Unleash Prosperity Hotline #985

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Unleash Prosperity Hotline
Issue #985
03/27/2024
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1) Biden’s Trust Busters Would REDUCE Credit Card Competition

It doesn’t get much dumber than this. The Biden Justice Department is blocking an attempt by Capital One bank to acquire the credit card company Discover. The regulators claim this will give Capital One too much power in the credit card industry.

Come again? Today two credit card companies dominate the industry: Visa and Mastercard – with about 80% of the market that now processes more than $5 trillion of retail and online transactions. There is nothing nefarious here: Visa and Mastercard are accepted almost everywhere, and they provide customer convenience, reward points, cash-back incentives, and so on, which shoppers love.

Discover is in a distant third place with about 8% of the market, just ahead of American Express.

Question: how can a bank’s acquisition of a company that controls less than 10% of the market be anti-competitive?

Capital One clearly hopes by marrying up with Discover they can give the two dominant players – Visa and Mastercard – a run for their money. And given Capital One’s vast financial resources, Discover may cut fees and interest rate charges to gain market share. Again: how is that anti-competitive?

Someone needs to tell the Biden regulators: If two major rivals compete, that’s good. If three do, that’s even better for consumers.

Rather than allowing more free-market competition in the industry, the Biden administration wants to impose credit card price controls. When and where have those EVER worked?

https://dailycaller.com/2024/03/24/stephen-moore-the-biden-administration-takes-a-swipe-at-credit-card-competition/

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2) Lockdown Enthusiasts Are Advising Biden on the Next Pandemic

Some of our readers scoffed when we warned in our new report “Covid Lessons Learned” that the Biden administration might try failed lockdowns again.

But sure enough, this week we discover that University of Edinburgh professor and zero-COVID devotee Devi Sridhar (who writes for the leftwing rag The Guardian), is advising Joe on how to deal with the next pandemic – or maybe even the next flu outbreak.

Sridhar boasts in her column yesterday that "President Joe Biden has been actively engaged in global health security, and his Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, invited several experts – including myself – to brief him directly on post-Covid-19 response."

Did Sridhar really just refer to herself as an “expert?” There are few health “experts” who were more wrong on COVID-19 than she was. Her apparent advice was this: "The strategic lesson from Covid-19 is to plan for maximum suppression of a new disease." This is a euphemism for militant lockdowns and violation of human rights.

We don’t know if Biden took to her advice, but just the fact that this half-wit was invited to the White House at all makes our spidey senses tingle.

Read our report here: https://committeetounleashprosperity.com/covid-lessons-learned/

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3) To Quickly Rebuild Baltimore Bridge – Call Ron DeSantis

President Biden is pledging to “move heaven and earth” to rebuild the collapsed Key Bridge in Baltimore Harbor. We hope he’s true to his word.

Unlike the Philadelphia freeway overpass that reopened to traffic in 12 days after an accident last year, the mile-long Key Bridge will have to be closed for weeks just to clear debris. Its replacement will need to occur while allowing ship traffic in and out of the busy Baltimore ports to proceed.

We can’t afford to see a replay of the fiasco in 1980 when a ship took down part of a bridge across Tampa Bay, and it took two years to file environmental impact statements and begin construction – which took five years to complete.

That can’t happen here. The Baltimore ports are critical to supply chains and the bridge collapse will mean long delays for the car and truck traffic along the northeast corridor – one of the busiest highway stretches in the country.

President Biden should waive environmental impact rules, Davis Bacon wage rules, and other building regulations to speed up the rebuilding process. Please, Mr. President, put someone in charge who knows something about managing a large operation and building things. That means no Pete Buttigieg.

We know the right person to call: Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida. He has (in a matter of a few weeks) rebuilt bridges that were destroyed by hurricanes.

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4) Is Biden Set to Mandate Electric Trains?

The EV mandate disaster was set in motion back in the Obama Administration when he granted California a waiver to set its own fuel economy standards.

California is now set to repeat the same play for rail, with a waiver application into the Biden administration that will let California set its own emission standards for locomotives that are designed to force electric locomotives to replace diesel.

Per the Washington Examiner:

Under California’s proposed rule, starting in 2030, no train older than 23 years may operate in the state. (Locomotives usually last 40 years.) Starting in 2030, half of all trains must be ”zero-emission” entirely, and by 2035, all trains must be.

Transitioning from diesel-powered trains to electric trains will be prohibitively expensive, which is why starting in 2026, California will require all train companies in the state to set aside almost a billion dollars each to fund an eventual transition to a battery-powered fleet…

The damage from California’s freight rail regulation would be immediate and devastating. First, trains do not switch when crossing state borders, so train fleets would be forced to update their entire fleet to make sure they complied with the ban on engines older than 23 years now.

Second, since almost all freight train companies operate in California, they would all be forced to start contributing almost a billion dollars a year to the mandatory transition fund. Since 40% of all long-haul freight traffic is delivered by train, this would mean immediate price increases for almost all consumers. Finally, since an operative commercially available prototype does not exist, every train company would face regulatory uncertainty as the 2030 and 2035 fleet mandates kicked in.

We’re all for federalism and letting states do pretty much whatever they want. But there is an interstate commerce clause in the Constitution and this California law clearly interferes with the free flow of interstate commerce.

This is interstate commerce...

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5) The Not-So Golden State Just Recorded the Worst Job Growth of Any State

Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom touts the continued health of his state’s tech industry as proof its economy is thriving.

But the rest of California’s economy is in the deep doldrums. New employment stats show its job growth slowed to only 0.87 percent last year – the worst rate in the nation and less than half the national rate. It’s the worst record in 30 years. Hit worst by the stagnation are the Blue-run cities of San Francisco (job loss of one percent) and Los Angeles, where job growth is a paltry 0.3 percent.

By contrast, Nevada and Florida’s growth rates were 3.4 percent with Texas just behind at 3.3 percent.

San Diego business columnist Jonathan Lansner warns the grim job news “should be a wake-up call to state leaders that…there’s plenty of lower-cost, high-quality competition that have proven to be viable options for bosses and workers.” If the last 30 years are any guide, the Golden State’s politicians will continue in a deep policy slumber while the state crumbles around them.

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6) Here’s the Untold Story Behind the Bridge Collapse

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