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IPI News
Dear Friend,
Happy 4th of July from IPI!
Whether it's fireworks, hot dogs, a tea party, a baseball game or a meetup with family, we at IPI hope you have a spectacular 4th of July holiday.
At some point this weekend, try to find time to read the text of the Declaration of Independence. It's surprising how many Americans are unfamiliar with the language and the arguments in the Declaration. It inspires me every time I read it.
The principles of limited government, personal freedom, property rights, and a government that respects and encourages these rights, is what animates us here at IPI. We have to be constantly vigilant, constantly at the ready, and always communicating these values and applying them in as many ways as possible to the policy debates of the moment.
Our goal is NOT to take the country in an exciting new communitarian and egalitarian direction envisioned by European socialists and Latin American Marxists. No, let's leave that vision to them. Our vision for America is the vision of Jefferson, and Madison, and Reagan.
Happy 4th of July! Read More...
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Nothing sends a chill up your spine like finding out you're going to be examined by the IRS, and for a nonprofit policy think tank, it goes double. So when I found out last November that IPI was going to be the subject of an IRS examination, it pretty much took over my life.
The last time IPI was audited by the IRS was in 1993, back when almost every prominent right-leaning policy group was coincidentally audited during the Clinton administration. IPI sailed through that exam with flying colors. My attitude since has been that a nonprofit probably ought to expect to be examined every 10 or 15 years. So we weren't outraged or anything about being examined, but we were appropriately concerned.
If you don't know, the most important thing about a 501(c)(3) organization is preserving its tax-exempt status, and there are number of test and pitfalls in the IRS code for nonprofits. In fact, every time I see some guy wanting to start his own (c)(3), I'm always amazed. There's no way he is fully aware of all of the burdens of compliance that lay ahead of him. If he were, he'd approach an existing organization and try to accomplish what he wants to accomplish through an organization that already knows the law and the requirements, which is already in compliance and which knows how to comply. Read More...
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This week, the U.S. federal government has seized control of the country’s two major home-mortgage funding agencies, the Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
We predict lots of disagreement in coming days over whether or not the feds should have taken this action. After all, the two agencies have not yet failed, and have both claimed sufficient liquidity to handle existing obligations. And the result of the fed’s actions is the disappearance of billions of dollars in shareholder value, which we're guessing won't happen without an outcry.
(Don't forget, if you have a 401k or an IRA, the odds are very strong that you owned stock in either or both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.)
But regardless of whether or not you agree with federal seizure of control, the action was the endgame of a dramatic policy failure with regard to the two institutions. Read More...
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IPI's offices have closed today due to an unexpected (and very pretty) snowstorm.
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Today was a big day at IPI, at least from an office point of view.
Today we switched over to a VoIP (Voice over IP) telephone system, which involves (among other things) changing ISPs.
Changing ISPs means temporarily disrupting your mail server, if you run your own email server, as we do.
Fortunately, we subscribe to a service called No-IP. In addition to providing spam filtering and email storage (in case of email server failure), No-IP makes DNS changes (such as the one we had to make today) easy and quick.
Within 5 minutes of changing the IP address of our mail server, our email was already flowing properly to our new IP address.
So we highly recommend No-IP. Read More...
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Just back from a few days in Aspen at the PFF Aspen Summit tech policy conference, so I'm way behind on a bunch of stuff, especially related to our study this week on the impact of music piracy on the U.S. economy.
I hope to get caught up over the next couple of days, dealing with objections and characterizations of our study. But I just had to share this one.
Today I get an email from someone who self-identifies as a member of the "Pirate Party of Utah."
His complaint is that IPI isn't objective on the subject of music piracy.
Now, let me get this straight: Someone who self-identifies as a member of the Pirate Party of Utah is complaining that WE aren't objective on the topic of piracy?
You can't make stuff like this up.
More later. Read More...
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IPI has no particular beef with the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA). In fact, I imagine that most IPI employees are, as I am, eager and enthusiastic consumers of the latest consumer electronics.
I'm personally a big fan of the consumer electronics industry, and at least once in my life got to attend their incredible show.
But CEA seems to have a beef with anybody who asserts that intellectual property infringement is a problem, and seems to knee-jerk every time anyone starts talking about piracy. I've never really understood this, because compelling content is a prerequisite for the CE industry. If there isn't compelling content, people aren't going to want to consume it by using the products of the CE industry.
So it seems to me that the CE industry is in a symbiotic relationship with the content industries, and they ought to at least be civil with one another.
Read More...
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Check out IPI’s latest op/ed published today in The Hill on the issue of free trade in agricultural goods.
Authors George Pieler and Jens Laurson say European policymakers have developed an unsubstantiated fear with regard to genetically modified food and make the case against the “precautionary” policy which has instituted absolute bans on the products. Pieler and Laurson argue that “there is no practical limit to the application of the precautionary principle,” and that it is “dangerously vague.”
While the authors admonish EU officials to qualitatively assess the risks when it comes to GM foods, they also point out how illogical bans provoked by unfounded phobias could do real damage to the global agricultural market. Read More...
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Read IPI Director of Entitlement and Budget Policy Peter Ferrara's latest op/ed published today in National Review Online. In it, Ferrara discusses Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama's proposed plan to combat urban poverty, entitled "Impoverished Poverty Program."
Although Obama's received accolade for this $6 billion proposal, Ferrara says these intiatives are not only outdated, but deficient and a waste of taxpayer dollars.
The solution to fighting poverty is not escalating the size of government programs and spending billions more for micro-initiatives, but rather empowering the poor by promoting private accounts, adopting school choice and providing vouchers for private health insurance instead of Medicaid. Read More...
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"The Ultimate Resource," a 1-hour documentary produced by the same people who produced "The Power of Choice," is being broadcast Tuesday night in high definition on HDNET.
The program will feature such well-known freedom thinkers as Johan Norberg and Hernando de Soto.
Free market thinkers in high def. What could be better than that? Read More...
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The minute you step onto my property uninvited, you are trespassing. Period, end-of-story.
However, because there are any number of reasonable and good and virtuous reasons for you to do so, such as to tell me my house is on fire or that my trash can has blown over in a windstorm, the law enumerates a number of specific exceptions to trespass, and also outlines principles to guide us in such matters.
But these are exceptions to the rule. The rule is still the right of the property owner to exclude trespass.
Copyright is the same. The minute you copy anything covered by copyright, you have infringed. Period, end-of-story.
But because there are several reasonable reasons for doing so, copyright law also gives us principles and standards for determining which infringements are "okay." These exceptions and standards are called "fair use."
But any of these specific exemptions are the exception, not the rule. Read More...
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IPI is gearing up for World IP Day on April 26th, and so is China.
On Saturday morning, authorities across the country oversaw the destruction of more than 42 million smuggled, pirated or simply illegal books, newspapers, CDs, DVDs, software and other electronic media in a bid to crack down on counterfeiters.
Coordinated events were held in 31 provinces and regions, including Beijing, Guangdong, Tianjin and Guangxi, sources with the General Administration of Press and Publication said.
Read More...
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IPI has just released a new publication by Peter Ferrara. "Personal Accounts not Tax Increases" is available on our website here.
A brief synopsis:
We will not get personal retirement accounts through tax increases, or cuts in future promised benefits. Quite the contrary, it was including these options on the table that actually killed the campaign for personal accounts. So it is those would-be reformers who misled the President down this pain caucus highway who should be held responsible for any future tax increases that will result due to the failure of reform now.
The only way to achieve personal accounts is to go back to the positive, populist reform model on which George Bush was elected. Read More...
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IPI's Dr. Merrill Matthews interviews with liberal radio talk show host Thom Hartmann at the Conservative Political Action Conference today.
In addition to interviews with numerous radio shows discussing a range of issues, Dr. Matthews also appeared on a health care panel, "Conservative Health Care Reform: Dead on Arrival?" alongside Robert Moffitt of the Heritage Foundation and Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute. Read More...
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IPI is hosting an exciting World Intellectual Property Day Event on April, 26. If you are in the Washington, DC area and would like to attend, let us know. More details below (additional speakers and panel topics still to be announced):
SAVE THE DATE
•••••••••••••••••••••
Annual World Intellectual Property Day Event
Intellectual property is the driver behind global economic growth and a key factor in the 21st century knowledge economy. On April 26, World Intellectual Property Day, join the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) at a policy forum exploring IP issues and solutions both in America and across the globe. Read More...
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IPI's Director of the Center for Technology Freedom Bartlett Cleland has an op/ed in today's Hill newspaper focusing on some of the most pressing concerns in the world of technology and public policy, such as global broadband, copyright, child safety and a handful of Web 2.0 issues. The op/ed comes the day before one of Washington's premiere tech conferences known as the "State of the Net" conference (sponsored by the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee)
Cleland challenges our nation's leaders to understand the importance of getting technology issues right for economic security reasons and to guarantee that our civil rights are not eroded electronically:
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MEDIA ADVISORY
A Communication from the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) For Immediate Release: Thursday, January 18, 2007
Contact: Sonia Blumstein soniab@ipi.org
IPI Experts Available to Discuss President’s State of the Union Speech
Dallas, TX –
WHAT:
President Bush is set to give his annual State of the Union Speech on Tuesday, January 23. Policy experts from the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI), a national free-market think tank with 20 years of policy experience, are available to comment on key issues to be addressed by the President. IPI experts have been interviewed and published on the following policy issues: Social Security, health care, taxes, energy, telecommunications, technology, and education.
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Our friend Doug Bandow has a new book out called Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire.
The title tips you off that the book will be controversial, but Doug's a clear and compelling writer who makes a great case. The book is a collection of columns and other writings on topics related to foreign affairs, interventionism, republic vs. empire, etc.
Here's the book's synopsis:
The U.S. once was a traditional republic, remaining aloof from foreign conflicts. Today there is no problem on earth with which Washington is not concerned. The result is an oversize military, perpetual intervention, and constant conflict. September 11 demonstrated that Washington’s enemies could strike America at home. Iraq shows how even great power does not ensure international success. It’s time for a new foreign policy. Read More...
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IPI has joined a number of other organizations in a letter released today urging the President to reject tax increases, including raising the income cap on Social Security payroll taxes. Read More...
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Welcome to IPI Policy Bytes, the "new" policy blog of the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI).
"New," because not only have we been blogging here for some weeks, but we have also folded into IPI Policy Bytes the content from another of our blogs, IP Blog, at which we've been blogging on intellectual property issues for several years.
IPI Policy Bytes is the "official" blog of IPI, and will cover all of the major policy topics upon which IPI focuses, as well as a few "off target" items as appropriate.
At some point we will more closely integrate this blog with IPI's official website, which can be found at www.ipi.org.
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Finally, IPI has decided to tell our side of the recent story about columnists who have been associated with The published column is on National Review Online here. I appreciate NRO running the piec Read More...
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My organization, the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI), released this statement this morning regarding some issues that have been raised about op/eds being funded by lobbyists. Statement from In Read More...
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Author: Tom Giovanetti || Location: Lewisville, Texas, USA