Freedom Line Blog

So federal bureaucrats at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), those known master micromanagers of the American economy, concluded in their wisdom to oppose the proposed merger between AT&T and T-Mobile, two independent, free, private parties.  Along the way, the FCC went to the improper and unprecedented extreme of releasing a staff report gratuitously and inaccurately critiquing the justifications offered for the merger.  Again, we’re talking about a merger between two consenting, informed parties.  We’re also talking about a merger application that was voluntarily withdrawn by the parties.  Yet the FCC, for reasons still unexplained, broke with decades of administrative protocol and published the staff report.

Remember, this is the same supposedly omnipotent federal government that managed the housing market so well in recent decades through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, not to mention the splendid business acumen it displayed in the energy sector with such examples as Solyndra.  And it’s the same FCC that incompetently attempted to commandeer Internet service through so-called “Net Neutrality,” which earned it a unanimous rebuke from the D.C. Court of Appeals and Congress.

Turning its eye toward the telecommunications industry, the FCC decided in its considered expertise that the AT&T/T-Mobile merger was not in the best interests of the American people.  As one particularly curious example, the FCC staff report claims that the proposed merger would cause job losses.  One would think that federal regulators would be more circumspect in asserting job projections in light of the slow-motion “stimulus” disaster that was supposed to cap unemployment at 8% in October 2009.  Instead, unemployment stands at 9% and has exceeded 8% for a record number of months.  Moreover, if the merger was a likely job-killer, why would even the Communication Workers of America (CWA) labor union support it?  The FCC asks us to believe that the labor union most impacted by the proposed merger would somehow seek fewer dues-paying members?

Moreover, the FCC itself within the past month claimed that its own $4.5 billion fund to deploy wireline broadband to just 7 million Americans would create “500,000 jobs and $50 billion in economic growth.”  Yet it now contradicts itself by claiming the proposed AT&T/T-Mobile merger, which would deploy broadband service to the far greater number of 55 million Americans, would somehow destroy jobs?  In other words, the FCC seems to think that smaller amounts of government spending to bring broadband to a smaller number of people will create jobs, but much larger amounts of private investment to bring broadband to a much greater number of people will not.

Federal bureaucrats are unequipped to micromanage the telecom industry, just as they’re incompetent to tell Boeing (America’s top exporter) where it can and cannot operate manufacturing plants.  It’s yet another example that the FCC is out of control, and threatening American jobs by its malfeasance.

Remember the alleged “crisis” that demanded ObamaCare?  To hear Obama, Pelosi, Reid and their minions, that crisis demanded that we do something, anything, even if it meant passing a bill before finding out what was in it.

The overwhelming majority of Americans apparently never got the memo.  According to Gallup, fully 82% of Americans rate their healthcare “excellent” or “good,” while 11% of the remaining 18% rate their care “fair,” and only 5% say “poor” (2% said “no opinion” or “not applicable”).  As Gallup notes, “That combined excellent/good percentage has remained fairly steady at around 80% since 2001,” when polling on this question began.

Occupy the 5%!

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):  Thomas Hazlett – Professor of law and economics at George Mason University, author of Encounter Broadside, “The Fallacy of Net Neutrality”;

4:30 (CST)/5:30 pm (EST):  Troy Senik – CFIF Senior Fellow and former Bush Speechwriter, on the failure of the “supercommittee” and presidential hopefuls just weeks before votes are cast;

5:00 (CST)/6:00 pm (EST):  Jeff Ashton – Prosecuting Attorney of the Casey Anthony trial and author of “Imperfect Justice:  Prosecuting Casey Anthony”;  and

5:30 (CST)/6:30 pm (EST):  Carrie Severino – Judicial Crisis Network, on Elena Kagan and Obamacare.

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

Under the false banner of “deregulation,” New Jersey state Senator Bob Smith (D) today introduced telecommunications legislation that would actually increase unnecessary and job-killing regulation over an industry critical to economic growth and jobs.

Smith claims that S-3062 relieves regulatory burdens, but it would in fact broaden regulatory authority for the Board of Public Utilities while heaping even more bureaucratic mandates and obligations upon telecom companies.  Among other things, the law would reinstate Board power over competitive services, even though such oversight was removed by the state legislature years ago.  The proposed bill would also mandate tariffs for services classified as competitive, while discriminatorily imposing filing requirements on some businesses but not others.  Moreover, the legislation would complicate and add uncertainty within the patchwork of overlapping federal and state regulations, and expand Board power in the video realm.

The fact that Sen. Smith attempted to characterize new regulatory proposals  as deregulatory shows that even he knows our current economic environment is not one in which the public desires even  more government interference.  Unfortunately, that’s what his bill would do.  What struggling New Jersey citizens need are more jobs and more telecom competition, not more bureaucracy.

Join CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino today from 4:00 p.m. CDT to 6:00 p.m. CDT (that’s 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EDT) 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 (CDT)/5:00 pm (EDT):  Catherine Crier, Author of “Patriot Acts:  What Americans Must Do to Save the Republic”;

4:30 (CDT)/5:30 pm (EDT):  Catherine Engelbrecht, Founder of King Street Patriots and True the Vote;

5:00 (CDT)/6:00 pm (EDT):  Elizabeth Samson, Visiting Fellow at the Hudson Institute;  and

5:30 (CDT)/6:30 pm (EDT):  Ken Blackwell, Senior Fellow at the American Civil Rights Union.

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

As we anticipated in last week’s Liberty Update, the U.S. Supreme Court announced today that it will hear legal challenges to ObamaCare this term.  As we also noted in that commentary, the issue broadly boils down to whether an explicit provision of the Constitution will be rendered meaningless and effectively read out of the document itself.

That is not hyperbole.  Our Founding Fathers didn’t randomly insert provisions into the Constitution for no reason whatsoever.  Rather, they crafted that document to design a federal government of limited, enumerated powers and to safeguard individual freedom to the greatest extent possible.  Accordingly, they intentionally included the Commerce Clause of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution to empower Congress “To regulate Commerce with Foreign Nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.”  ObamaCare, however, does not merely “regulate commerce among the several states.”  Rather, it compels commercial activity from every citizen, and punishes inactivity on the part of any individual.

Anyone asserting ObamaCare’s validity must therefore answer this question:  If the Commerce Clause somehow permits forced commercial activity and prosecution of inactivity, what possible hypothetical federal mandate would it not permit?  Such a result would void a specific clause within the text of the Constitution because no limiting principle would remain.  That, in turn, would mean that no other provision remains safe in such a brave new world.

Hopefully, at least five Justices respect the Constitution enough to not remove yet another thread from its fabric.  Should the Court fail, however, the fight will not be finished.  The job will simply fall upon us as individual citizens to effectuate the individual freedoms that too few elected and appointed officials seem to respect.

The nation’s unemployment remained at or above 9% again last month, and has now exceeded 8% for 33 consecutive months since February 2009.  That’s the longest stretch since the federal government began issuing monthly reports in 1948.

Here’s why that 8% benchmark and February 2009 are important.  When Obama passed his nearly $1 trillion “stimulus” bill that same month, his administration projected that unemployment would never exceed 8%, and be all the way down to approximately 6% today.  Instead, unemployment quickly climbed to 10.1%, and has remained above 9% for all but four months during that record 33-month span.  Moreover, the economy only added a disappointing 80,000 jobs for September, less than the expected 100,000 and far below the estimated 200,000 necessary each month to reduce the rate by just 1% over the course of a year.

It’s instructive to compare the real-world results of Obama’s economic agenda with Ronald Reagan’s.  In the same 33-month stretch following the effective date of Reagan’s tax cuts, unemployment plummeted from 10.4% to 7.1%.  The comparison speaks for itself, yet now Obama tells the nation that what we need is more of the same – more “mini-stimulus” government spending.  Obama’s agenda has demonstrably failed, and it’s time to return to what demonstrably works.

So the government reported tepid 2.5% gross domestic product (GDP) third quarter growth yesterday, and the market celebration it triggered says a lot about the bleak nature of the Obama economy.

First of all, that reading fell below consensus expectations of 2.7% growth.  Second, 2.5% falls almost a full percentage point below the post-war historical average of 3.3% quarterly growth.  Third, GDP should be growing even faster than that 3.3% long-term average during a period of so-called “recovery” – recall that the most recent recession officially ended nine quarters ago in June 2009.  At a similar point during the Reagan recovery in 1984, GDP grew at a 7.1% rate following consecutive quarters of 9.3%, 8.1%, 8.5% and 8.0% growth.  And at the same point during the Bush recovery from the Clinton/Gore tech bubble downturn and 9/11, GDP grew 3.7% following a previous quarter of 6.7% growth.  Fourth, 2.5% growth is insufficient to significantly improve the nation’s festering unemployment problem.

A 2.5% rate certainly beats the 0.4% and 1.3% readings for the preceding two quarters of 2011, but America’s desperate need for new economic leadership becomes clear when such a lackluster result is seen as “good” news.

In an ominous sign, the nation’s consumer confidence plummeted in October to lows not seen since March 2009, three months before the last recession officially ended.  After improving to 46.4 in September, the measure fell 7 points to 39.8, well below what economists expected.  That reading is also far below the 90 level that economists generally agree indicates a healthy economy.

So along with the cyclical recovery following the last recession, consumer confidence rose but has now returned to lows not seen since that time.  It will therefore be interesting to watch Barack Obama and liberals attempt to once again scapegoat the Bush Administration for this, almost three years since Bush departed office, and five years since his party last controlled Congress.

In our commentary this week entitled “While Federal Spending Hit New Record in 2011, Washington, D.C. Became America’s Wealthiest City”, we highlight the interrelation between federal spending reaching a new record high in 2011 and the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area becoming the nation’s wealthiest.   Among other facts, we pointed out that wages of federal employees themselves are over 1/5 higher than comparable private-sector employees, and that federal benefits stand 20%-40% higher than those of private counterparts.

Today, Senators Jeff Sessions and Olympia Snowe sustain our point in their commentary within The Wall Street Journal entitled “An End to Budgetary Trickery.”  Advocating the Honest Budget Act they’ve introduced to end “the most blatant and dishonest” overspending gimmicks, they highlight “Fake Federal Pay Freezes”:

In November 2010, the president promised to institute a ‘two-year pay freeze for all civilian federal workers.’  He explained that ‘getting this deficit under control is going to require broad sacrifice.’  But 70% of civilian federal workers have continued to receive 2%-3% automatic ‘step’ increases just for showing up – costing taxpayers an extra billion dollars every year.  The Honest Budget Act, in keeping with the president’s pledge, would simply make the federal pay freeze real by legislative mandate.”

Senators Sessions and Snowe also seek to end false “emergency” spending, phony “rescissions” and timing shifts in their legislation.  As they summarize, “No more gimmicks, tricks or shell games.”  We agree, and urge you to take a quick moment to contact your two Senators in support of the Honest Budget Act.   Let’s get this done.

Here in the developed world, Greenpeace’s brand of environmentalism provides a convenient way for sheltered liberals to become saints on the cheap.  But Greenpeace’s impact in the developing world isn’t so cheap.  In fact, it can be deadly.

A new introductory video from “DarkPeace” illustrates that destructive impact in very stark terms.  From sabotage against agricultural production research centers, to pressuring apparel companies like Adidas to stop manufacturing textiles in developing nations, to targeting energy projects, Greenpeace’s tactics have the effect of reducing availability of food in nations like Somalia where starvation is very real.  Its tactics also kill jobs, eliminate avenues to better wages and exacerbate miserable poverty.  Even The New York Times has admitted that Greenpeace’s shadier activities threaten “to completely marginalize” it and “undercut its credibility on other issues.”  Greenpeace co-founder Dr. Patrick Moore agrees:

To a considerable extent the environmental movement was hijacked by political and social activists who learned to use green language to cloak agendas that had more to do with anti-capitalism and anti-globalization than with science or ecology. I remember visiting our Toronto office in 1985 and being surprised at how many of the new recruits were sporting army fatigues and red berets in support of the Sandinistas…  Their propaganda campaign is aimed at promoting an ideology that I believe would be extremely damaging to both civilization and the environment.”

Even here in America, Greenpeace’s activities threaten tens of thousands of potential jobs.  But with groups like “DarkPeace” and people like Dr. Moore exposing them, perhaps not much longer.

Join CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino today from 4:00 p.m. CDT to 6:00 p.m. CDT (that’s 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EDT) 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 (CDT)/5:00 pm (EDT):  Daniel DiSalvo, Senior Fellow at Manhattan Institute’s Center for State and Local Leadership – “Government Unions and the Bankrupting of America”;

4:30 (CDT)/5:30 pm (EDT):  Rich Trzupek, Chemist, Consultant and Writer – “How the EPA’s Green Tyranny is Stifling America”;

5:00 (CDT)/6:00 pm (EDT):  Chief George Dodge – Importance of Recognizing Veterans’ Day and the Panzacola Indian’s in Pensacola; and

5:30 (CDT)/6:30 pm (EDT):  Troy Senik, CFIF Fellow – “Occupy Wall Street” vs. Tea Partiers, and Bush “Torture” Memos vs. Obama Awlaki Memos.

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

So Warren Buffett, who falsely claims that the wealthiest Americans pay lower tax rates than their receptionists, finally got around to disclosing (some) of his tax information.

It turns out that he paid approximately $7 million in federal income taxes from a taxable income of approximately $40 million.  That’s approximately 17.5%, substantially more than the 12% rate paid by the middle quintile of taxpayers in America, according to the Tax Policy Center.  Interestingly, Buffett’s $40 million taxable income was also significantly smaller than his total $63 million in gross income, but he apparently didn’t bother to explain that $23 million gap.

On top of all that, Buffett also apparently didn’t explain why he took any deductions at all, or why he didn’t simply pay more to the federal government if he felt that he was undertaxed.  Nobody is stopping him from putting his money where his mouth is, after all.  So the evidence suggests that Buffett is not only incorrect, but hypocritical.

Things were already pretty bad in California, as it hurtles down the fast track toward junk bond status and a Greek-style financial collapse.  But instead of even tapping the brakes, its political leaders are flooring the accelerator.

On Saturday, Governor Moonbeam – pardon, Jerry Brown – signed into law taxpayer-funded financial aid to illegal immigrants.  Never mind that undocumented students can’t even legally work in the state, or that fewer financial aid dollars will now be available to legal residents.  No, what California’s political leaders think the state needs is another new government benefit.

Compounding that assault against California taxpayers, Gov. Brown today signed A.B. 144, which prohibits openly carrying firearms in public – even if they’re unloaded.  The bill also prohibits “allowing a person to bring an open and exposed unloaded handgun into the vehicle,” along with an array of other new restrictions.  While other states continue to allow greater Second Amendment freedoms and enjoy lower crime rates as a result, California opts for the European model (where firearms bans have led to higher crime).

After years of policy mistakes like these, it’s no wonder the formerly golden state failed to gain a new House seat for the first time since 1920.

Unemployment remained unchanged at 9.1% last month, and has now exceeded 8% for 32 consecutive months since February 2009.  That’s the longest stretch since the federal government began issuing monthly reports in 1948.

And there’s a reason why that 8% benchmark is important.  When Obama passed his nearly $1 trillion “stimulus” bill that same month, his administration projected that unemployment would never exceed 8%, and be all the way down to approximately 6% today.  Instead, unemployment quickly climbed to 10.1%, and has remained above 9% for all but two months in that record 32-month span.  Moreover, the economy only added a lackluster 100,000 jobs for September, far below the estimated 200,000 necessary each month to reduce the rate by just 1% over the course of a year.  Compounding that depressing figure, keep in mind that approximately 45,000 of the jobs that were added came as a result of Verizon employees returning to work after striking in August.

It is helpful to compare the real-world results of Obama’s economic agenda with Ronald Reagan’s.  In the same 32-month stretch following the effective date of Reagan’s tax cuts, unemployment plummeted from 10.4% to 7.1%.  The comparison speaks for itself, yet now Obama demands that the country pass more of the same – his new “mini-stimulus.”  Mr. Obama, it’s time to return to what demonstrably works, not continue what demonstrably doesn’t.

Join CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino today from 4:00 p.m. CDT to 6:00 p.m. CDT (that’s 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EDT) 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 (CDT)/5:00 pm (EDT):  Representatives from the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association, Chapter #138 – Regarding the 70th Anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor;  

4:30 (CDT)/5:30 pm (EDT):  Sally Pipes, President, CEO, and Taube Fellow in Health Care Studies at the Pacific Research Institute – Regarding ObamaCare and the split between doctors and the AMA;

5:00 (CDT)/6:00 pm (EDT):  Timothy Lee, CFIF’s Vice President of Legal and Public Affairs – Regarding the U.S. Supreme Court’s October 2012 Term and Labor Controversies within the Obama Administration; and

5:30 (CDT)/6:30 pm (EDT):  Tod Lindberg, Hoover Fellow and Editor-in-Chief of the monthly journal “Policy Review” – Regarding Military Interventionalism and Presidential Candidates.

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

In a remarkable new interview with an NBC affiliate, Barack Obama smirks and lectures that Americans have “gotten a little soft.”  Take particular note of his expression as he utters those words.

According to Obama, you see, it’s never a problem with himself or his policies.  It’s that he somehow didn’t explain himself often enough to the rest of you ungrateful rubes – never mind that he has done little else in his presidency than give cliche-saturated speeches or golf.  Or now, that you people have “gotten a little soft” for his tastes.

From maligning Americans who supposedly “cling” to their guns, xenophobia and religion, then later to ambivalence toward American Exceptionalism and now this, Barack Obama just oozes adoration for this country, doesn’t he?

So how many times must Barack Obama be wrong – flatly, indisputably, wholly, precisely wrong – before he withdraws from American political life out of pure shame?

Today provided another example.  In selling ObamaCare, his cornerstone “achievement,” to the American people, Obama promised on March 8, 2010 that his bill “reduces most people’s premiums.”  So what is actually happened in just the first year since he made that assurance?  The Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust report that health insurance premiums rose 9% this year.  Employers’ average yearly premium for families climbed from $13,770 last year to $15,073 this year, and from $5,049 to $5,429 for individuals.

Perhaps this explains why Obama’s Justice Department curiously didn’t seek to delay United States Supreme Court review of ObamaCare this week – maybe even Obama suddenly wants it overturned as quickly as possible.

According to a new Gallup poll, a majority of Americans now blame President Obama for the current state of the U.S. economy.  By a 53% to 47% margin, surveyed adults say that Obama shares a “great deal/moderate amount” of blame, while they also believe that George W. Bush continues to share blame by a 69% to 30% margin.  But notice something interesting.  For all the talk of hyper-partisanship from Republicans, the primary reason Bush’s numbers look worse is that Republican survey respondents split 50% to 50% on whether Bush shares some blame.  Democrats, in contrast, were far less willing to admit that their guy Obama shares blame, disagreeing by a 75% to 25% margin.  Independents by a 60% to 40% margin say that Obama shares some blame.

Here’s another noteworthy fact.  For all of Obama’s talk that he and his wasteful trillions of “stimulus” spending saved our economy from “the next Great Depression,” government economic figures show that we actually began our cyclical recovery before Bush had left office.  That’s a point that must be highlighted to voters as we approach a pivotal 2012 election in which Americans must choose between two governmental philosophies.  But in the meantime, at least most of us now recognize Obama’s role in our continuing economic struggles.

Two federal government reports released within the past week again refute the toxic, persistent myth that poverty is the root cause of crime.

Last week, the Census Bureau announced that the nation’s poverty level jumped from 14.3% in 2009 to 15.1% for 2010, the highest rate since we emerged from the Jimmy Carter hangover in 1983.  The overall number of poor Americans rose to 46.2 million, the highest total since poverty estimates began 52 years ago.  Those numbers justify Newt Gingrich’s observation that Barack Obama is the “Food Stamp President.”

Now this week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced that crime rates continued to plummet last year.  Violent crime rates declined for the fourth consecutive year, while property crimes declined for the eighth consecutive year, even as the nation’s economic malaise deepened.  Moreover, the lower crime rates occurred amid local budget reductions that have affected police departments.

These statistics confirm the timeless reality that criminality is not some sort of involuntary act to which helpless souls are driven by economic adversity.  Rather, criminality is a voluntary choice on the part of the culpable criminal.  The latest data won’t stop the political left from repeating their discredited dogma, but the facts as usual refute them.