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April 2008
A new op/ed from IPI senior fellow George Pieler and International Affairs Forum editor-in-chief Jens F. Laurson discusses a recently failed co-investment deal between U.S. Bain Capital and Chinese telecom equipment provider Huawei.
The authors describe how the collapse occurred after a review performed by the US government may have raised serious security concerns, and ask what lies in the future when it comes to foreign investment deals.
An excerpt: A proposed co-investment deal between Bain Capital and Huawei, a major Chinese provider of telecom equipment, collapsed after preliminary review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).
The deal would have resulted in the acquisition of 3Com, a U.S. supplier of network security technology, with Bain Capital as the majority owner and Huawei a minority owner.
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Did You Know That Forests Can Pollute the Air?
The Institute for Policy Innovation’s Dr. Merrill Matthews says a forest fire is a pollution machine.
A new study from a forest science professor says that forests can be big polluters. And the reason is forest fires.
Texas A&M University’s Thomas Bonnicksen says that just four large forest fires in California produced 38 million tons of greenhouse gases. That’s equivalent to the emissions from 7 million cars for a year.
Of course, we can reduce the likelihood of and pollution from forest fires. Dense trees help the fires spread, and dead trees burn the hottest.
Bonnnicksen says those four forests had 350 trees per acre, while about 50 trees per acre is normal. So let loggers thin out the old and dead wood, called salvage logging.
But environmentalists oppose thinning out the forests. For them even a dead tree is still a good tree. Read More...
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In a new op/ed featured on Forbes.com, entitled “Georgia On His Mind,” IPI senior fellow George Pieler and International Affairs Forum editor-in-chief Jens Laurson say the decision regarding whether or not to include Ukraine and George as members of NATO “ought not have a de facto veto” by non-NATO member Russia.
An excerpt:
It surprised no one that Russia cried foul when NATO considered having Georgia and Ukraine join the alliance.
For the time being, Putin & Co. have achieved their goal: The matter has been shelved. But when the real decision time comes, the merits of NATO membership should be based on the will of the Georgian and Ukrainian governments and NATO's candid assessment of their bids. Read More...
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A recent ruling by the German Constitutional Court highlights the differences between one European approach to privacy, and privacy in the United States, and the impact of privacy concerns on anti-piracy measures.
German recording studios had adopted the practice of reporting illegal online file sharing to the police, who could then match the online identities reported to them with the sharer's real identity. The German Court ruled, however, that under German law the police could only proceed with the data matching in the case of serious crimes, evidently not including music piracy. Relevant German laws included laws requiring ISPs and telecom providers to retain customer data, and another set protecting Germans' rights to anonymous, surveillance free communications.
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Should We Be Giving More to the Poor?
Dr. Merrill Matthews of the Institute for Policy Innovation says liberals should.
Liberals claim the country needs to give more to the poor.
But Syracuse University professor Arthur C. Brooks says that when it comes to charity, conservatives give more.
According to Brooks, liberal families make on average about 6 percent more than conservatives. But conservative families donate about 30 percent more to charity.
Take liberal presidential candidate Barack Obama. His income tax returns show that in 2001 he and his wife made $275,000. And gave away a whopping . . . $1,500.
Bill and Hillary Clinton made $100 million between 2000 and 2007 and gave away $10 million — to the Clinton Foundation, which they controlled.
So don’t be fooled by liberal calls for more charity. The money they really want to give away is yours.
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Consistent with my curiosity about the enforcement end of intellectual property, I consider the GAO's recent report on federal IP enforcement efforts. Note that most of the efforts described in the report involve the reproduction of physical counterfeits (medicines, batteries, disks, manufactured goods) rather than copies downloaded across the aether. But as the sheer volume of international trade ramps up, the inability of traditional enforcement institutions to cope effectively begins to resemble their difficulties with the on-line world.
The GAO report confirms that is, however much federal activity has increased in recent years, it is still a very small drop in a very large bucket, with "the number of IP prosecutions by DOJ for fiscal years 2001 through 2005 hovered around 150 cases before increasing to about 200 cases in fiscal year 2006." Read More...
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Would You Like to Pay for Health Insurance with that Hotdog, M’am?
The Institute for Policy Innovation’s Dr. Merrill Matthews says in San Francisco you may not have a choice.
San Francisco is the first city in the country to pass a universal health insurance program to cover the uninsured. Employers with 20 or more employees have to provide coverage.
And who’s going to pay for it? Why, consumers, of course.
The Los Angeles Times reports that some restaurants are raising their prices.
A popular Mexican food restaurant has added a 3.5 percent surcharge to every food bill. Along with a note on the menu saying it’s to cover the health insurance program.
Another restaurant is adding 4 percent to the bill. And one has a flat fee or one or two dollars per person. It’s enough to give you heartburn.
Tony Bennett may have left his heart in San Francisco, but Read More...
SF Healthcare Insurance |
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In a new op/ed published today in the Washington Times, IPI Resident Scholar Merrill Matthews describes how the availability of health insurance coverage may be affected by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals’ current review of federal laws limiting wide-reaching health care reforms at the local and state levels.
An excerpt:
Federal law severely limits state and local efforts to pass sweeping health care reform legislation. But a case now being reviewed by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, regarding a San Francisco law that forces employers to provide health insurance or pay the city an assessment, could change all of that. And in so doing, it might fundamentally change the availability of good health insurance coverage.
Unwilling to wait on federal health care reform legislation, several states have taken their own steps.
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Not many people were aware of an insidious little thing that was going on related to the patent reform bill, which is why I decided to write an op/ed on the topic. It had to do with a handful of big banks who want to trample over the patent of a small Texas company which holds a battle-tested patent on check scanning technology.
I won't go into all the issues here. If you want the background, read my op/ed.
While some leaped into the debate and tried to use it for their own purposes before even bothering to see if the facts supported their arguments, I was dead-on.
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As reported in Business Week on March 31, 2008 "High-Tech Schooling for Our Dumb Grid" cleaner and more efficient energy is on its way. Those concerned with global warming, or just tired of paying more for power than they should have to because of inefficiencies in the system have something for which to look forward - a smarter electrical grid. In this case, smarter means the electric companies providing tools for more efficient use of the grid, to the benefit of the power company and to the benefit of their customers.
At the same time the Internet regulation crowd, who like to hide themselves behind the cloak of so called "net neutrality," are arguing for a dumber communications system in this country. A system that may in fact strand consumers without the means to filter out unwanted or dangerous content - such as spam or pornography. Read More...
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The European Patent Office is holding a very interesting event next month. Titled, European Patent Forum 2008 – Inventing a Cleaner Future, the conference claims to be the first global discussion dedicated to figuring out how “the fields of patenting and intellectual property” can support innovations that will address global energy needs and environmental concerns. The program can be viewed by clicking here.
There are a number of provocative questions and issues to be raised here.
First, there will be an explosion of “green tech” patents in the U.S. and around the world in coming years. Read More...
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Tough times lead to bad ideas—and sometimes, really bad ideas.
Consider the tax break being pushed by the National Association of Homebuilders.
They would get to offset their current losses by looking back to previous years and getting a retroactive tax break. The provision is estimated to cost about $6 billion and is part of a larger $15 billion bill that passed the Senate last week.
Now, we’re all for most tax breaks, especially those that cut marginal tax rates and spur economic growth. (We’d be even more supportive of fundamental tax reform that eliminated most breaks, and set a low flat rate in its place.)
But that’s not what this tax break does. It’s meant to bailout homebuilders in the hope that they will keep on building and, consequently, keep construction workers employed.
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Republican Presidential nominee John McCain gave a speech on economic issues this morning, and there is much in the speech that should help cheer conservatives and make them more enthusiastic about the McCain candidacy.
McCain is talking about ideas that appeal directly to the conservative base, but are also in direct contrast with the positions that are being taken by both Obama and Clinton. These are ideas that should appeal to every common sense voter, leaving either Obama or Clinton with only the hardcore leftists, and that's not enough to win an election with.
For one thing, McCain is talking about tax cuts, not tax increases:
In the same way, many in Congress think Americans are under-taxed. They speak as if letting you keep your own earnings were an act of charity, and now they have decided you've had enough. By allowing many of the current low tax rates to expire, they would impose -- overnight -- the single largest tax increase since the Second World War. Among supporters of a tax increase are Senators Obama and Clinton. Both promise big "change." And a trillion dollars in new taxes over the next decade would certainly fit that description. Read More...
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As several commentors have pointed out, there was an op/ed by Asa Hutchinson on the DataTreasury patent issue in today's Washington Times.
Several commentors want to know "what I think now" after the Hutchinson op/ed. The answer? I now think far less of Hutchinson's intellect and integrity than I did before reading his op/ed.
Several comments, not necessarily in order of importance:
1. As a conservative, Hutchinson's new-found faith in the accuracy and reliability of the New York Times is particularly amusing. The Times article conveniently omits the fact that the DataTreasury IS, in fact, the original filer of the patent. The patent filer lost and then RE-acquired the patent through his new firm, DataTreasury. To say that the only purpose of DataTreasury is to sue banks was misleading of the New York Times to assert, and is disingenuous of Hutchinson to regurgitate.
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Most of us would be embarrassed to admit in public that we don't know how to do our jobs or that we do them without any understanding of the implications of the actions we take. Yet, it seems when it comes to regulating and taxing (one in the same thing) the wireless communications industry, elected officials have no such shame.
During several panels that were held during CTIA Wireless 2008 show, state elected officials and public utility commissioners alike expressed a lack of understanding about the mobile communications industry.
Yet they expressed no concern about the implications when the subject was taxing this industry that is so mysterious to them. Regarding raising revenue one state congressman expressed "You, the wireless industry, have a big target on your head and we don't know much about your industry."
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IPI’s recording music piracy study is cited today in a Chattanooga Times Free Press article discussing the piracy crackdowns occurring on many college campuses.
An excerpt:
…Those scofflaws are at the center of a Tennessee legislative debate on copyright infringement and universities’ responsibility to monitor their students’ online activities.
The state Senate last month passed legislation that could prevent college students from using campus Internet resources for illegal downloads. The bill requires universities with public funding to have a policy on copyright infringement and to report to the Tennessee Higher Education Commission when they have more than 50 copyright infringement violations.
“A lot of my friends are in the music business, and they are basically getting ripped off,” said state Sen. Tim Burchett, R-Knoxville, who sponsored the bill.
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Dr. Larry Hunter is featured in the Denver Post today with a new op/ed on the dangers a potential move by Congress would have on the economy should the legislative body institute a “forced sale” of prescription drugs by the American drug manufacturing industry.
An excerpt:
More than seven in 10 economists believe that the United States has already slid into recession, according to a recent forecasting survey conducted by the Wall Street Journal. Imagine if, in the face of such a downturn, federal lawmakers were on the verge of forcing an entire industry to sell an unlimited amount of product at a loss. Sound too Orwellian to be true? Well, that's exactly what some congressmen are trying to do. Read More...
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The use of “short codes” is one of the most recent innovations in wireless communications.
Short codes are five and six digit numbers through which a cell phone customer can interact with a variety of entertainment and informational sources, such as voting for an American Idol contestant, providing customer feedback on a candy bar, or even responding to direct marketing.
Unfortunately, short codes have been included in the latest effort to compel the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to take a much greater involvement in the regulation of the communications marketplace.
The FCC’s current inquiry is in connection with a request for a ruling regarding “text messages and short codes.” Read More...
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Will Barack Obama Change Washington?
Dr. Merrill Matthews of the Institute for Policy Innovation says he only wants to change the way he takes your tax dollars.
Presidential candidate Barack Obama says he wants to change the way they do business in Washington. So he has released a list of his budget earmarks and has challenged his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton to do the same.
Earmarks are spending requests congressmen put in the federal budget, usually bringing millions of dollars in pork barrel spending back to their home state.
Obama wants $740 million of your tax dollars for Illinois. That includes $1 million for the hospital where his wife worked, until she went on leave.
I suppose we should be thankful that Senator Obama wants to be more open about taking your money for his own pet projects.
I mean, when someone robs your house, it’s always nice to get a thank you note.
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IPI is cited today in a new article from the Mississippi-based Daily Journal.
In the article, staff writer Patsy Brumfield discusses the music industry’s efforts to combat illegal downloading on college campuses. The IPI study, “The True Cost of Sound Recording Piracy to the U.S. Economy,” finds that worldwide theft of sound recordings costs the U.S. economy $12.5 billion and more than 71,000 jobs each year.
An excerpt:
OXFORD - You might say a fellow named John Brooks got off easy.
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Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain has proposed a radical reform for the tax treatment of health insurance. He would eliminate the current employer tax exclusion (i.e., employees do not count as income the money employers spend on employee health insurance; it is “excluded” from income) and replace it with a refundable tax credit: $2,500 for an individual and $5,000 for a family.
Critics of the McCain proposal—and they are legion—say that a $5,000 tax credit for a family doesn’t come near covering the cost of the average family policy, about $12,000 a year.
But to make that claim is to display a woeful ignorance of how the current tax exclusion affects a family’s income tax bill.
Consider, for example, a family making $60,000 a year, which has an employer-provided policy that costs $12,000 a year.
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Google can't afford to hire enough staff to police YouTube and make sure it isn't showing videos of gang rapes and copyright violations, but they CAN hire an army of people to drive all over the country and photograph people's houses, driveways and backyards?
These are choices Google is making. You do what you think is important, and Google thinks it's more important to invade your privacy, photograph your house, and collect data on your web browsing than it is to make sure content on YouTube is legal. Read More...
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Is there a reason why Google is pulling right up in people's driveways, right up to their garages, and taking pictures of people's backyards?
Yeah, I know it's "information," but doggone it, when did information just for information's sake become a virtue in and of itself? Read More...
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IPI president Tom Giovanetti is cited in the American City Business Journals' latest article on the presidential candidates’ positions on free trade, “Free Trade Frozen in Congress, Hot on Campaign Trail.”
In the article, Washington bureau chief Kent Hoover sums up the discussion amongst the presidential policy advisors and other experts from IPI’s latest event, “Trade and the Race for the White House.”
An excerpt:
Congress won't vote on any more free trade agreements until the federal government expands assistance to U.S. workers who lose their jobs due to imports. Meanwhile, both Democratic candidates for the presidency oppose the three trade deals awaiting action by Congress and want to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which lowered trade barriers among the U.S., Canada and Mexico in 1994. Read More...
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| A Houston Chronicle article today discussing the pending free trade agreement with Colombia mentions the IPI trade policy event held on March 27th, “Trade and the Race for the White House.” Chronicle reporter Bennett Roth writes in the article, At a recent forum on trade, sponsored by the Institute for Policy Innovation, a Lewisville, Texas, think tank, advisers to Clinton and Obama said both candidates opposed not only the Colombia agreement, but also other pending deals with South Korea and Panama. To view the full article, please visit the Houston Chronicle online at Chron.com. Read More...
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I don’t expect the stimulus rebates to be received by taxpayers next month to have any significant lasting effect in boosting the economy. That is because these rebates do not involve marginal tax rate cuts. They are simply old-fashioned Keynesian cash grants, financed by Federal government borrowing. Any stimulus from taxpayers spending that money would be offset by the borrowing drawing the same amount of money out of the private sector.
Maybe the policymakers who dreamed up this outdated policy for President Bush and the Democrats in Congress will be lucky, and the economy will rebound this summer on its own. But maybe not, maybe the economy will deteriorate further this summer, providing an enormous political boost for the Democrats.
I think the election will turn on the economy, not on the war in Iraq. The challenge for McCain is to frame the issue as who has the better plan to turn the economy around and get it booming again.
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In a new op/ed published in the Tucson Citizen, IPI senior fellow Dr. Lawrence A. Hunter discusses a great canard coming from Washington regarding the costs of prescription drugs.
Several lawmakers are pledging lower costs for Americans on prescription drugs if Congress legalizes the importation of foreign price-controlled drugs. Hunter calls this a “false promise guaranteed to backfire.”
An excerpt:
If you liked waiting in line for gas in the 1970s, you'll love what's coming next from Washington.
A number of lawmakers, including Sens. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain, have pledged to legalize the importation of prescription drugs from countries where price controls are imposed with the promise that it will lower costs for American consumers. But it is a false promise guaranteed to backfire.
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IPI senior fellow George Pieler is featured with International Affairs Forum editor-in-chief Jens Laurson on Forbes.com today.
Their new op/ed, entitled “Tipping Point for Southern Africa,” discusses the recent election in Zimbabwe with surprising results for the Robert Mugabe-led government.
An excerpt: “When the neo-totalitarian government of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe starts complaining about electoral coups by its meek and mild opposition, you know something's afoot. Days after Zimbabwe's election, the Mugabe regime reports ‘official’ vote tallies showing a near tie and likely runoff, which requires ‘official’ numbers showing that opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai got less then 50%. Read More...
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| Anyone who is interested in how they are personally connected to the countless negative impacts of global piracy and counterfeiting should mark April 16th on their calendars. That is when a powerful documentary film produced by National Geographic titled "Illicit" premieres on PBS. The film is an adaptation of Dr. Moises Naim’s book of the same name. People often talk about the “dark underbelly” of this or that, but seldom do we really have our eyes opened to it as powerfully as we do in this film. That fake purse you bought on a whim (and admittedly feel a little guilty about) will leave a sick feeling in your stomach after Dr. Naim shows you who made it, how it got to your street corner and who really gets the $20 you paid for it. If that doesn’t wake you up, how about cough syrup sold to developing countries that is made from chemical solvents. Read More...
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In a new oped featured today on American Spectator online, IPI director of entitlement and budget policy Peter Ferrara outlines what he calls “the most substantive exchange of the Presidential campaign” thus far: an exchange between Democratic Presidential hopeful Barack Obama and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.
An excerpt:
Probably the most substantive exchange of the Presidential campaign took place within the past two weeks. But it wasn't between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, or between John McCain and either of those two. It was between Barack Obama and Newt Gingrich.
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Tim Lee has responded in his typical fashion to my recent op/ed on the DataTreasury travesty.
Tim questions things in his blog entry that are established facts. By now he certainly knows the answers to his questions, and in fact knows that his skepticism as to the facts of the case was misplaced. But, of course, he's too busy with other things to do to update his blog with the facts.
You may be, as Tim is, highly skeptical of intellectual property at all, and thus particularly skeptical of such patents as the DataTreasury patents. That's fine; we can have a discussion about that.
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Should Students Be Paid to Pass Tests?
The Institute for Policy Innovation’s Dr. Merrill Matthews says they already are, and it’s working.
Talk about pay for performance.
New York City is experimenting with a radical new idea in education reform: capitalism. According to the New York Times, a number of schools are paying principals, teachers and even students if they perform well.
Students can get nearly $50 for doing well on a standardized test. And the city has handed out more than $500,000 to 5,200 students.
The nay-sayers complain kids should be willing to learn, not for money, but for education’s sake. The realists say that high-mindedness can’t compete against streets, gangs and illegal drugs.
The fact is the program prepares kids for the job market, where people are financially rewarded for dedication and hard work. Imagine that, inner-city kids making an A in capitalism. Read More...
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Dr. Larry Hunter and George Pieler are featured in the Austin American Statesman with a compelling discussion on who makes the decision when it comes to insurance business models.
Thanks to a Texas law that went unchallenged by the Supreme Court, government regulation, not the market, has made the choice for customers on whether or not insurance companies can be linked to auto repair shops.
If you want an object lesson in how messed up our ways of regulating insurance in the U.S. are, just take a look at a recent Supreme Court decision—or rather, nondecision. By turning down an appeal in the case of Allstate v. Abbott, the Justices de facto upheld Texas law barring linkage of insurance companies and auto repair shops. One obvious result is a reduction in the choices available to drivers seeking post-collision repairs once their claims have been honored.
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A new oped published in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram entitled, “They’re Banking On Getting Away With It,” by IPI President Tom Giovanetti, says a potential move by Congress would reward some financial institutions for infringing patent rights by granting them retroactive legal immunity.
An excerpt:
Property rights protect the little guy. It doesn't matter how wealthy or politically connected you are -- you have control and full legal standing with regard to your property. Because of your property rights, you can't be run over and abused. The same is true of intellectual property rights. There is something heroic, even romantic, about the small inventor who comes up with a breakthrough idea. The patent is his property right; his protection. It means that big companies can't just steal his idea and kick him down the road. Read More...
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Thousands of the nation’s independent truckers are threatening to go on strike this month (April) to protest high fuel prices.
Truckers are being hard hit by the escalating fuel costs. For one thing, diesel fuel costs more than regular gasoline—exceeding $4 a gallon in many parts of the country (remember when diesel fuel cost less than regular gasoline?).
When a long-haul truck holds 250 gallons, well, that’s a serious cost of doing business for people who don’t usually have deep pockets.
One of the truckers’ demands is removing the federal gas tax.
Hey, guys, we’re with you there.
Currently, consumers pay 18.4 cents in federal tax for every gallon (a little more for diesel), and then states tack on their own taxes. A Tax Foundation study a few years ago estimated that federal, state and local gasoline taxes add up to an average of 45.9 cents per gallon.
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Author: Erin Humiston || Location: Lewisville, Texas, USA