Cagle World

With the $7,500 tax credit for electric car buyers already in the phase out period for the two biggest manufacturers – Tesla and GM – it’s no surprise that many Democrats in Congress are clamoring to lift the cap and keep the subsidies flowing.Unfortunately, several Republicans are joining the effort, creating unfortunate bipartisan support for a piecemeal version of the crackpot Green New Deal they have been rightly mocking and ridiculing.

The so-called Drive America Forward Act would triple the existing cap on subsidies of 200,000 per manufacturer – massively expanding a program that was always supposed to be temporary and was originally premised on the national security rationale that it would lessen dependence on foreign oil – a now comically anachronistic concern when the United States has become a leading oil exporter.

Moreover, while the Green New Deal is a socialist income leveling exercise in the guise of environmental policy, electric vehicle subsidies use environmental delusion as a cover for a wealth transfer from poor and middle income Americans to the rich who buy electric hobby cars as their third or fourth vehicle.Voters agree – with a recent poll showing 67 percent do not think their taxes dollars should help pay for electric vehicle subsidies.

The Pacific Research Institute looked at IRS data and found that more than half of the electric car buyers claiming the credit make more than $200,000 per year and nearly 80 percent make more than $100,000. Just 1 percent make $50,000 or less.

There is also a geographic dimension to the wealth redistribution.The most recent industry data shows that nearly half of all electric vehicles sold in the United States are sold in California, which has its own lavish subsidies at the state level.

A September 2018 NERA Economic Consulting study looked at the economic impact of eliminating the cap and found that the costs outweigh the benefits.The study finds total household income falling as a consequence of lifting the cap by $7 billion in 2020 and $12 billion in 2035, which is about $50 to $70 per household in lost income every year.

That’s a cost of over $50 every year to middle-income Americans to pay for subsidies for rich people in California.

Orrin Hatch, the original sponsor of the bill, explained the logic behind the cap in 2007:

“I want to emphasize that like the tax credits available under current law for hybrid electric vehicles, the tax incentives in the FREEDOM Act are temporary. They are needed in order to help these products over the initial stage of production, when they are quite a bit more expensive than older technology vehicles, to the mass production stage, where economies of scale will drive costs down and the credits will no longer be necessary.”

At the time, big subsidies for electric vehicles were justified based on the theory that they were needed to lessen American dependence on foreign oil.A decade later, America is the largest oil and gas producer in the world and electric vehicles are a mature enough technology that they should be left to succeed or fail on the preference of consumers, not politicians.

Ironically, it is now electric vehicles that are vulnerable to strategic supply disruptions because they require rare earth minerals for their motors and batteries -the production of which is overwhelmingly controlled by China.Such resources also present moral issues, with the cobalt used for batteries sourced in part from Congo mines worked by children in hazardous conditions.

Meanwhile, gasoline vehicles have become vastly more environmentally friendly and fuel efficient.In fact, a study last year from the Manhattan Institute found that widespread deployment of electric vehicles would only reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 1 percent – and would increase emissions of SO2, NOx, and particulate matter.

The bottom line: efforts to raise the cap are a cash grab that will force taxpayers to subsidize wealthy Californians for no presently valid reason.Congress should let the subsidy phase out as scheduled.

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Copyright 2019 Phil Kerpen, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Mr. Kerpen is the president of American Commitment and the author of “Democracy Denied.” Kerpen can be reached at [email protected].

If you “cut the cord” and switch from cable TV to streaming services, you will probably notice a big difference in price, thanks to that long section of your bill with taxes and fees either being gone completely or dramatically slimmed down.

As more customers go in the direction of cord cutting competition intensifies on the incumbent franchised cable companies, viewers are justifiably calling foul on the often outrageous demands local governments place on them that result in more taxes and fees on their bill.

To begin with, there is the maximum 5 percent franchise fee that localities are allowed to charge on cable service under the federal Cable Act. That places cable at a disadvantage versus its video competitors, but it’s authorized by law. That 5 percent fee alone delivers over $3 billion a year to local governments.

Unsatisfied with that haul, local governments have begun concocting a wide variety of additional taxes, fees, and mandates that go on top of and violate the 5 percent federal cap.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is considering a rule that would close these loopholes and clarify that the 5 percent cap applies to all of the various and sundry cable-related exactions creative local governments have come up with, and would prohibit fees on broadband and other non-cable services as a condition of a cable franchise.

It is a good and necessary proposal and should be made final, before the most abusive local practices spread even further.

An appendix to the cable industry filing with the FCC shows how far things have gone already, including a number of Ohio ordinances requiring a “certificate of registration” with expensive regulatory requirements before a cable operator can offer non-cable services; a requirement in Corvalis, Oregon that requires a special franchise for Wi-Fi deployment; new additional fees for access to public rights-of-way in North Carolina, Kentucky, and New York City; and lengthy lists of communities all over the country demanding free government channels and free cable and Internet service at parks, libraries, government buildings, etc.

Many of these concessions may sound desirable, but they are costs that are ultimately borne by cable customers. To the extent free services are desired, they can be demanded but must be counted towards the five percent cap, as the FCC has proposed and the Cable Act requires.

Then there are the taxes.Eugene, Oregon is charging a 7 percent fee on broadband revenues in addition to their existing franchise fee on cable.And after the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of Eugene, some other cities across the state have followed suit with similar fees.Similarly, Los Angeles, California is charging its 5 percent “possessory interest” tax on broadband and phone service.In Texas, cable companies are being charged for right-of-way access twice – once for cable and once for phone – even though their services share a single wire.These taxes/fees violate federal policy against local internet taxes and will only discourage the deployment of faster and farther-reaching broadband.

The FCC under Trump’s appointees has been aggressive in lowering costs and encouraging deployment of broadband by wireline and wireless phone companies by reversing heavy-handed Obama-era broadband regulations, streamlining pole access regulations and fees, and allowing retirement of legacy networks and services.All of that is great news for consumers, and Internet speeds have risen to record highs.

But if the FCC is not now equally aggressive in limiting local government franchise abuses, then cable – which is investing heavily in multi-gigabit speeds, the next giant leap in broadband capabilities – will be unfairly disadvantaged.

And consumers will have an even longer, more obnoxious list of government taxes and fees on their cable bills.

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Copyright 2019 Phil Kerpen, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Mr. Kerpen is the president of American Commitment and the author of “Democracy Denied.” Kerpen can be reached at [email protected].

Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao did the right thing when she put the brakes on the Obama administration’s regulatory mandate that would have forced an expensive technology called dedicated short-range communication (DSRC) in all new cars and trucks sold in America.  The Obama rule would have imposed total costs of $108 billion and raised the price of every new car about $300 – for a technology that is already obsolete.

Now comes the related policy question of what to do with the big chunk of prime spectrum that would have been used for the Obama plan – will it be opened up for unlicensed use, enabling gigabit WiFi to make the Internet work better on all of our devices?  Or will it continue to sit fallow on the prospects of potential future automotive use?

The Department of Transportation (DOT) has zealously guarded the 5.9GHz band since it was set aside by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1999.  Twenty years later, DOT’s longtime preferred DSRC technology remains nearly undeployed – the technology is in just 18,000 of the estimated 270 million passenger vehicles in the country.  And the Obama DOT’s own testing found that “every DSRC device deployed had to be recalled at least once… to identify and correct issues” and “there were more false alerts generated by the systems than anticipated.”

Meanwhile, radar, lidar, camera-based, and cellular 4G technologies have been developed and enable a wide-array of driver-assist features.  As 5G is deployed it will bring even greater capabilities.

Yet DOT and automakers insist on a slow, three-phase series of tests to see whether WiFi can share spectrum with DSRC before making any changes.                            

The first phase was completed successfully in October, but as FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly observed: “The reality is that the entire debate has gravitated away from the type of sharing regime envisioned in the testing.  Instead, the Commission should move past this and initiate a rulemaking to reallocate at least 45 megahertz of the band, which is completely unused today for automobile safety.”

He’s right, and it’s an issue with bipartisan agreement at the FCC.

Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel joined O’Rielly in a 2016 joint statement, saying: “We believe this slice of spectrum provides the best near-term opportunity for promoting innovation and expanding current offerings, such as Wi-Fi. That’s because combining the airwaves in this band with those already available for unlicensed use nearby could mean increased capacity, reduced congestion, and higher speeds.”

The Trump DOT has stopped the Obama DSRC mandate but so far held on to the spectrum.  They have also, however, signaled a welcome shift to a technology-neutral approach, and are presently taking public comments on where vehicle communications technology is going.

Given the rapid development of mobile technology and the even greater capabilities coming with 5G – as well as sensor-based technologies being rapidly developed for driver-assist features and autonomous vehicles – it is possible that no dedicated spectrum will be needed.

Nonetheless, the FCC could potentially reserve a portion of the 5.9 GHz band in which automotive uses would be prioritized, or possibly designate another suitable band of spectrum for automotive use to satisfy DOT concerns and fully close the book on the Obama’s administration’s misguided approach.

In the meantime, the country’s nearly insatiable demand for WiFi in our homes, offices, and just about everywhere else should be met by opening the best spectrum available, rather than waiting because of a talking car law passed 20 years ago for a technology that never really worked.

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Copyright 2019 Phil Kerpen, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Mr. Kerpen is the president of American Commitment and the author of “Democracy Denied.” Kerpen can be reached at [email protected].

Americans are justifiably angry that we pay the highest prescription drugs prices in the world ,’ anger President Trump tapped into on the campaign trail.The disparity exists because other rich countries use price control schemes, forcing American consumers to provide the returns on capital that justify the enormous research and development costs associated with bringing new cures to market.

The rest of the world free-rides on our innovation.

The good news is that the Trump administration has been aggressive on the trade front in efforts to break foreign price control regimes.The bad news is that the Trump administration is also proposing to actually import foreign price control regimes into the Medicare program by adopting a payment formula that is pegged to foreign prices.

In its recent report “The Opportunity Costs of Socialism,” the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) looked at “the impact on medical innovation of the U.S. adopting European-style price controls” and found: “If M4A would entail the same experience with below-market prices as other countries with socialized medicine, it would reduce the world market size and thereby medical innovation, and ultimately mean that future patients would forgo the health gains that would have come from these forgone innovations.”

It is remarkable that, just days later, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar proposed setting prices for drugs in the Medicare Part –program, which are doctor-administered drugs, with a formula based on foreign price controls.

That would directly undercut the efforts of the U.S. Trade Representative to combat foreign price controls.A recent study by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity found that eliminating price controls in OECD countries would result in eight to 13 more drugs coming to market every year by 2030 and raise life expectancy in the United States by 1.1 to 1.6 years.

The U.S. Commerce Department has found that easing foreign price control regimes could, by increasing research and development of new drugs, result in more competition and lower prices in the domestic U.S. market.

Doing the opposite – imposing foreign price controls to the domestic market – would have disastrous consequences.

“Economists and policymakers have long recognized that research and development activity suffers from a severe free-rider problem,” Kevin Hassett, now president Trump’s top economist, wrote in 2004.”In the past, the U.S. market has been large enough relative to the rest of the world that it has been able to support research despite these intrusions. The evidence reviewed here suggests that there could be devastating effects should our policy environment change.”

Importing foreign price controls in the United States would short circuit diplomatic efforts to break foreign price controls, both because they would lack credibility and because the politics would flip, as higher prices abroad would now translate directly into higher prices at home through the price index.

Far from solving the free-rider problem, U.S. adoption of foreign price controls would undermine the incentive to invest in research and development. There would be no more moving vehicle on which anybody could get a free ride.

The average cost of bringing a new drug to market is about $2.6 billion, according to a widely cited Tufts University estimate that is now a few years old and therefore probably a lowball figure.

While capital has flowed freely into research and development, we cannot take for granted that it will continue to do so.Returns on capital in the pharmaceutical sector have fallen to about average in recent years and with the Federal Reserve pursing normalization competition for scarce capital will only intensify.

President Trump is absolutely right to spotlight the unfairness of other rich countries free-riding on the U.S. market for pharmaceutical innovation.But the if-you-can’t-beat-them-join-them approach of Azar’s proposal would actually undermine the only real solution: breaking foreign price control regimes in trade negotiations.

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Copyright 2019 Phil Kerpen, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Mr. Kerpen is the president of American Commitment and the author of “Democracy Denied.” Kerpen can be reached at [email protected].

President Trump recently tweeted that he wanted to end subsidies for General Motors “including for electric cars.” In this case the president’s personal pique aligns with an opportunity to advance good public policy.

One of most significant subsidies from which GM benefits – the $7,500 tax credit for electric car buyers – is already scheduled to phase out as GM passes the 200,000 vehicle cap on the full credit, entering a one-year phase-out before the subsidy ends completely.It’s a rare circumstance in which a government program could actually end just by Congress doing what it specializes in – doing nothing.

Unfortunately, while the House version of tax extenders leaves the cap in place, the Senate has been discussing lifting the cap and allowing subsidies to keep flowing to GM and Tesla, which has already reached the phase out.The president should make clear he would veto any legislation to lift the cap.

Democrats should support letting the credit phase out because it is a tax break for the rich.The Pacific Research Institute looked at the most recent IRS data and found that more than half of the electric car buyers claiming the credit make more than $200,000 per year, and nearly 80 percent make more than $100,000. Just 1 percent make $50,000 or less.

They conclude: “the subsidization of EVs has some reverse Robin Hood impacts where tax dollars are taken from all households (including lower-income households) and given to wealthier households.”

There is also a geographic dimension to the wealth redistribution.The most recent industry data shows that half of all electric vehicles sold in the United States were sold in California, which has its own lavish subsidies at the state level.In August, the most recent month with data available, 53 percent of electric vehicle sales were in California.

A September 2018 NERA Economic Consulting study looked at the economic impact of eliminating the cap, as some in the Senate have proposed and for which Tesla and General Motors have been heavily lobbying.

They found that the costs of lifting the cap outweigh the benefits, because lower gasoline costs are more than offset by the direct and indirect costs of subsidized EV infrastructure.The study finds total household income falling as a consequence of lifting the cap by $7 billion in 2020 and $12 billion in 2035, which is about $50 to $70 per household in lost income every year.

That’s a cost of over $50 every year to middle-income middle-Americans to pay for subsidies for rich people in California.

As Tom Pyle recently explained in The Hill, the subsidy for electric vehicles was always meant to be temporary.

Orrin Hatch, the original sponsor of the bill, explained the logic behind the cap in 2007:

“I want to emphasize that like the tax credits available under current law for hybrid electric vehicles, the tax incentives in the FREEDOM Act are temporary. They are needed in order to help these products over the initial stage of production, when they are quite a bit more expensive than older technology vehicles, to the mass production stage, where economies of scale will drive costs down and the credits will no longer be necessary.”

At the time, big subsidies for electric vehicles were justified based on the theory that they were needed to lessen American dependence on foreign oil.A decade later, America is the largest oil and gas producer in the world and electric vehicles are a mature enough technology that they should be left to succeed or fail on the preference of consumers, not politicians.

Congress should let the subsidy phase out as scheduled – and President Trump should force their hand by making clear he will not sign any bill that increases or eliminates the cap.

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Copyright 2018 Phil Kerpen, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Mr. Kerpen is the president of American Commitment and the author of “Democracy Denied.” Kerpen can be reached at [email protected].

President Trump has hundreds of unfilled presidentially-appointed positions because Democrats have stalled the nominations process out as much as their diminished power in the post-nuclear Senate has allowed.

But it is the Republican majority that has placed a total blockade on the usual safety valve for temporary appointments – the recess appointment power – by refusing to go on recess for the last two years. And with Democrats set to take the House and be in position to deny the Senate consent to recess starting January 3, there is a real possibility that President Trump will go an entire presidential term without being able to make recess appointments.

It has been nearly eight years since the United States Senate officially recessed – a streak aided by the practice of holding so-called pro forma sessions every three days throughout every adjournment. Those sessions – which consist of nothing but gaveling in and out and where, by unanimous consent, no business is conducted – serve a single purpose: to deny the president of the United States the recess appointment power, which is a constitutionally authorized power to temporarily install nominees to executive and judicial posts without Senate advice and consent.

President Bill Clinton used the recess appointment power 139 times, including 96 full-time positions. President George W. Bush used it 171 times, including 99 full-time positions. But recess appointments under Bush screeched to a halt in his final two years in office, after Democrats took control of the Senate and, for the first time, implemented pro forma sessions to avoid an official recess.

In Obama’s first two years, with Democrats in control of Congress, recesses were back and he made 28 recess appointments, all to full-time positions, in his first two years. Then Republicans won the House of Representatives and withheld consent from the Senate to recess, forcing the pro forma sessions to come back. They continued through the last six years of Obama’s presidency, though he attempted to disregard them and make recess appointments anyway in 2012, which were struck down unanimously by the Supreme Court in NLR–v. Noel Canning.

The pro forma gambit is legally valid, and therefore the president cannot make recess appointments unless the Congress decides to officially recess, which hadn’t happened since 2010.

You might reasonably expect no president will ever get recess appointments again except when the same party controls the House, Senate, and president. But for the last two years, the same party – the Republican Party – has in fact controlled the House, Senate, and president. And yet, the Senate has never recessed.

This curious fact has received surprisingly little attention.

Is McConnell blocking Trump for his own strategic reasons?Perhaps to establish that no recesses will ever be taken again, forcing all appointments to go through the Senate confirmation process?

If so, that seems to be somewhat at odds with constant Republican complaints about Democratic stalling and obstruction of Trump nominees.

Is McConnell concerned that, given the free hand of a recess, Trump would make some truly terrible appointments?If so, perhaps negotiating a list before agreeing to recess could allay that concern.

Or does McConnell simply lack a Senate majority that would vote to adjourn without pro forma sessions?If so, perhaps holding a clean adjournment vote would at least serve the clarifying purpose of showing the American people which Republican senators are intent on blocking Trump recess appointments.

If President Trump wants to lift the legal cloud from his acting Attorney General and temporarily fill vacancies across the federal government, the administration needs to press hard for the Senate to adjourn for the year with an official recess.

But if we’re simply in a new era in which the Senate protects its institutional power by never officially recessing, it would be nice for somebody to inform the American people.

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Copyright 2018 Phil Kerpen, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Mr. Kerpen is the president of American Commitment and the author of “Democracy Denied. ” Kerpen can be reached at phil@americancommitment. org.

When Republicans vote against coverage expansions, that’s the headline.So let’s give Senate Democrats the same treatment: they just voted to take away insurance coverage from millions of Americans.

I’ll explain.

Last summer, Republicans failed to deliver on their longstanding promise to repeal Obamacare due to Senator John McCain’s dramatic last minute thumbs down.They failed again in the fall, when the Graham-Cassidy bill to block grant health care dollars to the states was pulled from the floor because ailing Senator Thad Cochran was stuck in a Mississippi hospital.

Conservative activists were disappointed and dispirited, liberal partisans were jubilant, and most of America just figured we would keep muddling on with the dysfunctional Obamacare apparatus still in place.

But late last year, Congress struck a major blow to the heart of Obamacare.The individual mandate penalty tax that punishes Americans for not having Obamacare-compliant coverage was repealed in the Trump tax cut bill.

That made Obamacare voluntary. But there was a problem. There were very few non-Obamacare plans available, because a 2016 Obama regulation had deliberately crippled them.

That 2016 Obama regulation slashed the duration of Obamacare-exempt so-called “short-term, limited duration plans” from one year to three months and banned them from being renewable.

Why did Obama do it?

Because people were flocking to these short-term plans, even though at that time they would have to pay both their premiums and the individual mandate penalty tax for choosing a non-Obamacare plan.

The plans were that much cheaper and better than the junky Obamacare plans, with sky-high premiums and deductibles and narrow provider networks that exclude the best hospitals.

And now, thanks to a directive from President Trump to rescind the 2016 Obama rule, they are back.And now there’s no penalty tax for being in a non-Obamacare plan!

As of October 2, 2018, non-Obamacare plans are legal again and uncrippled.They can be written for up to 364 days at a time, renewed for up to three years, and can now be paired with a premium guarantee product to lock in a successor policy after three years without any risk of a premium increase because you get sick.

If you like your non-Obamacare plan you can keep it, without paying more, even if you get sick.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates Trump’s deregulation will increase overall insurance coverage by about a million people by 2023.Other estimates are higher, with the Center for Health and Economy projecting an overall coverage increase of 2.3 million by 2020 and even the liberal Urban Institute estimating 1.7 million more Americans insured by 2019.

So who would say no to consumers having more choices, with lower premiums, guaranteed renewability without medical underwriting, and potentially better provider networks?

Who would say no to up to two million people presently uninsured getting coverage because they’ll be able to afford these new options?

Democrats. Democrats who want to force everyone into Obamacare’s one-size-fits-all approach.

Every single Senate Democrat voted for Tammy Baldwin’s resolution to re-impose Obama’s 2016 regulations that cripple non-Obamacare health plans.

Their talking points made no sense – they called non-Obamacare plans junk, even though most people feel that way about Obamacare plans.

They claimed people who are already sick wouldn’t be able to get good prices on short-term plans, which ignores the fact they can still choose Obamacare if that’s a better option for them.

And they claimed the Trump rule undermines protections for pre-existing conditions, even though allowing renewal guarantees lets people keep the plans they like after they get sick, without paying more, and prevents them from ending up in Obamacare and drawing huge subsidies from taxpayers.

And their obsession with coverage numbers, ubiquitous during last year’s debates, conveniently disappeared.

It’s Obamacare ‘uber alles’ with the Democrats.

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Copyright 2018 Phil Kerpen, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Mr. Kerpen is the president of American Commitment and the author of “Democracy Denied.” Kerpen can be reached at [email protected].

On his way out the door, former Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection chief Richard Cordray signed off on a shockingly corrupt settlement agreement that could have widespread negative consequences for student loan borrowers (and more broadly for consumer finance) across the economy.

It was an enforcement action against the National Collegiate Student Loan Trusts, a group of 15 Delaware trusts that hold about 800,000 student loans totaling $12 billion, of which $5 billion is presently in default.These are loans that were made by dozens of private banks and then aggregated by institutional investors and repackaged as securities.

Because these are private loans, enforcement actions against borrowers in default require individual lawsuits to be filed – and the trusts used an array of debt collection entities to bring thousands of such lawsuits.Many of these lawsuits filed by third party debt collection entities were bogus, taking action without proper documentation or in some cases taking action against people who did not actually owe anything.Some of the debt collectors have already been fined for their violations.

But under Cordray the BCFP went further, declaring the trusts themselves “covered persons” under the Consumer Financial Protection Act and brought an enforcement action against the trusts, even though they are passive entities that did not engage in any of the improper activities.

If that action stands, the well-established, low-risk mechanism of securitizing loans through trusts would become a legally fraught process.And that would cause a massively negative ripple effect.

“For future students and their parents, this Byzantine fight over securitized loans may prove costly,” Bloomberg reporter Shahien Nasiripour explained. “The threat of a government agency setting aside securities contracts based on student loan payments could lead hedge funds to devalue their holdings, and cause them to demand higher interest rates on future loans to compensate for the risk of unilateral government action.”

Worse, the fallout would not be contained to the student loan market.A robust securitization market helps keep interest rates down for mortgages, auto loans, and credit cards.

Unfortunately, the trusts themselves eagerly agreed to Cordray’s power grab – because the hedge fund titan, Donald Uderitz, who bought up control of the trusts stood to benefit.

As Andrew Wilford explained, the BCFP “stepped in and made a deal with Uderitz to transfer servicing powers to Uderitz’s firm, VCG, in return for fines on some trustees and other servicing companies. The upshot for Uderitz and VCG is that Uderitz will make a killing off servicing and administering the debt.”

In effect, Uderitz “settled” with Cordray to use trust assets for his own company’s benefit.Moreover, the use of trust assets to settle claims against debt collectors, who were all hired subject to contracts that held the collectors responsible for compliance violations – would undermine investor confidence and drive up the cost of capital and therefore interest rates for borrowers.

The litigation has played out slowly despite the fact it was settled.The trustees intervened and more recently the broader securitization industry filed an amicus brief based on concerns that their entire market could be disrupted.

Meanwhile, the trusts have been unable to even pay the lawyers Uderitz hired to represent them, with trustees blocking him internally.The lawyers claim to have over $3 million in unpaid legal fees, and the judge has ordered the trusts to obtain new representation.

All of which is a recipe for continued uncertainty in what has been and should be one of the lowest risk corners of the finance world.

It’s been nearly a full year since the Cordray consent decree was announced in this case, and there is no reason for the uncertainty and confusion to continue into a second year.The BCFP should withdraw its claims and drop the lawsuit completely without prejudice.In doing so Acting Director Mick Mulvaney would be reversing another of Cordray’s major missteps, and could then focus on holding the guilty parties – and only the guilty parties – responsible for improper collection tactics.

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Copyright 2018 Phil Kerpen, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Mr. Kerpen is the president of American Commitment and the author of “Democracy Denied.” Kerpen can be reached at [email protected].

Obama’s astonishing takeover of the automobile industry was accomplished through a process even more corrupt than his takeover of the health care sector.While both involved backroom deals, the auto takeover was sealed in a backroom from which both the American people and our elected officials were completely shut out.

Worse, it transferred power over a huge swath of our economy – and the basic choice of what cars and trucks Americans can buy – not to Washington, D.C. but to Sacramento, California.Sacramento was empowered, contrary to federal law, to set fuel economy standards and to implement a credit scheme that raises the prices of vehicles all over the country to lavish subsidies on rich buyers of electric hobby cars in California.

Obama climate czar Carol Browner oversaw the secret negotiations in 2010.Mary Nichols, the chair of the California Air Resources Board, was the other key player in a game of bad cop and really bad cop. Basically, the industry was told that if they didn’t acquiesce to the new rules, California – waiver in hand – would even more severely kneecap them.

Nichols told the New York Times that Browner “quietly orchestrated” the secret negotiations between the White House, regulators, and auto industry officials. “We put nothing in writing, ever,” Nichols bragged.

In 2012 – with Sacramento firmly in control – they reprised the same tactics to ratchet up the mandate to 54.5 miles per gallon, which of course guarantees cars will be smaller, lighter, less crash-worthy, less powerful, and less comfortable than you can even imagine.A nice-sized family-vehicle?Good luck.

The political calculation by Obama was that putting Sacramento in the driver’s seat would lock in place the scheme because the regulatory, legal, public relations, and political effort required to unwind it would be too daunting for a future Republican administration.

They did not count on President Donald Trump or his intrepid lead on this issue, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.

Secretary Chao, jointly with EPA Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler, have issued a brilliantly crafted proposal that revises the core of the Obama fuel economy rules to reach a sweet spot that balances environmental, safety, and cost considerations – backed by thousands of pages of detailed legal, scientific, and economic analysis.

Their proposal would keep the model year 2020 standards in place through model year 2026, rather than allow a sharp increase in fuel economy requirements that would occur under the Obama/California plan.The Trump plan would save more than $500 billion in societal costs and reduce highway fatalities by 12,700 lives – because more expensive new cars price people out on the margin, forcing them to drive older, less safe cars longer.

Against the half-trillion in benefits you can weigh the global warming impact – or non-impact.Model runs based on mainstream, consensus climate models show the Trump proposal would impact the global climate by 3/1000th of one degree Celsius by 2100.You can round that to zero.

Most importantly, the proposed rule treats California like the other 49 states, withdrawing its special waiver and setting up litigation that will almost certainly result in a Supreme Court victory finding that Congress meant what it said when it passed the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975: “a State or a political subdivision of a State may not adopt or enforce a law or regulation related to fuel economy standards or for automobiles covered by an average fuel economy standard under this chapter.”

Like so much of his legacy, Obama’s fuel economy scheme was built on regulatory and legal quicksand because he was unable or unwilling to convince the American people and our elected representatives to implement his policies through the legislative process.

President Trump is absolutely right to stand up to the shrieks of protest from the environmental groups and the media and to let Americans buy the cars and trucks we want.

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Copyright 2018 Phil Kerpen, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Mr. Kerpen is the president of American Commitment and the author of “Democracy Denied.” Kerpen can be reached at [email protected].

Two House Republicans have chosen to capitulate on major agenda items on the liberal left – and are learning a familiar lesson the hard way.

One, Colorado’s Mike Coffman, has signed onto Democratic efforts to reimpose President Obama’s FCC order to tax and regulate the Internet under the banner of net neutrality. The other, Florida’s Carlos Curbelo, broke with his party by leading a tiny group of Republicans who voted against a resolution rejecting a carbon tax, and then went further by actually introducing his own carbon tax legislation. But rather than welcoming them as heroes, the left still wants to replace them with real Democrats.

Let’s start with Coffman. For months, he indicated that he would oppose the Democratic efforts to use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to reimpose the Obama FCC’s public utility Internet order.

In February, Coffman expressly stated his opposition to the CRA: “The CRA is a non-starter for me as it defers again to agency rulemaking. This is Congress’s job!”

At stake is whether the FCC will be allowed to manufacture for itself vast authority to regulate the Internet and to establish the legal predicate for federal, state, and local taxes and fees to be applied to Internet bills.Supporting the efforts of the current FCC to reverse that and go back to the successful free market approach that was in place until 2015 should be a no-brainer for Republicans.

Nonetheless, Coffman caved in to the PR efforts from the left completely when he came out on July 17 and announced that he had signed onto a discharge petition to bring the Democratic CRA he had previously called a “non-starter” to the House floor.

The main liberal advocacy group that pushed the Obama order, Free Press, responded with an immediate email alert to its members attacking Coffman, saying “bills like the one Coffman introduced won’t cut it.”

Carlos Curbelo’s carbon tax apostasy is a similar story.Last Congress, Curbelo voted for Republican Whip Steve Scalise’s resolution condemning a carbon tax for being economically destructive; this Congress, Curbelo not only flipped his vote on the Scalise resolution but has introduced his own carbon tax act.

The Curbelo carbon tax would raise energy bills an average of $275 for every man, woman, and child – $1,100 for a family of four – and that’s according to the lowball estimate included with the bill’s press release.Anyone who fails to comply would face a 300 percent penalty.The EPA would be given the power to expand the tax to new products and industries as a kind of Super IRS.And a new national climate commission would be established and authorized to lavish spending on “experts and consultants.”

And for his own back-breaking flip-flop, Curbelo has received responses from the environmental left ranging from the NRDC’s release saying the plan “still falls short” to Food and Water Watch’s hyperbolic “New Carbon Tax Bill Shields Polluters, Pours Gasoline on Climate ‘Fire.'”

While Coffman and Curbelo were perhaps expecting to be applauded by the liberal left for their capitulation, they are instead finding that liberal interest groups will always prefer a genuine Democrat to a counterfeit one.

As Dick Armey taught us: “When we act like us we win. When we act like them we lose.”

Republicans watching these two cautionary tales should take note and avoid learning the hard way that political appeasement doesn’t work.

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Copyright 2018 Phil Kerpen, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Mr. Kerpen is the president of American Commitment and the author of “Democracy Denied.” Kerpen can be reached at [email protected].