Freedom Line Blog

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.

NBC News reports a breath of fresh air for ailing U.S. manufacturing workers: Companies that once outsourced jobs to China are starting to bring some of them back.  Some of the reasons:

Labor costs are soaring by 40 percent a year, as migrant workers are becoming pickier, since there are more job opportunities at home. Also China’s one-child policy means there is no longer such a huge pool of young, dexterous workers. Bank lending is tightening and China’s currency is also appreciating by around 6 percent a year against the U.S. dollar, not quickly enough for US and European policymakers, but sufficient for factories on low margins to feel the pain.

Of course, slapping a new tax on USA-based job creators will stifle any trend towards manufacturing growth China’s growth might enable.

Mr. President, have pity on the working man…

When it was passed back in 2003, New Mexico’s law allowing illegal immigrants to receive state drivers’ licenses was billed as a way to make the roads safer by requiring illegals to pass a driving test and carry insurance.

For all the hoopla, a recent study showed that New Mexico is second in the nation for percentage of uninsured drivers on the road at 25.7 percent.  As for making New Mexico safer, a different reality has emerged:

The unintended consequence has been an eruption in criminal rings assisting illegal immigrants in obtaining New Mexico driver’s licenses. In the past year, the state has indicted members of at least seven operations on fraud charges.

The consequence may have been unintended, but it was foreseeable.  Extending a legal privilege to a person whose very existence breaks the law of the country encourages more law-breaking.

It’s a good thing for New Mexico that newly elected Governor Susana Martinez is a former prosecutor.  Too bad for America that President Barack Obama isn’t.

The bad news about the Obama Administration’s more than half a billion dollar investment in Solyndra — the California solar energy company that has gone bankrupt and laid off approximately 1,100 employees — keeps piling up. In addition to being a waste of taxpayer money, there are also issues about whether or not the federal loan guarantees were properly vetted, about private investors getting to jump in front of the taxpayers as secured creditors, and about why Solyndra received dramatically lower interest rates than similarly situated firms.

While all those issues are both troubling and relevant, the proliferation of trees runs the risk of obscuring the forest here. That’s why this passage from Matthew Continetti’s new piece in the Weekly Standard is so valuable:

In today’s economy, risks are socialized while profit is privatized. The government uses deficit spending to shape investment decisions and support markets that otherwise wouldn’t exist. Political connections determine the recipients of government largesse. Rentiers conceal their self-interest behind the organic hemp cloak of environmentalism and global “competitiveness.” The illusion can be maintained for a time, but in the end the bill comes due. There’s no money left. And everything disappears.

Ably stated. There’s a reason they’re starting to call it “venture socialism”.

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:

5:00 pm (EDT):  Professor John Yoo, Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American Security

5:30 pm (EDT):  Jason Stverak, President of the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, Citizen Journalists and Investigative Reporting

6:00 pm (EDT): Robert Knight, Senior Fellow American Civil Rights Union, ACLU’s “Don’t Filter Me” Campaign

6:30 pm (EDT):  Tim Wyrosdick, Superintendent of Schools Santa Rosa County, Race to the Top, Teacher Bonuses based on Student Performance, and Secretary Duncan’s Digital Promise to our Nation’s Children

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

An interesting critique is starting to surface: Big Government and Big Business are conspiring to enrich themselves at the expense of job and wealth creation for the middle and lower classes.  Demographer Joel Kotkin is noticing it.  So too, is potential GOP presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

As Kotkin notes, grassroots Democrats are noticing that President Barack Obama’s neglect of job creation is costing their members dearly.  (Just ask California Democrat Maxine Waters.)  Republican presidential frontrunner Rick Perry is weakest on the issue of crony capitalism.  Palin’s critique of the Big Business-Big Government axis could expand a core Tea Party theme into a viable national campaign.

Of course, this argument may fizzle, but it’s interesting to see quite different commentators coming out with the same idea.

While congressional investigators continue to probe into whether the Obama Administration broke federal laws in awarding a $535 million loan to now-bankrupt Solyndra, the Wall Street Journal details how crony capitalism prolonged a series of bad decisions by the solar company’s management.

Here’s the money paragraph:

In mid-2009, Solyndra had a choice: It could hunker down with its existing factory and try to slash costs to meet competition, drawing on additional private capital as needed, according to the people familiar with the company. Or, with a loan from Uncle Sam, it could gamble and build a brand-new, bigger factory in a bid to gain economies of scale and dominate the market.

Choosing to gamble, Solyndra overbuilt its manufacturing capacity, and continued rushing to market a product that was not marketed – or priced – correctly.

As the WSJ article makes clear, not all of Solyndra’s problems were the result of inept management.  An unexpected drop in the price of a competing product turned Solyndra’s profitability upside down.  The market was sending Solyndra’s management a message to rethink their strategies.  The Obama Administration bypassed that all-important-process with huge amounts of money to continue pursuing failure.

Come to think of it, that pretty much sums up the president’s thinking when it comes to government spending.  No wonder his new jobs plan is dead on arrival.

Yesterday was a victory of sorts for those of us who want Congress to clip the wings of the regulatory state.  In a near-perfect party-line vote the House of Representatives passed a measure prohibiting the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from harassing businesses like Boeing for moving to business friendly states.

Earlier this year, the liberal majority on the NLRB sued Boeing for opening up a new factory in South Carolina – a right-to-work state – instead of expanding its existing manufacturing presence in Washington state, a union shop state.  For the first time in its history, NLRB interpreted its congressionally delegated authority to include the power to punish a private business for relocating some of its operations to more profitable climes.

Congress now has an opportunity to correct NLRB’s overly broad interpretation.

NRLB’s unprecedented decision merits a brush back response like the one the GOP-controlled House delivered yesterday.  Though the measure is likely to die in the Democrat-controlled Senate, the Boeing-NLRB tussle should be some Republican presidential candidate’s Exhibit A on the regulatory overreach of Obama’s federal government.

Unions can only grow if businesses grow first.  It’s time for the liberals at the NLRB and elsewhere to remember that simple truth.

H/T: Washington Times

Speaker John Boehner’s jobs plan is well targeted. It was especially encouraging to see him lead with useful attacks on the regulatory state. As a matter of fact, if you look at the summary of his plan, you’ll see that item number one is about requiring congressional approval for “major” new regulations. What he’s referring to is the REINS Act, which we wrote about a couple of times while I was at the Washington Times. This is good stuff, and very important. Please do read those two links in the previous section for an explanation. The first of those came almost a year ago to the day; the numbers need updating, but this paragraph provides a sense of the problem:

Under the Obama administration, bureaucrats have gone wild, with the Code of Federal Regulations reaching a record 163,333 pages last year (and growing). That’s an increase of 22,000 pages since 2000. In 2008, the Small Business Administration estimated that the annual cost to the economy of these regulations was $1.75 trillion, which was even before the regulatory explosion under Mr. Obama.

On deregulation, Boehner is on the right track.

The Los Angeles Times reports that California’s unemployment is now 12.1 percent statewide, 25 percent higher than the national average, and second only to Nevada’s 13.4 percent.

For decades, California politicians have prided themselves on being “first in the nation” on numerous job-killing efforts such as fanciful global warming regulations, onerous land use regulations, and stupefying bans on products like Mylar balloons and plastic bags at grocery stores.

Recently, Troy wrote a painfully insightful piece on yet another attempt to wage war on business by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (higher taxes on commercial property).

California’s political class cannot resist the siren song of being the first to put the screws to the engines of economic growth.  If Villaraigosa’s plan becomes reality, perhaps the Golden State will finally be first in a category no one should want: unemployment.

This week’s edition of the Liberty Update, CFIF’s weekly e-newsletter, is out. Below is a summary of its contents:

Senik:  A Conservative’s Guide to Obama’s Flawed Jobs Proposal
Hillyer:  Yes, $2 Gasoline is Possible
Lee:  “Let Him Die” Or Government Healthcare? That’s a False Dichotomy
Ellis:  Postal Reform is Opportunity for Innovation, Not Capitulation
Ellis:  Paul Krugman’s 9/11: A Liberal History Lesson

Freedom Minute Video:  The New Adventures of Old Obama
Podcast:  Consequences of Neutering America’s Space Program
Jester’s Courtroom:  White Castle Craver Files Lawsuit

Editorial Cartoons:  Latest Cartoons of Michael Ramirez
Quiz:  Question of the Week
Notable Quotes:  Quotes of the Week

If you are not already signed up to receive CFIF’s Liberty Update by e-mail, sign up here.

In this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino analyzes President Obama’s “jobs plan,” which he outlined last week before a joint session of Congress.  While the plan has been advertised by the president as a bold new approach to job creation, Giachino says the details reveal that it is nothing more than “a new version of the same old song.”

In an interview with CFIF, George Landrith, President of Frontiers of Freedom, discusses why the end of the space shuttle program and America’s dominance in space are huge mistakes.

Listen to the interview here.

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.

Oh, the policy initiatives of a First Lady. In most White Houses, they’re confined to feel-good exhortations to increase child literacy or avoid the temptations of drugs. And at their best, they’re an opportunity for the president’s spouse to take a stand on an issue better handled by civil society than government. That’s not without merit. The voice of an influential public figure can certainly change popular attitudes for the better.

What’s a little dismaying however, is when what starts as an earnest appeal to self-improvement becomes an excuse for nannyism and artificial quotas. Consider this, from the Daily Caller:

Bending to the whims of Michelle Obama, Darden Restaurants — the company that owns the Olive Garden, Red Lobster, LongHorn Steakhouse and other restaurant concepts — announced Thursday that it will cut the “calorie footprint” and sodium levels in its meals and create new kids’ menus to comply with the first lady’s public health objectives.

With Michelle Obama, Darden unveiled its plans for all 19,000 of its restaurants in 49 states at an Olive Garden restaurant in Hyattsville, Md., in front of a prominent sign advertising the first lady’s “Let’s Move!” campaign.

The company pledged to reduce the overall calories and sodium in its meals by 10 percent over the next five years, and by 20 percent over 10 years.

Is the First Lady’s goal to suck all the joy out of life? Has our concept of limited government been so diminished that we’ll accept being hectored by the waiter at the Red Lobster over how many cheddar bay biscuits we’ve had because it’s a directive from Michelle Obama’s office?

The First Lady is certainly right that Americans could stand to step up their excercise regimes and cut back on the calories. But taking away options is the low road to virtue. If her case is compelling, it’ll sink in on the merits. If not, those are the wages of living in a free society.

As for those cheddar bay biscuits, I have five words for Mrs. Obama: “… from my cold, dead hands.”

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.

Rush may have the bravado. Hannity may be able to move the polls. But when it comes to sheer depth of insight, few figures in conservative talk radio can match the great Dennis Prager. In his most recent column, available on National Review Online, he makes an important point about 9/11 in his trademark style: simple yet profound.

The United States of America is a flawed society. Composed of human beings, it must inevitably be flawed. But in terms of the goodness achieved inside its borders, and spread elsewhere in the world, it is the finest country that has ever existed. If you were to measure the moral gulf between America and those who despise it, the distance would have to be measured in light-years.

If the academic and opinion-forming classes of the world had any moral courage, they would instead have asked the most obvious question that the events of 9/11 provoked: Were the mass murderers who flew those airplanes into American buildings an aberration, or were they a product of their culture?

The further we get from that horrible day, the dimmer our view of the moral horizon tends to become. Here’s to Dennis Prager, for always being a source of illumination.

We’ve long known that Pat Sajak counts himself a resident of the political right. Now, thanks to this new video from Chuck Woolery, it looks like we may be able to go so far as to carve out a game show host exception to the otherwise ironclad rule of Hollywood leftism. No word yet on Alex Trebek, but don’t hold your breath … he’s Canadian.

In addition to agreeing with Jennifer Rubin, here, I have the following, ultra-summary, reactions to last night’s debate and the state of the GOP presidential nomination race:

Herman Cain: When he talks foreign policy, he seems completely lost. When he talks economics, he is wonderful. He’s also incredibly likable. If he doesn’t get the nomination, he should be Secretary of the Treasury. His combination of practical business experience and chairmanship of the Kansas City branch of the Federal Reserve gives him great qualifications for that position.

Michelle Bachmann: You gotta love her passion and principles. Not so much her knowledge. She is actually way out in right field to say that Romneycare is “unconstitutional.” It’s not — not at the state level. The problem isn’t that it violates the Constitution; the problem is that the individual mandate tramples on liberty and completely upends the American understanding of individual choice and personal responsibility — not to mention the practical drawbacks of Romneycare as a whole.

Newt Gingrich: He shines in most of the debates. But his personality, temperament, and philosophical benders are probably not suited to the presidency.

Jon Huntsman: Condescending, unctuous, and with a nasty streak. And unconservative to boot.

Rick Perry: As I wrote last night, the man had a very bad evening.  I saw multiple other analysts say the same. He needs to improve his game, and fast, or else he could enter Fred Thompson-ville. (I like Thompson, by the way; this is in terms of political trajectory, not personal candidate preference.)

Mitt Romney: Plastic.

Ron Paul: When he’s right, he’s really right. But when he’s wrong, he’s in outer space, in fact in another galaxy. He was hurt politically very badly last night by Rick Santorum’s apt criticism of Paul’s goofball statements relating to 9/11.

Rick Santorum: Okay, I’m a big Santorum fan. This is the third straight debate in which I am hardly alone among pundits in saying that he really was impressive. Isn’t it time people stop saying: “He did great; too bad he can’t win,” and instead start saying: “He did great; maybe he might have a chance to win”?

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.