In the Washington Examiner, I discuss the brief I recently filed on behalf of Minnesota and North Carolina legislators challenging Obamacare, which highlights a lesser-known constitutional infirmity that plagues the massive new health care law passed in 2010: its Medicaid provisions violate limits on Congress’s power under the Spending Clause. Reason‘s Peter Suderman discusses the recent oral arguments before the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in the challenge to Obamacare in Florida v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the case in which we filed our brief, and how a judge viewed a related legal argument under the Spending Clause as being “powerful.” A Florida trial judge struck down Obamacare last year on a different ground: that its individual mandate violates limits on Congress’ power under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause. I previously explained why the individual mandate is unconstitutional.
January 2012
Cato’s latest endeavor, downsizing the Federal Government: Labor Department, emphasizes the ineffectiveness and restrictions put in place by the Department of Labor. DOL has a plethora of regulations and programs hindering the economic recovery of the United States, which Cato’s new site highlights.
For a department that’s supposed primary function is to create business-friendly environment for job creation and provide assistance to citizens looking for employment, DOL has missed the mark. Downsizing this department is vital to ushering in a sustainable (in reality, not in the “eco-sustainability” sense) economic recovery. As seen on Cato’s site, DOL spending has increased substantially since its creation to an unwieldy $148 billion in FY 2011. However, the increase in spending has little to do with job creation or assisting citizens to find employment — 92 percent of DOL spending equates to individual or business subsidies; $134.4 billion is spent on unemployment insurance.
The department takes little action to incentivize the workforce of America to work or for businesses to compete in the marketplace. Picking winners and losers in the workforce is, in reality, the primary fuction performed by the DOL. The economic harm and restriction of economic freedom caused by the department is incalculable.
One of the themes I explore in my new book, Stealing You Blind: How Government Fat Cats Are Getting Rich Off of You
There’s another great example today, with the news that taxpayers have spent over $3 million on getting monkeys stoned. It’s a revelation that should shock drug reformers and animal welfare advocates as well as students of the federal bureaucracy. It comes via a grant from the National Institutes of Health designed “to use a rhesus monkey model of drug abuse, to study factors affecting vulnerability to drug abuse and to evaluate behavioral and pharmacological treatment interventions. Routes of administration that have been developed in this laboratory will include oral drug self-administration and smoking.” Stunningly, the study found that after smoking cocaine monkeys exhibited “dilated pupils and slightly agitated, hyperactive behavior.”
Whenever I see anything like this I am reminded of President Eisenhower’s farewell address, where — in addition to the warning about the military-industrial complex — he advised us to keep a watch on this sort of thing:
[R]esearch has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.
And it’s not as if there aren’t enough stoned primates readily available for observation on campuses anyway…
The Falkland Islands are English-speaking and have been part of the United Kingdom for generations. Although Argentina unsuccessfully tried to conquer them in 1982, they have no desire to be part of Argentina, anymore than the United States yearns to be part of Mexico. But the Obama Administration wants England to entertain just that possibility, ignoring “the principle of self-determination for the islanders.” (The islands are largely “self-governing“).
In what has been perceived in England as a stab-in-the-back, the U.S. State Department has sided with Argentina in a resolution on the Falkland Islands by the Organization of American States (OAS) backed by the anti-American rulers of Venezuela and Nicaragua. The resolution contains a draft declaration calling on England to negotiate with Argentina over ceding control of the Falkland Islands. The declaration refers to the islands by their Argentine name of the “Malvinas,” which is rejected by inhabitants of the islands.
Argentina’s military dictatorship previously invaded the Falklands in 1982, only to be ousted and defeated by the English military.
Tech:
Google: Who cares where your data is:
“Security professionals should not worry where their data is located in cloud computing models, according to Google.”
“Lawmakers Pushing Bill That Could Land YouTube Lip-Synch Artists Behind Bars”:
“Record labels are clamoring for a chance to have their artist lip-synch alongside 16-year-old YouTube sensation Keenan Cahill in, of all places, his bedroom.”
Global Warming / Environment / Energy:
The Earth is Full… of Hypocritical Eco Blowhards:
“Thomas Friedman had a column in Wednesday’s New York Times entitled “The Earth is Full.” In the column, Friedman called for people to work less and own less in order to save the planet. Bla bla bla.”
Insurance / Gambling:
County Gambling Seizure Draws Ire of Poker Players:
“News last week that the Anne Arundel County Police Department had received more than $470,000 in seized funds from a federal investigation into online gambling has raised the ire of poker players both locally and from around the world.”
The World Series of Poker is underway. The tournament is perfectly legal. And anyone over 18 can play poker in a casino. But it has been illegal to play the game online since April 15, now known to poker fans as Black Friday. Policy Analyst Michelle Minton goes over the controversy and explains why prohibition doesn’t work.
Thanks to all who were able to attend CEI’s 2011 Annual Dinner & Gala! As Master of Ceremonies Andrew Langer told you last night, CEI did something totally different with this year’s dinner video. You all saw the preview last night and now in a shameless attempt to drive traffic to our blog, we’ve posted it below. Enjoy:
Anywhere but the Senate, getting 54 votes out of 100 is a victory. And yesterday, a bipartisan group 0f 54 Senators responded to concerns from community banks, credit unions, entrepreneurs, and consumers and voted for a measure from Jon Tester (D-Mont.) to delay implementation of price controls on debit card interchange fees from the Durbin Amendment of Dodd-Frank.
The bill would have also required certification that the exemption for smaller financial institutions and would work, and that the price controls the banks and credit unions that issued debit cards would be allowed to recover all of their costs, which the 12-cent cap does not allow. By forcing banks and credit unions to reduce debit card “swipe fees” by 75 percent, the Fed rule as it currently stands (which hopefully the Fed will now modify as much as it can to reflect the sentiment of the majority in Congress) would forcibly shift the cost of processing debit cards from retailers to consumers. Consumers are already losing free checking and debit card rewards in anticipation of this rule, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said last month that it may cause smaller banks to fail.
But the GOP pro-price control caucus struck again, defeating a vote that could have been — like the repeal of the 1099 mandate from Obamacare — the first chink in the armor of Dodd-Frank. Last time, 17 Republicans voted with Durbin. This time it was a baker’s dozen. An improvement, but still too many.
Tech:
Court: Passwords + Secret Questions = ‘Reasonable’ eBanking Security:
“A closely-watched court battle over how far commercial banks need to go to protect their customers from cyber theft is nearing an end. Experts said the decision recommended by a magistrate last week — if adopted by a U.S. district court in Maine — will make it more difficult for other victim businesses to challenge the effectiveness of security measures employed by their banks.”
“Facebook: ‘We should’ve been more clear’ on face-scanning tech”:
“Facebook has tried to prevent yet another privacy row engulfing the social network by admitting it “should have been more clear” about the roll-out of its facial recognition technology.”
Global Warming / Environment / Energy:
Coal Regs Would Kills Jobs, Boost Energy Bills:
“Two new EPA pollution regulations will slam the coal industry so hard that hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost, and electric rates will skyrocket 11 percent to over 23 percent, according to a new study based on government data.”
Green Buildings Hazardous to Health? Report Cites Risks of Weatherization:
“The buildings commonly referred to as “green” could actually be hazardous to your health, according to a new report.”
Businesses often use regulations as a cudgel to bludgeon their competitor. Occupational licensing is one of the most-abused types of regulation. John Stossel’s latest column shows how by telling the story of Jestina Clayton, an immigrant from Africa who braids hair for a living.
Her customers are satisfied. But now her competitors want her to take 2,000 hours of classes and spend thousands of dollars to get a cosmetology license. This even though braiding is the only service Jestina offers. And because the her competitors are the very people who grant or deny licenses, it will be easy for them to keep entrepreneurs like Jestina out of business even after she completes the licensing requirements.
Jestina’s story repeats itself every day in any number of occupations. Stossel writes:
Once upon a time, one in 20 workers needed government permission to work in their occupation. Today, it’s one in three. We lose some freedom every day.
“Occupational licensing laws fall hardest on minorities, on poor, on elderly workers who want to start a new career or change careers,” Avelar said. “(Licensing laws) just help entrenched businesses keep out competition.”
This is not what America was supposed to be.
He’s right.
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