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Author: Alice Salles

Pentagon IP laws

Pentagon to Explore IP Laws for the Benefit of Contractors

Written by Alice Salles on . Posted in Property Rights. 1 Comment on Pentagon to Explore IP Laws for the Benefit of Contractors

Intellectual property (IP) is, plain and simple, an attack against private property. But while IP rights holders claim they can use government force to limit what others do with their own property, it is clear that all these rules accomplish is to create monopolies. Unsurprisingly enough, the U.S. Department of Defense is now using these very laws to strike a deal with technology firms who have long favored IP laws, and is doing so openly precisely to fend off competition. Pentagon IP laws According to Roll Call, the Defense Department is fighting so-called Chinese aggression by putting a team of IP experts together to help the Pentagon negotiate rights to technology developed by defense contractors. This program is part of the 2018 defense authorization bill, which requires the defense department “to ensure a consistent, strategic, and highly knowledgeable approach to acquiring or licensing intellectual property by providing expert advice, assistance, and resources to the acquisition workforce on intellectual property matters, including acquiring or licensing intellectual property.” But in order to follow Congress’ plan, the Pentagon must bend IP rules to strike new deals with firms providing the U.S. government with defense technology. As Ellen Lord, the undersecretary of Defense for acquisition and sustainment, explained, the government is acting offensively to protect “our technology.” Saying that the government must better define “what is owned by industry and what is owned by government at the outset of a program,” Lord added that officials and contractors are all equally invested in “[addressing] intellectual property.” But despite their excitement, there’s one aspect to this partnership and their use of IP laws that is being completely ignored.

IP Laws Fuel Crony Capitalism

Regardless of whether the government or defense contractors will control IP rights over technology and data, this move is nothing but another example of crony capitalism in action. With defense firms either holding exclusive rights to certain technologies or having contracts with the government that guarantee them exclusivity, IP laws give everyone involved a legal way to keep competitors at bay. By limiting what competitors can do through patent and other forms of IP laws, the government effectively hampers the market, making firms less likely to develop superior and more effective technology. Furthermore, it also inflates the cost of technologies already in use as only a handful of firms have the OK from government to produce defense mechanisms. Who hurts as a result? The taxpayer. Because ideas cannot be controlled with physical force, government restricts people’s property rights by keeping them from reproducing these ideas by the way of computers, paper, recording mechanisms, and printing presses. When someone is given a patent, what he is granted is a guarantee from government that a third party’s property rights will be infringed upon once they try to use “protected” ideas. This isn’t a protection of intellectual property, because ideas cannot be owned the way land or objects are owned. Instead, it is the government imposing limitations on what others can do with their own property. As argued by libertarians in the past, IP laws serve the government well as they give people the illusion that only a large concentration of power could enforce such a rule. And as the defense department is demonstrating now, they have been right all along.

Biden Bashes Trump for Abuse of Power, Ignores Obama Era

Written by Alice Salles on . Posted in Elections and Politics. No Comments on Biden Bashes Trump for Abuse of Power, Ignores Obama Era

Current Democratic presidential hopeful and former Vice President Joe Biden attacked President Donald Trump for “engaging in a gigantic abuse of power,” adding that “[i]If there’s anything I can’t stand it’s the abuse of power.” “And he is abusing it every single day,” he said during a speech at Urbandale, Iowa. Apparently, good old Joe has forgotten all about the countless instances of abuse he witnessed while serving under President Barack Obama.
Image credit: Marc Nozell (https://bit.ly/2HsmdDn)
Law professor Garrett Epps, a liberal and a fan of Obama, was one of the many left-leaning academics who admitted that Biden’s former partner in crime “[left] the Constitution weaker than at the beginning of his terms.” “[E]ven for those like me who admire Barack Obama, the constitutional record is disturbingly mixed,” he explained. And as explained by Epps himself, Obama ignored the fact only Congress can declare war to intervene in Libya, transforming the Middle-Eastern country in a waste land. Furthermore, Obama went beyond his predecessors by aggressively persecuting journalists and whistleblowers. And if memory fails Biden, let us remind him that it was the Democratic president’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper who lied to Congress about the country’s  surveillance program and how robust it had become under Biden’s old buddy. Then, there was the blatant political persecution of Obama’s opposition, with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) targeting organizations engaged in politics and that openly criticized the president and his supporters. Groups that educated citizens on the Constitution, that challenged Obama’s Affordable Care Act, or that simply criticized the president’s policies were targeted from 2010 though 2013, when Lois Lerner, the then-director of the Exempt Organizations Unit, was allowed to retire and face absolutely no consequences for her actions. But if these examples of abuse of power don’t pass Biden’s smell test, how about Obama’s love of crony capitalism? The Democratic president bailed out companies like Chrysler by building on the Bush Administration’s TARP funds to save a failed and bankrupt auto industry. Was that not an abuse of power? By openly picking winners, Obama told an entire industry that the law of the land means nothing, and that companies that fail to serve their customers should simply build a close relationship with Washington if they want to stay afloat. And what about Obama’s harsh targeting of legal weed farmers, retailers, and users? Was that not an abuse of power as the president deliberately ignored state laws to go after law-abiding cannabis businesses? If anything, Biden has a lot of catching up to do if he was looking the other way during the eight years he spent as Obama’s right-hand man.

Without Government, Who Would Drop Off Our Kids at the Wrong Stop?

Written by Alice Salles on . Posted in Education. No Comments on Without Government, Who Would Drop Off Our Kids at the Wrong Stop?

A 7-year-old boy from Arkansas is probably now famous around town after his school bus driver dropped him off at the wrong stop. But now that his father is demanding answers, all that the school district has managed to do was to issue a statement saying they are looking into the matter. According to a local news outlet, DeMarcus Watkins Sr. learned his son was dropped off more than a mile away from where the school bus should have dropped him off, leaving the child on the side of the road as the area had no sidewalks. The incident could have turned out dramatic if not for a Good Samaritan who saw the lonely boy and took him to the correct stop. “A stranger picked him up, and luckily a good-hearted person took him back to his grandmother’s house,” he told reporters. Unfortunately for Watkins, the Marion School District has yet to issue an apology for what its school bus driver did, even after the 7-year-old insisted he wasn’t being dropped off at the right location. “My biggest problem was when he got to this point and he was telling the driver and the driver’s aid that this is not his right stop, no one really paid attention,” the angry father explained. But since this is a public school district and the two people responsible for this incident are public employees, it’s safe to say Watkins won’t be getting much of an apology in the future. As a matter of fact, the district’s superintendent said they are still reviewing the bus footage to determine whether the driver and driver’s aid followed proper procedures.

Taxpayer-Backed Negligence

Considering that school buses send an average of 17,000 children to the hospital yearly, they are far from a safe transportation option for children. Unfortunately, over 23 million school-aged children ride these buses every year in the United States. And while this particular incident in Arkansas may seem like an oddity, it’s far from an isolated occurrence. As highlighted by NJ.com, a child is forgotten inside of a school bus every two weeks during the school year. And while state laws require that school bus drivers check their buses before exiting, “students keep being left behind,” the report explained. Needless to say, bus drivers aren’t being reprimanded. But being forgotten inside of a bus isn’t the end of the world, right? How about dropping off a 5-year-old girl two miles away from her destination? In New York state, a mom is suing the contractor that runs the district’s school buses after her 5-year-old was dropped off at the wrong stop and after her public charter school failed to contact her when the child didn’t arrive. After finding her crying daughter alone more than 10 blocks away from her home at a busy intersection, the mom filed a $7 million lawsuit. And why didn’t she sue the school district instead? Probably because government agencies can’t be held liable. With records showing that between late 2015 and July 2017 at least 281 drivers and escorts put children in danger in New York City alone but only 32 were fired, it’s clear that even when incidents are thoroughly investigated, the school district does little to protect children. With this in mind, it’s not far-fetched to believe that what happened to Watkins’ child will continue to happen across the country. After all, bureaucrats have absolutely no incentives to keep their customers, in this case, the students and their parents, happy.

Trump Mulls Payroll Tax Cut, But Why Now?

Written by Alice Salles on . Posted in Taxes. No Comments on Trump Mulls Payroll Tax Cut, But Why Now?

President Donald Trump is on the verge of seeing the economy collapse, experts have been warning about this for quite some time. But as the president tells the press a recession isn’t on the way, his own White House officials are working around the clock to try to revert the downward trend. According to many reports, senior White House officials are discussing what plan of action they should take to curb the future economic slowdown, taking a particularly close look at pushing a temporary payroll tax cut to stimulate consumption — a sure sign that the administration knows the economy isn’t as strong as advertised.
Image by Gage Skidmore (https://bit.ly/31BLJO2)
The payroll tax, a measure that the economist Milton Friedman helped to create, steals the income of over 70% of American workers, even those who do not pay the so-called “income tax,” making it one of the most effective tax mechanisms the federal government has in place. And it is precisely because the payroll tax manages to hurt both the poor working man and the employer that it is particularly damaging to the economy. As Mises Institute’s Ryan McMaken explained, the payroll tax “is assessed at a flat and regressive rate of more than 15 percent, once both worker and employer shares are included.” And even those who are self-employed are impacted, as the feds force them to pay the “self-employment tax” in place of the payroll variety. Needless to say, this represents a big chunk of a person’s income, putting people living paycheck to paycheck in a particularly difficult situation, so by targeting this tax during an economic crisis, the Trump administration would be taking a highly popular approach. Unfortunately, not even a temporary payroll tax cut would make up for what the average American consumer is losing thanks to the president’s trade war. According to GoldMoney’s head of research, Alasdair Macleod, Trump’s 25% tariff on Chinese imports may bring billions into the Office of Management’s funds, but over time, the added cost will translate into more expensive goods. And when people in the low- and middle-income brackets see prices rising, they stop buying. And as the tariffs spill over to domestic products that rely on Chinese imports, things could get much worse. “[G]iven the indebtedness of the average American consumer,” Macleod wrote, “the ability to pay higher prices is obviously restricted, suggesting that overall demand must suffer, not just for imported Chinese goods, but for domestically-produced goods as well. It is therefore likely there will be both an impact on price inflation and a fall in consumer demand.” So as Trump plays it cool on Twitter, saying that if anything wrong happens it’s the Federal Reserve’s fault, it’s clear that his own officials disagree. Like his predecessor, Trump learned quickly that all it takes to calm everybody down during a recession is to give the taxpayer the illusion they are relinquishing less of their hard-earned money to the feds.
straws

CNN Anchors Shame Their Own Over Plastic Straws: ‘You’re With Trump!’

Written by Alice Salles on . Posted in Elections and Politics. 1 Comment on CNN Anchors Shame Their Own Over Plastic Straws: ‘You’re With Trump!’

Politics is here to divide us. And as our dependency on the state grows, so does our absolute trust in it, making partisanship a live-or-die game. It is in this environment that people lose track of decency, putting their personal political preferences before common sense. Recently on CNN, the channel’s “squad,” namely April Ryan, Bakari Sellers, Angela Rye, and Andrew Gillum, ended up humiliating one of their own because his choice didn’t happen to match the group’s consensus. They were discussing plastic straws. straws While talking about the otherwise uncontroversial subject, the group brought up the news that President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign was selling plastic straws. Seeing this as an affront to the left’s growing movement against the hollow tubes of plastic, Ryan and Rye teamed up to give the viewer the “correct” take on the subject, saying that paper straws were the best as they are biodegradable. Sellers then said he didn’t like paper straws, prompting some of his colleagues to lose their minds. As Gillum tried to light up the conversation, saying that the straw discussion was such a “first-world” problem type of thing, Rye got back at the former Florida gubernatorial candidate, asking if he was calling her an elitist. Then, she turned her claws against Sellers. “I think you’re in alignment with the President. Go for it. I can’t wait.” She was clearly trying to shame him. Sellers then responded saying that yes, he was, indeed, in alignment with the president. After all, he said, he doesn’t like paper straws! That’s when Rye said, “everybody get Bakari” on Twitter, actually encouraging people to shame him online for, gasp, liking plastic straws. Obviously, the tactic worked as Sellers promptly said he was going to try to move on from plastic in order to embrace the movement. Gillum eventually joked about the whole debate once again, prompting both Rye and Ryan to threaten him. “If you run again, you better be careful on this!” Ryan said, while Rye gave Gillum a deathly look, “you should have brought a red tie. That was a big moment to bring a red tie.” Then, Rye did the unthinkable: she called Sellers a “Republican.” For liking plastic things. If anything, this entire charade isn’t about the climate, nor is it about making the world a better place. As explained by the climate-conscious themselves, plastic products are actually better for the environment than say, paper alternatives. Furthermore, it is a well-known fact that banning plastic straws across the country wouldn’t help the anti-plastic pollution crusade. So why are CNN hosts wasting the viewers’ time by fighting over plastic straws? Because of Trump, of course. “This straw is the precise color of the President’s skin!” Ryan gleefully exclaimed after the debate was over, making it clear that if you like plastic straws, you’re in the wrong team. As you can see, the division is complete. And what happens when you can no longer survive while near people who don’t agree with you and, as a matter of fact, threaten you for having the wrong opinions? You break up.

San Francisco Rules for AirBnB Make Criminals Out of Residents

Written by Alice Salles on . Posted in Property Rights. 1 Comment on San Francisco Rules for AirBnB Make Criminals Out of Residents

The housing crisis continues to worsen as cities pass even more regulations on the industry while doubling down on rent control and other types of restrictive rules. In many of California’s towns, this reality has become almost impossible to ignore, with officials now close to outlawing short-term rental apps such as AirBnB. But despite what these cities’ rules say, people still have an incentive to rent their homes, especially where housing access is lacking. Needless to say, these people find no other option but to explore loopholes. In the end, all these regulations do is to make criminals out of residents. San Francisco, the epicenter of California’s housing crisis, has tight regulations governing short-term rentals, making it nearly impossible for anyone to rent their homes on apps such as AirBnB, HomeAway, and VRBO. But despite this difficulty — or perhaps because of it — people are using the registration process the city imposes on anyone wanting to rent their home to game the system. But as the city cracks down on these illegal rentals, people end up losing their listings on home-sharing apps, as these companies are now forced by law to comply with San Francisco’s rules. According to NBC, people applying with San Francisco officials to be allowed to post their listing on AirBnB and other sites are adding false information to their applications. By doing so, they hope to lead regulators into thinking they are complying with the rules when in fact, they fail to meet the requirements imposed by the city. The San Francisco Office of Short-Term Rentals told reporters that anyone in the city trying to rent their homes for less than 30 days must live at the location for at least 275 nights per year. They must also be registered with the city. So when registrants claim to be the rental’s primary resident despite not holding that title, regulators deny their registration. But while the process is ongoing, these individuals are allowed to continue listing their homes. And because of the false information added to their application forms, regulators take longer to verify all claims, giving renters more time to keep their listings up. According to NBC, this is creating a chaotic situation as the backlog of pending applications continues to grow. “Processing times have slowed to a crawl,” the report added, and “[a]s the four-person staff at the Office of Short-Term Rentals attempts to weed out potentially fraudulent applications, wait times are now averaging nine months.” As rental owners look for new ways to go around the city’s rules, officials fear that unless more city resources go toward enforcement, things will only worsen. But as regulators come up with more ways to target renters, it’s clear that the city is spending a lot of taxpayer money on a fruitless pursuit. How about helping to lessen the city’s ongoing housing crisis by cutting the red tape instead?

Social Media Executive Order Will Backfire on Censored Conservatives

Written by Alice Salles on . Posted in Conservatism, First Amendment. 4 Comments on Social Media Executive Order Will Backfire on Censored Conservatives

President Donald Trump has long complained about what many call anti-conservative bias on social media but had never threatened to outright intervene in a more direct manner. Now, CNN reports that an executive order Trump might sign would put the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in charge of policing what companies like Facebook do with their content. In other words, Trump is doing exactly what he shouldn’t be doing by using the government’s power to control what content can and cannot go up online.
Image by Gage Skidmore (https://bit.ly/31BLJO2)
According to CNN, the order’s draft puts the FCC in charge of coming up with regulations that would make it clear to social media platforms whether they can be held liable when removing or blocking specific content. While Trump said that he would “explore all regulatory and legislative solutions to protect free speech” during a recent meeting with conservative activists, this draft would pressure the FCC to effectively enforce the new regulations, restricting companies like Facebook by keeping it from blocking what they consider to be unacceptable content. This plan, which may seem like a step in the right direction to supporters, is far from a solution. As a matter of fact, anybody who criticizes the president will see this as nothing but an attempt at censoring left-leaning organizations. In the end, if Trump puts this plan into action, he might as well have turned the tables on conservatives who look up to him. After all, he will be doing the exact type of thing honest conservatives would see as an attempt at hurting one political group in order to benefit another.

Free Speech or Property Rights?

America is proud of its speech protections, and Americans in general seem to agree that limiting speech does little to counter violence. But what is exactly the freedom of speech? And why are some groups so confused as to what it means? As Austrian economist Murray Rothbard once explained, the right to say whatever he or she likes isn’t a right per se, as it depends on a number of factors. “[T]he neglected question is,” Rothbard said, “Where? Where does a man have this [freedom of speech] right? He certainly does not have it on property on which he is trespassing. In short, he has this right only either on his own property or on the property of someone who has agreed, as a gift or in a rental contract, to allow him on the premises.” In other words, a freedom to speak depends on what platform you’re using to make your claims. And if Facebook, Twitter, and others have an incentive to block content that doesn’t go along with what they prefer to hear, then it is their right to restrict content. While there is an argument to be made that popular culture’s prevailing attitude toward conservatives and anyone who disagrees with the left for that matter is, indeed, toxic and rooted in the ideology of statism, we simply cannot fix an issue borne out of tyranny with more tyranny. Unfortunately, there’s also another problem that Trump isn’t addressing with his executive order targeting social media and that is crony capitalism. It is because government gives companies twisted incentives to keep “investing” on lobbying politicians and the legislative that we have powerful firms that are able to help the federal government regulate competitors out of existence. If the president wants to truly help conservatives who feel that their voices are being kicked out of popular online platforms, he will act on deregulating the internet and content-based platforms, giving entrepreneurs the chance to come up with heavy-weight competitors to Google, Twitter, and Facebook.
Elizabeth Warren tax the rich

Warren’s Broadband-For-All Is a Cover-Up for Gov’t Failure in Rural America

Written by Alice Salles on . Posted in Elections and Politics. No Comments on Warren’s Broadband-For-All Is a Cover-Up for Gov’t Failure in Rural America

Presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren is enjoying a sudden surge in popularity, with recent polls suggesting she’s now in second place, with 19 percent support. But while this uptick may be, in part, to Sen. Kamala Harris’ bad performance during the last Democratic debate, it does force us to wonder whether Warren could be the Democratic Party’s pick for presidential candidate. In this case, policies she’s championed and promises to double down if elected should be taken seriously, and we should all remember that while she seems harmless on the surface, her vision for America isn’t. Elizabeth Warren tax the rich On Twitter, Warren shared an article touting her new plan to make America one giant hot spot by claiming that her proposal would guarantee universal high-speed internet access across the country. “Let’s create a federal Office of Broadband Access,” the presidential hopeful said, “and invest $85 billion into making sure every home in America has a broadband connection.” In case the public wasn’t quite sure what that meant, the candidate explained that her proposal would “[mean] publicly-owned and operated networks — no giant telecom companies running away with taxpayer dollars.”
Also on Twitter, economist Robert Murphy commented on her idea, saying that her plan would boil down to nothing but one large bureaucracy incapable of delivering a good service. But what’s even worse than just delivering a bad service, a government-controlled internet would also put a newly created federal agency in charge of our communications. If anything, this would make the job of intelligence agencies such as the National Security Agency (NSA) or the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) much easier. Especially if municipalities are handed grants from the federal government to invest on high-speed internet locally, as these local authorities would be beholden to the federal government, and residents would have no recourse in case the feds come for their data. To the average American, however, privacy might not be a concern. And hearing a top Democratic candidate offer access to “affordable” high-speed internet provided by what she calls “publicly-owned and operated networks” might just be enough to get them to warm up to the senator. In the end, they will learn the hard way that anything offered by the government can be offered more efficiently and for less in the private market — if only the government would allow it.

The Seen and the Unseen

Internet service providers (ISPs) are often demonized by politicians like Warren, who like to take a stab at private companies so they may justify government involvement. But not all broadband companies are major corporations. Interestingly enough, the small companies are actually dying out thanks to government’s involvement in the industry, imposing roadblocks that make it nearly impossible for a small firm to compete. The main culprits in this case are local governments themselves, as they impose high fees to give broadband companies access to publicly owned land. Oftentimes, big cable becomes the only option to many municipalities precisely because the “rights of way” are inaccessible to firms with less investment capital. In other words, rural areas where access to internet is lacking are being underserved by the market because local governments stand in the way.
If Warren did care about us enough to think of both our privacy and our internet access, she would have simply proposed an end to these barriers, promoting the “open access” approach and suggesting that local governments give ISPs access to public land. This would give smaller firms the incentives they require to serve less populated communities.
Donald Trump budget taxpayer NRA

Trump Declares War on Hate, Falling into the Left’s Trap

Written by Alice Salles on . Posted in Gun Rights. 1 Comment on Trump Declares War on Hate, Falling into the Left’s Trap

After the two horrific mass shootings in Texas and Ohio, President Donald Trump spoke to the press, condemning white supremacy and blaming the madness on the “glorification of violence” and mental illness. To help prevent similar attacks in the future, the president talked about implementing the death penalty for hate-crime mass murders. In an apparent attempt to play down what his critics say is a failure to enact gun control, the president added that the gun didn’t pull the trigger. Instead, “mental illness and hatred” were in charge. While it might be comforting to know that, unlike his predecessor, the president doesn’t blame guns for these tragedies, it might be just as concerning to learn that he believes that a “hate crime” should be treated any differently, while simply parroting the right’s video game claim. Donald Trump budget taxpayer Just like the left with their calls for gun control, conservatives never cease to blame violence on video games. And while the president may not be wrong to bring up “glorification of violence” as a real problem, he’s still far from unmasking this debate for what it is: an opportunity for politicians to push their agenda.

‘Hate Crime’ and the Quest For Attention

Defining certain activities as hate crime didn’t do much to help prevent bigotry, as proven by the ever-increasing rate of crimes categorized as such. What the practice accomplished instead was to elevate certain activities and force law enforcement to treat them as crime. Tagging a building, for instance, might be vandalism. But tagging a symbol such as the swastika or an offensive word is seen as a hate crime. As the FBI explains, “[a] hate crime is a traditional offense like murder, arson, or vandalism with an added element of bias.” And the media never ceases to cover such crimes, oftentimes exaggerating the circumstances and giving the incident more attention than other types of crime. Much like what news outlets do with mass shootings, most also claim that we are going through a particularly troubling crisis, and that we’re dealing with an “epidemic.” But as Ryan McMaken explained for the Mises Institute, homicides are not a growing part of American life. As a matter of fact, “the homicide rate in America in recent years has been around half of what it was in the early 1990s,” he wrote. What has grown, however, is the rate of hate crime hoaxes. As theorized by Justin Murray here, “there is immense value in becoming a victim of a hate crime.” Media narratives pick up on this, elevating hate crime stories. The ugliest side effect of this is the inevitable incentive structure for people sick enough to kill for attention. By giving murders the additional “hate crime” label, Trump trivializes murder itself, as this new category paints regular murder as a lesser offense than murder carried out by a bigot. As Tho Bishop noted, pushing for any kind of gun control legislation during times like this actually helps to “feed the political theater of the absurd.” Pushing for tougher penalties for murderers because they happen to be racist has the same effect. This is how vicious cycles of violence are created. When the only meaning or purpose to one’s identity is that of oppressor or oppressed, there will be no peace.
budget agreement

Bipartisan Budget Deal a Total Screw Job That Explodes Debt Crisis

Written by Alice Salles on . Posted in Taxes. No Comments on Bipartisan Budget Deal a Total Screw Job That Explodes Debt Crisis

Bipartisanship is the disease that keeps on destroying America’s chances at being a truly free nation. After all, it is when Republicans and Democrats come together to pass legislation that the taxpayer is forced to give away more of his income to feed the growing black hole that is Washington, D.C. The latest example of bipartisanship in action is the passage of the “Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019,” which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin all worked on together. This bill, which President Donald Trump promoted aggressively, increases the federal spending by $320 billion over the next two fiscal years. Furthermore, the law gives the government limitless powers to increase the debt until July 31, 2021. In a country that is over $22 trillion in debt, you would think that the custodians of the country’s public goods would go the opposite way. And yet, cutting spending and saving the taxpayer from ruin isn’t on the agenda of neither party. Thankfully, at least one legislator in D.C. understands the implications of a limitless government budget.

Ignoring a Problem Won’t Make it Go Away

In a heroic move, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) tried his luck in changing the title of the dreadful “Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019” to a more accurate name. And because his amendment proposed changing the bill’s title to “A Bill to Kick the Can Down the Road, and for Other Purposes,” most of his colleagues felt the overly honest take would not be a good look. In the Senate, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) also proposed a different title, telling senators they should call the bipartisan atrocity the “Accelerating America’s Bankruptcy Act.” Needless to say, his idea was shot down. On Twitter, Trump boasted that the bipartisan budget was “phenomenal” to the military, veterans, and “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs!” But unless he’s talking about growing the bureaucracy, coming up with more useless ways to put American troops in danger, and failing to actually address the issues our veterans face thanks to the utter incompetence of the Veterans Affairs office, it’s clear that this bill does nothing but to act as an economy killer. As Mises Institute’s associate scholar Frank Shostak explained, the economy loses when government undertakes projects using taxpayer dollars or borrowed money. And that’s because there isn’t a real demand for most of government’s enterprises, meaning that lesser projects are being funded at the expense of projects that are of a higher priority to taxpayers. “[T]he government is not a real wealth generator,”  Shostak wrote. “It relies on its sources of funding from the private sector. This in turn means that the more government spends the less real funding will be available for the wealth generating private sector.” In other words, bipartisanship is, quite literally, making us poorer for no good reason.

Parents Sacrifice Children’s Rights for College Financial Aid

Written by Alice Salles on . Posted in Education. No Comments on Parents Sacrifice Children’s Rights for College Financial Aid

When government got in the college financing businesses, it may have done so to give people in the low income brackets a shot at pursuing a college degree. But in the end, all that this interference accomplished was to inflate tuition fees, as the demand for higher education increased considerably and artificially. Needless to say, college became unaffordable for both the rich and the poor. And now, scores of high-income families are beginning the feel the pressure to offer their children the best education possible while being unable to do so due to the high costs attached to some of the most renowned universities. In order to make things work, a new report alleges, dozens of these parents are transferring the guardianship of their teenage children to friends or relatives so they may qualify for federal, state, or institutional financial aid. According to MarketWatch, many of these parents live in the suburbs of Chicago. They are doctors, lawyers, real estate agents, and often have household incomes that topple $250,000 and yet, they are quite literally ready to give up their own children so they can afford to . And if that wasn’t enough, they are also ready to lie about their children’s situation, as prospective students must appear to live independently from their parents. Encouraged by college counseling firms and lawyers, these parents are trying to game a system made even more intricate thanks to the ballooning student debt crisis. But by exploring loopholes, nobody can accuse them of going against the law. And if it weren’t for the perverse incentives laid out before them thanks to the artificial demand for college and government’s easy money policies, they may have not thought that taking part in the guardianship scheme would do them any good in the first place. “We need to keep our focus on the fact that what has motivated this terrible behavior is that we have an incredibly high cost of college and a Rube Goldberg system for financing it that enables manipulation of this kind,” said Caitlin Zaloom, the author of Indebted: How Families Make College Work at Any Cost. “An overly complex system will always promote gamesmanship. Bad on them, but bad on us too.”

Asking The Right Questions

As schemes like these become well known, some worry that government agencies responsible for financial aid may want to review the rules. This could “make it more difficult for students who are legitimately independent to qualify for aid,” Mark Kantrowitz, the publisher of SavingforCollege.com, told MarketWatch. Unfortunately, these concerns are misplaced as they do not prompt us to ask the right questions. The problem isn’t that rich kids are making it difficult for the poor ones to go to college, but the fact that tuition has become prohibitive precisely because of the existence of accessible taxpayer-backed cash. As Democratic presidential candidates discuss ways to worsen the situation by actually forgiving students’ debts or making it even easier for them to get their hands on loans they can’t pay back, we should be discussing the nefarious influence the state has had in the making of such a terrible crisis in the first place.

The Trump-Cummings Baltimore Squabble is Infested With Failed Ideas

Written by Alice Salles on . Posted in Criminal Justice, Drugs. No Comments on The Trump-Cummings Baltimore Squabble is Infested With Failed Ideas

After President Donald Trump stated that the “Baltimore district is FAR WORSE and more dangerous” than the U.S.-Mexico border, a direct attack against Rep. Elijah Cummings and the city that elected him, critics complained that the president was “racist” for saying that the black lawmaker’s district is “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” and for calling the Charm City extremely dangerous. But just a couple of months earlier, the New York Times Magazine reported that following Freddie Gray’s death, the city went from bad to worse.
Image credit: Elvert Barnes (https://bit.ly/2OsbNtA)
“In 2017, it recorded 342 murders — its highest per-capita rate ever, more than double Chicago’s, far higher than any other city of 500,000 or more residents and, astonishingly, a larger absolute number of killings than in New York, a city 14 times as populous.” To locals, the NY Times Magazine writer said, it was almost like “there was no one in charge.” “With every passing year, it was getting harder to see what gains, exactly, were delivered by the [2015 riots].” And yet, nobody involved with that report was called “racist.” As the New York Post put it, Trump isn’t wrong for calling Baltimore “very dangerous and filthy.” With more than 50 homicides per 100,000 people, the city feels more like “a Third World country,” as Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders described it after a tour in 2015. “There are hundreds of buildings that are uninhabitable,” he added. “Residents of Baltimore’s poorest boroughs have lifespans shorter than people living under dictatorship in North Korea. That is a disgrace.” Both Sanders and Trump are right about the city’s conditions, and Cummings, being a representative of West Baltimore in Congress, should be partially to blame for this mess. Not because he has power to change local legislation to help address some of the issues plaguing the city — he doesn’t. But because as a congressman, he has the power to change federal policy. As Hollywood producer David Simon said in 2015, the only way to help Baltimore is to end the drug war. After all, the federal war against drugs hit minorities the hardest, creating a culture of violence and crime in inner city communities that helped to make Baltimore a difficult city to navigate. As as the producer of “The Wire” said then, “the drug war gives everybody permission to do anything.” “It gives cops permission to stop anybody, to go in anyone’s pockets, to manufacture any lie when they get to district court …. The drug war gives everybody permission. And if it were draconian and we were fixing anything that would be one thing, but it’s draconian, and it’s a disaster.” In other words, the drug war gives authorities carte blanche to be openly racist. Cummings, a career-politician, has yet to be more proactive when it comes to putting an end to the drug war. And, unfortunately, when it comes to pushing Congress to pass legislation that could actually help cities like Baltimore, Trump is nowhere close to perfect. Instead of following his accusations with real solutions, Trump merely used a well-known fact, namely that Baltimore is a mess, to attack Cummings on his lack of action, virtually ignoring his own failures. While the president fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the man who pressured federal prosecutors in drug cases to seek the maximum penalty authorized by mandatory minimum sentencing laws, he has yet to come out against the drug war. If either Trump or Cummings had, indeed, any love or compassion for the people of Baltimore, they would be fighting tooth and nail to bring the drug war to an end.