Freedom Line Blog

In an interview with CFIF, Michelle Minton, Consumer Policy Studies Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, discusses “The Wage of Sin Taxes,” why they do nothing to reduce societal costs, how NYC Mayor Bloomberg’s ban on big soda could spoil family pizza night, and what’s wrong with proposed energy drink bans.

Listen to the interview here.

Fresh off his Super Bowl win, Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco signed a contract extension worth $120.6 million, making him the highest paid player in the National Football League.

But as Americans for Tax Reform points out, that’s just on paper.  After state and local taxes are factored in, Flacco actually makes less take home pay than the New Orleans Saints’ Drew Brees.

Reason TV ran a similar commentary when NBA star LeBron James left his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers to play for the Miami Heat.  Because Florida doesn’t have an income tax, some tax experts predicted that James could have a higher net income playing for the Heat even if the value of his contract was less than what he could make as a Cavalier.

While there’s no indication that professional athletes are making contract decisions based solely on a team’s state and local tax rates, it would certainly make sense in the long run.

After all, according to ATR’s analysis, after taxes Brees is projected to make $470,000 more every year than Flacco.  At $470,000 a year, that’s $2.82 million in extra taxes over the course of Flacco’s new contract.

With that kind of contribution to the city and state, Ravens fans should count any Super Bowl repeat as icing on the cake.

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.

With the news today that Eric Holder has told Kentucky’s U.S. Sen. Rand Paul that President Obama “has the power to authorize lethal force, such as a drone strike, against a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil, and without trial,” it is now apparent that this man is criminally out of control, and a menace to society. This chilling, outrageous, tyrannical assertion of power comes on top of a stunning assertion that he himself is entirely above the law giving Congress the power to oversee federal agencies and to enforce said power — which derives directly from the Constitution — via the ability to hold scofflaws officially in contempt. Here’s what he said about the members of an elected, co-equal branch of government, when they held him in contempt: “ I have to tell you that for me to really be affected by what happened, I’d have to have respect for the people who voted in that way,” Holder told ABC News. “And I didn’t, so it didn’t have that huge an impact on me.” Note that the contempt vote against Holder was not just a partisan exercise: Seventeen Democrats also voted to hold him in contempt, for his refusal to share information (and for prevaricating) about the murderous “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal. This is lawlessness upon lawlessness upon lawlessness — from a thoroughly mendacious man who already was running a lawless department. The list of Holder’s outrages through the years is so long as to defy belief… but today’s letter to Rand Paul is by far the most frightening, most despicable chapter in Holder’s reign of proto-criminality.

In his letter, this Attorney Generally Hideous wrote that he can indeed imagine a scenario in which “it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States.” This would trample over all tradition, over due process, and also almost certainly over the Posse Comitatus Act.

This man — and probably his boss, the president, if Mr. Obama agrees with Mr. Holder — is a menace to society. One wonders whether now, finally, the civil liberties-left — in Congress, and in the establishment media — will finally hold Holder to something approaching the standard they held George Bush when Bush merely wanted to use enhanced — barely enhanced — interrogation techniques on foreign enemy combatants.

If the chief law enforcement officer of the land actually believes in such raw tyranny, we are all in danger.

Pennsylvania Republican Governor Tom Corbett may be wavering on his refusal to expand Medicaid under ObamaCare’s bait-and-switch funding scheme.

I don’t envy him.  He’s surrounded by states like Ohio and New Jersey, whose GOP governors opted to indulge the fantasy that they can accept the federal government’s promise of full funding at face value.

To his credit, Corbett isn’t allowing himself to act like there are no costs associated with agreeing to so-called “free” Medicaid expansion for the next three years.

Here’s some refreshing honesty from Corbett’s spokeswoman Christine Cronkright:

The Corbett administration has estimated that participating in the Medicaid expansion that would add 800,000 people to medical assistance would cost Pennsylvania $1 billion through 2014-15 and a total of $4.1 billion. Advocates maintain that the Medicaid expansion would pay the way for $43 billion in federal contributions, beginning with three years in which the federal government would pay 100 percent of the expansion.

“Regardless of the federal government’s claims, the presumption that they will cover 100 percent of the costs of full expansion is simply not true. Regardless of any other costs under the (Affordable Care Act) that we’d have to bear, there are still IT and staffing costs, costs for additional clients coming into the system that may have been eligible before, and costs for those we believe will drop employer-based coverage,” Cronkright said.

So it turns out “free” really means $1-4 billion.

The simple truth about ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion is that it establishes a one-way street toward greater federal intervention in every individual’s health care decisions. Democrats know this, and are using the “free” money trope to lure weak-willed Republicans into a federally-dominated system from which a state will not be able to extract itself.

GOP governors who agree to expansion and believe that they will have the political support to simply cut off access to Medicaid when the feds pull back funding are deluding themselves. Besides, what kind of leadership is it to support welfare expansion on the condition that someone else pays for it with their debt-laden credit card?

So far, Governor Corbett is standing firm in the face of tremendous opposition to fiscal sanity.  Let’s hope he continues.

The libertarian-leaning Tenth Amendment Center is doing a double service for people interested in how to fight federal government overreach at the state level.

(Note: Before explaining further, I want to say that I do not endorse all of the views at TAC. The point here is to highlight how one group within the larger conservative movement is finding a way to work within the system to enact constructive alternatives.)

The first service is providing an easy-to-access list of model legislation to use at the state level.  Any limited government activist with an internet connection and a printer can get readymade bill language that a sitting state representative or senator can introduce.  The topics range from preserving Second Amendment gun rights to refusing to cooperate with ObamaCare, with issues like the Constitutional Tender Act in between.

After a piece of model legislation is introduced, TAC then delivers its second service: Tracking the progress of its bills across the fifty states.  For example, since January 2013, nine states have introduced at least one element of TAC’s ObamaCare refusal law.  So far, twenty-three states have introduced TAC bills protecting gun rights, and another three have passed the measure out of at least one legislative chamber.

Some of the model legislation comes from experts in the field like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), while others look to be homegrown with TAC.  Whatever their provenance, limited government conservatives should get energized by the fact that concerned citizens are finding ways to stem the tide of federal overreach – even if you’d never hear about it from the mainstream media.

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.

In an interview with CFIF, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli discusses the role of the states to protect individual liberty and push back against an expansive federal government, and his new book, “The Last Line of Defense: The New Fight for American Liberty.”

Listen to the interview here.

U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) shines a spotlight on the true impact of today’s sequester cuts:

If the sequester were to take effect, our spending would only be cut by 2.3%. Let me repeat that — these “eviscerating” cuts will leave our country with 97.7% of our current spending, cutting a mere $85 billion from this year’s $3.6 trillion budget.

The sequester barely begins to skim the surface of the problem. Since taking office, President Obama has increased federal domestic agencies’ budget by 17%. This 17% increase since 2008 will have to endure a 5% cut.

Even with the sequester, the federal government will spend more in 2013 than it did in 2012 — or more than $15 billion.

An editorial in Investor’s Business Daily spells out in greater detail just how much federal spending has grown during the Obama Administration:

…here are some examples — using the OMB’s data and projections — showing the growth in spending for various federal functions since 2008 (percentage increases are inflation-adjusted):

• Transportation: up $36.6 billion, an increase of 37.5%.

• Education: up $30.8 billion, or 25%.

• Housing assistance: up $16.4 billion, or 31.4%.

• Community and regional development: up $11 billion, or 36.5%.

• Natural resources and environment: up $9.5 billion, or 21.3%.

• Farm income stabilization: up $6.8 billion, or 39.5%.

• General government: up $5.9 billion, up 26.6%.

This doesn’t exhaust the list of nondefense discretionary spending; it leaves out energy boondoggles and the burgeoning food stamp program, among others.

Other important budget items immune from sequester are federal entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, to name just the most recognizable three.

While any budgets cuts are going to be painful, the $85 billion on the chopping block now is, to use Paul’s word, a “pittance” when one considers that for the fifth year in a row the federal budget is likely to carry a $1 trillion deficit.

In an interview with CFIF, Congressman Steven Palazzo (R-MS) discusses his proposed Constitutional Amendment (H.J. Res. 28) that, if passed and ratified, will effectively abolish ObamaCare’s mandate tax and permanently limit Congress’ power to impose taxes as  penalty simply for choosing not to purchase goods or services.

Listen to the interview here.

Americans might expect the U.S. government to demonstrate greater concern about who supplies resources and equipment to our men and women in uniform.  This week, however, the Obama Administration announced its decision to award a much-disputed, high-stakes Air Force light air support (LAS) contract to a Brazilian company over one based in Kansas.

The LAS contract could be worth over $950 million, so we’re irrationally sending nearly a billion American taxpayer dollars to Brazil despite the weak state of our manufacturing sector and economy more broadly.  But this is about more than the initial 20 aircraft, or the money associated with building them.  Americans should also be troubled that Embraer receives tremendous subsidies from the Brazilian government, which has been very vocal in its opposition to the War on Terror and American interests while siding with Iran and Venezuela time and again.  As one of the few nations that continues to work with the Iranian regime, Brazil and Embraer have already supplied aircraft similar to their LAS offering to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

Perhaps even more alarming, a provision woven into Embraer’s bylaws would enable the Brazilian government to halt the manufacturing or maintenance of the warplane at any given time, with no threat of repercussions from the U.S.  This could mean anything from withholding parts to complete cessation of production.  For a country so outspoken in its opposition to America’s global foreign policy objectives and our stance against governments that commit such grotesque crimes against their own citizens as well as other nations, how can we trust that they won’t disrupt the delivery of these aircraft in pursuit of their own political motives?

The Obama Administration’s decision to outsource the production of American military equipment to Brazil is not only illogical, it creates an unconscionable threat to our national security.  Embraer and Brazil have publically stated that their immense focus on this contract is motivated by their desire to secure a U.S. Air Force endorsement of their product, which in turn allows them to more effectively market it to other nations.  If history tells us anything, Embraer and the Brazilian government that controls it will have no qualms about selling our enemies the same aircraft they will be providing to our Air Force.

It is morally and economically untenable that United States government would prefer a Brazilian supplier that is publicly opposed to the very cause for which we need the equipment.  Awarding this contract to a historically unfriendly foreign sovereign suggests that the Obama Administration is not only careless in its foreign policy judgment, it’s reckless in the equipment it selects to carry out the mission.

In this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino argues that we should lock up and throw away the key on new EEOC regulations that say employers can now be sued for discrimination if they fail to hire convicted criminals.