January 2012

Supreme Court Limits Voting Rights Act, But Declines to Strike Down Key Section of the Act

by Hans Bader on June 22, 2009 · 2 comments

in Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony

The Supreme Court expanded the ability of local governments to “bail out” of a draconian provision of the Voting Rights Act, which requires them to get “preclearance” from the Justice Department, or a special court in Washington, D.C., for even trivial decisions like whether to move voting booths across the street. A three-judge district court said even local governments with an undisputed history of non-discrimination could “bail out” of Section 5 of the Act only if they themselves register voters, which most local governments don’t. The Supreme Court just overturned that ruling, which had effectively rendered the bail-out provision meaningless.

(The Justice Department has recently used preclearance requirements to block Georgia’s attempt to keep illegal aliens from voting, saying that voter ID requirements exclude more Hispanics than whites (perhaps true, but only because Hispanics in Georgia are more likely to be non-citizens not entitled to vote than are the state’s white residents). The Supreme Court earlier rejected a constitutional challenge to voter ID in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board (2008)).

By an 8-to-1 vote, the Justices refused to strike down the pre-clearance requirements of the Act as unconstitutional, in the case decided today, Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder. Justice Clarence Thomas dissented, saying that Section 5 of the Act violated federalism provisions of the Constitution, since the extraordinary remedy of requiring pre-clearance could only be imposed if state and local governments were engaging in discrimination that was too pervasive to be checked on a case-by-case basis in lawsuits.

In 1966, the Supreme Court, in an 8-to-1 vote, upheld an earlier, less burdensome preclearance requirement, based on rampant, systematic discrimination against black voters, reasoning that its “strong medicine” was a temporary abrogation of constitutional federalism principles necessary for black people to be able to vote. Justice Black partially dissented in that case, South Carolina v. Katzenbach, arguing that Section 5′s “requirement that States come to Washington to have their laws judged is reminiscent of the deeply resented practices used by the English crown in dealing with the American colonies,” which Americans protested in the Declaration of Independence.

But Congress dramatically broadened the Voting Rights Act in 2006, making it more burdensome, even as the discrimination that once justified the Act has become rare.

In cases like Reno v. Bossier Parish School Board (2000), the Justice Department had attempted to use its pre-clearance veto power to force local governments to engage in unnecessary race-based districting. When the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Bossier Parish School Board, with Justice Thomas noting that black people had fared quite well there without any racial gerrymandering (winning 3 of 12 seats on the Board), liberal newspapers and self-proclaimed civil-rights groups attacked the decision, and got Congress to overrule portions of that decision by dramatically expanding the pre-clearance requirements of the Voting Rights Act.

Ironically, even as the Justice Department uses Section 5 to force race-based restricting and thwart efforts to combat voter fraud and illegal alien voting, it has turned a blind eye to voter intimidation aimed at white voters, and done little to remedy violations of the voting rights of American soldiers.

I haven’t linked to press coverage of today’s ruling, since most of it is tendentious and ideologically biased. John Rosenberg, an expert on discrimination (and former expert witness in a landmark discrimination case), shows just how biased press coverage was of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in an age-discrimination case was (the case was Gross v. FBL Financial Services (2008)).

Earlier, I discussed how Obama misstated the facts of a landmark Supreme Court ruling, and distorted what the court’s ruling in Ledbetter v. Goodyear meant for people bringing pay discrimination lawsuits, and how the press (with a few exceptions) let him get away with it.

The Irony of the Liberty Bill

by Evan Banks on June 21, 2009 · 2 comments

in Culture, Politics as Usual, Zeitgeist

H.R. 2854, a proposed bill making its way through committees, would require the Treasury Secretary to give the greenback a makeover. The bill aims to replace the Great Seal of the United States (which Franklin Delano Roosevelt incorporated in 1935) on the reverse of the dollar with excerpts from the U.S. Constitution including the preamble, a list of Articles, and a list of Amendments in the founding document. The bill, cited as the “Liberty Bill Act,” states that Congress believes that “many Americans are unaware of the provisions of the Constitution of the United States” and that the proposed new Federal Reserve notes would “remind the American people of the historical importance of the Constitution and its impact on their lives” and “remind Americans of the blessings of liberty. . .[and] of the framework of the United States government.”

Granted, I don’t consider myself an average citizen, but I personally carry a copy of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights with me to remind myself of the limits our forefathers placed on governmental power — limits which have secured to our nation the trappings of liberty and prosperity throughout the years. Undoubtedly it would be a good thing to see more people knowledgeable and well-versed in the basic principles of the founding documents of our country. There is a great and weighty irony, however, in printing portions of this document on Federal Reserve Notes, an institution which, according to some experts, is nowhere to be found in the Constitution.

I am reminded of George Orwell’s Animal Farm when I hear of proposed bills such as this one. You’ll perhaps remember the Seven Commandments which were written on the barn wall by Napoleon and Co. “in great white letters that could be read thirty yards away,” which constituted “an unalterable law by which all the animals on Animal Farm must live for ever after”:

1. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.

2. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.

3. No animal shall wear clothes.

4. No animal shall sleep in a bed.

5. No animal shall drink alcohol.

6. No animal shall kill any other animal.

7. All animals are equal.

As anyone who has read the story knows, in the following pages the pigs go on to pervert, circumscribe, and later rescind every Commandment save one in the aforementioned list, concluding infamously and chillingly with the line “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Perhaps what is most troubling about this downward spiral, however, are the other animals’ reactions toward the pigs’ alterations, or rather their lackadaisical compliance to the pigs’ demands. Time and time again we are told that “somehow or another” the animals had forgotten that the pigs’ alterations to the Commandments had been there “all along,” or that it “did not seem strange” as the treacherous pigs increasingly take on the physical and amoral qualities of their former human masters.

Public display of the Commandments did nothing to halt or slow their eventual corruption. In fact, by turning them into a mantra (the sheep were especially fond of commandments one and two, but in the end fell to the pigs’ twisted influence all the same), Napoleon and Squealer were able to warp their meaning to the point at which the Commandments were used against the impressionable animals. Putting the Commandments on stage served as an accelerant to this end; the crafty swine knew that under constant public scrutiny what was once absolute would become slippery, then give way altogether and fall into a morass of meaningless impotence. Orwell himself cautioned in Politics and the English Language that “. . .if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

Too often in politics the meaning of words become liquid campaign slogans, transformed by gilded tongues into passionate promises and adamant assertions, or they are primed and charged with so many attached packets of meaning that the original meaning of the word stands as a hollow husk of what it once signified. By this process words become labels, and labels in turn become a little less than zeitgeist on the backs of transfixed ideologues.

As Friedrich Hayek put it in The Road to Serfdom:

The most effective way of making people accept the validity of the values they are to serve is to persuade them that they are really the same as those which they. . .have always held, but which were not properly understood or recognized before. And the most efficient technique to this end is to use the old words but change their meaning. Few traits of totalitarian regimes are at the same time so confusing to the superficial observer and yet so characteristic of the whole intellectual climate as the complete perversion of language, the change of meaning of the words by which the ideals of the new regimes are expressed.

Indeed, we must proceed with caution on this ground, or not at all. Rubber-stamping our money with the likeness of our most cherished pact between citizenry and government may make one set of papers more important, but it could render another set impotent as well.

On the other hoof, Congress has a point, I think, in stating that many Americans are unaware of the meaning and importance of the Constitution. I’m just not sure that the back of an inflated, central-bank issued fiat currency is the appropriate medium for learning about limited government.

What do you think? Would this bill profane one of the greatest foundations of our liberty by opening it up to the liquefying subversion of linguistic politics? Or will it actually serve to educate and remind people of the limits of government at a time when limited government is so badly needed?

U.S. Senate Investigates Mobile Phone Exclusivity Deals

by Elizabeth Jacobson on June 21, 2009 · 4 comments

in Regulation, Tech & Telecom

A group of US Senators has sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission expressing their concern that the exclusive arrangements that are common between wireless service providers and mobile handset manufacturers may be hindering competition and innovation. Senators John Kerry (D-MA), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Byron Dorgan (D-ND), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) are worried that the prevalence of such exclusivity arrangements (for example, AT&T and Apple’s iPhone, or Sprint-Nextel and the Palm Pre) restrict consumer choice.

Are consumers getting a bad deal? In an essay published last year by The Progress and Freedom Foundation, Barbara Esbin and Berin Szoka noted that the FCC’s most recent report found that 95% of the US population lives in areas with at least three wireless carriers. Clearly, the market isn’t suffering from a lack of competition. The vast majority of the consumers have a choice when it comes to service providers, and they enjoy a great deal of choice among mobile handsets, too. However, the idea that the government should ensure that every citizen has access to the mobile phone of his or her choosing is plain baloney, as PFF notes:

Simply put, the market is currently working to protect consumer interests and there is no constructive role for government to play here.  There is not yet-nor should there be-a governmentally-sanctioned right to obtain a particular handset (no matter how desirable that handset might be).  Where both the handset manufacturer and the carrier service markets are not only effectively, but wildly, competitive the lack of availability today of some equipment in certain parts of the country should not give rise to an FCC investigation tomorrow.

There is strong evidence that exclusivity arrangements encourage the development of newer products, contributing to innovation in mobile devices. A wireless carrier that offers a trendy new handset can attract legions of new data plan subscribers. Revenue-sharing agreements between the carrier and the manufacturer direct a significant portion of these new profits back to the manufacturers, which go toward developing newer and better phones. In the case of the iPhone, consumers have benefitted from better performing new models and price reductions (the first model of the phone cost $499-$599; the 3G S model to be released this weekend will cost $199, with last year’s 3G model dropped to a bargain of $99). Developing a new product is a risky venture; without such profit-sharing schemes in place, we could expect the price of high-tech smartphones to be much higher, as manufacturers would be forced to price their handsets without the expected financial returns from their carriers. Further, new products would be slower to come to market, as developers would need to spend considerable time ensuring that their handsets function properly with every wireless carrier’s network. Customer service at the local wireless retail store would be a nightmare, as employees and technicians would need to acquire expert knowledge for hundreds of cell phones, instead of just the handful that most carriers offer.

It’s far from clear that mobile phone exclusivity agreements have made the marketplace less competitive. More dubious still are claims that exclusive agreements are hurting consumers. Were the FCC to declare that exclusivity contracts are somehow anticompetitive, then the effort to benefit a few consumers would result in slower innovation, higher prices, and less overall choice for all consumers. Smartphones in particular, and mobile phones in general, have continued to improve in quality while carrying lower price tags over the last several years, and more options are available today than ever before. Clearly, the industry is doing something right.

E-Cigarette Smokers Could Be Left Out in the Cold

by Evan Banks on June 21, 2009 · 4 comments

in Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Precaution & Risk, Regulation

The “smokes” may be different, but the Food and Drug Administration’s ever-vigilant watch to keep us safe from ourselves in its quest to quantify and purge all health risks from society continues. Their latest target? Smokeless cigarettes, or so called “E-cigarettes.”

The devices in question utilize an atomizer to vaporize a nicotine and propylene glycol (a substance commonly found in fog machines) solution that the user inhales and exhales as a vapor. Since there’s no tobacco, combustion, smoke, or smell involved, savvy individuals have taken advantage of the devices, which can be bought online or in mall kiosks here in the States, to get around heavy taxes on tobacco products and stringent smoking bans in public places.

But that hasn’t stopped the FDA, which as of this writing has “refused [the importation of] 17 shipments of various brands of these ‘electronic’ cigarettes, cigars, and pipes, and their components,” on the basis that the devices are drugs and as such need regulatory approval before being marketed in the US.

Even without the FDA’s newly-gained jurisdiction over tobacco products (though clearly e-cigs aren’t tobacco products), the Administration already had the authority to regulate drugs containing nicotine (such as patches, sprays, inhalers, or gum) that are designed to help users kick the habit.

All this recent buzz about e-cigarettes seems to have come from a front-page article in the June 1 New York Times, in which the director of the Nicotine Dependence Center at the Mayo Clinic stated that “We basically don’t know anything about them. They’ve never been tested for safety or efficacy to help people stop smoking,” despite this Health New Zealand safety report on Ruyan e-cigarettes, the Chinese product on which U.S.-imported versions are based, and the fact that the FDA has approved of nicotine for use in various and sundry quitting aids (some of them inhalant-based). As for propylene glycol, the substance is already generally considered by the FDA to be safe for consumption. From the FDA’s report:

“Propylene glycol is metabolized by animals and can be used as a carbohydrate source. Propylene glycol can be ingested over long periods of time and in substantial quantities (up to 5 percent of the total food intake) without causing frank toxic effects.”

If the FDA were to succeed in banning or restricting e-cigarettes, which are already illegal to sell in Australia and Hong Kong, the potential health risks to American smokers looking for a tar-free and less offensive cigarette alternative would be enormous.

Stimulus = Welfare + Quotas + Corruption

by Hans Bader on June 20, 2009 · 3 comments

in Economy, Employment, International, Labor, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Regulation, Stimulus to Nowhere, Trade

Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package is now being used to force states to adopt racial quotas in government contracts, even if their state constitution or civil-rights laws forbid such quotas. Slate’s Mickey Kaus reports that “CalTrans, the huge state agency that spends billions in federal highway construction funds, ‘sets a quota of having 6.75 percent of contracts go to women or members of a targeted group–African American, Asian-Pacific American, and Native American.’”

The stimulus package also repealed welfare reform, as Kaus and the Heritage Foundation have noted. Obama ran campaign ads claiming to support welfare reform, even though he had actually fought against welfare reform as an Illinois legislator.

Obama claimed the stimulus package was needed to prevent the economy from suffering from “irreversible decline,” but the Congressional Budget Office admitted that the stimulus package would shrink the economy “in the long run.” The stimulus package has since destroyed thousands of jobs in America’s export sector, and subsidized countless examples of government waste and corruption.

Recently, Obama fired an inspector general, Gerald Walpin, who uncovered millions of dollars of waste and fraud in the AmeriCorps program, including by a prominent Obama supporter, endangering the Obama supporter’s ability to administer federal stimulus spending in Sacramento.

At least four states (California, Michigan, Nebraska, and Louisiana) have state constitutions that ban racial set asides, but most of those bans contain exceptions for racial set-asides that are requirements for receiving federal funds. No such exception exists to the California Equal Rights Amendment, which was construed in Connerly v. State Personnel Board (2001) to bar gender-based set-asides even when they are permitted under federal law.

Obama Administration Gives Miranda Warnings to Enemy Combatants in Afghanistan, Even Though They Are Not Legally Required

by Hans Bader on June 19, 2009

in International, Legal, Personal Liberty

The Obama Administration is now requiring investigators to give Miranda warnings to some “captured foreign fighters” in Afghanistan, advising them that they have the “right to remain silent” rather than cooperate with American investigators! (Congressman Mike Rogers witnessed this while on a fact-finding mission in Afghanistan). Congress wasn’t told about this bizarre policy shift, which is apparently part of the Administration’s “global justice initiative.” But White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that this development “would not surprise him.”

This is extraordinarily stupid. As Obama himself once recognized, foreign terrorists do not have Miranda rights.

Miranda warnings are NOT required by international law for anyone, much less enemy combatants who do not follow the rules of war. Most countries not only do not require such warnings, but regard them as being at odds with the goal of getting at the truth. Miranda warnings are not a requirement of customary international law or international human-rights law (unlike torture, which is clearly banned by treaties like the Convention Against Torture). You don’t get Miranda-like warnings even in many European countries. (The word Miranda refers to Miranda v. Arizona, a controversial 5-to-4 U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1966 that for the first time mandated such warnings). Even in countries that do have similar warnings, they are generally mandated only by statute or the common law, not by the country’s constitution, and thus can be rescinded at the will of the national legislature (and thus can hardly be deemed to be a universal or inalienable “human right”). French anti-terror laws are much tougher than U.S. laws like the Patriot Act.

And these captured foreign fighters are neither U.S. citizens nor on American soil at the time of their capture and interrogation, so the U.S. Constitution gives them no right to Miranda warnings, either.

Senators Act on Clean Water Restoration Act

by RJ Smith on June 19, 2009

in Agriculture, Environment, Natural Resources

Yesterday, in a mere one hour and seventeen minutes, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee sailed through S. 787—the Clean Water Restoration Act (CWRA). This bill would remove the word “navigable” from the Clean Water Act, expanding the federal regulatory power under the Clean Water Act (CWA) to include such things as puddles on farms and other private property around the nation. For background on this legislation see my prior blog post, this site, and this press blog. Former CEI staffer, Jonathan Adler, also delivered very good testimony on these issues as well last year.

The final bill was a slightly modified alternative amendment worked out yesterday by Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mt.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) This Baucus “compromise” is largely window dressing, maintaining the existing Clean Water Act exemptions for some agricultural activities in the new CWRA. This was to lure farmers into supporting the CWRA. At best it might have gained them one farm organization.

Senators James Inhofe (R-Okla.), David Vitter (R-La.) and John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) were heroic in their efforts to defend private property rights and states’ water rights and prevent most of the American land and water from effectively being federalized/nationalized.

Inhofe said in his opening statement that the bill represents a dagger aimed right at the heart of rural America, but that there was no way to stop it in committee. He vowed a very robust effort to defeat it on the floor.

Vitter submitted two amendments. One would allow the president to override the CWRA in the case of natural disasters such as hurricanes, so that recovery efforts would not be delayed or halted. Boxer said public health would be compromised if exemptions were provided. Senator Thomas Carper (D-Del.) said Vitter’s amendment would undermine the intent of the bill.

Boxer and Carper argued they weren’t expanding any government authority–simply returning to the authority of the CWA as it was prior to the SWANCC and Rapanos Supreme Court decisions. Boxer repeated that theme over and over. For more information on these decisions see this paper of Jonathan Adler.

Vitter responded that it restores nothing that was ever in the CWA–instead it returns to the vastly expansive definition of navigable which federal bureaucrats had achieved in order to usurp powers not granted to the federal government (such as the migratory bird rule, the “glancing goose test”), which was why the Supreme Court had to step in and point out that navigable meant navigable.

It was defeated on a voice vote.

Vitter offered another amendment to include language that the use of mosquito control pesticides would never be required to obtain permits under the CWRA. This provision would allow that mosquito control efforts to prevent control of diseases such as West Nile. There have been movements to require such permits and there are currently cases in court. This too was defeated on a voice vote and a roll call vote. [more hotlinks]

Barrasso then offered a series of amendments, basically aimed at restricting the vast new “wetlands” listed as waters of the US.

His first amendment was to prohibit the federal government from taking over all streams and intermittent streams within a state. He explained: “No one in Washington D.C. has the right to seize and control our streams.” They are already adequately protected under state laws. Under this bill, streams that only flow when storm water runoff fills them would be placed under control of Washington. This one was defeated on voice vote. Other defeated Barrasso amendments included:

• An amendment was designed to prevent Federal government from taking all mudflats in the 50 states.
• An amendment to prevent US takeover of all prairie potholes in the states, with vast numbers being on private farmland and ranchland.
• An amendment to prohibit federal takeover of all wet meadows.
• An amendment to prevent EPA takeover of all natural ponds.
• An amendment to protect and exempt agriculture under the CWRA.
• An amendment that would prohibit controls on animal farming: cattle, sheep, goats, fish, crawfish, etc.
• An amendment that would require that specific language be inserted in the bill to clearly exempt ground water from the regulatory authority of the CWRA.

The fact that all these were defeated, just goes to show the extensive regulatory scope of this bill. Inhofe asked that his name also be attached to all of the amendments.

Midway through these amendments Boxer asked Barrasso if he had any more amendments. He responded yes. She replied “Boy you are a glutton for punishment.” So much for respect for property rights and the Fifth Amendment.

Then Boxer called for the vote on S.787 as amended and it very quickly passed 12-7 on strict party lines.

Now we wait to see what happens in the Senate and what Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.) does in the House.

Senator Inhofe said in committee that there is no chance of the CWRA passing on the Senate floor. And in a post-mark-up press release reiterated: “The CWRA faces certain demise if it ever reaches the Senate floor.”

Also Senator Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) placed a hold on the bill.

Let’s hope that Senator Inhofe’s optimism is well founded.

Photo Source and caption: USAF, carries the caption: “Airman 1st Class Corey Turpin, 28th Civil Engineer Squadron pest management apprentice, tosses larvicide into a pool of water, May 14. The larvicide keeps mosquitoes in their larvae stage to stop them from maturing. (U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Anthony Sanchelli).”  Such mosquito control activities could become very difficult under the Clean Water Restoration Act.

Privacy Declared Public Good

by Jack O'Connor on June 19, 2009

in Privacy

Bruce Schneier, eminent cryptographer, has declared market failure. He points to what he calls a meta-problem:

Those entrusted with our privacy often don’t have much incentive to respect it . . . What this all means is that protecting individual privacy remains an externality for many companies, and that basic market dynamics won’t work to solve the problem. Because the efficient market solution won’t work, we’re left with inefficient regulatory solutions.

Privacy is indeed an externality, but customer satisfaction is an externality, too. The whole point of markets is that they help us work these things out. What Mr. Schneier has described is not a market failure but in fact the original sin of the regulator: the assumption that, though the market chose publicity, it should have chosen privacy. We can’t make that claim without evidence.

Before we go making assumptions about what homo economicus might or mightn’t choose, we should remind ourselves of some of the benefits of publicity. Search engines like Google can give me tailored results, and targeted advertising funds many of their nifty services. When TransUnion vouches for me, I can reliably get a loan from a banker I’ve never met. If I’m married with kids, insurers who know that can offer me cheaper policies. These benefits are substantial, and we should be quicker to assume that the market values them than that it has ignored the associated costs.

There are plenty of good reasons for choosing privacy, and for the most part that choice is open to us. It’s still legal to pay with cash, walk around without ID, and forgo health insurance. It can be monstrously inconvenient, but that’s the price we pay when we make unusual choices. Of course, these options may not be legal for much longer, and there are already many legally required disclosures that should include privacy requirements–car insurance and airplane tickets, for example. There’s plenty of work to be done to make sure privacy stays legal, but that’s a long way from making it mandatory.

Mr. Schneier acknowledges several of the inefficiencies of regulation, to his credit, but he misses the single largest. None of us have exactly the same priorities when it comes to privacy, but when the choice is made for us by legislation, we’re stuck with a one-size-fits-all regime. As Mr. Schneier points out himself, there are also limits to how much regulation can accomplish. A privacy violation is the act of revealing information–not using it–and without any “IRS misplaces laptop” headlines, it’s usually impossible to tell whodunnit.

And of course, that’s the real problem here. If we don’t act like private people, we won’t be private people. I don’t share Mr. Schneier’s willingness to regulate, but he is absolutely right that the reality of privacy has changed too quickly for our norms to keep up. Posting drunken photos on Facebook is one of the stupidest things we can do with a computer, yet we do it all the time, because we don’t appreciate the consequences. It’s not just a lack of judgment, either. Everyone knows not to send cash through the postal service, but most of us still don’t have the slightest clue how email works. This too shall pass.

When man discovered fire, he learned not to burn himself. When we brought electricity into the home, we learned not to shock ourselves. If and when our online indiscretions come back to haunt us, we’re going to learn the value of privacy, and how to get it. Once we do, the market will bend over backwards to sell it to us. But insulating us from the consequences of our decisions can only make things worse.  If we try to save ourselves the trouble of adjusting, if we put our chips on government to simply make the problem disappear, we won’t be ready when the stakes are a lot higher.

The $60,000 Obama Health-Care Plan: It’s “Eye-Poppingly” Expensive on a Per-Person Basis

by Hans Bader on June 19, 2009 · 1 comment

in Healthcare, Insurance, Regulation, Stimulus to Nowhere

Obama’s health-care proposals will cost well over a trillion dollars, without providing universal coverage. They are so “eye-poppingly” expensive that even Congressional Democrats have been forced to scale them back. But the Congressional Budget Office has concluded that their bill “would cover just 16 million additional people at a cost of $1 trillion,” reports the Washington Post. That’s more than $60,000 for each additional person covered! Other estimates peg the cost at $1.6 trillion.

The Examiner notes that Obama’s own Council of Economic Advisers estimated that “as much as 30 percent of Medicare spending is unnecessary,” due to poor government oversight, yet Obama wants to expand government control over the “entire” health-care “system.” The Examiner also worries that his plan will close badly-needed cancer clinics and “lead straight to rationing health care.”

Health-care expert (and former New York Lieutenant Governor) Betsy McCaughey says that contrary to Obama’s promise, you won’t necessarily be able to keep your doctor, or your insurance if you like it, under his proposed government takeover of the health-care sector.

Recently, Obama fired an inspector general, Gerald Walpin, who uncovered millions of dollars of waste and fraud in the AmeriCorps program, including by a prominent Obama supporter, endangering the Obama supporter’s ability to administer federal stimulus spending in Sacramento.

I wonder how long it will be before the President or liberal Congressional leaders similarly retaliate against the Congressional Budget Office for telling inconvenient truths about their disastrous economic policies. Not only has the CBO estimated the enormous cost of ObamaCare, it earlier pointed out that Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package will actually shrink the economy “in the long run.” (The CBO predicted that in the short-run, by the 2010 election, the stimulus would temporarily create jobs. But it hasn’t. Indeed, it has actually destroyed thousands of jobs in America’s export sector.)

The stimulus package also repealed welfare-reform, and wastes taxpayers’ money.

Obama has done nothing to make health-insurance cheaper, like letting consumers buy cheaper health-care policies across state lines (few countries have a more geographically fragmented and balkanized health-care market than we do. Private piggy-back health insurance is cheaper and less regulated even in supposedly socialist countries like France than it is here. When my Marxist French father-in-law left the grim public hospital where he had his quadruple bypass, he was able to stay cheaply and comfortably in a convalescent home using private health insurance that was much cheaper and less regulated than what he could buy in America, where 50 different states apply a bewildering patchwork of complicated rules to health-insurance, and a federal statute, strongly backed by Joe Biden, allows states to block purchase of health insurance across state lines).

Nor has Obama proposed anything to help remedy the looming doctor shortage, like getting rid of unnecessary and time-consuming requirements for becoming a doctor (in other countries, doctors can study medicine as undergraduates, without having to first graduate from college before going to medical school. That dramatically reduces the time and expense of a medical education. One of my former co-workers is the child of a doctor who emigrated from a Third World country to Canada. That doctor began treating patients soon after receiving an undergraduate degree in medicine in her home country, and now practices medicine in Canada).

Taxes without Borders

by Ryan Young on June 19, 2009

in Economy

Some politicians in North Carolina want Amazon.com to collect and pay North Carolina state sales taxes.

This is troubling. In our federal system, states can only tax entities within their borders. And Amazon’s Washington state headquarters are three time zones away from the Raleigh, NC, statehouse. What gives?

The logic goes that Amazon works with affiliates to advertise and link to products it sells. Some of these affiliates are in North Carolina. Therefore, Amazon has a physical presence in North Carolina, and can be taxed. QED.

The problem is that affiliates are not owned by Amazon. They are independent entities. Amazon pays them to drive traffic to Amazon and get people to shop there. Affiliates are basically outside contractors.

The taxation-by-affiliate argument is really no different than making a Hawaii resdent pay North Carolina income tax simply because they do business with someone who lives in North Carolina.

This comes at a time when the economy is in recession, businesses are struggling, and workers are losing their jobs. Economists have known for a long time that when you tax something, you get less of it. Apparently politicians in North Carolina want less commerce.

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