The INF withdrawal can help our North Korea strategy. Marc Thiessen writes:
In announcing his decision to withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, President Trump cited Russia's repeated violations and the fact that the treaty does not bind China, which is engaged in the world's most ambitious ballistic missile development program. But Trump's withdrawal may also be designed for another purpose. It sends a subtle but unmistakable message to North Korea: If you refuse to denuclearize, we can now surround your country with short- and medium-range missiles that will allow us to strike your regime without warning.
At the moment, the Trump administration appears to be making little progress in nuclear talks with Pyongyang. The threat of deployment of intermediate-range missiles in Asia could change the dynamics of those negotiations. Recall that in 1983, President Ronald Reagan announced plans to deploy hundreds of US intermediate-range Pershing II missiles in Western Europe in response to the Soviet Union's deployment of SS-20 nuclear missiles. The US deployment sparked mass protests throughout Europe, but it also put enormous pressure on Moscow — and in so doing laid the groundwork for a series of arms control breakthroughs, including the INF Treaty.
By withdrawing from the INF Treaty, Trump can now put similar pressure on Pyongyang.
[Marc A. Thiessen, "The Real Reason Behing Trump's Nuclear Treaty Withdrawal Isn't Russia. It's North Korea." American Enterprise Institute, October 25]
More health care options coming. Robert Moffit details a new regulatory change by the Trump administration that could help those in small group plans:
The proposed rule, jointly developed by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Treasury Department, would allow employer-sponsored health reimbursement accounts to fund the purchase of individual health insurance on a tax-free basis.
Today, workers and their families can use tax-free health reimbursement accounts to offset medical expenses, such as out-of-pocket medical costs. Under the new rule, workers and their families could use employer contributions to the accounts to buy health insurance on their own.
This opportunity is particularly valuable for workers employed by small business owners who cannot
afford to offer standard group health insurance, but who could afford to help offset the premium costs of their employees' individual coverage.
Treasury Department officials estimate that the new rule could encourage as many as 800,000 employers to sponsor health reimbursement accounts, or HRAs, to fund individual coverage for more than 10 million workers.
[Robert Moffit, "How Trump's New Rule Aims to Expand Health Coverage and Lower Costs," October 24, The Daily Signal]
What do College Diversity Officers do? George Leef writes:
Four Baylor University economists, Steven Bradley, James Garven, Wilson Law, and James West looked for any statistical evidence to show that having a CDO did anything to increase the hiring of "underrepresented racial/ethnic minority groups" for faculty positions. [...]
Their conclusion: "Using a wide variety of robust specifications, we are unable to find significant evidence that the presence of an executive level CDO alters preexisting trends of increasing faculty and administrator diversity."
The key phrase here is "preexisting trends." Pressure to hire more minority faculty and administrators has been a fact of life in American higher education for many years. Most deans and provosts have been on board with the diversity agenda for decades and don't need additional prodding from a CDO to hire applicants who, because of their ancestry, "add to diversity" rather than applicants who don't.
One obvious reason why hiring a CDO won't necessarily lead to more faculty diversity is the limited number of minority individuals who have the necessary credentials. The authors observe that there is a limited supply of diverse PhD job candidates for faculty positions and further that roughly half of those who do accept employment outside of academia. "Despite widespread desire to increase faculty diversity, it simply may not be possible to rapidly increase faculty diversity given the pool of available candidates," state the authors.
In other words, it's impossible for every college to become more "diverse" no matter how vigorous its CDO may be.
[George Leef, "What Do 'College Diversity Officers' Accomplish?" The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, October 26]
Lower-income workers are paying for protectionism. Ryan Bourne writes:
The United States raised $33.1 billion in tariff revenue in 2017, but $14 billion of that came from tariffs on apparel and footwear alone. These items account for 4.6 percent of the value of U.S. imports, but 42 percent of duties paid. That means while the average effective tariff rate for U.S. imports overall is just over 1.4 percent, rates for apparel and footwear are 13.7 percent and 11.3 percent, respectively. [...]
U.S. consumers pay the price of this protectionism, and poorer consumers especially. In 2016, the average household in the bottom income quintile spent $860 on apparel and footwear, or 3.4 percent of overall spending—the highest proportion of any income quintile. The average single-parent household put 4.5 percent of total expenditure toward these goods. The poor spend a disproportionate amount on clothing and footwear, and family structures most likely to be recipients of means-tested welfare programs (single-parent households) spend most of all. [...]
Where duties are applicable, a pure cashmere sweater import incurs a 4 percent tariff, a wool sweater a 16 percent tariff, and an acrylic sweater a whopping 32 percent. Men's silk shirts see a 0.9 percent tariff, cotton shirts a 19.7 percent tariff, and cheaper polyester shirts a 32 percent tariff. Leather dress shoes have an 8.5 percent tariff, whereas cheap sneakers would see a 43 percent tariff. Windbreakers, leggings, tank tops, and other clothes made cheaply from synthetic fabrics face a 32 percent tariff if sourced from countries that the United States does not have a free-trade agreement with. Assuming poorer households tend to buy cheaper products, these differential tariffs have perniciously regressive effects. [...]
The average household in the poorest income quintile spends $655 on apparel and $206 on footwear per year. Assuming the import propensities for the population as a whole apply to poorer people implies $595 of apparel spending and $199 of footwear spending is on imported goods. Taking average effective tariff rates for apparel and footwear for this spending (13.7 and 11.3 percent) implies a combined direct tariff cost of $92 per year for the average household in the poorest income quintile, or $204 per year for the average single-parent household.
[Ryan Bourne, "'Where Do We Have Tariffs?' the President Asked. On Clothing and Footwear, for a Start," Cato Institute, October 26]
The 2018 Buckley Award winners. The America's Future Foundation has announced four winners of its 2018 Buckley Award, recognizing young leaders in the liberty movement. They are:
—Ericka Andersen, digital marketing director of the Independent Women's Forum and the author of Leaving Cloud 9: The True Story of a Life Resurrected from the Ashes of Poverty, Trauma, and Mental Illness.
—Rob Bluey, Vice President of Communications at The Heritage Foundation and editor-in-chief of The Daily Signal, Heritage's multi-media news organization.
—Christina Sandefur, Executive Vice President at the Goldwater Institute, co-drafter of the Right-to-Try initiative, and author of Cornerstone of Liberty: Private Property Rights in the 21st Century.
—Carrie Sheffield, writer and founder of the multimedia outlet BOLD.
You can learn more about this year's winners at the Americasfuture.org.
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