CEI Daily - Essential Air Service, New Century Brewing, and Richard Cordray

Essential Air Service

The federal Essential Air Service Program (EAS) subsidizes air traffic to rural airports in the name of fostering economic development.

Research Associate Matthew Melchiorre talks about House efforts to cut funding to EAS.

"The cuts to EAS reside within a 'routine' funding reauthorization for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). As a result, the Democratic-controlled Senate will almost certainly reject the entire bill and blame Republicans for an FAA shutdown. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Commerce Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) will undoubtedly espouse specious rhetoric about rural economic development, but the real truth is that they want to protect precious pork rolling back to their electorates. Republicans ought to dismiss their poor economics and ignore their self-interested cries for taxpayer dollars."

 

New Century Brewing

Rhonda Kallman, the co-founder of Sam Adams Brewery, has shut down her New Century Brewing company.

Policy Analyst Michelle Minton explains how the FDA is to blame.

"Kallman shut down her small brewery after months of the FDA hounding her to reformulate her flagship product, Moonshot, a light beer that also happened to contain a small amount of caffeine. I’ve followed Kallman’s tragic story since last December — the maverick beer maven who you might have seen in the movie Beer Wars. After leaving Boston Beer Co., Rhonda took the major financial risk of forming craft beer company New Century Brewing to peddle the idea she was sure would be a hit: a caffeinated light beer. While her brew, Moonshot, didn’t take off with the oomph of a rocket ship, it was slowly gaining a following, that is until the FDA decided to step in and kill it."

Richard Cordray

Richard Cordray has been nominated to the top spot at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Director of the Center for Investors and Entrepreneurs John Berlau explains why Cordray is a poor nominee.

"As Ohio’s attorney general, Cordray's philosophy was ban first, ask questions later. He seemed to never meet a price control, interest rate cap, or product ban he didn’t like. The former Jeopardy! champion would constantly express the belief that less intelligent beings should not be burdened with deciding what product is best for them in the marketplace.

He was a driving force in Ohio’s efforts in putting price controls interest on small, short-term loans. Ohio instituted one of the lowest interest caps in the country, driving legitimate small lenders out of the state, and Cordray would have gone even further. He championed outlawing basic fees that small-loan providers had been able to charge in the state since the ’50s."

NRN - Must Reads for September 20, 2010

Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson's quote of the day in reference to Elizabeth Warren being appointed as an Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: "Rather than engage in the constitutional process of Senatorial advice and consent, and nominate Warren to the post of Director of the Financial Protection Bureau, Obama is simply creating a new financial czar post to avoid a bruising Senate battle over her radical views."

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• Dems at War: Public Unions v. Gentry Liberals
• The SEIU Takes on Sodexo at George Mason University
• Stimulus happytalk
• White House weighs ad war on Tea Party
• GOP moderates should practice what they preach
• Cuba and the death of Communism

Read more at NetRightDaily.com.

ALG Blasts Obama Appointment of Financial Czar

"The White House can dress this up however they want.  They can pretend Warren's not leading this agency, whose task will be to run the financial sector into the ground, but everyone knows that she will be heading the agency."—ALG President Bill Wilson.

September 16^th, 2010, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today condemned the appointment of Elizabeth Warren as a special assistant to Barack Obama in order to avoid a tough confirmation battle in the Senate.

"Rather than engage in the constitutional process of Senatorial advice and consent, and nominate Warren to the post of Director of the Financial Protection Bureau, Obama has simply created a new financial czar post to avoid a bruising Senate battle over her radical views," Wilson said.

Warren's potential nomination has been sidelined amid objections by the Senators of both political parties, including Senator Chris Dodd, one of the principal architects of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).  Warren has advocated for moratoria on foreclosures of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages and supported court-ordered cramdowns on the principal owed on mortgages.

Wilson said that the appointment violated the language of the Dodd-Frank financial bill, because the Director of the CFPB is supposed to be confirmed by the Senate.  According to Section 1011(b)(2) of the new legislation, the Director and Deputy Director of the agency "shall be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate."

"The Bureau cannot function at all without a director, under the law Obama signed," Wilson said. "The Director is responsible for whatever rules and regulations the Bureau produces, for staffing, for any reports crafted by the Bureau; in short, everything.  The law does not contemplate the agency functioning without a director."

But, as reported by the Washington Post, "Warren is expected to take on a dual role as assistant to the president and special adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, giving her primary responsibility for shaping the consumer watchdog in the coming months."

Geithner, it appears, would actually have the role of "acting director" in lieu of a Senate confirmation.  Wilson said the only reason it was possible legally for Geithner to head the agency was because the Vacancies Act allows for an "acting director" of an "executive agency" to be appointed.  The CFPB was dubbed an "executive agency" under the Dodd-Frank bill.

Warren is ineligible under the Vacancies Act to be named "acting director" because she is not a currently serving confirmed official, a senior agency employee who served for 90 days or more, nor the Deputy Director of the agency.  Wilson said her ineligibility to be appointed acting director was "most likely the real reason for her being named advisor, which means this was the only way they could get her in there over Senate objections."

"But it doesn't matter," said Wilson, "because the Vacancies Act is clearly unconstitutional.  It allows for appointments to confirmable positions without any confirmation while Congress is in session.  The Constitution only allows non-confirmed appointments in the context of being recess appointments.  If Obama has a nominee for this agency, and Congress is in session, he only has one option: nominate her and await the Senate's judgment."

"If the agency operates without a confirmed director, the legitimacy of the acts of the agency will be called into question," Wilson said.

Wilson called for Congress to repeal to the Vacancies Act, saying, "In the Vacancies Act, Congress may have abdicated its constitutional authority for the Senate to confirm appointments, but that doesn't make it constitutional.  Barack Obama is completely ignoring what the Constitution says.  The American people are crying out for the rule of law, but their pleas appear to be nothing more than an annoyance to the White House," Wilson said.

"The White House can dress this up however they want.  They can pretend Warren's not leading this agency, whose task will be to run the financial sector into the ground, but everyone knows that she will be heading the agency," Wilson concluded.



NRN - Must Reads for September 17, 2010

Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson's quote of the day in reference to Elizabeth Warren being appointed as an Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: "Rather than engage in the constitutional process of Senatorial advice and consent, and nominate Warren to the post of Director of the Financial Protection Bureau, Obama is simply creating a new financial czar post to avoid a bruising Senate battle over her radical views."

• Establishment Washington screams at O'Donnell victory
• Constitution Day: The Bill of Rights
• Cartoon of the day, "Tokyo Rove"
• Rove: I'm not the establishment!
• D.C. Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton hustles a lobbyist for campaign cash…
• Why it's time for the Tea Party
• Tea Party built for the long haul
• $111 million in "stimulus" creates 55 jobs!?!?
• Why Democrats can't win on taxes
• Rasmussen: Feingold trailing in Wisconsin
• Americans for Limited Government prepare FOIA for Department of Education
• Stossel: Money is not what schools need
• Tougher oversight means better (and less) government

Read more at NetRightDaily.com.

CHQ - Were Obama Czar's Pay Cuts Constitutional?

The Pay Czar is Unconstitutional

Wall Street Journal (Michael W. McConnell) - "Last week's announcement that 'Pay Czar' Kenneth Feinberg slashed compensation for executives at seven large financial firms by an average of 50% stunned Wall Street, stoked the fires of populist resentment, and troubled economists. Will this government-mandated pay cut drive the most talented professionals away from these companies, endangering their recovery? Does it augur further politicization of economic decisions?

"Lost in the arguments over economics and political theory, however, is a more basic question: Was this action constitutional?" 

Read This Story at News From the Front

Other Articles at News From The Front:

New RNC Ad "Goes Tea Party"

Hot Air - A new RNC ad is killing "two birds with one stone ... , using an all-senior cast to reflect grandpa's jitters about ObamaCare and a catchphrase lifted from yesterday's Code Red event to address tea partiers' feelings of disenfranchisement. Throw the whippersnappin' bums out..."

Dangers of the Overexpansion of Federal "Regulatory Crimes"

The Volokh Conspiracy - "Marie Gryphon of the Manhattan Institute, a generally conservative think tank with strong libertarian leanings, has an excellent report summarizing several dangers of the overexpansion of federal criminal law in the field of 'regulatory crimes.' "

Find these articles and more at News From The Front


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