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."

AFPNH - Will Senator Jeanne Shaheen stand up to government price controls?

The Senate will have its first opportunity to undo – or at least delay – one of the most outrageous elements of the disastrous Dodd-Frank financial takeover legislation soon, perhaps as soon as this week.

The issue is whether the Federal Reserve should impose 12-cent price controls on debit card transactions. The current average fee, determined by the free market, is about 44 cents.

The drastic price control will, as price controls always do, cause shortages and inefficient allocation of resources. In particular, it will spur the elimination of free checking accounts, free debit cards, and debit card rewards programs. It will also result in less investment and less innovation in payment networks, including fraud monitoring and other value-added features that now won’t be invented because of the price control.

Smaller banks will be hit the hardest. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said: “It's going to affect revenue of small issuers. And it could result in some smaller banks being less profitable or even failing.”

That’s the last thing the economy needs right now.

I need your help to convince Senator Shaheen to stop the debit card price control. 

CLICK HERE for more information and to take action.

Sincerely,

Corey R. Lewandowski
New Hampshire State Director
Americans for Prosperity

CORNERSTONE COMMENTS ON PROPOSED 'MAGGIECARE'

Says Price Controls are Recipe for Health Care Disaster in NH

Concord, NH - Today, Senate Majority Leader, Senator Maggie Hassan, held a press conference to discuss her proposed piece of legislation, SB505, which would establish a new government bureaucracy made up of three "health czars" whose responsibility it would be to fix health care rates that hospitals and other health care professionals charge.  In addition, this new government entity would grant authority to itself to impose taxes on the income of these health care providers in order to sustain its own existence.

Commenting on this proposed health care boondoggle was Cornerstone-Action's Executive Director, Kevin Smith:

"At a time when the entire nation is rejecting the massive government take-over of health care on the federal level, Senator Hassan is now proposing that the State start fixing the health care costs of its private providers.  Not only will this kind of price controlling literally destroy the delivery of health care services in the State of New Hampshire, but this government take-over will know no limits and will certainly go far beyond just the hospitals."

Smith continued, "This legislature sure does have a penchant for sticking it to the health care providers in our State - first they try to steal money from the doctor's private (JUA) account, now they want to fix the rates hospitals charge.  The state Leadership appears to be as tone deaf as they are in Washington on the health care issue."