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.
September 24, 2012
Latest Studies: 53 new items, including a Pioneer Institute report on how Common Core standards threaten college readiness, and a Mercatus Center examination of regulation’s impact on U.S. competitiveness
Notes on the Week: The Constitution turns 225, economic freedom matters, work requirements make a difference, and more
To Do: Recognize the best in liberal media bias
Budget & Taxation
• The Case for Abolishing the Economic Development Administration: A Great Society Relic that Robs Peter to Pay Paul – Competitive Enterprise Institute
• Iceberg Ahead: The Hidden Cost of Public-Sector Retiree Health Benefits in New York – Empire Center for New York State Policy
• Corporate Welfare Bargains at Industry Canada – Fraser Institute
• Taxing Marriage: Microeconomic Behavioral Responses to the Marriage Penalty and Reforms for the 21st Century – Mercatus Center
• Iowa’s Privileged Class: State Government Employees – Public Interest Institute
Crime, Justice & the Law
• Mens Rea and State Crimes – Federalist Society
Economic Growth
• Boom, Bust, and Beyond: A Look at Housing Market Data in Arizona – American Action Forum
• Missing in Action: Growth – American Enterprise Institute
• U.S. Manufacturing’s Brave New World – American Enterprise Institute
• Economic Freedom of the World: 2012 Annual Report – Fraser Institute
• How Contagious Is Europe’s Economic Crisis? – The Heritage Foundation
• Economic Recovery: Lessons from the Post-World War II Period – Mercatus Center
Education
• Keep Tuition Affordable Legislative Package – Commonwealth Foundation for Public Policy Alternatives
• Getting to Graduation – Johns Hopkins University Press
• How Common Core’s ELA Standards Place College Readiness at Risk – Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research
Foreign Policy/International Affairs
• Foreign Policy 2013: Drone Strikes – American Action Forum
• How to Respond to the Embassy Attacks – American Action Forum
• Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act of 2008 Set to Expire – The Heritage Foundation
• The Chávez Plan to Steal Venezuela’s Presidential Election: What Obama Should Do – The Heritage Foundation
• The Folly of the State Department’s Assessment of U.S. Arms Control Compliance – The Heritage Foundation
• U.S. Aid to Egypt and Libya: Tight Strings Needed – The Heritage Foundation
Government Reform
• Non-Citizen Voters: Diluting the Rights and Privileges of Citizenship – Center for Immigration Studies
• The Costs and Benefits of Minnesota’s Proposed Photo ID Constitutional Amendment – Center of the American Experiment
Health Care
• Medicare – A Choice of Two Futures – Independent Women’s Forum
• Lack of Transparency for New Mexico’s Not-For-Profit Hospitals Cost Taxpayers Dearly – Rio Grande Foundation
Immigration
• Driver’s License Insecurity: A Terrorist’s Back Door – Center for Immigration Studies
• Immigrants in the United States: A Profile of America’s Foreign-Born Population – Center for Immigration Studies
• The Civil Rights Implications of Current State-Level Immigration Laws – Center for Immigration Studies
Information Technology
• FCC’s Video Report Reveals Disconnect Between Market’s Effective Competition and Outdated Regulation – Free State Foundation
• Justifying the Ends: Section 706 and the Regulation of Broadband – Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies
• Taxation by Condition: Spectrum Repurposing at the FCC and the Prolonging of Spectrum Exhaust – Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies
• What is the Effect of Regulation on Broadband Investment? Regulatory Certainty and the Expectation of Returns – Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies
International Trade/Finance
• Still a Protectionist Trade Remedy: The Case for Repealing Section 337 – Cato Institute
Labor
• The Most Important State Ballot Question You’ve Never Heard of (Yet) – Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs
Monetary Policy/Financial Regulation
• Breaking Up the Big Banks: Is Anybody Thinking? – American Enterprise Institute
• Bernake’s QE3: Ironically, a Policy Predicated on Irrational Behavior – The Heritage Foundation
National Security
• Chicago Bombing Attempt Marks 52 Terrorist Plots Since 9/11 – The Heritage Foundation
• Sequestration Will Undermine U.S. Interests in the Middle East – The Heritage Foundation
Natural Resources, Energy, Environment, & Science
• Locavores or Loco-Vores? – American Enterprise Institute
• Algae Energy—Dead in the Water? – Capital Research Center
• Common Sense Conservation, Saving Species Without Hurting People – Freedom Foundation
• Renewable Fuel Standard, Ethanol Use, and Corn Prices – The Heritage Foundation
• War on Coal: A House Bill to Stop the Regulatory Assault – The Heritage Foundation
• California Needs a Crude Awakening – Manhattan Institute
• The Economic Impacts of Closing and Replacing the Indian Point Energy Center – Manhattan Institute
• Mandated Biotech Food Labeling: A California Initiative by Lawyers and for Lawyers – Washington Legal Foundation
Regulation & Deregulation
• Regulation and the International Competitiveness of the U.S. Economy – Mercatus Center
Retirement/Social Security
• Best Practices for Reforming State Employee Pensions: New Accounting Standards and Bold State Actions Show Momentum Gaining for Reform – Capital Research Center
• Is It Becoming Too Late to Fix Social Security’s Finances? – e-21: Economic Policies for the 21st Century
• Iceberg Ahead: The Hidden Cost of Public-Sector Retiree Health Benefits in New York – Empire Center for New York State Policy
Transportation/Infrastructure
• Flex Growth: A Smarter Option for North Carolina Communities – John Locke Foundation
Welfare
• An Overview of Obama’s End Run on Welfare Reform – The Heritage Foundation
• Obama’s End Run on Welfare Reform, Part One: Understanding Welfare – The Heritage Foundation
• The Food Stamp Recovery: The Unprecedented Increase in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program 2008–12 – Manhattan Institute
Work requirements make a difference, reports Philip Klein:
Obama administration officials have insisted that their decision to grant states waivers to redefine work requirements for welfare recipients would not “gut” the landmark 1996 welfare reform law. But a new report from the Congressional Research Service obtained by the Washington Examiner suggests that the administration’s suspension of a separate welfare work requirement has already helped explode the number of able-bodied Americans on food stamps.
In addition to the broader work requirement that has become a contentious issue in the presidential race, the 1996 welfare reform law included a separate rule encouraging able-bodied adults without dependents to work by limiting the amount of time they could receive food stamps. President Obama suspended that rule when he signed his economic stimulus legislation into law, and the number of these adults on food stamps doubled, from 1.9 million in 2008 to 3.9 million in 2010, according to the CRS report, issued in the form of a memo to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va. [Washington Examiner, September 19]
The problem is the response to the video, not the video. “The video did it” argument—even if true—isn’t much of a defense of the Obama administration’s policies in the Middle East, explains Jonah Goldberg:
According to the Obama administration, its policies in the Middle East are working. The Cairo speech, the tougher line with Israel, the withdrawals from Iraq and pending drawdown in Afghanistan, Obama’s coolness to Iran’s failed Green Revolution: These have all been part of the successful effort to repair the damage done by the previous administration. Yet all of that hard work can go up in smoke if some crackpot says something mean about the prophet Muhammad on YouTube?
Progress that flimsy strikes me as no progress at all.
It is simply a fact that Islamist radicals, the Arab street and the Muslim world have been angry at America for decades, under Republican and Democratic administrations alike. It’s also true that demagogues and other opportunists have used things like this video as an excuse to attack America and the West for generations. Obama isn’t solely to blame for the current conflagrations, though his naivete about the transformational power of his presidency deserves ample scorn. [Los Angeles Times, September 18]
As a general rule, it’s no defense to say your policy failed only because of the actions of bad people. Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement was working great, too—right up until Hitler ruined it.
How the Constitution protects your rights: Here’s one important thing to know about the United States Constitution, which turned 225 last week:
Most constitutions around the world enumerate rights: the right to work, to health care, and to ecologically sustainable development and use of natural resources while promoting justifiable economic and social development. In these constitutions, “rights” is just another word for free stuff government gives you.
But in the U.S. Constitution, the government doesn’t distribute rights; it secures them. Therefore, the word “right” is barely mentioned in the Constitution. It appears once in the unamended document: The Patents Clause in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8: “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” The Bill of Rights further secures rights by limiting the powers of the federal government.
Expanding on that last point, notice how the First Amendment begins with the words “Congress shall make no law …” So even the Constitution’s most well-known provision relating to rights is written as a prohibition on what government may do.
For more little understood facts about the Constitution, see Julia Shaw’s “The Forgotten Constitution,” at The Foundry, September 17, 2012.
Yes, economic freedom matters, finds the Fraser Institute’s latest edition of its Economic Freedom of the World Report, just released this week:
Nations in the top quartile of economic freedom had an average per-capita GDP of $37,691 in 2010, compared to $5,188 for bottom quartile nations in 2010 current international dollars. In the top quartile, the average income of the poorest 10% was $11,382, compared to $1,209 in the bottom in 2010 current international dollars. Interestingly, the average income of the poorest 10% in the most economically free nations is more than twice the overall average income in the least free nations. Life expectancy is 79.5 years in the top quartile compared to 61.6 years in the bottom quartile.
According to the Fraser Institute’s ranking, the top ten in economic freedom are Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, Australia, Canada, Bahrain, Mauritius, Finland, and Chile. The United States comes in 18th, right behind Qatar. The bottom five in economic freedom are Angola, the Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, and Venezuela.
Bad incentives: The tax code still contains what’s come to be known as a “marriage penalty”—i.e., as a result of filing jointly, many married couples face a higher tax rate than they would if each individual filed separately. A new Mercatus Center paper by Jason J. Fichtner and Jacob Feldman reviews the research on this problem. Fichtner and Feldman point out that the penalty especially affects low-income households:
Marriage penalties are predominantly borne between two groups of two-earner couples: (1) low-income two-earner families filing for the earned income tax credit (EITC) and (2) low- and middle-income two-earner couples for which the two salaries are roughly equal (for example, see the section “Under Current Law” in the table). These marriage penalties are strongest among low-income households utilizing the EITC, the same households that would potentially benefit most from the acclaimed sociological benefits of marriage. Where marriage bonuses are present, the tax code discourages labor force participation among secondary earners, predominantly women. A higher marginal tax rate for a single-earner household more strongly depresses the economic return of a potential secondary earner. On their own and not married, the secondary earner could experience an entry marginal tax rate of 10 percent rather than 25 percent or higher. As a result, certain economic growth and productivity is forgone as a consequence of the married filing status requirement. An ideal tax code would be neutral with respect to marriage; in other words, the decision to enter into marriage would not be adversely affected by the tax code.
The authors also observe that studies have found higher marriage penalties are associated with a greater incidence of divorce. [“Taxing Marriage: Microeconomic Behavioral Responses to the Marriage Penalty and Reforms for the 21st Century,” by Jason J. Fichtner and Jacob Feldman, Mercatus Cener, September 2012]
Driving corn: Low yields on corn this year mean corn prices are heading upward. But corn prices would be at least 8 percent lower if it weren’t for federal rules requiring motor fuel to be blended with ethanol. Those requirements divert some corn from food and feed to ethanol production. Eight percent is the low end of the estimates; the impact could be much bigger, says David Kreutzer. [The Heritage Foundation, September 17]
The Feds ignore the private sector costs of regulations. Federal regulations really cost the economy $1.8 trillion per year, not $89 billion as calculated by the Office of Management and Budget, says the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Clyde Wayne Crews. So what is the 95 percent of regulatory costs that OMB forgot to count? OMB’s estimate includes only the taxpayer cost of federal regulations, leaving out what the private sector spends to comply with regulations, plus the economic impact of those regulations, and the cost of unfunded mandates on the states. That’s all.
An annual cost of $1.8 billion isn’t pocket change, even when compared to the U.S. gross domestic product, forecast to come in around $15.8 trillion this year. The federal government will spend about $3.8 trillion in 2012.
Crews, who produced the estimate by compiling information from numerous sources, has created a “perpetual working paper and e-book” to keep track of federal regulatory costs. He calls the project “Tips of the Costberg,” and anticipates refining his estimate over time. Crews encourages anyone with information about regulatory cost estimates to share those with him at the Web site, TenThousandCommandments.com.
Jay Leno, keen observer of the American economy: What James Sherk and Rea Hederman Jr. reported earlier this month [The Heritage Foundation, September 7], only funnier:
Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals—that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government—that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen’s protection against the government. [Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness, 1961]
Should making it harder to fire workers be a goal of public policy? Only if you like two-tiered systems that make some workers less secure, explains Virginia Postrel:
Imagine a career in which once you had worked somewhere for a long time – say, seven years – and you couldn’t be fired unless you did something really horrible. To make the picture even more appealing, imagine further that your industry was largely immune from foreign competition, had been enjoying increasing consumer demand, was subsidized by the state and federal governments, and rarely experienced any bankruptcies.
As you have probably realized, this career exists. It’s the professoriate. But while outsiders imagine higher education as a sheltered enclave of secure jobs, the actual state of American faculty members is much more uncertain. Tenure-track employment is no longer the norm. Part-time work is.
About 30 percent of faculty members are either tenured or on the tenure track, compared with about 57 percent in 1975. The rest are “contingent faculty”: About 19 percent work full time, usually on contracts lasting one to three years, and more than half work part time. (These figures omit graduate students who also teach classes.) Along with a lack of job security, contingent faculty members receive lower pay and fewer, or no, benefits. They frequently don’t have offices and may not even get library cards. [Bloomberg, September 16]
• Help the Media Research Center celebrate its 25th anniversary by attending the media watchdog’s annual gala. Always one of the most entertaining events, the MRC Gala honors the year’s best in liberal media bias. Reception begins at 6 p.m., September 27th at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.
• Spread the word about how ObamaCare will make health insurance more expensive, reduce consumer options, impose billions in new taxes, make it harder for seniors to find a doctor, and many more problems. At the Galen Institute’s Web site, you can find 12 note-card-size guides containing key points, facts, and figures about ObamaCare. Perfect for printing up and distributing to your friends.
• Need to find some key footage of a news broadcast? Check on the Internet Archive’s new TV News page, which contains every news program going back to 2009. You can do a text search of program captions to find the exact clips you want.
• Mobilize the Mountain West by attending CPAC Colorado. The American Conservative Union’s western franchise of its annual Conservative Political Action Conference will be October 4 in Denver. We’ll be there!
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