Updated daily, InsiderOnline (insideronline.org) is a compilation of publication abstracts, legal action, how-to essays and news from around the conservative movement. The INSIDER blog keeps tabs on news, events and commentary of interest. The INSIDER blog has RSS and Atom feeds. The current edition of The INSIDER quarterly magazine is also on the site.
April 20, 2012
Latest Studies
42 new items, including a look at the equal pay day myth from the Independent Women’s Forum, and an American Action Forum assessment of what tax policy might be this time next year
Blog Entries
The tax code is still broken and it might get worse, celebrate biotech on Earth Day, new issue of The Insider
Budget & Taxation
• The Future of Tax Policy: Implications for Small Business and Entrepreneurs – American Action Forum
• How the Taxation of Capital Affects Growth and Employment – American Enterprise Institute
• Another $54 Billion?! – Illinois Policy Institute
• Who Are Maine’s “Rich?” – Maine Heritage Policy Center
• Illinois Shows What Not to Do – Manhattan Institute
• The Dangers of Raising Taxes on Investment Income – Manhattan Institute
• Taxation, American Style – Reason Foundation
• Tax Increment Financing and Missouri: An Overview Of How TIF Impacts Local Jurisdictions – Show-Me Institute
• Taxmageddon Looms, Potentially Pushing Tax Freedom Day Later than Ever – Tax Foundation
Crime, Justice & the Law
• Reforming Juvenile Detention in Texas – Texas Public Policy Foundation
Economic and Political Thought
• Apocalyptic Daze – Manhattan Institute
• How to Think about Inequality – National Affairs
Economic Growth
• Women’s Figures: An Illustrated Guide to the Economic Progress of Women in America – American Enterprise Institute
• The “Equal Pay Day” Myth – Independent Women’s Forum
• Freedom and Entrepreneurship: New Evidence from the 50 States – Mercatus Center
Education
• Between Efficiency and Effectiveness: Evaluation in For-Profit Education Organizations – American Enterprise Institute
• States Must Reject National Education Standards While There Is Still Time – The Heritage Foundation
• The Benefits of Florida’s Test-Based Promotion System – Manhattan Institute
• New U: Meet the Donors Who Have Taken It upon Themselves to Launch New Colleges – Philanthropy Roundtable
• Dumping the Know-Nothing Amendments – Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research
Family, Culture & Community
• Women vs. the State – Reason Foundation
Foreign Policy/International Affairs
• Quds Force Commander and Candidate: Gholamreza Baghbani – American Enterprise Institute
• Thinking about a Korean Denuclearization Treaty – Hudson Institute
Government Reform
• Term Limits for Judges – Hoover Institution
• Texas vs. Environmental Protection Agency: A Survey of Pending Litigation between the State of Texas and EPA – Texas Public Policy Foundation
Health Care
• How to Replace Obamacare – National Affairs
Immigration
• The JOLT Act: Right on Visa Waiver Program, Wrong on Travel Promotion – The Heritage Foundation
Information Technology
• Telecommunications Modernization Act of 2012 – Independence Institute
• Keeping the Internet Competitive – National Affairs
International Trade/Finance
• The U.S. Sugar Program: Bad for Consumers, Bad for Agriculture, and Bad for America – The Heritage Foundation
• Trade and Prosperity in the 50 States: The Case of North Carolina – The Heritage Foundation
Monetary Policy/Financial Regulation
• A Housing Market without Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Effect on Home Prices – The Heritage Foundation
• Financial Crisis II: European Governments Fail to Learn from History – Reason Foundation
Natural Resources, Energy, Environment, & Science
• Food Safety: Background, Analysis and Recommendations – American Enterprise Institute
• Earth Day, the Free Market Way – Hoover Institution
• Energy Policy: Lots of Heat, No Light – Hudson Institute
Regulation & Deregulation
• The Role of Retrospective Analysis and Review in Regulatory Policy – Mercatus Center
• Reining In the Agencies – National Affairs
Retirement/Social Security
• Social Security by Choice: The Experience of Three Texas Counties – National Center for Policy Analysis
The Constitution/Civil Liberties
• Obamacare, Religious Liberty, and Civil Society: What the Debate Is Really About – The Heritage Foundation
• Constitutional Footsie – Hoover Institution
Welfare
• Making Work Pay in New York: The Earned Income Tax Credit – Empire Center for New York State Policy
The Insider, Spring 2012: ObamaCare v. Liberty
We’ve got a new look for the Spring 2012 issue of The Insider. Let us know what you think. The rundown:
We wouldn’t call the Supreme Court’s ObamaCare oral arguments unprecedented, but they were high constitutional drama. Here was the Court, with a history of deference to the government on matters of economic regulation, asking the government’s lawyer why, if the government could force people to buy health insurance, it couldn’t also mandate gym membership, cell phone ownership, burial coverage, automobile purchases, and the buying of vegetables.
The Court’s deference had finally run up against its insistence all along that there must be some powers the Commerce Clause didn’t grant to Congress. What were those powers? The Court wanted to know.
A lawyer opposing the government identified the problem this way: “They seem to be saying: ‘Look, we couldn’t just force people to buy insurance to lower health insurance premiums. That would be no good. But we can do it because we’ve created the problem. We, Congress, have driven up the health insurance premiums, and since we’ve created that problem, this somehow gives us authority that we wouldn’t otherwise have.’ That can’t possibly be right.”
If the government can compel transactions it deems essential to the success of any Rube Goldberg scheme it wants to enact, then, as Chief Justice John Roberts put it, “all bets are off.” Or, as Todd Gaziano explains in our feature story, we no longer have a government of limited and enumerated powers. Gaziano provides a preview of what the Court’s decision might be and what the outcome will mean both for health care reform and the future of constitutional government.
Another constitutional problem: Under ObamaCare, the Department of Health and Human Services mandates that virtually all employers cover contraception and abortion-inducing drugs. That mandate forces many people to behave contrary to their religious beliefs, which the First Amendment is supposed to protect against. We talk with Hannah Smith about the Becket Fund’s lawsuits against HHS over the mandate, and about Becket’s various wins for religious liberty.
In other stories, Matthew Mitchell assesses which budget reforms work, Scott Walter shows how conservative donors expand the conversation in academia, Malia Hill provides a citizen’s checklist, and Keesha Bullock advises how to improve your e-mails.
There Must Be Some Kind of Way Out of Here
Choice-based policy alternatives are the solution to the inexorable growth of the federal leviathan, say Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Steve Moore of the Wall Street Journal, and R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. of The American Spectator:
We Might Remember This Year’s Tax Burden Fondly
“Tax Freedom Day,” which was this Tuesday, April 17, could get even later next year, unless Congress and the President take action to prevent tax increases set to take effect on January 1, says the Tax Foundation (April 16).
Every year, the Tax Foundation calculates how many days it takes for the average tax payer to earn enough money to pay his tax bill for the year. In 1913, for example, it took the average taxpayer 13 days to earn enough money to pay his taxes, so Tax Freedom Day was January 13 that year (though no one knew it at the time, since the Tax Foundation began marking the occasion only in 1971).
The latest ever Tax Freedom Day was May 1, in 2000. However, under current law a number of taxes are set to increase automatically, meaning unless Congress and the President act, those tax increases will happen. The cumulative effect will push Tax Freedom back approximately 11 days, says the Tax Foundation, which would make April 28 next year’s Tax Freedom Day. The taxes set to go up include the individual income tax (as a result of the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and the effect inflation pushing more and more taxpayers into the Alternative Minimum Tax system), the corporate income tax, the payroll tax, and the estate tax.
Biotech Is the Real Green Program
You might not hear it on Earth Day (Sunday)—because most environmentalists won’t admit it—but both humans and the planet are a lot better off thanks to biotechnology, says Henry Miller (Defining Ideas, April 19):
[W]hat is at issue are products like pro-vitamin-A-fortified “Golden Rice,” which promises to ameliorate the ravages of vitamin A deficiency in many poor countries; cassava with enhanced protein levels and lower endogenous cyanide; papaya, corn, and cotton plants genetically improved to give higher yields, resist pests, grow under adverse climatic conditions, and with less agricultural chemicals; and a fast-maturing, farmed salmon that offers an eco-friendly source of high-quality, inexpensive protein. […]
Introduced less than two decades ago, [genetically engineered crops] are the most rapidly adopted agricultural technology in history. In about three-dozen countries worldwide, more than 17 million farmers are using agbiotech crop varieties to produce higher yields with lower inputs and reduced environmental impact. Most of these new varieties are designed to be resistant to pests and diseases that ravage crops or to herbicides so that farmers can more effectively control insects and weeds while adopting more environmentally friendly farming practices and more benign herbicides. […]
In addition, genetically engineered plants permit more efficient water usage and encourage wider use of environmentally friendly, no-till cultivation which decreases soil erosion and releases less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. For example, in 2009, the shift to biotech crops reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 17.6 billion kilograms, equal to the removal of 7.8 million cars from the road for a year. (Interestingly, organic farming—which explicitly prohibits the use of genetically engineered plant varieties and is the darling of the environmental movement—has opposite effects on all of these parameters.)
The Left is playing the race card against the American Legislative Exchange Council precisely because the group has been successful in promoting smaller, more accountable government in the states, explains John Fund (National Review, April 18):
Over the years, such distinguished governors as Michigan’s John Engler, Wisconsin’s Tommy Thompson and Texas’s Rick Perry have come from the ranks of ALEC. It has tirelessly warned for a decade that states were spending themselves into a deep hole, and has promoted measures such as school choice and privatization to improve the quality of government services. (Disclosure: I have spoken at several ALEC events over the last 20 years without receiving any compensation.)
But ALEC’s recent successes in the wake of the 2010 tea-party election have infuriated liberals and unions, who have been looking for a convenient crowbar to club it with. They found it in the Trayvon Martin killing and the completely false claim that voter-ID laws discriminate against minorities and block people from voting. Both arguments have little basis in fact. Over half of the states have passed “Stand Your Ground” laws with bipartisan support, and in Georgia and Indiana, the two states with the earliest and toughest voter-ID laws, minority-voter turnout went up significantly in both 2008 and 2010.
ALEC’s major service to members is its development of model legislation, which can then be adapted to the needs of each state. Its truth-in-sentencing legislation has been adopted by a majority of states, and many states have followed ALEC’s lead in expanding property rights or creating state versions of medical savings accounts to expand consumer choice in health care.
Former Justice Official: Ineligible Voters Not a Problem to Obama Justice
Obama Justice has deliberately ignored threats to election integrity, testifies former Justice Department official J. Christian Adams (excerpted by PJ Tattler, April 18):
Noxubee County, where widespread voter fraud was proven in the case I litigated of United States v. Ike Brown, has 113% of voting age citizens eligible to vote. In the case, the United States presented evidence of in-person voter impersonation. But Noxubee isn’t even the worst county in Mississippi. Ten counties have higher percentages than 113%, including Tunica where 2011 saw multiple voter fraud convictions, and Claiborne County, Mississippi, where 162% of eligible voting age population is on the rolls. Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann has begged these counties to clean up their corrupted rolls, but Mississippi law provides him no statutory weaponry, except begging. The Justice Department has the power to step in and sue states and counties to clean up their rolls, but it deliberately refuses to act.
Unfortunately, the Justice Department has not brought a single case under Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act. Indeed, when I was at the Voting Section, political appointees expressed open and outright hostility to enforcing Section 8. Former Voting Section Chief Christopher Coates testified under oath that he recommended eight Section 8 investigations into various states, but that the political appointees overseeing the Voting Section simply said the Obama administration would not enforce Section 8 to require the removal of ineligible voters. Coates also testified that political appointees announced to the entire Voting Section in November 2009 that the Obama administration would never enforce Section 8 to require states to purge ineligible voters. Coates’ testimony was given under oath, and I can corroborate his account because I was also an eyewitness. [Internal citations omitted.]
If you’ve spent more time than you care to figuring out your tax forms, you’re probably not alone. The federal tax code is a mess, writes Chris Edwards (Daily Caller, April 16):
This year the instruction book for the 1040 is 189 pages long.
That’s just one IRS tax form, but there are more than 500 others. Consider, for example, that the number of special tax breaks for energy has soared from 11 in 1995 to 26 today, and each break has separate tax forms, instructions, regulations and other paperwork.
The total quantity of federal tax rules is gigantic. Tax publisher CCH collects all the paperwork in one volume, and it currently spans 73,608 pages and covers nine feet of shelf space. That is more than triple the volume of tax rules as recently as the 1970s, as shown in the chart.
In a recent report, the IRS Taxpayer Advocate said that the compliance or paperwork costs for the federal tax code are more than $160 billion a year. That cost represents pure waste to the economy—it’s like throwing in the trash the entire retail sales of Target, Home Depot and Safeway every year.
In addition to being complex, the federal tax code is constantly changing. The Taxpayer Advocate found that there have been 4,428 changes to the tax code in just the last 10 years.
As Edwards notes, the tax code is complicated because politicians like adding special provisions, credits, and deductions in order to provide benefits to their political supporters. This re-engineering of society from the top down isn’t just wasteful; it’s an affront to the idea that everyone should be treated equally before the law.
See also: “Our Tax Code Is Broken,” by Scott Hodge, The Insider, Winter 2012.
Federal Spending Data Headed to the Memory Hole
The federal government just got less transparent, reports Patrick Tyrrell (The Foundry, April 16), who notes the Census Bureau has announced there will be no more Consolidated Federal Funds Reports.
Those reports provided data on federal expenditures at the county level on programs such as Medicaid, Social Security, Medicare, and hundreds of more obscure federal programs. That data had also been available online in searchable form, but the Census Bureau plans to discontinue that Web site (www.census.gov/govs/cffr) too.
Tyrrell notes that the Obama administration’s 2012 budget submission contains no explanation of why these useful reports are being discontinued, while the Census Bureau Web site says only that other programs are a higher priority. You might say they’re less than transparent about this decision to reduce transparency.
Meanwhile, reports Tyrrell, the old data is only spottily available at USASpending.gov:
When we click on any of the files that are supposed to contain federal contracts however, we continually got “page not found” messages. Researchers who want to continue to use data they have had access to since 1993 are out of luck. On Friday, April 13, the data mysteriously returned to the page and is now located there, but the availability of the data remains spotty—one day in the last two weeks.
To Do: Get the Real Story on Stand Your Ground Laws
• Find out what’s really happened in the 24 states that have “Stand Your Ground” laws. The Cato Institute hosts a program on the topic at 4 p.m. on Monday, April 23. On the panel are historian Clayton E. Cramer; firearms trainer and author Massad Ayoob; Steven Jansen, Vice President of the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys; and Tim Lynch, Director of the Project on Criminal Justice at the Cato Institute.
• Learn how the ideas of economists have shaped history. The Mercatus Center hosts a book discussion and reception for Lawrence White’s The Clash of Economic Ideas: The Great Policy Debates and the Experiments of the Last Hundred Years. The event begins at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, April 25, at the The Mason Inn at George Mason University.
• Get ready for the two best idea-sharing and networking events in the free market movement. The Atlas Experience (Wednesday and Thursday) and Resource Bank (Thursday and Friday) begin next week at The Broadmoor in beautiful Colorado Springs, Colorado. Book your tickets now if you haven’t already.
• Check out the new online version of The Heritage Guide to the Constitution. The handy guide to our country’s supreme law is both an essential reference for lawmakers as well as an educational tool for citizens. The Web site contains the entire book, in searchable form, as well as an integrated teacher’s companion.
• Bookmark these writer’s pages: Hans von Spakovsky, John Fund, J. Christian Adams, and Cleta Mitchell. These are the folks to follow when it comes to election integrity issues. The effort to ensure honest elections will continue.
Toolkit: Network Your Way to Success
In the public policy arena it’s critically important to expand and strengthen your network of professional acquaintances to be successful. The Institute of Humane Studies’ Career Guide includes a chapter on networking written by Nigel Ashford. You’ll find the advice helpful, whether you’re looking for a job, trying to get published, or just trying to learn more about your area of specialty. Here are key concepts from the guide:
• Dispersed knowledge: We can’t know everything, but we can develop a network of people who collectively know quite a bit.
• Weak business ties can be strong: 80 percent of job seekers landed a position with help from an acquaintance who didn’t know them too well.
• Reciprocity: Make sure to help others and steer clear of those who seem to be just takers.
• Fill holes: Connect acquaintances who you think should know each other but don’t.
• Articulate commonalities: When meeting new contacts be sure to offer information about yourself that might allow you to find things in common.
• Connectors, mavens, and salesmen: Demonstrate all three skills: bring people together, collect knowledge, and sell yourself and your ideas.
At events you should:
• place your nametag on your right side to it’s easy to read when you shake hands;
• have a 30 second “elevator speech” about yourself ready to give to a stranger;
• ask an intelligent question at the event and state your name before asking it;
• exchange business cards often and follow up with an e-mail to your new contact to cement the new connection;
• lavish praise on others and listen to them talk about their work/accomplishments without interrupting;
• use their first name when they first tell it to you by responding, “Hi [Name], I’m [Name], it’s very nice to meet you.”
—Ryan Nichols
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