NEWS RELEASE —
—“Cracking the code against Senate Democrats like Arizona’s Mark Kelly” PAC hopes “all Republicans will steal this ad.”
— “Doubling down in Phoenix” with a long format 2-minute ad that now has a 1-minute “chaser” on “Biden’s key enabler.” VIEW SPOT
— One “screen” in spot accusing Kelly of “corrupt bargain” drawing heavy attention and donations.
WASHINGTON D.C. — Announcing a new wave of TV ads against endangered Democrat Senator Mark Kelly, SUPER PAC President George Landrith says his group, Frontiers of Freedom Action, is doubling its broadcast buy (nightly and morning news) for a 2-minute spot asking Arizona media to stand up to a “corrupt national media” by making Kelly answer charges he is “liberal extremist and has the voting record to prove it.”
(For more information, contact PAC President George Landrith at 703-901-5464)
One ‘screen’ in particular in the TV spot is drawing heavy attention and donor response Landrith says
— a photo of radical-left New York Representative Ocasio-Cortez and 3 other Representatives who make a far-left congressional group the media dubbed “The Squad” with the headline emblazoned across it — ‘CORRUPT BARGAIN” as the ad’s voice-over charges:
“Mark Kelly made a corrupt bargain with left-wing extremists to not run a primary against him if he pushed far-left positions”
Accusing Kelly of “going to the big city and forgetting the people who sent him there” the ad asks Arizona press and network affiliates to end Kelly’s “free ride” and make him respond to questions like
“Why did he let his fear of a primary make him cave into the left-wing extremist “squad’?”
“How can he say he isn’t a left-wing extremist if every time he votes like one?”
WHY IT CRACKS THE CODE
“Kelly and all other Senate Democrats were so terrified that Ocasio Cortez and her left-wing billionaire allies would run primary campaigns against them they voted right down the extremist line.
“The reason this cracks the code is that many people find it hard to believe that their home state senator or local representative could really be so left wing but once they get an explanation for why it happened they are willing to vote against the Dems. Polling shows that even if they like their Senators they will vote against them if they voted for Biden’s and the Democrats’ agenda.”
“THIS SENATE RACE IS NOT A PERSONALITY CONTEST. KELLY’S OPPONENT IS A GREAT CANDIDATE BUT EVEN IF HE WEREN’T THE ISSUE IS KELLY’S LEFT WING EXTREMIST VOTING IN THE SENATE” Landrith said.
THE NEW 1-MINUTE “CHASER”
One conservative website called an earlier version of the spot (directed against Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer) “The greatest ad in the history of campaign ads” and said “Every MAGA candidate should imitate its format.”
Landrith explained, however, a 1-minute “chaser” (VIEW SPOT) now follows the 2-minute spot that summarizes what the viewer has just seen. (A 3-minute web version is also available: VIEW SPOT). The ads began on Sunday morning and will run on the nightly and morning news through the week.
“These are not 30-second attack ads that try to manipulate people, but heavily informative narrative ads that ask Mark Kelly when he will reject extremist liberal views and plans,” Landrith said.
“BIDEN ENABLER”
In addition to saying Kelly’s “free ride” from the national media means he never has to disown left-wing extremist groups that support him, the spot also spends much of its time charging that Kelly was a key “Biden enabler.” Accusing him of being “the 50th Senator” in a closely divided Senate who could easily have stopped Biden debacles like the border crisis, the spot show vivid footage of illegal border crossings.
WHY THE “EXTREMIST” CHARGE IS KEY
“The reason Joe Biden and Democrats are trying to use the ‘extremist’ charge against Republicans is they realize it is their own biggest vulnerability.”
“Mark Kelly is perfect example of why a Red Wave is coming in states like Arizona” the SUPERPAC PRESIDENT SAYS. “He wants to run as a moderate but like every Senate Democrat he is imperiled by his corrupt bargain with the left which said in effect: ‘Don’t primary me and I will vote your way.’”
SPOT CHARGES KELLY’S “FREE RIDE” FROM NATIONAL MEDIA MEANS HE HAS “NEVER HAD TO DENOUNCE” EXTREMISTS WHO WANT TO DEFUND THE POLICE OR DEMOCRATS “dark money alliance with notorious anti-American billionaire George Soros, to opposition to school reform and parental rights, as well as the destruction of women’s sports and childhood education with “gender lunacy.”
SPOT WANTS TO “Make The Media The 2022 Issue”
In calling national media “the most powerful and corrupt institutions in America” seeking to “smear” GOP candidates and protect their own “chosen candidates,” the SPOT asks voters to “send a message to the media bosses” who are “corrupting American journalism” and give them a “miserable election night” by asking Kelly for answers
“Get back at those who have corrupted journalism and seek to crush dissent and smear Kelly’s opponent.”
Spot cites MEDIA AS AMERICA’S MOST CORRUPT INSTITUTIONS COVERED UP 1) China virus leak, 2) Hunter Biden laptop scandal, 3) illegal wrongdoing by Clinton and Biden, 4) FBI harassment of political dissenters, 5) never apologized for two years of its Russian collusion hoax, 6) promoted smears and civil rights violations against conservatives, 7)phony impeachments and show trials.8)covered up Biden’s ill health and incompetence by letting him run from basement.
KELLY AS BIDEN’S AND SCHUMER’S “CHIEF ENABLER” ON —
HUGE SPENDING BILLS CAUSING SHATTERRING INFLATION AND RECESSION.
SHUT DOWN PIPELINES, DROVE UP GAS PRICES
CAUSED FOOD SHORTAGES EVEN BABY FORMULA
AND OPPOSING SCHOOL REFORM.
SUPPORTS POLITICIANS WHO VIOLATED THEIR OWN LOCKDOWNS ABD DESTROYING BUSINESSES
(Pelosi, DeBlasio, Cuomo, Newsom)
DESTROY WOMEN’S SPORTS AND CHILDHOOD EDUCATION WITH GENDER LUNACY (Pix of Lia the swimmer and drag queens at kindergarten)
ACCUSES KELLY ON DESTROYING ELECTION INTEGRITY BECAUSE HE BACKED BIDEN-SCHUMER
“He even voted for a federal takeover of Arizona’s election that would corrupt the secret ballot and completely reduce Arizona’s historic role in presidential elections”
AD HITS SENATE DEMS FOR “SCORCHED-EARTH” “RULE-OR -RUIN” ATTACK ON AMERICAN DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS
WILL DESTROY –
THE SUPREME COURT (Packing the Court)
THE SACRED SECRET BALLOT (No voter ID, unlimited vote harvesting and mail-ins and DC bureaucrats’ takeover of elections)
CITIZENSHIP (Open borders)
US SENATE (Add new states, no filibuster)
ELECTORAL COLLEGE. (Elections decided by a few counties in a few states)
IMPOSE ANTI-CATHOLIC RELIGIOUS TEST FOR FEDERAL OFFICE
“The GOP has never gotten across to the people how those bills would have destroyed the secret ballot, put Department of Justice bureaucrats in charge of our elections, abolished citizenship rights, packed the Supreme Court into irrelevance, radically changed the U.S. Senate, and made a few states the only thing that mattered in presidential elections by abolishing the Electoral College,” said Landrith.
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Amac: PAC Urges Arizona Press to “Stand Up to Corrupt National Media” Over “Extremist” Mark Kelly
By Seamus Brennan
In a two-minute broadcast TV advertisement, a conservative Super PAC is asking the Arizona press to “stand up” to the national media and make “liberal extremist” Senator Mark Kelly answer for his “corrupt bargain” with left-wing radicals in the Democratic Party. The ad also asks Arizona voters to “send a message to the media bosses” who represent “the most corrupt institutions in America.”
In the TV spot and an extended three-minute online version of the ad, the group asks Kelly “how he can say he isn’t a left-wing extremist if every time he votes like one,” and likewise calls on Arizona journalists to question Kelly on his extremist positions on the campaign trail. The ad, which launched Thursday night, is set to run on the Phoenix TV nightly news and Sunday political talk shows through next week.
The Arizona Senate race between Kelly and Republican Blake Masters—widely expected to be one of the most competitive in the nation—could determine which party controls the Senate come January 2023. “Mark Kelly is a perfect example of why a red wave is coming in states like Arizona,” said George Landrith, president of Frontiers of Freedom Action, the group that aired the ad. “He wants to run as a moderate, but like every Senate Democrat, he is imperiled by his corrupt bargain with the left which said in effect: ‘Don’t primary me and I will vote your way.’”
The ad’s release comes just days after the group aired a similar TV spot in New York markets, criticizing Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) as “the media’s chosen candidate,” which was hailed by one conservative news outlet as the “greatest campaign ad of all time.” Like the New York TV blitz, the first minute of the Arizona spot focuses chiefly on the media for trying to “crush dissent” and hide corruption, displaying headlines about media scandals and smears—including its suppression of the COVID-19 lab leak theory, censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop bombshell, promotion of the Russian collusion hoax, a coverup of Hillary Clinton’s email scandals, and refusal to report on Biden’s blackmailing of the Ukrainian government. The ad also catalogs other political smears, like those against General Michael Flynn, students at Covington Catholic High School, and parents protesting anti-Americanism in their local schools.
The ad goes on to blame the media for elevating Joe Biden to the presidency by letting him run “from his basement” and “covering up his incompetence and ill health.” It then goes on to smear Biden as “the worst president in modern history,” and features videos of him falling up the stairs on Air Force One and taking directions from the Easter Bunny at a White House event with the headline “EASTER BUNNY RUNS WHITE HOUSE EVENT.”
Around the halfway mark of the two-minute TV spot, the ad labels Kelly as Biden’s “key enabler,” noting that he votes with Biden 92 percent of the time and “cast the deciding vote on huge spending bills that cause shattering inflation and recession”—referring to the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act,” which economists predict will even further aggravate inflation and raise costs for Arizona families.
Additionally, the ad notes how attempts by the likes of Biden and Kelly to push a radical takeover of elections—as well as efforts by other Democrats to alter the makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Senate, American citizenship, and the Electoral College—represent a “scorched-earth, rule-or-ruin” attack on longstanding American democratic institutions. “The GOP has never gotten across to the people how those bills would have destroyed the secret ballot, but Department of Justice bureaucrats in charge of our elections, abolished citizenship rights, packed the Supreme Court into irrelevance, radically changed the U.S. Senate, and made a few states the only thing that mattered in presidential elections by abolishing the Electoral College,” said Landrith.
The ad concludes with a call for the people of Arizona to “make the media bosses the 2022 issue” before stating that Kelly “was the 50th senator and could have forced Biden and Schumer to stop the deliberate border crisis.” Mark Kelly, the ad goes on to say, “is a symptom of all that is wrong about Washington. Why did Mark Kelly go to the big city and forget the people who sent him there?”
“This Senate race is not a personality contest,” Landrith said. “Kelly’s opponent is a great candidate, but even if he weren’t, this issue is Kelly’s left-wing extremist voting in the Senate.”
Although Kelly has thus far maintained a marginal lead over Masters in statewide polling, the release of the ad could go a long way in further tightening the race and compelling moderates, independents, and disaffected Democrats to reconsider their support for Kelly as their representative in the Senate.
LINK TO STORY BY SEAMUS BRENNAN AT AMAC <HERE>
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BREITBART: Super PAC Attacking Media, Schumer Expands Ad Buy to Target Mark Kelly
By Joel Pollak
A conservative super PAC that is urging Republicans to target the mainstream media in campaign messages is expanding its ad buy, entering the Arizona race for Senate with TC spots targeting Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ).
As Breitbart News reported last month, the Frontiers of Freedom Action (FFA) super PAC placed ads in regional markets in upstate New York, urging voters to consider the “bargain” that Senate Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) allegedly made to avoid a difficult primary challenge from the likes of democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY): if he would vote and govern from the left, he would be left virtually unopposed in his primary race.
Now, the PAC is making the same case in Arizona, arguing that Kelly — who campaigned as a moderate but has voted with the party’s left since taking office in 2021 — made a similar “corrupt bargain” in his own race.
The PAC has bought airtime for a two-minute ad to air during 10 p.m. television news shows in Phoenix, to run on Thursday night and on Sunday through next week. (See TV Spot above)
It has also released a similar ad on the web: <HERE>
The ads allege that Kelly was the chief “Biden enabler,” and that as the “50th Senator” he could have stopped some of the most radical legislation to pass through the chamber, but refused to do so.
The implied contrast is with Sen. Kirsten Sinema (D-AZ), who has joined Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) in opposing some left-wing initiatives and defending the filibuster that enshrines the rights of the minority.
The ad encourages viewers and voters to pressure their local media outlets to ask questions of Kelly, and urges them to see the 2022 midterms as a way to “sed a message” to a corrupt media establishment.
Kelly faces a challenge from Republican Blake Masters in the upcoming November election.
. . . . . . . . . .
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
LINK TO STORY BY JOEL POLLAK AT BREITBART <HERE
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MAKE “LIBERAL EXTREMIST” MARK KELLY ANSWER “CORRUPT BARGAIN” ALLEGATION
“Mark Kelly made a corrupt bargain with left-wing extremists to not run a primary against him if he pushed far-left positions” — TV spot.
Ask “local press” and Arizona news “affiliates” to hold Kelly “accountable on the campaign trail” by asking —
“Why did he let his fear of a primary make him cave in to the left-wing extremist “squad”?
“How can he say he isn’t a left-wing extremist if every time he votes like one?”
PHOENIX TV PUSH: 2 – MINUTE SPOT (https://youtu.be/29shDBn8JYQ) ON PHOENIX NIGHTLY NEWS AND SUNDAY NEWS SHOWS AND 3-MINUTE WEB RELEASE (https://youtu.be/Mz6rujONihg) also says KELLY WAS “CHIEF BIDEN-SCHUMER ENABLER” AND “AS 5OTH SENATOR” COULD HAVE STOPPED THE DEBACLES. BUT HE NEVER DID!
“He was the deciding vote in the Senate and could have forced Biden and Schumer to stop their deliberate border crisis.”
“Instead he became a Biden-Schumer enabler and gave them everything they wanted.”
END MARK KELLY’S ‘FREE RIDE’ FROM THE NATIONAL MEDIA
“Mark Kelly is a perfect example of why a Red Wave is coming in states like Arizona,” said Frontiers of Freedom Action President, George Landrith. “He wants to run as a moderate, but like every Senate Democrat he is imperiled by his corrupt bargain with the Left which said in effect: ‘Don’t primary me and I will vote your way.’”
“THIS SENATE RACE IS NOT A PERSONALITY CONTEST. KELLY’S OPPONENT IS A GREAT CANDIDATE, BUT EVEN IF HE WEREN’T, THE ISSUE IS KELLY’S CONSISTENT LEFT WING EXTREMIST VOTING IN THE SENATE,” said George Landrith, President of FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM ACTION.
We ask in the TV spot:
“Why he went to Washington and sided with the left-wing extremists against the people of Arizona?”
“Why Mark Kelly went to the Big City and forgot the people who sent him there?”
Spot also says:
“Ask the local news not to give Kelly the free ride that he gets from corrupt national media.”
“Ask the Arizona media and affiliates to question Mark Kelly on the campaign trail.”
KELLY’S “FREE RIDE” FROM NATIONAL MEDIA MEANS HE HAS “NEVER HAD TO DENOUNCE” EXTREMISTS WHO WANT TO DEFUND THE POLICE OR DEMOCRATS “dark money alliance with notorious anti-American billionaire George Soros, to opposition to school reform and parental rights, as well as the destruction of women’s sports and childhood education with “gender lunacy.”
SPOT SAYS “Make The Media The 2022 Issue”
Calling national media “the most powerful and corrupt institutions in America” seeking to “smear” GOP candidates and protect their own “chosen candidates,” TV SPOT asks voters to “send a message to the media bosses” who are “corrupting American journalism” and give them a “miserable election night” by asking Kelly for answers
“Get back at those who have corrupted journalism and seek to crush dissent and who smear Kelly’s opponent.”
TV Spot says — the MEDIA, AS ONE OF AMERICA’S MOST CORRUPT INSTITUTIONS, COVERED UP — 1) China virus leak, 2) Hunter Biden laptop scandal, 3) illegal wrongdoing by Clinton and Biden, 4) FBI harassment of political dissenters, 5) never apologized for two years of its Russian collusion hoax, 6) promoted smears and civil rights violations against conservatives, 7) conducted phony impeachments and totalitarian style show trials, and 8) covered up Biden’s ill health and incompetence by letting him run from his basement.
THE AD SHOWS KELLY AS BIDEN’S AND SCHUMER’S “CHIEF ENABLER” ON :
HUGE SPENDING BILLS CAUSING SHATTERING INFLATION AND RECESSION
SHUT DOWN PIPELINES, DROVE UP GAS PRICES
CAUSED FOOD SHORTAGES EVEN BABY FORMULA
OPPOSING SCHOOL REFORM
SUPPORTING POLITICIANS WHO VIOLATED THEIR OWN LOCKDOWNS AND DESTROYED SO MANY BUSINESSES. (Pelosi, DeBlasio, Cuomo, Newsom)
DESTROYING WOMEN’S SPORTS AND CHILDHOOD EDUCATION WITH GENDER LUNACY (Pix of Lia the swimmer and drag queens at kindergarten)
DESTROYING ELECTION INTEGRITY BECAUSE HE BACKED BIDEN-SCHUMER — “Kelly even voted for a federal takeover of Arizona’s election that would corrupt the secret ballot and completely reduce Arizona’s historic role in presidential elections”
The Ad Hits Senate Democrats “SCORCHED-EARTH” and “RULE-OR-RUIN” ATTACK ON AMERICAN DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS
The Ad points out that the Left’s Agenda — one that Kelly fully supports — WILL DESTROY –
THE SUPREME COURT
THE SACRED SECRET BALLOT (No voter ID, unlimited vote harvesting and mail-ins and DC bureaucrats’ takeover of elections)
CITIZENSHIP (Open borders)
US SENATE (Add new states, no filibuster)
ELECTORAL COLLEGE (Elections decided by a few counties in a few states)
AND IMPOSE AN ANTI-CHRISTIAN AND ANTI-CATHOLIC RELIGIOUS TEST FOR FEDERAL OFFICE
“The GOP has never gotten across to the people how those bills would have destroyed the secret ballot, put Department of Justice bureaucrats in charge of our elections, abolished citizenship rights, packed the Supreme Court into irrelevance, radically changed the U.S. Senate, and made a few states the only thing that mattered in presidential elections by abolishing the Electoral College,” said Landrith.
TO SEE FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM ACTION’S GROUND BREAKING TV SPOT AGAINST CHUCK SCHUMER CLICK <HERE>
. . .
With George Landrith, Tom Donelson, Larry Fedewa & Joe Mangiacotti
. . .
. . .
LINK — https://rumble.com/v1m67qm-frontiers-of-freedom-weekly-report-sept.-30-2022.html
. . .
By Tom Donelson, Senior Fellow
Since August 2020 and during the pandemics, there has been one constant: unemployment in Republican states have been significantly lower than in Democratic states. The chart below shows this
In August of 2020 unemployment for states with Democratic governors was 8.4 compared to 6.4 unemployment for Republican governors and in August 2022, unemployment under Democratic governors was 3.7 percent and under Republican governors was only 3 percent.
We also compared states with exclusively one-party control of the both the legislature and the executive with branch mixed control with one party who split control of the lever of power and found differences. Republicans who control both the legislature and governor seats, had an unemployment rate of 2.8 percent compared to Democrat states who control both the governor seat. and the legislature had an unemployment rate of 4 percent. Those who had mixed government had an unemployment rate of 3.4.
Completely run blue states had 30 percent more unemployment than completely run red states and these Democrats run states were even behind those states with split control. We did not find a difference between states with Republican governors and split government and Democratic governors with split government as GOP governors was 3.4 percent and Democratic governors was 3.3 percent. When we combined GOP governors and split governance, we see the unemployment is 3 percent.
We also compared the top four most populous states with Republican governors: Florida, Ohio, Texas, and Georgia to top four populous states with Democratic governors: New York, California, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. States with Republican governors had unemployment of 3.4 percent and two, Florida and Georgia, were below the national average and below 3 percent. The Democratic states averaged 4.4 percent and not one of these states were below the national average. Not one Democratic state had unemployment less than 4.1 percent.
The main reason for this difference is that Republican states open their economy earlier during the Pandemics compared to Democratic states. While some GOP states were aggressive with lockdowns initially, GOP states reduce restrictions, and this showed up in the lower unemployment.
Dr. Wilfred Reilly conducted three studies on the impact on the lockdown and found that there were no real differences in deaths per capita and both non-lockdown states and Republican states had lower unemployment compared to lockdown states and Democratic states. 1 Unemployment for non-lockdown states was 5.5 percent and for Republican states 6.4 percent whereas lockdown states and Democrat states unemployment was 8.2 percent in August of 2020.
In winter of 2020, many states reinstate lockdowns and in reviewing those states in August 2022, the unemployment was 3.5 percent for lockdown states compared to 2.8 percent for non-lockdown states. In both studies, all the non-lockdown states had Republican governors and in those states in which Democrats ran all phrase of government, the unemployment rate was 4 percent.
What we find for the past two years is that Republican states have lower unemployment compared to their Democratic counterpart and we found this difference most significant. Other studies support this including a report card by Casey Mulligan, Phil Kerpen and Steve Moore. They observed, “Economy and schooling are positively correlated (correlation coefficient = 0.43), which suggests a relationship between the willingness of the population (or its politicians) to resume normal activity in business and school. MT, SD, NE, and UT are the states’ highest on the economy score and among only seven states to exceed 85 percent open schools. The correlation between health and economy scores is essentially zero, which suggests that states that withdrew the most from economic activity did not significantly improve health by doing so.”2
By • American Liberty
There’s something about the way laws are made and the impact they have on the nation that many people may not understand. Oh, they may know what it is intuitively, and that much of how Congress does its business doesn’t make sense, but they can’t explain why.
That means they can’t propose ways to fix it. This isn’t a failing on their part and it’s not because they don’t understand the democratic process or how a bill becomes a law. It’s the lawmakers themselves who have made the legislative process so opaque, with so many moving parts, that it’s hard for people who are not part of the professional political class to figure out what it means, how it works and how to improve it.
That’s useful to those who favor the continual growth in the government’s size and authority, especially at the federal level. The constant obfuscation allows deception and permits those few policymakers who are still politicians holding elective office to change positions on the spot without having to worry too much that the people who keep them in office will hold them accountable.
That’s how, for example, West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, who’d won plaudits for his opposition to President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill, was able to make a deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to produce, even take the lead on something which is called the Inflation Reduction act but is just a slimmed down, slightly less woke version of what he’d previously opposed. As a side note, it doesn’t do much of anything – say such neutral arbiters of its effect on the economy like the Congressional Budget Office and Congress’s Joint Tax Committee – to reduce inflation. According to them, it could make it worse than it otherwise might be before it finally levels off.
The Manchin-backed bill, which could just as easily and more accurately be called the Inflation Resuscitation Act as anything else, is chock full of the same kinds of tax increases, special interest spending, unnecessary regulatory crackdowns, sweetheart political deals (Arizona Sen. Krysten Sinema, we’re looking in your direction) and green energy mandates and subsides as Build Back Better. In the bigger picture, the differences between the two are insignificant enough that they hardly matter at all. Except that the Inflation Reduction Act could also be responsible for your death.
It won’t kill you, at least not literally, unless you happened to be walking by the U.S. Capitol when and if some unhappy Republican throws a bound copy of the bill out an open window and it lands on your head. It’s a big bill. What you need to know is the imposition of price controls on certain categories of prescription drugs contained within it will depress pharmaceutical industry research and development into new drug therapies by an estimated $663 billion according to a paper by Tomas Phillipson published by the University of Chicago.
Says the professor in an essay he penned for Newsweek, a reduction in funding of that size “will amount to a loss of 330 million life-years, about 30 times the loss from COVID-19 so far. The associated loss in value is more than $66 trillion, with longevity conservatively valued at half the amount used by agencies such as FDA and EPA.”
In layman’s terms, that means the cures that could be coming down the pike for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease and certain kinds of cancers – just to name a few of the ultimately fatal maladies we face as we get older – won’t arrive because they’ll never get out of the gate. Sorry, Boomer.
As Kevin Murphy and Robert Topel write in their study, The Value of Health and Longevity (also published by the University of Chicago) “Economic evidence shows that growth in life-expectancy is as important as GDP growth in lifting U.S. well-being. Put differently, few people would give up a year of their lives in order to gain an inflation-free year with marginally higher growth. Emphasizing the reduced economic effect of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act is akin to rejoicing that a hurricane spared the house, even though its owners died.”
This shouldn’t be hard to understand. If the legislative process and the impact of a given bill were explained to the American people with the same level of detail that goes into the analysis of the New York Mets’ pitching power, it wouldn’t be. So, without going too deeply into the weeds, if you accept that price controls affect profit margins by pushing them lower, you also have to accept they eliminate incentives to innovate.
Too many people, especially those who take their cues on economic issues from Karl Marx and AOC, view words like “capital, “profit” and “property” as dirty ones. When they are applied to the American model, they become glorious, responsible for the incentives that make living standards in the United States among the highest in the world and the envy of just about every other country.
The debate over this issue is not an honest one, with all sides getting a fair hearing. If it were, you’d know the vast majority of Americans oppose the idea of the government negotiating price controls with pharmaceutical companies when they understand the consequences that would ensue.
Government price controls are popular, according to just about every public poll, when people think all that will happen is the price of drugs will come down. Why pay more when you can pay less, right? When they learn it also means forcing manufacturers to negotiate on price with the government takes away from doctors the ability to prescribe medicines that in their opinion best meet the needs of their patients, the support for price controls drops considerably. A survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation found support for capping schemes dropped the moment respondents became aware it might lead to less research and development of new drugs or limit access to newer prescription drugs. A March 2022 Ipsos poll conducted for the industry’s trade association found just 14 percent of those participating in the survey would support them if they resulted in limited access to newer prescription medicines.
If this information were planted as firmly in the public’s mind as the idea that the government can lower the price of drugs through negotiation or fiat, it would be easy to predict what the politicians would do. But it isn’t, so the fact price controls would kill innovation in the industry in the U.S., leading to the development of fewer breakthrough drugs is easy to hide.
The evidence is there if anyone cares to look for it. By burying their scheme in a bill that’s supposed to bring down inflation – and the pharmaceutical sector is one area where prices have continued to be relatively stable and have even come down – no one does. That’s the biggest benefit to legislating as Schumer and Manchin are doing. There are too many moving parts that will produce too many adverse outcomes for people to keep track of it all. The solution for the mess it will cause, when it comes, will be another big bill that doesn’t fix the problems the Inflation Reduction Act will cause while making the mess even bigger.
Drug importation is always presented as a way to reduce costs, but the truth is it is the wrong solution and will have the costly impact of endangering drug safety and creating a huge counterfeit medication problem.
“Safe” importation of medications is an oxymoron. It may sound good and it may sound like a cost saver, but it’s actually very risky. For example, the reality is that many drugs labeled as “Canadian” and thus assumed to be safe, are usually counterfeit or tainted medications that come from third world countries. In some cases, the medications are simply ineffective and have no value as medication. But if you need medication and think you’re getting the needed medication at a lower cost, but you’re actually getting what amounts to a placebo, your health is at risk and you’re not saving any money at all. In fact, you’re wasting money. You might as well eat chalk and burn cash. It would provide the same benefit.
And in other cases, the medications are not merely ineffective, they are actually tainted and do great harm. For years, healthcare policy analysts and health safety experts have produced a cacophony of powerful objections to importation based on worries about safety and pricing. Even many government reports make it clear that drug importation is a risky business and that there are better ways to keep costs in check. The health, legal and economic dangers posed by drug importation makes it dangerous public policy.
This isn’t just our opinion, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office carefully reviewed Senator Bernie Sander’s proposal for drug importation in 2017 and determined that it would have minimal to no impact on federal expenditures.
Additionally, drug “importation” would actually import Canada’s price-controlled, government-run healthcare system and kill off the incentives to develop new medicines. If we hope to find the next generation of cures and treatments to many of the terrible diseases that have plagued mankind for millennia, then we need to encourage innovation, investment and research — not stifle it.
Simply stated, drug importation may have a certain rhetorical appeal, but when the shiny stylistic glitter is wiped away, it becomes clear that the proposal is dangerous and potentially deadly for American patients. Paying a lower cost for so-called medications that aren’t medications or in some cases are poisonous, is not a cost savings.
Plus it will stifle and hamstring future innovation and development of new medications. None of that is a good idea, and none of that will help American’s stay healthy or end up reducing healthcare costs.
Drug importation is a bad and risky idea. It keeps getting recycled and some pretend that it isn’t a completely discredited idea. It is time to stop recycling failed ideas that pose real risks to Americans. It is time to look to encourage innovation and research.
Regulations 'will help projects get built faster,' says head of environmental agency that can't finish its own projects on time
By • The Washington Free Beacon
The White House on Tuesday restored environmental regulations on infrastructure construction that the Trump administration struck down in the name of cutting bureaucratic red tape. The Biden administration said reimposing the stringent review process will speed up the construction of infrastructure projects.
The rule change will require federal agencies to assess the “direct,” “indirect,” and “cumulative” climate and environmental effects of infrastructure projects before approving the projects. Former president Donald Trump in 2020 made certain projects, such as pipelines and highways, exempt from those regulations in an effort to clear up “mountains and mountains of bureaucratic red tape in Washington, D.C.”
Chairwoman Brenda Mallory of the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality, which issued the rule change, said in a statement that the restoration of red tape will actually expedite the construction of infrastructure.
“Restoring these basic community safeguards will provide regulatory certainty, reduce conflict, and help ensure that projects get built right the first time,” Mallory said. “Patching these holes in the environmental review process will help projects get built faster, be more resilient, and provide greater benefits to people who live nearby.”
When the White House last year proposed reimposing the regulations, though, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce opposed it, saying the rule change would bog down infrastructure projects.
“By rolling back some of the most important updates to our antiquated permitting process, the Biden administration’s new proposed [National Environmental Policy Act] rule will only serve to slow down building the infrastructure of the future,” Chad Whiteman, the Chamber of Commerce’s vice president for environment and regulatory affairs, said in October. “Important projects … are languishing due to continued delays and that must change.”
On Monday, the day before the Council on Environmental Quality argued its policy changes would speed up the construction of federal projects, Politico subsidiary E&E News revealed that the agency has failed to complete its own projects on time. The agency was tasked with achieving a number of the Biden administration’s climate priorities, including tracking the White House’s “climate-related investments to disadvantaged communities” with a scorecard.
The Council on Environmental Quality “has already fallen behind on multiple key goals, including the scorecard, which was supposed to be released two months ago, and the climate and economic screening tool, which was released in February in draft form after a six-month delay,” E&E News reported.
By • The Desert Review
The U.S. economy runs on startups. For all of America’s mega-corporations, it’s young firms that create most of our new jobs during periods of economic growth. Those startups depend on America’s famously strong laws protecting their inventions and intellectual property. The only way someone with a big idea but minimal resources can out-compete established firms is through government protection of their innovations.
Today, we are failing in that responsibility. Our laxity is empowering predators foreign and domestic — endangering not only the next Apple, Microsoft, or Facebook, but our entire economy.
For years, the greatest threat to American intellectual property has been China. Chinese IP piracy became endemic — totaling an estimated $600 billion in costs to the U.S. per year. A CNBC survey of American corporations found that one-third had experienced IP theft by Chinese pirates. Testifying before Congress, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “I think it’s well documented that the Chinese government steals technology from American companies.”
More telling than Zuckerberg’s acknowledgment was the strange equivocation by other Big Tech executives at the hearing. The CEOs of Apple, Amazon, and Google — individuals famous for their breadth of knowledge and laser focus on their businesses — all shrugged and testified only that they hadn’t personally seen any Chinese IP piracy.
There is a reason those firms might not want to shine a light on IP theft: it’s a valuable part of their own business models.
In January, the U.S. International Trade Commission issued a ruling finding that Google infringed on five patents belonging to Sonos, a company that makes smart speakers. The story is a worst-case scenario for a startup. Sonos developed one of the most advanced wireless audio systems in the market — a product so impressive that Google wanted to partner with the company. Sonos alleges that early in the partnership, Google lifted Sonos-patented technology for Google’s own audio equipment.
Sonos was no fluke. Google faced 48 patent infringement lawsuits in 2021. But Google is not the only perpetrator.
In 2020, a federal jury ordered Amazon to pay $5 million to Texas-based Vocalife for infringing on its patents. Apple was recently ordered to pay $300 million in damages to Optis Wireless Technology for infringement.
It’s no accident that the number of IP lawsuits rose in 2020 for the first time since 2015, and court awards rose to $4.67 billion from just $1.5 billion in 2019.
It makes holding China to account much harder. If the richest and most powerful businesses in America are ignoring our intellectual property laws — why shouldn’t our global adversaries?
The issue here isn’t complicated: When laws against theft aren’t enforced, thieves are going to steal. Slaps on the wrist aren’t going to deter pickpockets in Beijing, Silicon Valley, or anywhere else. Congress has to tighten up our IP laws and stiffen penalties, and the Justice Department needs to ramp up enforcement while there are still startups left to save.
One noteworthy aspect of the American Dream is that the most important businesses of 20 years from now are probably ones we haven’t heard of yet. In order for them to lead us into the future, the government must protect them from foreign adversaries and Big Tech.
Does Constitutional Government Still Matter? Or Can Unelected Bureaucrats Unilaterally Crown Themselves Our Healthcare Emperors and Demand that We, their Subjects, Obey their Decrees?
Americans from coast-to-coast are applauding U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) because he is going to force a vote on his resolution to repeal travel mask mandates on public transportation and airplanes. The science is clear, mask mandates have not saved lives and have not slowed the spread. Yet, despite the clear evidence from the last two years, many continue to insist on mask mandates. Curiously, these were some of the loudest and most shrill voices demanding that Americans follow the science — yet, they now clearly defy and ignore the science.
Thankfully, Sen. Paul, also a medical doctor, is requiring government to be accountable and be reasonable. While many in government seek to use fear and demagoguery to keep Americans worked up and living in fear, it is clearly time to learn to live with COVID and mitigate its impact. But the insistence on perpetual COVID mandates and the fear mongering and threats of mandates do nothing to save lives or improve health. Senator Paul’s resolution to repeal travel mask mandates on public transportation and airplanes can be found HERE.
If requiring people to perpetually wear masks is a good idea, why not follow the constitutional process of law-making? Why not ask Congress, the people’s representatives, to vote on it? It is stunning that for almost two years, Americans have been forced to follow the baseless edicts of bureaucrats and over-zealous executives. But not once have those supporting mandates followed the constitutional process of voting on proposed laws in the legislature and then asking the executive to sign the law into effect. And no one exercising (or actually abusing) these powers has bothered to explain where in the Constitution, the government has the power to issue all these so-called healthcare mandates. And they also don’t bother to explain why their mandates are needed or supported by the data.
It is time for this abuse of power to stop and for Congress to vote. While we do not believe that the Federal government has the legal authority to force Americans to wear masks, it is certainly well within Congress’ purview to put an end to abuses of federal power and usurpations of constitutional power. And we thank Sen. Rand Paul for seeing to it that Congress at least goes on record as whether constitutional government still matters or whether unelected bureaucrats can simply crown themselves healthcare emperors and hand out edicts that their subjects must follow.
February 22, 2022
The Honorable Senator James Lankford
316 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Senator Lankford and Staff,
We write knowing full well that you and our organization are aligned in our commitments to promote the principles of individual freedom, limited government, free markets, and traditional American values. The purpose of our message today is to recognize your strong work and introspection into the problems that have plagued the deeply indebted and dysfunctional U.S. Postal Service.
As you are aware, the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, of which you are a key member, last held a hearing with USPS leadership to discuss its finances and operations on August 21, 2020 as part of the 116th Congress.1 At that time, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy outlined the case for legislative action to reposition the Medicare program as a defacto financial backstop for addressing the Postal Service’s “unaffordable retirement payments,” given that the USPS has been encumbered by its “management strategy that has not adequately addressed these issues.”2 The Committee has not convened to consider postal legislation in 2022, nor in 2021.
As you are also aware, the House passed version of the Postal Service Reform Act (H.R. 3076) was subject to a clerical error during transmittal to the Senate, prompting an objection by your colleague Sen. Rick Scott on February 14th.3 With this motion, Sen. Scott further communicated how this postal legislation “does nothing to secure the future of postal workers and Medicare recipients or make the Postal Service more efficient.”
This should be of great concern to all legislators who espouse the values of responsible, accountable governance, and dedication to public service.
To this end, Sen. Scott also sent a letter to the Congressional Budget Office seeking clarity on the budgetary effects of H.R. 3076 in years ahead, along with requesting demonstration of fiscal impacts on the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, costs to the Medicare program, and effects on Medicare premiums.4. Such information was not sufficiently provided in the CBO’s recently released “Estimated Budgetary Effects” of H.R. 3076.5 The CBO’s initial findings were not subject to formal discussion in the House Ways & Means Committee, and the House bill was ushered to a full chamber vote three days later, on February 8, 2022.
Given your strong judgment, Senator Lankford, and your unique position in membership of both Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, and the Senate Committee on Finance, we respectfully call upon you to provide the requisite level of scrutiny that the current Postal Service Reform Act deserves. We urge you and your staff to exhaustively pursue all Committee measures that will allow for honest debate on a reformulated bill that is in the best interest of postal customers and American taxpayers.
Earlier in February, your colleague and Senate Finance Ranking Member, Sen. Mike Crapo, discussed the depths of the Medicare program’s fiscal distress and what that could mean for beneficiaries. Sen. Crapo stated: “Moreover, with each passing year, we are steadily moving closer to the Medicare Trust Fund’s exhaustion date, at which time the program will no longer be able to pay full benefits for our nation’s seniors. We must be thoughtful and cautious to avoid exacerbating the fiscal challenges we face.”6
In our evaluation, the Postal Service Reform Act will invoke significant harm on the Medicare program’s ability to rightfully fulfill its promises to Americans.
In closing, we have included with this letter our recent opinion piece published in The Oklahoman, “Does the Postal Service Reform Act address core problems?,”7 which highlights the lack of honest discussion around the bill. We recognize your unwavering service on behalf of Oklahomans and thank you for this opportunity to share our views.
Sincerely,
George Landrith
President
Frontiers of Freedom
Letter to the Editor
The Oklahoman
February 4, 2022
A recent opinion article relies on faulty logic and omission of facts about the USPS (“Postal Service steps up to the challenge, needs Congress to deliver reform,” Jan. 12). The USPS lost $87 billion in recent years and carries $188 billion in debts.
The author omits his ideas for how USPS would address this problem. His preferred “Postal Service Reform Act” would set in motion the plan to slowdown mail delivery times for everyone and have the federal government conduct a $58 billion bailout. The proposed bill does nothing to fix the Post Office’s core problem: they ship packages for less than their true costs.
Hopefully Sen. James Lankford and Sen. Jim Inhofe can see that the Postal Service Reform Act is simply a bad deal for Americans and has no plan to help the USPS achieve financial sustainability.
– George Landrith, President of Frontiers of Freedom, Virginia
Link: https://www.pressreader.com/usa/the-oklahoman/20220204/281728387922471
FOOTNOTES:
1 – “Examining the Finances and Operations of the United States Postal Service During COVID-19 and Upcoming Elections,” hearing, HSGAC, August 21, 2020, https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/examining-the-finances-and-operations-of-the-united-states-postal-service-during-covid-19-and-upcoming-elections
2 – “STATEMENT OF POSTMASTER GENERAL AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER LOUIS DEJOY before HSGAC,” testimony of Louis DeJoy, Postmaster General, United States Postal Service, August 21, 2020, https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Testimony-DeJoy-2020-08-21.pdf
3 – “Sen. Rick Scott on Senate Floor: Postal Reform is Needed; But it Can’t Be at the Cost of Medicare Recipients, Postal Worker,” press release, Office of Sen. Rick Scott, February 14, 2022, https://www.rickscott.senate.gov/2022/2/sen-rick-scott-on-senate-floor-postal-reform-is-needed-but-it-can-t-be-at-the-cost-of-medicare-recipients-postal-workers
4 – Sen. Rick Scott letter to Director Phillip Swagel, Congressional Budget Office,” February 14, 2022, https://www.rickscott.senate.gov/services/files/5FD84464-1455-4E95-9E31-96143650F647
5 – “Estimated Budgetary Effects of Rules Committee Print 117-32 for H.R. 3076, the Postal Service Reform Act of 2022,” CBO, February 4, 2022, https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57821
6 – “Crapo Statement at Hearing on Youth Mental Health,” Sen. Mike Crapo, February 8, 2022, https://www.finance.senate.gov/ranking-members-news/crapo-statement-at-hearing-on-youth-mental-health
7 – “Does the Postal Service Reform Act address core problems?,” George Landrith, Frontiers of Freedom, The Oklahoman, February 4, 2022, https://www.pressreader.com/usa/the-oklahoman/20220204/281728387922471
A significant portion of the $751.7 billion spent annually on K–12 education is used to purchase non-public goods and services.
By • Reason Foundation
In a recent tweet, journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the 1619 Project, recycled a common refrain against school-choice programs, noting that “they funnel public dollars into privately run institutions.” Similar talking points are being used in Michigan, Texas, and other states to block policies that give families access to their students’ education dollars and more opportunities for their kids.
This argument is misguided and ignores the fact that public education wouldn’t exist without the private sector. The reality is that much of the $751.7 billion spent annually on K–12 education is used to purchase non-public goods and services.
The wheels of commerce are spinning well before the morning bell rings, with public schools spending over $27 billion annually on transportation services. Manufacturers such as Blue Bird — a publicly traded company that recorded $1.019 billion of sales in 2019 — supply the nation’s 480,000 yellow buses, and about one-third of school districts outsource bus services to private contractors, saving public schools millions of dollars each year.
Without these companies, millions of students would be stuck at home, but that’s only the start. School districts also partner with private entities to build the schools, playgrounds, and athletics facilities they rely on each day.
Nationwide, spending on capital consumes roughly 10 percent of all K–12 education dollars each year, totaling $76.3 billion in 2019 alone. Districts finance much of this spending by issuing municipal bonds, which require private-sector assistance from investment banks, attorneys, and ratings agencies and are purchased by investors such as money managers and insurance companies.
For their part, public-school advocates — including teachers’ unions and other school-choice opponents — almost always support bond referenda, despite the cadre of private actors that profit from them.
Once bonds are approved, school districts hire architecture, engineering, and construction companies to do the work. For example, construction giant Balfour Beatty contracts with districts across the country from Texas to California and has completed over $500 million in projects for the public schools in Wake County, N.C., alone.
Inside classrooms, a similar story unfolds. While nearly half of all education dollars are spent on employee salaries, benefit expenditures for things such as pensions and health insurance account for 21 percent of spending. This includes teacher retirement contributions that are made each year to massive pension funds that invest in equities, real estate, and other financial vehicles that help fund managers diversify risk and hit performance targets. Teachers have a vested interest in U.S. economic growth and benefit from the success of corporate giants such as ExxonMobil, Amazon, and Berkshire Hathaway.
Schools are also increasingly reliant on technology companies to supply computers, tablets, and software solutions that support instruction, and it’s estimated that $26 billion to $41 billion is spent each year on education tech. Similarly, states depend on private firms to administer statewide exams, such as the $388 million in contracts Texas awarded to Pearson and Cambium Assessment.
In some cases, school districts even pay private-school tuition for students they can’t serve. The National Association of State Directors of Special Education says that about 1.5 percent of public-school students with disabilities are placed by their districts into private schools. This practice helps families obtain specialized services and means that public-school districts are already doing exactly what school-choice opponents fight against — sending public dollars to private schools. The only difference is that district bureaucrats, not parents, are the ones calling the shots.
Of course, not all these examples of private-sector partnerships are wise investments or the best use of scarce resources. After all, K–12 transportation is in desperate need of reform, and construction projects can be wasteful. The real issue that opponents such as Hannah-Jones have with school choice isn’t with public dollars going to the private sector, but with competition for students and their per-pupil funding. The public-school monopoly gets weaker when parents can access their education dollars and use them for the private services that they choose, and that’s a good thing.
February 15, 2022
The Honorable Mark Takano
Chairman
House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs
The Honorable Jon Tester
Chairman
Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs
The Honorable Mike Bost
Ranking Member
House Veterans Affairs Committee
The Honorable Jerry Moran
Ranking Member
Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs
Dear Chairmen Takano and Tester, and Ranking Members Bost and Moran:
In 2021, Frontiers of Freedom launched the Veterans Choice Initiative, a grassroots effort committed to supporting disabled veterans by protecting their right to choose how to best navigate the bureaucracy of the Veterans Administration and secure the disability benefits they rightly deserve.
Providing access to high quality disability benefits support is one of our most important obligations to the brave men and women who have served this country. Unfortunately, the current government-run and volunteer system is both confusing and under-resourced, leaving veterans at a disadvantage when seeking the benefits, they are ethically, medically, and legally entitled to.
As you look to set the Committee’s priorities for the New Year, we ask that you not repeat the mistakes of the past.
In 2021, Preventing Crimes Against Veterans Act (S. 2141) was introduced in the Senate which in effect criminalized “unaccredited actors,” that wish to help veterans with their claims. This includes private consultants that provide necessary and life-changing assistance to millions of veterans around the country.
These proposed changes will limit a veterans’ choice and leave the initiation phase of the claims solely on the backs of VSOs or veterans themselves. While VSOs are filled with well-meaning and sometimes qualified individuals and volunteers, most of the organizations do not have the manpower or expertise to handle the massive inflow that is expected over the next few years.
This latest attempt built upon a 2019 bill that aimed to amend title 38 of the United States Code, to provide criminal penalties for individuals acting as agents or attorneys for the preparation, presentation, or prosecution of a claim. Thankfully, the initial bill was rightfully defeated.
Our veterans have earned the right to choose their consultation and representation, regardless of Accreditation status, as they navigate a confusing system.
As you consider reforms to the veterans’ benefits system in 2022, we ask that any legislation around this issue in Congress will ensure a veteran’s right to choose is not jeopardized.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
George Landrith, President
Frontiers of Freedom
Richard Manning, President
Americans for Limited Government
Charles Sauer, Founder & President
Market Institute
David Williams, President
Taxpayers Protection Alliance
Seton Motley, Founder & President
Less Government
James L. Martin, Founder/Chairman
60 Plus Association
Andrew Langer, President
Institute for Liberty
Chuck Muth, President
Citizen Outreach
Saulius “Saul” Anuzis, President
60 Plus Association
David Wallace, Founder
Restore America’s Mission
Judson Phillips, Founder
Tea Party Nation
Ryan Ellis, President
Center for a Free Economy
Governor Mike Huckabee
Former Governor of Arkansas
C. Preston Noell III, President
Tradition, Family, Property, Inc.
Gerard Scimeca, Chairman
Consumer Action for a Strong Economy
Nicholas Willis, President
Americans for Liberty & Security
Susan Taylor, President
Strengthening America for All
John Cooper, President
Defending America Foundation
Scott Vanandler, President
The Last Best Hope on Earth Institute
Mark Thomas, Founder
Freedom & Prosperity Caucus
U.S. Senator Larry E Craig (retired)
United States Senate Retired
Paul Caprio, Director
Patriotic Veterans
Steve Moore, Co-Founder
Committee to Unleash Prosperity
Horace Cooper, Director
Project 21
Phil Kerpen, President
American Commitment
James Taylor, President
Heartland Institute
Morton Blackwell, President
The Leadership Institute
The Honorable George K Rasley Jr
Managing Editor, ConservativeHQ.com
Elaine Donnelly, President
Center for Military Readiness
Karen Kerrigan, President & CEO
Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council
Martha Boneta, President
Vote America First
Becky Norton Dunlop, Director
Reagan Alumni Association
Bob Carlstrom, President
AMAC Action
Ed Martin, President
Phyllis Schlafly Eagles
Mario H. Lopez, President
Hispanic Leadership Fund
Bob McEwen
U.S. House Committee on Veteran’s Affairs
Former Member, Ohio
Dee Stewart, President
Americans for a Balanced Budget
By • Newsmax
One of the keys to America’s growth from 1776 to becoming the world’s strongest, most robust and innovative economy within a little more than 100 years is that our Constitution placed importance on both traditional land property rights and intellectual property rights.
Early in America’s history, land-oriented property rights caused our vast nation to be developed productively and efficiently. That fueled economic growth and helped “ordinary” Americas provide for themselves and accumulate some measure of wealth.
But as ideas, inventions and innovation became the primary engine to drive the economy, our nation’s focus on protecting intellectual property helped “ordinary” Americans not only provide for themselves, but also created a vibrant economy where “ordinary” Americans could aspire to and achieve the American dream.
Our Nation’s Founders were wise to include protecting intellectual property rights as one of Congress’ enumerated powers. And the First Congress was wise to create a system for copyright, patents, and the protection of intellectual property rights. That laid the groundwork for America to become the world’s greatest economic power.
The United States has been a leader in innovation since the early 19th century. This is because as a nation, we have respected intellectual property rights and thus incentivized and encouraged innovation. When there is economic and regulatory freedom and when property rights are respected, private enterprise will invest billions of dollars to innovate and create new technologies to solve real-world problems and provide valuable goods and services to the public.
But even something clearly good, useful, and productive can be misused and distorted and become a negative. Such is the case in the intellectual property rights arena. For example, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office — combined with judicial activism — has created an untenable situation where design patents have morphed into a situation that does more to prevent innovation and stop competition than to protect or encourage real innovation.
Design patents have historically covered the design of an entire patented product. But now, unelected bureaucrats and some unelected judges have changed the concept of a design patent to mean that individualized parts of the larger patented product are also covered. One area where this causes consumers real problems and imposes real costs is with automobiles.
The morphing of the actual meaning of a design patent has allowed automobile design patents to mean that even parts like headlights, taillights, fenders and bumpers are covered by the patent. This means that consumers cannot buy alternative or competing parts. That means repairs cost more and consumers have fewer choices.
This problem was highlighted by the Consumer Federation of America’s Jack Gillis who testified before Congress:
“[C]ar companies are now using design patents, not for the important and legitimate protection of the overall design of their vehicles, but to prevent competition when it comes to getting the parts we need to repair our vehicles.”
Our patent system has traditionally served America well. In fact, it has served the entire world well. It fueled tremendous innovation and creativity and it provided tremendous competition which provided Americans with jobs, economic security, helpful products and medicines.
But the world has also benefited. The medical cures that were innovated in America under our system of intellectual property rights now cure diseases all over the globe.
But when unelected bureaucrats distort the law and the system and unelected judges stop adjudicating the law, but instead undertake to rewrite it, America’s system of constitutional government is subverted. Congress has the sole power to create our patent laws.
The Patent and Trademark Office has the power to implement those laws, but not to rewrite them. And judges have the power to apply the law and facts to disputes and to adjudicate them. But judges do not have the power to rewrite laws and essentially act as a super-Congress.
When the Patent and Trademark Office and judges act outside their authority, it is the American consumer who suffers. But those who have the resources to lobby bureaucrats and to fund endless litigation stand to benefit when our laws are bent and morphed to benefit them.
If your car needs a repair or if the hard drive on your computer needs to be replaced, the question is: Should the government be working to make it so that you cannot get the part you need except from one source? Being forced into one option means that option will be more costly and over time the quality will decline.
Competition forces all competitors to offer as much as they reasonably can for the best possible price. A lack of competition means that a single-source provider can provide whatever quality it likes and charge whatever it can get away with.
Unless Congress does something to stop the abuse of design patents and prevent partial-product or fragmented design patents from essentially eliminating aftermarket parts, consumers will face a shrinking set of options and costs will rise and even insurance premiums will rise. Congress needs to exercise its constitutional power to fix our patent laws.
Fairfax, VA – Frontiers of Freedom released the following statement from President, George Landrith, about a Report published by U.S. Senator Rand Paul on the harmful impact inflation is having on American families and small businesses. The full report — “The Hidden Tax: Inflation’s Effect on American Families and Small Businesses” — can be found HERE.
Frontiers of Freedom President, George Landrith, said:
U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has done Americans everywhere a real service by bringing into focus how the hidden tax of inflation hits hardworking middle income and lower income Americans the hardest and how this hidden tax burdens and weakens small businesses from coast to coast. If you’re a billionaire, you can afford to absorb this hidden tax, but if you’re a lower income American or even a middle income American, this hidden tax increase hits you hard and steals your hard-earned dollars — making it harder to feed and clothe your children, and provide for their future. And if you’re running a small business, this hidden tax makes it harder to grow the business, hire new people, and pay the ones you’ve already got. Simply stated, this hidden tax can be the difference between making it, and not making it.
Many Americans know what its like to have too much month, at the end of the money. But the hidden tax of inflation means that more and more Americans will have more and more of the month still to go when the money runs out.
Senator Paul correctly points out that one of the primary causes of this hidden tax is the almost $5 Trillion that was spent on COVID stimulus. Those who promoted this out of control spending argued it would benefit American families and small businesses. But as usual, it was America’s families and small businesses that are suffering as a result of this so-called COVID-stimulus. The primary beneficiary was government and allies of big government who grew at unprecedented rates. But American’s incomes and small businesses took unprecedented hits. Americans have seen the power of their paychecks shrink and small businesses have been forced to close because they cannot bear the hidden tax burden that inflation has imposed upon them.
The bad news is that so many in Congress see nothing wrong with out of control spending that caused this economic catastrophe. And the truth is it isn’t likely to get better nearly soon enough. For example, the Producer Price Index (PPI) reveals that prices for businesses have jumped by nearly 10 percent during 2021. That is the largest one year increase in prices in the history of the Labor Department tracking such information. And if businesses are seeing those kind of price increases, they will continue to fail and we will continue to see prices rise. This will severely limit the recovery and opportunity for Americans who desperately need a break from the bad news the last two years has brought. This is a 100% self imposed problem. We did this to ourselves. Or more precisely, the big-government apologists in government did this to us.
Frontiers of Freedom and the millions of Americans who support our work and our mission statement in all fifty states express our sincere thanks to Senator Paul for speaking out about inflation. More importantly, he has correctly identified why inflation is hitting us so hard. Getting government spending under control is necessary for at least two important reasons — first, we cannot saddle future generations with mountains of debt. But secondly, we don’t need to look to future generations to see how harmful out of control spending can be — here and now, we cannot continue to impose the hidden and heavy taxes of inflation on so many struggling Americans.
In what amounts to state-orchestrated discrimination, California is using bizarre grounds to mandate racial and gender diversity on corporate boards.
By • National Review
The trial commenced this week in Crest v. Padilla, a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch to enjoin California from requiring that publicly held corporations headquartered in California include at least one director who “self-identifies” as a woman. Pursuant to California’s SB 826, by the end of 2021, up to three self-identified women will be required, depending on the size of the board.
In September 2020, two years after enacting SB 826, California went even further, when Governor Newsom signed AB 979 into law. That law requires that California-headquartered public companies also include at least one director from an “underrepresented community,” and by the end of 2022, up to three such directors, depending on the size of the board. The statute defines a “director from an underrepresented community” to be an individual who “self‑identifies as Black, African American, Hispanic, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American, Native Hawaiian, or Alaska Native, or who self‑identifies as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender.” Arabs, Armenians, Persians, and Turks, who often are viewed as non-European whites, are excluded from the list of favored minority groups.
A small board could appoint a Rachel Dolezal who self-identifies as an African-American woman to satisfy both requirements. Or, if the board can find biological white males who identify as Alaskan Natives or use the pronoun “she,” they (meaning all of them, not “they” in the royal or gender fluid sense) could satisfy both statutes with a board consisting only of confused white males.
California’s corporations are rejecting this social engineering. In March 2021, the California secretary of state reported that of 647 companies to which SB 826 applies, only 311 reported compliance. At least 50 companies avoided compliance with both statutes by leaving the state or going private.*
Judicial Watch has also sued to enjoin AB 979. That action is in its discovery phase. Both Judicial Watch actions were filed in state court and assert that California laws pertaining to race, ethnicity, sexual preference, and transgender status are presumptively invalid, and taxpayer-funded resources may not be used to implement such laws absent a compelling government interest. Judicial Watch alleges that the California legislature knew these bills to be unlawful when enacted and that the laws cannot pass strict scrutiny.
Though a Judicial Watch victory on SB 826 likely would presage a victory in its similar action against AB 979, three federal lawsuits have potentially greater national implications. Merland v. Weber and Alliance for Fair Board Recruitment (AFBR) v. Weber allege that both statutes violate the 14th Amendment and federal civil-rights laws. The National Center for Public Policy Research last week filed a complaint with the novel premise that the California statutes violate shareholder rights to vote for board nominees based on merit, free of government-imposed race, sex, and sexual orientation quotas.
When it passed SB 826, California’s legislature did not claim that California companies discriminate against female candidates for director. Instead, the legislature cited reports that gender diversity may improve a corporation’s financial performance. For AB 979, the legislature cited reports suggesting that racial diversity among executives might enhance earnings. The legislature did not cite any evidence that racial diversity on corporate boards improves performance, and academic studies have failed to establish that link.All Our Opinion in Your Inbox
The AFBR lawsuit alleges that the reports supporting AB 826 were not peer reviewed, or the result of sound statistical analysis. By contrast, numerous peer-reviewed studies analyzed by Jonathan Klick of the American Enterprise Institute have found no effect, or even a negative effect, from increased board diversity. And a study published last week found “a robust and significantly negative stock market reaction” to California’s gender quota mandate.
Beyond the lack of factual evidence, it is remarkable that progressives now identify profit as a “compelling interest” that overrides the heavy burden of using race, ethnicity or gender as the basis for state-orchestrated discrimination. And, despite the legislature’s rationale for the benefits of diversity, both statutes permit a board to exclude all whites and men. The hypocrisy is stunning.
California is not alone. By 2020, a dozen states had enacted or were poised to enact requirements to enhance diversity on boards, though most of the proposals stop at disclosure. Superficially, that is the approach taken by Nasdaq, which recently received SEC approval to require companies trading on Nasdaq to publicly disclose board diversity statistics and explain any failure to have at least two “diverse” directors, including one who self-identifies as female and one who self-identifies as either an “underrepresented minority” or LGTBQ+.
It has been axiomatic that the purpose of a board is to maximize shareholder value. Doing so requires experience and acumen. The Sarbanes–Oxley Act and the Dodd–Frank Act place onerous obligations on directors, particularly independent directors and members of the audit committee. The SEC has long required public companies to disclose biographical information about each director. In 2009, the SEC also required companies to explain “the specific experience, qualifications, attributes or skills that led to the conclusion that the person should serve as a director.”
Until fairly recently, a hugely disproportionate share of individuals with the necessary experience and skills to serve as directors were white men. But, by 2018, 25 percent of Fortune 100 board seats were held by women and 19.5 percent by minorities. Without government mandates, the boards of public companies have continued to become more diverse. The percentage of Fortune 500 boards with greater than 40 percent diversity has more than doubled in the last ten years.
Not only is this progress insufficient for progressives, but they reject the premise that corporations should maximize shareholder value, or that directors should be selected based on talent. Rather, their priority is “equity,” meaning that jobs are awarded to achieve parity with each group’s percentage in the population, regardless of qualifications.
It is difficult to see how the California laws comply with the Constitution, or federal law.
Racial balancing can never satisfy the compelling-interest requirement for racial and gender preferences. Chief Justice John Roberts succinctly reiterated this in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (2007):
Accepting racial balancing as a compelling state interest would justify the imposition of racial proportionality throughout American society, contrary to our repeated recognition that at the heart of the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection lies the simple command that the Government must treat citizens as individuals, not as simply components of a racial, religious, sexual or national class.
The U.S. Supreme Court also has held that “racial classifications are antithetical to the Fourteenth Amendment, whose ‘central purpose’ was ‘to eliminate racial discrimination emanating from official sources in the States’” (Shaw v. Hunt [1996], quoting McLaughlin v. Florida [1964]). More than once the Court observed that “distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people” (e.g., Rice v. Cayetano [2000] and Hirabayashi v. United States [1943]).
Though the criteria for gender is somewhat more flexible, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg explained in United States v. Virginia (1996), the “inherent differences between men and women” cannot justify the “denigration of the members of either sex,” support the imposition of “artificial constraints on an individual’s opportunity,” or permit government to “rely on overbroad generalizations about the different talents, capacities, or preferences of males and females.” Last year, in Bostock v. Clayton County, the Supreme Court extended the prohibition against sex discrimination in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and transgender status.
The Supreme Court has applied prohibitions on state action to a private company when the state requires the unlawful act. In California, the improper acts are specifically mandated by the state, at risk of escalating fines.
The destructive fixation on race and gender has had profoundly negative effects on education, the military, government, science, and other sectors. With the quality of corporate boards at America’s largest corporations now under siege, the outcome will not be any better.
By • Newsmax
To many Americans, the widespread deployment of 5G technology means faster download speeds on their mobile device.
While that is absolutely one of the real benefits of 5G technology, it is a great deal more than that. In fact, the U.S. maintaining its high tech advantage in the 5G arena has national security implications.It also has widespread economic importance. It is also critically important that 5G technology be American, and not Chinese technology — not for reasons of national pride, but because national security matters.
For this reason, we need U.S. policymakers to remove unnecessary impediments to American innovation and deployment in the 5G arena. The truth is that China is hoping that our regulatory regimes will slow and impede American innovation and the speed of implementation of this new technology so that we leave the window open for China to dominate the world in 5G technology.One of the current impediments to 5G progress is the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which despite having no actual evidence for vaguely stated concerns, nonetheless alleges that maybe 5G technology will interfere with altimeters in older helicopters and older small private planes. Without providing any specifics or data, the FAA is throwing up roadblocks.
I am confident that we all agree that if expanding 5G technology were going to mean planes falling out of the skies, we would all want to put the breaks on. But the FAA hasn’t provided any real transparency to its vague concerns or any significant specifics and there is zero evidence that 5G technology interferes with altimeters.But it’s not just that the FAA hasn’t provided any factual support. The truth is this issue has been heavily studied by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) which regulates the usage of wireless spectrum to be sure it doesn’t create conflicts. Roughly 40 other countries have also studied this issue and they all agree that there is no harmful interference with 5G and altimeters.Why didn’t the FAA raise any concerns over American planes already flying to these countries?
On a practical level, around the globe there are a number of 5G cell towers. Some of them are near airfields and there has been no observed interference with altimeters.
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency has concluded: “[E]ven though 5G has already been deployed in several States around the world, we are not aware of any reported occurrence that relates to possible interference originating from 5G base stations.”While China may be able to give American consumers a better internet connection (as American technology would also clearly do), the communist country will not promote economic growth around the globe and certainly not in America. Moreover, because 5G technology will be more than just faster connection speeds, but will also be the “internet of things” and allow for our devices to communicate with each other (to the extent we authorize that), 5G technology will open up thousands of new businesses just as smartphones did.
The sharing economy — exemplified by Uber and Lyft and Airbnb — was made possible by smartphone technology.
In the same way, but probably multiplied by a factor of one thousand, 5G technology will become the foundation of thousands of amazing ideas that will make the lives of consumers more convenient. It will create millions of new jobs and greater opportunity for more and more people.
But if we hamstring our own industries and entrepreneurs, the totalitarian regime in China will gladly fill the void. And if China deploys 5G technology, privacy and security will take a huge hit.The Chinese regime has been gathering online data on Americans for decades. Dominating and defining the technology that will be built into your phone and later into household appliances will give the totalitarian regime unprecedented access to all of our private information — perhaps even how much milk we have in the refrigerator.
But the other problem would be a very serious national security issue. Can you imagine having 5G chips in military hardware that could give the totalitarian regime access to intelligence and even the ability to turn off the hardware?
Imagine our missile defense being turned off because we ceded 5G technology to China.
Experts and policymakers from all sides of the political spectrum agree that 5G technology does not pose risks to altimeters. So if the FAA has some secret information that it has yet to reveal, it should provide transparency and reveal precisely what its concerns are as well as the scientific and data basis for such concerns.
Otherwise, the FAA needs to work in good faith and allow America to continue to be the world’s high tech leader and innovator. Our national economic wellbeing and our national security hang in the balance.
