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August 2008
Dr. Merrill Matthews is featured today with a brand new op/ed discussing the differences in health care policy between Barack Obama and John McCain, entitled 'Competing Visions on Health Care.'
An excerpt: "Despite his image as a politician who transcends party boundaries, Barack Obama's health care platform is mostly composed of proposals long propounded by the Democratic mainstream. And it just won't work. Take his plan to expand Medicaid, primarily by adjusting the eligibility criteria to include families earning up to $84,800 a year. Many patients already enrolled in Medicaid can't get medical care. Administrators have made major cuts to reimbursement rates, to the point that many physicians lose money on Medicaid patients. In New York, for example, physicians earn just $20 for 60-minute consultations with Medicaid patients. Read More...
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IPI resident scholar and health care expert Dr. Merrill Matthews is featured with a brand new op/ed on Townhall.com discussing “The Failures of Government-Run Healthcare.”
“Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, in a rare moment of honesty on what he’d really like to do about health care reform, recently asserted that if we were starting from scratch he would probably choose a single-payer health care system.
That’s a system in which people pay higher taxes and the government pays most medical bills.
Obama’s not alone in that opinion. Filmmaker Michael Moore took his “Sicko” audience to England, among other places, where we learned that doctors in that single-payer system made good salaries, had nice homes and cars, and patients were very satisfied.
Read More...
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In a new op/ed by IPI's Peter Ferrara featured today in American Spectator entitled "Obama's New Tax Welfare," Ferrara says:
In 1984, Walter Mondale ran for President promising to raise taxes if elected. He consequently made it to the dustbin of history even before the Soviets, averting a 50 state shutout by just 1,200 votes in his home state of Minnesota.
The recently released details of Barack Obama's tax plan, published on his campaign website, along with an article by his top economic advisers in the Wall Street Journal, confirm that Obama makes Mondale look like a moderate. For Obama pledges not just to raise taxes. He proposes to raise every major federal tax. The recently released details confirm that:
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IPI director of entitlement and budget policy Peter Ferrara will appear live today at 4:10 pm CT on the Dave Elswick Show to discuss Barack Obama’s “tax welfare” program.
To catch the discussion, tune in to Little Rock talker KARN on 102.9 FM or 920 AM.
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Why do some companies move offshore?
The Institute for Policy Innovation’s Dr. Merrill Matthews says Congress should learn a lesson from them.
Senator Hillary Clinton is mad—that is, angry.
She claims a growing number of companies are flocking to places like the Caymen Islands to avoid paying U.S. taxes. And she wants to punish them by denying them any government contracts.
But she never addresses why some companies move offshore. The U.S. has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. And some Democrats want to raise them even higher.
Clinton says she wants to reward “responsible companies” that stay inland.
Of course, Exxon does just that, yet many Democrats want to punish it and other oil companies with a huge “windfall profits tax.”
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This can’t be good!
The Detroit Free Press reported August 5 that the country’s top three automakers are looking for a bailout from Washington. So, you ask, what else is new?
Answer: the money and the likelihood.
Apparently, the “asking price” just a few months ago was about $20 billion, but now insiders say it may need to be closer to $40 billion. By the time the election rolls around, who knows? $80 billion? $100 billion?
And with Washington in a bailout mood these days, there’s little reason to hope for restraint.
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IPI senior fellow George Pieler and International Affairs Forum editor-in-chief Jens F. Laurson are featured today on Forbes.com with a new piece discussing the powerful, artistic propaganda used to paint the Russians as liberators for the ‘oppressed’ South Ossetians in Georgia.
An excerpt: Apart from the regular bullets and tanks, the South Ossetian war between Georgia and Russia has brought forth some alternative methods of warfare. There was an alleged cyber-attack on Georgian Web sites that served as a premonition to the military action. More significant, though, were the harshly harmonious sounds of Dmitri Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony, performed in South Ossetia's capital last Thursday. Called "Leningrad," the symphony came to symbolize the Nazi resistance movement during Word War II. Read More...
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This is a little outside of IPI's usual fare, but I couldn't help but note today's outstanding example of how the media write the story they want to write, regardless of the facts.
Today, an AP news headline, which was repeated on MSN, Yahoo, and other major news outlets, was Americans skip Labor Day trips as costs rise.
Here's how the story starts:
KANSAS CITY, Mo. - After missing out on summer vacations because of high fuel prices and a weakening economy, many Americans won't be going anywhere over the Labor Day weekend either.
The number of people traveling 50 miles or more will drop by 0.9 percent this Labor Day weekend compared with last year, the biggest drop in at least eight years, according to travel and auto group AAA.
Wait a minute, what was that statistic? Read More...
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Those famous lyrics from “New York, New York” just might have to be changed, at least for online retailers.
“Start spreading the news
I'm leaving today
I [don’t] want to be a part of it, New York, New York
These vagabond shoes
Are longing to stray
And make a brand new start of it
[anywhere but] New York, New York”
A new law from the state of New York thumbs its nose at the Supreme Court’s Quill decision, which held that for a state to require sales tax collections from a retailer that retailer must have some physical connection with the state.
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| Catch Peter Ferrara, IPI director of entitlement and budget policy, live today discussing more economic policy differences between presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and John McCain. Tune in to Seattle-Tacoma’s “The David Boze Show” on 770 AM KTTH at 7:30 pm Eastern/4:30 pm Pacific. To read Peter’s new op/ed co-authored by Jack Kemp on National Review Online, “Which Way To Prosperity?” click here. Read More...
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| Peter Ferrara’s provocative new op/ed featured today in the American Spectator online discusses “Poverty and Welfare in America.” An excerpt: “…BUT I WANT TO FOCUS here on Obama's answer to the question about why he wants to be President and what motivated him to go into politics. He referenced the biblical injunction from Jesus Christ in the Book of Matthew, saying, "Whatever you do to the least of these you do unto me." Obama expressed his concern that America is not doing enough for the least among us, the poor, the sick, the old. He wants to be President most of all to lead the government to do more for these most vulnerable and weakest of citizens, and ensure that they are cared for adequately. This sentiment is what motivates most grassroots Democrats, who hold the vague and uninformed notion that America is not doing nearly enough to combat widespread poverty. Read More...
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Jack Kemp and IPI’s Peter Ferrara co-author a new op/ed featured today in National Review Online building on their discussion regarding the differences between McCain’s and Obama’s economic policies.
”The central question in this election is, Which candidate can most improve our wobbly economy? Here, the McCain-Obama contrast could not be sharper. Obama has proposed increases in every major federal tax. He has proposed to increase individual income taxes, with the top rate to rise to almost 40 percent. He has proposed to increase the top capital-gains tax rate by 33 percent. He has proposed the same for the top tax rate on dividends. He has proposed to increase payroll taxes, with a rate increase of 16 percent to 32 percent for workers earning over $250,000 a year. Read More...
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Should Politicians Decide Which Restaurants You Can Choose From?
Dr. Merrill Matthews of the Institute for Policy Innovation say Los Angeles may lose some fast-food freedom.
A Los Angeles city councilwoman thinks Angelenos are too fat. So she’s pushing legislation that bans new fast food restaurants like McDonalds and KFC.
While Los Angeles does have an obesity rate some 4 percentage points higher than the national average, lower-income areas tend to have higher obesity levels.
Of course, there’s already some 400 fast-food restaurants in the targeted area. So the bill doesn’t eliminate access to fast food.
And McDonalds serves fresh salads and yogurt—if people want to buy them. While more expensive restaurants often serve hamburgers and fried chicken. So why target fast food?
The real question is whether the government should decide your restaurant options or what you eat.
Read More...
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Listen live online Thursday morning at 8:33 am CT/9:33 am ET as IPI director of entitlement and budget policy Peter Ferrara discusses Obama’s tax policy with radio host Lynn Woolley.
In a new op/ed featured this week in the Wall Street Journal, Ferrara explains how Barack Obama’s tax-cut policies are just a new form of welfare.
To listen live online at 9:33 am ET, click here. Read More...
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Catch IPI director of entitlement and budget policy Peter Ferrara live this morning with Greg Allen on “The Right Balance.”
Peter will be discussing presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s tax policy, what Ferrara calls not a tax-cut plan at all, but rather a welfare plan.
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The Wall Street Journal recently ran has an important article by Stuart Weinberg, "Caught in the Crossfire." It describes the difficulties that small firms face in licensing patents to large firms. The fuss about bad patents and so called "patent trolls"--firms that own patents, but do neither research nor production, and that make their money from suing other firms--has lead legislators and courts to consider steps to make it easier to challenge and less disastrous to infringe patents. But the result is significantly less protection for small firms that do invent and then license.
"Caught in the Crossfire," describes the efforts of one firm, which was in the midst of negotiations to license its patents to Microsoft, when Microsoft initiated proceedings at the patent office questioning the validity of all its patents. Whatever the merit of the technology at issue, clearly this sort of proceeding has a bad flavor. Read More...
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Jim Frogue, the state project director for Newt Gingrich’s Center for Health Transformation, has proposed an idea that worth’s considering.
In recent testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Health, Frogue suggested a way to bring the transparency movement to Medicaid.
Transparency in government—which we discussed in the last TaxByte in relation to state budgets—is the notion that the public should have access to information about what politicians and others who spend taxpayer money are doing with those funds.
The federal-state Medicaid program provides health coverage for some 52 million Americans at a cost of about $330 billion (for 2007). And we know Medicaid is fraught with sub-quality care and fraud.
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| IPI director of entitlement and budget policy Peter Ferrara will be a guest on the Fox News Channel’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto” today at 4:20 pm ET to discuss presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s tax plan. In a brand new op/ed published today in the Wall Street Journal, Ferrara discusses how “Obama’s Tax Plan is Really a Welfare Plan.” "Barack Obama's tax plan is the opposite of supply-side economics. He proposes to raise marginal rates for just about every federal tax. He also proposes a raft of tax credits that taxpayers can receive if they engage in various government-specified activities. Moreover, the tax credits would mostly go to those who pay little or nothing in federal income taxes. His trick is to make the tax credits "refundable." Read More...
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IPI's Peter Ferrara has a compelling op/ed in the Wall Street Journal today which explodes the fact that Obama's tax policy outline is misleading, and is focused on promoting welfare, not economic growth.
We'll have much more to say about Peter's op/ed and subsequent media appearances shortly.
Reinforcing Peter's point is another piece in the WSJ today by William McGurn, which points out that Obama is fully aware that raising the capital gains tax rate will lower the amount of money that comes into the federal government--that raising the tax RATE results in reducing the tax REVENUE. In other words, a tax rate hike on taxpayers is actually a tax revenue cut to the federal government.
But that doesn't trouble Obama, because for Obama, taxes aren't about revenue--they are purely social policy. Read More...
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IPI’s Peter Ferrara will be a guest on the nationally syndicated “The Lars Larson Show” today at 6:20 pm ET/5:20 pm CT to discuss his recent op/ed on the ‘flower power’ energy policies of Barack Obama.
To find a station near you, click here.
To read Peter’s op/ed in the American Spectator, click here. Read More...
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In a new op/ed featured online in The American Spectator, IPI’s Peter Ferrara discusses Barack Obama’s proposed centralized government energy policies that Ferrara calls “flower power.”
An excerpt: "Barack Obama proposes that we seize the profits of the oil companies and use them for $1,000 "energy rebate" checks to every working family in America. That is what he said in his speech in Lansing, Michigan on August 4, 2008, entitled "New Energy for America." Economist Donald Boudreaux pointed out that seizing all oil profits would still not be enough to fund these $1,000 giveaway checks.
If the government is going to target an industry it has vilified in the public mind, loot all its profits, and then use the money for giveaway checks to buy votes, then what has our nation become?
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The apparent collapse of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Doha round of trade talks is indefensible. But at least one good thing came out of it: the (temporarily, at least) failure of an effort to amend WTO’s TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) provisions in some alarming ways.
A group of developing countries, with the assistance of the European Union, was fighting to make several substantive changes to TRIPS:
- Establish an international register of geographical indicators (GI) for wine and spirits;
- Extend GI protections for products other than wine and spirits; and, finally,
- Bring TRIPS into compliance with the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
The international GI register has already been agreed to and seems to have little negative impact if it’s voluntary and nonbinding. Read More...
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The Institute for Policy Innovation’s Dr. Merrill Matthews says no, it’s time to increase economic growth.
Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform says that Congress hasn’t passed a federal tax increase in 15 years.
The last one was in 1993 under President Bill Clinton, and it was a whopper. Under President Bush, there has actually been a tax cut every year.
But that doesn’t mean federal revenues have gone down. Federal revenue in 1990 was about $1 trillion; in 2007 it was $2.5 trillion.
There’s an important lesson here: a tax increase doesn’t mean a revenue increase. And a tax cut doesn’t necessarily mean a revenue cut.
Federal revenues depend on economic growth. When the economy is growing, both family and government revenues rise.
That means we need politicians who will grow the economy, not our taxes.
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| Finally—a trend that works for us taxpayers instead of against us! Government is giving us a close, careful and woefully overdue look at what happens with our tax dollars. No kidding. The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 set up a free, publicly searchable website (www.usaspending.gov). On it the taxpayer can find all federal grants and contracts, as well as data on most payments of more than $25,000. Intentionally or not, by unanimously passing such unconventional legislation Congress kicked off a national movement—in the right direction, for a change. Kansas the following year enacted comprehensive legislation setting up a similar website for state spending. The next state to do so was Missouri. Oklahoma and Texas quickly followed suit. All told, 12 states now have their own where-your-money-goes websites. Read More...
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IPI’s Peter Ferrara will be interviewed by Greg Allen, host of “The Right Balance” this Wednesday, August 13.
Peter will be clearly illuminating the vast economic policy differences between presidential hopefuls John McCain and Barack Obama, recently featured in an op/ed co-authored with Jack Kemp in this weekend’s Washington Times.
To listen live from 10:33 – 10:50 am ET, please visit “The Right Balance” online.
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In a new op/ed featured today in South Africa’s Business Day, IPI senior fellow George Pieler and International Affairs Forum editor-in-chief Jens Laurson discuss how the legal trade of ivory benefits, not harm, elephant populations through the basic economic principle of property rights.
An excerpt:
AFTER nearly 20 years, ivory trade is legal again. This is good news for callous lovers of exotic trinkets or traditionalists among pianists, but hardly a reason for elephants to celebrate, you might think. Somehow it’s not more comforting to know that China, quickly becoming the premier neocolonial force in Africa, is a key reason why the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites) has allowed the export of 110 tons of ivory. Read More...
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In a new op/ed featured today in the Washington Times, IPI director of budget and entitlement policy Peter Ferrara and Jack Kemp discuss the economic positions of John McCain and Barack Obama.
An excerpt: "It's a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low, and the soundest way to raise revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now." Those are the words of President John F. Kennedy in 1962. He went on to say, "The purpose of cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus."
What's more, in Kennedy's annual message to Congress, circa 1963, he said: "In today's economy, fiscal prudence and responsibility call for tax reduction, even if it temporarily enlarges the federal deficit. Read More...
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In a new op/ed featured today exclusively by the American Spectator online, IPI senior fellow Dr. Lawrence A. Hunter discusses how regulatory competition is the solution—not the problem—when it comes to success for the nation’s insurance market.
An excerpt:
As a frustrated Al Pacino complained in The Godfather Part III, "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."
And he wasn't even in the insurance business!
Government modernizers, until recently, seemed ready to inject a modicum of regulatory competition into an industry barred from the same option enjoyed by banks -- choosing between state and national chartering and thus getting to decide who regulates them.
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The Institute for Policy Innovation’s Dr. Merrill Matthews says, apparently, and that may be good news
While the rest of the world agonizes over growing levels of greenhouse gases such carbon dioxide, researchers at the Theunen Institute in Germany are saying, chill!
They point out that far from being a pollutant, carbon dioxide is absolutely essential to life on earth. Plants must have it to survive.
Indeed, the institute suggests that increased CO2 levels could lead to a 10 percent increase in crops such as barley, beets and wheat.
Investor’s Business Daily says that researchers from NASA and the University of Montana claim that the earth’s vegetation has already increased by 6.2 percent over the past 20 years.
That means more food for animals and people, not extinction. Instead of all the doom and gloom, you might call it “doom and bloom.”
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In a new op/ed featured in the Mobile Press-Register, IPI senior fellow George Pieler and International Affairs Forum editor-in-chief Jens Laurson discuss the recent Boeing-Airbus contract dispute in Congress, and how it evolved into a global fight.
An excerpt: Might the never-ending story of the Air Force's competition for new refueling tankers actually end this December? Or will it lead to a new international trade dispute? In this competition's first round, Boeing officials were caught bribing Air Force officials, bringing prison time for both. In the inevitable re-competition, and after painstaking analysis, the Air Force awarded the contract to a Northrop Grumman/EADS partnership, which based its proposal on the Airbus 330.
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How does that old saying go? Those who refuse to learn from history are bound to . . . um, run for Congress?
Democrats have decided that since the first economic stimulus provided virtually no economic stimulus, it’s time to double down and do it again!
Having touched the hot stove and gotten burned, they’ve decided the lesson is to hold their hand on the stove even longer.
The New York Times says that many economists agree with the Democrats’ assessment. The story quotes former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who attended a meeting of Democratic congressional leaders to devise a plan. Summers is quoted as saying, “This is a serious situation. We are in much more danger of responding inefficiently than in responding excessively.”
There goes any respect we might have had for Larry Summers.
The story says that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and other Dems wa Read More...
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In a new op/ed featured today on American Spectator online, IPI director of entitlement and budget policy Peter Ferrara highlights an integral member of today’s American conservative movement, Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.
In the piece, entitled “Understanding American Politics,” Ferrara discusses Norquist’s new book, Leave Us Alone, and the two coalitions Norquist forecasts will define the course of American politics for the next 50 years.
An excerpt:
If you want to understand American politics, then you will read the new book by Grover Norquist, Leave Us Alone (reviewed by W. James Antle III in last April's American Spectator).
Norquist has a unique real world perspective on politics in America. Read More...
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In a new op/ed featured this weekend in California’s Press-Enterprise, IPI Director of Technology Freedom Bartlett Cleland and IPI senior fellow Barry M. Aarons discuss how consumers are fighting back against high communications taxes.
An excerpt: “There are signs that consumers have had it with government's addiction to high communications taxes. Consumers are now taxed, in many cases, more than twice as much on wireless services as they are on other competitive goods and services, as Scott Mackey makes clear in his recent State Tax Notes paper, "Excessive Taxes and Fees on Wireless Services: Recent Trends." But consumers, who in some places pay as much as a 22 percent tax on wireless, are beginning to fight back. Read More...
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IPI director of entitlement and budget policy Peter Ferrara discusses “What Kansas Knows” this week in a new op/ed featured in the American Spectator online.
An excerpt:
Few outside the Democrat party understand what has just happened in the historic primary season that recently ended. But in those primaries, the party made a fundamental decision that marks a dramatic turning point in American politics.
Bill Clinton swept up the Democrats in 1992 based on the new politics of the Democrat Leadership Council (DLC), which he headed. The DLC sought to remake the Democrats based on recognition of what had then just happened in the real world of American politics. Reagan's Republicans had won three straight national elections, thrashing unreconstructed liberals like Mondale and Dukakis in landslides.
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Author: Erin Humiston || Location: Lewisville, Texas, USA