The Heritage Insider: The Left cheats, how to help Ukraine, remember to register for Resource Bank! and more
Updated daily, InsiderOnline (insideronline.org) is a compilation of publication abstracts, how-to essays, events, news, and analysis from around the conservative movement. The current edition of The INSIDER quarterly magazine is also on the site.
March 15, 2014
Latest Studies: 48 new items, including an Institute for Policy Innovation report on why crude oil exports should be permitted, and a Cato Institute book on the Hobby Lobby case and religious freedom
Notes on the Week: The Left cheats, how to help Ukraine, more ObamaCare changes, and more
To Do: Find out what’s going on at the Federal Communications Commission
Budget & Taxation
• Chairman Camp’s Tax Reform Plan Keeps Debate Alive Despite Flaws – The Heritage Foundation
• The Deduction of State and Local Taxes from Federal Income Taxes – Mercatus Center
• The Uses and Misuses of Budget Data – Mercatus Center
• Does Boston Convention and Exhibition Center Expansion Really Pay for Itself? – Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research
Crime, Justice & the Law
• Dubious Mayors Against Legal Guns: The Not So Pretty Story Behind Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns – Capital Research Center
• Military Sexual Assault Reform: Real Change Takes Time – The Heritage Foundation
Economic Growth
• The Economic Situation, March 2014 – Mercatus Center
Education
• Drawing Meaningful Trends from the SAT – Cato Institute
• New Preschool Spending an Unnecessary Burden on American Taxpayers – The Heritage Foundation
• No (Gifted) Child Left Behind – Hoover Institution
• Matching Students to Excellent Teachers: How a Massachusetts Charter School Innovates with Teacher Preparation – Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research
• Educational Freedom—For Your Child, My Child, All Children – Public Interest Institute
Foreign Policy/International Affairs
• Is Deepening Shi’ite-Sunni Tension Plunging Lebanon into a New Civil War? – American Enterprise Institute
• Aid to Ukraine Should Not Be Held Hostage by IMF Politics – The Heritage Foundation
• Human Rights Committee’s Review of U.S. Record: Things to Watch For – The Heritage Foundation
• Is Ukraine a Watershed? – The Heritage Foundation
• Obama’s Meeting with Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk – The Heritage Foundation
• If You Want Peace, Prepare for War—U.S. Military Pre-Eminence and Why It Matters – Hudson Institute
Health Care
• Why the Patient CARE Act Proposal Is ‘Going to Need a Bigger Boat’ – American Enterprise Institute
• The Empty Promises of Arkansas’ Medicaid Private Option – Foundation for Government Accountability
• Medicare SGR Replacement Is Not Worth More Deficit Spending – The Heritage Foundation
• Proposed Rules for Part D Would Create Undue Disruption for Seniors – The Heritage Foundation
• Warning: Side Effects of Special Congressional Health Handout May Include Lawsuits – The Heritage Foundation
• Access and Cost: What the U.S. Health Care System Can Learn from Other Countries – Pacific Research Institute
• Self-Insurance: The ObamaCare Escape Hatch – Texas Public Policy Foundation
Information Technology
• What Is the Effect of File Sharing on the Creation of New Music? – Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies
International Trade/Finance
• Free Ukraine by Freeing Energy Markets – The Heritage Foundation
• Lift Restrictions on Natural Gas Exports to NATO Allies in the Baltics – The Heritage Foundation
Labor
• Expand Employee Participation in the Workplace – The Heritage Foundation
Monetary Policy/Financial Regulation
• Data Breaches and Payment System Risks – American Enterprise Institute
• Terrorism Risk Insurance Act: Time to End an Unnecessary Program – The Heritage Foundation
• Behavior, Paternalism, and Policy: Evaluating Consumer Financial Protection – Mercatus Center
• The Regulation and Value of Prediction Markets – Mercatus Center
National Security
• Cyber Supply Chain Security: A Crucial Step Toward U.S. Security, Propserity, and Freedom in Cyberspace – The Heritage Foundation
Natural Resources, Energy, Environment, & Science
• A Sensitive Matter: How the IPCC Buried Evidence Showing Good News About Global Warming – Global Warming Policy Foundation
• Energy Efficiency: Two Bills Aimed at Reducing Energy Consumption – The Heritage Foundation
• Three Cheers for Fracking – Hoover Institution
• The Case for Permitting Crude Oil Exports – Institute for Policy Innovation
• America’s Hydrocarbon Industry Can Revive the Economy and Eliminate the Trade Deficit – Manhattan Institute
Philanthropy
• Building a Radical Foundation: The Glaser Progress Foundation Makes No Bones About Its Focus on Far-Left Activism – Capital Research Center
Regulation & Deregulation
• The Entertainment Industries, Government Policies, and Canada’s National Identity – Fraser Institute
• Supplemental Applications Proposing Labeling Changes for Approved Drugs and Biological Products – Mercatus Center
The Constitution/Civil Liberties
• Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby – Cato Institute
• Does the Treaty Power Threaten Our System of Limited Government? – The Heritage Foundation
• Our Property Principle – Hoover Institution
• Wrong Way: How the Map Act Threatens NC Property Owners – John Locke Foundation
• Taking Contraband Without Taking Our Liberties: Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform in Texas – Texas Public Policy Foundation
The Left cheats. A few news items from the past month:
• The North Carolina State Bar is interfering in judicial elections by threatening to sue a challenger for false advertising because his campaign signs don’t include the words “for” or “vote for.” The challenger is a Republican, and the incumbent is a Democrat. Dan Way reports: “Like campaign signs posted by a host of candidates, including Supreme Court hopeful Sam Ervin IV and Court of Appeals candidate Lisa Inman, both Democrats, Phillips’ signs displayed only his name and the position for which he is running.” [Carolina Journal, March 13]
• Another item from North Carolina: The conservative John William Pope Center doesn’t count as a credible think tank on education issues—not in the eyes of the profs at the University of North Carolina, anyway. Jenna Robinson reports that the faculty’s resource page lists only one think tank alongside links to a variety of government offices—“NC Policy Watch, the ‘progressive, nonprofit and non-partisan public policy’ project of the NC Justice Center that regularly calls for increased funding for the UNC system.” [The Locker Room, March 12]
• Suggest that public schools shouldn’t get any money unless students choose to attend them and you’re likely to see a liberal’s head explode. Public schools will teach the kids that President Herbert Hoover had laissez faire economic policies; for a liberal, that kind of whacky history is a feature, not a bug of public schools. But what happens when you are a non-profit that teaches about the philosophical connections between religious faith and free market economics? Apparently, that’s so far out that it disqualifies you from being considered a charitable educational institution in Grand Rapids, Mich. The Acton Institute conducts a variety of outreach and educational programs that present a faith-based case for free market economics, including its annual Acton University. The Institute is recognized as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit by the Internal Revenue Service. Nevertheless, Grand Rapids has denied Acton’s request for nonprofit status in a letter that did not explain the reasons for the denial, reports Matt Vande Bunte. The city values Acton’s newly renovated offices, purchased in 2012, at $1.8 million and wants the Institute to pay $91,000 in property taxes on the property. [MLive.com, March 7]
• In Wisconsin, Democrats are chilling conservative political speech by conducting a John Doe investigation of 29 conservative groups that they say illegally coordinated their communications with the Scott Walker (R) campaign during the 2012 recall campaign. Of course, the prosecutors don’t have any evidence of that, which is the reason they have resorted to a John Doe investigation instead of filing charges. As Jason Stverak notes, such investigations come with gag orders on the non-accused targets of the investigation; which means the targets are prevented from responding when investigation details leak to the media. [Watchdog.org, March 4]
• The Federal Communications Commission has backed off of its plan to monitor broadcast newrooms to find out if stations are covering “the right” stories. The agency, however, is still busy implementing its media ownership rules, and those may turn into a tool to keep down a black conservative, reports Phillip Swarts. Armstrong Williams recently purchased two television stations, and a key part of that purchase was a service-sharing agreement with Sinclair Broadcasting Group. Shortly after the conservative commentator bought the stations, the FCC announced it would examine whether service-sharing agreements are a way for media companies to evade limits on media concentration. Williams said he would not have been able to make the purchase without the service-sharing agreement, under which Sinclair sells advertising for the station and provides other services. [Washington Times, March 10]
• Media critics, meanwhile, are worried that the late Andrew Breitbart’s and James O’Keefe’s expose-driven journalism has permanently lowered the quality of news consumption. In February, the Brookings Institution’s Darrell West and Beth Stone published a paper contending that the media should present more thoughtful, less polarizing analysis of public policy issues. As Mike Gonzalez notes, however, West and Stone begin their argument by observing that the most conservative Democrat is to the left of the most liberal Republican. As a rule, complaints about political polarization are almost always a cipher for complaints about conservatives winning policy arguments. Indeed, as Gonzalez goes on to point out, West and Stone “make clear that ‘thoughtful reporting’ would be what Ezra Klein, Andrew Sullivan, Jill Abramson, Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez—journalists ranging from liberal to very liberal—think is thoughtful.” If news consumers need help finding “thoughtful” analysis, who is to do the helping? Facebook and Google, of course. Conservatives should be wary, says Gonzalez. [The Federalist, March 13]
Less nuanced assaults on free speech abound: Global warming scientist Michael Mann wants to silence critic Mark Steyn with a libel suit. Modesto College wanted to keep student Robert Van Tuinen from handing out the Constitution on Constitution Day (it lost in a lawsuit by Van Tuinen). McGill University forced a student to apologize for the “micro-aggression” of emailing a non-flattering Obama gif.
The big and continuing story, of course, is the Internal Revenue Service’s invasive, burdensome, and selective requests for information from conservative nonprofits applying for tax exempt status, and the agency’s efforts to codify its abuse with new rules. Official Washington is hung up on the question of whether there was White House direction of the agency’s foot-dragging that sidelined conservative groups from legitimate participation in the political process for one whole election cycle. We learned this week from the report of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that the key official at the Internal Revenue Service was very worried that the Internal Revenue Service would get blamed for letting conservatives win elections. The report quotes Lois Lerner, head of the IRS’s exempt organizations unit:
The Supreme Court dealt a huge blow, overturning a 100-year old precedent that basically corporations couldn’t give directly to political campaigns. And everyone is up in arms because they don’t like it. The Federal Election Commission can’t do anything about it. […]
So everybody is screaming at us right now: ‘Fix it now before the election. Can’t you see how much these people are spending?’
The report continues:
Lerner openly shared her opinion that the Executive Branch needed to take steps to undermine the Supreme Court’s decision. Her view was abundantly clear in many instances, including in one when Sharon Light, another senior advisor to Lerner, e-mailed Lerner an article about allegations that unknown conservative donors were influencing U.S. Senate races. The article explained how outside money was making it increasingly difficult for Democrats to remain in the majority in the Senate. Lerner replied: “Perhaps the FEC will save the day.” [“Lois Lerner’s Involvement in the IRS Targeting of Tax-Exempt Organizations“ Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, U.S. House of Representatives, March 11, 2014]
Do we really need evidence that somebody at the White House told somebody at the IRS to crackdown on conservatives in order to know what’s going on? We can see that liberals are worried about losing power to conservatives, and we can see how often in the normal course of affairs they bend the cultural and professional institutions they control as well as the ostensibly non-partisan government agencies to the task of keeping liberalism in power. The evidence is all around us.
Video of the week: Social capital in the Big Easy: The Institute for Humane Studies’s Learn Liberty project is using New Orleans culture to examine economic ideas. Or maybe it’s just an excuse to enjoy a good party. Either way, here is Off-the-Clock economist Dan D’Amico exploring how music helped New Orleans recover from Hurricane Katrina:
By the way, did we mention that The Heritage Foundation’s Resource Bank will be in New Orleans this year? Register now, so that we’ll see you March 26 – 28.
Image of the week: Ukraine’s choice: Eastern European and former Soviet countries that have integrated with the European Union have done much better economically than those that have remained closer to Russia. This chart, from Kevin Hassett, shows why President Yanukovych’s decision to nix an agreement to integrate Ukraine’s economy with the European Union ignited so much protest:
[American Enterprise Institute, March 10]
Russia ranks 140th in the world in economic freedom, with a score of 51.9 (out of a possible 100) in the latest edition of The Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom. Every country of the European Union ranks ahead of Russia. The EU has an average country score of 68.8—and that doesn’t even include Switzerland, the fourth freest economy in the world with a score of 81.6. [The 2014 Index of Economic Freedom, The Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal]
Notes on Ukraine:
• If President Obama really wants to take a tough stand on Russia’s actions against Ukraine, he should free up U.S. energy markets. Allowing more production and more energy exports from the United States will in the long run make Ukraine and Europe less dependent on Russian energy, write Nicolas Loris and Jack Spencer. Among the actions they say would help are ending the permitting requirements for exporting natural gas, lifting the ban on crude oil exports, and ending efforts to make fossil fuel consumption artificially expensive (regulations on greenhouse gas emissions). [The Heritage Foundation, March 13]
• The Obama administration has some odd priorities, notes James Roberts: “The Obama Administration is insisting that before Congress can support courageous, Westward-looking Ukrainians, it must first reduce the power of the United States at the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The White House wants Congress to attach its approval of an IMF governance ‘reform package’ that has been pending for three years to any legislation providing urgently needed U.S. financial assistance to Ukraine.” [Internal citations omitted.] [The Heritage Foundation, March 7]
• If Russia annexes Crimea, it will risk radicalizing “an otherwise peaceful indigenous Tatar community,” writes Ariel Cohen: “As conflict between Russia and the Crimean Tatars escalates, there is a danger that it might bring international extremist organizations like al-Qaeda into the region, as happened in Chechnya during Russia’s military campaigns there in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Some Tatar extremists, who are Sunni Muslim, have already fought in Syria against the pro-Iranian Alawite regime of Bashar El-Assad and have links to the Islamic militants. […] This year marks seventieth anniversary of deportation of the entire population of Crimean Tatars by Joseph Stalin to North Kazakhstan and Central Asia in 1944. Up to 25 percent of the Crimean Tatars died in these deportations.” [The Foundry, March 10]
This week in ObamaCare and other health care news:
• As of March 1, the ObamaCare exchanges are about 2.8 million short of the goal of reaching 7 million sign-ups by March 31, reports Jonathan Easely. Oddly enough, as the deadline draws near, enrollments have dipped—from 1.1 million in January to 942,000 in February. The Department of Health and Human Services had previously projected 1.3 million would sign up in February. [The Hill, March 11]
• “Of the 3.3 million people that the White House has touted as Obamacare exchange ‘sign-ups,’ less than 500,000 are actual uninsured people who have actually gained health coverage,” writes Avik Roy: “McKinsey’s most recent survey, conducted in February with 2,096 eligible respondents, found that only 48 percent had thus far signed up for a 2014 health plan. Within that 48 percent, three-fifths were previously insured people who liked their old plans and were able to keep them. The remaining two-fifths were the ones who signed up for coverage on the Obamacare exchanges. Of the Obamacare sign-ups, only 27 percent had been previously uninsured in 2013. And of the 27 percent, nearly half had yet to pay a premium.” [Forbes, March 8]
• Two-hundred and fourteen out of 552 enhanced prescription drug plans would have been cancelled under a rule that limits the number of plans insurers may offer under Medicare Part D, says the consulting firm Avalere Health. Those cancellations and the resulting redesigning of continuing plans would have affected 94 percent of Medicare Part D beneficiaries. [Avalere Health, February 12] The justification for the new rule was that seniors were confused by too many options, but widespread opposition to the proposal has forced the Obama administration to shelve the plan, report Aylene Senger and Robert Moffit. [The Heritage Foundation, March 11]
• The Obama administration has suspended the individual mandate for two years, but didn’t tell anyone about it. Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that health insurance plans not meeting ObamaCare’s minimum coverage requirements would be allowed to continue until 2016. Burried within that announcement, reports the Wall Street Journal, was a paragraph and footnote that “allows Americans whose coverage was cancelled to opt out of the mandate altogether”: “[A]ll you need to do is fill out a form attesting that your plan was cancelled and that you ‘believe that the plan options available in the [ObamaCare] Marketplace in your area are more expensive than your cancelled health insurance policy’ or ‘you consider other available policies unaffordable.’” [Wall Street Journal, March 11]
Other things we learned this week (warning: some of these stories may induce pro-liberty activism):
• Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom was published 70 years ago this week, and its warnings “about the dangers from an ever encroaching paternalistic and interventionist government are no less valid now,” says Richard Ebeling: “Think of the mounting corruption from special interest groups feeding at the trough of government spending; or the misuse and abuse of intrusive power into people’s lives in the name of ‘national security’; or the imposition of a paternalistic scale of values concerning presumed ‘fair wages’ and ‘progressive’ redistribution of income and wealth; or the misguided and dangerous presumption that those in political power know better how people should live than those people themselves; or the arrogant discarding of the Rule of Law and constitutional procedures and restraints.” [Somewhat Reasonable, March 11]
• Rules for trigger warnings—notices of content that may trigger post-traumatic stress disorder—have arrived on college campuses. The fuss, reports Cathy Young, is more about ideology than psychological conditions: “[T]rigger warnings are rooted in the assumption that our colleges are full of walking wounded—victims/survivors of ‘the rape culture,’ the violent capitalist patriarchy, and traumas that are nearly always inherently political and related to oppression. The trigger-warning mindset ostensibly encourages traumatized people to remain stuck in their fragility; but it also cultivates entitlement and self-righteous outrage. When several students get up and walk out of a classroom because the (female) professor uses an analogy involving rape to illustrate the difference between correlation and causation, it is doubtful that their walkout is prompted by a debilitating fit of panic and anxiety; moral indignation is a far more likely motive.” [Minding the Campus, March 11]
• Supreme Court watchers expect the Justices to defer to Congress on the question of whether the ObamaCare shell bill procedure conforms to the Constitution’s requirement that revenue bills originate in the House of Representatives (the origination clause). What we have here, writes Randy Barnett, is the problem of “double deference”: “On constitutional questions, the courts defer to Congress’s assessment that its acts are constitutional. Then when you ask members of Congress whether what they are doing is constitutional, they respond by saying, ‘that is the job of the courts’ or, even more commonly, they predict that ‘the courts will uphold us.’ Of course, if the courts defer constitutional judgments to Congress, and Congress defers constitutional judgments to the courts, then no one is considering the Constitution itself. Double deference is a shell game, not to be confused with a shell bill.” [Washington Post, March 12]
• Sharyl Attkisson broke the story of the “Fast and Furious” scandal and investigated the Obama administration’s responses to the Benghazi attacks for CBS news. On Monday, she resigned from CBS News. Dylan Byers reports that Atkkisson “felt that her work was no longer supported,” while her colleagues “saw evidence of a political agenda, particularly against President Barack Obama.” [Politico, March 10] “If Attkisson is being shown the door at CBS,” writes Jonathon Tobin, “it is not because her work is not highly regarded but because she has violated the prime directive of liberal media insiders: thou shalt not report on Obama in the same way that you reported on George W. Bush or even Bill Clinton. The liberal bias that conservatives have long complained about is out of the closet.” [Commentary, March 10] As John Nolte notes, Attkisson’s boss and President of CBS News, David Rhodes, is the brother of President Obama’s National Security Advisor, Ben Rhodes, who helped draft the infamous Benghazi talking points. [Breitbart, March 10]
• Property rights won at the Supreme Court on Monday when the Justices ruled eight-to-one that easements given to railroad companies revert to the private owners of the land—not the government—when the railroads stop using the land. As Trevor Burrus explains, the ruling is consistent with how both American and English common law of dealt with easements. The ruling, in Marvin M. Brandt Revocable Trust v. United States, protects the rights of tens of thousands of landowners across the United States. [Cato Institute, March 10]
(Want more? Visit the InsiderOnline blog for daily links.)
• Assess the new realities in the telecommunications marketplace and the role of the Federal Communications Commission at the Free State Foundation’s Sixth Annual Telecom Policy Conference. FCC Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Michael O’Rielly will be among the featured speakers. The conference will begin at 8:45 a.m. on March 18 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
• Find out what the defeat of the United Auto Workers at Volkswagen’s Chattanooga plant means for the future of organized labor and federal labor law. The Heritage Foundation will host a discussion with Matt Patterson of the Center for Worker Freedom at Americans for Tax Reform, and Professor John Raudabaugh of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. The discussion will begin at noon on March 17.
• Hear Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal share some reform ideas with supporters of the Alabama Policy Institute. The Institute’s annual Mobile Dinner will be held at the Arthur R. Outlaw Mobile Convention Center, starting at 7 p.m. on March 20.
• Examine the structure and role of the Federal Reserve. The American Enterprise Institute will host a discussion on the topic “The Fed: Philosopher King or Servant of the Treasury?” The event will begin at 3:30 p.m. on March 20.
• Discover how to restore freedom and prosperity in America by attending the Institute for Humane Studies & Mercatus Center’s annual retreat. The theme of this year’s retreat is “Advancing Liberty, Creating Change,” and it will be held March 20 – 23 in Scottsdale, Ariz.
• Explore the Founders ideas on national greatness. James Ceaser will take up the topic at Hillsdale College’s Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center in Washington, D.C. Ceaser’s talk will begin at noon on March 20.
• Learn the best ideas and strategies for advancing liberty. Register now for The Heritage Foundation’s 2014 Resource Bank. The conference will be held March 26 – 28 in New Orleans. Resource Bank is a must-attend conference of today’s top conservative leaders—policy experts, think tank CEO’s, activists, and donors—filled with strategy sessions, networking, coalition building, and policy collaboration.
(Want more stuff to do? Check out InsiderOnline’s Conservative Calendar.)
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