FREEDOMWORKS 11/14/2017 RED CROSS A SCAM?

1. Trump Calls for Individual Mandate Repeal Before House Vote on Tax Reform - via Washington Examiner

President Trump on Monday urged congressional Republicans to kill Obamacare's "unfair and highly unpopular" individual mandate in tax reform legislation that the House could vote on as early as this week.

"I am proud of the [Republican] House and Senate for working so hard on cutting taxes (and reform)," Trump tweeted Monday morning, a day before he returns from his 13-day trip to Asia. Read more here...

2. As Congress Debates Tax Reform, Don't be Deceived by Tax Myths About Kansas - via Washington Examiner

Opponents of federal income tax cuts besieging Congress with dire warnings about what happened in Kansas may not realize it, but they aren’t dealing in facts. Kansas does have budget problems, but that’s largely because legislators cut revenue and set new spending records. Every state provides the same basket of services, but those that do so at better prices can keep taxes lower. Kansas needed only to go from being morbidly inefficient to grossly inefficient to balance the budget, but legislators in both parties increased spending instead. Read more here...

3. Market Realities Have Finally Caught Up With a Floundering Red Cross - via RealClear Markets

A rhetorical question for readers of all economic classes: on a normal, disaster-free day, is the American Red Cross your go-to when you’re sick, hungry, lacking clothes, or in search of life’s necessities?

To some the mere question might smack of elitism, but it shouldn’t.  Figure that there are profit-motivated businesses of all kinds in the U.S., and that serve the needs of every income class. What’s crucial is that the good businesses, as in the businesses that enjoy relentlessly rising stock-market valuations, are the ones constantly pushing down the price of everything all the while making everything increasingly easy to attain. Read more here...

4. Trump Should Focus on Deregulation - via Reason

President Trump told The New York Times earlier this month that he was proud of his "focus on deregulation." Let's hope that focus doesn't turn out to be fake news.

In rolling back regulation, Trump is focusing on a real problem, Ira Stoll writes. And pruning back regulation doesn't have to be a partisan issue.

"The US Code of Federal Regulations—the annually published set of books containing all federal regulations currently in effect—contained 35.4 million words in 1970. A person could read the entire code in just a few days short of a year, assuming he or she read 250 words per minute, 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year," the Mercatus scholar wrote. Read more here...

5. The Significance of Sen. Al Franken's Call to Impose Net Neutrality on Google, Facebook and Amazon - via Competitive Enterprise Institute

Antitrust and technology market regulatory interventions are staging a comeback, even in the era of President Donald Trump's  push for broad regulatory rollbacks.

In a recent speech at an Open Markets Institute panel session called "Are Tech Giants Too Big For American Democracy?" Sen. Al Franken (D-Minnesota) had a surprise for big tech.

Not only does the Senator want to preserve government oversight over information flows in the form of regulated "net neutrality" for Internet service providers (the rules that Federal Communications Commission under Ajit Pai wishes to roll back); Franken also wants to extend the neutrality concept to content companies. Read more here...

Jason Pye
Vice President of Legislative Affairs, FreedomWorks