The Maryland House followed the state Senate’s lead last night and passed a bill giving illegal immigrants in-state tuition rates for community colleges. After graduating from a two-year school, beneficiaries would then be eligible for in-state tuition at four-year universities.
Maryland: so generous, it’s criminal.
This week’s edition of the Liberty Update, CFIF’s weekly e-newsletter, is out. Below is a summary of its contents:
Lee: Obama Launches 2012 Campaign, Chants of “Four More Years!” Conspicuously Absent
Ellis: The End of Eric Holder
Ellis: Liberal Attacks Misfire on Ryan Budget Plan
Freedom Minute Video: School Choice: The Next Great Fight for Civil Rights
Podcast: Congressman McCotter Charts Path of Truth and Renewal for America
Jester’s Courtroom: Haircut Policy Nets 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.
Shouldn’t America ensure that its military personnel and their families continue to receive paychecks, regardless of whether budget negotiations result in a deal or a federal shutdown? Barack Obama apparently doesn’t think so.
As bargaining continued yesterday, House Speaker John Boehner (R – Ohio) introduced legislation that would keep the government open one additional week and maintain military funding through the end of 2011 so that members of the armed forces would continue to be paid. The House quickly passed that bill, including 15 Democratic votes. Obama, however, grotesquely promised a veto, bizarrely labeling it a “distraction.”
Frankly, this entire debate wouldn’t be necessary if the preceding Congress overwhelmingly controlled by Obama’s own party had simply passed a 2011 budget. But for the first time since the inception of the Budget Act, they simply abdicated that basic responsibility. Regardless, our military is stretched thin across the globe, and many families live paycheck-to-paycheck. This obviously isn’t of paramount concern to a president who clearly seems to welcome a government shutdown.
This is one of the most shameful and pathetic episodes in an already shoddy presidency.
Noting that one of the few areas where government continues to enforce inequality is in America’s public schools, CFIF’s Renee Giachino discusses the fight for school choice and calls it “the greatest civil rights issue of our generation.”
In an interview with CFIF, U.S. Representative Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) discusses his book, “Seize Freedom! American Truths and Renewal in a Chaotic Age,” and what concerned citizens and committed conservatives can do to put an end to the simplistic solutions and false comforts of ideologues.
Listen to the interview here.
Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Michael Ramirez sums up U.S. energy policy under the Obama Administration.
One would think the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had learned its lesson by now.
In the past calendar year, the FCC’s extralegal power grabs have brought judicial rebuke from a unanimous Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, widespread public opposition and rare bipartisan Congressional condemnation. But instead of internalizing those lessons, the FCC has once again endeavored beyond its legal authority by voting to impose data roaming mandates on private wireless carriers. In a correspondence to the FCC, CFIF set forth the ways in which its latest rogue action is not only without legal foundation, but also unwise as a matter of public policy.
First, Section 332 of the Communications Act explicitly states that private mobile service providers “shall not be treated as a common carrier for any purpose under this Act.” By requiring wireless providers to forcibly enter agreements with other wireless carriers and allow non-customers to roam on their data networks, the FCC has violated that express provision.
Second, a vibrant market for data roaming agreements already exists, meaning that this FCC action is unnecessary. Carriers large and small already engage in very high rates of partnership, including Rural Cellular Association (RCA) members. These agreements cover 3G and even 4G networks, contrary to extremists’ claims. Indeed, numerous smaller carriers currently advertise nationwide broadband data coverage despite possessing relatively narrow license areas, meaning that they already have secured data roaming agreements. Further, the prices negotiated in roaming agreements continue to decline.
Third, the FCC’s bureaucratic intrusion into this realm will have the perverse effect of discouraging new investment and job creation in this cutting-edge sector. After all, the FCC’s mandates will create incentives to piggyback on other networks rather than invest in new ones. Carriers must be able to differentiate themselves and compete against counterpart carriers in the free market, which the FCC’s proposed mandates will undercut. As data use continues to increase and smart phones impose new demands on network capacity, the inevitable result will be congestion, delay, fewer jobs and less investment.
Today’s FCC vote thus exceeds its legal authority and undermines new investment, while ignoring the fact that data roaming agreements are already prevalent. It merely provides the latest evidence that the rogue FCC must be brought back to Earth, whether via Congress or the courts.
Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Michael Ramirez illustrates Obama’s posturing on the ongoing congressional budget negotiations and the pending government shutdown.
View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.
His crypto-candidacy is only a few weeks old, but, as Politico reports, Donald Trump is already making big waves in the race to the be the next Republican presidential nominee:
Donald Trump is a force to be reckoned with on the national political stage, according to a new poll on Wednesday night.
The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows Trump tied for second place with Mike Huckabee, both at 17 percent, and leading the GOP pack among Tea Party supporters.
Those are huge numbers for someone who was completely absent from presidential chatter just a few months ago (of course, universal name recognition doesn’t hurt).
Let’s stipulate that the odds favor Trump’s flirtations being nothing more than some extremely sophisticated guerilla marketing. That being said, one has to wonder where the source of his appeal lies. The safest bet? Trump is popular because he is unafraid to speak his mind, directly and unapologetically. That’s a rare trait in an age where most politicians are driven by fear of losing the next election rather than hope for governing before then. To the extent that it’s present in other GOP comers — whether in the iron will of Chris Christie or the intellectual honesty of Paul Ryan — it seems to be a gene characteristic of those who won’t be running for president in 2012.
GOP White House hopefuls should take note. There’s a Trump-shaped vacuum in this presidential field.
Two bills before the Texas legislature, H.B. 259 and H.B. 3675, propose new and unwarranted taxes on satellite television providers. This period of high unemployment and economic uncertainty is no time to be raising taxes in the first place. But here’s the kicker: those two bills would essentially tax thin air.
H.B. 259 and H.B. 3675 would impose taxes on something satellite television providers don’t even use – the physical public right of way. Obviously, reasonable people could understand why entities that actually use the public right of way under city streets or along physical power lines must help maintain those rights of way. Since satellite video doesn’t even traverse any physical right of way, however, H.B. 259 and H.B. 3675 constitute a tax on thin air. Moreover, Texas already taxes video services, so imposing yet another entirely new tax upon physical rights of way that satellite providers don’t even use makes these two bills even more manifestly unfair. Additionally, it is estimated that only 10% of right of way taxes actually go to maintenance, with 90% of collected revenues diverted to general city funds. In other words, these two proposed bills are a transparent money grab.
We at CFIF have therefore sent a letter of to the House State Affairs Committee to assert our opposition on behalf of 17,000 activists and supporters in the state of Texas. But you can also help by contacting them as well via this link.
Make it clear to these legislators that now is not the time to raise taxes, especially when what’s being taxed is nothing more than thin air.
View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.
In this era of bureaucratic overreach and unsustainable spending and deficits, should government also enter the business of competing against private communications service providers? Doesn’t it already have its hands full?
We at CFIF think so. In fact, we testified last month before the North Carolina legislature on behalf of thousands of supporters and activists across that great state in support of H.B. 129, which would restrain government bureaucrats from unfairly competing against private providers of communications services. And with good reason. From Taiwan to Australia, from Chicago to Houston, and inside North Carolina itself, the history of public broadband is without exception one of failure. Every single public broadband project of which we’re aware has failed to so much as break even. Ultimately, taxpayer bailouts become necessary as government endeavors lose money and require constant upgrades to keep pace with evolving technology. Moreover, government broadband boondoggles undermine the billions of dollars invested in private network improvement and expansion, and discourage future private investment. After all, why risk one’s capital to compete against governments that can manipulate the rules and go to taxpayers for bailout? Inevitably, poorer service and layoffs in the vibrant tech sector result. Rural communities particularly suffer.
But none of that logic seems to matter to Democratic FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. In a statement Monday, Clyburn attacked the North Carolina’s sensible legislation and defended the concept of government entering yet another portion of the private sector. Perhaps that’s not surprising, considering Clyburn’s vote last December to impose so-called “Net Neutrality” in the face of two-to-one public opposition, a unanimous Court of Appeals decision that the FCC didn’t possess such authority and condemnation from bipartisan groups in Congress.
Predictable or not, however, it is critical that Americans at the federal, state and local level vocally oppose the sort of government tech sector overreach that she advocates.
Britain’s Telegraph says General David Petraeus may be nominated to replace CIA Director Leon Panetta, after the latter is tapped to become Secretary of Defense when Robert Gates retires.
If that happens, President Barack Obama will have kept not only former President George W. Bush’s people, but also his rationale for staffing key national security posts. Gates’ last government job before Defense Secretary was as CIA Director. Air Force General Michael Hayden led the CIA under Bush before Panetta took over.
Despite his campaign rhetoric, President Obama has continued the war in Afghanistan, and reversed himself on civilian trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees. Now, it looks like the current president is adopting the staffing rationale of his predecessor too.
Somewhere in Texas, I’m sure former President Bush is flattered.
In the must-watch video below, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan lays out his 2012 budget proposal and the consequences should Congress fail to act now to restore the nation’s fiscal sanity.
The Wall Street Journal reports that India’s explosive growth in college graduates isn’t translating into employment for millions of newly minted degree holders. The biggest problem: lack of critical thinking and communication skills.
To compensate, companies are spending large sums of money coaching graduates into employability. According to one Indian business executive, the problem is the credential mentality infecting education:
“How are you able to change the mind-set that knowledge is more than a stamp?”
Sound familiar? American higher education too is tempted to treat knowledge-building as a service rather than a task. When students are treated like customers, the link between effort and reward is broken. The result is a certification that doesn’t translate into employment.
With half of India’s 1.2 billion population under the age of 25, up to a million new workers a month are estimated to join the labor force over the next decade. If India continues down the path of graduating young people without critical thinking skills, those workers – and the growing Indian economy – will be in serious trouble.
Today, Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan and the House Republican majority are introducing their much-anticipated 2012 budget plan. The bold proposal — “The Path to Prosperity” — is refreshingly comprehensive in addressing the nation’s debt crisis and promoting economic prosperity. According to Congressman Ryan:
For starters, it cuts $6.2 trillion in spending from the president’s budget over the next 10 years, reduces the debt as a percentage of the economy, and puts the nation on a path to actually pay off our national debt. Our proposal brings federal spending to below 20% of gross domestic product (GDP), consistent with the postwar average, and reduces deficits by $4.4 trillion.
A study just released by the Heritage Center for Data Analysis projects that The Path to Prosperity will help create nearly one million new private-sector jobs next year, bring the unemployment rate down to 4% by 2015, and result in 2.5 million additional private-sector jobs in the last year of the decade. It spurs economic growth, with $1.5 trillion in additional real GDP over the decade. According to Heritage’s analysis, it would result in $1.1 trillion in higher wages and an average of $1,000 in additional family income each year.
Furthermore, Ryan’s budget cuts taxes and strengthens to the social safety net with commonsense reforms to Medicare and Medicaid and by advancing the discussion to sure up Social Security for future generations.
Simply put, the proposal is a real and comprehensive solution to a grave spending and debt crisis that threatens America’s future. Failure to act to right the nation’s fiscal ship, and now, is no longer an option. The Path to Prosperity budget deserves serious consideration, not the partisan politics as usual that has already begun.
Read more details on Ryan’s budget plan here. For the complete plan, click here (.pdf).
This week provides a stark contrast between a leader actually willing to risk political capital, versus a man who now seeks four more years of politics-as-usual.
On the one hand, we have House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R – Wisconsin). Tomorrow, Congressman Ryan will unveil a federal budget proposal that reduces spending by $4 trillion over the coming ten years, provides pro-growth tax reform and caps runaway federal spending. All without reducing Social Security benefits by a single penny for anyone already receiving them or over 55 years of age, along with Medicare reform that will save it from its catastrophic fate if nothing is done. Congressman Ryan knows full well that by offering budget leadership, Democrats will possess a “political weapon” to use against him, even if it means that “they will have to lie and demagogue” to do so. But instead of shrinking, he has chosen leadership.
On the other hand, we have the President of the United States. The purported leader of the Free World. The most powerful man on Earth. The man who formed a blue-ribbon deficit commission, then proceeded to ignore it. Instead of making sure that a Congress dominated by his own party could even manage to pass a 2011 budget, instead of offering decisive world statesmanship amid worldwide crises and instead of providing leadership in averting a national debt catastrophe, Obama instead focused on unveiling his 2012 reelection campaign this week. Instead of offering a plan, the AWOL Obama will apparently just sit back and attack Paul Ryan’s.
So there you have it. One man seeks to cut spending by $4 trillion, and the other man seeks to spend $1 billion getting himself reelected.
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.” Today’s guest lineup includes:
Listen live on the Internet here. Call in to share your comments or ask questions of today’s guests at (850) 623-1330.
If you follow the debates over whether voters should be required to present a photo ID at their polling place, you’ve probably heard the standard Democratic refrain before: there’s very little real voter fraud out there and voter ID policies are just a cynical Republican plot to suppress turnout amongst key Democratic constituencies. As is the prevailing tendency, however, liberal rhetoric is now being undermined by stone cold facts.
Last week, the U.S. House’s Administration Committee heard testimony on a Colorado study that used the 2010 election to put claims of scarce voter fraud to the test. The results, as The Hill reports, were shocking:
Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler, a Republican, told the panel that his department’s study identified nearly 12,000 people who were not citizens but were still registered to vote in Colorado.
Of those non-citizen registered voters, nearly 5,000 took part in the 2010 general election in which Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet narrowly defeated Republican Ken Buck.
Colorado conducted the study by comparing the state’s voter registration database with driver’s license records.
We applaud our Democratic friends for their efforts to increase voter turnout. We just wish they’d stick with legal voters.
As the House and Senate enter budget negotiations, House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor must not sacrifice the Kline Amendment de-funding the Obama Education Department’s so-called “Gainful Employment Rule” on the altar of false compromise.
The Gainful Employment Rule, which sets arbitrary bureaucratic formulas for federal student loan repayment, is a transparent attempt by the Obama Administration to cripple private career colleges. And the tale of its creation is a long, sordid one. First, there were allegations of insider trading between Education Department officials and short-sellers with a financial interest in seeing career colleges’ stock prices fall. Then, the the Government Accountability Office (GAO) had its sting operation against career colleges exposed as defective, ultimately forcing its retraction. These allegations are serious enough that separate investigations were commenced in the Senate and House.
Fortunately, a bipartisan group in the House of Representatives voted to de-fund any enforcement of the Gainful Employment Rule in budget bill H.R. 1. In an era of intense party acrimony, the fact that opposition to the Gainful Employment Rule attracted strong bipartisan agreement speaks volumes. Now, it’s a matter of Speaker Boehner holding strong on de-funding implementation of the rule, rather than offering it as “trade bait” to Senate Democrats. Please don’t allow the Kline Amendment de-funding the Gainful Employment Rule to become a casualty of politics as usual, Speaker Boehner.
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