The Heritage Foundation - Leadership for America

While CNN reports that Americans are split evenly (49% for, 48% against) on bailing out people who paid to much for real estate, the newsroom at the Washington Post is 100% behind the measure judging from their front-page hatchet job today.

The very first sentence of the piece betrays the Post’s bias when the reporter describes the House bill as “ambitious.” Deep in the story it is reported that the Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill will help only 500,000 people. But the Post fails to report that the bill’s proponents sold the plan as helping more than 2 million Americans. The Post also low balls the cost of the bill, pegging it at $1.7 billion. But this leaves out another billion dollars in administrative and counseling costs.

The most dishonest part of the story though is this paragraph:

The Bush administration has tried to help such borrowers by urging banks to reduce their mortgage debt. The administration also has eased eligibility standards so borrowers who have missed a few payments can qualify for cheaper loans insured by the federal government through the FHA. But those initiatives have helped relatively few families.

The Post makes no mention of the Treasury Department’s Hope Now program, which has assisted 500,000 homeowners in the first quarter of 2008 alone, and more than 2 million homeowners since July 2007.

So to recap, in this article the Post:

1. Cheerleads for a government bailout.
2. Exaggerates the scope of people who will be helped.
3. Low balls the cost of the government intervention.
4. Completely fails to report on existing, successful, unobtrusive government efforts to mediate the problem that have already helped millions more people than the new government program.

Congress had its first chance in six years to reform the economically incoherent farm program. Rather than fix the program, lawmakers irrationally increased subsidies.

Below are price increases for the most heavily subsidized crops, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service. These five crops are responsible for approximately 90% of all farm subsidies.

Market Prices of the Five Most-Subsidized Crops

1. Stop subsidizing millionaires. The majority of farm subsidies would continue going to commercial farmers, who report an average income of $200,000 and net worth of nearly $2 million.
2. Close payment limit loopholes. Current proposals eliminate payment limits for the marketing loan program altogether, thus allowing farmers to potentially collect millions in annual subsidies.
3. Reject spending increases. Gimmicks in the conference report would vastly underestimate the true cost of the bill.
4. Eliminate increases in subsidy rates. Both versions of the bill raise subsidy rates despite record crop prices.
5. Close loopholes that increase subsidies even further. The marketing loan program compensates farmers for low crop prices. However, farmers are not compensated for the price at which they sell their crops; rather they can choose the lowest market price on any day of the year.
6. Reduce direct payments. This $5 billion program pays farmers no matter how high crop prices rise.
7. Avoid a new, permanent disaster aid program. Congress wants to create a $5 billion permanent farm disaster aid program. Farmers already receive approximately $20 billion in annual commodity and conservation subsidies, plus $3 billion in crop insurance subsidies.
8. Modernize farm policy for the 21st century. The greatest challenge for farmers today is not persistent poverty, but rather year-to-year income fluctuations brought on by weather- and pest-induced crop unpredictability. The current farm bill represents a clear refusal to modernize as times change.

According to Salary.com, stay-at-home moms would rake in $117,000 a year for services they provide if they sold them on the open market. The activities included in the total include: housekeeper, day care teacher, van driver, psychologist and chief executive officer. A 2006 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics study did not include all of those elements (van driving and psychologist were not included), but they did show how irreplaceable mom is.

Can we tax, spend, and regulate our way to prosperity? Some say we can—if the taxing, spending, and regulating help fight global warming.

North Carolina’s legislators are considering a package of 56 proposals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The proposals include such things as mandates on consumer appliances, energy-efficiency requirements for government buildings, subsidies for buying energy from renewable sources, subsidies for investment in renewable-energy technologies, mandating pay-as-you drive insurance, restricting the hours of operation of heavy trucks and buses, mandates for recycling electricity, rationing energy use by businesses (via a cap-and-trade system), new vehicle taxes based on emissions.

Mandate, regulate, tax, ration, subsidize, restrict … If that doesn’t seem like a formula for economic growth, then you must be unfamiliar with the work of Appalachian State University’s Energy Center. According to the Energy Center, the proposed global warming policies will add 32,000 new jobs and $2.2 billion to the North Carolina economy by the year 2020.

Of course, those estimates are a far cry from estimates released six months ago of 325,000 new jobs and $20 billion in value to the economy by the year 2020. Only off by a factor of nine.

ASU’s modelers produced the new, more modest estimates after the earlier ones were criticized by North Carolina’s John Locke Foundation as well as the Beacon Hill Institute in Massachusetts. The Beacon Hill Institute has produced its own estimate: the global warming proposals will cost North Carolina 33,000 jobs, and subtract $4.5 billion from the Gross State Product by 2020.

As the Beacon Hill Institute study points out, the problem with the ASU estimates is that they are based on an input/output model, which assumes that any resources used in the implementation of the policies would not otherwise be used by the economy. (We have written previously in a different context about the problems with input/output models. See Government’s Magic Job Machine.) In other words, the model assumes that anybody employed as a result of these policies would otherwise be unemployed.

As most sensible people know, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. The question now is: Are North Carolina’s legislators sensible people?

Cross-posted at InsiderOnline.

Next week the Labor Department will will propose changes to its union financial reporting and disclosure requirements in an effort to improve transparency and accountability. The proposed rule will give rank-and-file union members more information about union finances. It is the latest effort by the Bush administration to increase transparency for labor unions after years of decline during the Clinton administration. (Visit UnionReports.gov for more information.)

The proposed rule modifies a 2003 change to the LM-2 form, which is required for unions with annual receipts of $250,000 or more. It also implements a longstanding provision of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act that requires unions that ordinarily file the simplified LM-3 form to instead file an LM-2 under certain limited circumstances, according to the department.

The change comes eight months before President Bush leaves office. With presidential candidate Barack Obama suggesting that his administration would impose less oversight on unions, the proposed rule is both significant and symbolic.

The Labor Department outlined five reasons why the changes were being proposed:

• Itemizing benefits for union officers and union employees. The current Form LM-2 discloses the gross salary, allowances, disbursements for official business, and other disbursements next to the name of every officer, and employees of the union earning $10,000 or more. In contrast, the benefits provided to individual union officers and employees are only included in large aggregated amounts in line items on other parts of the form. This allows substantial amounts in the form of individual benefits (e.g., life insurance, pensions, deferred compensation) to remain undisclosed. The proposed change would add a column for “Benefits” in the officer and employee disbursement schedules, allowing union members to identify the total benefit disbursements to individual union officers and employees.
• Covering indirect disbursements to officers and employees. If a union officer or employee uses a personal credit card for temporary lodging or transportation by public carrier and is directly reimbursed by the union, the reimbursement is currently reported for that individual officer or employee. However, if the payment goes directly to the vendor instead (indirect disbursement), the amount is not reported for the individual union officer or employee. This proposed change will ensure that indirect disbursements are subject to the same level of transparency as direct disbursements.
• Enhancing transparency for receipts (i.e., itemizing receipts over $5,000 aggregated). Most of the current “Cash Receipts” on the LM-2 are not itemized, including Dues and Agency Fees; Per Capita Tax; Fees, Fines, Assessments, Work Permits; Sales of Supplies; Interest; Dividends; Rents; On Behalf of Affiliates for Transmittal to Them; and From Members for Disbursement on Their Behalf. In some cases these line items have exceeded $20 million for LM-2 filers, and union members are unable to discern useful information from these aggregate totals. The proposed revision will provide itemized receipt schedules similar to those existing on the current LM-2 for the category known as “Other Receipts,” allowing for greater transparency regarding these important union assets.
• Disclosing the identity of the purchaser or seller in transactions involving union assets. The current Form LM-2 requires disclosure of the purchase or sale of union assets but does not require information about the buyer or seller. The proposed change will allow union members to know the name and address of the purchaser or seller (of any asset of $5,000 or more) and the date of the sale. This disclosure will enable union members to verify that transactions were at market price and at arm’s length, thereby limiting the opportunity for purchasers and sellers to improperly benefit at union member expense.
• Establishing fair procedures to revoke a union’s privilege to file a simplified annual report when they violate their legal obligations. Form LM-3 is a simplified annual report filed in lieu of the Form LM-2 by unions with total annual receipts between $10,000 and $249,999. It is also a revocable privilege pursuant to the statute. In cases of delinquency or deficiency with regard to filing the LM-3, or certain other reasons that demonstrate a union’s failure to comply with LMRDA obligations, this privilege would be revoked, for a limited time, after investigation, due notice, and opportunity for the union to explain why the revocation should not occur. If the privilege is revoked, the union, for a period of time, would instead be required to file a Form LM-2, which provides greater detail and better assists union members and government investigators in detecting financial problems.

On April 26, Barack Obama supporter Bill Richardson met with Venezuela President Hugo Chavez in an attempt to secure the release of Americans being held in Colombia by the Marxist-inspired Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Besides helping to legitimize Chavez’s longstanding goal of becoming a regional power, the meeting did not produce any tangible results. Chavez later claimed Venezuela had “lost the contact we had with the FARC.” As the Wall Street Journal reports today, that is unlikely.

In early March the Colombian government captured a FARC leader’s laptop after an air strike in neighboring Ecuador. A review of more than 100 of the files on the computer by the WSJ shows that “Venezuela has broader and deeper ties to the FARC than previously known.” The findings include:

• Venezuela appears to be making concrete offers to help arm the rebels, possibly with rocket-propelled grenades and ground-to-air missiles.
• According to one document, Venezuela’s interior minister, Ramón Rodríguez Chacin, last November asked the FARC to train Venezuela’s military in nuts-and-bolts guerrilla tactics — including “operational tactics, explosives, … jungle camps, ambushes, logistics, mobility” — so that soldiers would be prepared to fight a guerrilla war if the U.S. were to invade Venezuela.
• The documents suggest Chavez is personally involved in helping the guerrillas. In a September 2007 message to the FARC’s ruling body, a commander wrote: “Chavez is studying our documents and has said that just like Fidel [Castro] has decided to delegate his other responsibilities to concentrate on the Venezuelan situation, he [Chavez] is ready to do the same to dedicate more time to Colombia.”

Chavez’s close ties to FARC are an integral part of his efforts to undermine the democratically elected government of Colombia President Alvaro Uribe. Chavez’s continued involvement in FARC’s deadly hostage-taking tactics are a key element of these efforts.

Richardson is not the first liberal to legitimize the regime. Ex-Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-Mass.) stars in Chavez’s heating oil giveaway commercials. Rep. William Delahunt (D-Mass.), like Richardson, has also supported Chavez’s efforts to lead hostage extraction efforts with FARC. And the same laptop mentioned above also shows that Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) “has been working with an American go-between, who has been offering the rebels help in undermining Colombia’s elected and popular government.”

McGovern’s pro-Chavez efforts do not end there. He has also been a leading force in Congress against the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, the defeat of which is another key Chavez goal. Susan Segal, president of the Council of the Americas, notes:

The U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement is our single most effective tool to help bring economic and political security to Colombia. Without this agreement and the investment security it provides, hundreds of thousands of Colombian jobs are in jeopardy of being lost. Each job opens an opportunity for a Colombian worker to enter the formal sector and to build individual economic prosperity — the alternative to narcotraffick­ing and the direct threat that poses to U.S. national security.

Instead of helping an ally grow its economy, build democratic institutions, and help protect its own and our security, liberals in Congress have killed the Colombia trade deal and both presidential candidates Obama and Hillary Clinton have promised they would not revive it. This will only directly help the FARC, Chavez and other forces for chaos in the region and through out the world.

Quick Hits:

• President Bush promised to veto the latest farm bill from Congress since it is “larded with giveaways.”
• Plummeting real estate values are proving to be a boon for conservationists, enabling land trusts to buy thousands of acres that were slated for development and preserve them as open space.
• A news study shows that teens who smoke marijuana are more likely to report depression and suicidal thoughts.
• According to Salary.com, stay-at-home moms would rake in $117,000 a year for the domestic services they provide.
• According to Gallup, only 31% of future retirees expect to rely on Social Security compared 56% of current retirees.

House Democrats continued to block passage of a terrorist surveillance bill today, rejecting a measure by Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.) to add the Senate-passed FISA bill to the fiscal 2009 Intelligence authorization bill. The amendment was defeated by one vote in the House Intelligence Committee, the latest proof that the Senate bill would pass the House if Speaker Nancy Pelosi allowed it to come to the House floor. Congress let emergency surveillance powers lapse more than 80 days ago.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the committee’s top Republican, said it was irresponsible for Congress not to act on the bipartisan measure:

This is the bill by which Congress sets the funding levels and the authorities for America’s intelligence agencies. What message does it send that the Congress has rejected one of the intelligence community’s highest priorities? Our nation’s terrorist surveillance capabilities continue to erode, as Senator Rockefeller has noted. So has our capability to protect our homeland, our embassies and troops overseas, and our allies.

Hoekstra did prevail on another vote to strip all earmarks from the authorization bill, an important — and surprising — accomplishment. It was the second year in a row Hoekstra sponsored the measure, citing the bill’s highly classified nature.

Because much the text cannot be viewed by the public, Hoekstra said “the best assurance we can give the American people that Congress is spending taxpayer money wisely is to spend it on national security, not earmarked requests.” One of the earmarks was the controversial National Drug Intelligence Center in Rep. John Murtha’s Pennsylvania district. Hoekstra’s measure passed, 17-4.

Frustrated by inaction from Democrats on earmarks and gas prices, House Republicans are tying the two issues together in hopes of forcing Congress to act. Legislation introduced by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) would suspend the 18.4 cents per gallon federal gas tax for the summer. To avoid impacting the Highway Trust Fund, Ryan’s bill would freeze all taxpayer-funded earmarks.

The bill has the support the conservative Republican Study Committee and immediately won the backing of House Minority Leader John Boehner:

For far too long, taxpayers have been footing the bill for billions upon billions in wasteful Washington spending that our nation neither needs nor can afford. An earmark ban will halt this pork-barrel spending until Congress comes up with a straightforward plan to reform the earmark process and restore some sanity to the federal budget.

The gas-price debate is nothing new for Congress. When Republicans were in the majority, then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi promised a “commonsense plan” to lower the cost. But since Pelosi became speaker, average gas prices have risen from $2.33 per gallon to $3.64 per gallon today, according to AAA.

The debate in the Senate is just as contentious, where Senate Democrats yesterday proposed a windfall profits tax that would slap an additional 25% tax on all oil industry earnings beyond what they defined as “reasonable.”

Ross Douthat notes that Matt Yglesias is having trouble duplicating the campaign contribution data that Heritage’s Mike Franc cited in his in his NRO article today. Franc wrote:

In this upside-down campaign season when populist GOP campaigners like John McCain and Mike Huckabee surprised the pundits with their primary victories or, in the case of Ron Paul, their fundraising prowess, it almost makes sense that the party of the country club set has been winning the fundraising race among the common man. That’s right. The white-shirt/red-tie brigade of Republican presidential aspirants holds a nearly three-to-one edge among janitors, custodians, cleaners, sanitation workers, factory workers, truckers, bus drivers, barbers, security guards, and secretaries. While Democrats command the financial loyalty of architects, Republicans successfully woo contributions from the skilled craftsmen who turn their blueprints into reality — specifically, contractors, hardhats, plumbers, stonemasons, electricians, carpenters mechanics, and roofers.

Yglesias complains he cannot recreate this data at the FEC website. We suggest he tries Arianna Huffington’s Fundrace 2008 where, as of this posting, if you enter in ‘electrician‘ into the occupation field you find that Republicans have raised $181,981 and the Democrats have raised $155,926.

Multilateral trade negations are the best way to bring the benefits of trade liberalization to the most people people, but with the current Doha Round of talks stalled, the U.S. has turned to bilateral agreements, that while not perfect, still are helping the American economy. Heritage scholar Daniella Markheim documents their most recent benefits:

As of January 2008, the United States has 11 free trade agreements with 17 countries. Congress has approved FTAs with Israel; Canada and Mexico (NAFTA); Jordan; Singapore; Chile; Australia; Morocco; the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicara­gua (DR–CAFTA); Bahrain; Oman; and, most recently, Peru.

While the agreements with Oman and Peru have not yet been fully implemented, the U.S. has already seen impressive results from the bilateral trade deals currently in force. In 2007, FTAs accounted for more than $1 trillion in two-way trade—about 34 percent of total U.S. global trade. Along with their economic benefits, the FTAs have strengthened the political relationships the U.S. shares with strategic allies around the world.

In the first year of the U.S.–Singapore FTA, America’s trade surplus with Singapore more than tripled, growing to $4.3 billion. Just four months after the U.S.–Australia FTA was implemented, America’s trade surplus with Australia grew by nearly 32 percent to more than $2 billion. Exports to Chile and Singapore expanded by $4 billion in the first year after these free trade agreements were implemented.

As Heritage’s Michael Franc documents again today, the Democratic party is rapidly becoming a party of rich cultural elites:

Through May 1, the Democratic presidential field has suctioned up a cool $5.7 million from the more than 4,000 donors who list their occupation as “CEO.” The Republicans’ take was only $2.3 million. … Wall Street firms, long a symbol of American elite accomplishment, also tilt decisively toward the Democrats. Employees in storied Wall Street institutions such as Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley have all favored the Democratic field by a large margin. … Professors favor Democrats over Republicans by a nine-to-one margin ($3.7 million to $430,000).
…
Who favors the Republicans? … Republican presidential aspirants holds a nearly three-to-one edge among janitors, custodians, cleaners, sanitation workers, factory workers, truckers, bus drivers, barbers, security guards, and secretaries. While Democrats command the financial loyalty of architects, Republicans successfully woo contributions from the skilled craftsmen who turn their blueprints into reality — specifically, contractors, hardhats, plumbers, stonemasons, electricians, carpenters mechanics, and roofers.

Caught in between the demands of the Democrat’s new wealthy base and its old hard working middle class constituents are the Blue Dog Democrats. Despite the strong headwinds in Democrats favor,  of the 48 member Blue Dog caucus, 12 are fighting completive races this fall. One might think a caucus of this size could pull some legislation their way, but on issue after issue the Blue Dogs have heeled to their new rich masters:

• Immigration: Enforcement First immigration policy is extremely popular in Blue Dog districts and Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC), has even authored a bill supported by the conservative immigration group Numbers USA. Problem is, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) will not allow any movement on the effort. Republicans are spearheading a discharge petition to force a vote, and they have 186 of the required 218 signatures so far, but Pelosi has been able to twist enough Blue Dog arms to keep the bill off the House floor.
• FISA: Republicans are also pushing a discharge petition on common sense reform to our nation’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), but again Pelosi is blocking this effort as well. 21 Blue Dogs sent Pelosi a letter in January urging her to pass the much needed reform, but Pelosi completely rebuffed them.
• Supplemental Spending: Most recently Blue Dogs have made noise about not supporting Democrat efforts to tack billions of dollars in unrelated spending onto the latest Iraq/Afghanistan war spending. Blue Dog Rep. John Tanner (D-TN) explained: “Some of us oppose creating a new entitlement program in an emergency spending bill, whether it’s butchers, bakers or candlestick-makers.”

We’ll see if the Blue Dogs finally follow through this time.

The Department of the Interior is expected to announce soon that polar bears have been designated a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. The justification for such a move will not be that polar bears are actually declining. Rather, the justification will be based on speculation that they may decline in the future as a result of global warming. Global warming, so the argument goes, is causing Arctic sea ice to melt, and, unless that process is arrested, polar bears will be unable to survive because they need Arctic sea ice to reach their primary source of food: seals.

As might be expected with a speculative scenario, there is uncertainty about whether it is actually true. However, there is certainty that if Interior goes through with the designation, it will give the department enormous power to regulate economic activity under a polar bear mitigation plan. Hopefully, before the government puts shackles on the economy, it weighs very carefully the significant uncertainties about whether the polar bear is actually threatened.

Ken Green of the American Enterprise Institute has a new paper detailing the many problems with the supposed global warming/sea ice/polar bear link. Green notes in particular that while there has been some evidence of sea ice loss in the Arctic, there is not enough evidence to conclude global warming is the culprit.

• An October 2007 NASA study concluded that changing wind patterns are responsible for sea ice loss. New wind patterns have compressed sea ice and moved it into the Transpolar Drift Stream which has taken the ice to lower latitudes where it has melted.
• A study reported in Nature in January 2008 reported that Artic heating has been happening higher in the atmosphere than predicted by global warming models. Meanwhile, the predicted warming at the earth’s surface has not been detected. Green comments: “What the data seem to indicate is that heat from the tropics is being transported to the Arctic by wind patterns that are not well understood.”

If global warming isn’t the cause of recent sea ice loss, then there is no reason to assume that the loss of sea ice is a long-term trend.

There are also significant uncertainties about how the loss of sea ice will impact polar bear populations. Analysts use a tool called population viability analysis (PVA), which is fraught with problems. Green writes:

Like various statistical models, PVA can be a useful tool in policy cost-benefit analysis, but its results are only as accurate as the data and the model assumptions that go into it. Polar bear populations are difficult to measure, in part because they travel so much, are sparsely populated, and live far from people. The highest-quality data on polar bears come from aerial studies and mark/recapture studies, in which scientists “mark” polar bears and estimate how many are in a population based on sightings of marked and unmarked animals. There are other methods of estimating polar bears, but the report describes those methods as having “unknown and in most cases inestimable errors.”

Of the nineteen subpopulations of polar bears, the IUCN reports estimates based on aerial or mark/recapture data for fourteen, but of these, only five are based on data collected after 1998. Twelve had sufficient data for the report to predict population trends, and of the five marked as declining, only two of these estimates were based on aerial or mark/recapture data from after 1998. Scientists have collected more recent data on polar bear populations, but from studies with more “inestimable errors.”

But, says Green, we do know that polar bears “have survived past periods of extensive deglaciation.”

Polar bear fossils have been dated to over one hundred thousand years, which means that polar bears have already survived an interglacial period when temperatures were considerably warmer than they are at present and when, quite probably, levels of summertime Arctic sea ice were correspondingly low.

Listing the polar bear as threatened would give government incredible power to control economic development. The government, therefore, should feel an obligation to demonstrate that the polar bear actually is threatened before it lists the polar bear as threatened. Congress, meanwhile, should revisit the whole concept of delegating power that is essentially a legislative power to an unelected government agency. If global warming is a problem justifying economic sacrifice, then Congress should feel an obligation to actually vote for such sacrifice.

Cross-posted at InsiderOnline.

Fast becoming an official communications appendage of the Barack Obama campaign, the New York Times editorializes today on the “petty pandering” of Hillary Clinton’s and John McCain’s call for a suspension of the federal gas tax over the summer. Noting that the policy would not deliver lower prices for consumers, the Times asserts that “their demagoguery is growing into a real problem.” The New York Times is at least half right; demagoguery is a real problem that is threatening to significantly worsen our nation’s energy policy. But it is the Obama/Clinton oil profit windfall tax that would be damaging to most Americans.

Political analysts and the Obama campaign both seem to believe that Obama’s opposition to the gas tax holiday helped him change the subject from his relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But while Obama did fight the gas tax holiday idea, he was also running ads in North Carolina claiming that his proposed tax on “excess profits” of Exxon Mobil would help lower gas prices for Americans. Apparently, Obama has forgotten the lesson of Jimmy Carter’s 1980 windfall profits tax. A 1990 Congressional Research Service analysis of the program found that it reduced domestic oil production between 3% and 6% and increased oil imports between 8% and 16%. The tax hurt consumers more through higher energy prices than it helped them through higher tax revenues, which turned out to be far lower than originally predicted because the tax discouraged production.

But hurting American consumers through higher prices and decreased consumption seems to be exactly what the New York Times wants. The paper concludes: “Americans must find ways to curb their use of fossil fuels. That will require higher, not lower, prices for gas — even during a presidential campaign.” Is this now the stated policy of liberals? Do they Democratic presidential candidates really want to hurt Americans at the pump as much as possible? We know Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez does. That is why he also recently passed a windfall oil profits tax of his own. Do Democrats and the New York Times really want to start importing policy ideas from the socialist leader of Venezuela?

Quick Hits:

• Senate Democrats on Wednesday proposed a windfall oil profits tax that would slap an additional 25% tax on all oil industry earnings beyond what they defined as “reasonable.”
• Thanks to public union salaries and benefits that eat up 74% of their budget, Vallejo, Calif., became the largest city in the state to ever declare bankruptcy.
• The earmark disease that has corrupted Congress has spread to the District of Columbia budget process, which directed $98 million of public funds to private groups in the past four years.
• President Bush vowed yesterday to veto the Democratic plan to risk billions in taxpayer dollars to bailout housing speculators.
• Blue Dog Democrats are threatening to block the emergency war spending bill unless leadership follows through on its promise to offset new spending with other spending cuts or tax hikes.

According to an article on The Hill, lobbyists are now targeting smaller immigration bills. This strategy is the smarter approach. The U.S. immigration system touches on practically every aspect of the government, and involves many different competing interests that affect millions of American lives. Fixing immigration in one fell swoop is highly impractical. They tried in 1986 under President Reagan, and two decades later, our immigration problem is worse off. Congress doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel. Instead, as Heritage recommends, they must go about it in an incremental approach. Proper funding and execution of border security and internal enforcement laws already in the books is sufficient. Fixing existing visa programs is equally if not more beneficial than creating new visa programs entirely.

In their editorial today celebrating Barack Obama’s victory of Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, the New York Times attacks John McCain and his promise to appoint conservative judges to the bench. They write:

Mr. McCain predictably criticized liberal judges, vowed strict adherence to the Founders’ views and promised to appoint more judges in the mold of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. That is just what the country does not need.

Mr. McCain did not mention, of course, how the Roberts-led Court blithely overruled Congress by nullifying a key part of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. He did wax nostalgic about what “the basic right of property” has meant “since the founding of America.” (He did not mention that in 1789 many women could not own property and African-Americans were property, but he did criticize the idea that values evolve over time.)

Is the New York Times really this ignorant? Are they completely unaware that strict constructionism does not forbid, and in fact requires, the Supreme Court to overturn Congressional legislation when it does not conform to the Constitution? Are they completely unaware that strict constructionism depends on the ability of the people to amend the constitution? Are they completely unaware that the Supreme Court did not free the slaves or grant the women the right to vote and that constitutional amendments did those things (the 13th and 19th respectively)?

Yes, the New York Times is right when they write that “values evolve over time.” The question is how and who should decide when values have changed enough to alter the founding principles of our nation. Conservatives believe the people should decide through constitutional amendment. Liberals, and the New York Times, believe nine robed people in Washington should decide by decree. Which sounds more democratic to you?

Lawmakers say they want to speed FAST, FAST, FAST RELIEF to homeowners with mortgage woes. But the leading remedy on the Hill, the Frank-Dodd FHA Refinance Plan (H.R. 5830), will take many months before it has any effect at all. Moreover, it’s the wrong prescription.

Though not as bad as some earlier proposals, the Frank-Dodd proposal still remains “essentially a government buyout of problem mortgages disguised as a refinancing plan,” Heritage Foundation expert David John writes in a May 6 research paper.

And anyone expecting quick relief from the bill will be quickly disappointed. It will take a long, long time to refinance the 1- to 2-million loans the bill’s supporters envision “fixing.” Though they talk about refinancing loans in bulk, John notes, bulk refinancing is not now an available option. Congress would first need to change the law to allow it, and then the financial industry would have to develop new practices so it could do bulk re-fi’s without making the housing market even more unstable.

The bill’s mass expansion of the federal housing bureaucracy would cause even further delay. For Frank-Dodd to work, Congress will have to pass another bill funding hundreds of new federal workers needed to administer the bill. Once that’s done, it’ll take even more time to recruit and hire the workers, and then train them in how to implement the new law.

And one more thing: Taxpayers are still left holding the bag if homeowners can’t pay the refinanced mortgage. “If the homeowner subsequently walked away from the new loan, and if the FHA lacked the resources to back the loan, then the taxpayers would cover any losses,” John writes.

Some fix. To read more of John’s research paper, click here. For more insights into the housing crisis and what Congress should and shouldn’t do about it, click here.

Liberal in Congress are desperate to satisfy both their labor union masters who oppose all trade and their new Wall Street donors who generally support open trade policies. To this end, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is desperately trying to blame the House’s failure to even vote on the Colombia Free Trade Agreement on the White House’s decision to submit the agreement before getting her consent. U.S. Susan Schwab set the record striaght on the reason for the timing of the agreement’s submittal to Congress yesterday:

“I would argue (President George W. Bush) had no choice and were we to repeat this, the president would still have no choice,” Schwab said in remarks at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Bush submitted the agreement to Congress in April, 18 months after it was signed and at the last possible date to ensure lawmakers would vote on it before they were scheduled to adjourn for the year in September, Schwab said.

In 1950 80% of Americans read a Newspaper every day. Today that number is below 50%. Since 2001 paid newspaper circulation has fallen 8.4% and paid advertising revenue has fallen 9.4%. Meanwhile, a whopping 48% of Americans say they rely on the internet as their primary news source with only 11% naming radio and 29% naming television.

Last December the Federal Com­munications Commission (FCC) began to recognize this new reality and voted to liberalize its 33-year-old blanket prohibition on cross-ownership, allowing broadcast licenses to be owned jointly with newspaper licensees. Scared senseless by news that Rupert Murdoch was trying to add Long Island’s Newsday to his media empire, liberals in Congress are now moving to overturn the FCC’s decision. Heritage scholar James Gattuso comments:

In this dynamic and competitive media landscape, a ban on cross-ownership simply makes no sense. It is unnecessary and downright harmful to consum­ers—and even detrimental to competition. More­over, like the FCC’s long-repealed Fairness Doctrine, such rules can become a tool for ideologically moti­vated interference in media content.

The FCC was right to liberalize its cross-owner­ship rule. It would have been even better if the agency had repealed it altogether.

This week is “National Charter Schools Week,” and the Center for Education Reform has a number of ideas for how you can celebrate. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools also released a new poll finding: “More than three out of four voters (77%) favor giving parents more options when choosing a public school for their children.”

Charter schools are one of the growing options in American education. Today, 40 states and the District of Columbia allow charter schools. In all, more than a million children are attending one of the nation’s 4,100 public charter schools. To learn more about charter schools and school choice options in the United States, see this Heritage report from January.

The Washington Monthly’s Kevin Drum tries to take Michael Gerson to task for being “disingenuous” about “the liberal critique of the Republican war on science.” Drum cites a number of areas he believes conservatives have betrayed science and “global warming denialism” tops the list. Too bad Drum wasn’t listening to the May broadcast of “Fresh Air” where, while promoting the paperback edition of his latest book, Al Gore proclaimed:

And as we’re talking today, Terry, the death count in Myanmar from the cyclone that hit there yesterday has been rising from 15,000 to way on up there to much higher numbers now being speculated. And last year a catastrophic storm from last fall hit Bangladesh. The year before, the strongest cyclone in more than 50 years hit China – and we’re seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming.

This is blatant global warming sensationalism. Yes, Gore did later add his careful caveat that “any individual storm can’t be linked singularly to global warming” but the game Gore is playing here is extremely convenient: anytime any weather related disaster happens anywhere in the world, liberals swoop in, point to the dead bodies and claim “climate change” is causing more violent weather around the world.

Never mind that the scientist’s model predicted a very active 2007 hurricane season only to be greeted by the actual reality of a historic low. Never mind that actual observation of the Earth’s temperature has actually fallen over the last ten years contrary to scientists modeling. Never mind that actual observations are now leading to predictions that the Earth’s temperature will not rise for the next ten years either.

There is a war on science all right. And it is being waged by liberals so that they can scare the public into granting them the extensive government control of the entire economy that they have always wanted.