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Google, Europe, and How Antitrust Is Like Football
Tweet Share on Facebook May 23, 2013 CommentDavid Balto is a former policy director of the Federal Trade Commission, attorney-adviser to Chairman Robert Pitofsky, and antitrust lawyer at the U.S. Department of Justice. He has been a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and has worked with the International Center on Law and Economics, both of which receive funding from many organizations including Google. Mr. Balto has also published research and authored scholarship for Google on technology policy topics, but the opinions here are his own.
"Football" means two very different sports depending upon what side of the pond you are on. And in either sport you need to have a referee to make sure the game is fair, either team has a chance to win and spectators can enjoy the battle. We want a referee to be unobtrusive, to call penalties only when necessary, not favor any team and recognize the game is played best when there are no limits to competition.
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How the Private Sector Can Ease Memorial Day Traffic
Tweet Share on Facebook May 23, 2013 CommentR. Richard Geddes is an associate professor at Cornell University and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute where Brad Wassink researches domestic policy.
The AAA Memorial Day travel forecast released yesterday estimates that about 31 million Americans will drive 50 miles or more to reach their destinations this weekend.
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Apple is a Pioneer in Corporate Overseas Tax Avoidance
Tweet Share on Facebook May 23, 2013 CommentKenneth P. Thomas is professor of Political Science and fellow in the Center for International Studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He is the author of "Competing for Capital: Europe and North America in a Global Era" and "Investment Incentives and the Global Competition for Capital." He blogs at Middle Class Political Economist.
This week, the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a report on Apple (via Ars Technica) which shows how the company managed to amass $102 billion in offshore profits on which it is deferring taxes. As Ars Technica notes:
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Moore Tornado Shows Federal Disaster Aid Must Be Reformed
Tweet Share on Facebook May 22, 2013 CommentRyan Alexander is the president of Taxpayers for Common Sense.
The images and descriptions of the devastation caused by the tornados in Oklahoma are heartbreaking – dozens of people killed, homes destroyed and a community struggling to salvage what is left in the wake of the storm.
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Republicans Should Reconsider Mindless Consumer Bureau Obstruction
Tweet Share on Facebook May 21, 2013 CommentJim Lardner is the communications director at Americans for Financial Reform, a coalition of more than 250 civil rights, consumer, labor, business, investor and other groups working for a strong, stable and ethical financial system.
Forty–three Senators will soon get the chance to reconsider their assault on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They should take a moment, along with the rest of us, to look at what this agency – created after the financial meltdown of 2008 to set basic rules of the road for the banking and lending world – has done so far.
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Apple CEO Tim Cook's Corporate Tax Idea Would Increase Offshoring of Jobs
Tweet Share on Facebook May 21, 2013 CommentEileen Appelbaum is a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
A "territorial" tax system – in which overseas profits of U.S. corporations would be lightly taxed in the U.S. or not taxed at all – is likely to be the top tax reform proposal advocated by Apple CEO Tim Cook when he testifies before the Senate on Tuesday.
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The Federal Reserve Ignores Its Own Role in the Financial Crisis
Tweet Share on Facebook May 20, 2013 CommentSteven Horwitz is a Mercatus Center Affiliated Senior Scholar and the Charles A. Dana Professor of Economics and department chair at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY.
Since the financial meltdown in 2008, the Federal Reserve's range of powers have expanded, as have the kinds of financial institutions it monitors and regulates. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is now saying that the Fed's oversight has expanded beyond strictly financial institutions to wide swaths of the economy that might, in his words, provide evidence of "emerging vulnerabilities."
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The Problems With the Senate's Newest Farm Bill
Tweet Share on Facebook May 20, 2013 CommentPete Sepp is Executive Vice President for the 362,000-member National Taxpayers Union (ntu.org), a nonpartisan citizen group founded in 1969 to work for lower taxes and limited government at all levels.
Sooey! That old-fashioned farmer's call, meant to summon hogs to the trough, is also an appropriate warning signal for taxpayers and consumers, as Washington returns with a vengeance to its fiscally woeful work on a Farm Bill. This legislation, formally called the "Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act of 2013" in the U.S. Senate, is actually about much more than farming. In addition to traditional crop-related policies, incarnations of the bill have also contained a mishmash of subsidies for agribusinesses' advertising, payouts for nutrition programs and even costly alternative energy schemes.
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U.S. Trade Agreements Threaten Public Health and Freedom
Tweet Share on Facebook May 17, 2013 CommentDavid Brodwin is a cofounder and board member of American Sustainable Business Council. Follow him on Twitter at @davidbrodwin.
Let's face it: trade agreements bore most people.
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Facts Show Little SNAP Food Stamp Fraud or Abuse
Tweet Share on Facebook May 16, 2013 CommentChad Stone is chief economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
The House and Senate agriculture committees are holding hearings this week on reauthorizing SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as Food Stamps). We'll hear claims from some quarters that "waste, fraud, and abuse" and "explosive" growth in enrollment and benefit costs have produced a program bloated well beyond what's needed to serve the truly needy.
