CEI Today: Internet gambling, antibacterial soap, and IRS abuse of power

INTERNET GAMBLING - MICHELLE MINTON

Wall Street Journal: Should Washington Allow Internet Gambling?

We shouldn't be debating whether Washington should legalize Internet gambling, because the federal government didn't have a right to try to ban it in the first place.

The debate over the morality of gambling has been over for a long time in the U.S. It is a widespread and popular activity: Research shows that more than 70 million Americans gamble in a given year, and some 85% of adults admit to gambling at least once in their lives. > Read more

> Interview Michelle Minton

ANTIBACTERIAL SOAP - ANGELA LOGOMASINI Openmarket.org: “Shocking” Truth about Government and Soap Is your hand wash slowly killing you as government regulators sit idly by? Sounds silly, but that’s what environmentalists seem to think about an antibacterial agent called triclosan, which is used in soap and other consumer products. > Read more > Interview Angela Logomasini

IRS ABUSE OF POWER - HANS BADER Openmarket.org: IRS Investigated Groups for Teaching about the Constitution The IRS didn’t just investigate groups based on their perceived political views, but also targeted groups for “educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights” or advocating limits on government. Such viewpoint discrimination is forbidden, even in allocating discretionary government benefits such as tax exemptions where certain types of content discrimination might be permissible. As the Supreme Court noted in a case involving a college’s discrimination against a religious magazine in access to student-activity funds, ”viewpoint discrimination is . . . an egregious form of content discrimination.” > Read more > Interview Hans Bader

More in the news... Sorry, Daily Beast: E-Verify Will Be National ID Milton Friedman, Immigration, and Birth Control

CEI ANNUAL DINNER & GALA FEATURING THE HONORABLE RAND PAUL JUNE 20, 2013 cei.org/ceidinner

CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government.  For more information about CEI, please visit our website, cei.org, and blogs, Globalwarming.org and OpenMarket.org.  Follow CEI on Twitter! Twitter.com/ceidotorg.

TODAY! Fixing America's Crumbling Infrastructure: How Competitive Bidding Offers a Way Out The problems besetting the nation’s roads, bridges, tunnels, underground water pipes, and wastewater systems pose a direct threat to the health and safety of all Americans. Tuesday, May 14, 2013 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm 1539 Longworth HOB Washington, DC >> RSVP to the event here.

I, Pencil Movie Screening The Union League Club Chicago, Illinois May 21, 2013, 6 - 7:30 PM

APPLY TODAY! Warren T. Brookes Journalism Fellowship CEI offers a one-year fellowship for journalists seeking to improve their knowledge of the principles of free markets and limited government.  cei.org/warrenbrookes Contact: chall@cei.org

INTERVIEW A CEI EXPERT CEI Experts by Issue Advancing Capitalism Constitutional and Legal Issues Energy and Environment Finance and Entrepreneurship Health and Safety Labor Nanny State Regulatory Reform Tech and Telecom Trade and International Transportation

CEI Today: Senate vote on EPA nominee, suing the EPA, and labor unions vs workers

EPA NOMINEE - BRIAN McNICOLL

Fox News: EPA tries hard to keep nominee Gina McCarthy 'clean' before confirmation hearings

The Environment and Public Works Committee will vote this week on Gina McCarthy's nomination. Senators should not act on her nomination until she orders the veil lifted and lets Americans know her record with regard to President Obama's war on coal and efforts by the administration to build outside support for a carbon tax. > Read more

> Interview Brian McNicoll

SUING EPA - MARLO LEWIS Forbes: A Supreme Court EPA Decision That Could Cost Taxpayers $21 Billion Per Year Is the Clean Air Act so badly flawed that it will cripple environmental enforcement and economic development alike unless the EPA and its state counterparts defy clear statutory provisions or, alternatively, spend $21 billion a year to employ an additional 320,000 bureaucrats? That is a central issue in a recent lawsuit by the Southeastern Legal Foundation, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and a host of lawmakers and several companies. > Read more > Interview Marlo Lewis

LABOR UNIONS - MATT PATTERSON Washington Examiner: 'Life of Julius' shows how unions kill jobs, hurt workers Many people realize that unions can hurt the workers they claim to represent. For example, the United Auto Workers union drove labor costs up for the Big Three automakers, a major factor in driving General Motors into bankruptcy and leaving Detroit a shadow of its former glory. But what many don't realize is that labor unions can kill jobs and hurt workers even if they are not members of a union, because the laws, regulations and politicians supported by unions affect our entire economy, often in negative ways. > Read more See Julius’s story at WorkplaceChoice.org

More in the news... Government Gives Students Lifelong Lesson— In Debt Ohio Deserves Right-To-Work Institutional Corruption: AFSCME Subverts Prison Accountability Europe’s “Green Energy” Initiatives Don’t Want Your Help Youth Unemployment Is at Highest Sustained Level Since World War II First Amendment Menace: Obama Administration to Expand Americans with Disabilities Act over Websites?

CEI ANNUAL DINNER & GALA FEATURING THE HONORABLE RAND PAUL JUNE 20, 2013 cei.org/ceidinner

CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government.  For more information about CEI, please visit our website, cei.org, and blogs, Globalwarming.org and OpenMarket.org.  Follow CEI on Twitter! Twitter.com/ceidotorg.

CEI Today: Internet sales tax, apples and pesticides, and European austerity

TAXING THE INTERNET - JESSICA MELUGIN

CEI Slams Senate Vote on Marketplace Fairness Act

Senators crossed a dangerous line today when they voted to approve the dubiously named Marketplace Fairness Act (S. 743). CEI policy analyst Jessica Melugin criticized the measure.

“It’s alarming the Senate would pass an unprecedented expansion of state tax authority without holding a single hearing on the legislation. This legislation will raise compliance costs for online retailers, reduce healthy downward pressure on tax rates, tax online retailers for services they cannot use, increase consumer privacy concerns, remove political accountability for tax authorities and create new inequities between bricks-and-mortar and online businesses."  > Read more

> See also: How Online ‘Marketplace Fairness Act’ Could Tax Your 401(k)

> Interview Jessica Melugin

 

PESTICIDES - ANGELA LOGOMASINI The Washington Times: Nutritious Apples, Poisonous Claims Exaggerated pesticide warnings could scare us from a healthy diet Eat fewer apples, strawberries and grapes, and more corn, onions and pineapples, and you’ll protect yourself and your children from “toxic” pesticides, according to the Environmental Working Group’s 2013 Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce. This advice, however, is nothing more than dangerous hogwash. > Read more > Interview Angela Logomasini

EUROPEAN "AUSTERITY" - MATTHEW MELCHIORRE Separating European Austerity Fact and Fiction Rarely a week goes by without mention in the media of European governments’ failure to restore economic growth through “savage” budget cuts. There is only one problem with that narrative: It is not true. Government austerity is nowhere to be found in Western Europe—and neither is prosperity. But both are present in the oft-ignored east, as Estonia is outperforming its West European neighbors and likely will continue to do so in the future. Why? Because Estonia is the only Euro Zone country to implement real spending cuts and tax reform that does not involve squeezing more revenue out of an economy in recession. America should take note: Real austerity works. Fake austerity does not.  > Read more > Interview Matthew Melchiorre

More in the news... Richard Windsor, aka Lisa Jackson: What’s in the secret e-mails of the head of the EPA? The GOP Has a Blurry View of Free Markets In Medicine Senate Schedules Vote for EPA Nominee Historian: Housing Nominee Mel Watt Helped Spawn the Subprime Crisis Obama: A Sweet Pension for Himself, But Not For America’s Savers or Investors CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

CEI ANNUAL DINNER & GALA FEATURING THE HONORABLE RAND PAUL JUNE 20, 2013 cei.org/ceidinner

CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government.  For more information about CEI, please visit our website, cei.org, and blogs, Globalwarming.org and OpenMarket.org.  Follow CEI on Twitter! Twitter.com/ceidotorg.

CEI Today: Immigrants and welfare, Senate vote on EPA nominee, and Big Gov't versus doctors

IMMIGRATION - DAVID BIER

Openmarket.org: Conservatives Must Reject the “Poor Are Parasites” Narrative

When Mitt Romney made his comments about the 47 percent of Americans who don’t pay taxes and were supposedly “dependent on government,” many conservatives rightly condemned the remark, and Romney apologized. Now, a major conservative think tank is repeating his error, denouncing lower-skilled workers as a fiscal drain on the economy.

This week, the Heritage Foundation, the largest conservative D.C. non-profit organization, released a study intended to demonstrate that allowing the 11.5 million mostly lower-income immigrants who are currently in the country illegally to stay will harm America’s economy. The study focuses on immigrants, but its logic applies to millions of working Americans, almost half of whom had no income tax liability in 2011, according to the Tax Policy Center. > Read more

> Interview David Bier

 

EPA NOMINEE - MYRON EBELL Globalwarming.org: Senate Schedules Vote for EPA Nominee The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has scheduled a vote on the nomination of Gina McCarthy to be Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency for the morning of Thursday, 9th May. The argument for blocking McCarthy’s confirmation is simply that it is one of the very few shots that Senators will have during the 113th Congress to push back the EPA’s ongoing regulatory onslaught against affordable energy. > Read more > Interview Myron Ebell

BIG GOVERNMENT - MICHELLE MINTON Real Clear Markets: The GOP Has a Blurry View of Free Markets In Medicine Bad ideas and special interest politics don't ever die in Washington, D.C. They get re-introduced in the next Congress. Earlier this month, Rep. Larry Bucshon, R-Ind., resurrected a plan to make it more difficult for optometrists (doctors of optometry who provide primary eye care) to compete with ophthalmologists (medical doctors who specialize in treating eyes). The perversely named Truth in Healthcare Marketing Act of 2013 (HR 1427), authored in previous Congresses by former Rep. John Sullivan, R-Okla., as the Healthcare Truth and Transparency Act, is aimed at hampering competition between these eye-care providers. > Read more > Interview Michelle Minton

More in the news... EPA Doubles Down on E15 — Literally The Doctor Is In, America: Get With the Estonian Program Twinkies & unions - Twinkie, Twinkie, Little Star Getting ‘The Kinks’ Out: Unions vs. Union Jack CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

CEI ANNUAL DINNER & GALA FEATURING THE HONORABLE RAND PAUL JUNE 20, 2013 cei.org/ceidinner

CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government.  For more information about CEI, please visit our website, cei.org, and blogs, Globalwarming.org and OpenMarket.org.  Follow CEI on Twitter! Twitter.com/ceidotorg.

CEI Slams Senate Vote Marketplace Fairness Act

CEI Slams Senate Vote Marketplace Fairness Act

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 6, 2013 – Senators crossed a dangerous line today when they voted to approve the dubiously named Marketplace Fairness Act (S. 743), according to experts at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

"America’s economy and American consumers have long benefited from the requirement that politicians can tax only those who can vote them out of office,” said Fred L. Smith Jr., founder of CEI and now director of its Center for Advancing Capitalism. “The Constitution established a system of competitive federalism to prevent states from violating this ‘No-taxation-without-representation” restraint. Those voting for this measure have no regard for the Constitution or for the restraints it established.”

Added CEI policy analyst Jessica Melugin:

“It’s alarming the Senate would pass an unprecedented expansion of state tax authority without holding a single hearing on the legislation. This legislation will raise compliance costs for online retailers, reduce healthy downward pressure on tax rates, tax online retailers for services they cannot use, increase consumer privacy concerns, remove political accountability for tax authorities and create new inequities between bricks-and-mortar and online businesses.

“No doubt sales tax inequities between traditional and online retailers exist, but this legislation is a cure worse than the disease. As this issue moves to the House, representatives would be wise to put the legislation (H.R. 684) through regular order to address the harmful unintended consequences of the Marketplace Fairness Act.”

John Berlau, CEI senior fellow for finance and access to capital, says the bill could result not only in new state taxes on internet shopping but even on their retirement savings. “This bill also could enable states to tax 401 (k) and other savings,” Berlau says. “Out-of-state ‘sellers’ and ‘sales” are never defined, and there are no specific exemptions for certain types of products or services. Thus financial services, such as stock trades, may well be on the table of state governments with ravenous appetites for tax revenue.”

► For more from CEI on the Marketplace Fairness Act, see the links below. CEI was also a signatory to a Conservative Political Action Project memo circulated today on the bill.

• Jessica Melugin, "Facts on Marketplace Fairness Act," a CEI Web Memo

• Jessica Melugin, "The Marketplace Fairness Act Would Create a State Sales Tax Cartel," a CEI OnPoint

• Jessica Melugin, "Internet Sales Tax Bill a Bad Idea," a March 10 op-ed in The Washington Examiner

---

CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government.  For more information about CEI, please visit our website, cei.org, and blogs, Globalwarming.org and OpenMarket.org.  Follow CEI on Twitter! Twitter.com/ceidotorg.