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Archive for February, 2014
February 10th, 2014 at 5:00 pm
MPAA’s Ben Sheffner Sets the Record Straight on the Value of Copyright Protections
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Do America’s copyright protections stifle artistic innovation?

Obviously, that question answers itself.  After all, no nation in human history even approaches the United States in terms of sheer scale of musical, film and other creative innovation.  And that’s due precisely to our strong copyright laws that reward creativity and incentivize more.  Moreover, Americans’ ability to access a greater amount of artistic content, more easily, more cheaply and via more outlets increases daily.

Bizarrely, however, the contrary assertion remains regrettably fashionable even among some self-proclaimed “libertarian” and “conservative” circles.  Fortunately, voices of reason rebut the pernicious anti-intellectual property (IP) movement’s myths, and bring clarity to the debate.  One such voice of reason is Ben Sheffner, the MPAA’s Vice President of Legal Affairs.  In this abbreviated and this full-length debate video recently released, Mr. Sheffner clarifies the realities and refutes the curious claim that copyright laws inhibit innovation.  Quite the contrary, he makes clear, strong copyright laws not only preserve the fruits of creators’ labor, they incentivize the risk-taking and investment critical to spark additional creativity now and into the future.

Mr. Sheffner does an excellent job, and absolutely schools Derek Khanna multiple times on both the broader and finer points of intellectual property generally, and copyright more specifically.

February 10th, 2014 at 4:02 pm
This Week’s “Your Turn” Lineup
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Join CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino today from 4:00 p.m. CST to 6:00 p.m. CST (that’s 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EST) on Northwest Florida’s 1330 AM WEBY, as she hosts her radio show, “Your Turn: Meeting Nonsense with Commonsense.”  Today’s guest lineup includes:

4:00 (CST)/5:00 pm (EST): Marc Scribner, Research Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute: Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communications;

4:30 (CST)/5:30 (EST): Leighton Steward, Chairman of Plants Need CO2: Global Warming and the Supreme Court;

5:00 (CST)/6:00 pm (EST): Slade O’Brien, Florida State Director of Americans for Prosperity: Why ObamaCare is Harming Florida; and

5:30 (CST)/6:30 pm (EST): Peter Roff, Contributing Editor at U.S. News & World Report: The IRS “Smidgeon” of Corruption Keeps Growing.

Listen live on the Internet here.   Call in to share your comments or ask questions of today’s guests at (850) 623-1330.

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February 7th, 2014 at 4:55 pm
The Case for Expanding the House
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Here in Southern California, the biggest development in recent weeks has been the announcement that hyper-liberal congressman Henry Waxman — who’s held a House seat from the Los Angeles area for 40 years — is finally stepping down at the end of the current session.

Given how long Waxman has dominated the politics of the area, it’s no surprise that there’s a long list of candidates lining up to succeed him. There’s another reason, however, for the glut of competition: this is an enormous district of wildly divergent communities. In my weekly column for the Orange County Register, I argue that this stems from a mistake in how we’ve organized the lower chamber for the past 85 years:

The physical distance between the northwestern edge of Waxman’s 33rd District, in Malibu, and its southeastern terminus, in San Pedro, is more than 40 miles. The cultural difference can only be measured in light years. The South Bay, the Westside, the Conejo Valley, and the coastal refuges of Pacific Palisades and Malibu are all worlds unto themselves, populated by citizens who view themselves as distinct from one another. The idea that they should all be represented by one person in Congress makes a mockery of the notion that House districts represent discrete, coherent communities.

That sort of absurdity is inevitable, however, given the fact that the House was severed from its original purpose 85 years ago, when Congress passed the Reapportionment Act of 1929. That law fixed the number of seats in the House of Representatives at 435, dictating that the available seats would be redistributed among the states based on population changes in each census, instead of adding new ones, which had been the historical practice (the House had grown to 435 from its original number of only 65). As a result, the average House district now consists of over 700,000 people – a far cry from the original system, where there was one representative for approximately 33,000 souls.

Whoever inherits Waxman’s seat will represent more people than the U.S. senators from the states of Wyoming or Vermont. Were the ratios employed by the founders still in use today, California’s 33rd Congressional District would actually be split into 21 discrete House seats.

Returning to that standard may be overkill; it would swell the ranks of the House of Representatives to over 9,500 members. Some expansion, however, is surely justified to create House districts small enough to actually represent something like the will of a coherent community. Until such changes are made, the notion of the House as the “people’s chamber” will be little more than a touch of historical nostalgia.

I’ll also note that having an enlarged House would (A) make it harder for special interests to capture critical masses of legislators and (b) have the practical effect of making it cheaper to run for Congress and allowing more true citizen-legislators to emerge. In short, it would make it harder to consolidate power in Congress—which is precisely why most sitting lawmakers won’t support it…and why it’s the right thing to do.

February 7th, 2014 at 12:00 pm
ObamaCare Death Panel
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Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

February 7th, 2014 at 11:36 am
Liberty Update
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Center For Individual Freedom - Liberty Update

This week’s edition of the Liberty Update, CFIF’s weekly e-newsletter, is out. Below is a summary of its contents:

Lee:  Whereas Obama Once Compared Himself to Reagan, Today It’s Nixon
Senik:  ObamaCare Kills Jobs, Doesn’t Help the Uninsured

Podcast:  The Admin’s Use the IRS to Silence Its Critics – Interview w/Cleta Mitchell
Jester’s Courtroom:  Simply Say “You’re Sorry” Lawsuit

Editorial Cartoons:  Latest Cartoons of Michael Ramirez
Quiz:  Question of the Week
Notable Quotes:  Quotes of the Week

If you are not already signed up to receive CFIF’s Liberty Update by e-mail, sign up here.

February 6th, 2014 at 9:41 pm
Safety First: Red Light Cameras, Drones and the Sochi Olympics
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In an interview with CFIF, George C. Landrith, President and CEO of Frontiers of Freedom, discusses how there is no benefit to red light cameras, the government’s reluctance to allow the use of drones in commercial settings, and whether drones or other security measures will enhance safety at major events like the Sochi Olympics.

Listen to the interview here.

February 6th, 2014 at 2:48 pm
An Idle Generation
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Following on Ashton’s post below (many of the themes of which appear in my column for this week), it’s crucial to note that the hazards presented by Obamacare’s incentives for lower-income Americans to stay out of the workforce are compounding a pre-existing problem. As noted by Mark Peters and David Wessel in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal:

More than one in six men ages 25 to 54, prime working years, don’t have jobs—a total of 10.4 million. Some are looking for jobs; many aren’t…

… The trend has been building for decades, according to government data. In the early 1970s, just 6% of American men ages 25 to 54 were without jobs. By late 2007, it was 13%. In 2009, during the worst of the recession, nearly 20% didn’t have jobs.

To the crisis amongst men, we can add the crisis amongst youth. As noted earlier in the week by Zara Kessler at Bloomberg:

According to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data, 36 percent of the country’s 18- to 31-year-olds were living in their parents’ homes in 2012 — the highest proportion in at least 40 years. That number is inflated because college students residing in dorms were counted as living at home (in addition to those actually living at home while going to school). Still, 16 percent of 25- to 31-year-olds were crashing with mom and pop — up from about 14 percent in 2007 and 10 percent in 1968. In a Pew survey conducted in December 2011, 34 percent of adults aged 25 to 29 said that due to economic conditions they’d moved back home in recent years after having lived on their own.

Every trend line is pointing in the wrong direction. Yes, there are structural issues (technology, offshoring) that complicate the employment picture, but free markets generally resolve such issues given enough time. Markets can’t resolve, however, the pathologies imposed on the economy by government — whether Obamacare’s perverse incentives or the consistently anti-growth policies of the White House.

If nothing changes, the upshot will be the Europeanization of the American economy: fewer workers toiling to support a growing class of government beneficiaries.

Future generations may note the irony of Mitt Romney being so thoroughly pilloried during the 2012 election for his infamous 47 percent comment. While you can quibble with the statistics, the underlying theme is correct: we’re headed towards an economy with fewer makers and more takers. Changing that trajectory will be the responsibility of the next president — and it won’t be an easy one.

February 4th, 2014 at 1:59 pm
CBO: ObamaCare Incentivizes More Welfare, Less Work

A new report by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office predicts the Affordable Care Act (i.e. Obamacare) will cause up to 2 million lower-income workers to leave the labor force over the next decade because they will make more in government benefits than as a private employee.

“CBO estimates that the ACA will reduce the total number of hours worked, on net, by about 1.5 percent to 2.0 percent during the period from 2017 to 2024, almost entirely because workers will choose to supply less labor – given the new taxes and other incentives they will face and the financial benefits some will receive,” the agency says in Appendix C, Labor Market Effects of the Affordable Care Act: Updated Estimates (pdf).

The incentive to drop out of the workforce is one’s eligibility for a government subsidy to help pay for an insurance plan bought through an Obamacare exchange. Since eligibility for a subsidy phases out as a person’s income rises, people who will receive subsidies will have to factor in whether to take a job that makes more money, but will likely reduce or eliminate eligibility. In this scenario, taking the job may actually result in a net loss of income as the person must now pay for the full cost of health insurance.

The disincentive to work also applies to those hanging between Medicaid and Obamacare subsidies. Eligibility for Medicaid means the cost to the beneficiary is nothing (at least not directly). In this scenario, qualifying for a subsidy increases one’s out-of-pocket expenses, making it financially smart (for the individual) to work less and stay on Medicaid.

It’s important to emphasize that deciding to work less to receive more in government benefits is a financially rational decision for individuals to make, and one that any economist would readily predict. My hunch is that at least some of Obamacare’s architects knew this and designed their programs accordingly.

The problem, of course, is that convincing millions of people not to work is not financially sustainable for the country as a whole.

February 3rd, 2014 at 12:47 pm
Video: The Inequality Illusion
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CFIF’s Renee Giachino explains how President Obama’s push for higher taxes, bigger government and expanded welfare programs is the wrong approach to help the greatest number of people climb the economic ladder.

February 2nd, 2014 at 4:40 pm
Ramirez Cartoon: The Obama Constitution
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Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.