NR Editorial: Get Big Bird Off of Welfare

A new NRO editorial, “Vulture Capitalism,” states that the latest Obama campaign advertisement featuring Big Bird demonstrates that “while Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are rolling out big ideas on taxes, entitlements, and deficits, Barack Obama is clinging to his toys like a frightened child, which very well may be what he is feeling like after his recent trip to the woodshed.”

The complete text of the editorial follows. It can also be found on National Review Online at http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/329846/vulture-capitalism-editors.

For further information contact National Review Publisher Jack Fowler at jfowler@nationalreview.com.

Vulture Capitalism

By The Editors

The Obama campaign apparently is being run by a humor-deficient would-be Jon Stewart: On Tuesday, it launched an ill-advised attempt at snark in an advertisement featuring Big Bird. How bad was the ad? Even the yellow fellow himself was embarrassed, and Sesame Workshop, the multimillion-dollar enterprise with the $1 million–a–year president behind Sesame Street, asked that the ad be taken down. Even President Obama’s amen corner in the media was aghast: ABC News’ Terry Moran pronounced it the work of a campaign “in panic mode.” Somebody should remind Barack Obama that he is, for the moment, president of the United States of America, and not auditioning for whichever MSNBC time slot Chris Hayes turned down.

Mitt Romney has promised to end subsidies for public broadcasting, which is an excellent idea for many reasons, beginning with a $16 trillion debt. Those who point out that eliminating mere small-fry outlays like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting won’t balance the budget are undeniably correct — but it is also undeniably correct that we will not balance the budget without eliminating a lot of small-fry outlays like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. We have to do the big-ticket items and the little ones as well, lest we spare the taxpayer the guillotine only to abandon him to a death by a thousand forgone cuts. While Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are rolling out big ideas on taxes, entitlements, and deficits, Barack Obama is clinging to his toys like a frightened child, which very well may be what he is feeling like after his recent trip to the woodshed.

Controlling the deficit will entail some difficult decisions. Getting Big Bird off of welfare is not one of them. Caroll Spinney, the actor who has played Big Bird since the dawn of time, earns a comfortable 1-percenter income and nests in a gated estate in tony Woodstock, Conn. Rich-old-hippie welfare is an idea whose time has gone. Public-broadcasting executives earn incomes well into the six figures and sometimes into the seven figures. Sesame Workshop takes in hundreds of millions of dollars from Tickle Me Elmo and other merchandise. Big Bird is beak-deep in birdseed and does not require a half-billion dollars a year from taxpayers. Antiques Roadshow, Frontline, and many other public-broadcasting programs similarly do not require government support. We have excellent reason to believe that people will open their pockets to pay for Downton Abbey: the fact that they already open their pockets to pay for Downton Abbey through on-demand television services. And if Clinton: American Experience or Tony Bennett: Duets II somehow fails to connect with an audience, the sun will rise in the morn nonetheless.

Public broadcasting is the deathless government program par excellence. It may have made some sense a few generations ago, when there were in effect three broadcast television stations, limited radio offerings, and enormous regulatory and economic barriers standing in the way of new market entrants. But that no longer is the case: Anybody with a few thousand dollars and an Internet connection can launch a television series or a radio program today and reach an audience of millions. We have more television stations than we can watch, more radio stations than we can listen to, and instantaneous connections to most of the world’s media. In fact, we could multiply public broadcasting expenditures a hundredfold and do practically nothing to improve on the already vast richness of our media environment. Firing Line is a beloved memory, but in 2012 such programming would not require a public-broadcasting infrastructure to thrive. If PBS doesn’t do it, 10 million others will.

And while PBS and NPR give very little offense beyond their bland, conventional liberalism, the United States is not the sort of country that should have government-run media — or even media that is only 6 percent government run. Public broadcasting, like so much associated with the progressive heyday, is fundamentally un-republican.

We welcome this debate. The Democrats will, as usual, cry that this is about “the children,” but l’affair Big Bird shows us precisely who the children really are.

NR Editorial: Obama's Middle-Class Tax Hike

A new NRO editorial, “Obama’s Middle-Class Tax Hike,” states, “Democrats have been saying — or, in the case of Joe Biden, trying to say — that Mitt Romney plans to raise taxes on the middle class. This claim is flatly untrue.”

The article goes on to explain that President Obama “proposes ever-higher spending, which means, unavoidably, ever-higher taxes. Romney proposes to restrain spending and to reform the tax code in the hopes of turning around our sclerotic economy. But only one of the candidates is telling the truth about his tax proposals.”

The complete text of the editorial follows. It can also be found on National Review Online at http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/329133/obama-s-middle-class-tax-hike-editors.

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Obama’s Middle-Class Tax Hike

By The Editors

Democrats have been saying — or, in the case of Joe Biden, trying to say — that Mitt Romney plans to raise taxes on the middle class. This claim is flatly untrue. The word “lie” probably is thrown around too casually in our politics, but this qualifies. Romney has no such plan, has forsworn taking such a course of action, and has in fact proposed to cut tax rates for the middle class — and everybody else who pays the federal income tax — by reducing all brackets by 20 percent.

Romney’s plan would be revenue-neutral, making up for forgone tax revenue by eliminating certain exemptions and deductions. How many and which of those deductions would need to be reduced or eliminated would be determined by the economic facts on the ground come January: If the economy is growing more quickly than expected, then fewer offsets will be required to keep tax revenue level. Romney has been nothing if not consistent in his guiding principles for tax reform: lower rates and fewer deductions, producing a system that is fairer and flatter.

Analysts at the Tax Policy Center estimated that Romney could not both cut rates and maintain revenue neutrality, and published an estimate that this would necessitate an $86 billion tax increase on the middle class. Many of the center’s assumptions were either tendentious or incorrect, as we argued in an earlier editorial, and as has been amply demonstrated by budget scholars at the American Enterprise Institute and elsewhere. The center later cut its $86 billion estimate by more than half. And even that doesn’t quite get the story: For example, Romney proposes to “pay for” repealing the taxes associated with Obamacare by (this is a subtle point) repealing Obamacare, and no further offset is required. According to AEI’s Alex Brill, the Romney plan could produce anything from a $14 billion shortfall that would need to be made up elsewhere to a $1 billion surplus, depending upon how the plan is implemented and how fast the economy grows. An extra one-tenth of 1 percent in annual economic growth substantially changes the federal fiscal picture for the better. That fact, of course, is the animating idea behind Romney’s tax-reform agenda, the point of which is not to lower federal revenue but to increase economic growth by simplifying tax law, lowering compliance costs, and reducing economic distortions.

The Obama campaign’s dishonesty about this is striking even by the very low standards of Democratic election rhetoric. But the White House is also misleading the public about the consequences of its economic policies, specifically about elevating levels of federal spending that have produced an unbroken chain of deficits exceeding $1 trillion — which ultimately will force a very large tax increase on, yes, the middle class and all other taxpayers.

Gigantic deficits such as these can be sustained for only so long, and the Democrats’ spending spree — and their unwillingness to try any approach to restraining entitlement spending that hasn’t already failed — puts the country in a very risky situation: Interest rates are at present very low, but if they should return to something like their historic average, the increasing costs of financing our national debt will be catastrophic. The president’s most recent budget proposal would add some $7.6 trillion in new federal debt. The additional debt-service costs would add up to an average of about $1,300 per family per year under the current tax system. Families of relatively modest means would see hundreds of dollars a year in new taxes, and better-off families would see thousands or tens of thousands of dollars a year in new taxes. But not until after the November election, of course.

Ultimately, a dollar in spending is a dollar in taxes. There are better ways to organize the tax code, such as the way Romney has proposed. And a tax code that encourages enterprise, work, savings, and capital formation encourages economic growth, and thereby makes the broader fiscal reforms the country needs much easier to achieve.

Obama proposes ever-higher spending, which means, unavoidably, ever-higher taxes. Romney proposes to restrain spending and to reform the tax code in the hopes of turning around our sclerotic economy. But only one of the candidates is telling the truth about his tax proposals.

Romney For President - ICYMI: Foster's Daily Democrat Editorial - Romney Has A Real Energy Proposal

In addition to the great coverage coming out of the convention in Tampa, Foster’s Daily Democrat has come out in support of Gov. Romney’s plan for North American energy independence by 2020. The plan for energy independence is part of the Romney-Ryan plan to strengthen the middle class and create 12 million jobs in their first term alone.

Read more about the plan HERE and see the infographic at the bottom.

Romney Has A Real Energy Proposal

Fosters Daily Democrat

Editorial

August 29, 2012

http://fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120829/GJOPINION_01/708299968/-1/fosopinion

Prior to the opening of the Republican National Convention this week, Mitt Romney offered a look at his North American energy independence plan. 

It comes with a goal Romney believes the nation can reach by 2020. And it is a goal the editorial board here at Foster's Daily Democrat urges voters to support.

In a nutshell, Romney has run the numbers needed to get to his goal. Some added energy comes from recent natural gas finds in the Marcellus shale region, which stretches from New York to Ohio. Millions of barrels of oil per day come from the Bakken range in North Dakota.

More comes from opening offshore drilling, starting off the coasts of Virginia and the Carolinas, and empowering the states to lease federal lands for oil, coal and natural gas development.

Given that his plan is for North America, Romney is also looking to Canada. "Canada has oil sands, we're going to take advantage of those and build the Keystone Pipeline," he told The Washington Post's Philip Rucker. Additionally, Romney will work with Mexico to increase supplies coming north across the border.

"The net-net of all this ... is by 2020, we're able to produce somewhere between 23 million and 28 million barrels per day of oil, and we won't need to buy any oil from the Middle East or Venezuela or anywhere else where we don't want to," Romney said.

Critics argue that Romney's plan leaves the United States dependent on a eventually finite supply of fossil fuels and does little to move in the direction of green energy.

The editorial board here at Foster's Daily Democrat would argue that given the recent debacles of government financed Solyndra, Solar Inc. and others, the United States needs to deal with first things first.

That means establishing a flow of energy that will not be disrupted by war in the Middle East or a South American dictator.

Instead, an appropriate first step is to cultivate domestic production and tap supplies from neighboring nations more friendly to our cause and on which the United States can better depend.

While we are on the topic of oil independence, it was reported over the weekend that an explosion at Venezuela's largest refinery killed 41. 

While the loss of the 645,000 barrel-a-day plant is not expected to affect worldwide prices, coverage of the event was enlightening.

According to a radio news report, Venezuela's refineries are in such bad shape that the country ships crude oil to the United States to be refined into gasoline.

Another report, this one by Reuters, concluded with the following:

"Venezuela has traditionally been a key supplier of fuel to the United States, but U.S. reliance on it has declined sharply over the last five years due in part to repeated unplanned outages at Venezuelan refineries."

In the case of Venezuela, the United States has by happenstance been moving away from South American crude. So much so that a major industrial disaster will not affect prices or supply here at home. 

This gives more impetus to Romney's energy independence plan that would methodically accomplish the same for crude from overseas.

NR calls for Akin to “step aside”

A new NRO editorial, “Step Aside, Todd Akin,” criticizes Missouri Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin’s controversial remarks on rape and abortion, stating:

We suspect that this same lack of judgment will cause Akin to blow past tomorrow evening’s deadline for him to leave the race and allow the Republicans to select a better nominee. We hope the congressman, who surely wants to see a Senate with as much conservative strength as possible next year, will prove us wrong.

The complete text of the editorial follows. It can also be found on National Review Online at http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/314502/step-aside-todd-akin-editors.

Step Aside, Todd Akin

By The Editors

Representative Todd Akin, the Republican nominee for Senator from Missouri, became nationally notorious yesterday for saying something stupid. In the course of explaining why he believes abortion should be illegal even when pregnancies result from rape, he said that in cases of “legitimate rape” the victim’s body has defense mechanisms that usually prevent pregnancy.

Give the man points for concision, at least: His remarks combined several mistakes with brutal efficiency. There is no evidence for Akin’s biological claim. The frequency with which rape results in pregnancy has no bearing on whether abortion should be allowed when it does. And while it is not completely clear what point Akin was trying to make with the phrase, “legitimate rape” should not appear in any good one.

Only a small minority of Americans opposes abortion in cases of rape, and some Democrats are now trying to claim that the real scandal in Akin’s remarks is that he, and some other Republicans, belongs to it. For the very same reason this issue offers Democrats political opportunities, however, it is only a theoretical one: No state is going to ban abortion in the case of rape even if Roe v. Wade is overruled — and even if Akin were elected to the Senate. Everyone knows this. (In contrast, Obama’s minority position on abortion — that infants who survive abortion should have no legal protection if they are at an early stage of development — led him to fight an actual change in the law.)

Some voters may nevertheless find a candidate’s theoretical view so abhorrent that they cannot support him, and it is a perfectly legitimate issue for opponents to raise. Most Republicans who hold the view that unborn children have a right to life regardless of the circumstances of their conception will have the wit to explain themselves in a way that prevents most voters who disagree from vetoing them for that reason.

While Akin is a stalwart conservative and an honorable man, we regret to say that he inspires no such confidence. That is one reason why Senator Claire McCaskill, the sitting Democratic senator, boosted him during the Republican primaries with ads calling him a “true conservative.” She knew that she is the weakest Senate incumbent on the ballot this year and that her only hope was to draw a weak opponent. Akin won a three-way primary with a plurality of the vote; there was no run-off. McCaskill’s strategy is now paying off.

Akin has backed off from his remarks, albeit with the politician’s excuse of “misspeaking.” People who make such remarks on television are typically capable of making more like them, or rather incapable of exercising the judgment to refrain. We suspect that this same lack of judgment will cause Akin to blow past tomorrow evening’s deadline for him to leave the race and allow the Republicans to select a better nominee. We hope the congressman, who surely wants to see a Senate with as much conservative strength as possible next year, will prove us wrong.

NRO Editorial: Arizona's “commonsense” immigration law is constitutional

A new NRO editorial, “Uphold S.B. 1070,” says the Supreme Court should uphold Arizona’s “tough, commonsense immigration-enforcement” law and allow states to “use their law-enforcement resources to ‘do the jobs Americans the Justice Department won’t do.’”

The complete text of the editorial follows. It can also be found on National Review Online at http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/296914/uphold-sb-1070-editors.

Uphold S.B. 1070

By The Editors

Today, eight justices of the Supreme Court (Associate Justice Elena Kagan, formerly President Obama’s solicitor general, has recused herself) will hear oral arguments in The United States v. Arizona, a case that will decide whether the Obama administration may impose its strategic neglect of federal immigration laws on the states, or whether instead the states may use their law-enforcement resources to “do the jobs Americans the Justice Department won’t do.”

In April 2010, Arizona governor Jan Brewer signed the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act into law. The tough, commonsense immigration-enforcement package that would come to be known simply as S.B. 1070 had passed comfortably in both houses of Arizona’s legislature and enjoyed broad public support. But in July of 2010, the Obama Justice Department asked a federal court for, and was granted, an injunction against enforcement of major provisions of the law, including the requirement that police make an effort to ascertain the immigration status of lawfully detained individuals when there is reasonable suspicion they are in the country illegally; the complementary requirement that immigrants carry federal immigration papers or be subject to misdemeanor charges; and the imposition of penalties on illegal immigrants who improperly seek work. In April of 2011, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals added to the annals of its infamy by upholding this injunction, and in December the Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal.

The conflict centers on whether the aforementioned provisions of S.B. 1070 preempt federal law on a matter of federal prerogative — in contravention of the Supremacy Clause in Article VI — or whether, as the state of Arizona has argued, they merely complement that law. But we can save the Court the trouble. There is simply no plain-language reading, either of the Arizona law or of federal immigration code, that renders the one incompatible with the other. The Justice Department’s case rests instead on a willful misreading of federal statute, and it reinterprets the requirement that states not preempt federal immigration laws as a requirement that states harmonize their own laws with federal immigration enforcement practices — or in this case, with the lack thereof.

Federal courts have generally held that although setting immigration law is the exclusive domain of the federal government, the states can and indeed should play a role in enforcing that law. For example, in United States v. Vasquez Alvarez (1999), the Tenth Circuit saw “a clear invitation from Congress for state and local agencies to participate in the process of enforcing federal immigration laws” and a “preexisting general authority of state or local police officers to investigate and make arrests for violations of . . . immigration laws.” The Fifth Circuit similarly noted in Lynch v. Cannatella (1987) that “no statute precludes other federal, state, or local law enforcement agencies from taking other action to enforce this nation’s immigration laws.” And in Plyler v. Doe (1982), Justice William Brennan, writing for the majority in an otherwise pro-open-borders opinion, held that “despite the exclusive federal control of this Nation’s borders, we cannot conclude that the States are without power to deter the influx of persons entering the United States against federal law, and whose numbers might have a discernible impact on traditional state concerns.”

This is all S.B. 1070 does. Let us take each of the enjoined provisions separately. Section 2(B), arguably the most controversial, requires that police officers who have lawfully arrested, detained, or otherwise stopped persons for a violation of any law or ordinance take reasonable measures to ascertain the immigration status of those persons should there be a reasonable suspicion they are here illegally. The Justice Department has argued, and the lower courts have agreed, that this unjustly singles out aliens as a group for discrimination and surveillance. But the provision is aimed specifically at aliens already suspected of breaking the law. U.S. code requires aliens to be properly registered with the federal government, and it already commands federal authorities to respond to any inquiries “by a Federal, State, or local government agency, seeking to verify or ascertain the citizenship or immigration status of any individual.” So it stands to reason that local authorities with custody of a suspected illegal alien (who may have committed one of the deportable infractions codified in federal law, to boot) have the investigative and enforcement resources to confirm that alien’s status.

The same goes for section 3(C), which imposes penalties on aliens for not carrying registration papers. Federal law already requires that “every alien, eighteen years of age and over, shall at all times carry with him and have in his personal possession any certificate of alien registration or alien registration receipt card issued to him.” And federal penalties for a willful failure to complete and carry proof of registration already exist. The Arizona law merely adds a layer of state penalties to existing federal ones.

Lastly, section 5(C) of S.B. 1070 makes it unlawful for illegal aliens to solicit work. Opponents have argued that this preempts the clear congressional preference to focus on employers of illegal workers and not the workers themselves. Federal law does prohibit states from imposing their own sanctions on employers — but it does not forbid states to impose sanctions on illegal workers, who are already required to swear, under penalty of perjury, that they are lawfully authorized to work in the United States. Under this section, S.B. 1070 thus avails itself of the means open to it in the pursuit of an avowed congressional end: to stem the employment of illegal workers.

While it is thus clear that nothing in the Arizona law runs afoul of federal immigration statutes, it is equally obvious that, facing an immigration crisis in its back yard, Arizona has decided to enforce those statutes more strenuously than the current administration in Washington. That it has been compelled to do so should not be cause for a censure of the former, but of the latter.