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Archive for April, 2023
April 26th, 2023 at 3:16 pm
CFIF Proudly Celebrates World Intellectual Property (IP) Day
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Today is World Intellectual Property (IP) Day, and CFIF is proud to join a broad coalition of conservative, libertarian and free-market organizations in celebrating a key element that not only drives worldwide innovation and prosperity, but also is the central component explaining American Exceptionalism in worldwide innovation, power and prosperity.

In that latter regard, nothing stands above our enduring legacy of protecting IP – patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets.  America throughout its history has protected IP like no other nation before or since.  Our Founding Fathers deliberately inserted text protecting IP rights into Article I of the Constitution, which reads, “Congress shall have the Power … To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”  As James Madison explained in the Federalist Papers while advocating ratification of the Constitution, protecting IP respected the natural right of individuals to enjoy the fruits of their labors, while also serving the public good by encouraging innovation.

That assurance that one’s creations will enjoy legal protection in turn promotes creative activity, which is why patent holder Abraham Lincoln noted that America’s IP protections, “added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius in the discovery and production of new and useful things.”

Consequently, no nation spanning the entirety of human history even approaches America’s record of patented invention, from the telephone to the airplane, from lifesaving pharmaceuticals like the polio vaccine to the internet.   No society remotely rivals our copyrighted artistic influence, whether in the form of motion pictures, television programming or popular music.  No nation’s trademarks stand recognized in the way that the Coca-Cola or Apple logos are instantly identified across the world.  A direct relationship exists between our tradition of IP protection and our unrivaled success in innovation and prosperity.

That’s precisely why CFIF is so pleased to join other organizations here in the U.S. and across the globe in celebrating World IP Day, highlighting IP’s critical importance:

On World IP Day, we celebrate the role intellectual property plays in bolstering entrepreneurship, innovation, economic growth and quality job creation…

The U.S IP system drives economic growth, accounting for $7.8 trillion in GDP (41% of total GDP) and more than 47 million jobs.  Direct and indirect employment in IP industries accounts for 44% of U.S. jobs.

IP-intensive industries create high-paying jobs.  Average weekly-wage earnings are 60% higher than earnings in other sectors.  Accelerating the growth rate of women who participate in IP-intensive industries means increasing their earning power and financial well-being.

Unfortunately, some politicians here in America and abroad fail to respect the role of IP in boosting innovation and wellbeing, and actively seek to undermine it with such misguided efforts as surrendering patent rights to Covid vaccines developed in the U.S.

We cannot let that occur, lest Americans and billions across the world suffer.  Accordingly, on this World Intellectual Property Day, we urge national governments, policymakers and other organizations around the world to promote policies that strengthen intellectual property protections and ensure that a healthy innovation environment can thrive.

April 20th, 2023 at 12:43 pm
CFPB, Like the IRS Before It, Suffers a “Major Breach” Affecting Over 250,000 Americans
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For years CFIF has highlighted how the IRS has not only targeted conservative and libertarian organizations for persecution, but also suffered security breaches allowing online extremists to release Americans’ sensitive data to the world.  Now, the equally abusive (and obviously misnamed) Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has suffered a similar breach.  Specifically, the CFPB acknowledges that an employee breached and forwarded the data of over 250,000 Americans in what it labels a “major breach”:

The CFPB said an employee forwarded the personal information of more than a quarter-million consumers to a personal email account, an incident that the bureau described as a ‘major’ breach.  The employee, who was fired when the data breach came to light, sent spreadsheets with names and transaction-specific account numbers related to those 256,000 consumer accounts at a single institution, according to the bureau.”

Separately, and confirming our reference to CFPB abusiveness above, our friend John Berlau along with Stone Washington of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) write in today’s Wall Street Journal how the CFPB is suing and attempting to censor the owner of nonbank mortgage firm Townstone Financial for discussing out-of-control crime in the Chicago area on a radio show to general audiences.  You can’t make this up:

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal bureaucracy with a vast jurisdiction, is testing a novel approach to crime and punishment.  In a lawsuit against Townstone Financial, a small Chicago-area nonbank mortgage firm, the CFPB is signaling that it may attempt to punish anyone who complains about neighborhood crime.

The CFPB accuses Townstone owner Barry Sturner and others affiliated with the company of making ‘statements that would discourage African-American prospective applicants from applying for mortgage loans.’  The suit, filed in 2020, doesn’t provide any concrete examples of  consumers that Townstone has allegedly mistreated.  Rather, the CFPB points to a handful of statements Mr. Sturner and other company officials made over a four-year period on the Townstone Financial Show – a weekly radio program and podcast.”

And here’s the kicker:  Mr. Sturner was simply saying things similar to what soft-on-crime Mayor-Elect Brandon Johnson has himself said about Chicago crime:

Among the statements highlighted in the lawsuit are Mr. Sturner’s descriptions of frequent weekend crime rampages on Chicago’s South Side as the work of ‘hoodlums’ and his claim that police are keeping the city from ‘turning into a real war zone.’  The CFPB also wags its finger at a host’s description of a Chicago suburb as an area in which ‘you drive very fast through’ and ‘you don’t look at anybody or lock on anybody’s eyes.’

The CFPB contends that these statements about majority-black communities would somehow ‘discourage prospective applicants from applying for mortgage loans.’  Yet the Townstone hosts’ candid comments about the crime epidemic in Chicago’s black neighborhoods are remarkably similar to recent statements of Mayor-Elect Brandon Johnson.

Despite Mr. Johnson’s past association with the ‘defund the police’ movement, he spoke openly in his campaign about the effect of crime on Chicago’s neighborhoods.  In a March 16 debate with Paul Vallas, Mr. Johnson described Austin – his own West Side neighborhood – as ‘one of the most violent neighborhoods in the entire city.’  In his April 4 victory address Mr. Johnson said he’d shielded his children ‘from bullets that fly right outside our front door.'”

It all points to a bureaucratic abusiveness that we address this week regarding the vast federal administrative state, and shows the need for courts and elected officials to rein it in.  In the meantime, the CFPB should pay more attention to its own dangerous data breaches, and less what is said on radio shows.

 

 

April 5th, 2023 at 6:50 pm
Labor Department Must Address “Shared Savings Fees” to Boost Healthcare Transparency and Target Unnecessary Costs
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In our contentious national healthcare debate, there’s one point on which we can all find a rare point of consensus:  the benefit of achieving greater transparency in medical billing and fees.  

Unfortunately, the manner by which the Biden Administration has implemented the “No Surprises Act” that took effect on January 1 so far has failed to protect consumers from obscure and needless insurance costs.  Although the No Surprises Act aimed to reform the out-of-network reimbursement process, some insurance companies continue to exploit what are known as “shared savings fees,” which in turn keeps costs higher than necessary for both employers and their employees alike.  

The Department of Labor, however, can help rectify the problem by requiring greater transparency going forward.  

By way of background, “shared savings fees” derive from out-of-network medical claims, and more specifically refer to out-of-network cost-management fees.  They’re sold to health insurance plan sponsors, typically employers, as a form of protection against surprise medical bills charged to employees.  In other words, shared savings fees ostensibly provide a mechanism for employers to save money by lowering out-of-network healthcare costs when they arise.  

The problem is that in practice, they often impose hidden fees that result in higher premiums and dubious benefits for plan sponsors and covered employees, as we explained alongside a dozen other free-market organizations in a recent coalition letter to the U.S. Secretary of Labor:    

In some cases, shared savings fees exceed total administrative fees for many plan sponsors, and some may not even be aware of the total amount they are paying in those fees.  That is partly a function of a significant lack of transparency, since insurance companies do not routinely report their revenues from shares savings programs.  Unfortunately, the No Surprises Act does not directly address those fees, and we believe that insurers should more responsibly disclose the fees that plan sponsors are charged every year to help reduce healthcare prices for millions of American families.   

The No Surprises Act should’ve made shared savings fees unnecessary.  As long as shared savings fees continue to exist as “administrative fees,” the problem of higher healthcare costs and fewer choices for consumers will fester.  The Labor Department must therefore require higher transparency and full disclosure to employers and other health plan sponsors regarding shared savings fees to help resolve this outstanding and wholly unnecessary problem.  

April 3rd, 2023 at 12:17 pm
Image of the Day: Voting With Their Feet, Americans Abandoned Blue States for Red States Over the Past Decade
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In our ongoing political debates, leftists can virtue signal all they want, but facts don’t lie.  In this case, the Census Bureau’s facts over the past decade relating to domestic migration illustrate whose policy model Americans prefer:

Facts Don't Lie, Leftists Do

Facts Don’t Lie, Leftists Do