Updated daily, InsiderOnline (insideronline.org) is a compilation of publication abstracts, how-to essays, events, news, and analysis from around the conservative movement. The current edition of The INSIDER quarterly magazine is also on the site.
July 16, 2012
Latest Studies: 31 new items, including a report from the Rio Grande Foundation assessing how right-to-work would have affected New Mexico, and a Free State Foundation examination of the FCC’s problem with the rule of law
Notes on the Week: The erosion of Congress’s law making authority continues apace, maybe we need more income inequality, docs consider ditching Obama’s entitlement party, and more
To Do: Activities to Fill Your Dog Day Afternoons
Toolkit: Use Google+ Hangout to Get Personal with Your Audience
Budget & Taxation
• Weekly Checkup: The President’s Middle Class Tax Increase – American Action Forum
Crime, Justice & the Law
• Standard-Essential Patents: An Increasingly Contentious Issue At The U.S. International Trade Commission – Washington Legal Foundation
Economic and Political Thought
• Delusions of Power: New Explorations of the State, War, and Economy – Independent Institute
Economic Growth
• U.K. Experience Casts Doubt on Viability of Keynesian Remedies – Economics 21
• Heritage Employment Report: June Jobs Fizzle – The Heritage Foundation
• Inheriting Recessions – Hudson Institute
• The Pathology of Privilege: The Economic Consequences of Government Favoritism – Mercatus Center
• Expanding Broadband: Jobs, Innovation and Rural Development – Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy
Education
• Pieces of the Puzzle: Factors in Improving Achievement of Urban School Districts – American Enterprise Institute
Foreign Policy/International Affairs
• Between Reform and Revolution: Sheikh Qassim, the Bahraini Shi’a, and Iran – American Enterprise Institute
• American Leadership Needed for Shaping a Post-Assad Syria – The Heritage Foundation
• Leadership: America’s Critical Foreign Policy Role – The Heritage Foundation
• Taking on Iran – Hoover Institution
• Hedging and Engaging with a Future – Hudson Institute
• Perilous Precedents: Proliferation as Policy in Alternative Nuclear Futures – Hudson Institute
• Thinking About a Poly-Nuclear Middle East – Hudson Institute
Government Reform
• State and Local Government Privatization: Testimony before the House Committees on State Affairs and Government Efficiency and Reform – Texas Public Policy Foundation
Health Care
• US Health Care: A Reality Check on Cross-Country Comparisons – American Enterprise Institute
• A Health Care Contract with America – National Center for Policy Analysis
International Trade/Finance
• Chinese Outward Investment: Acceleration Features the U.S. – The Heritage Foundation
Labor
• Right-to-Work and Economic Growth: A Comprehensive Analysis of the Economic Benefits to New Mexico of Enacting a Right-to-Work Law – Rio Grande Foundation
Monetary Policy/Financial Regulation
• Would a Financial Transaction Tax Affect Financial Market Activity? – Cato Institute
• Freeing Europe From the Euro: The Case for a European Free Market in Money – Competitive Enterprise Institute
Regulation & Deregulation
• Six Reforms to Occupational Licensing Laws to Increase Jobs and Lower Costs – Goldwater Institute
The Constitution/Civil Liberties
• The FCC and the Rule of Law – Free State Foundation
• Defending Religious Liberty for All – The Heritage Foundation
• What Was Roberts Thinking? – Hoover Institution
Transportation/Infrastructure
• Does Loudoun County Need Metrorail? – Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy
Welfare Reform Is the Latest Obama Rewrite: There he goes again: On Thursday, President Obama rewrote another law via executive discretion. This time he gutted the work requirement of the 1996 welfare reform law; he cited section 1115 of the law, which he says provides the administration with a waiver authority. But—no it doesn’t, explain Robert Rector and Kiki Bradley:
Section 1115 states that “the Secretary may waive compliance with any of the requirements” of specified parts of various laws. But this is not an open-ended authority: Any provision of law that can be waived under section 1115 must be listed in section 1115 itself. The work provisions of the TANF program are contained in section 407 (entitled, appropriately, “mandatory work requirements”). […] Of the roughly 35 sections of the TANF law, only one is listed as waiveable under section 1115. This is section 402.
Section 402 describes state plans—reports that state governments must file to HHS describing the actions they will undertake to comply with the many requirements established in the other sections of the TANF law. The authority to waive section 402 provides the option to waive state reporting requirements only, not to overturn the core requirements of the TANF program contained in the other sections of the TANF law.
The new Obama dictate asserts that because the work requirements, established in section 407, are mentioned as an item that state governments must report about in section 402, all the work requirements can be waived. This removes the core of the TANF program; TANF becomes a blank slate that HHS bureaucrats and liberal state bureaucrats can rewrite at will. […]
In a December 2001 document, “Welfare Reform Waivers and TANF,” the non-partisan Congressional Research Service clarified that the limited authority to waive state reporting requirement in section 402 does not grant authority to override work and other major requirements in the other sections of the TANF law […] . [The Foundry, July 12]
Government Eats Up 197 Days This Year: In 2012, it will take 197 days for the country to earn enough income to pay for both the cost of government spending and the cost of the regulatory burdens government imposes. That means if we worked only for the government starting January 1, it would take the country until July 15 to cover the cost of government, which makes July 15 the Cost of Government Day, as Americans for Tax Reform dubs it.
The group has calculated Cost of Government Day back to 1977. For the second consecutive year, Cost of Government Day has moved earlier in the year. It was July 18 last year and July 19 in 2010. It was July 17 in 2009. Cost of Government Day had never been later than June 26 before 2009. In 2000, the Cost of Government Day fell on June 7.
Real Public Pension Costs Revealed: The underfunding in the nation’s public pensions is three times as big as the pensions have claimed according to a new Moody’s estimate, reports Ed Mendel:
A new estimate from Moody’s Investor Services triples national public pension debt from $766 million to $2.2 trillion, mainly because the major Wall Street bond-rating firm uses a lower forecast of pension fund investment earnings urged by critics.
In a reporting overhaul proposed last week to give investors a better way to compare pension funding, Moody’s uses an annual earnings forecast based on corporate bonds, 5.5 percent, much lower than the 7.5 to 8.25 percent forecast by pension funds. [Calpensions, July 9]
In other words, the pension funds were lying.
U.S. Taxpayers Are Subsidizing a War on Financial Privacy: The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development has issued a new report bragging about its role in promoting the automatic sharing of tax information among governments. Richard Rahn explains why U.S. taxpayers, who subsidize the OECD, should not be pleased:
This means that the most vile governments will receive financial account information automatically about individuals from other countries. Assume you are standing up to or protesting some corrupt or authoritarian regime in your own country – there are too many to name – and to protect your family, you have a bank account in the United States, Switzerland or some other nation that offers basic protections of civil liberties. Under automatic information-sharing, the thugs you are opposing will be receiving information about your finances from the U.S. government and other governments, which can put your property and your life at risk. The response from the bureaucrats in the OECD and Obama administration is “we protect confidential information,” as if they had never heard of Wiki-Leaks or the other never-ending hacks of government data. Again, we are told that governments will increasingly engage in “automatic” information-sharing and will “protect confidential information,” but please don’t notice the disconnect. [Washington Times, July 9]
Fighting City Hall—There’s an App for That: For some start ups, social media offers more than just a new way of getting product or services to customers. Its letting them break the regulatory cartels created by special-interest politics, too. This week in the nation’s capital, the relatively new and popular sedan-booking service, Uber, used social media to mobilize its customers against a proposal before the city council to impose minimum prices on sedan services.
Uber’s mobile-phone app allows patrons to book a ride only minutes before they need one, effectively blurring the distinction between a car service and a taxi. The taxis and their regulators did not appreciate that blurring. They wanted a crackdown, calling Uber an illegal taxi service. The city council appeared set to solve the impasse by passing a law that would have let Uber carry on as a sedan service but require all such services to charge a minimum of $15 per trip. That charge is five times the standard taxi charge for the “flag drop,” a level that would have threatened Uber’s plans to roll out a low-price version of its service. Uber used social media to mobilize its customers, who didn’t like the idea of paying higher prices for something they liked. After receiving tens of thousands of e-mails from Uber supporters, the council dropped the price provisions and passed the bill giving Uber a green light to continue as it is.
Uber’s victory is one more example of how social media empowers consumers and taxpayers at the expense of special interests. When mobilizing your customers or followers is no harder than pushing a few buttons, the highly motivated but smaller special interests lose their organizing advantage.
Free Enterprise Doesn’t Just Make Us Wealthier: There is a moral argument for free enterprise, too, which Arthur Brooks outlines in the video below:
Maybe We Need More Income Inequality: We don’t know whether the Gini co-efficient is going up, but we do know that liberals think it is and that they think that’s a bad thing. The Gini co-efficient is a measure of income inequality. But is rising income inequality really a problem that needs a solution (i.e., more income redistribution)? It certainly wasn’t for the Chicago Bulls of the Michael Jordan era, as Matthew Schoenfeld points out:
In 1986, the Bulls’ median player salary was $300,000. The team’s lowest-paid player made $135,000, and its highest-paid player made $806,000. The team’s Gini coefficient was 0.36. But Jordan’s superstardom increased the team’s popularity and revenues, and by 1998 salaries looked different. The median income was $2.3 million, the lowest was $500,000, and the highest (Jordan’s) was $33 million. The Gini coefficient had nearly doubled, to 0.67.
Jordan’s salary of $33 million consumed over half the payroll, but everyone was better off. The median player in 1998 made more than seven times what the median player made in 1986, while the income of the lowest-paid player in 1998 quadrupled that of his 1986 peer. [Wall Street Journal, July 10]
The Doctors’ Prescription Is More Patient Control, Less Government: Has the government confused health insurance with health care? Being covered doesn’t mean much if you can’t find a doctor to give you care. A new poll of doctors from the Doctor Patient Medical Association suggests that physician shortages may become the defining feature of the era of ObamaCare. Specifically, the poll found that 83 percent of doctors are considering quitting medicine; 90 percent say the health care system is on the wrong track. Why?
Hands-down, doctors blame government involvement in medicine for the current problems in medicine, and are not shy to say they want it out. Two out 3 doctors ranks government involvement as the top reason, one-half rank health plans/insurance as the top reason […] and third-party payers and lawyers are tied for the third highest ranking at 40%.
The reasons cited range from the deluge of regulatory compliance that siphons time away from patient care, to de facto rationing achieved through complex payment schemes, to cushy relationships that favor corporations and special interests in medicine […]
Doctors say that a key government provision in the Affordable Care Act – the huge expansion of Medicaid enrollees – is likely to backfire, as almost half (49%) say they will stop accepting Medicaid payments.
Medicare draws even more complaints. Three-quarters (74%) say they will stop accepting new Medicare patients or leave it completely. […]
And they report that insurance companies are often barriers to reforms that would give patients tools to find and negotiate for more affordable care. Fifty-nine percent would post prices or consider posting them, but 40% report that their insurance contracts gag them from disclosing prices. […]
Doctors say that many problems in health care could be fixed if patients would get more involved, take more responsibility for their health, and pay for their care themselves instead of asking doctors and other medical professionals to file the insurance claims and wait for payments. “More patient involvement” was ranked as a “most important” factor by 68%, just behind reducing government regulations and mandates. [“Doctors’ Attitudes on the Future of Medicine: What Wrong, Who’s to Blame, and What Will Fix It,” Doctor Patient Medical Association, June 2012]
Obama’s Tax Increases Would Hurt Job Creation: On Monday, President Obama at last addressed the Taxmaggedon problem, proposing to extend current income-tax rates only for individuals earning less than $200,000 and families earning less than $250,000 per year. That leaves higher-income taxpayers looking at increases in the top two marginal rates. Instead of 35 percent and 33 percent, the rates will be 39.6 percent and 36 percent. Promising to make some other guy pay always has a certain political appeal, but the move will surely stifle job creation. As Scott Hodge points out, more than a few businesses report their income through the income tax code:
[T]he vast majority (66 percent) of pass-through business income was reported by taxpayers earning more than $250,000. Millionaire tax returns earned 36 percent of this private business income while taxpayers earning between $250,000 and $1 million earned 30 percent. Meanwhile, taxpayers with incomes below $100,000 earned 13 percent of all private business income.
It is also illuminating to look at the distribution of specific types of business income. […] Whereas only 25 percent of sole proprietor income is reported by taxpayers earning over $250,000, some 85 percent of partnership and S-corp income is reported by these high-income taxpayers. Indeed, more than half of all partnership and S-corp income is earned by millionaire taxpayers.
The president and his economic team also tend to overlook how many of these pass-through businesses are employers. A recent Treasury report analyzed IRS data from 2007 and found that roughly 4.2 million pass-through business returns – out of 34.7 million overall – were employers. […] 50 percent of the income generated by these employers accrued to taxpayers with incomes above $1 million. Fully 90 percent of this business income was generated by employers with incomes above $200,000. [Scott Hodge, Tax Foundation, July 9; related: Curtis Dubay, The Heritage Foundation, July 9]
Crony Capitalism Is a Bigger Problem than Just Bailouts, as the Metaphorical Iceberg Below Shows:
(Roll over or click on the graphic for more information.) [Related: Matthew Mitchell, “The Pathology of Privilege: The Economic Consequences of Government Favoritism” Mercatus Center, June 8.]
• Not a fan of body scanners at airports? Consider signing the new petition at WhiteHouse.gov that calls on the President to tell TSA to conduct a notice-and-comment rulemaking already. A federal court told TSA it had to get the public’s input on using Advanced Imaging Technology at airports—and to do so promptly! But that was a year ago.
• Go where the smart girls are: Attend the Smart Girl Summit 2012, where you’ll learn all about women and the economy and the 2012 elections. Featured speakers include filmmaker Ann McElhinney, Rep. Tom Price, and author Mary Beth Hicks. The summit will take place July 20 and 21 at the Westin in Alexandria, Va.
• Find out how bad the cronyism has gotten in the age of Obama. Writers Jay Cost and Tim Carney will talk at The Heritage Foundation at noon on Tuesday, July 17.
• Students get ready for National Conservative Student Conference, the biggest conservative event of the year for students. Organized by the Young America’s Foundation, the conference takes place July 30 – August 4 at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
• Save the date for Milton Friedman’s 100th Birthday. It will be July 31. Next week, we’ll send along a roundup of events.
Google+ has a feature called Hangouts that lets you have real-time face-to-face conversations on the Web. Don’t overlook this platform as part of your Web marketing strategy. Here’s what to do:
Get Started: Begin by creating a Google+ profile for yourself if you don’t already have one. This can be done by going to Google.com, clicking on the “You” in the upper left hand corner. Then, click the option to “create a new account.” Having a Google+ profile is necessary for Hangout but also beneficial for communicating with customers and consumers in other ways as well. Once you have a Google+ profile, you can follow the instructions to start up a Hangout. Then, you are ready to roll with these three tips:
Have Real-Time Interaction: Create a select group of supporters, customers, etc. to participate in a Google+ Hangout. Create an agenda to talk over during your scheduled time and get honest, face-to-face feedback from your most valued consumers. They will appreciate the personal aspect of Hangout and feel especially valued. The feedback you get from a real-time—as opposed to email or even a phone call—will be more genuine and also give the consumer a personal connection with you. For that, he will become more endeared to your product or service.
Host a Virtual Panel: Like at a conference or event, Hangout can provide a virtual panel of speakers or experts to talk about their areas of expertise. Create a title for the panel and have each person speak for a few minutes. Then, take questions from others logged in and from other Web-based social media like Twitter and Facebook. This allows you to get your ideas and expertise out there without going to all the trouble of traveling to a conference. It can be used for your advantage if you need to respond to something quickly.
Give it Away! Attract interest in your Hangout by holding a contest in which you will announce the winner during the Hangout. Give-aways always generate huge spikes in traffic and by doing something innovative like this, you’ll gain even more attention. Local blogs and news sites may even take notice and promote it for you, which will give you even more traffic. Consumers will find it interesting you are a step ahead and this is the perfect platform for a give-away.
Google+ Hangout makes it so easy for you to have genuine interaction with fans and consumers. Take advantage of this free service and up your game in the social media world at the same time.
See our Toolkit at InsiderOnline.org for more helpful ideas.
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