Cagle World

Serious policymakers who want to bring business as usual in Washington to an end would do well to explore the connections between trial lawyers, so-called science and safety groups, and the progressive activists who consort with them to promote the regulation of business.

These groups may have more influence over U.S. regulatory policy than the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Business, and the AFL-CIO. Yet most people don’t realize they’re there.

Their powerful and cross-promote each other’s interests while pretending to be independent. That way the media lambs who go for such stories can portray them as acting purely in the public’s interest, not their own.

When these white hats beat the so-called evil business interests, lives are saved, animals are spared, and condemned communities come back to life. Think “Working Girl” meets “Erin Brockovich.” Easy-to-understand narratives overwhelm real science, while sob stories lead readers and viewers to the desired conclusions.

One example is the fight to stop the production of chemicals used to make heat, oil, stain, grease, and water-resistant coatings and other products. They’re everywhere, from non-stick pots and pans to the insulation around electric wire.

These wonder chemicals have made our lives easier and safer for 75 years. But the regulatory advocates, who’ve labeled them “forever chemicals” because of the length of time it takes for them to break down, say they’re harmful to people and animals. Their targets are the bank accounts of some of the most famous names in American business who they say act irresponsibly and accuse of poisoning entire communities.

They’ve filed lots of lawsuits. They expect big payouts when the companies settle, since that is the cheaper outcome. Yet even the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which is angling to put these chemicals on the Superfund list says in play English on its website they don’t fully understand yet how harmful PFAs are to people and the environment.

That’s hardly conclusive. Yet it hasn’t stopped interest groups from pressuring the EPA to come down hard on the manufacturers of PFAs. The regulatory assault they want, and which the White House or Congress could stop on the basis that the costs incurred by an industry shutdown would far outweigh the proven benefits, continues.

These lawsuits, as they do for other industrial manufacturers, threaten the corporate bottom line. As a defendant, it’s usually cheaper to settle than fight these kinds of suits. Some companies are already moving to protect themselves. Bloomberg reported in December that Minnesota-based 3M Corporation would soon stop PFA production because of “accelerating regulatory trends” and increasing customer concerns over their use.

Company executives are meant to feel the heat from what the business news service called “regulatory pressure and lawsuits that threaten billions of dollars in damages.” It weakens their opposition and opens their checkbooks.

The health and safety of the public are important. So are their jobs and the economic health of the communities they live in. Regulations have to make sense, and that has to be a priority for Washington policymakers. Compelling stories don’t always lead to correct public policy.

Congress needs to take another look at the total federal regulatory burden, and at the interest groups interested in making it grow. Laws like the one that created the Superfund need to be revisited and made smarter, more accountable to real science, and able to function in support of rather than in opposition to community and business interests.

In many important ways, they’re the same thing. Sound, sensible regulation emerging from the informed interests of all stakeholders rather than from screaming headlines is the way toward prosperity, security, and a cleaner, safer world.

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Copyright 2023 Peter Roff distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Peter Roff is a media fellow at the Trans-Atlantic Leadership Network, a former columnist for U.S. News and World Report, and senior political writer for United Press International. Contact Roff at [email protected], and follow him on Twitter @TheRoffDraft.

It may seem a cruel thing to ask whether the government gives too much money away in the name of helping the poor, especially at this time of year, when reminders to help the less fortunate are omnipresent. It is nonetheless necessary to pose the question.

Most of us agree there is dignity in work. We see self-reliance and the ability to stand on one’s own feet as being worthwhile. And we recognize there is and ought to be a profound difference between charity and subsidy.

Unfortunately, poll-obsessed policymakers and their advisers, their vision distorted by stories about the misfortune experienced by those living life in the lowest economic quintile, may have lost sight of these things.

As well-intentioned as they might be, the elite class advocates who want to spend more and more tax dollars on behalf of the needy are seeking outcomes that do more harm than good to everyone.

This may seem an outrageous proposition, but after reading the recently released Committee to Unleash Prosperity’s “Paying People Not to Work,” it’s hard to conclude otherwise. The trio of economists who conducted the study – Casey Mulligan, Erwin Antoni, and Stephen Moore – found regulations as currently written make families earning half a million dollars a year eligible for ObamaCare subsidies. They also found that in nearly half the states, unemployment benefits and ObamaCare subsidies together for a family of four where no one worked can bring in the annualized equivalent of the national median household income.

In three states, Massachusetts, Washington, and New Jersey, unemployment and health insurance benefits can equal the earnings of a job paying $100,000 annually. To most people, that probably seems excessive. It should also turn what we think now about public assistance programs on its head. The social safety net should be a temporary source of support in times of personal or national economic crisis, not a source of semi-permanent succor and sustaining income.

The problems associated with paying people not to work reached their extremes during the pandemic. Congress allocated trillions in new spending to support those forced out of work by lockdowns that closed the marketplace. Most of that aid has run its course, yet, the study suggests, it is still possible in roughly half the states for an unemployed couple receiving unemployment and health insurance subsidies to earn more than a firefighter, a construction worker, a retail clerk, or a machinist working a 40-hour week. That’s not fair.

“We all believe in a reliable safety net for when Americans lose a job or can’t work,” study co-author Moore wrote, “but it isn’t fair to the hard-working Americans who put 40 hours a week on the job, that neighbors who aren’t working a single hour can receive a higher income from not working and collecting benefits.”

The authors further argue the payment of these significant benefits is a major reason the labor force participation rate remains close to its all-time low and there are at least three million fewer Americans working today than before COVID. The ability to obtain generous financial assistance without the type of work requirements that were part of the landmark 1996 welfare reform act makes it harder for employers to find people willing to take jobs.

There are nearly 10 million jobs today in America that go unfilled, the federal government says. The excessive generosity of unemployment benefits in many states has created perverse incentives for workers to remain at home, rather than immediately going back to work and helping take down some of the ubiquitous “help wanted” signs that are restraining economic recovery.

What then are we to do? Reforms are needed, for the economic and spiritual good of the country. Unemployment insurance and Obamacare health insurance subsidies need to be re-examined carefully. The links between work and reward must be re-established by ensuring that combined government benefits do not exceed wages. Other changes are also probably necessary, as a matter of fairness to those who are working.

It is not right to pay people who will not work as much or more than those who will.

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Copyright 2022 Peter Roff distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Peter Roff is a media fellow at the Trans-Atlantic Leadership Network, a former columnist for U.S. News and World Report, and senior political writer for United Press International. Contact Roff at [email protected], and follow him on Twitter @TheRoffDraft.

This week, people from all walks of life – from the many different faiths, races, and ethnicities who inhabit this wonderful place we call America – will gather together and give thanks, grateful for the blessings they’ve received over the last twelve months.

In previous years, they might have given thanks for health, for family, for children, for grandchildren, for employment, and for that special hope or dream that was unexpectedly realized. This year, in 2022, they’ll no doubt also be giving thanks the turkey dinner with all the trimmings they’re about to enjoy didn’t break the bank.

Like everything else, Tom Turkey’s risen in price, up by a record high 20% over last year, according to the folks that feed the nation and the world over at the American Farm Bureau. The average meal for ten, the Farm Bureau says, will cost about $64, which may not seem like a lot to some people but, as just under $6.50 a person, is considerably more than people are used to paying.

That pumpkin pie on the table? Inflation’s eating into it faster than Uncle Ed will when he raids the refrigerator after everyone else has gone to sleep. Never before in the group’s 37-year history of tracking the price of what is usually found on the Thanksgiving table have prices risen so quickly in so short a time.

Who’s to blame? The Farm Bureau says it’s the continuing increase in inflation month over month of between 7 and 9% and the 12% hike on the most recent Consumer Price Index numbers regarding food consumed at home.

“Farmers are working hard to meet growing demands for food — both here in the U.S. and globally — while facing rising prices for fuel, fertilizer, and other inputs,” said Farm Bureau Chief Economist Roger Cryan said – and we should all be thankful they are. They’re not responsible for the rise in prices.

Neither are the truckers who bring the turkeys and boxes of stuffing and loaves of bread and sweet potatoes and the bags of those tiny marshmallows, without which no Thanksgiving table is complete. Or the hardworking people who stock the shelves and ring up your purchases in the checkout line while wishing you a “Happy Holiday!”

The hike in prices also isn’t the fault of the people who own and manage the stores that sell us the dinner fixings or run the distribution centers and the freight companies that move products from one place to another.

No, the ones responsible for making your Thanksgiving dinner the most expensive ever are the turkeys in Washington who keep spending your money like it was their own. Inflation is caused by too much money chasing too few goods and services. Higher demands fuel higher prices.

How did all that money get into circulation? The Fed printed it so Congress could spend it on the American Rescue Plan and other so-called relief programs that paid people not to work and producers not to produce from what was left over after the scammers and rip-off artists got who knows how many tens or hundreds of millions of your hard-earned tax dollars.

Then there’s the effort to eliminate oil and natural gas from the receipt for American energy that’s raised the cost of everything from the industrial processes required to produce the food items we expect to enjoy to the price of the diesel fuel consumed to bring it to your local grocers – if it’s available.

The Washington crowd doesn’t want you to put all the pieces together. Policymakers would prefer you focus on the ceremonial presidential pardon of the Christmas turkeys so they can continue to blame greedy businessmen for the fact you had to pinch pennies on your holiday meal while they dined like the Middle Eastern potentates of old.

Don’t be fooled. The cost of the food on your table this year and every year at the end of November has everything to do with how you voted earlier in the month. It may seem crass to some to point this out at a time when we’re supposed to feel thankful that will live in a country where expressions like these are allowed. But it’s important to think about the role policy made in Washington has on the aspects of everyday life. Some people call it “pocketbook economics.” Others call it just plain old common sense. In either case, it’s important to keep at least in the back of your mind how the policies made by the politicians ostensibly in your best interests work against you.

Hopefully, it will different next year, when you gather around the same table to give thanks for your blessings once again – that is if higher rents and rising interest rates haven’t forced you to move to a new place by then.

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Copyright 2022 Peter Roff distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Peter Roff is a media fellow at the Trans-Atlantic Leadership Network, a former columnist for U.S. News and World Report, and senior political writer for United Press International. Contact Roff at [email protected], and follow him on Twitter @TheRoffDraft.

We’re all going to have to adapt to the way the Internet has changed global commerce and banking eventually. We can hold out a while longer by continuing to insist on paper billing and writing checks and using cash instead of debit cards or smartphones to make transactions.

Sooner or later though, the companies we do business with are going to force us into the 21st century.

As this is happening in other parts of the industrialized world, the United States is stuck in neutral. Money is still a store of value and a medium of exchange but while Americans still use $10 and $20, the rest of the world (especially China) is on the fast track to zeroes and ones.

Cryptocurrency – “crypto” for short – is the future of global finance.

To the extent most people know anything about it, they see crypto as something that exists only in cyberspace. It’s for geeks to worry about, not normal people. That’s wrong. It’s a private mechanism for exchange that is fungible and can be used to purchase anything from legal goods to items considered extremely illicit, so long as the buyer and seller can come to terms.

Sometimes that means trading crypto, which goes by many names besides Bitcoin, for real money. Yet for centuries people have used things besides paper and coins like rare gems, precious metals, and other commodities when engaged in transactions. Crypto falls into that category, too.

The reason America is so far behind the rest of the economically developed world is the absence of clear guidelines from the government. The uncertainty that’s created has left the U.S. industry at the mercy of regulators who can’t make up their minds about what crypto is and what rules should apply.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, led by Chairman Gary Gensler, is taking a punitive approach. It wants to force companies in the cryptocurrency business to submit to an as-yet undisclosed, improvised set of rules, ostensibly for the protection of investors. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which also wants jurisdiction over crypto, believes a light regulatory touch is required so the American crypto baby survives through its infancy.

The SEC’s approach is the wrong one, the consequences of which are illustrated by a case now being heard in the courts brought by the SEC against Ripple, a software company that uses the digital token XRP to expedite international money transfers.

The agency alleges that Ripple has been selling unregistered securities for distribution. It argues that XRP is a security based on the Howey Test, an 80-year-old legal doctrine that uses a four-pronged test to determine what constitutes an investment contract.

To drive its point home, the SEC made the charges retroactive to transactions going back seven years. That’s a signal to the rest of the industry to get in line or face the consequences. In its suit, the agency is essentially arguing it is not accountable for its failure to issue reliable guidance over nearly a decade. That’s not supposed to matter. Even worse, the lawsuit caused the value of XRP to crash for hundreds of thousands of people who were using it – many of whom never heard of Ripple.

Abrupt changes in regulation and the law can, as they have in this case, wreak havoc on the markets. Businesses are supposed to be able to look to the law to know what to do and depend on it to function consistently. Ripple and other holders of XRP are now being punished economically because the SEC changed its position on how the token should be treated.

If that kind of action is going to be taken, it should be done through legislation. The United States Supreme Court has been clear on that of late. Regulatory agencies don’t get to expand their work into new areas just because the person in charge, Chairman Gensler, thinks it would be a good, even logical move.

He doesn’t get to decide. The courts shouldn’t, either. It’s up to Congress to tell the SEC what to do here.

The outcome of this case could have far-reaching consequences for the entire fin-tech industry. If Gensler and the other Democrats on the SEC can reach so far beyond the bounds of their directive when it comes to crypto, what is stopping them from going after any industry they want?

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Copyright 2022 Peter Roff distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Peter Roff is a media fellow at the Trans-Atlantic Leadership Network, a former columnist for U.S. News and World Report, and senior political writer for United Press International. Contact Roff at [email protected], and follow him on Twitter @TheRoffDraft.

At the time it was handed down, the nation’s editorial pages generally condemned the United States Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. Taking the responsibility for setting abortion policy out of the hands of lawyers, special interest groups, and judges and returning it to voters and state legislators was deemed undemocratic.

Ironically, what was undemocratic was what has been in place since Roe v. Wade, with the judicial branch allowed to substitute its judgment on an essentially political matter better left to legislators. Overturning Roe allows for a meaningful debate once again among the people regarding what the appropriate limits on abortion – if any – should be.

The polling data collected since Roe show consistently that only about a fifth of the American people supports one or the two extreme positions. Slightly more people favor a total ban on abortion (save for instances where the life of the mother is endangered) than back abortion with no restrictions whatsoever up through the end of a pregnancy.

The views held by most of us, however, fall somewhere in between. Before Dobbs, activists on both sides of the debate were boxed in by high court pronouncements in the Roe, Webster, and Casey decisions. Most anything outside that was rendered functionally meaningless.

The extremism is once again evident. Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams’ recent linkage of abortion to fighting inflation, for example, during an interview on MSNBC while campaigning for governor shows this starkly.

“Right now, we are walking away so often from the real issues that people care about. Abortion is an economic issue. It’s been reduced to this idea of a culture war. But for women,” she said, “This is very much a question of whether they’re going to end up in poverty in the next five years because women who are forced to carry unwanted pregnancies end up within poverty.”

Her opinion is popular among those who argue abortion empowers women, leading to their economic and social success. Those same people should step outside the box and acquaint themselves with Support After Abortion’s new study examining the effect of abortion on women who had them.

The study shows that mental health resources are far more helpful to women after abortion than political rhetoric, something that should serve as a guide for both sides of the debate going forward.

Using open-ended questions and a Census-driven sample demographic, the study’s authors found a “negative self-image” resulted for 34% of women who underwent an abortion using pharmaceutical methods. Nearly two-thirds either sought help or said they could have used someone to talk to following the procedure even though, as most of them admitted, things went largely as planned.

Some find it necessary to shout their approval for abortion, including their own, perhaps in pursuit of justification and to ease their psychological pain. Most women, however, want to remain anonymous when it comes to their emotional struggles, even among the 75% of them who identified as pro-choice.

Up to now, hardcore supporters of abortion rights have made it difficult for those who experience regret, shame, or other negative psychological and emotional outcomes to make their feelings known. They fear it would diminish the public’s enthusiasm for the practice because “women’s empowerment” is now the primary justification for aborting unborn children.

What Dobbs has done is free policymakers to consider the full impact of abortions – not just on the unborn child, but on the parents. Abortion advocates are not as vocal on the need to fund mental health assistance useful to women and men who need healing from traumas they experience before, during, and after abortion as they are about the procedure itself.

The Dobbs decision gives us the chance to revisit what abortion means and how to address it. We should take advantage of this opportunity to prove that American democracy gets it right far more often than judicial diktats. The phrase “people are policy” is true for government leaders and everyday people.

Babies deserve far more protection than they get. Abortion advocates need to stop dismissing the real harm done to mothers who have experienced abortion.

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Copyright 2022 Peter Roff distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Peter Roff is a media fellow at the Trans-Atlantic Leadership Network, a former columnist for U.S. News and World Report, and senior political writer for United Press International. Contact Roff at [email protected], and follow him on Twitter @TheRoffDraft.

America used to have the best healthcare system in the world. It may still be, but it’s getting harder to deal with.

Politicians promising to bring costs down typically hit on “solutions” that made things worse. One innovation they encouraged was the use of middlemen called pharmacy benefit managers – PBMs – which sounded like a good idea at the time, but predictably created a mess.

The three largest PBMs control now more than 80 percent of the retail drug market. They are owned by three of the nation’s biggest insurers who use them to pad the corporate bottom line by taking advantage of the 15-year-long decline in the price of generics, instead of passing the savings on to consumers.

Military families, because of their dependence on the federal government, are particularly vulnerable to these kinds of marketplace manipulations. Many depend on TRICARE, a Defense Department program that pays for civilian health benefits for U.S. military personnel, retirees, and their dependents. Express Scripts, the CIGNA-owned PBM, is its sole provider.

When TRICARE-participating military families and retirees need prescriptions filled, they must use Express Scripts, which announced in September it was kicking more than 14,000 independent community pharmacists out of its network. By the end of October, these thousands of pharmacies will join Walmart and Sam’s Club, who have also been dropped from the list of approved providers. If that wasn’t bad enough, Kroger – America’s largest grocery chain – was recently forced to terminate its contract with TRICARE to protect its customers from rising prescription costs.

“There is no negotiating, these are take-it-or-leave-it contracts provided from Express Scripts Inc. to a pharmacy,” the National Community Pharmacists Association’s Karry La Violette said in a recent interview. “If you want to be in the network you take this horrible reimbursement rate or you don’t.”

It’s not pretty and it doesn’t do much to raise the quality of care or keep costs down. You can’t stay in business if your biggest customers, by threatening to go somewhere else if you don’t comply, extract concessions requiring you to sell an item for less than it costs per unit to make or sell.

A letter sent to the Pentagon by nearly 100 members of the U.S. House of Representatives addressed these planned reductions that, because they’re scheduled for October, “may force beneficiaries to change pharmacies at a time when many receive annual vaccinations.”

Cigna and Express Scripts are putting their interests ahead of the interests of the people PBMs were created to serve by squeezing out every penny they can out of military families, pharmacies, and the federal government. TRICARE beneficiaries are stuck, watching as their benefits are mismanaged and their options decrease.

Congress and federal regulatory bodies are now involved. That’s no guarantee things will get better, but the pressure is on. The Federal Trade Commission recently launched an investigation into PBMs, and a bipartisan coalition of senators want the agency to complete its inquiry quickly and forward its findings to them.

Using intermediaries positioned between manufacturers and retailers to negotiate prices should have worked to keep costs down. It would have, if the PBMs had functioned as honest brokers. Instead, big insurers like Cigna and its Express Scripts PBM benefit at the expense of consumers forced to pay inflated prices while seeing their choices reduced.

The whole business makes a mockery of the marketplace. If the companies do not clean up their act on their own, Congress and regulators like the FTC’s Lina Kahn will force them to. The politicians shouldn’t get the chance to make it harder and more complicated for people to get the healthcare they need and want.

These companies know what they are doing. They need to stop, and to stop undermining free-market principles in the process.

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Copyright 2022 Peter Roff distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Peter Roff is a media fellow at the Trans-Atlantic Leadership Network, a former columnist for U.S. News and World Report, and senior political writer for United Press International. Contact Roff at [email protected], and follow him on Twitter @TheRoffDraft.

It’s Columbus Day again. Rather than denounce it as a celebration of western cultural appropriation and white male privilege, let’s make it an occasion to celebrate our diversity.

If you think about it, Columbus and his crew could be considered the first immigrants. As the first to make land in the western hemisphere (admittedly an arguable point) their adventure led to the founding of the United States, an occasion still worthy of attention no matter what the people behind the considerably problematic 1619 Project might say.

When you look at things on balance, America has done more to raise global living standards and promote the ideas of liberty and equality around the world than any other nation. Not without error, of course – and those errors should never be allowed to slip into the memory hole – but, as a nation and as a people, our character is shaped more by the good we have done than the evil we have allowed.

Some are reluctant to acknowledge this. In his 2021 Columbus Day proclamation, President Joe Biden chose to draw attention to what he called “the painful history of wrongs and atrocities that many European explorers inflicted on Tribal Nations and Indigenous communities” instead of celebrating the explorer’s accomplishments.

This divides rather than unites us. Those descended from people born here, from people brought here (most often against their will), and from people who came here looking for a better life than they could experience where they came from all have one thing in common: we are all Americans now. We should work together to improve our common lot rather than accelerate the decline of our American civilization. The demand for social and economic reparations for past injustices is intended to accomplish the latter. It’s a clever, and unfortunately effective, strategy as George Orwell observed in “1984”: “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”

Those seeking to control the future, as Orwell put it, have singled out Columbus Day for special consideration, presenting it as an excuse to trigger a conversation about the need for social justice for the peaceful indigenous peoples massacred by white, empire-building Europeans. Shame on those who pretend that’s all America is.

Most people who came here from other lands did so because they wanted to. They saw the promise of America as a place where hope reigned, and opportunities abounded. Some had interests that were commercial while others came seeking religious liberty. Some were starting over, while others simply wanted a better life than they had. That continues to be the case today.

The dark blot stain on our national heritage caused by the practice of bringing some here without their consent, treated as property rather than people, remains – alongside a bright red stain created by the blood spilled by so many, native-born and immigrant, in the name of ending that practice here and around the world.

We are a nation of immigrants. Those born elsewhere have for centuries helped create the freest, most prosperous, generous country mankind has ever known. Seeking their share of the American Dream, immigrants have contributed mightily to our common success. The Kaufmann Foundation estimates that in the first decades of the current century, every month almost 350 out of every 100,000 immigrants created a new business. That’s an impressive record.

America should welcome immigrants with open arms, applauding their courage. Who among us would leave behind everything we knew for life in another country? Only the bravest among us. Honor these 21st-century adventurers and those who came before them on Columbus Day.

The country we are today was not stolen from others. It is the result of centuries of hard work, initiative, and innovation undertaken by people who often could not find the opportunity to do well where they came from. So, they came here.

Can there be a greater compliment to who we are and what we represent than that?

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Copyright 2022 Peter Roff distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Peter Roff is a media fellow at the Trans-Atlantic Leadership Network, a former columnist for U.S. News and World Report, and senior political writer for United Press International. Contact Roff at [email protected], and follow him on Twitter @TheRoffDraft.

Globalization has its benefits but, after COVID, it might be time to consider just how much of America’s economic activity we want to continue to share with other countries.

Is it too much to ask to have safeguards put in place so that American firms employing American workers reap the benefits of cutting-edge technologies developed in America using American taxpayer dollars?

Is that protectionist? Some free-market purists probably will say it is. For the rest of us, the idea the government spends our money to develop technologies that could change the world for the better and then lets other countries like China commercialize them makes us wonder whether the folks in Washington are working for us or against us.

Examples of this mule-headed thinking are everywhere. Take the effort to make America go green. The research dollars put into it, billions of your tax dollars at last count, have generated interesting results. One of them, the vanadium redox flow battery (or VRFB) developed at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory at a cost of $15 million could be a significant boon to the emerging electric vehicle industry if the technology proves out.

If it does, it will be a big deal. Those who follow such developments closely say the batteries look as though they could last as much as 30 years without their capacity to be charged and recharged degrading in any significant way, making them much more practical for use in the transportation sector.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, as President Joe Biden reminded us recently in another context. Unfortunately for us all, and thanks to the U.S. Department of Energy, the table on which developers will feast on the batteries is being set in Beijing.

That’s not a misprint. Despite licensing agreements that specified the work to move these batteries past the developmental stage would be done in America by an American firm, the Energy Department allowed it to be transferred to a business operating in the People’s Republic of China controlled, in one fashion or another, as most all businesses there are, by the People’s Liberation Army and the Chinese Communist Party.

The amount of money the United States spends each year keeping technology secrets out of the hands of America’s competitors and enemies is classified. It’s probably more than the $15 million spent to develop the batteries, but why spend anything at all to stop the transfer of sensitive technologies to countries like China if we’re just going to give it to them in the end?

Predictably, the people who hold the purse strings aren’t happy. After news of this technology production transfer broke, two high-ranking Republican senators – Joni Ernst of Iowa and John Barraso of Wyoming – have asked Teri Donaldson, the DOE’s inspector general, for answers to questions we all should be asking.

Specifically, Barrasso and Ernest want Donaldson to explain just how it is that – referring to a report by National Public Radio, a news agency partially funded by the U.S. government – the Energy Department could have committed such an “overt dereliction of duty” by allowing the technology to be handed over to the Chinese. They also ask, and this will probably hit close to home not just at DOE but inside the White House, whether what has been reported by NPR is “emblematic of a department that routinely and flippantly permits government-funded technology to be transferred to China.”

This is both a national and economic security issue. China, as it has established for all to see, is not America’s ally. It is, at best, a competitor that would if it could, cheerfully assume the position of global leader on issues from advanced technology development to zoo maintenance. They have no interest in being first among equals – or even second. They want to run the whole shebang and think we are the only thing standing in the way.

For a while, we were. Whether we’ll continue to do so is something that needs to be addressed, now. There is too much riding on the answer to ignore the question.

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Copyright 2022 Peter Roff distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Peter Roff is a media fellow at the Trans-Atlantic Leadership Network, a former columnist for U.S. News and World Report, and senior political writer for United Press International. Contact Roff at [email protected], and follow him on Twitter @TheRoffDraft.

Marching in lockstep, the Democrats pushed a $700 billion spending bill through Congress, claiming it would reduce inflation. We know that to be a lie.

Independent analyses from the Congressional Budget Office, the Congressional Joint Tax Committee, and Penn/Wharton all show the badly misnamed Inflation Reduction Act would do little to nothing to stop the rate of increase in the price of goods and services.

Instead, relying on the oft-quoted strategy of never letting a good crisis go to waste, the Democrats rammed through a pared-down version of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan that, to the disappointment of those who put him in office, had languished on Capitol Hill for more than a year.

Biden and the Democrats plan to spend the month of September traveling the country, trumpeting their achievement – which will be interesting to watch as no Democrat considered even remotely at risk of defeat seems to want to campaign with him. Yet the American people are not fooled. A recent NBC News poll found that 71 percent believe that if it does anything, the legislation will actually make things worse.

Inflation is still on everyone’s mind. A Rasmussen Reports survey released Monday found 85 percent of likely U.S. voters at least “somewhat concerned” about inflation, including 57 percent who are “very concerned.” That’s almost unchanged since May, the pollster reported. Nonetheless, the Democrats are already shifting gears, talking about the IRA’s caps on prescription drug prices and stimulation of America’s switch to green energy instead.

Let’s look at what’s wrong with it. One of the Democrats’ proudest boasts is that by 2030 the new law will bring down carbon emissions by 40 percent from where they were in 2005. What they don’t say is they’re already projected to drop by 30 percent over that period. Spending $370 billion to maybe gain an additional 10 percent reduction sounds like a bad deal because the reduction in global average temperature would be imperceptible.

The new law also contains provisions that will increase costs for working families, according to a release from the minority staff on the House Ways and Means Committee. Among them are a $25 billion crude oil tax and methane taxes on American energy that will disproportionately harm middle- and lower-income households by driving up the price of gasoline and traditional home heating and cooling.

When it’s cold, you can put on a sweater. When it’s beastly hot, is it fair to force working American families to choose between buying groceries and school supplies or turning on the A.C.? And that’s not even the most odious part of legislation Congress once again passed without knowing what was in it.

It makes things worse for working families in other ways. According to the Congressional Joint Tax Committee, more than 92 percent of households with incomes under $200,000 get no benefit or a tax hike. Median-income families earning $50,000-$75,000 are 33 percent more likely to get a tax hike than a tax cut. Families earning $75,000-$100,000 are four times more likely to get a tax hike, and families earning $100,000-$200,000 more than ten times more likely to see their taxes go up

If they lose, who wins? The wealthiest Americans:

– The percentage of $1 million-plus households getting a tax cut (19.4 percent) is twice as high as any other income group.

– The group with the next highest proportion of tax cuts is those earning $500,000-$1 million.

– Over the long term, 72.5 percent of households with income over $1 million get a tax cut.

The claim drugs prices will come down fares no better. The scheme the new law imposed will increase new drugs’ launch price, according to the Congressional Budget Office. If new drugs cost more, you will pay more at the pharmacy and your health insurance premiums will rise, meaning new cures could be pushed out of reach for all but the wealthiest Americans.

From top to bottom, the Inflation Reduction Act is a budget buster, driving the federal government and the nation’s families deeper into debt. Under the guise of bringing prices down, the Democrats used their momentary monopoly on power to reward the special interests who help them get elected and their electoral base.

It’s a progressive political payoff, not the salvation of the American economy.

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Copyright 2022 Peter Roff distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Peter Roff is a media fellow at the Trans-Atlantic Leadership Network, a former columnist for U.S. News and World Report, and senior political writer for United Press International. Contact Roff at [email protected], and follow him on Twitter @TheRoffDraft.

The U.S. economy is teetering on the edge of a recession. Prices are up. Job creation appears to be slowing. People are seeing the value of their wages decline. It’s a perilous time, yet instead of seeking ways to stimulate economic growth, policymakers in Washington are poised to enact new rules that will take us where we don’t want to go.

We’ve already seen it in the energy sector. President Joe Biden’s initiatives to make renewables the main source of the nation’s power have ravaged the energy sector. Instead of incentivizing domestic producers to ramp up and produce more oil and natural gas to bring prices down, he’s gone hat in hand to the Saudis to ask them to pump more oil. He’s also ordered the release of a million barrels a day from America’s critical petroleum reserves – intended for use only in national emergencies like war and natural disasters – to lower the price.

These are bad policy decisions, enforced by the handcuffing of U.S. producers through regulatory means. This is not an anomaly. It’s happening across the economy as the veritable alphabet soup of federal rule-making agencies attempt to force corporate bigwigs to adopt politically progressive ideas, even when it means acting counter to the long-term interests of shareholders and consumers.

Consider the Federal Trade Commission, one of the government’s most powerful regulatory bodies. It’s purportedly an independent agency, a designation that is supposed to leave it free of partisan concerns. Under the leadership of its Biden-appointed chairman, Lina Khan, it’s now trying to use powers it may not have to take on some of America’s biggest companies.

Khan has a radical, anti-free market outlook informed by, according to a recent report produced by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, a lack of practical, real-world business experience. She’s an academic, a former government attorney, and an ideologue who thinks businesses that are big are inherently bad and need Washington’s input regarding what they can and cannot do. Problematically, her agenda to bring central planning back from the Harvard University storage locker in which it’s been kept since the late 1980s runs headlong into a recent ruling by the United States Supreme Court.

In West Virginia vs. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the court reined in the ability of federal agencies to make policies and expand their purview without specific congressional authorization. Hopefully, that will keep Khan coloring within the lines, at least for a while.

Even without that decision, the FTC’s wings have been clipped over the last few years. In April 2021, the high court ruled unanimously the commission could no longer impose large fines on companies as part of its effort to remediate bad behavior. Going forward, two more cases the justices will hear will force them to address the fundamental unfairness of the administrative trial procedures these regulatory agencies commonly employ.

The constitutional guarantee of due process granted to defendants in criminal cases isn’t exactly the standard used by the administrative law judges who oversee hearings on behalf of regulatory agencies. Their approach is more akin to the “Heads we win, tails you lose” challenge fathers have used to teach impressionable children a valuable lesson about how life can be unfair. It can be said, with the agency acting as prosecutor, judge, and jury in such instances, the current process is unfair to those these agencies have the authority to regulate. With the deck stacked like that, it’s no wonder the success rate for cases brought by the FTC over the last 25 years approaches 100 percent, even when the administrative law judge overseeing the case initially found in a defendant’s favor.

Unless the FTC changes course on its own – and it’s doubtful it will as long as Khan is chairman – the efforts to strip away its statutory authority will continue. This is as it should be. Reform is needed, now, that preserves the standard that actual harm to the consumer must be at issue. Needless new regulations punishing companies with a bottom line a bureaucrat thinks is too big will not get the economy back on its feet. Instead, it will bury it.

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Copyright 2022 Peter Roff distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Peter Roff is a media fellow at the Trans-Atlantic Leadership Network, a former columnist for U.S. News and World Report, and senior political writer for United Press International. Contact Roff at [email protected], and follow him on Twitter @TheRoffDraft.