Features

Conservatives Must Reject the “Poor Are Parasites” Narrative

by David Bier on May 7, 2013 · 8 comments

in Features, Immigration, International

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When Mitt Romney made his comments about the 47 percent of Americans who don’t pay taxes and were supposedly “dependent on government,” many conservatives rightly condemned the remark, and Romney apologized. Now, a major conservative think tank is repeating his error, denouncing lower-skilled workers as a fiscal drain on the economy.

This week, the Heritage Foundation, the largest conservative D.C. non-profit organization, released a study intended to demonstrate that allowing the 11.5 million mostly lower-income immigrants who are currently in the country illegally to stay will harm America’s economy. The study focuses on immigrants, but its logic applies to millions of working Americans, almost half of whom had no income tax liability in 2011, according to the Tax Policy Center.

Indeed, Heritage makes quite clear that its conclusion that immigrants are economically superfluous applies equally to most Americans. If an individual does not have a college degree, they are a net fiscal drain on the economy, and in the Heritage methodology, that means that America’s economy would be better off without them. Thus, about 70 percent of Americans would be “deportable.”

Heritage is absolutely correct to point out that entitlements are unsustainable, but this is true with or without immigration reform—that is an argument for fixing entitlements, not stopping immigration reform. At current deficits, the federal government will spend $67 trillion more than it will bring in taxes over the next 50 years. By Heritage’s logic, that means America should be emptied.

As should be obvious, America would not gain from removing between 50 and 70 percent of its workforce. This fact exposes the fatal flaw in the Heritage study—it ignores the economic benefits that low-skilled workers bring. Under progressive taxation, the majority of taxes are paid by the highest income levels, but low-wage workers still form a critical base without which the top earners would suffer and tax revenues would fall.

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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

by Ryan Young on May 6, 2013 · 0 comments

in Features, Regulation

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This week in the world of regulation:

  • Last week, 62 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. This is down from 66 new final rules the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every 2 hours and 43 minutes — 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
  • All in all, 1,163 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
  • If this keeps up, the total tally for 2013 will be 3,451 new final rules.
  • Last week, 1,250 new pages were added to the 2013 Federal Register, for a total of 26,190pages.
  • At its current pace, the 2013 Federal Register will run 76,134 pages.
  • Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. No such rules were published last week, for a total of 12 so far in 2013.
  • The total estimated compliance costs of this year’s economically significant regulations ranges from $5.58 billion to $10.19 billion.
  • So far, 85 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2013.
  • So far this year, 216 final rules affect small business; 20 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.

What Are the National ID Implications of the Senate Immigration Bill?

by David Bier on May 3, 2013 · 0 comments

in Features, Immigration, Nanny State, Personal Liberty

Post image for What Are the National ID Implications of the Senate Immigration Bill?

1. ID standards: The bill requires all employers to check photo IDs of all employees they hire—any employee who fails to present a photo ID must be fired. Employees who attempt to use ID from states that have not implemented the Real ID Act would need a second form of identification to be hired. The Real ID Act was an unfunded mandate on states to remake their state IDs to fit federal guidelines. The states rebelled and refused to do so. This law would make it more burdensome for employees in those states to get a job—thus, this stick is being used to conform states to the federal ID standards. (The bill also creates “tamper-proof Social Security cards, which all workers will need to get a job in America).

3. Mandatory E-Verify: E-Verify compares form I-9 information—names, addresses, Social Security Numbers (SSNs), document ID numbers, immigrant ID numbers, etc.—submitted by employers to a federal database on all employees, a combination of Department of Homeland Security (DHS), State Dept. and Social Security Administration (SSA) databases. E-Verify’s creation was never the subject of any specific legislation, but rather was the spawn of a verification “pilot program” that was authorized under the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. This bill would mandate the system be used by all employers within four years of implementation.

4. Biometric E-Verify: E-Verify has already expanded to include all passport photos, but this bill will essentially create a database on all citizens that includes photos on each person. It’s called the “photo tool” in the bill. It allocates $250 million to pay states to hand over their state ID photos and numbers, vastly expanding the database and making photo identification essentially mandatory.

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Did Hensarling Force Obama’s Hand On “Recess” Appointments?

by John Berlau on May 1, 2013 · 0 comments

in Economy, Features, Labor, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Regulation

Post image for Did Hensarling Force Obama’s Hand On “Recess” Appointments?

They called it a “stunt” early last week when House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) refused to allow Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) director Richard Cordray to testify due to the constitutional cloud over Cordray’s appointment. But this “stunt” just may have forced the Obama administration’s hand in submitting a brief later in the week urging the Supreme Court to resolve the issue.

In a statement, Hensarling announced that the committee could not “legally accept testimony from Richard Cordray … until he is validly appointed as the bureau’s director.” In the letter that Hensarling sent to Cordray, Hensarling cited the ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in Noel Canning v. National Labor Relations Board that three “recess” appointments to the labor board made the same day and in the same manner as Cordray’s appointment were ruled unconstitutional. “It is clear,” Hensarling wrote, “as a number of legal scholars have concluded, that your appointment was also unconstitutional.”

This is exactly what the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and our co-plaintiffs the 60 Plus Association and the State National Bank of Big Spring (Texas), argue in our lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the CFPB and other elements of Dodd-Frank, the so-called financial reform law rammed through Congress in 2010. Neither Cordray nor the NLRB officials were valid “recess” appointments, because the Senate was in pro-forma session, gaveling in and out every three days and ready for legislative business should it occur (including changes to payroll tax legislation Congress made during these sessions).

The Obama administration’s action was unprecedented. As noted by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service and reported by Politico, during the 2007-08 pro forma sessions when the Democrats controlled both houses, President Bush “made no recess appointments between [Democrats’] initial pro forma sessions in November 2007 and the end of his presidency.” As I asked on OpenMarket on January 4, 2012, the day the recess appointments were made, “If any adjournment or break the Senate takes can be defined as ‘recess,’ can the president make appointments when the Senate is in formal session and gavels out for the evening?” Or could a recess even be declared when the Senate adjourns for a bathroom break?!

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U.S. Government Bans French Cheese Based On Food Prejudices

by Hans Bader on April 30, 2013 · 0 comments

in Features, Health and Illness, International, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Trade

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The U.S. government is banning a standard, normal-smelling French cheese based on its own squeamishness. The cheese in question is Mimolette, a commonplace, orange French cheese so mild in flavor that I once confused it with cheddar when I visited my French relatives and ate it for the first time. The ban has triggered protests in New York City, reports the Global Post:

Around 40 protesters took to the streets of New York on Saturday to demonstrate against a US ban on mimolette that has angered lovers of the distinctive French cheese.

Since March, several hundred pounds of the bright orange cheese have been held up by US customs because of a warning by the Food and Drug Administration that it contained microscopic cheese mites.

The mites are a critical part of the process to produce mimolette, giving it its distinctive grayish crust.

The US decision has angered importers and consumers, who have even set up a Facebook page titled “Save the Mimolette.”

Benoit de Vitton, an importer of the cheese. . . said he was baffled by the recent blockade, noting he has imported mimolette for two decades without a problem.”They are afraid of allergies,” he said. “But we’ve been doing this for 20 years without any problem.”

Who cares if it has tiny, invisible mites in it? Cheese is the product of bacteria. Good yogurt has live cultures of bacteria in it, and that is beneficial for your health. Food that is alive can be good for you. The human body is full of living, friendly microbes that keep us alive. The cheese mites in Mimolette are there to enhance its flavor: as Wikipedia notes, the “crust of aged Mimolette is the result of cheese mites intentionally introduced to add flavor by their action on the surface of the cheese.”

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Jerry Brown’s Legacy Train Wreck

by Charles Katebi on April 30, 2013 · 2 comments

in Economy, Features, Mobility, Politics as Usual, Stimulus to Nowhere

Post image for Jerry Brown’s Legacy Train Wreck

California Governor Jerry Brown, along with an entourage of high-profile business and financial leaders from the Golden State, recently traveled to China on a trade tour. The agenda included government and private sector partnerships in electric vehicle production, trash-to-electricity technology, and green energy research and development.

But the tour’s main purpose centered on garnering Chinese financial interest in what Jerry Brown hopes to be his defining legacy: high-speed rail for California. (Embarrassingly for Brown, China indicted its former top rail official on corruption charges during the governor’s junket.) China is currently sitting on $3.4 trillion in foreign exchange reserves. Traditionally, these have been invested in foreign government bonds. But in recent years, China has moved to diversify its holdings away from government bonds—which have been yielding historically low interest rates—and into more lucrative brick and mortar assets. Needless to say, the China’s banks and sovereign wealth funds would be fools to invest in Jerry Brown’s white elephant for several reasons.

First, the project’s estimated costs are ballooning before construction has even begun. Since a statewide ballot initiative in 2008 authorized the creation of a high-speed rail network, projected construction costs for the entire endeavor have ballooned from $34 billion. In a revised business plan published in 2011, the California High-Speed Rail Authority estimates construction will now cost $98 billion to $117 billion, and the estimated completion date of the full first section was pushed back by 13 years. In 2012, the rail authority claimed it found $30 billion in estimated savings, primarily by abandoning the initial full-build plan that would have required completely dedicated and electrified infrastructure and moving toward a “blended” model. Basically, this means the initial system will not be true 21st century high-speed rail, in that it will share tracks with electrified mass transit and trains relying on diesel motive power. The downward cost estimates are also the result of modified inflation projections that assume rates over the course of construction will be lower than previously assumed. These are the estimates before a single track has been laid.

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Gang Of 8’s Euphemism For National ID System: “Identity Authentication Mechanism”

by David Bier on April 29, 2013 · 0 comments

in Features, Immigration, Nanny State, Personal Liberty

Post image for Gang Of 8’s Euphemism For National ID System: “Identity Authentication Mechanism”

Our new euphemism for a national identification system is “identity authentication mechanism.” The Gang of 8, the leaders of which are proponents of biometric national ID cards, included a provision in the electronic employment verification portion of the immigration bill that calls for such a “mechanism” to identify every American at the click of a mouse.

E-Verify, the verification system used voluntarily by about 7.5 percent of employers, is currently national ID-lite. Right now, E-Verify only compares identifiers, such as your name and Social Security number, to the Department of Homeland Security database. This means the system cannot know whether the person submitting the identifiers (SSN, name, etc.) is the individual those identifiers refer to, which would be true identification.

True identification, as the Cato Institute’s Jim Harper explains in his book, “Identity Crisis,” must compare biometric identifying information — pictures, fingerprints, retina scans, DNA, etc. — to the actual individual. The Gang of 8 bill does this. It allocates $250 million to DHS to include all passport, DMV and state ID photos and ID numbers into the system. Employers would then compare the database picture to the new hire.

This is a true national identification system — the exact thing Americans have resisted for the past 80 years, ever since the Social Security card was first proposed. Nonetheless, the Gang of 8 bill contains the obligatory “Nothing in this section may be construed to directly or indirectly authorize the issuance, use, or establishment of a national identification card.” Of course it creates “tamper-proof, fraud resistant” Social Security cards required for work, but presumably those don’t count. In any case, it creates something far more odious to privacy — a national ID system accessible anywhere at any time to identify anyone, or at least any U.S. citizen.

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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week In Regulation

by Ryan Young on April 29, 2013 · 0 comments

in Features, Regulation

Post image for CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week In Regulation

This week in the world of regulation:

  • Last week, 66 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. This is down from 86 new final rules the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 32 minutes — 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
  • All in all, 1,101 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
  • If this keeps up, the total tally for 2013 will be 3,464 new final rules.
  • Last week, 1,307 new pages were added to the 2013 Federal Register, for a total of 24,940 pages.
  • At its current pace, the 2013 Federal Register will run 76,976 pages.
  • Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. No such rules wre published last week, for a total of 12 so far in 2013.
  • The total estimated compliance costs of this year’s economically significant regulations ranges from $5.58 billion to $10.19 billion.
  • So far, 84 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2013.
  • So far this year, 202 final rules affect small business; 20 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.

Meet Julius: How Unions Hurt The Average Worker

by Matt Patterson on April 29, 2013 · 0 comments

in Features, Labor, Video

Meet Julius.

Julius is an African American man living in modern-day America. Julius is a fictitious character, but the problems he faces are real problems that real people face every day. He wants the American Dream. He wants prosperity and opportunity. He wants his kids to have a better life than he did. When he retires, he wants to know that his years of hard work have meant some level of comfort in his old age.

In other words, Julius wants what all of us want.

Unfortunately, his economic hopes are continually frustrated in ways both large and small, both obvious and subtle, by a powerful force: labor unions.

In a new CEI video production, an animated film called “The Life of Julius,” we see how he is affected by the laws and regulations supported by unions at every turn of his working life.

As a young man entering the job market for the first time, for example, Julius finds the job pool artificially shrunk in part by minimum wage laws (vigorously promoted by unions for decades), laws that drive up the cost of business and kill thousands of entry-level jobs.

Later in life, as a homeowner in his 40′s, Julius is faced with the imminent prospect of sending one of his children to college. But for a whole host of reasons, labor unions have conspired to leave Julius with less take-home pay, limiting his ability to pay for his daughter’s education, as well as provide for food and vacations.

And on and on it goes, right up to and including his retirement at age 64 (I won’t spoil the end for you).

The point is this: people may not realize it, but labor unions have a stranglehold on the economy in hundreds of ways that affect every single worker, whether they are union members or, like Julius, never belong to a union in their entire life.

Julius just wants the best for him and his family, like all of us. Unfortunately, the best that Julius can do is not nearly as good as it could be, thanks in large part to the pernicious influence of labor unions.

Please come see Julius’s story at WorkplaceChoice.org, and share with your friends and family. After all — you are Julius. And so are we all.

New York Times: Obama Administration Discrimination Settlement Was “Magnet For Fraud” That Enriched Trial Lawyers

by Hans Bader on April 26, 2013 · 1 comment

in Agriculture, Bailout Watch, Economy, Features, Legal, Politics as Usual, Zeitgeist

Obama RacineA page 1 New York Times story today describes how the Obama administration, despite opposition from civil servants, radically expanded a legal settlement that had already become a “magnet for fraud,” paying out vast sums of money over baseless claims of discrimination at the Agriculture Department in the Pigford case. As the Cato Institute’s Walter Olson notes, its story “today breaks vital new details about how career government lawyers opposed Obama appointees’ insistence on reaching a gigantic settlement for claims of bias against female and Hispanic farmers in the operation of federal agriculture programs” over the objections of “career government lawyers.” As the Times reports,

On the heels of the Supreme Court’s ruling [adverse to claimants and favorable toward USDA], interviews and records show, the Obama administration’s political appointees at the Justice and Agriculture Departments engineered a stunning turnabout: they committed $1.33 billion to compensate not just the 91 plaintiffs but thousands of Hispanic and female farmers who had never claimed bias in court.

The deal, several current and former government officials said, was fashioned in White House meetings despite the vehement objections — until now undisclosed — of career lawyers and agency officials who had argued that there was no credible evidence of widespread discrimination. What is more, some protested, the template for the deal — the $50,000 payouts to black farmers — had proved a magnet for fraud.

The ever-growing settlement became “a runaway train, driven by racial politics, pressure from influential members of Congress and law firms that stand to gain more than $130 million in fees.”

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