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Politics

nj-gov-chris-christie

File Photo: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie answers a question during a summit in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., on June 2, 2015. (Photo: AP)

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie scored a major victory in his fight against public unions and for pension reform and budget solvency in the Garden State. The state’s highest court ruled in favor of preserving cuts aimed to stave off an inevitable budget crisis, giving the governor a much-needed political win ahead of his decision whether to jump into the Republican presidential primary.

In a 5-2 ruling, the state Supreme Court rejected the union argument that stated there was an enforceable contract to ensure full payments to workers, which overturned a lower-court judge’s ruling ordering the governor and the Democrat-controlled state legislature to work out a way to increase pension contributions for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30.

The state has faced nine credit downgrades throughout the governor’s tenure from credit rating agencies, who repeatedly cited the unsustainable financial burden of public pensions. However, the once-dominate frontrunner and head of the Republican Governors Association (RGA) was unable to reign in union power after BridgeGate, which cost him enormous political capital. Of course, that was the intention of those conducting the witch hunt, despite federal, independent and partisan-run investigations finding no evidence to link Christie to the bridge closing controversy. As as result, he had been in a state of executive paralysis regarding the debt crisis.

Until now.

“That the State must get its financial house in order is plain,” Justice Jaynee LaVecchia wrote in the majority opinion. “The need is compelling in respect of the State’s ability to honor its compensation commitment to retired employees. But this Court cannot resolve that need in place of the political branches. They will have to deal with one another to forge a solution to the tenuous financial status of New Jersey’s pension funding in a way that comports with the strictures of our Constitution.”

The powerful teachers’ union and other public employee unions fought Gov. Christie tooth-and-nail on pension reform, and now not only are the budget busting unions paying the price but the state’s taxpayers, as well. A recent report from Moody’s Investors Service had a dire warning for two of New Jersey’s largest public employee pensions — they will run out of money and exhaust their underlying assets within ten years.

Clearly, Justice LaVecchia agrees.

She pointed out that the state is obligated to pay individual retirees their pensions, which may be the focus of the political attacks on reform, but that’s not yet the cruz of the pension crisis. Unions argee the funds could start going insolvent within the next decade, but refuse to stop adding generous promises to the pension payroll in the future.

“This decision is an important victory not only for our taxpayers who simply cannot afford these unsustainably high costs, but for limited, constitutional government that recognizes the proper role of the executive and legislative branches of government,” Christie said in a statement.

Benefits paid to teachers and public sector retirees in 2013 from TPAF and PERS assets totaled a whopping $4.9 billion, which represents roughly 16 percent of the state’s entire operating revenues. But the rate of benefit growth is simply unsustainable, as the state’s contribution to those plans last year was just $878 million.

Prior to the BridgeGate controversy, Gov. Christie signed a 2011 deal on pensions for public workers, which required employees to pay more and the government to agree to make up for years of skipped or reduced contributions.

But, in order for the state to escalate those payments over seven years, they had to suspend the cost-of-living increases for retirees and raise the retirement age for current workers. Still, because of the state’s high-tax economic environment and wet blanket of debt, lacking economic growth resulting in state tax revenue last year unexpectedly missing projections, further quickening the state’s march toward a budget crisis.

Christie solved it by reducing the planned contributions by more than $2.5 billion over the fiscal 2014 and 2015 budgets, if which nearly $1.6 billion was front-loaded for the current fiscal year. His budget proposal for the fiscal year 2016, which starts July 1, will request a record $1.3 billion contribution and, despite the amount being less than half the $3.1 billion called for in the 2011 deal, Democrats have vowed to oppose it.

“It’s of course extremely disappointing that the Supreme Court didn’t decide the law was exactly what the law said. It’s just one obstacle,” said Hetty Rosenberg, president of Communication Workers of America in New Jersey. “We will win, there is no way we will ever, ever give up this fight.”

The governor’s office said Christie has a new plan to reduce health benefit costs and use the savings to reform the state’s pension funds over the long term. According to the plan, workers would also have their defined benefit plans frozen and replaced with 401(k)-style plans.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie scored a

Video

[brid video=”9590″ player=”1929″ title=”Obama Snubs Iraqi PM alAbadi at G7 Summit”]

President Obama is taking some heat from critics this week after video footage appears to so an awkward moment when he snubs Iraqi PM Haider al-Abadi. While attending the G-7 summit in Germany, the Iraqi prime minister sat down next to Obama, who likely had no idea he was even there.

Of course, even if we conclude he did not, which you can do for yourself by watching the video, it does reenforce the sentiment that President Obama is completely aloof, at best, and unaware of his surroundings. As Mara Liasson, a liberal and the national political correspondent for National Public Radio said on Special Report with Bret Baier Monday night, the scene serves as a metaphor for a president who is also aloof and unaware of the foreign policy reality under his administration.

Obama was speaking with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and International Monetary Fund Christine Lagarde when Abadi approached with his translator. Obama, engaged in conversation with the other two, didn’t turn around or seem to have any idea that the prime minister was behind him. After Obama stood, Abadi did the same, taking an exaggerated look at his watch and his translator putting his arms up in a shrug, before walking away.

Obama, Abadi and other members of the G-7 summit were supposed to be discussing a strategy for combatting the Islamic State. However, considering the scene we witness in the video and the fact Obama once again told reporters at a press conference that “we don’t yet have a complete strategy” to combat the militant terror army, there is little wonder the Iraqi leader made the recent comments he did.

READ ALSO — Iraqi PM Haider al-Abadi Slams U.S.-led Coalition for Spread of ISIS

On Tuesday, al-Abadi blamed the U.S.-led coalition that is training his security forces for the spread of ISIS in his country.

He said ISIS “is a failure on the part of the world” to offer an alternative to militant Islam, adding the international community has “a lot of political work” in their own countries.

President Obama is taking some heat from

Opinion

Hillary-Clinton-Watermark-Silicon-AP

Hillary Rodham Clinton jokes during her keynote address at the Watermark Silicon Valley Conference for Women in Santa Clara, Calif., on Feb. 24, 2015.

Don’t you find it a bit odd that two glaringly contradictory narratives surround Hillary Clinton’s bid for the presidency — inevitability and “she’s in trouble”?

I’ve never been convinced, as I’ve written before, of Hillary’s inevitability. In fact, I rarely believe the media or members of the establishment of either party when they anoint any candidate as inevitable. These people tend to live in the Northeastern power corridor but are often oblivious to what the rest of the country is thinking.

I attended an influential confab prior to the 2008 primary season and listened to numerous GOP establishment honchos explaining why Mitt Romney’s nomination in 2008 was virtually guaranteed — statistically, among other things. As I recall, he didn’t win the nomination that year.

Also that year, the power brokers and establishment punditry prophesied Hillary as the inevitable Democratic presidential nominee. Their assessment, I think, was based on identity politics groupthink. It was time, in their collectively superficial view, for a woman to be president.

I guess it hadn’t quite occurred to them that it was time for a black man to be president until Barack Obama came along and displayed certain charisma, at which point they happily cashiered one identity group for another.

But now that they can check one group off their list, they must move on to the next. It is Hillary’s turn. Women’s time has come. Plus, they convinced themselves she was inevitable in 2008; surely, they could resurrect that self-deluding fantasy for 2016. So they have, but lo and behold, they’re experiencing serious speed bumps along the way.

Even with the mainstream media doing everything they can to shield Hillary from scrutiny, she is beginning to self-destruct. Her past is catching up with her — her distant and recent past; none of it is pretty, and she is an affirmatively horrible candidate.

Everywhere you turn today you’re seeing stories about Hillary’s looming problems. Just type her name in Google and see what you find.

Now, let’s stop right here for a moment, lest you think I’m contradicting myself. In back-to-back paragraphs, I asserted that the media are shielding Hillary from scrutiny yet are also reporting that she is facing obstacles. Let me explain.

Put aside actual inevitability for a moment, and consider apparent inevitability. The only reason anyone is able to utter the term “inevitability” in proximity to “Hillary Clinton” is that the mainstream media are conspiratorially protecting her. If they were journalists instead of partisan hacks, they wouldn’t tolerate for a second her arrogant stiff-arm and would demand she make herself available for interviews and questions.

Her famed “listening tour” is now a “listen to me” junket. Her ongoing media flip-off is unprecedented. Has any other presidential candidate ever done this?

If the media had any self-respect, let alone allegiance to journalistic integrity, they could instantly force her out of the shadows as they would if any Republican attempted such an outrageous stunt.

Alternatively, they could very likely torpedo her campaign by savaging her for hiding and also by exposing the multitudinous scandals and weaknesses circling her aura like a wistful vulture.

But they don’t. How utterly stunning that the institution that nominally champions the public’s “right to know” is assisting Hillary in making sure the public doesn’t know. How unspeakably hypocritical that the candidate who is stumping for expanding the voter franchise, as shamelessly demagogic as that is, is desperately trying to keep voters ignorant about who she is, what she’s done and what she stands for.

The media act as if there’s nothing much to all the scandal allegations against Hillary, other than perhaps an inconvenient appearance of impropriety in connection with the Clinton Foundation monies and influence. They are telling us she isn’t inauthentic, only that she might appear to be, such as with her championship of income equality while being as rich as Croesus. They are ignoring or pooh-poohing her smorgasbord of scandals. And they are barely even murmuring about her inaccessibility, much less speculating about whether she lacks the confidence and competence to subject herself to questions.

But should Hillary’s approval numbers continue to fall and another credible Democratic candidate emerge — and some are now talking about former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg — the media will demonstrate that their attitude toward Hillary has been one of purely partisan expedience as they turn on a dime and start airing her dirty linen. They’ll tell us she’s truly inauthentic, not just apparently so, and that there is something to some of these scandals after all. Heck, they might even suggest she’s too old and not altogether competent. They might not get their first female president (unless Sen. Elizabeth Warren were to show real promise), but any Democrat — even another man — would be better than a Republican president.

The liberal media are Hillary’s only lifeline right now, and should she continue to self-destruct and a strong liberal challenger come forth, we could see how quickly they sever that line.

[mybooktable book=”jesus-on-trial-a-lawyer-affirms-truth-the-gospel” display=”summary” buybutton_shadowbox=”true”]

Don't you find it a bit odd

Opinion

obama-g7-iraq-strategy

President Barack Obama speaks during a media conference at the conclusion of the G-7 summit in Grun, Germany. (Photo: AP)

After the pro-Western government of China was forced to flee to the island of Taiwan in 1949, when the Communists took over mainland China, bitter recriminations in Washington led to the question: “Who lost China?” China was, of course, never ours to lose, though it might be legitimate to ask if a different American policy toward China could have led to a different outcome.

In more recent years, however, Iraq was in fact ours to lose, after U.S. troops vanquished Saddam Hussein’s army and took over the country. Today, we seem to be in the process of losing Iraq, if not to ISIS, then to Iran, whose troops are in Iraq fighting ISIS.

While mistakes were made by both the Bush administration and the Obama administration, those mistakes were of different kinds and of different magnitudes in their consequences, though both sets of mistakes are worth thinking about, so that so much tragic waste of blood and treasure does not happen again.

Whether it was a mistake to invade Iraq in the first place is something that will no doubt be debated by historians and others for years to come. But, despite things that could have been done differently in Iraq during the Bush administration, in the end President Bush listened to his generals and launched the military “surge” that crushed the terrorist insurgents and made Iraq a viable country.

The most solid confirmations of the military success in Iraq were the intercepted messages from Al Qaeda operatives in Iraq to their leaders in Pakistan that there was no point sending more insurgents, because they now had no chance of prevailing against American forces. This was the situation that Barack Obama inherited — and lost.

Going back to square one, what lessons might we learn from the whole experience of the Iraq war? If nothing else, we should never again imagine that we can engage in “nation-building” in the sweeping sense that term acquired in Iraq — least of all building a democratic Arab nation in a region of the world that has never had such a thing in a history that goes back thousands of years.

Human beings are not inert building blocks, and democracy has prerequisites that Western nations took centuries to develop. Perhaps the reshaping of German society and Japanese society under American occupation after World War II made such a project seem doable in Iraq.

Had the Bush administration pulled it off, such an achievement in the Middle East could have been a magnificent gift to the entire world, bringing peace to a region that has been the spearhead of war and international terrorism.

Germany and Japan had been transformed from belligerent military powers threatening world peace for more than half a century to two of the most pacifist nations on earth, in both cases after years of American occupation reshaped these societies. Why not Iraq?

First of all, Germany and Japan were already nations before the American occupation. There was no “nation-building” to do. But Iraq was a collection of bitter rivals — Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, for example — who had never resolved their differences to form a nation, but were instead held together only by an iron dictatorship, as Yugoslavia once was.

Replacing German and Japanese dictatorships with democracy after World War II was a challenge. But both countries remained under American military governments for years, slowly gaining such self-governing powers as the military overseers chose, and at such a pace as these overseers deemed prudent in the light of conditions on the ground.

American authorities did not rush to set up an independent government, able to operate at cross purposes because it was “democratically elected” in a country without the prerequisites of a viable democracy.

Despite the mistakes that were made in Iraq, it was still a viable country until Barack Obama made the headstrong decision to pull out all the troops, ignoring his own military advisers, just so he could claim to have restored “peace,” when in fact he invited chaos and defeat.

This is only the latest of Obama’s gross misjudgments about Iraq, going back to his Senate days, when he vehemently opposed the military “surge” that crushed the terrorist insurgency, as did Senator Hillary Clinton also, by the way.

Iraq was in fact ours to lose,

Politics

John-Koskinen-Lois-Lerner-emails

File Photo: IRS Commissioner John Koskinen testifies on Capitol Hill in June 2014 during what became a contentious hearing on the “lost” Lois Lerner emails.

Judicial Watch announced Monday that a U.S. federal judge has ordered the IRS to provide an answer for the missing Lois Lerner emails — by this Friday, June 12. This is another positive step to have the IRS and the Obama Administration finally answer to the American people. Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted the watchdog group’s request to issue an order requiring the IRS to answer for the status of the likely damaging Lois Lerner emails by June 12, 2015.

“The Obama IRS obstructed and lied to a federal judge and Judicial Watch in an effort to hide the truth about Lois Lerner’s emails,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The IRS, including its top political appointees IRS Commissioner John Koskinen and General Counsel William J. Wilkins, has much to answer for over its contempt of court and of Congress.

It took all of two days for the judge to approve the request, which was actually filed on June 2 and approved on June 4 by Judicial Watch, who raised questions about the IRS’ handling of the missing emails.

“The IRS is directed to respond to [Judicial Watch’s] notice by no later than June 12, 2015,” Judge Sullivan ordered.

The group, the Congress and now apparently the judge, all are either suspicious or convinced that the IRS lied by withholding the truth about the existence and content of the backup tapes. In fact, despite testimony by Commissioner Koskinen that Lerner’s emails had been destroyed behind recovery, an investigation conducted by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) uncovered material previously claimed to be lost.

“And the Department of Justice officials enabling this cover-up in court need to be held accountable, as well,” Fitton added. “The IRS is out of control and Judicial Watch is happy that Judge Sullivan has taken this key step to remind the agency that it is accountable to the rule of law and the American people.”

Recent emails obtained by Judicial Watch and shared with PPD revealed Lerner was “willing to take the blame” for the inappropriate targeting of Tea Party and other conservative groups. However, as was the case in previously obtained emails, Lerner was well-aware of how the targeting practice “might raise questions” and attempted to keep information from Congress and investigators from the TIGTA.

President Obama had claimed during a previous interview with Bill O’Reilly that there was “not even a smidgen of corruption” involved at the IRS.

“That’s not what happened,” Obama told O’Reilly when asked if mass corruption was at play. “There were some bone-headed decisions. Not even mass corruption. Not even a smidgen of corruption.”

However, according to newly obtained emails, including an email from Lerner in February 2012 asking that a program be set up to “put together some training points to help them [IRS staffers] understand the potential pitfalls” of revealing too much information to Congress, clearly suggest otherwise.

Judicial Watch announced Monday that US District

Politics

Obama-bullies-supreme-court-G7-Summit-Germany

President Obama bullies Supreme Court as he speaks at a press conference during the G-7 summit in Germany Monday June 8, 2015.

Speaking during a press conference in Germany Monday, President Obama again made an effort to bully the Supreme Court over the upcoming ObamaCare ruling. The president’s remarks came ahead of the much-anticipated King v. Burwell decision, which could gut the president’s deeply unpopular signature healthcare law by siding with the lower courts that ruled them unconstitutional.

“This should be an easy case. Frankly, it probably shouldn’t even have been taken up,” Obama said. He said it’s safe to “assume” the court will do what most legal scholars expect and “play it straight.” Obama said it has been well-documented that Congress never intended to exclude people who went through the federal exchange.

If the Supreme Court rules against the decision by his administration to offer subsidies through the federal exchange, then it could only be based on a “contorted reading of the statute” and a “twisted interpretation.”

Except, the president’s claims fly in the face of both the historical congressional record and the statements made by the now-infamous ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber. Gruber, the MIT economist who helped write ObamaCare, was the star of a series of videos in which he admitted that the law passed by Congress never provided for federal subsidies. He is better known, however, for the following comments:

“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” said Gruber. “And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass. You can’t do it political, you just literally cannot do it. Transparent financing and also transparent spending. I mean, this bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes the bill dies. Okay? So it’s written to do that.”

Following the initial filing of the lawsuit to be decided upon by the high court by the end of the month, Gruber did a series of interviews and made a number of outrageous comments and accusations, including calling those who say the law should be interpreted as it was written “screwy,” “nutty,” “stupid,” and “desperate.”

“Literally every single person involved in the crafting of this law has said that it`s a typo,” Gruber said in an interview with MSNBC.

However, despite the president’s claims after the fact, Gruber, who recently said that he knew “more about this law than any other economist,” admitted back in 2012 that subsidies were only permitted per the law in SBMs, or state-based exchanges. But don’t take our word for it.

[brid video=”9570″ player=”1929″ title=”Gruber v. Gruber Conflicting Statements Exposes Lies of ObamaCare Architect”]

“I think what’s important to remember politically about this is if you’re a state and you don’t set up an exchange that means your citizens don’t get their tax credits. But your citizens still pay the taxes that support this bill. So you’re essentially saying to your citizens, you’re going to pay all the taxes to help all the other states in the country. I hope that that’s a blatant enough political reality that states will get their act together and realize there are billions of dollars at stake here in setting up these exchanges and that they’ll do it, but you know once again the politics can get ugly around this,” Gruber said.

And just in case you need more evidence, an audio emerged that can be heard via YouTube in this next clip, during which Gruber again repeats concerns over the law’s barring of federally distributed subsidies. He clearly didn’t view the language as a clerical error, or “typo.”

[brid video=”9573″ player=”1929″ title=”Jonathan Gruber Once Again Says Subsidies Are Tied to StateBased Exchanges”]

Yet, Obama administration has repeatedly argued the legislative language implies the federal exchange can be used to offer people ObamaCare subsidies in the event states did not take the 3-year diminishing bribe and set up state-based exchanges. Unfortunately, on July 22, 2014 the powerful D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Gruber’s past statements revealed in the videos and invalidated ObamaCare subsidies for health insurance obtained through the federally run exchange, HealthCare.gov.

To better understand how this could have happened, let’s first review the situation in its proper historical context.

The House, at that time, was still in Democratic control under the direction of former Speaker now-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and they passed a version of the bill that included language one could argue did, indeed, extend ObamaCare subsidies beyond state-based exchanges. The Senate, however, was another story.

In a shocking rebuke of the law, which Americans never wanted and still do not want, Scott Brown was elected in deep Blue Massachusetts to replace the late liberal Sen. Ted Kennedy, a long-time advocate of government-run healthcare.

Democrats simply didn’t have the votes to take up another piece of legislation similar to the even more centralized House bill. They had no choice but to settle on the version that had already been passed in the Senate, which specifically barred ObamaCare subsidies for consumers in states that did not set up SBMs, or state-based marketplaces. The House went on to pass the Senate version, and here we are.

This isn’t the first time President Obama has openly and publicly scolded the Supreme Court. In fact, it isn’t the first time he bullied them over ObamaCare, or played loose with the facts in his claims. First, during his 2010 State of the Union Address, Obama slammed the justices over the Citizen’s United ruling, claiming that it opened up America’s political process to manipulation by “foreign corporations.”

A video of Justice Samuel Alito shaking his head back-and-forth mouthing the words “not true” or “that’s not true” went viral. Exactly which version of the phrase he said is up to interpretation, thus we bring you the video:

[brid video=”9569″ player=”1929″ title=”Justice Alito State of the Union CloseUp Mouths “]

In the weeks after oral arguments were heard by the court on the individual mandate, which was upheld when Chief Justice John Roberts decided to rewrite the law and uphold what he initially ruled to be unconstitutional, President Obama essentially threatened the court in the Rose Garden. We will soon find out if bullying once more prevented Chief Justice Roberts and the other conservative justices from dismantling the so-called Affordable Care Act based upon the constitutionality of the law.

President Obama bullies Supreme Court over upcoming

Policy

hillary-clinton-oecd-2011

Then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivers remarks at the OECD Ministerial in June, 2011.

Citing the work of David Burton and Richard Rahn, I warned last July about the dangerous consequences of allowing governments to create a global tax cartel based on the collection and sharing of sensitive personal financial information.

I was focused on the danger to individuals, but it’s also risky to let governments obtain more data from businesses. Remarkably, even the World Bank acknowledges the downside of giving more information to governments.

Here are some blurbs from the abstract of a new study looking at what happens when companies divulge more data.

Relying on a data set of more than 70,000 firms in 121 countries, the analysis finds that disclosure can be a double-edged sword. …The findings reveal the dark side of voluntary information disclosure: exposing firms to government expropriation.

And here are some additional details from the full report.

…disclosure has important costs in allowing exposure to government expropriation… We show that accounting information disclosure can be detrimental to firm development… Such disclosure allows corrupt bureaucrats to gain access to firm-level information and use it for endogenous harassment. …once firm information is disclosed, the threat of government expropriation is widespread. Information disclosure thus allows rent-seeking bureaucrats to gain access to the disclosed information and use it to extract bribes. …Our paper offers a vivid illustration that an important hindrance to institutional development—here in the form of adopting information disclosure—is government expropriation. …The results are thus supportive of Acemoglu and Johnson (2005) on the overwhelming importance of constraining government expropriation in facilitating economic development.

Yet this doesn’t seem to bother advocates of bigger government.

Indeed, they’re using a Paris-based international bureaucracy to push a “base erosion and profit shifting” initiative designed to produce global rules that would give governments far greater access to business data.

Their goal is to extract more money openly with tax policy rather than surreptitiously with bribes, but the net effect will be just as bad for the global economy.

A new study from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity has the disturbing details.

Under direction of the G20, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) began two years ago a major initiative on “base erosion and profit shifting” (BEPS). …Through the BEPS project, the OECD is continuing its war against tax competition.

For all intents and purposes, politicians from high-tax nations are using the G20 and OECD to undermine the liberalizing force of tax competition.

They want to rewrite international tax policy to prop up nations with uncompetitive tax systems.

[BEPS] would…lead to an overall higher tax environment as politicians freed from the pressures of global tax competition inevitably raise rates to levels last seen in the early 1980s, when reforms by Reagan and Thatcher sparked a global reduction in corporate tax rates that has continued to this day. Through tax competition, the average corporate tax rate of OECD nations declined from almost 50% in 1981 to 25% in 2015. …The [BEPS] Action Plan…considers the benefits of tax competition to be the real problem, explaining that “there is a reduction of the overall tax paid by all parties involved as a whole.” The prospect of there being less money to be spent by politicians is perceived as a problem to be solved.

Even though there’s no evidence of a problem, even from the perspective of revenue-hungry politicians.

The OECD’s BEPS Report itself undercuts the argument that there is a pressing need for a global response when it acknowledges that “revenues from corporate income taxes as a share of GDP have increased over time.” Likewise, the Action Plan admits when discussing hybrid mismatch that “it may be difficult to determine which country has in fact lost tax revenue.”

So BEPS isn’t a response to the nonexistent problem of falling revenue. Instead, the real goal is to make it easier to impose higher tax rates and change other rules to raise additional revenue.

sachs-race-to-the-bottom

Even if the required policies have very troubling implications. As part of this new campaign against tax competition, here’s some of what the OECD is seeking.

Proposed recommendations for transfer-pricing documentation and country-by-country reporting, for instance, feature broad reporting requirements that go far beyond what is required for purposes of tax collection. …Information contained in the local and master files are particularly vulnerable, since it would take a breach in only a single jurisdiction for it to be exposed. The OECD makes assurances for the confidentiality of these reports, but they are empty promises. Such government assurances of privacy protection are contradicted by experience and the long history of leaks of taxpayer information. In the United States alone tax data has frequently been exposed thanks to inadequate safeguards, or even released by officials to attack political opponents. …Even without malicious intent, governments are ill equipped to protect sensitive information from outside access. …As poor as the United States has proven at protecting privacy, there are likely to be nations even more vulnerable. Through the master file and other reporting mechanisms, BEPS will demand of corporations propriety information and other sensitive data that they have every right to keep private.

Requiring more information is just one part of BEPS.

There are many other elements, all of which are designed to facilitate higher tax burdens. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal warned that, “this is an attempt to limit corporate global tax competition and take more cash out of the private economy.”

But as bad as BEPS is now, the study from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity explains it will get worse over time.

Of particular relevance for understanding the BEPS initiative is the pattern demonstrated by the OECD during the course of this campaign. After each recommendation was widely adopted – typically under duress in the case of low-tax jurisdictions – the OECD immediately pushed a new requirement that was more radical and invasive than the last. First was a call to adopt a certain number of Tax Information Exchange Agreements and a standard of information exchange upon request, then a peer-review process whereby tax policies are judged according to the standards of high-tax welfare states. Then, after years of meetings and costly compliance efforts, the old standard for information exchange upon request was replaced with a call for global automatic exchange.

The OECD’s strategy of moving the goalposts is worth noting because the BEPS project almost certainly will evolve in ways that enable ever-higher tax burdens.

I predicted back in 2013 that the end result will be “global formula apportionment,” a system that would enable dramatically higher tax burdens on the business community.

And I’m sticking with that prediction, in part because that’s what would be in the interests of politicians from high-tax nations. If national governments were able to tax on the basis of what companies sold inside their borders, regardless of how much income actually was being earned, there would be very little competitive pressure to keep tax rates reasonable.

Politicians could push corporate tax rates back up to 50 percent, or even higher.

The folks on the left certainly would like that kind of system. Here are some excerpts from a CNN story.

It’s time for a complete overhaul of the global tax system to ensure each company pays their fair share, says Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz. …”Multinational corporations act and therefore should be taxed as single and unified firms. It is time for our [political] leaders to be bold,” Stiglitz said. …Stiglitz said that creating a new worldwide tax system is realistic, but all nations would have to work together to agree rules and close loopholes. The group of economists said in a statement that it was critical to “curb tax competition to prevent a race to the bottom.” Developed nations should take the first step by agreeing on a minimum rate of corporate tax, possibly under the auspices of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. …The economists also suggest establishing an intergovernmental tax body within the United Nations that would combat abusive tax practices.

The bottom line is that politicians and statist interest groups both want to extract more money from the productive sector of the economy.

And OECD bureaucrats have been assigned the task of crafting rules to undermine tax competition so that companies can’t escape those higher burdens.

Developing new rules is actually the easy part. The hard part is when the bureaucrats try to rationalize how higher tax rates and bigger government are somehow good for the global economy.

Particularly since economists who work at the OECD have written that lower tax rates and tax competition result in better economic performance.

P.S. To add insult to injury, American taxpayers provide the biggest share of the OECD’s budget. This means that our tax dollars are being used to generate policies that will result in higher tax burdens. Which is why I’ve argued, on a per-dollar-spent basis, that subsidies to the OECD are the most destructively wasteful part of the federal budget.

P.P.S. And to add insult upon insult, OECD bureaucrats get tax-free salaries, so they are insulated from the negative effects of policies they’re trying to impose on the rest of the world.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

US

Supreme Court Building (SCOTUS)

The U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) building as viewed from across NE 1st Street.

The Supreme Court struck down a disputed law passed in 2002 on Monday that would have allowed Americans born in Jerusalem to list their birthplace as Israel on their U.S. passports. In a 6-3 ruling, the high court sided upheld the president’s authority in foreign affairs, claiming Congress overstepped its bounds when it passed legislation that would’ve changed the State Department’s long-standing policy.

The policy was based on the U.S. government historically refusing to recognize any nation’s sovereignty over Jerusalem until Israelis and Palestinians resolve the seemingly impossible question of sovereignty through Middle East negotiations.

“Recognition is a matter on which the nation must speak with one voice. That voice is the president’s,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his majority opinion. The ruling, which ends a 12-year-old lawsuit by a Jerusalem-born American, Menachem Zivotofsky, and his U.S. citizen parents. grants the president exclusive power to recognize foreign nations. Leading up to the conclusion, Justice Kennedy wrote the following:

In a world that is ever more compressed and interdependent,it is essential the congressional role in foreign affairs be understood and respected. For it is Congress that makes laws, and in countless ways its laws will and should shape the Nation’s course. The Executive is not free from the ordinary controls and checks of Congress merely because foreign affairs are at issue. It is not for the President alone to determine the whole content of the Nation’s foreign policy. That said, judicial precedent and historical practice teach that it is for the President alone to make the specific decision of what foreign power he will recognize as legitimate, both for the Nation as a whole and for the purpose of making his own position clear within the context of recognition in discussions and negotiations with foreign nations. Recognition is an act with immediate and powerful significance for international relations, so the President’s position must be clear. Congress cannot require him to contradict his own statement regarding a determination of formal recognition.

Justice Clarence Thomas agreed with the outcome of the case, but on narrower grounds and not based on the same legal or philosophical grounds outlined by Kennedy. For Thomas, the law didn’t meet a “Necessary and Proper” standard, nor was it solely addressing passports that fell under the Commerce Clause.

“That the President has the power to regulate passports under his residual foreign affairs powers does not, however, end the matter, for Congress has repeatedly legislated on the subject of passports.,” Justice Thomas wrote. :Because the President has residual foreign affairs authority to regulate passports and because there appears to be no congressional power that justifies §214(d)’s application to passports, Zivotofsky’s challenge to the Executive’s designation of his place of birth on his passport must fail.”

Justice Antonin Scalia read a summary of his dissent from the bench, stating the Constitution “divides responsibility for foreign affairs between Congress and the president.” Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito joined the dissent.

“That is not the chief magistrate under which the American People agreed to live when they adopted the national charter,” Justice Scalia wrote in the decent. “They believed that “[t]he accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” The Federalist No. 47, p. 301 (Madison)…. Under the Constitution they approved, Congress may require Zivotofsky’s passport and birth report to record his birthplace as Israel, even if that requirement clashes with the President’s preference for neutrality about the status of Jerusalem.”

The status of Jerusalem, which has been controlled by Israel since the Six-Day Wr in 1967, when an Arab coalition unsuccessfully attacked the tiny young country, has been one of the more controversial issues in the Israeli-Palestinian debate. Israel has proclaimed a united Jerusalem as its eternal capital, yet, despite their defeat, Palestinians have declared that east Jerusalem will be the capital of their non-existent independent state.

Though U.S. policy has long refrained from recognizing any nation’s sovereignty over Jerusalem, Congress has repeatedly tried to push administrations of both parties to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Through a Republican and Democrat administration, the U.S. has never enforced the passport law.

The justices rejected Zivotofsky’s case in 2012, when they rejected lower court decisions that called the matter a political issue that should be resolved by Congress and the president without the help of the courts. The federal appeals court in Washington then struck down the law as an unconstitutional intrusion by Congress on the president’s authority over foreign affairs.

President George W. Bush signed the 2002 provisions into law, but wanted to have it both ways, as has President Obama. Bush said afterward the signing that “U.S. policy regarding Jerusalem has not changed,” and Obama has agreed.

The Supreme Court struck down a disputed

Politics

Hillary-Clinton-Newscom

Hillary Clinton at a campaign event in Iowa. (Photo: Keiko Hiromi/Polaris/Newscom)

Former secretary of state and first lady Hillary Clinton announced on April 12 that she will run for president via a video released on social media.

Here are a list of names representing the most influential political advisors and operatives behind Team Hillary 2016. The early staffing moves from various candidates will all be introduced to PPD’s viewers and subscribers in PPD’s new series, Team 2016: Players, Pollsters And Pockets Behind The Campaign.

While many of the power brokers on Team Hillary have been in the Clinton Rolodex for a long time, some are new names that advocate new strategies that more closely resemble President Obama’s philosophy on winning elections than her husbands. That is, Mrs. Clinton will slice and dice the electorate with a highly polarizing message in the hope to hold together the Obama coalition of minorities and young women, etc., rather than appeal to Americans as a whole, as her husband did in 1992 and 1996.

“One of the hardest things to do in politics is dispense with old behavior,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a former Obama adviser. “That will be a challenge. But they’re setting themselves up to avoid that. She hired people with a sense of where the electorate is now, not where it was in 1992.”

Still, the camp is crawling with veteran Clinton allies, who know her strengths and weaknesses and seek to re-introduce Clinton as an advocate for Americans trying to improve their economic and social standing.

The core group of dozens of staffers operating out of two full floors at 1 Pierrepont Plaza in Brooklyn Heights will try to distract away from scandals, including her use of a personal email server while she was secretary of state and the foreign money that has flowed to the Clinton Foundation, with hyper-polarized attacks that serve up red meat to the liberal base.

Here is a list of influential players, strategists and deep pocket donors that will help her carry out this election strategy.

THE CORE CAMPAIGN

• John Podesta, the trusted aide to both Bill Clinton and Obama with ties to both uber-left outlets Media Matters and Think Progress, is Hillary’s campaign chairman. Podesta, the founder of the liberal think tank the Center for American Progress, was former President Clinton’s chief of staff in the White House and was the go-to guy for scandal damage control.

He will tap Neera Tanden, a longtime Hillary Clinton confidante and the current president of the Center for American Progress, to help the Clinton campaign fire back against criticism and validate her proposed policies using what you are meant to believe are independent, valid policy studies and analysis.

• It would not be a stretch to claim that Robby Mook, Hillary’s current campaign manager, had more to do with longtime-Clinton buddy and now Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s 2013 Virginia governor race victory. It was always the plan to get the crucial swing state of Virginia under their friend’s control prior to the election because of the ground power and electoral influence that comes with holding a state’s governor mansion during a presidential election cycle.

Mook, who is only in his mid-30s, prefers to digest data over showboating in the spotlight. He is a serious, competent and capable choice for campaign manager. Mook, who also served as executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, previously worked for Clinton’s 2008 presidential bid and helped her cross the finish line in Nevada, Ohio and Indiana during the Democratic primary.

• Joel Benenson, Obama’s former pollster, is one of those new recruits we talked about prior to leading with trusted confidantes. Benenson is all about getting to the bottom of what people want to hear, and then helping the candidate to hone that message. He did so against Clinton in 2008 for Obama, and will serve now as Clinton’s chief strategist and pollster.

• John Anzalone and David Binder, two top pollsters also from Team Obama, will work closely with Benenson. Anzalone, according to operatives close to the Hillary camp, will focus on the early states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

• Marlon Marshall, a highly influential White House aide in the Obama administration, is expected to be Clinton’s director of state campaigns and political engagement.

• Jim Margolis, another familiar name from the Obama campaign, is Clinton’s new media adviser. In addition to serving as a senior adviser to Obama in his 2012 reelection effort, Margolis has also served in a similar capacity — though often as a behind-the-scenes consultant — for a number of other Democratic senators. In fact, the most notable, would be the outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, who was ousted after the Republican midterm wave in 2014 when he and the party lost control of the upper chamber for the first time since 2006.

• Tony Carrk, also a former cubicle at the Center for American Progress action fund, will serve as Clinton’s research director.

• Marc Elias, who serves as the chair of political law practice at the prominent law firm Perkins Coie, will serve as general counsel to the Clinton campaign. He also served as general counsel to John Kerry’s failed 2004 presidential campaign.

• Garry Gensler, a former Commodity Futures Trading Commission chairman, is chief financial officer. Gensler is a former Goldman Sachs executive who has also worked to regulate Wall Street, a balance that may be helpful for Clinton, who enjoys support from many wealthy Wall Street donors, but who is also seeking to strike a populist note on economics.

• Jennifer Palmieri, the former White House communications director, will do what she does best. She will serve in the same capacity for the Clinton campaign this cycle. But this isn’t her first rodeo with the Clinton’s, despite her rumored allegiance to the Obamas. Palmieri not only worked in the Clinton White House before the Obama administration, but also at Podesta’s Center for American Progress.

Seeing a pattern yet?

• Kristina Schake, who formerly served as a top aide to first lady Michelle Obama, will be deputy communications director. Mandy Grunwald, another longtime Clinton advisor who not worked on Clinton’s 2008 campaign but also both of Bill Clinton’s campaigns and administrations, will balance out the new Obama team talent as a senior media consultant.

• Brian Fallon, formerly a spokesman at the Department of Justice as well as for Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., will serve as Clinton’s national press secretary.

• Amanda Renteria, a failed California Democratic candidate for Congress in California and the state Senate’s first Latina chief of staff, will serve as political director. Renteria also worked for Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., but her real role will be to help Hillary balkanize and galvanize the Hispanic vote.

• Brynne Craig, Clinton’s former scheduler and McAuliffe’s political director, will be tapped as her deputy political director. Meanwhile, Dennis Cheng, who served as chief development officer at the Clinton Foundation, is expected to be finance director despite the recent cloud of scandal over the foundation. In fact, other key players with ties to the Clinton foundation, including Craig Minassian, the foundation’s chief communications officer, and Kamyl Bazbaz, Chelsea Clinton’s chief spokesman, will also be rolled out to serve in similar capacities.

• Nick Merrill will handle the day-to-day interactions with the national press covering the campaign, though there hasn’t really been any interaction with the candidate, herself. Though we couldn’t confirm it, it was allegedly Merrill who gave the order to tell the press that Clinton’s speech in Austin, Texas would serve as the Q&A session for the outraged press. He worked with Clinton at the State Department and will serve as traveling press secretary. Dan Schwerin, a Clinton speechwriter and key advisor during the lackluster rollout of Clinton’s memoir, “Hard Choices,” will work side-by-side with Merrill.

• Jesse Ferguson, a former spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Committee (DCCC) in Washington, will handle daily press interactions as a national press secretary.

• Karen Finney, the former Clinton lackey-turned-MSNBC host, will be a senior spokeswoman and a strategic communications adviser.

DIGITAL CAMPAIGN

• Teddy Goff, who was the head of Obama’s national digital campaign operation, will serve as a top digital adviser with Andrew Bleeker, another Obama digital guru.

• Stephanie Hannon, a former Google executive, is chief technology officer, whiel Katie Dowd, who worked for Hillary at the State Department and the Clinton Foundation, will be digital director.

• Jenna Lowenstein, the former vice president of digital engagement at EMILY’s List,will be deputy digital director.

GROUND GAME

• Adam Parkhomenko, as founder and executive director of Ready for Hillary, has already spent two years of his life nudging Hillary to enter the race. Obviously, he had the easiest job in the world, considering everyone knew she would run. Parkhomenko will be director of grassroots engagement.

• Jeremy Bird and Mitch Stewart, two tech gurus in Obama’s 2012 GOTV efforts, are expected to advise Clinton as outside consultants.

Iowa

• Matt Paul, a veteran Iowa Democratic operative, will run her organization in the Hawkeye State. Michael Halle, a top adviser on McAuliffe’s team, Troy Price, and Michelle Kleppe, an Obama campaign alum, will help run the field operation.

New Hampshire

• In the Granite State, Mike Vlacich, who led incumbent Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen’s 2014 reelection campaign against Scott Brown, will serve as the state director in New Hampshire. Kari Thurman, who was Shaheen’s political director, will also aid Vlacich in his efforts.

 

SUPERPACs

• Jim Messina and Buffy Wicks, two well-known top former Obama advisors, are running Priorities USA Action, a liberal super PAC that was created to back Obama in 2012. Except, in 2016, they will now help try to elect Clinton. Former — and widely known to be the failed — Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm,  is a co-chairman, while Jonathan Mantz, a longtime Clinton man, is the senior finance adviser. Mantz also served as Clinton’s 2008 finance director.

• David Brock, of the tax-exempt leftwing hit job outfit Media Matters, has now founded and will run American Bridge, a Democratic super PAC. Burns Strider runs Correct the Record, a wing of American Bridge, and the rapid response arm of the operation.

CLINTON’S INNER CIRCLE

• Huma Abedin, the controversial wife of now-disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., and one of Hillary Clinton’s top aides at the State Department, is a highly trusted and influential figure in Hillary Clinton’s circle. Abedin, whose father’s widow is a leading member of a women’s auxiliary organization of the Muslim Brotherhood, is serving as vice chairwoman of the campaign.

Politically speaking, her family’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood may not be the most potentially damaging piece of information to the campaign. The mere presence of Huma Abedin, as well as others we are about to address, may make it more for Hillary to put questions behind her.

She, according to information revealed in FOIA requests filed on behalf of Judicial Watch, was also involved in using Hillary’s private email server to avoid the proper procedures of the official State Department email network.

• Cheryl Mills has been a Clintons loyalist for a period of years that dates back to the Clinton White House. But she is also knee-deep in the questions surrounding Clinton’s tenure at the State Department and even has ties to the Clinton Foundation. She was general counsel to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign, and even though she does not yet have an official title on the campaign, she is and will remain highly influential.

Mills, along with Jake Sullivan, whom we will discuss next, are both on the shortlist of Clinton confidantes set to testify in front of the House Select Committee on Benghazi. Emails obtained by PPD clearly show Mills and Sullivan both knew that the Benghazi terror attack that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, had nothing to do with an Internet video.

• Jake Sullivan, mentioned above, now serves as a senior policy adviser on the campaign and previously served as a deputy policy director on Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. Worth noting, as a matter of political consequence, he boasts his increased role in laying the groundwork for a preliminary nuclear deal with Iran. Clinton’s two other senior policy advisers, who along with Sullivan are helping to shape the campaign’s foreign policy message, are Maya Harris, another former employee at the Center for American Progress, and Ann O’Leary, who was then-Sen. Clinton’s legislative director. Harris has focused much of her research on international human rights issues, while O’Leary’s expertise in early childhood education.

READ ALSO — Meet Team Rand Paul 2016: Players, Pollsters And Pockets Behind The Campaign
READ ALSO — Meet Team Rubio 2016: Players, Pollsters And Pockets Behind The Campaign

In this edition of Team 2016: Players,

Policy

Every so often, I’ll assert that some statists are so consumed by envy and spite that they favor high tax rates on the “rich” even if the net effect (because of diminished economic output) is less revenue for government.

In other words, they deliberately and openly want to be on the right side (which is definitely the wrong side) of the Laffer Curve.

Laffer-Curve-graph

Critics sometimes accuse me of misrepresenting the left’s ideology, to which I respond by pointing to a poll of left-wing voters who strongly favored soak-the-rich tax hikes even if there was no extra tax collected.

But now I have an even better example.

Writing for Vox, Matthew Yglesias openly argues that we should be on the downward-sloping portion of the Laffer Curve. Just in case you think I’m exaggerating, “the case for confiscatory taxation” is part of the title for his article.

Here’s some of what he wrote.

Maybe at least some taxes should be really high. Maybe even really really high. So high as to make them useless for revenue-raising purposes — but powerful for achieving other ends. We already accept this principle for tobacco taxes. If all we wanted to do was raise revenue, we might want to slightly cut cigarette taxes. …But we don’t do that because we care about public health. We tax tobacco not to make money but to discourage smoking.

The tobacco tax analogy is very appropriate.

Indeed, one of my favorite arguments is to point out that we have high taxes on cigarettes precisely because politicians want to discourage smoking.

As a good libertarian, I then point out that government shouldn’t be trying to control our private lives, but my bigger point is that the economic arguments about taxes and smoking are the same as those involving taxes on work, saving, investment.

Needless to say, I want people to understand that high tax rates are a penalty, and it’s particularly foolish to impose penalties on productive behavior.

But not according to Matt. He specifically argues for ultra-high tax rates as a “deterrence” to high levels of income.

If we take seriously the idea that endlessly growing inequality can have a cancerous effect on our democracy, we should consider it for top incomes as well. …apply the same principle of taxation-as-deterrence to very high levels of income. …Imagine a world in which we…imposed a 90 percent marginal tax rate on salaries above $10 million. This seems unlikely to raise substantial amounts of revenue.

I suppose we should give him credit for admitting that high tax rates won’t generate revenue. Which means he’s more honest than some of his fellow statistswho want us to believe confiscatory tax rates will produce more money.

But honesty isn’t the same as wisdom.

Let’s look at the economic consequences. Yglesias does admit that there might be some behavioral effects because upper-income taxpayers will be discouraged from earning and reporting income.

Maybe…we really would see a reduction of effort, or at least a relaxation of the intensity with which the performers pursue money. But would that be so bad? Imagine the very best hedge fund managers and law firm partners became inclined to quit the field a bit sooner and devote their time to hobbies. What would we lose, as a society? …some would presumably just move to Switzerland or the Cayman Islands to avoid taxes. That would be a real hit to local economies, but hardly a disaster. …Very high taxation of labor income would mean fewer huge compensation packages, not more revenue. Precisely as Laffer pointed out decades ago, imposing a 90 percent tax rate on something is not really a way to tax it at all — it’s a way to make sure it doesn’t happen.

While I suppose it’s good that Yglesias admits that high tax rates have behavioral effects, he clearly underestimates the damaging impact of such a policy.

He presumably doesn’t understand that rich people earn very large shares of their income from business and investment sources. As such, they have considerable ability to alter the timing, level, and composition of their earnings.

But my biggest problem with Yglesias’ proposals is that he seems to believe in the fixed-pie fallacy that public policy doesn’t have any meaningful impact of economic performance. This leads him to conclude that it’s okay to rape and pillage the “rich” since that will simply mean more income and wealth is available for the rest of us.

That’s utter nonsense. The economy is not a fixed pie and there is overwhelming evidence that nations with better policy grow faster and create more prosperity.

In other words, confiscatory taxation will have a negative effect on everyone, not just upper-income taxpayers.

There will be less saving and investment, which translates into lower wages and salaries for ordinary workers.

And as we saw in France, high tax rates drive out highly productive people, and we have good evidence that “super-entrepreneurs” and inventors are quite sensitive to tax policy.

To be fair, I imagine that Yglesias would try to argue that these negative effects are somehow offset by benefits that somehow materialize when there’s more equality of income.

But the only study I’ve seen that tries to make a connection between growth and equality was from the OECD and that report was justly ridiculed for horrible methodology (not to mention that it’s hard to take serious a study that lists France, Spain, and Ireland as success stories).

P.S. This is my favorite bit of real-world evidence showing why there should be low tax rates on the rich (in addition, of course, to low tax rates on the rest of us).

P.P.S. And don’t forget that leftists generally view higher taxes on the rich as a precursor to higher taxes on the rest of the population.

P.P.P.S. In the interests of full disclosure, Yglesias says I’m insane and irrational.

[mybooktable book=”global-tax-revolution-the-rise-of-tax-competition-and-the-battle-to-defend-it” display=”summary” buybutton_shadowbox=”true”]

Statists are so consumed by envy and

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