ScaifeNet because we can't let Soros have all the fun...

The Obama Administration is apparently readying a “Fall Surprise” regarding its policy toward Cuba. The New York Times reports that the White House intends to ease restrictions on travel to Cuba and return to the “people-to-people” policies of the Clinton Administration. It will also reportedly make private assistance flows easier. Claimed one Democratic policy mandarin, the Administration has worked up “a smarter Cuba policy.”

The decision to loosen restriction comes as Cuba’s mismanaged economy is again in free fall and seeks help from any quarter. Cubans recently were informed that they must further tighten their belts since as much as a fifth of the nation’s workforce may soon be let go. Food production continues to fall despite Raul Castro’s tinkering. And Cuba’s exploitative export of doctors and medical personnel was recently exposed.

Changes would also take place at a moment when the convalescent 84-year old Fidel Castro is making a return to the public stage. Acting more like Nostradamus than the “maximum leader,” Castro is given to prognosticating that nuclear Armageddon is just around the corner because of U.S. imperialistic confrontations with Iran and North Korea.

It is surely an ironic fact that in October 1962 at the height of the Cuban Missile crisis, Castro urged the Soviet Union’s Khrushchev to launch a nuclear war against the U.S. if JFK landed U.S. troops in Cuba. An unrepentant Castro sees in Iran’s deadly nuclear quest the same visceral anti-Americanism that remains the guiding star in his geopolitical firmament.

Fidel’s return is, according to veteran Cuba analyst Brian Latell, “unbridled narcissism.” Valiant blogger Yoani Sanchez captures the muddle that is the political scene in Cuba: Fidel, she observes, “has come forward again to shamelessly display his infirmities and announce the end of the world, as if to convince us that life after him would be lacking in purpose.”

The Administration will move ahead despite the fact the Cuban are still holding AID worker Alan Gross, who was arrested in December, 2009 , and his being held without charges. Gross was engaged in a “people-to-people project” that ran afoul of Cuba’s ever-present security apparatus.

While failing to advance any substantial U.S. economic [jobs, exports], political [democracy, respect for human rights, freedom for Mr. Gross ], or security interests, the Obama Administration proposes to serve up the Castros and their moribund communist regime with a fresh bunch of carrots—more visitors, easier private assistance aid, and heightened legitimacy. This policy is the opposite of “smart.”

Following billion dollar bailouts and stimulus packages, the Administration is hoping to find “savings” elsewhere in the federal budget. One of its targets is defense. According to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the “gusher” of defense spending “has been turned off, and will stay off for a good period of time.”

His effort is misguided. It’s a political decision divorced from the reality of the threats we face. And it’s not a move Americans support. According to a new NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll, cutting defense is as unpopular as raising payroll taxes to fund Medicare. A solid 57 percent of adults say it would be “unacceptable” to reduce spending on national security and defense weapons systems.

The problem with restraining the defense budget further is that it is already near historic lows—and an unprecedented level for the nation in wartime. During the Cold War, defense spending averaged 7.8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). The Administration’s current budget projections show total defense spending falling from 4.9 percent today to 3.6 percent of GDP by 2015. In the words of the Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel, thanks to aging equipment; escalating personnel, overhead, and procurement costs; and increasing operational demands, the U.S. military is heading for a “train wreck” in personnel, acquisition, and force structure.

Defense is not the culprit of our budget woes, and it shouldn’t bear the brunt of the Obama Administration’s efforts to look fiscally responsible. This year, defense accounts for 19 percent of all federal spending, compared with 57 percent for our entitlement programs. As entitlement costs grow, there will be less and less left over for anything, including defense.

Americans are sensible people. They care greatly about security, not just for this generation but for generations to come. This new poll shows that Americans are far more willing to underwrite the costs of defense than our leaders understand. Let’s hope Washington is listening and, as the QDR review panel recommends, finds the political will to fund the kind of military forces our nation—and the world—expect.

It’s an unfortunate truth about Washington: Those who decide the great issues of the day seldom see the practical results of their legislative or judicial handiwork.

Court decisions almost always involve lofty discussions of constitutional rights, legal theory, and precedent. So it was last year when the Supreme Court upheld the racial discrimination claims filed by 20 white and Hispanic firefighters in Ricci v. Stefano. These firefighters had outscored black firefighters in lieutenant and captain examinations, which prompted the City of New Haven, Conn., to throw out the results and deny them promotions.

The firefighters then waged an expensive, six year fight to get the promotions they had earned, promotions that Judge Sonia Sotomayor did not want to give them. When she sat on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, she saw no problem with the blatant racial discrimination practiced by New Haven. Fortunately, the Supreme Court disagreed with her assessment.

On Friday, a story in the New Haven Register showed the practical results of the Supreme Court’s decision in Ricci. Matt Marcarelli, top scorer in the firefighter exam the city wanted to ignore, was sworn in as the new director of training at the Regional Fire Academy. He had already been an adjunct at the Connecticut Training Academy for more than a decade, where he gave instruction on basic firefighting skills as well as more specialized training such as how to deal with hazardous materials.

The fact that a public servant with such qualifications was not only discriminated against because of his race, but had to go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to vindicate his rights is really an outrage. Marcarelli is in a profession where lives are at stake. Sub-optimal qualifications and skill can lead to death and injury among the general public, as well among the firefighters themselves.

Yet as Justice Alito made clear in his concurring opinion, the City of New Haven—particularly its mayor, John DeStefano—saw nothing wrong with discriminating against its best firefighters for crass political reasons, and for an ideology that sees nothing wrong with discrimination – as long as the politically correct can select the victims. Sadly, this seemed of little concern to certain members of the U.S. Senate, who in their rush to confirm Sonia Sotomayor, were more than willing to downplay and paper over her approval of the city’s behavior.

Congratulations to Marcarelli and his other fellow firefighters who finally got the promotions they deserved. It’s a shame that they had to wage such a long and costly fight to get New Haven to honor the merit system in its hiring and promotions. Treating employees based on merit should be the norm everywhere. But too often these days it is not the norm, because nonremedial “affirmative action” – which is simply a euphemism for racial discrimination – is deemed acceptable by too many in government and academia.

With concern over the arms control agreement President Obama signed with Russia growing, those pushing for ratification are devising increasingly far-fetched reasons why the Senate should rubber-stamp New START rather than give the treaty the serious and deliberate scrutiny a nuclear arms deal deserves. From the beginning, arguments for the treaty have sounded like scare tactics, an impression only reinforced by the recent allegations that New START will compromise national security.

In his most recent effort to drum up support for the treaty, William Hartung asserted in the Daily Caller that, “without New START, there will be no verification system to help monitor what Russia is doing in the nuclear sphere. It doesn’t make sense to deprive our military of that critical information.”

Hartung’s argument for the treaty of course runs completely counter to the narrative advanced by New START’s chief cheerleader Sen. John Kerry (D–MA) who chairs the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. Kerry argues that the treaty should be signed because “relations with Moscow are far better” than they were during the Cold War. Well, time out: Which is it? We need the treaty because we trust the Russians? Or do we have to sign the treaty because we can’t trust the Russians?

Hartung and Kerry need to get their stories straight.

I would actually agree with Hartung that we ought to worry about what the Russians are doing. We have lots of reasons not to trust them—particularly regarding nuclear issues. The Russians primary interests in pursuing New START are to limit U.S. missile defenses and solidify their position as domineering nuclear power. How does trying to help them achieve their ends improve our national security? In fact, helping Russia become a more domineering nuclear power is a much more significant national security threat than a temporary lapse in the verification regime.

The savage truth is that the Russians are going to upgrade their arsenal no matter what we do. That said, it seems utterly illogical to rush to sign New START when we know the verification procedures are completely inadequate.

The New START Treaty’s verification regime is not even a pale reflection of the verification regime for the original START Treaty. The decline of verification standards is striking when one remembers the late 1990s, when U.S. President William Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin were discussing a START III agreement, limiting strategic nuclear forces to 2,000–2,500 warheads. For this decrease in strategic nuclear forces, increasingly stringent verification measures were considered mandatory. While it is not known what the Obama administration proposed for New START, they certainly did not come away from the negotiating table with a treaty and a verification regime appropriate for low levels of nuclear forces. A regime that permits widespread cheating is just as bad, indeed it is worse, than a gap in verification. Why rush into a treaty to obtain verification measures that are inadequate? A poor treaty will only increase the likelihood that the U.S. and Russia will be at odds in the future—and that is a much greater security risk.

Nor should we forget that it is the administration that negotiated the treaty that put us in this predicament to begin with. The White House could have elected to focus on concluding an early agreement with Russia on transparency and verification measures by amending the Moscow Treaty. This was the simpler way to salvage them. Extending the Moscow Treaty would have given the White House more space to try to negotiate a better deal. The administration ignored this advice and went for a more far-reaching and complicated agreement—and got its clocks cleaned by Moscow at the negotiating table.

Proponents of the treaty persist in arguing that we have no other options. That is wrong. The Senate can amend the treaty and fix its many flaws. Or the Senate can reject it outright and send the boys back to Moscow to negotiate a new one. In either case these are better options than being hamstrung by an inadequate treaty for the next decade.

Cross-posted at The Daily Caller.

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At 300 East 23rd Street in the exclusive Gramercy Park neighborhood of Manhattan, where to get into parts of the park you need a key granted just to residents, a new 98-unit luxury apartment complex has been built with an outdoor movie theater and panoramic city views. The problem is that not enough buyers are coughing up the $820,000 to $3 million the project’s developers are asking for the privilege to own a unit in the building. But don’t worry, the Obama administration is coming to the rescue. Last December, the Federal Housing Administration loosened its financing rules so that U.S. taxpayers would have the honor of backing loans with downpayments as low as 3.5%. Now rich Manhattanites can better afford condos in buildings with pet spas, concierges and rooftop lounges like the one in Gramercy Park, all on the taxpayers’ dime.

You read that correctly: the FHA, created in 1934 to make homeownership attainable for low- to moderate-income Americans, is now subsidizing Manhattan luxury condominiums. How did we get here? The mindset that allowed this unconscionable public policy to occur was on display yesterday in Washington, where Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner hosted his Future of Housing Finance symposium. While Secretary Geithner promised “fundamental reform” of our nation’s housing policies, he also insisted that the federal government must continue to play a strong role in U.S. mortgage markets: “There is a strong case to be made for a carefully designed guarantee in a reformed system, with the objective of providing a measure of stability in access to mortgages, even in future economic downturns.”

Geithner was not asked if FHA’s backing of Manhattan luxury condos fit his definition of a “carefully designed guarantee in a reformed system,” but American Enterprise Institute fellow Alex Pollock was there to at least throw some cold water on Geithner’s central-planner arrogance: “You can either, in my view, be a private company or a government agency — one or the other, but not both.”

Geithner’s “carefully designed” government intervention mindset is at the core of why the Obama administration’s economic policies have been a complete failure. Since taking office the Obama administration has used the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and other initiatives to buy one car company, give another to union allies, punish non-union workers, undermine the bankruptcy code, enrich Wall Street at the expense of Main Street, bail out Mickey Mouse, keep unionized zombie firms from dying and generally terrorize the world economy. That is why, for the first time ever in 2010, the United States fell from the ranks of the economically “free,” as measured by The Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom. From housing, to banking, to spending and taxation, the U.S. economy will only truly recover once it is clear to private enterprises that their best bet is investing in employees, machines and ideas, not lawyers and lobbyists in Washington. To that end, Heritage’s just-released Solutions for America chapter on Restoring the U.S. to a Free Economy recommends:

Unwind Government Intervention: The government should end the interventions it has made since 2008, starting with abolition of the TARP program. It should then abolish Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and repeal all U.S. government regulatory measures that interfere with mortgage markets. Congress should also repeal the Sarbanes–Oxley Act, which discriminates against small firms and reduces competition. Companies should be allowed to fail, and laws and regulations should create no expectation of a future bailout.

Reduce Government Involvement in Commercial Decision-making: Congress must eliminate the insidious practice of earmarking, which corrupts the legislative process. The government needs to divest itself of all assets acquired in connection with the financial crisis and recession and refrain from interfering in bankruptcy cases.

Reduce Tax Rates: Our corporate income tax rate, currently the second highest in the developed world, must be cut to restore U.S. competitiveness. The corporate tax rate should be set at or below the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development average of 26% to eliminate the incentive for businesses and jobs to move overseas. We should also stop taxing businesses as individuals, but rather reduce rates to 25%, which would help business to grow and create jobs.

Spend Less and Devolve Responsibilities: Congress should enact a firm cap on the annual increase in total government spending, limited to inflation plus population growth. Lawmakers should exert all effort to keep overall federal spending to less than 20% of U.S. GDP, the historical post–World War II average for federal spending.

Give Workers a RAISE: Union contracts set both a wage floor and a wage ceiling. Unionized employers may not give productive workers pay raises outside those envisioned in the collectively bargained contract. The RAISE Act (Rewarding Achievement and Incentivizing Successful Employees) would allow employers to pay individual workers more, but not less, than the union contract specifies thus restoring to millions of union members the inherent American right to earn individual raises through individual efforts.

On Monday, President Barack Obama visited the ZBB Energy battery factory in Menomonee Falls, Wis. Last January, the Obama Energy Department invested $14 million in the company, and President Obama was on hand to claim credit for every employed person there. But The Wall Street Journal did some homework and found that since going public in June of 2007, ZBB has been hemorrhaging money. The firm lost $4.9 million in fiscal year 2008, $5.5 million in fiscal year 2009, and has a “cumulative deficit” of $44.1 million. ZBB has admitted that its ability to continue as a “going concern” depends on securing additional investment. In a free market economy, private investors would provide those funds, reap the rewards if ZBB prospered and suffer the losses if ZBB failed. But under President Obama’s crony capitalist economy, ZBB is the big winner if the company survives, and if they fail, it is you, the taxpayer, who loses.

Quick Hits:

• Eight capitalists are suing Springdale, Utah, to enforce their constitutional right to open a Subway restaurant franchise in the town, despite Springdale’s proximity to scenic Zion National Park.
• Over the past decade, total local and state debt has soared from $1.5 trillion to $2.4 trillion.
• The Obama administration has issued a rare threat to sue Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio if he does not cooperate with its investigation of whether he discriminates.
• Despite leftist promises that the money would save jobs, school districts are not using the latest $10 billion federal bailout to hire teachers.
• The leftist majority in California’s legislature has filled a public employee pension reform bill with so many loopholes that it is now powerless to stop government unions from spiking their end-of-career paychecks.

On Aug. 4, U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker threw out Proposition 8, California’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage. But don’t drop those invitations in the mail just yet. A three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has put that ruling on ice – at least until December, when the court will consider a request by Prop 8 proponents to dismiss Walker’s ruling.

The court would do well, in the meantime, to read an op-ed by Edwin Meese III in The Washington Post. The former U.S. attorney general explains why even those who support same-sex marriage should be profoundly troubled by the legal ramifications of what he calls Judge Walker’s “arbitrary and capricious” ruling:

By refusing to acknowledge binding Supreme Court precedent, substantial evidence produced at trial that was contrary to the holding and plain common sense, the ruling exhibits none of the requirements of a traditional decision.

Walker’s ruling, in Meese’s view, is simply “too extreme to stand.” He goes on:

[S]tructurally sound opinions always confront binding legal precedent. Walker’s is a clear exception because the U.S. Supreme Court has spoken on whether a state’s refusal to authorize same-sex marriage violates the equal protection and due process clauses of the 14th Amendment. In 1972, Baker v. Nelson, a case over whether Minnesota violated the Constitution by issuing marriage licenses only to opposite-sex couples, was unanimously thrown out on the merits … The Supreme Court’s action establishes a binding precedent in favor of Proposition 8. But Judge Walker’s ruling doesn’t mention Baker, much less attempt to distinguish it or accept its findings.

As for the lopsidedness of Judge Walker’s ruling:

Walker’s opinion pretends that the voluminous evidence introduced on the side of Proposition 8 does not exist. It neither acknowledges nor attempts to distinguish the writings of renowned scholars presented at trial in support of Proposition 8, including that of anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, history professor Robina Quale and social scientist Kingsley Davis. It ignores the writings of legal giant William Blackstone and philosophers John Locke and Bertrand Russell. It even refused to address the fact that Congress, in the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, defined marriage as the ‘legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife.’

Meese concludes:

People can differ on whether, as a matter of policy, states should allow same-sex marriage. The robust debate on that topic should not be short-circuited by judicial fiat.

Contrary to progressive rhetoric, conservatives do in fact have alternatives to the runaway spending of the Obama administration. Today, The Heritage Foundation released Solutions for America-a 46-page outline of 128 specific policy prescriptions for getting America back on track. Here's...

The Department of Interior and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEM) announced that blanket environmental exemptions, such as the one granted to BP, will not be given until “it undertakes a comprehensive review of its National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) process and the use of categorical exclusions for exploration and drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf.” The government should use this time to enact smarter regulations, not unnecessary regulations that make it too costly for projects to move forward.

The NEPA process was originally set up to increase productive activities but at the same time address environmental concerns. But over the years it has evolved into a burdensome procedure and a political tool for environmental activists to stop projects built on federal land. Unfortunately, NEPA has evolved into an onerous and costly process that slows progress on critical public and private activities.

Now, most any major federal action—including the sale of offshore drilling leases—technically requires a detailed environmental impact analysis as part of the NEPA process before they are permitted. This can take years to fulfill, and the process is subject to litigation. For instance, it takes federal construction projects, such as those funded by the stimulus plan, an average of 4.4 years to complete a NEPA review and, consequently, the billions of dollars in infrastructure spending passed in the stimulus bill will not be spent until years after the economy has already recovered.

This onerous process has led to exemptions for projects that are deemed to pose little environmental risk. In fact, the Department of Interior (DOI) designed categorical exclusions for this very reason. As noted by DOI: “Categorical exclusions are actions that do not individually or cumulatively have a significant effect on the human environment and for which neither an environmental assessment nor an environmental impact statement is required. The categorical exclusion process was established to reduce the amount of unnecessary paperwork and delay associated with NEPA compliance.”

This should be a sign to create a more efficient NEPA process, not to deny future NEPA waivers or add needless regulatory constraints. As currently applied, NEPA is too wide-reaching and onerous, which results in the need to waive its provisions. In drilling alone, 28 percent of all drilling permit applicants received similar waivers between 2006 and 2008. NEPA’s pervasive application makes it highly burdensome and difficult to follow, which drives the need for waivers. As waivers become the norm, they become easier to attain—even when perhaps they should be denied.

Typically when federal agencies say they are taking a “new approach” toward rules and regulations, it’s not a good thing, especially with the direction in which this Administration is moving. Here’s a chance for them to get something right.

China’s reported holdings of U.S. Treasury bonds fell sharply again in June and are now almost $100 billion lower than they were in July 2009. The press reports this as meaningful and important. It isn’t.

You may have noticed that American interest rates are not soaring; in fact, they’re at historic lows. One reason they’re not soaring is because, contrary to widespread assertions, American interest rates don’t depend on the PRC.

The other reason is, over the same period, reported British holdings of U.S. Treasuries rose $265 billion. Why would the UK increase its holdings 273% in 11 months, when the yield on Treasuries is close to zero? The answer: China’s State Administration for Foreign Exchange (SAFE) has an office in London. When purchases are made through that office, they are initially counted as purchases from Britain, not China.

SAFE’s goal is to reduce China’s visible dependence on the United States. It is motivated by domestic political pressure within the PRC. Just as many people here think China holding American bonds makes the United States dependent on China, many people in China think holding U.S. bonds leaves the PRC hostage to American policy that could reduce the bonds’ value. SAFE is trying to hide some of China’s bond holdings by routing them through Britain.

SAFE obscures things – it’s a tool of the Communist Party. The problem is on the American side, where the Department of the Treasury reports monthly information on bond ownership known to be inaccurate. Treasury also publishes much better figures, but only once a year and late. The most recent figure from this more accurate data dates back to June 2009. It shows China’s bond holdings at $1.46 trillion, far above the initial figure from Treasury of $916 billion for that month.

The problem is not that China is selling American bonds; it almost certainly isn’t. The problem is it takes too long to find out who actually is selling and buying our bonds.

Despite their key role in creating the housing crisis, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not being reformed, and will continue to cost the American taxpayer huge sums of money for the foreseeable future. There will be a housing summit on Tuesday, but its already clear that the federal government will remain in the mortgage business, despite the scandals that have emerged. Bailouts of the mortgage giants have already cost the taxpayer $111 billion, and the Congressional Budget Office projects they will cost another $290 billion this year alone. (This is not counting the interest that will have to be paid since this money is borrowed.)

Sometimes it’s hard to even comprehend numbers this large, so a breakdown of this cost using the Center of Data Analysis Individual Income Tax model may be useful. About 44 percent of federal revenue comes from individual income taxes. 44 percent of $111 billion and $290 billion is still large enough to constitute a fair little chunk of personal income tax paid. This is how it breaks out by demographic group.

Such a huge cost, and for what? To bail out and subsidize companies that, along with $120 billion annually in housing tax breaks, drove a bubble in housing that has nearly taken the economy down with it.

Methodology here.

Sen. Kerry (D–MA), Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, took to the pages of U.S. News and World Report again trying to make the case for ratification of the New START treaty. He continues to tow the Administration line in attempts to demonstrate how the treaty is in the national security interest of the U.S. After posing a series of questions, he concludes, saying, “The opponents of New START cannot provide good answers to these questions. All they can do is stand in the way of common sense—and of our nation’s security.” Presented with the opportunity, here are common sense reasons why this Administration has it all wrong on the New START treaty.

Question 1: “Why is this treaty less deserving of approval than, say, the original START treaty, whose reductions were significantly more dramatic and which was signed in 1991, at a time of great international upheaval?”

There are a number of areas to address in answering why this treaty is less deserving of approval than its predecessor. The verification regime is one such area. When negotiations for New START began, it was believed that it would largely be a continuation of the 1991 START treaty. Nevertheless, out of the seven provisions in the original START treaty that dealt with verification, only two have survived. Most worrisome are the elimination of restrictions on the encryption of telemetry and the reduction of both the number and effectiveness of on-the-ground inspections, both of which will severely decrease our knowledge of the Russian arsenal. Furthermore, compliance reports from the State Department in both 2005 and 2009 demonstrate that the Russians cheated numerous times under the provisions of the START treaty. In response to the reports, General Chilton, Commander of U.S. Strategic Command, testified to the Senate that he was not concerned with the prospects of Russian cheating under the new treaty. In other words, this Administration has tossed the Reagan mantra of “trust, but verify” out the door.

Question 2: “Why, nearly 20 years later, when relations with Moscow are far better, would we not agree to modest reductions in our nuclear arsenals?”

Senator Kerry acknowledges that decades have past since the history of U.S.-Russian nuclear agreements began, but fails to realize that the role these two nations play around the globe is vastly different. This is a Cold War treaty in the post-Cold War era. Nuclear parity should not be the standard by which the United States negotiates treaties. Maybe in the world sought by this Administration where the United States is a country among equals, but most certainly not one in which the U.S. is that exceptional nation defined by President Reagan as the “shining city on a hill.”

Question 3: “Why, when the fight against proliferation is ever more crucial, would we not approve a treaty that will encourage international cooperation in the fight against the spread of nuclear weapons to rogue states like Iran?”

The thought that this treaty is going to be held up as a great landmark moment in the history of the non-proliferation regime is naive. What is similarly confusing is whether the treaty will negatively affect Iran in any way. If anything, it reinforces the pivotal role nuclear weapons play in getting a seat at the negotiating table. It also demonstrates that, once there, the U.S. is willing to make concession after concession while getting nothing in return (witness the failure to address tactical nuclear weapons and a ceiling on launch vehicles well above the number Russia possesses, meaning they must reduce nothing in that respect).

In the end, it is not the opposition that is threatening U.S. national security, but rather the actual ratification of this ill-conceived treaty.

Ricky Trotman is currently a member of the Young Leaders Program at the Heritage Foundation. For more information on interning at Heritage, please visit: http://www.heritage.org/about/departments/ylp.cfm

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Obama Administration have touted the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) as a beneficial and necessary negotiation, and urged for its immediate ratification. However, the negotiating record of New START—which contains critical information—has not been released to the U.S. Senate. Because of the importance of strategic nuclear arms and due to the ambiguity of this treaty’s implications, the lack of the negotiating record prevents an informed debate and deliberation in the Senate, obstructing the Senate’s constitutionally mandated role to provide “advice and consent” on all U.S. treaties. Senators ought, therefore, to demand access to all essential information in order to effectively discharge their duties as enumerated by the Constitution.

Obamacare creates a host of new federal requirements billed as consumer protections.  But enacting these policies falls not on the feds, but on the states.

Some of these provisions were among the more popular components of Obamacare: guaranteed issue for children; letting individuals remain on their parents’ health plan up to age 26; requiring insurers to cover federally-defined preventive services, etc.

The goals behind these mandates are worthy.  But they could be achieved in better ways.  The approach taken here is virtually guaranteed to accelerate insurance costs.  Ironically, Obamacare also requires states to review “unreasonable” rate increases.

What authors of the health care takeover failed to consider was whether states actually have the authority to enforce these standards.  Robert Pear and Kevin Sack report in a recent New York Times article:

Insurance commissioners in about half the states say they do not have clear authority to enforce consumer protection standards that take effect next month.  Federal and state officials are searching for ways to plug the gap. Otherwise, they say, the ability of consumers to secure the benefits of the new law could vary widely, depending on where they live.

Several states don’t have authority to enforce the federal standards.  How will regulators in these states respond to the new law?  Pear and Sack write, “Some state regulators said they would ask state legislators to expand their authority by putting the federal standards into state law next year. Others said they would rely on their powers of persuasion, the good will of insurers or general state laws that ban unfair or deceptive trade practices.”

Good will?  This isn’t the first time Obamacare has had to rely on the industry’s “good will” to cover up the legislation’s many flubs.

In Arizona, the likelihood of passing legislation to enforce federal standards is low, due to the state’s lawsuit against Obamacare’s individual mandate.  In Florida, if insurers fail to revise their contracts, the state claims no “has no legal authority to do so.”

These headaches are the inevitable result of jamming Obamacare through Congress without sufficient thought.  Moreover, they are the expected natural byproducts of central planning. The states are an after thought here, but the situation reveals Obamacare to be yet another example of federal encroachment into state authority.  If states can’t find a way to enforce the new standards, Washington will do it for them.  Yet implementing these policies will needlessly drive up premiums, putting states in a very awkward position.

The Heritage Foundation today released “Solutions for America,” a comprehensive policy agenda addressing the nation’s most pressing and ingrained problems.

Unless Congress and the President intervene legislatively, federal income taxes will soar on January 1, 2011 for millions of middle- and upper-income Americans. Tax relief enacted in 2001 and 2003 is set to expire. Whose money is this?

Is it the taxpayer’s money taken by government, or government’s money left with the taxpayer as a benefit? If current policy is preserved, is it a tax cut, are tax cuts extended, or has Congress prevented a tax hike? As a recent Brookings report reveals, one’s core view of government determines how one refers to these events.

Current policy has been the law of the land for 10 years. A tax cut then arises if a change in tax policy causes tax burdens to fall. A tax increase arises if taxes go up due to a change in policy. Conservatives would call the jump in tax revenues a tax hike, and the proposals in Obama’s budget allowing current policy to expire are the Obama tax increases.

As the Brookings alert announcing the report indicates, many continue to refer to extending current policy as a tax cut, which is plainly wrong. An individual with the same income in 2011 as in 2010 will pay the same amount of tax in both years.

But more responsible analysts such as the author of the report, Adam Looney, have adopted the language of “extending tax cuts.” Extending current policy is not a tax cut, but if the tax increases are avoided it will be because the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts were extended, so both uses of language—tax increase and extending the tax cuts—are technically correct. The choice of language one uses depends on one’s view of government.

According to the Brookings report “full renewal of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts will cost an average of $366 billion each year over the next 10 years.” Will cost whom? Will cost the government, of course. This captures perfectly the belief that the money belongs first to the government and citizens are permitted to keep some as an act of governmental beneficence.

The conservative perspective is that the failure to extend the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts will likewise cost an average of $366 billion each year over the next 10 years. Will cost whom? Will cost taxpayers; the people who earned the money through their efforts, intelligence, and sometimes good fortune.

So, depending on one’s point of view, raising taxes and not raising taxes would both cost $366 billion over 10 years. The difference depends on whose money it is in the first place. If the money belongs to the government, then preserving current policy costs the government. If the money belongs to the taxpayer, then allowing current policy to expire costs the taxpayers.

The Brookings alert further displayed this dismissive attitude about taxpayer property when it observed that if the tax cuts are extended then “the wealthiest Americans would benefit.” Does the money belong to the government? Then the wealthiest Americans are getting a handout through a tax change. As the Brookings alert implies, no one can justify government handouts to the wealthy—though it happens all the time on the spending side of the ledger.

Or does the money belong to the taxpayers? If so, then the “benefit” Brookings refers to is the benefit of being allowed to keep more of one’s own property. It is not a benefit to have less taken.

Do citizens exist to serve the state, or the state to serve the citizens? As demonstrated by the language they freely use, in the national capitol of the state we are still fundamentally vassals of the state. Even the most Washington-centric would bridle at this interpretation, but the language they themselves choose to use convicts them.

For far too long, the United States has failed to enforce its immigration laws. Its visa system does not adequately serve the needs of the economy, legal immigrants, or U.S. citizens. Cartel violence and continued illegal immigration along the U.S. southern border have many Americans concerned. Americans are demanding a border and immigration policy that will keep the U.S. free, safe, and prosperous—not an amnesty that simply exacerbates the problem.

The United States is at war. Since the September 11, 2001, attacks, the United States has detained alien unprivileged belligerents under the law of war and the congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). Although the Supreme Court has held that the AUMF allows the government to detain the enemy without charge, it has issued a series of decisions that have invaded the traditional province of the elected branches of government. This overreach by the Court has created dangerous uncertainty for those who are charged with prosecuting the war. The President must seek and Congress must pass appropriate legislation that defines who the enemy is and the rights he has, regardless of where he is captured or held. All lawful tools within the province of the executive branch must be utilized, including military commissions and, in limited appropriate cases, referral of cases to the federal court. The President should immediately provide the military commissions with the best resources our country has to offer, including the best federal prosecutors and defense counsel.

Many states offer “tax holidays” for shoppers during the back-to-school season, but families everywhere still pay extra at the checkout counter due to hidden import taxes that increase the price of everything from sneakers to baseball caps.  We have produced a graphic to help you visualize those import tax rates for some popular back-to-school items.

The first duty of the U.S. government is to protect the American people. The spread of ballistic missile technology and the existence of nuclear weapons programs in states such as North Korea and Iran make fulfilling this duty more urgent than ever. During the Cold War, the U.S. protected Americans by threatening devastating retaliation against any enemy who attacked the U.S. or its allies. Today, the U.S. needs a new strategy, a positive vision that combines verifiable arms control, missile defense, a modernized arsenal, and responsible non-proliferation diplomacy. This “protect and defend” strategy is a modern realization of President Ronald Reagan’s vision of “peace through strength.”

Today, every branch of America’s active duty military forces, as well as the National Guard and Reserves, are strained by the high level of operations that began in the 1990s. Despite the procurement holiday and dramatic defense budget cuts of the 1990s and the increasing investments since 2001, the demands on our forces are shortchanging their preparedness. Their wartime footing in Iraq and Afghanistan and the multi-theater war against terrorism, the economic downturn, and the rising costs of entitlements are forcing defense planners to make risky assumptions and trade-offs.