We just released a new Issue Paper that tackles the perennial question: how much are we taxed here in Colorado? Many on the Left presume it’s not enough. When our researcher Anthony Gonzalez really dug into it and looked at the whole picture (state AND local taxation), Colorado it turns out sits right in the middle of the nation at 26th. Take a look at our first Issue Paper of 2012, How Colorado’s Tax Burdens Rank Nationally.

In his latest blog post, our Constitutional scholar Rob Natelson shares his thoughts on the recently signed into law National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Many believe the NDAA codifies the Executive Branch’s ability to indefinitely detain American citizens without trial. What does Rob think? Check it out here.

Keep your eyes on this developing story: Democratic lawmakers are putting RTD’s toes to the fire on building out the Northwest corridor. RTD made a promise many years ago and the folks up in the Longmont area have been paying for a rail system that has yet to be delivered. How long can RTD hold out? How long will the Northwest corridor take it? Time will tell…

Finally, there is a really cool economics fundamentals class being held at our building this Saturday the 11th. I encourage all of you to take a look at the details here. For those still not on Facebook, here is some information:

Are you a liberty activist who loves free markets, capitalism and limited government – but have a difficult time describing its myriad benefits and merits when talking with others?

Then this is the educational training course for you!

Liberty on the Rocks is looking for leaders in the liberty movement (current or future) who are interested in obtaining insights into the basic fundamental principles of free market economics by attending a half-day educational course in Denver. **Tickets to attend are $10**

On Saturday, February 11th from 1:30-6:30pm, Liberty on the Rocks will present an exclusive hands-on, discussion and activity-driven economics session. During this half-day course, attendees will learn and/or better understand:

-The role economics plays in the advancement of liberty

-How to make the case for freedom from an economic and philosophical perspective

-How prices work in a market place

-Different ways of looking at public policy from an economic perspective

-The essential arguments for why socialism can’t work

RSVP today by purchasing tickets at: http://denver.libertyontherocks.org/economic-freedom-session/

Email Amanda Muell for even more info.

The news released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on Friday appeared to be all good: The unemployment rate was down by 0.2 percent to 8.3 percent, the lowest since the month after President Obama was inaugurated. November and December estimates were revised upward. Most private industries showed growth, including 70,000 new business services jobs, 50,000 new manufacturing jobs, and a remarkable 21,000 new jobs in the construction industry. The labor force expanded by 500,000 which appeared to indicate that more people are coming back into the market looking for work.

But the skeptics were legion: the Wall Street Journal, while accepting the numbers at face value, said, “Even with the recent gains, this is by far the worst jobs recovery since the Great Depression, and the U.S. still has about 5.5 million fewer jobs that it did before the recession began in December 2007.” Across town, the Washington Times said the numbers looked better than they should because of the number of young people dropping out and the paper even found an economist at the Federal Reserve to agree with it. Brian Holter, who works at the Minneapolis Fed, said: “However these factors stack up, the improvement in unemployment is largely the work of declining participation rates and, unfortunately, not job growth.”

, writing at Townhall.com, was blunt in his assessment of the BLS report:

Continue reading Friday’s Unemployment Numbers: Correcting the Corrections

Oh hey there! I’m glad you asked. Our Energy Policy Center director Amy Oliver has been hitting the energy and environment issues hard lately. You should take a look at our Energy Policy Center’s webpage to stay on top of Amy and Michael Sandoval’s work. For example, when President Obama came to town to talk about his “comprehensive” view of energy, Amy and Michael put together a nice article translating his rhetoric into real life language – that real people speak! Additionally, Amy sat down with my main minion Justin Longo to discuss Obama’s energy policies and figure out how his “green” energy favoritism gets twisted into an “all of the above” approach he claims to have. You can hear Amy translate and discuss Obama’s energy policies here on iVoices.org.

Let’s bring energy policy even closer to home shall we? Amy and Michael also tackled the upcoming energy legislation before our Colorado representatives in this year’s legislative session. What’s some of the good? What’s some of the bad? And you know there’s going to be some downright ugly when it comes to energy policy in Colorado… so what’s that all about this year? Amy gives a run down of some of the more important legislation in this iVoices.org podcast with Justin. You might be surprised at how great some of the good stuff is. (Hint: Rep. Spencer Swalm is on an energy tear this year!) Likewise, the bad will bad and the ugly… expensive.

Just when CoreLogic, the California-based mortgage data provider, began to wax optimistic about the housing market, the Census Bureau and the S&P/Case-Shiller index doused their enthusiasm with some cold facts and daunting data.

CoreLogic noted in its January report that single-family permits and starts rose at a 15-percent annual rate over the six months ending November 2011. In addition, existing home sales appeared to be trending higher as well, increasing by about 12 percent from January to November. The tone in their note to clients was guardedly optimistic:

While we cannot say with a high degree of certainty what 2012 has in store for us, indications based on the latter part of 2011 are that both the broad economy and the housing market are moving toward positive growth in 2012.

And then, on January 31, the Census Bureau released its fourth-quarter report on home ownership: the rate was 66 percent, extending the decline from the 69 percent reached in 2005, just before the housing bubble burst, and rivaling the rate last seen in 1997, 14 years ago. Economist Mark Perry developed a visually stunning graph for his blog and concluded:

Continue reading Housing: Prices and Ownership Still Correcting

Monkey-Wrenching America was created to document the danger professional green extremists pose to America’s economy, limited government ideals and freedom-oriented way of life. The economic, fiscal, judicial and human costs of green monkey-wrenching activities aren’t as well-documented as they should be, because the establishment media becomes an unabashed cheerleader where the environmental movement is concerned. This website, and the stories and reports it hosts, will help document these excesses and bring some balance and reason to the public debate about environmental issues.

Be sure to check out their Wall of Shame. It’s going to be a great way to document the special interest groups who oppose low energy costs.

After two hours of hearing from plaintiffs challenging Barack Obama’s eligibility to run for the office of President in 2012, Judge Michael Malihi for the Office of State Administrative Hearings for the State of Georgia asked them to file briefs with him on their positions no later than Sunday, February 5. The complaints originated on October 25 of last year with a lawsuit filed by the Liberty Legal Foundation (LLF) requesting an injunction against the Democratic Party that would prohibit the party from certifying that Obama is constitutionally qualified to run for office in 2012. Without that certification, says the foundation, Obama’s name would not appear on any ballot in the general election. The case has nothing to do with Obama’s birth certificate or his place of birth or how many Social Security numbers he may have. As noted by LLF,

These issues are completely irrelevant to our argument. [Our] lawsuit simply points out that the Supreme Court has defined “natural-born citizen” as a person born to two parents who were both U.S. citizens at the time of the natural-born citizen’s birth. Obama’s father was never a U.S. citizen. Therefore, Obama can never be a natural-born citizen. His place of birth is irrelevant.

Article II, Section 1, of the U.S. Constitution reads, in part: “No person except a natural born citizen…shall be eligible to the office of President.” Since the only entity responsible for vetting a candidate’s qualifications to hold office is the political party that nominates the candidate, LLF chose to sue the Democratic Party and thus “we…avoid taking on any state or federal government.” And Georgia has a state law that requires that “every candidate for federal office shall meet the constitutional and statutory qualifications for holding the office being sought.” The Supreme Court’s 1875 Minor v. Happersett ruling stated:

Continue reading Obama Ignores Challenge to His Presidential Eligibility in Georgia

For refutations of the President’s flawed claims and statist economic plans, see the Cato Institute‘s website, blog, and YouTube channel.  Regarding Obama’s “Buffett tax” on millionaires, the Associated Press explains that the wealthiest Americans already “pay a lot more taxes than the middle class,” including secretaries

To understand Obama’s statist fervor, ask yourself: Are you a machine cog?  Surely not. But like many politicians, Obama disagrees, at least tacitly. How? Linguist George Lakoff explains how metaphors are key to understanding political discourse.  In his speech, the President expressed his desire to “lay out a blueprint for an economy.”  At least twice he’s mentioned starting a health care “system” from “scratch.” This speaks volumes.

“The economy” refers to people producing and exchanging goods and services. In a freed economy, government respects people’s right to trade voluntarily. But Obama sees the economy as a machine to be manufactured, or a cake to be baked.

Obama has the same conceit that better economists have warned about for centuries. Describing the “man of system,” Adam Smith wrote: “He seems to imagine that he can arrange … members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges … pieces upon a chess-board.” “Socialists look upon people as raw material to be formed into social combinations,” wrote French economist Frederic Bastiat in 1853. Or, as 1974 Nobel laureate F.A. Hayek wrote, “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

Keep it up everyone!

Since federal Medicaid funds are a huge portion of all states’ budgets, the effect is to subordinate state fiscal policy to the whim of federal officials. This is clearly unconstitutional.

Stay tuned for details and PDF of the other amicus. It will focus on the unconstitutionality of the individual health insurance mandate. Word is, Rob and Dave work their magic on the Commerce Power and the Necessary and Proper Clause. I also hear that they plan to sit down for an iVoices.org podcast with my main minion Justin Longo on both briefs. I’ll post the brief and the podcast here when they come out.

Until then, say NO to bullying.

On the surface, why the hell not?  Taxpaying workers may have to submit to random drug tests.  Many people would be livid to know their tax dollars are supporting the drug habits of the shiftless.  Then again, this country has been fighting a War on Drugs since Prohibition and has precisely nothing to show for it.  Workers who must prove the purity of their blood, sweat, and piss are bottom of the pyramid types.  The lawmakers considering this idea certainly are not about to submit to something so undignified.

Making some desirable thing contingent on voluntary work?  Schools do it all the time.  Some professions make it a condition of maintaining a license.  Too, refusing to volunteer won’t get anyone jailed; they just won’t have UI benefits.  Thus, there’s no actual Constitutional issue.  Presuming the acceptable forms of volunteer works are defined widely enough to ensure no one will be stuck supporting a cause he finds abhorrent in order to eat, this is not the requirement likely to work up more than a few souls.

The two requirements are actually two bills.  One requires that people who have been on UI for six months commit to 16 hours of volunteer work a week, a work load roughly on par with the First Lady’s hectic schedule, and accept any available job they are able to do, regardless of the pay cut of diminished status it would represent against the job they lost.  It’s a separate bill that would require drug testing.

Focus on the drug testing, shall we?  Binding receipt of social services on clean drug tests is nothing new.  Nor are arguments that, because it is the poor who use such services, the practice amounts to class discrimination.  There may be something here.  Can you imagine what would happen to top-flight law firms and investment houses if they had to fire anyone caught using drugs?

Will those who test positive be simply locked out, or will they get rehab services?  If so, who on earth will pay for all for that?  Are UI claimants with positive drug tests going to be charged?  Would this open the door to a suit alleging people are being compelled to incriminate themselves in exchange for benefits?

Hell, is this even going to stand.  Florida’s attempt to implement a similar bill was blocked by the courts on Fourth Amendment grounds.  In South Carolina’s statutes, UI may only be diminished for deny in cases of benefit fraud, disqualifying income, or an applicant at fault for losing his job.  Then again, Congress passed a bill allowing states to ban applicants from taking UI if they can’t pass a drug test.  Technically, South Carolina would need to pass a law to change statute as it stands.  They could, however, do so handily.

Practically, states have got to be looking at ways to cut down on the unemployment rolls.  Instituting a requirement many applicants won’t be able to meet is certainly one way of thinning the rolls without actually admitting to that.  According to November 2011 numbers for unemployment by state, South Carolina, at 9.9%, is tied for tenth.  This puts them well above the national median of 8.5%.  At 8.0%, Colorado is tied for 13th.

Both states’ numbers were down from the previous reporting period.  I would not be the first, though, to suggest this is due to people who have essentially stopped trying (“discouraged workers”) and to people who have taken McJobs (“marginally attached workers”).  If the oft-quoted statistic that, nationally, there are six unemployed people looking for work for each one job available, is true, we are left wresting with the question of how much the long-term unemployed are truly responsible for their own situation.  (Such people are also those least likely to have benefited from the modest dip in unemployment rates; those out of work for at least six months are 42.5% of the current unemployed population and they aren’t the ones finding work.)

That the current administration speaks so loftily and so often of the state’s ability and duty to create jobs, might we not suggest they are failing spectacularly at that?  Might we also suggest that the very existence of UI makes workers less likely to work at keeping jobs, makes the unemployed less likely to do as much as possible to find work, and makes employers more likely to cut people loose?

Given that, in South Carolina, one in ten able-bodied adults doesn’t have work, is the upteenth re-hash of war on drugs a wise use of scarce resources?

PPC has, of course, a policy solution for all this mess.  Give the 9.9% of jobless South Carolinians works administering drug testing to one another and call it done.