Freedom Line Blog

In our latest Liberty Update, we highlight how even some elements of the Biden Administration’s wasteful spending blowout that actually do constitute “infrastructure” are nevertheless terrible ideas — his broadband plan chief among them.  Along the way, we note in passing how part of Biden’s plan includes returning the U.S. to the inglorious status of imposing the developed world’s highest and least-competitive corporate tax, which the Tax Foundation illustrates nicely:

Biden Plan Imposes World’s Highest Tax Rate Upon U.S.

In this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino pushes back against calls by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress to use lower prices at the pump as an excuse to raise the federal gas tax.

2012  may be remembered as the year that Barack Obama dropped the mask. Based on his remarks at a campaign stop in Roanoke, Virginia on Friday, the president has no interest in making his peace with America’s entrepreneurs. In fact, his remarks there should make their blood run cold:

We’ve heard this rap before. It sounds suspiciously like Elizabeth Warren’s pep talk to a room full of agitated Boston liberals. But, if anything, Obama’s remarks are actually worse. Warren didn’t go so far as to denigrate hard work and intelligence, which the president seems to consider middling factors when it comes to being successful in life (note to the president: I’d absolutely love to meet these armies of workaholic geniuses who wouldn’t be succeeding without the federal government).

The asininity per square inch of this speech is pretty daunting, but here are a few corrective notes:

• Notice the examples Obama uses — teachers, firefighters, and infrastructure. These are all (by relatively expansive definitions, anyway) public goods. If there were a caucus of conservatives out there advocating boarding up schools, abolishing fire departments, and moving to a system of rope bridges, the president would have a point, but these are generally uncontroversial examples of public expenditures. Moreover, they’re not areas that are primarily financed by the federal government. Left unsaid is why taxes should increase to fund green-energy boondoggles like Solyndra, PR efforts for the stimulus package, or six-figure salaries for the Interior Department’s Twitter monkey.

• The constant liberal assertion that the economic growth of the 1990s — coming on the heels of Bill Clinton’s tax increases — shows that taxes don’t effect the broader economy confuses correlation with causation and ignores the effects of NAFTA, the IT revolution, welfare reform, etc. In truth, the 90s likely boomed less than they would have without Clinton’s tax hikes, something that the work of Obama’s own economic advisers suggests.

• Liberals love to trot out the example of the internet as government innovation that works, but it’s worth noting that the internet wasn’t designed with commercial purposes in mind, but rather as a communications tool for the military. And, in fact, many of the lingering inefficiencies of the internet stem from its government paternity, and a whole host of the improvements that have been made to it owe to market forces.

The incomparable Veronique de Rugy (Reason columnist and economist at the Mercatus Center) was recently a guest on Bloomberg TV, where she was tasked with rebutting the faulty economics behind the gigantic economic stimulus program that’s still holding back the American economy. As the video below shows, it was child’s play for this intellectually rigorous defender of free markets:

Surprisingly, former Governor Mike Huckabee (R-AR) comfortably leads all other likely Republican contenders for the party’s 2012 presidential nomination.  Though the lead is of dubious predictive value, the Other Man From Hope, Arkansas continues to be a genuine political force attractive to millions of Americans.  He did, after all, win the 2008 Iowa caucuses and come within a hair’s breath of winning Missouri’s primary.  Had he won the latter, the nomination fight would have boiled down to him and Senator John McCain (R-AZ), with favorable odds for an eventual Huckabee win.

So far, Huckabee says he won’t make a final decision on running until this summer.  The reason being his distaste for an 18-month campaign; a distaste shared by many voters.  Though Huckabee ran afoul of some fiscal conservative groups for some infrastructure spending increases he implemented as governor, he rightly pointed out that all of them were either mandated by federal judicial rulings, or popularly approved by Arkansas voters.

From all accounts Huckabee is probably the most normal person likely to run for president this cycle.  That alone may explain his widespread appeal.  Time will tell if it is enough to get him the nomination this time.

H/T: Political Wire