IPI PolicyBytes

“Free trade agreements (FTAs) between the U.S. and developing countries like Jordan and Mexico, to name just a few, have generated long-term social and economic benefits for both partners. Nonetheless, President Bush’s recent call to renew FTA talks in Thailand in recent days brought more jeers than cheers from so-called civil society groups.

Those activists reportedly fear that a U.S. FTA would curtail Thailand’s continued expansion of compulsory licensing, a controversial practice in which a country over-rides intellectual property rights (generally) associated with a brand name prescription drug. Read More...

Taxpayers someday might have to underwrite another bailout if the U.S. sets up a single provider with a free nationwide wireless network, the Institute for Policy Innovation said Thursday. Like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, "this kind of company would not be allowed to fail," said IPI's Solveig Singleton.

"The risk of failure is substantial," and the carrier would have "little flexibility to change business models if it finds itself in trouble," said Singleton. A government-designated wireless provider could "undermine" other wireless firms' network investments, she said...

"Bad things usually happen in the waning hours of just about any Congress, as the pressure to clear the decks often overwhelms good judgment. Occasionally, however, an exception appears.

A bipartisan group of senators, led by Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), is leading an effort to enact The Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act (S.3325), in order to strengthen significantly our government’s effort to protect American innovation and creativity.

The federal government has a tremendously important and unique role to play in intellectual property (IP) enforcement. Read More...

• bring criminal charges in cases of organized and prolific piracy and counterfeiting,
• conduct the investigations necessary to build and prove these cases,
• effectively engage our trading partners on behalf of U.S. rights holders and
• provide comprehensive leadership on a problem that has reached global scale and affects millions of Americans.

"Taxed to the Max"

"Massachusetts is often referred to as 'Taxachusetts' because the state's taxes are so high. Now the Committee for Small Government wants to change that image by pushing legislation called the Small Government Act, which Bay Staters will vote on in November. The legislation repeals the state income, wage and capital gains taxes. That's a $12.5 billion state revenue cut--with no other revenue to replace it. That reduction would force state legislators to seriously rethink their financial priorities. But it would also leave that money in the hands of families, where it will surely be better spent. Bostonians were once brave enough to tell England--and the world--that taxes were too high. Read More...

“The financial panic gripping America right now, and threatening to throw the entire economy into a serious tailspin, was not caused by corruption on Wall Street, deregulation, free market economic philosophy, the 1999 repeal of the outdated, 1930s Glass-Steagall Act, or any of the other far left talking points advanced by the Obama campaign.

The root of the problem began with bad, mismanaged monetary policy by the Fed. Earlier this decade, the Fed overexpanded money and credit, reflected in historically low interest rates for far too long. Read More...

Viviane Reding, Europe's info-media commissioner, has skillfully staked out her position as champion of consumers who want it cheap and now (rather than better, if later).

Her Europe-wide caps on roaming charges for mobile voice services are popular, and now Reding wants the same relief for consumers downloading data and text-messaging across the borders of EU member states. She also seems disposed to cap call-termination fees -- charges from one cell-service provider for ending a call from another provider's network.
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“The Clean Air Act is one of these laws. If stretched beyond its original intent, it would override legislation just enacted by Congress, requiring the government to regulate far more than merely power plant emissions or cars. Read More...

“The world's intellectual property system is broken, stopping lifesaving technologies from reaching the people who need them most in developed and developing countries, according to a report released in Ottawa today by an international coalition of experts.”

• Designating July as National Watermelon Month;

• Recognizing the 70th anniversary of the Idaho Potato Commission;

• And naming June 30 National Corvette Day.

Resolutions

Just two days ago, on September 15, the New York Post published an explosive article by Amir Taheri, an Iranian born journalist who has long covered the Middle East for a wide range of publications. He was editor in chief of Iran's largest daily newspaper from 1972 to 1979 and has in the past been a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Newsday. He has also long been widely published throughout Europe and the Middle East. He is currently a regular contributor to CNN, National Review, and the New York Post. Read More...

“During both the Democrat and Republican conventions, the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) spent a fortune running ads over and over with very troubling personal stories of individuals who were bankrupted with medical bills even though they thought they had health insurance. Some apparently even lost their houses as a result. The ads didn’t offer a solution. Their theme was simply “something needs to be done about it.”

Not enough details were given to understand exactly what happened in these cases. Generally, the individuals involved seemed not to understand the insurance coverage they had, or thought they had. Read More...

"Barack Obama says he supports a tax cut for 95 percent of all Americans. He refers here to his proposal for a $500 refundable income tax credit for all workers, except those in the top 5 percent of income earners. These folks, for some reason, are to be singled out for "special treatment" - i.e., tax increases - unless, as he told ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos last week, "the economy remains weak." So apparently even Mr. Obama recognizes his tax increases would be economically harmful.
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“The key to understanding the Presidential election this year is that the two candidates are diametrically opposed on almost every major issue. In probably no other election since the Civil War have the differences between the two candidates been so stark.

Barack Obama has proposed a record increase in government spending, running into trillions. John McCain has proposed the strictest spending reductions since Reagan. Obama has proposed to increase the marginal tax rates for almost every federal tax. McCain proposes marginal tax rate cuts. Obama proposes to increase taxes on savings and investment. McCain proposes to reduce them.
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"Well, you know, it is our money - or at least it was, before government helped itself to a sizable portion and called it revenue.

That we've rarely, as taxpayers, had a clear idea just what those guys in government were doing with all that tax money isn't one of the nicer things to be said about democratic governance.

Let's look on the bright side, even so. Light is starting to shine in the recesses where all those billions lie, waiting to be spent. The transparency movement in government finance is spreading fast. There's finally a way to see how government spends our money - just by going online. Read More...

Cloud services are "pushing the outer boundaries of [court] precedent, but more gently" than predecessors did, by noting demonstrated DMCA compliance, Solveig Singleton of the Institute for Policy Innovation told us.

If a service itself "is not making an effort to promote that particular [infringing] use," courts may not be perturbed by demonstrated user infringement. Along with the Veoh ruling, eBay's recent victories over trademark infringement suits (WID Aug 14 p5) show that active deterrence wins with judges, she said.
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“Thirty years of Republican tax policy have now completely eliminated federal income taxes on the poor and lower middle-income Americans, and almost eliminated them on middle America.

The latest data from the Congressional Budget Office and the Internal Revenue Service show that the lowest 40 percent of income earners as a group actually receive net payments from the federal income tax system. (They get 3.8 percent of total federal income tax revenues instead of paying any income taxes.) The middle 20 percent of income earners pay 4.4 percent of federal income taxes. Read More...

”Would someone please tell Gov. Charlie Crist he is not Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and that he won't have any more success setting the price of insurance by executive order than FDR had setting the price of gold every morning over eggs in his White House bedroom?

During the Great Depression, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau would meet with President Roosevelt every morning in Roosevelt's bedroom to set the U.S. government's bidding price for gold.

According to a Time magazine news account at the time, "On what principle they fixed their premium above the world (gold) price remained a deep secret." Read More...

The loss of these ice shelves means that rare ecosystems that depend on them are on the brink of extinction, said Warwick Vincent, director of Laval University's Centre for Northern Studies and a researcher in the program ArcticNet.
"The Markham Ice Shelf had half the biomass for the entire Canadian Arctic Ice Shelf ecosystem as a habitat for cold, tolerant microbial life; algae that sit on top of the ice shelf and photosynthesis like plants would. Now that it's disappeared, we're looking at ecosystems on the verge of distinction,' said Mueller.

• objections to intellectual property in principal
• objections to price
• objections to low game quality (bugs etc.) and
• objections to DRM
• objections to distribution channel (i.e. too cumbersome to outlets other than Steam and finally
• people who admitted that they liked free stuff and they could get away with it.

"With one bold masterstroke, everything that was so wrong with American politics has been made right. It is as if Frodo just dropped the Ring of Power in the lake of fire at Mount Doom, and, as the third book of The Lord of the Rings reports, "There was a roar and a great confusion of noise...Towers fell and mountains slid, walls crumbled and melted, crashing down....Then all the Captains of the West cried aloud, for their hearts were filled with a new hope in the midst of the darkness."
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• Raise individual income taxes, increasing the top two income tax rates, with the top rate climbing by 13 percent, to almost 40 percent. This tax increase particularly hits small business—which creates the most new jobs in America—as small businesses often pay taxes under the individual rather than corporate income tax.
• Raise the top capital gains tax rate by 33 percent, to 20 percent.
• Raise the top dividends tax rate by 33 percent, to 20 percent.
• Increase Social Security payroll taxes by 16 percent, to 32 percent, for families earning over $250,000 a year. Read More...
  
  

The best components of John McCain's campaign are his tax and budget proposals. These are crafted to counter our currently wobbly economy and restore economic growth. So why on earth doesn't he talk about them more?

On taxes, America suffers from the second-highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world. American corporations face a 35% federal tax rate, averaging 40% with state income taxes. In contrast, the average corporate tax rate in the European Union has been slashed from 38% in 1996 to 24% today. Read More...