Freedom Line Blog

For what it’s worth, I explain it here. This is not a fight about contraception; it is a do-or-die fight for religious freedom, against persecution from the state. If the mandate stands, no faith is safe.

Tim’s column on corporate tax rates is superb. But I’d go even farther.

Before I explain, I’d like to highlight this part of Tim’s column, which is right on target:

At one point Lew stated that any reform must bring in more revenue to feed out-of-control federal spending, and suggested that although America’s official tax rate is too high, the actual effective rate is “much lower.”  Senator Portman helpfully instructed him that even the U.S. effective rate far exceeds the industrialized world average.

We must also beware Lew’s other caveat above.  Liberals will attempt to exploit corporate tax reform as a source of new revenue for the federal government.  Our budgetary problem, however, is not insufficient revenues but extravagant spending, as illustrated by the fact that if we simply returned to 2005 spending levels we would have enjoyed a $100 billion surplus last year.

The deficit problem clearly is caused by over-spending. But one thing I would emphasize is that cutting corporate rates probably would not add anything to the deficit; indeed, the sort of parallel tax cut, that of cutting capital gains tax rates, has consistently resulted in greater total revenues from capital gains actually coming into federal coffers. The added economic activity really has “paid for itself,” and then some.

But, as I said, I would go farther. As I’ve written here and elsewhere before, I would completely eliminate corporate income taxes. Gone. Kaput. Finis. Nada. And, obviously, if the rate is zero, there would be zero revenues from that particular tax, so of course the “more than paid for itself” argument would go out the window.

But that doesn’t mean eliminating the tax would cost much or any revenue, total, to the feds. Indeed, it was a left-leaning, former Democratic Capitol Hill budget staffer who first suggested to me the idea of completely eliminating this tax, and he, as a number cruncher, explained that he thought it would be almost revenue neutral. Some of the “lost” taxes would be recouped immediately via higher receipts from capital gains taxes and dividend taxes (because corporate profits obviously would be expected to rise), and some would be recouped through substantially higher economic growth, and some would be recouped due to a huge rush of companies repatriating their business operations. And so on, as I’ve explained elsewhere — including some savings on the spending side due to cutbacks in no-longer-needed IRS enforcement.

If I were a politician rather than a journalist, I would make this proposal part of my platform — and dare any demagogue to criticize me for it as long as it the criticism was done in open debate.

Finally, it’s worth noting that other very smart people have pushed the same idea, including Megan McArdle, formerly of The Atlantic and now apparently of The Daily Beast.

The Daily Caller spotlights a landmark decision in the Los Angeles Unified School District this week:

The Los Angeles Board of Education signed off on a parent-led plan to turn a failing public school over to a private charter company this week — the city’s first use of the controversial “parent trigger” law.

The 5-1 vote granted parents in downtown Los Angeles final approval to convert 24th Street Elementary School into a charter school. The new school will be better equipped to handle demographic changes to the area, parents said.

Unsurprisingly, and despite the fact that the parents pushing for the change met for over a year to put together a charter proposal, the United Teachers of Los Angeles, affiliated with the deplorable California Teachers Association, has been opposing the parents’ move by essentially calling the group insane.

In relevant part, the union’s statement declares:

We believe parents do not want a private charger corporation to take over 24^th Street Elementary, which is exactly what is happening at Desert Trails Elementary School in Adelanto as a result of the Parent Trigger.

So, parents who have deliberated for over a year about converting their public school into a charter school, used the state’s parent trigger law to do it, have now been approved for the change, and will get a privately run charter school don’t, in fact, want any of this to happen?

It’s hard to know which is more offensive – saying that adults who navigate a rigorous legal process don’t understand the consequences of their actions, or that the union who released this statement is in a superior position to judge what’s best for students in a failing school.

Thanks to the parent trigger, California parents of kids in failing public schools now have a mechanism for saving their child’s education – and their future.

Conservatives looking for ways to grow the movement’s electoral base should pay close attention to this development.  If championed, it could become a key reason why traditionally liberal voters start supporting more conservative candidates.

In this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino discusses how recent efforts to erode fundamental intellectual property rights are in fact a direct assault on the American dream.

In an interview with CFIF, National Security Specialist and Pepperdine University Law Professor Gregory McNeal analyzes the constitutional and privacy debates surrounding the domestic and international use of drones.

 Listen to the interview here.

It looks like Quin’s prediction that Senate Republicans would filibuster Chuck Hagel’s nomination to be the next Defense Secretary was right on.

Politico and Fox News are reporting that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid doesn’t have 60 votes necessary to shut down a threatened Republican filibuster, so it looks like Hagel will be in confirmation limbo until at least February 25^th.

The reasons given revolve mainly around trying to pressure the White House to turn over documents detailing the Obama Administration’s response during and after the terrorist attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.  So far, there have been only cursory remarks by Republican Senators that a vote on Hagel is being delayed because of problems raised by his past policy statements and inconsistent testimony two weeks ago.

Right now, it looks like the GOP, as the minority party in the Senate, is trying to assert itself any way it can.  But there is a risk the move could backfire, if over the next week or two President Obama successfully frames the filibuster as over a dispute about an issue unrelated to Hagel’s fitness to run the Pentagon.  To avoid that, Republicans should be prepared to make a compelling case against Hagel on the merits, in every forum possible.

Get a load of this economic reasoning from Peter Orszag, Obama’s first Director of the Office of Management and Budget and current vice chairman at megabank Citigroup:

More graduates would mean lower inequality, because the wage premium for a college degree would be reduced by the additional supply. And it would mean higher national income, because better-educated workers are, on average, more productive.

So, lowering the “wage premium” means that income for college graduates will go down with more of them in the job market.  This is a good thing according to Orszag because reducing the value of a college degree will have a leveling effect on incomes (in a downward direction, of course).

On the bright side, it’s a remarkably honest admission about everything that’s wrong with the analysis of people who obsess over economic inequality.  In this worldview, government policies that devalue education and distort the labor market should be praised if it means less people have an opportunity to be rewarded for superior ability.

Thus, while Orszag’s analysis doesn’t square with the diminished aspirations of millions of under- and unemployed college graduates in the Age of Obama, it does help explain why his former boss isn’t putting any muscle behind addressing the depressed job market.  In Obama World, so long as more people make the same – even if it’s less – everything is just fine.

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.

My old friend Deroy Murdock was kind enough to cite me in this column, but that’s not why the column is important. In chilling — nay, not just chilling, but sickening and frightening — detail, Murdock lays out the growing problem of over-use of SWAT teams, often deadly. He also ties it to the gun-control debate, saying, in effect, that these sorts of SWAT abuses are one reason individuals need guns — yes, to protect themselves against government agents.

Please read it. Yes, this. Here is one of many examples:

On July 13, 2010, a dozen St. Paul, Minn.–area policemen and a federal Drug Enforcement Agency officer assaulted Roberto Franco’s home. Clad in Army fatigues, they rousted all nine people there, including three children. “Each plaintiff was forced to the floor at gun and rifle point and handcuffed behind their backs,” states Franco’s $30 million federal lawsuit against these authorities. “Defendants shot and killed the familydog and forced the handcuffed children to sit next to the carcass of their dead and bloody pet for more than an hour while defendants continued to search the plaintiffs’ home.”

According to the complaint, one young girl who “was handcuffed and prevented by officer from obtaining and taking her medication thus induced a diabetic episode as a result of low blood-sugar levels.”

Oops. Wrong house!

Negligent police meant to hit the house adjacent to the Francos. The search warrant named next-door neighbor Rafael Ybarra, but did not mention anyone named Franco. Perhaps these cops forgot to read that document before launching their onslaught against the Francos, their home, and their dog.

Eventually, the SWATsters realized their error. As the complaint continues: “Despite the fact that defendants learned that the suspect did not live at the address raided, defendants remained in the home of plaintiffs and continued searching the home.” The authorities eventually found a .22-caliber revolver in the basement. Although it belonged to Gilbert Castillo, another resident of the house, the gun was pinned on Franco, leading to his incarceration with Minnesota’s Department of Corrections.

Speaker John Boehner put out a wonderful press release today honoring U.S. Rep. Sam Johnson, released from seven years of North Vietnamese captivity 40 years ago today. An excerpt:

In fact, Sam was set aside for extra abuse because of his obstinate resistance to his Communist captors.  At various points Sam spent 42 straight months in solitary confinement and was forced into leg stocks for more than two years.

“But while Sam’s jailors punished his body, they could not break his spirit; his love of God and country is a deep wellspring they could never penetrate.  His scars bear witness to his tenacity and toughness.

Johnson was on the very first plane of POWs that left Vietnam as a result of the agreement forged by President Richard Nixon. Among the 130-some others released that first day were Edward Alvarez Jr. (later Deputy Administrator of the VA) — honored last year down here where I live in Mobile when our local Chapter of the Association of Naval Services Officers (ANSO) was named after him — former Vice Presidential candidate James Stockdale, and former U.S. Sen. Jeremiah Denton, also of Mobile. Denton, by the way, is a delightful man who continued to do good works for decades after he left the Senate.

Denton’s book about the experience, When Hell Was in Session, is an incredibly moving read.

(U.S. Sen. John McCain was released from Vietnam a month later, on March 14, 1973.)

Anyway, even all these years later, please take a moment to stop, consider the courage and sacrifice and hardiness of those kept in such hellish conditions while serving our country’s cause, and please offer a prayer of thanks.

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.

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:  Professor John McGinnis, Northwestern University Law Professor, author of “Accelerating Democracy”;

4:30 CST/5:30 pm EST:  Professor Gregory McNeal, Pepperdine University Professor and national security expert:  Drones;

5:00 CST/6:00 pm EST:  Gwendolyn Oxenham, author of “Finding the Game: Three Years Twenty-Five Countries, and the Search for Pickup Soccer”; and

5:30 CST/6:30 pm EST:  Troy Senik, CFIF Fellow, Orange County Register Columnist and Senior Editor at Richochet:  GOP’s Foreign Policy Posture, Presidential Speeches and Competition between States.

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’re someone who thinks that democracy works best when citizens and their representatives take time to deliberate (i.e. reason and think together), then a new Fox News/Bing collaboration will not excite you.

From Politico:

Bing is teaming up with Fox News to bring State of the Union viewers an interactive experience with real-time polling and social media aggregation.

The project is spearheaded by Microsoft’s Mark Penn, the Democratic strategist and pollster, and promises to meet the “growing need for up-to-the-minute political information and second-screen experiences that are a great companion to political broadcasts.”

Bing Pulse will allow anyone to vote every five seconds on their feelings about the address and the results will be shown live on the site and on Fox News Channel.

“We think this will be the largest live online poll in history,” Penn writes in an announcement of the project.

It’s also history’s most useless poll.  Allowing people “to vote every five seconds on their feelings” about a message as they’re hearing it would be great if we wanted to know people’s reactions to words instead of sentences.  It’s bad enough that most political dialogue has been reduced to competing sound bites.  But at least sound bites are designed to trigger reactions based on thoughts.  From Penn’s description, this new venture is tracking little more than raw emotion in five second intervals.

Like Ohio’s John Kasich and four other Republican governors, Indiana’s Mike Pence seriously considered expanding Medicaid eligibility under ObamaCare.  But unlike Kasich & Company, Pence ultimately decided against it when HHS refused to grant him one sensible reform.

Established under Mitch Daniels, Pence’s predecessor, the Healthy Indiana program allows uninsured adults aged 19-64 to use a state-based health savings account to pay for medical expenses, such as doctor’s visits, hospital services, diagnostic tests, and prescription drugs.  Incentives apply to reward cost-effective spending, but it’s critical to point out that the spending decisions within the account are determined by the policyholder, not the state.

In order to go along with expansion under ObamaCare that increases the eligibility pool for Medicaid, Pence asked permission to use Healthy Indiana accounts to help keep costs down.  The request is imminently reasonable.  If the purpose of Medicaid expansion is to cover uninsured people, why not let Indiana migrate a state-based program with a 94% satisfaction rating?

Predictably, Kathleen Sebelius’ Department of Health and Human Services said no, preferring to retain federal control over coverage and spending.  Without a program like Healthy Indiana in place, costs are likely to spiral upward since Medicaid beneficiaries are not tethered to the consequences of their spending decisions.

So, Pence said no to the Medicaid expansion.  But I think it’s crucial to understand that his response was not a kneejerk reaction against helping the uninsured get normal access to healthcare.  Instead, he proposed a sensible reform that would have accomplished the same goal as Medicaid expansion, but with more cost certainty for the state budget, and thus less tax receipts from taxpayers.

I’ve speculated before that Pence might be the GOP’s best bet in the 2016 presidential race.  A moment like this, even when it doesn’t result in a “win” politically speaking, helps confirm that suspicion because it’s based on sound principles.

I don’t know of a major journalist other than Byron York continually highlighting the plight of the under- and unemployed in Barack Obama’s America.

Summarizing the findings of a new Rutgers study, York excerpted this cautionary stat:

The researchers asked people — unemployed and employed alike — about the “major causes” of joblessness. Seventy percent named “competition and cheap labor from other countries.” The next-highest number, 40 percent, blamed “illegal immigrants taking jobs from Americans.” That 40 percent is more than blame Wall Street bankers (35 percent), the policies of George W. Bush (23 percent) or the policies of Barack Obama (30 percent).

“These strong and enduring concerns about globalization and fears that illegal immigrants hurt job prospects for Americans citizens are likely to make it more difficult for policymakers in Washington, DC to negotiate free-trade agreements and reform immigration laws,” the report concludes, in what is probably a serious understatement.

Whether this perception is correct or not, Republicans in Congress need to take care how they handle immigration reform.  As I wrote last week, conservatives like Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies make a strong case that increasing the legal labor supply when jobs are scarce hurts native workers.  If Republicans are seen as complicit in increasing the Democrats voting base and hurting job prospects for working class citizens, the party will have no one to blame but its leadership for its dwindling popularity.

There is much to commend, and there are some things to question, about Rand Paul’s big foreign policy speech yesterday at Heritage Foundation. The overall idea of using George Kennan-like “containment” for Iran or for jihadist Islam in general is, well, problematic , although there are plenty of elements of his speech that are at least somewhat sensible. It is a good thing to have discussion of such issues, and there is much value in having people make a thoughtful case against over-eagerness for military intervention. Those of us who tend a little more towards interventionism (“tend” being the key word, rather than “strongly favor”) do need to be challenged about the dangers of using military force.

Nonetheless, a fuller discussion of Paul’s speech would require more space and time than is available for me this morning. One paragraph, however, was so tendentious, so … well, civility requires that I withhold the most accurate words… anyway, so wrong as to demand response.

Here’s the passage at issue:

In the 1980s, the war caucus in Congress armed bin Laden and the mujaheddin in their fight with the Soviet Union. In fact, it was the official position of the State Department to support radical jihad against the Soviets. We all know how well that worked out.

Let’s leave aside for now the insulting, utterly asinine, sickening, inexcusable use of the phrase “war caucus” to describe those (including Reagan!) who supported the mujaheddin against the Soviets. That word choice alone is almost entirely disqualifying for its purveyor to ever be president.

Instead, let’s just look at a little history here — because the ignorance evident in this paragraph is truly astonishing. One would be hard pressed to find even a single historian, whether right, left, or center, who would argue anything other than that the Soviet failure in Afghanistan was not just a huge factor, but probably an essential one, in the Soviets’ ultimate loss of the Cold War. The mujaheddin did much to help bleed the Soviets dry, at a comparatively negligible cost to the United States (for smuggled military hardware and some intelligence). “We all know how well that worked out,” said Sen. Paul, dismissively, of the work of our “war caucus” to support the mujaheddin. Yes, we do: It played a key role in helping us win the Cold War. Anybody who doesn’t understand that is either foolish or invincibly ignorant.

Second, it is a myth that the United States “armed bin Laden.” False, false, false. It is also a falsehood to say that bin Laden was a major player within the mujeheddin or in the anti-Soviet war effort at all. Finally, it is false even to say that the Afghani effort against the Soviets was primarily, or even largely, about “jihad.” It was a defensive effort against armed invaders, not an offensive effort by “radicals” in the name of Allah. Sure, there were religious aspects to the motivations of the mujaheddin, who of course considered the Soviets to be “infidels,” but to say that the primary goal was to expand the reach of the Prophet is so absurd as to be laughable. The Afghani defense against the Soviets was, in truth, as close to being a nationalist, patriotic war as the diverse tribes of Afghanistan are ever likely to be involved in.

So every element of Sen. Paul’s paragraph was wrong: 1) Reagan was not the head of a “war caucus.” 2) The U.S. did not arm bin Laden.  3) The U.S. support had nothing to do with “radical jihad.” 4) The Afghani/mujaheddin effort as a whole was only tangentially jihadist. And 5) The war in Afghanistan that kicked out the Soviets worked out not badly, but very, very well for the United States, for the Western world, and for the hundreds of millions of people freed from behind the Iron Curtain and for millions elsewhere whose “non-aligned states” were freed from fear of the Soviets and thus could move more towards free markets and towards Western prosperity.

Finally, as a post-script, most knowledgeable people would argue that it was only after the Soviets left that the radical jihadists like the Taliban and bin Laden really gained ascendance within Afghanistan — and it was not because the United States helped arm the mujaheddin, but because we left so soon afterwards without providing reconstruction aid. While nobody would suggest that the U.S. should have done anything approaching “nation building,” it is certainly arguable — and the movie Charlie Wilson’s War, as well as congressmen I know personally, indeed did and do argue this — that humanitarian aid, of not-terribly-expensive sorts, might have gone a long way towards bolstering the society in Afghanistan, and towards bolstering more responsible elements therein, in such a way that the Taliban might not have been able to find anywhere near as much opportunity to operate.

The lesson then would be not that Paul-like isolation is the best idea, but rather that just a little involvement might have then, and often does, helped ward off future disaster.

Rand Paul makes a lot of sense on many domestic issues. But by virtue of this one paragraph alone, his big “coming out” exam on foreign policy earned an unambiguous grade of ‘F.’

Fox News is reporting a major announcement by the Post Master General today that the United States Postal Service (USPS) plans to discontinue Saturday letter delivery.  The agency would continue to deliver packages six days a week.  (Per federal law, USPS does not operate on Sundays.)

The decision to reduce letter carrying to five days a week is one of the cost reduction approaches advocated by congressional postal reformers such as Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK).  With USPS posting a near $16 billion operating loss last year, the move, at a cost-savings of $2 billion, is one of the changes that could help the agency stay alive.

Unfortunately for those who like letter service, legacy costs like high levels of workers’ compensation use and generous pension guarantees are coming up against the switch by consumers to email and other electronic messaging services.

When looking at the numbers, today’s USPS announcement makes sense.  According to the report, the agency’s percentage of letter deliveries has fallen since 2010 while package delivery rose 14 percent.  Reformers typically want government agencies to act more like businesses to reduce the cost to taxpayers while maintaining an acceptable level of service.  Unless Congress gives USPS more flexibility or some money (currently USPS receives no appropriations), a leaner Post Office, with fewer services, seems like the most likely way forward.

Thirty years ago today, upwards of 400 college students crammed into the White House to wish Ronald Reagan a happy 72nd birthday. I wrote about it here. I also wrote about it here. It disposes of the myth that Reagan was just scripted by his aides.

Last year at CFIF, I disposed of other Reagan myths.

Another time, I wrote of a visit to the Reagan Ranch.

As do tens of millions of Americans, I miss Reagan more and more, every day.

But back to that 72nd birthday party. Here’s a tidbit I didn’t include in those other two columns. One of the people among us that day was the photo editor of the Georgetown HOYA, the college newspaper I wrote for. This guy took great pictures. (I have several from that day; I wish I knew how to post them here.) Anyway, this guy was a good-naturedly committed Democrat, through and through, who would later work as an aide to a Democratic Congressman. Amidst a sea of College Republicans, he may have been the only Democrat in attendance. Anyway, after the event was over, I asked him what he thought. (He shall remain nameless, in case he doesn’t want his current employers, whomever they are, to know that he said such nice things about Reagan.)  He smiled, and then he chuckled. “Well, I still don’t like his policies,” he said. “But I’ve gotta say, he sure did seem like a great guy. I mean, I really liked him. That was fun!”

Reagan’s “likability factor” has been much remarked upon, through the years, of course. This is just one more example of how infectiously likable he was. Still, it is testimony to the reality that this part of Reagan’s success was no mere myth. What is a myth is the liberal spin on it. The liberal spin was that Reagan just sort of projected a fake image of likability through the TV screen, and that there was no real substance to it. But that’s not true. Reagan was likable precisely because he was so genuinely sunny and cheerful. The likability factor was greater, not lesser,  in the flesh.

In one-on-one situations he was reportedly not easy to get to know; there was a famous “distance” or “reserve” in play. But that wasn’t from a lack of warmth; it came from what was, oddly enough, a certain shyness — or so I’ve been led to believe. But it certainly wasn’t an indication of a lack of warmth. The warmth sprang from a real belief that there was an innate decency somewhere in every human being. “It was from his mother that Reagan inherited his faith in the goodness of people” wrote biographer Craig Shirley in Rendezvous with Destiny. “His humanitarian streak would surface throughout his life.”

In his presence even more than through a TV lens, most people easily and immediately sensed this about Reagan. That’s what my friend, the photo editor, did — and his response was absolutely typical of almost all who came in contact with Reagan.

So Happy Birthday, Mr. President. With a emphasis on “happy” — because happiness seemed one of your special gifts.