March 21, 2024
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
Anti-censorship provisions stripped out of omnibus spending bill, now it’s up to the Supreme Court
By Robert Romano
Anti-censorship provisions of spending bills that were passed by the House for appropriations for the Departments of Defense, State and Homeland Security have all been stripped out of the now proposed 1,012-page omnibus spending bill. Similar provisions were stripped out of the omnibus spending bill that passed earlier this month impacting the Department of Justice.
The defunds would have prohibited the use of funds for any of the federal government’s misinformation, disinformation and malinformation (MDM) programs that were used to target conservatives, Republicans and other Americans on social media for opposing tyrannical Covid lockdown policies, vaccine mandates, mail-in ballots and supporting the Trump campaign’s legal election challenges in 2020.
Without the Senate and White House, Republicans have very little hope of moving anything like that into spending bills, and even with a trifecta of the House, Senate and White house, it would still be very difficult because entrenched forces in both parties remain largely in favor.
The House appropriations process as it began had defunds for every single one of these items on censorship and more coming out of the committees that should in the least provide an able template for future Congresses. That is an accomplishment worth noting.
The censorship has been revealed via disclosures including the Twitter Files after Elon Musk acquired the company and transforming it into X, but also a result of discovery in the Missouri v. Biden (later Murthy v. Missouri) litigation, that revealed thousands of instances of the government raising concerns with social media that resulted in account suspensions of Americans who were sharing their views political and social issues.
For now, it will take a favorable court ruling in the Murthy v. Missouri case now before the Supreme Court, with no guarantees the American people will get one. If the Supreme Court strikes down the MDM operations by the government to censor social media, then Congress’ failure to rein it in might be forgotten.
But that hasn’t happened yet. It’s still up to the Supreme Court to act.
But if not, if the Court allows the censorship, then a much more difficult road ahead emerges. Republicans are unlikely to get a much larger majority on the Supreme Court — the current majority of Republican-appointed justices is 6-3, clearly a high-water mark — and if the Court rules in favor of the censorship right now, it’s not likely to be revisited any time soon via litigation. It could be decades.
That would make Congress the only show left in town, and so all roads lead to later this year where it would take substantial legislative majorities and a president committed to reining in these excesses to be able enact laws that do away with these programs, which for the moment appear to be permanent features of law.
But it will also require a true free speech movement that is not beholden to government and military interests. We failed. If anyone tells you we are "winning" tell them to cut the happy talk. In many ways, things have never been worse as these anti-speech policies are being locked in and dissent becomes more difficult. Now, all eyes turn to the Supreme Court.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2024/03/anti-censorship-provisions-stripped-out-of-omnibus-spending-bill-now-its-up-to-the-supreme-court/
Cartoon: Threat To Democracy
By A.F. Branco
Click here for a higher level resolution version.
Ending Biden’s Electric Vehicle Mandate Regulation Should Be a Top Trump Priority
March 20, 2024, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement in opposition of the EPA’s electric vehicle regulation:
“Let’s be clear, the new Biden EPA regulation is a virtual mandate on industry to sell only Electric Vehicles whether the public wants them or not.
“The 70 percent target for EV sales the Biden regulation would require automakers to meet by 2032 (eight years away) is in every respect a mandate. A mandate which becomes almost impossible given that consumer demand for Electric Vehicles has plummeted. Ford Motor Company aggressively invested in an EV automotive future over the past ten years, yet they have had to dramatically slow the manufacture of vehicles as their customers don’t want them.
“This regulation is just another example of an out of control Biden bureaucracy attempting to control private markets through coercion, and under the regulatory standard set by the Supreme Court in West Virginia v. EPA, is clearly unconstitutional. The Environmental Protection Agency does not have the authority to pick automotive winners and losers.
“Because the Courts are slow to act and Democrat control of the Senate makes it extremely difficult for the historically small GOP majority in the House to use the power of the purse to defund this and other regulatory overreaches, on January 20, 2025 at 12:01 pm, newly inaugurated President Donald J. Trump should act to immediately rescind this dangerous attempt to permanently alter the U.S. auto market through an unlawful mandate.”
To view online: https://getliberty.org/2024/03/ending-bidens-electric-vehicle-mandate-regulation-should-be-a-top-trump-priority/
John Carney: Keeping U.S. Steel American Isn’t Protectionism
By John Carney
If something is running amok in the United States trade policy, it sure doesn’t look like protectionism.
Joe Biden’s recent thumbs down on the Nippon-U.S. Steel marriage was met with the predictable shrieks of protectionism from self-styled free-market pundits. Michael Strain, ensconced at the American Enterprise Institute, sounded the alarm in the Financial Times, claiming protectionism is “running amok” in the U.S.
That op-ed was singled out for approval by the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.
“Biden’s intervention in a single deal is itself a threat to economic liberty, the article said, adding that in a free society, the government should not attempt to blow up voluntary transactions between private parties,” the People’s Daily explained.
Note that when the People’s Daily starts nodding along and muttering about our economic liberty, it’s probably a sign that you have veered off in the wrong direction.
Those backing the steel deal are quick to slap opposition with the “protectionism” label, but that’s a word historically reserved for domestic big fish wanting to keep the international minnows out of their pond, padding their profits by hiding behind the shield of “saving American jobs.” In this case, it’s a peculiar reversal—U.S. Steel is trying to sell the farm, not fence it off. If we’re concerned about businesses twisting policy for anti-competitive gains, our antennas should be up right now.
U.S. Steel Doesn’t Need Japanese Capital or Technology
So, what are the supposed benefits of selling to Nippon Steel?
“Nippon’s acquisition of US Steel would benefit the economy broadly and the working class specifically,” Strain writes “The company intends to inject much-needed technology and capital into US Steel. This would raise the productivity of its workers, putting upward pressure on their wages and incomes, and potentially increasing employment opportunities and steel output.”
This does not make sense. The U.S. is not some small backwater economy in need of a jolt of foreign capital or technology. If there are investments that can improve productivity of U.S. Steel’s workers, those can be expected to be made by domestic sources of capital.
The fact that there are no non-illusory, publicly identifiable benefits to Nippon Steel’s ownership of U.S. Steel, either to the company or the broader U.S. economy, suggests that something more underhanded is occurring. The most likely candidate is that the acquisition is designed to benefit Japan’s manufacturing sector at the expense of the domestic U.S. manufacturing sector perhaps by blurring the lines between what is a U.S. company and what is a foreign company.
The Free Trade Masquerade
Here’s where free trade theory skids into the mud. It argues that society wins big while only a few inefficient producers lose out. In reverse, it suggests trade barriers are a cost spread thinly across the populace, with benefits for a select few.
Yet, by that logic, one would expect a fortress America, protected by high trade walls built by special interests. But that’s not the scene. The “free traders,” often wearing the garb of public benefactors, may very well be the real special interest wolves, reaping concentrated benefits while the costs scatter like dandelion seeds in the wind.
What goes under the banner of free trade is actually a special interest trade policy. The real protectionists—meaning, special interests looking to protect their profits at the expense of the rest of the economy— are the self-styled free traders.
More broadly, the U.S. economy is anything but a protectionist economy, as understood in the traditional sense.
“Protectionist economies are those in which manufacturing is subsidized through direct and indirect transfers from the household sector,” Michael Pettis, a professor of finance at Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management and co-author of Trade Wars are Class Wars, explained in a recent post on X.
Basically, a protectionist policy holds down domestic consumption by keeping out imports and sending domestic production abroad. This benefits the bottom line of the domestic producers partially at the expense of the household sector, just as the free traders claim. But the household sector also benefits from the additional income created by exports.
Of course, nothing is free. Someone has to pay for the subsidies. In a protectionist economy, Pettis points out, the costs of these subsidies are externalized in the form of persistent trade surpluses, with the result being that protectionist countries have weak domestic demand and a high manufacturing share of gross domestic product.
That’s obviously not the case in the United States. Manufacturing accounts for just 11 percent of GDP, far lower than the 17 percent of global GDP, according to Pettis’ calculations. Domestic demand is extremely strong, and we run a persistent trade deficit with the rest of the world. We do not have a protectionist policy, amok or otherwise. We are the enablers of protectionist policies of our trading “partners.”
In other words, our economy is shaped by protectionism and trade policies—just not ones set by our government. Our economy is forced to adjust to the trade policies of Tokyo, Beijing, or Frankfurt that are designed to subsidize their semiconductor, electric vehicle, consumer electronics, or other industries. We’re a policy-taker rather than a policymaker nation.
“That’s because in a globalized world, savings and investment, demand and supply, and surpluses and deficits always balance, so that trade and industrial policies that create distortions in one economy must also create the opposite distortions among their trading partners,” Pettis writes.
The crux of the matter is whether the stars and stripes will be the master of its own economic destiny, charting its course with the compass of American ingenuity, or if it will drift, rudderless, buffeted by the economic eddies and currents crafted by its trading partners with surplus-laden coffers.
To view online: https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2024/03/20/breitbart-business-digest-u-s-steel-forging-of-trade-policy/