Day: July 15, 2018

Blackburn Campaign: Phil Bredesen Will Go Down for the Count This November in ‘Death by 10,000 Cuts’

John Bryant
Ward Baker, Phil Bredesen

Republican Marsha Blackburn campaign strategist Ward Baker predicted Democrat Phil Bredesen will lose to Rep. Marsha Blackburn in November by “death by 10,000 cuts,” also comparing Bredesen to a punch drunk boxer “who won’t survive the punches coming before the November election,” according to reports. “I believe when the TV ads are out, and we lay out our case, I think some of them will come back. And the ones that don’t, I’ll do everything in my power to make sure that they have trouble living in the future,” Baker reportedly said by  way of a joke aimed at Republicans who might cross party lines to support the Democrat. Baker supposedly called Bredesen “Phantom Phil,” citing his “disappearing act on the campaign trail” we’ve previously characterized as “duck and cover Phil.” Baker also hinted  at a potential controversy to come that would dog Bredesen and set him apart from Blackburn as a candidate. He offered no further details. “We’re going to make sure that he is in a corner, and we are going to constantly punch him in his face over and over and over again. This race will not be won by death by a thousand cuts. It’s going…

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Just Facts Think Tank President: The True Effects of Regulations on the Economy

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by James D. Agresti   In a New York Times article about President Trump scaling back regulations, reporters Binyamin Appelbaum and Jim Tankersley report “there is little historical evidence tying regulation levels to” economic growth. They support this sweeping claim only with a quote from Jared Bernstein, a former chief economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, who says: “The notion that deregulation unleashes growth is virtually impossible to find in the data.” In reality, there is a wealth of data indicating that regulations harm economic growth, and economists have identified numerous mechanisms by which this can occur. This includes but is not limited to: preventing workers from using the most efficient means of production. In the words of an economics book published by Johns Hopkins University Press, “The sectors that provide services related to human capital investments [like education and healthcare] may produce inefficiently because regulations preclude efficient production,” which “may result in much greater costs of achieving specific investments than would be possible with fewer regulations.” diverting people from productive work. For example, federal tax laws and regulationsrequire taxpayers to spend 6.1 billion hours per year filling out forms and performing other tax compliance tasks. This is more than the combined work time of…

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Occupational Licensing Reform: A Bipartisan Blueprint for Helping Low-Income Workers

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bureaucratic stamps

by Alex Muresianu   A new report from the University of Wisconsin-Madison comparing employment between Minnesota and Wisconsin after Minnesota raised its minimum wage found that Minnesotan workers saw a decline in employment, especially for young, inexperienced, and low-skilled workers, as employment in Wisconsin rose. Despite this evidence reaffirming that the minimum wage can hurt many low-income workers, a $15 an hour minimum wage remains a popular position among progressives, including the rising democratic socialist star and primary upset winner Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes. In light of this push, conservatives need to do more than just rebut progressive arguments for minimum wage hikes or job guarantees. We need to push for a compelling alternative that can raise low-income workers’ wages: occupational licensing reform. Occupational licensing is a form of government regulation that requires workers to obtain a license before they can provide a service. The process for getting a license can be time-consuming and expensive, requiring fees in excess of $1,000, hundreds of hours of training, or even a college degree. Occupational licensing has exploded over the past half-century. In the 1950s, only five percent of jobs required licenses—now almost 30 percent of jobs do. Doctors and lawyers are not the only positions that require licenses: over 8,000 job titles require licenses in at least…

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The Department of the Interior Will Pay 1,900 Local Governments $553 Million in ‘Lost Tax Revenue’ in 2018

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federal lands

by Daniel Di Martino   Over 1,900 local governments received $553 million from the Department of Interior this year to compensate them for lost tax revenue for federal lands that cannot be developed in their territory. These payments are the consequence of more than 640 million acres of land, which amounts to 28 percent of the U.S. territory owned by the federal government. The Federal Government Is Hoarding Huge Potential Prosperity The costs of federal ownership are not only payments to local governments but also environmental damage due to mismanagement and deferred maintenance, as well as the lost economic activity that cannot occur in 28 percent of the country. Of all federal land, 27.4 million acres are National Parks, while approximately 600 million acres are managed by the Bureau of Land Management, the National Forest Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Park Service. These government agencies allow grazing and other economic activities on federal lands in exchange for fees. However, since fees are not enough for the expenses of these agencies, the federal government spends several billion dollars per year to cover the difference. Additionally, the federal government owns more than three trillion barrels of oil and 450 trillion cubic meters of natural…

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One-Fifth Of North Carolina Students Aren’t Going To Traditional Public Schools

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by Rob Shimshock   Almost 20 percent of K-12 students in North Carolina are not attending traditional public schools. Enrollment in the state’s traditional public schools has fallen during the past few years as more and more students attend private, charter or home schools, The News & Observer reported Friday. North Carolina’s proportion of students enrolled in traditional public schools now sits at 80.8 percent. “Families are more attuned to and used to having choices at their fingertips, and that is entering education as well,” Parents For Educational Freedom Interim President Brian Jodice said. “We’re no longer in this mindset that because I live at this address or this ZIP code I have to attend this particular school that works for many students but doesn’t have to be the only choice.” The National Center for Education Statistics anticipated that out of the 3.6 million students expected to graduate from high school in 2018, 3.3 million graduates would receive their degrees from public high schools. This proportion is over 10 percent higher than the aforementioned North Carolina rate. Not everyone is pleased with the trend. “North Carolina has already embraced the privatization, the [American Legislative Exchange Council] agenda of dismantling public schools in favor of…

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Commentary: Democrats Don’t Fear Brett Kavanaugh – They Fear the Constitution

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Bernie Sanders

by David Harsanyi   Sure, some of the anger aimed at President Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court is partisan bluster meant to placate the activist base. Still, most Democrats were going to get hysterical about any pick, because any conservative pick was going to take the Constitution far too literally for their liking. For those who rely on the administrative state and coercion as a policy tool—forcing people to join political organizations, forcing them to support abortion, forcing them to subsidize socially progressive sacraments, forcing them to create products that undermine their faith, and so on—that’s a big problem. Some, such as former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, indulged in the histrionic rhetoric we’ve come to expect in the Trump era, claiming that Kavanaugh would “threaten the lives of millions of Americans for decades to come.” But almost none of the objections coming from leading Democrats have been even ostensibly about Kavanaugh’s qualifications as a jurist or, for that matter, his interpretation of the Constitution. [ The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more ] “Specifically,” prospective presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif.,…

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Evidence from Many Nations Confirms That Border Walls Stem the Tide of Illegal Immigration

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Great Wall of China

by Daniel Marulanda and James D. Agresti   The border between the United States and Mexico stretches for 1,960 miles, parting two major regions of the world with vastly different governments, standards of living, and levels of crime. Consequently, many millions of people have risked their lives to illegally cross the border into the United States. During 2013 to 2015 alone, the U.S. Border Patrol recorded an average of 700,000 illegal entries per year along the U.S.-Mexico border. Additionally, roughly one million people per year legally immigrate to the U.S., 100 million per year legally visit the U.S., and more than 300,000 per year illegally overstay their visits, often never leaving. People who illegally enter the U.S. avoid criminal background checks, and as a result, they have much higher serious crime rates than legal immigrants and the general U.S. population. Highlighting the impact of this, a U.S. Government Accountability Office study of 249,000 non-citizens in U.S. prisons and jails during 2003 to 2009 found that they had been arrested for 2.9 million offenses committed within the U.S.—including 69,929 sex offenses and 25,064 homicides. Like most government data, this study did not isolate legal non-citizens from illegal ones, but given that legal immigrants have to undergo background checks, the vast bulk of these criminals were probably in the U.S. illegally. Mexico is…

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Three Ways Milton Friedman Improved the Field of Economics

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Milton Friedman

by Luis Pablo De La Horra   Milton Friedman is probably the most important free-market thinker of the twentieth century. His ideas in defense of capitalism and economic freedom had an enormous influence on the shift towards free-market policies that took place from the 1970s onwards. Countries like the UK, China, Chile, or Estonia followed the economic recipes contained in best sellers like Free to Choose or Capitalism and Freedom, unleashing the power of free markets to create wealth and prosperity. Yet the contributions of Friedman as an economist are often overlooked by non-economists. Here are three that will help you understand a bit better his work. 1. On Methodology In 1953, Friedman wrote a very influential essay titled The Methodology of Positive Economics, where he puts forward what he thinks is the right methodological approach to economics. According to Friedman, the assumptions on which a theory rests don’t have to be realistic: as long as they are “sufficiently good approximations for the purpose in hand” (which is to make accurate predictions), the theory is valid and useful to analyze the world. Let’s draw upon an example to better understand what he meant. We are all familiar with the theory of perfect competition, which is based on…

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Democrat Steve Cohen Tries to Walk Back Purple Heart Slur of Veterans

Jason M. Reynolds
Steve Cohen

U.S. Rep Steve Cohen (D-TN) wants to take it back after drawing fire for flippantly telling anti-Trump FBI lovebird Peter Strzok he wanted to give him a Purple Heart during a Congressional hearing. The Memphis Democrat made the remark during the disgraced FBI agent’s heated testimony in front of the House Oversight and Judiciary committees regarding his bias against President Donald Trump. For an analysis of the hearing, click here. Even reporter Aaron Blake of the Washington Post was dumbfounded: https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1017476103794028550?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Now, Cohen wants to take it back. Newsmax quoted his interview with CNN’s Ana Cabrera: “I regret using the term ‘Purple Heart. I used it metaphorically, not literally. I never thought, literally, it should be given to Agent Strzok,” he said. The Purple Heart is given to U.S. service members who are wounded or are killed during combat. The apology may be too little, too late. Some veterans in Tennessee say they’re planning a protest march in protest of Cohen’s remark, Fox News reports. Sean Higgins, an Air Force veteran from Memphis, is leading the upcoming march, The Tennessean reported. Higgins said many constituents are “p****d as hell” after Cohen said Strzok deserved the military award. “How do you compare…

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