forde, professor of systematic theology, Where God Meets Man, Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1972, p. 128].

In other words, Christianity says, sure, salvation is coming, and that's great, but you have work to do in this world. The work you do won't be perfect, it won't ever fully succeed, but don't let that stop you. You can't win, but you play the game as if you could.

Obama's hope fits that perfect paradox as well as anyone's. Will Obama make the world perfect? Of course not. No politician will. But only a cynic -- or a heretic -- would suggest there's any harm in trying to make the world a better place.

This Week Only -- No Wiretaps Without Probable Cause!

Tim Johnson and John Thune may not have the courage to stand up for the Fourth Amendment, but the House Dems do! When the House left for recess on Thursday, they gave us all a little Presidents' Day special treat: the warrantless wiretap law awaiting their renewal expired at midnight yesterday! Bush's spooks can still eavesdrop on targets that have been approved, but any the government will have to show probable cause before beginning any new monitoring.

Probable cause -- novel concept for the Bush Administration. Bush will likely continue to use visions of al-Qaida under every bed (down there with Sibby's secular humanists and Che Obama insurgents*) to justify the continued expansion of federal power. But this simple reversion to previous FISA standards of probable cause will not increase the risk of terrorist attacks one bit.

Besides, Bush's real worry isn't about missing a phone call from Osama to his Vegas bookie. It's about protecting his wealthy corporate buddies who've facilitated illegal wiretaps (it all comes back to plutocracy).

So enjoy the coming week, free of unexpected clicks on the phone. And if you catch Stephanie while she's in town for Presidents' Day, tell her to stick with the House Dems and let Bush's warrantless wiretaps stay dead.

Update 2008.02.18 10:55 CST: Looks South Dakota has no one in its Congressional delegation interested in protecting the Fourth Amendment. Hoghouse Blog offers some fresh comment straight from Rep. Herseth's office supporting the continued expansion of Bush's powers to ignore the Consitution in the pursuit of scary bad guys. Expect more silence from Badlands Blue on that one, too.

*O.K., I liked The Motorcycle Diaries, but I agree: Che was a thug, and the Obama camp should take a little harder line with Che-hipsterism in its ranks, as JFK would do.

HB 1076: Transferring Wealth from Teachers to Bureaucrats

The Associated School Boards' Open Forum got me reading HB 1076, a revision of the K-12 funding formula. The ASBSD is torqued, perhaps rightly so, that the bill reduces state aid by $71.46 per student. The Department of Education will keep that money for itself "to fund technology in schools and statewide assessment testing on behalf of the school districts."

If I'm reading the bill right, that means $71.46 times 120,000 kids [state stats -- PDF!]... ouch! That's $8.6 million dollars diverted to Pierre! And where will that money go? More tech specialists who never work directly with kids? More lucrative contracts for out-of-state companies producing bubble tests? More bureaucrats in fancy offices flipping through academic journals and saying, "Hey! Let's make the schools do this!" Any time Pierre says it's doing something on behalf of school districts, we should be suspicious.

$8.6 million dollars. Hmm... we have 9000 teachers actually working in classrooms with our kids. That's $950 per teacher. Our teachers need $3000 raises just so we can catch up with the next lowest-paying state in the nation, North Dakota. And the state wants to take away almost a $1000 of potential salary for each teacher, just to pay for more computers and multiple-guess tests? Priorities, anyone?

Johnson Votes Against Constitution; Party Mouthpiece Silent

As I catch up after a busy week (big research poster for Pierre, NFL national qualifying tournament in Sioux Falls, and oh yeah, maybe some homework), I note with interest SD Moderate's commentary -- and Badlands Blue's lack thereof -- on Senator Tim Johnson's betrayal of the Constitution. Senator Johnson backed President Bush's request to extend the federal government's powers to conduct warrantless wiretaps and to grant immunity to the telecommunications corporations who enable Big Brother. (Both Clinton and Obama skipped the vote... grrr!)

As SD Moderate aptly points out, South Dakotans will go ballistic over a perceived infringement of their Second Amendment rights, but when both of our U.S. Senators vote to perpetuate the diminution of the Fourth Amendment, all the rhetoric about the Constitution and the Founding Fathers seems to disappear.

Note to citizens: the Constitutional Amendments aren't numbered in order of importance. Second, Fourth, Fifth, Tenth -- all important, all worth fighting for, all imperiled by our fraidy-cat attitudes ("Osama might get us if the President can't listen to my phone calls!").

Badlands Blue, the Democratic Party's paid blog in the state, remains silent on this unpatriotic vote. Ironically, the afternoon of the vote, Badlands Blue touted Senator Johnson and his wife's receipt of a "Courage" award. The award was for fighting to beat cancer, not to protect the Constitution. Since then, from his comfy, faraway seat in Virginia, Badlands Blue has kept up its gentle pitter-pat of press releases from the Senator's office about anything but why the Senator would help enshrine the Bush legacy of dismantling the Constitution.

Oh well. I'm not hearing any criticism from Johnson's challengers for his Senate seat, either. Sam Kephart doesn't say much on his website, but he sees "tremendous global instability and risk for our homeland." Joel Dykstra warns that the very survival of Western civilization is at stake and that he will do "whatever it takes to keep Americans safe from terror groups."

Somehow, I'm not encouraged. If we keep America safe by living in fear and comprimising American ideals of freedom, then we've done the terrorists' job for them. It's not that hard for bloggers to speak up and say that. It shouldn't be that hard for politicians to speak up and say it, either.

Congratulations to Mt. Blogmore -- Nation's Best!

I wake to learn from Dakota Today that we have the nation's finest in our SD-Blogospherical midst. The Inland Press Association has named the Rapid City Journal's Mount Blogmore
"the Best Staff-Written Blog in the country in the over 20,000 circulation category" [see Journal staff, "Mount Blogmore Named Best Blog in the Nation," Rapid City Journal, 2008.02.15].

Yahoo! Congratulations to Rapid City's Fantastic Four on provoking all sorts of vigorous public discourse (and being a good source for links for the rest of us!) for four years!

Legislative Notes: Dyslexia Bill Down, Minimum Pay Bill Up

As expected, the South Dakota State Legislature is saving its highest priority, education, for last. Let's see what's going on:

--The Senate Education Committee deferred HB 1291, the dyslexia bill, to the 36th day -- i.e., the bill is mostly dead. Cory Klumper called me the other day to discuss the coverage you read here, then got hold of Dr. Uttermark herself and gave the bill and its ramifications some wider play on SDPB. Senators Gray, Nesselhuf, Ed Olson, Jerstad, Jim Peterson, and Knudson gave HB 1291 the thumbs down; only Senator McNenny voted against (mostly) killing it.

--The Legislature may make raises for teachers happen, but not without some strings. HB 1124 has been hoghoused into the minimum teacher pay bill that's making headlines. The idea of a minimum salary for teachers is worth considering, but it seems rather irresponsible of our legislators to vote to require all teachers be paid at least $30K a year by 2011 but not do the hard work of coming up with the money to fund that minimum salary. The bill specifies no revenue source for this new minimum; school districts have to do that on their own. ("Have to"? Interestingly, HB 1124 doesn't appear to contain any enforcement mechanism....)

Fair notice: our man Russ voted Nay on HB 1124! I'll give him the benefit of the doubt tonight and attribute his vote to a desire to fight unfunded mandates...

...but there is a lot of mandate this bill does fund. HB 1124 does come up with some state money to fund annual incentives for the teachers willing to jump through the hoops created in the bill's new three-tier salary system: a thousand bucks a year to move up from Level I to Level II, and $5000 a year to move from Level II to Level III.

Note that a lot of this cost will kick in right away in 2010, when the state declares every teacher with three or more years of experience to be at Level II and thus eligible for the $1000 raise from the state. In 2011, every teacher with at least six year of experience, an advanced degree, and good evals gets the level II designation and $5000 raise. That looks like pretty good money: will the designated teacher compensation assistance program funds be enough to cover it, or will the Legislature have to back their part of the plan with a tax increase?

Also worth considering: what impact will this bill have on local authority to set salary schedules? Assuming the local districts have any budget left after granting all the raises to the minimum, will schools still be able to implement their various salary schedules based on years of service and additional coursework? Nothing in the bill seems to say they can't, but with this new layer of state bureaucracy, will they want to?

Some little things to note about HB 1124:

1. It changes (Section 18) the nature of the very thin "tenure" South Dakota teachers have. Instead of three years, "tenure" will now be granted when a teacher reaches Level II -- one more motivation for teachers jump through those hoops. (But remember: all tenure means for South Dakota's K-12 teachers is that if the board doesn't renew your contract, they have to give you a reason, and you can appeal.)
2. It creates (Section 19) a new board, the "Certified Teacher and School Service Specialist Classification and Evaluation System Advisory Board within the Department of Education." The CTSSSCESAB (next amendment: better acronym!) will include three teachers (yay!) three administrators, three school board members, three legislators, and three persons "engaged in business." Engaged in business? Does that include librarians? construction workers? grandmas? cops? How does the entrepreneurial class rank special appointment to this government board, and not the rest of us?
   

Teachers, administrators, students, everybody else: HB 1124 is headed for the Senate next week. Weigh in with your thoughts now!

Rutland School Seeks Wind Turbine

If Todd can cry "Man-crush!" on Obama, I think I can say this: Carl Fahrenwald is a total stud. The Rutland School District superintendent is exactly the passionate defender that his small community needs. He has fought to get laptops for his students. He has waged a vigorous ad campaign in the Madison Daily Leader to draw open enrollees to enjoy the attention of smaller classes and to swell Rutland's enrollment (fall 2007 pre-K thru 12: 123). Just a couple weeks ago he put his name to a strongly and artfully worded MDL op-ed arguing the hypothetical savings of school consolidation are based on "several tremendously foolish assumptions." How many administrators do you know who will dish that sort of straight talk in the local paper?

And now, Superintendent Fahrenwald is tilting at windmills -- literally. Rutland School District is applying to be part of the PUC's "Wind for Schools" program. If Rutland is among the five South Dakota schools that will be chosen, Fahrenwald is willing to stake $3500 of the district's money on this forward-looking project:

Rutland Superintendent Carl Fahrenwald said not only would there be energy savings with the installation of a wind turbine, but a science curriculum would also be provided to the school [Elisa Sand, "Rutland Vies for Possible Wind Turbine on Property," Madison Daily Leader, 2008.02.14].

Superintendent Fahrenwald is no mere caretaker, serving his time until Governor Rounds or the big-city contingent of the Legislature put him and his school out of business. Fahrenwald is saying to his students, his town, and Governor Rounds, Rutland is here forever. Now that's school pride.

Parsley Seeks District 8 Senate Seat

Happy Valentine's Day, Dems and all of District 8! MDL puts in print tonight: East River Electric's Scott Parsley has the 41 signatures he needs for his petition to run for the District 8 Senate seat. He's going to wait to file, though: he wants to line up some more signatures and make sure everything is kosher before submitting his petitions in March.

Parsley sees education, tax reform, open government, health care, and alternative energy as the big issues for District 8 voters [see Chuck Clement, "Parsley to Run for Dist. 8 Senate Seat," Madison Daily Leader, 2008.02.14]. Sounds like a good list of priorities to me.

So the question remains: Russ, do you really want to jump to the Senate? Do you really want to run against Scott on the basis of one freshman term in the House? Sure, PP and I both think you're an all-right guy, but Senate? This year? Mmm... such an interesting choice. The eyes of the District are upon you....

The Value of Land -- Cash or Home?

Bernie Hunhoff at South Dakota Magazine offers a great discussion of land values that helps explain why I hate property tax. Hunhoff asks whether increasing land values are a good thing:

...[I]t’s a good thing if you want to sell and move to Florida or Texas. It’s a bad thing if you want to start farming because 1) you can’t afford the land, and 2) you can’t afford to rent the land.

It’s a good thing if you’re a white collar hunter from Florida or Texas and you wouldn’t miss a million or two. It’s a bad thing if you’re a blue collar hunter from Mitchell or Huron and you don’t have a father-in-law who farms.

It’s a good thing if you’re a real estate agent and you get the commission on the sale. It’s a bad thing if you’re the tax assessor and you have to raise the farmer’s assessment 20% in one year. And it’s a bad thing for those of us who don’t plan to sell until after we’re dead.

[Bernie Hunhoff, "Land Prices: Good or Bad?" South Dakota Magazine.com, 2008.02.14]

Property tax -- especially a ramped-up property tax with a repealed 150% rule -- reinforces the idea that land is simply material wealth, an asset to be valued only as far as it can be exploited for profit. Property tax gives leverage to wealthy developers to drive up prices and drive out smaller farmers and other landowners who just want a piece of land to call home.

The right to own property isn't about doing what will make the market or a tax-hungry government happiest. The right to own property is about having some small realm of autonomy -- not complete freedom to do positive harm to others, but enough liberty to live your life pretty much as you see fit. If you want to build a 1200-square-foot house or a 500-square-foot cabin, great. If it takes a 4000-sq-ft McMansion or lakeside resort to make you happy, fair enough.

But when the government levies taxes based on how much land might sell for, it creates a system that favors the big builder over the simpler landowner. The big builder drives up land values and property taxes for all of his neighbors and creates pressure for everyone else to build big or sell out.

That's a restriction of liberty in personal economic choices that income and sales tax don't create. That's why you'll hear me supporting a complete repeal and replacement of property tax with a more rational and just system of taxation (your suggestions are welcome!).