Archive

Archive for January, 2019
January 28th, 2019 at 3:06 pm
Image of the Day: New Jobless Claims Plummeting
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Last week, new jobless claims fell below the milestone 200,000 level, and to the lowest point since the 1960s (when the labor force was significantly smaller).   In this chart, note also the steep drop starting in 2017 with the tax-cutting and deregulatory agenda that arrived with the Trump Administration, after the number of new claims had plateaued toward the end of the Obama Administration:

Jobless Claims Plummet

Jobless Claims Plummet

 

 

January 25th, 2019 at 11:50 am
Shutdown Perspective
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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.

January 25th, 2019 at 11:48 am
Notable Quote: American Incomes Versus Supposedly Superior European Counterparts
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The myth of superior livelihoods in supposedly more enlightened European nations remains a curiously persistent one, but Mona Charen’s latest commentary today provides a refreshing corrective:

Median household income reached $61,372 in 2017, which is higher than comparable countries like Canada, Germany, France, Britain and Denmark, and exceeded only by a handful of tiny rich nations sitting on oil (Norway) or numbered bank accounts (Switzerland and Lichtenstein).  U.S. median household size, meanwhile, has declined, so individual wealth has increased even more than the income numbers reflect.”

Something to remember the next time Bernie Sanders or latest leftist darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez alleges that “democratic socialist” nations of Europe somehow offer a superior alternative, nevermind that Venezuela actually offers a better illustration of socialism in practice…

January 21st, 2019 at 3:08 pm
This Week’s “Your Turn” Radio Lineup
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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/99.1FM 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:  Hans von Spakovsky, Manager, Election Law Reform Initiative and Senior Legal Fellow, Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies – William Barr Hearings and Trump’s Former Lawyer Michael Cohen;

4:15 CST/5:15 pm EST:  Clark Neily, Vice President for Criminal Justice at the Cato Institute: SEC and Gag Orders;

4:30 CST/5:30 pm EST:  Michael Bindas, Senior Attorney with the Institute for Justice – Privileges or Immunities Clause of the 14th Amendment;

4:45 CST/5:45 pm EST:  Romina Boccia, Director, Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget at The Heritage Foundation – Economic Impact of the Government Shutdown;

5:15 CST/6:15 pm EST:  Jennifer Grove, Vice President of External Relations for Baptist Health Care and Development Chair for Leadership Florida – It’s Time to Apply to Leadership Florida; and

5:30 CST/6:30 pm EST:  Sally Pipes, President and CEO, Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy at the Pacific Research Institute – Medicaid Expansion.

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

January 18th, 2019 at 6:52 pm
Image of the Day: Higher Top Income Tax Rates Don’t Mean Increased Revenues
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In our Liberty Update this week, we highlight how history refutes the idea that returning to top income tax rates of 70% or higher, offered by new faces on the political left like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, will somehow pay for all of the new entitlement spending they advocate.  Wealthier taxpayers actually carried a smaller share of the nation’s income tax payments before the top marginal rate was cut.  And, as illustrated nicely by Veronique de Rugy and the great folks at the Mercatus Center, it won’t unleash some wellspring of new tax revenues that leftists might hope in any event:

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Sorry, Leftists

 

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January 15th, 2019 at 11:31 am
Drug Price Controls Would Kill Innovation
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We at CFIF have been emphasizing the threat posed by new drug price controls inexplicably contemplated by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).  In December, CFIF filed formal Comment opposing that ill-advised proposal, and hopefully wiser minds will prevail before the damage is done.  In similar vein, The Wall Street Journal ran a welcome commentary entitled “The Drug Price-Control Threat” on January 8 of this year, and a followup letter from reader Bruce Zessar of Highland Park, Illinois in today’s edition offers a personal, real-world illustration of what could be lost:

Insulin isn’t the same now as when it was discovered a century ago.  My wife is a Type I diabetic, diagnosed when she was 14 in 1980.  She has been a beneficiary of the tremendous advances in insulin therapy during the last four decades, including Lantus and Humalog.  When we got married in 1990, she had to live on a rigid schedule, eating lunch at, say, noon, and then dinner by 6:30-7:00 every day.  That’s becaue of the way prior insulin therapies worked in managing blood sugar.  With the invention of Lantus and Humalog, she can now live a normal life like everyone else.

Insulin is a shining example of why drugs deserve the utmost patent protection to encourage continual innovation.”

Price controls have never worked in any nation that has tried them, or with any commodity.   Few, if any, products are as important to our lives as America’s world-leading pharmaceutical sector, and we mustn’t let the price control scheme contemplated by the HHS kill the goose that continues to lay golden eggs.

January 7th, 2019 at 4:55 pm
This Week’s “Your Turn” Radio Show Lineup
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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/94.1FM 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: Pat Rosenstiel, Founder & Chairman of Trade Alliance to Promote Prosperity: Importing Price Controls for Prescription Drugs;

4:15 CDT/5:15 pm EDT: Sherman Joyce, President of American Tort Reform Foundation: Latest “Judicial Hellholes” List;

4:30 CDT/5:30 pm EDT: Phil Kerpen, President of American Commitment: Electric Vehicle Subsidy;

4:45 CDT/5:45 pm EDT: Adam Michel, Policy Analyst, Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation: House Democratic Rules Package;

5:00 CDT/6:00 pm EDT: Tim Wyrosdick, Superintendent of Santa Rosa County Schools: 2019 Legislative Session and Education Updates; and

5:30 CDT/6:30 pm EDT: William J. Conti, Partner at Baker & Hostetler: The New Congress and 2020.

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

January 3rd, 2019 at 8:12 am
Ramirez Cartoon: New Year’s Resolutions
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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.