Archive

Archive for March, 2017
March 31st, 2017 at 9:55 am
The Judicial Confirmation Circus
Posted by Print

In an interview with CFIF, Carrie Severino, Chief Counsel and Policy Director of the Judicial Crisis Network, discusses what may happen next with respect to Judge Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court and the predictable political posturing of Senate Democrats.

Listen to the interview here.

March 30th, 2017 at 2:31 pm
Union Activists Continue to Push Air Traffic Control “Privatization” Proposal
Posted by Print

This afternoon, proponents of a proposal claiming to privatize air traffic control (ATC) are joining with labor activists to continue pushing what amounts to a labor union giveaway.  Alongside a number of conservative groups, CFIF remains concerned about the proposal, which upon closer scrutiny doesn’t constitute true privatization at all, because it would maintain monopoly power over ATC without sufficient accountability to taxpayers, as well as expanded gold-plated compensation and benefit guarantees to the National Air Traffic Controller’s union.

Instead of real privatization through open competition, pricing transparency and increased efficiency, the union-supported proposal would create a federally-chartered nonprofit corporation similar to current inefficient and bloated public/private entities like Amtrak and the U.S. Postal Service, which have long required massive subsidies and bailouts from taxpayers while struggling to manage legacy union contracts.  Under the proposal, air traffic controllers would receive additional taxpayer- and passenger-funded guarantees with diminished legal consequences for labor pressure tactics.  It’s therefore little wonder that the union’s bosses push the proposal so aggressively.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) determined last year that creation of a nonprofit ATC corporation would widen the federal budget deficit by $20 billion between 2017 and 2026.

This type of proposal could lead to a vicious cycle of increased user fees, more aggressive union contract demands and potential taxpayer bailouts.

March 27th, 2017 at 3:39 pm
This Week’s “Your Turn” Radio Lineup
Posted by Print

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:  Carrie Severino, Chief Counsel and Policy Director at the Judicial Crisis Network – Judge Gorsuch Hearings;

4:15 CDT/5:15 pm EDT:  Evan Moore, Policy Fellow at the Foreign Policy Initiative -Foreign Policy, Syria, Russia and Terrorism;

4:30 CDT/5:30 pm EDT:  Phil Kerpen, President of American Commitment – ObamaCare and Congress;

4:45 CDT/5:45 pm EDT:  Pat Nolan, Director of the American Conservative Union Foundation’s Center for Criminal Justice Reform – Practice of “Civil Asset Forfeiture”;

5:00 CDT/6:00 pm EDT:  Timothy Lee, CFIF’s Senior Vice President of Legal and Public Affairs – Tax Policy and the Border Adjustment Tax; and

5:30 CDT/6:30 pm EDT:  Peter Rubardt, Conductor and Music Director at Pensacola Symphony Orchestra – Upcoming Performances and Music in Education.

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

March 24th, 2017 at 11:48 am
Congress Introduces Much-Needed Copyright Office Reform Legislation
Posted by Print

This week, the Chairmen and Ranking Members of both the Senate and House Judiciary committees introduced important legislation – the Register of Copyrights Selection and Accountability Act – which makes the U.S. Register of Copyrights a position appointed by the president subject to Senate confirmation.

CFIF applauds this much-needed proposal to modernize the U.S. Copyright Office in order to meet the new challenges of the 21st century.

Strong copyright protection constitutes a core component of our domestic economy, and our world-leading creative community in particular.  As we at CFIF have often emphasized, it is not by coincidence that the U.S. stands unrivaled as the most creative, innovative, prosperous and powerful nation in human history while consistently maintaining the world’s strongest copyright and other intellectual property (IP) protections.  That relationship is direct and causal.  Our Founding Fathers specifically protected copyright as a fundamental, natural property right in the text of the Constitution.  As a result, American copyright-related industries dominate the globe, from film to television to music to publications, and today those industries contribute over $1 trillion to the American economy, as well as accounting for 5.5 million jobs.  And in an era of increasing global competition, copyright-related industries remain a significant export sector that only keeps growing.

Here’s why the Copyright Office is so crucial in that realm.  It facilitates the thriving U.S. market by administering the registration and recordation systems, as well as advising Congress, our judicial system and other pivotal parties on both domestic and international copyright matters.  Unfortunately, under the current system created over 120 years ago, the Office is currently housed within the Library of Congress, which faces its own challenges and responsibilities.  Consequently, the Copyright Office has struggled to keep pace in the increasingly digital economy despite repeated calls urging modernization.

Accordingly, given the enormous and growing importance of copyright industries to the U.S. economy and exports, we applaud the long-needed legislative effort to modernize the Copyright Office in this way.  Although only a first step in broader Copyright Office reform, it is an important one.  It also offers a rare bipartisan opportunity for Congress in addition to how it helps American consumers and our creative and innovative community.  Every living former Register of Copyrights has urged Copyright Office restructuring, and CFIF agrees wholeheartedly with that broad consensus.  American consumers, our economy and export industries stand to benefit immensely from this important step.

March 22nd, 2017 at 5:48 pm
Congress Making Good On Rescinding Rogue “Privacy” Regulations Rammed Through by Obama’s FCC
Posted by Print

Among the myriad missteps and abuses of the Obama Administration, its habit of rogue lawmaking through unelected administrative agencies rather than the deliberative democratic process was perhaps the worst.  Even the most liberal Supreme Court justices on several occasions agreed, striking down Obama Administration regulatory impositions by unanimous votes.

And perhaps no federal agency represented that lawlessness and impropriety better than the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Last year as the clock began to expire on the Obama era, the FCC moved to impose new “privacy” regulations upon private Internet Service Providers (ISPs), upon which Americans rely to access the internet.  Those regulations actually did nothing on behalf of consumer privacy, or to prevent online data collection practices used profusely by other entities throughout the Internet economy that the Obama Administration favored.  Instead, the regulations served to constrict development of new business practices and distort the robust digital marketplace, while picking winners and losers.

Additionally, those FCC regulations circumvented the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC’s) superior expertise in this field by encroaching upon its existing regulations upon which the Internet economy had relied for years.  The FTC’s proven framework protected consumers for decades, while obviously allowing the Internet to flourish as it did.  But the FCC went rogue, insisting on inserting itself into more areas of American consumers’ daily lives, and disrupting a robust marketplace with a “solution” where no problem existed.

Fortunately, Congress is set to act by rescinding the Obama FCC’s ill-advised regulation.  The Congressional Review Act (CRA), which was enacted as part of the Contract with America reforms, allows Congress to rein in rogue administrative agency regulations and prevent future agencies from reimposing them in the future.  It remained an ineffective tool when the threat of an Obama veto loomed, but with Donald Trump now in the White House, Congress has begun using the CRA to rescind costly and improper regulations.

Now, the Senate stands ready to eliminate the Obama FCC’s destructive last-hour “privacy” regulation this week.

And they can use your help.

Contact your Senators and tell them to put the CRA to use and rescind the FCC’s rule.  The best way to protect privacy and strengthen the internet economy is to build from the successful and established framework established by the FTC, not the Obama FCC’s scheme.

Tags: , ,
March 21st, 2017 at 7:21 pm
New Report: We Need More Capitalism in Space
Posted by Print

Quick:  Name all of the areas where government outperforms the private sector where both options exist.

Pretty difficult, isn’t it?  From schools to overnight delivery to cheese, the overwhelming and perhaps even categorical rule is that the private sector performs more effectively and efficiently wherever it competes with government.

Aerospace is no exception, as detailed by an impressive new report from the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) entitled “Capitalism in Space:  Private Enterprise and Competition Reshape the Global Aerospace Launch Industry.”

The report first notes how increasingly critical a flourishing aerospace industry is for any nation hoping to prosper in today’s competitive global marketplace.  That includes national defense, natural resource exploration, economic growth, experimentation and national prestige.  Unfortunately, the report also highlights how U.S. government performance in this realm has declined:

All of these goals require a prosperous U.S. aerospace industry, which in turn requires above all a viable space-launch industry, capable of placing payloads, both unmanned and manned, into orbit cheaply and efficiently.  Unfortunately, since the beginning of the 21st century the U.S. government has struggled to create and maintain a viable launch industry.  Even as the government terminated the Space Shuttle program, with its ability to place and return humans and large cargoes to and from orbit, NASA’s many repeated efforts since the mid-1980s to generate a replacement have come up  empty.

In addition, in the 1990s the Department of Defense instituted a new program, the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV), to guarantee itself launch services that – though successful in procuring those services – have done so at a very high cost, so high, in fact, that the expense  now significantly limits the military’s future options for maintaining its access to, and assets in, space.”

But there’s positive news, according to the report.  Private aerospace players like today’s SpaceX have succeeded at far less cost than the government spends:

Even as the federal government struggled with this problem, a fledgling crop of new American private launch companies have emerged in the past decade, funded initially by the vast profits produced by the newly born internet industry.  These new companies have not been motivated by national prestige, military strength, or any of the traditional national political goals of the federal government.  Instead, these private entities have been driven by profit, competition, and in some cases the ideas of the visionary individuals running the companies, resulting in some remarkable success, achieved with relatively little money and in an astonishingly short period of time.

Because of these differing approaches – the government on one hand and the private sector on the other – policymakers have an opportunity to compare both and use that knowledge to create the most successful American space effort possible.”

As just one example, the report notes the “significant cost discrepancy between the government-developed SLS/Orion system and commercially-developed systems, without any significant difference in capability.”  The SLS/Orion is projected to cost $43 billion for two rockets, three test spacecraft, and three flight spacecraft over 15 years.  By comparison, SpaceX development and operational contracts combined totaled less than $2 billion to achieve 13 launches to and from the International Space Station, as well as an orbital demonstration.

By leveraging the private sector and maintaining competition, the report concludes, America’s aerospace industry can continue to lead through the end of this century.  That won’t surprise anyone familiar with the performance disparity between the private sector and government generally, but it’s an important new confirmation in this vital sphere that will only play an increasingly important role in our lives.

March 15th, 2017 at 11:18 am
“The Muslim Travel Ban”
Posted by Print

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.

March 13th, 2017 at 1:30 pm
Image of the Day: Does This Dress Make Obama’s Deficits Look Fat?
Posted by Print

Another reason why Barack Obama must enter discussion of the worst presidents in U.S. history, not the best as his stubborn apologists pretend:

Obama Deficit Record

Obama Deficit Record

Tags: , ,
March 13th, 2017 at 1:12 pm
This Week’s “Your Turn” Radio Lineup:
Posted by Print

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:  David Schoenbrod, Author and Renowned Policy Expert – “DC Confidential: Inside the Five Tricks of Washington”;

4:15 CDT/5:15 pm EDT:  Karlyn Bowman, Public Opinion Expert and Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute – Public Perceptions of President Trump and America’s Foreign Policy;

4:30 CDT/5:30 pm EDT:  David Keating, President of Center for Competitive Politics – A Sad Day for Free Speech;

4:45 CDT/5:45 pm EDT:  Tred Barta, Author, Hunter, Fisherman, and Outdoorsman – Co-existence of Conservation and Commercial Fishing;

5:00 CDT/6:00 pm EDT:  Sally Pipes, President, CEO and Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy at the Pacific Research Institute – Republicans’ Health Care Bill; and

5:30 CDT/6:30 pm EDT:  Quin Hillyer, Contributing Editor of National Review Magazine, a Senior Editor for The American Spectator Magazine – Angry Americans, Investigative Journalism, and Trump’s Budget.

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

March 3rd, 2017 at 1:14 pm
State Senator in N.Y. Post: “Residents Shouldn’t Have to Pay for Cuomo’s Upstate Nuke Bailout”
Posted by Print

Since last summer, we at CFIF have sounded the alarm regarding a crony capitalist “green” energy boondoggle forced upon New York state residents by Governor Andrew Cuomo and a power commission staffed entirely by his appointees.

The plan imposes an artificial mandate that 50% of all New York power be generated by carbon-free plants in just over a decade, and will cost taxpayers and businesses $1 billion in just its first two years of operation, as well as $8 billion over the course of the scheme.  Making matters worse, the subsidies generated will go to a single company named Exelon that owns all three struggling upstate nuclear plants that will benefit.  Obviously, New York consumers and businesses will pay those costs, which has led even left-leaning environmental leaders to oppose the plan.  Governor Cuomo’s scheme is also the subject of a lawsuit in U.S. District Court on the grounds that it violates the Constitution’s interstate commerce clause and its supremacy clause.

In today’s New York Post, state senator Tony Avella, a Democrat, joins the opposition with a blistering piece entitled “City Residents Shouldn’t Have to Pay for Cuomo’s Upstate Nuke Bailout.”  Among other points, Sen. Avella notes the cost to be paid by residents who won’t even benefit:

There’s a new wrinkle in the quest to power New York that will further drive up our already high utility bills.  It’s both unfair and completely avoidable.  Under a new plan announced last year, the state is adding a surcharge to all utility bills – regardless of whether the person uses gas, oil or a renewable resource, which many people are already paying a premium for.  That surcharge, which will also hit businesses and local governments, will bring an estimated $7.6 billion over the next 12 years.

All of the money will go to Exelon, a Chicago-based Fortune 100 company with annual revenues over $34 billion.  All so the company can prop up three aging nuclear power plants.

That’s not a fair deal for New York taxpayers.  And it’s even more one-sided when you consider the fact that the vast majority of New Yorkers aren’t even getting their power from these old nuclear plants.  Customers with Con Edison, which powers parts of New York City and Westchester, alone will pay $700 million.  So we’re basically paying for something we’ll never use.”

Fortunately, he’s not just complaining about it.  He’s doing something about it:

I recently introduced a bill that would require the state’s Public Service Commission, which regulates utilities, to determine what parts of the state are served by the nuclear power plants, and which ones aren’t.  Communities that don’t get their power from the plants, mostly in downstate areas like New York City, wouldn’t have to pay under my bill.  It’s only fair.”

That’s for sure.  Bit by bit, Gov. Cuomo’s boondoggle is unraveling.  For New York consumers and businesses alike, the sooner it is brought to an end, the better they’ll be.

March 2nd, 2017 at 2:53 pm
WSJ Provides Some Stark Numbers on Dodd-Frank and Market Overregulation
Posted by Print

In our recent commentary “Dodd-Frank:  Ripe for Repeal,” we highlighted the destructive effect of that law and the need for repeal by the Trump Administration.  In a piece entitled “Snap Goes the Market,” today’s Wall Street Journal highlights Snap Inc.’s initial public offering (IPO) and provides some stark numbers on the matter:

Last year, there were only 105 IPOs on U.S. exchanges, the fewest since 2009.  One reason is that the regulatory costs of going public – mainly imposed by Sarbanes-Oxley but also Dodd-Frank – can outweigh the benefits.  Amazon went public in 1997, three years after launching.  Snap waited six.”

This is low-hanging fruit and a no-brainer for the Trump Administration in its continuing effort to cut harmful overregulation and improve our economy.  There’s no reason whatsoever for delay.

Tags:
March 1st, 2017 at 11:12 am
Ramirez Cartoon: And the winner is…
Posted by Print

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.