U.S. Senate and Biden Administration Shamefully Renew and Expand FISA Section 702, Ushering in a Two Year Expansion of Unconstitutional Mass Surveillance

One week after it was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, the Senate has passed what Senator Ron Wyden has called, “one of the most dramatic and terrifying expansions of government surveillance authority in history.” President Biden then rushed to sign it into law.  

The perhaps ironically named “Reforming Intelligence and Security America Act (RISAA)” does everything BUT reform Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). RISAA not only reauthorizes this mass surveillance program, it greatly expands the government’s authority by allowing it to compel a much larger group of people and providers into assisting with this surveillance. The bill’s only significant “compromise” is a limited, two-year extension of this mass surveillance. But overall, RISAA is a travesty for Americans who deserve basic constitutional rights and privacy whether they are communicating with people and services inside or outside of the US.

Section 702 allows the government to conduct surveillance of foreigners abroad from inside the United States. It operates, in part, through the cooperation of large telecommunications service providers: massive amounts of traffic on the Internet backbone are accessed and those communications on the government’s secret list are copied. And that’s just one part of the massive, expensive program. 

While Section 702 prohibits the NSA and FBI from intentionally targeting Americans with this mass surveillance, these agencies routinely acquire a huge amount of innocent Americans’ communications “incidentally.” The government can then conduct backdoor, warrantless searches of these “incidentally collected” communications.

The government cannot even follow the very lenient rules about what it does with the massive amount of information it gathers under Section 702, repeatedly abusing this authority by searching its databases for Americans’ communications. In 2021 alone, the FBI reported conducting up to 3.4 million warrantless searches of Section 702 data using Americans’ identifiers. Given this history of abuse, it is difficult to understand how Congress could decide to expand the government’s power under Section 702 rather than rein it in.

One of RISAA’s most egregious expansions is its large but ill-defined increase of the range of entities that have to turn over information to the NSA and FBI. This provision allegedly “responds” to a 2023 decision by the FISC Court of Review, which rejected the government’s argument that an unknown company was subject to Section 702 for some circumstances. While the New York Times reports that the unknown company from this FISC opinion was a data center, this new provision is written so expansively that it potentially reaches any person or company with “access” to “equipment” on which electronic communications travel or are stored, regardless of whether they are a direct provider. This could potentially include landlords, maintenance people, and many others who routinely have access to your communications on the interconnected internet.

This is to say nothing of RISAA’s other substantial expansions. RISAA changes FISA’s definition of “foreign intelligence” to include “counternarcotics”: this will allow the government to use FISA to collect information relating to not only the “international production, distribution, or financing of illicit synthetic drugs, opioids, cocaine, or other drugs driving overdose deaths,” but also to any of their precursors. While surveillance under FISA has (contrary to what most Americans believe) never been limited exclusively to terrorism and counterespionage, RISAA’s expansion of FISA to ordinary crime is unacceptable.

RISAA also allows the government to use Section 702 to vet immigrants and those seeking asylum. According to a FISC opinion released in 2023, the FISC repeatedly denied government attempts to obtain some version of this authority, before finally approving it for the first time in 2023. By formally lowering Section 702’s protections for immigrants and asylum seekers, RISAA exacerbates the risk that government officials could discriminate against members of these populations on the basis of their sexuality, gender identity, religion, or political beliefs.

Faced with massive pushback from EFF and other civil liberties advocates, some members of Congress, like Senator Ron Wyden, raised the alarm. We were able to squeeze out a couple of small concessions. One was a shorter reauthorization period for Section 702, meaning that the law will be up for review in just two more years. Also, in a letter to Congress, the Department of Justice claimed it would only interpret the new provision to apply to the type of unidentified businesses at issue in the 2023 FISC opinion. But a pinky promise from the current Department of Justice is not enforceable and easily disregarded by a future administration. There is some possible hope here, because Senator Mark Warner promised to return to the provision in a later defense authorization bill, but this whole debacle just demonstrates how Congress gives the NSA and FBI nearly free rein when it comes to protecting Americans – any limitation that actually protects us (and here the FISA Court actually did some protecting) is just swept away.

RISAA’s passage is a shocking reversal—EFF and our allies had worked hard to put together a coalition aimed at enacting a warrant requirement for Americans and some other critical reforms, but the NSA, FBI and their apologists just rolled Congress with scary-sounding (and incorrect) stories that a lapse in the spying was imminent. It was a clear dereliction of Congress’s duty to oversee the intelligence community in order to protect all of the rest of us from its long history of abuse.

After over 20 years of doing it, we know that rolling back any surveillance authority, especially one as deeply entrenched as Section 702, is an uphill fight. But we aren’t going anywhere. We had more Congressional support this time than we’ve had in the past, and we’ll be working to build that over the next two years.

Too many members of Congress (and the Administrations of both parties) don’t see any downside to violating your privacy and your constitutional rights in the name of national security. That needs to change.

U.S. Senate and Biden Administration Shamefully Renew and Expand FISA Section 702, Ushering in a Two Year Expansion of Unconstitutional Mass Surveillance

Economists Are Roasting Biden’s ‘Incoherent’ Inflation Tweet—and for Good Reason

President Joe Biden’s approval rating is tanking, and he’s now trailing former President Donald Trump in national polls, as well as in some key swing states .

Vox blames the economy for Biden’s plunging popularity — or at least voters’ perception of the economy. A new Gallup poll shows that just 32% of people approve of Biden’s handling of the economy.

To combat the narrative that Biden’s policies are to blame, the White House has gone on the offensive, attacking billionaires and blaming corporations for the economic pain the public is experiencing.

“Let me be clear to any corporation that hasn’t brought their prices back down even as inflation has come down: It’s time to stop the price gouging,” Biden tweeted . “Give American consumers a break.”

It’s a strange line of attack for several reasons, but the most glaring one is that it’s entirely devoid of economic sense, something University of Michigan economics professor Justin Wolfers observed on X.

“This is not only incoherent; it’s unhelpful,” Wolfers, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Brookings Institution, said of Biden’s tweet. “It’s incoherent because lower inflation is cause for firms to moderate their price hikes, rather than cut prices. It’s unhelpful because the only path back to earlier price levels is deflation, which comes with massive economic pain.”

Melissa S. Kearney, an economics professor at the University of Maryland, responded with a face-palm emoji.

“I’m guessing the economists weren’t consulted on this one,” Kearney deadpanned.

The obvious fact the Biden White House missed is that while inflation might be slowing, it’s still positive, which means prices are still increasing — and at a clip much faster than the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%. That companies would cut prices amid a general rise in consumer prices defies economic sense.

A second problem with Biden’s tweet is that he points the finger at companies for inflation that stems from the government’s policies. In one of his most famous lectures, the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises pointed out that inflation is just that: a policy .

And if we look at recent U.S. monetary policy, it’s clear why people are suffering from inflation.

Over a four-year period, the Fed increased the M2 money supply from $14 trillion to $22 trillion at its height in the summer of 2022, an increase of more than 50% in just four years.

The M2 money supply has fallen slightly, to $21 trillion, due to tighter Fed policy, but it is still significantly above pre-pandemic levels.

This is the cause of price inflation, and one need only look at the Fed’s description of what causes inflation to confirm this.

“Inflation is caused when the money supply in an economy grows at a faster rate than the economy’s ability to produce goods and services,” the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis states on its “ Money and Inflation ” resource page.

The obvious question is: If printing money causes inflation, why are we doing it?

The Fed has long claimed that inflation is just the price we must pay to keep unemployment low, but using monetary policy to fight unemployment has always been problematic. It’s true that there is, generally, an inverse relationship between unemployment and inflation, as demonstrated by the Phillips curve . When inflation rises, unemployment falls and vice versa — at first.

This relationship weakens over time , however, which is why some astute economists, including the Nobel Prize-winner F. A. Hayek , believed that using monetary policy to curb unemployment would inevitably result in higher and higher inflation, as central banks would have to print more and more money to maintain low unemployment.

We’ve seen this phenomenon play out in numerous countries in recent history, including Argentina , where inflation is above 140%. Despite Argentina’s high inflation, its unemployment rate has averaged about 8.5% over the last decade. In other words, Argentina has high inflation and high unemployment, just as the United States did in the 1970s.

Managing unemployment might be the stated reason for inflationary policy, but the actual reason seems to be something else: It facilitates government spending. As the Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman and others have pointed out, inflation is a tax.

Taxes are what facilitate government spending, and once one grasps that inflation is a tax, the inflation picture becomes clear. Inflation is caused by expanding the money supply, but the impetus behind the money printing is government spending.

Politicians can’t admit this, of course. So they concoct ridiculous economic arguments that blame companies for the very inflation their policies cause.

This article originally appeared on The Washington Examiner. 

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Editor at Large of FEE.org at FEE.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Economists Are Roasting Biden’s ‘Incoherent’ Inflation Tweet—and for Good Reason

Ivy League Analysis Destroys Biden’s Entire Argument for Multi-Trillion-Dollar ‘Build Back Better’ Spending Plans

President Biden continues to fight to pass some version of his multi-trillion-dollar “Build Back Better” spending agenda through Congress. In its various iterations, the plan includes trillions spent on everything from electric vehicle tax credits and green energy subsidies to taxpayer-funded childcare-for-all to housing subsidies and more. The Biden administration claims that the latest version would involve $1.85 trillion in new spending. 

The president has made lofty promises about what we’d get in exchange for such a historic investment. (After all, that price tag is more than the inflation-adjusted cost of FDR’s New Deal!)  

“[This is] a framework that will create millions of jobs, grow the economy, invest in our nation and our people, turn the climate crisis into an opportunity, and put us on a path not only to compete, but to win the economic competition for the 21st century against China and every other major country in the world,” Biden said in a recent speech. “It’s fiscally responsible. It’s fully paid for.”

“For much too long, the working people of this nation and the middle class of this country have been dealt out of the American deal, and it’s time to deal them back in,” he continued. “If we make these investments, there will be no stopping the American people or America. We will own the future.” 

Simply put, Biden argues that his plan to spend trillions will create jobs, grow the economy, and increase wages—all without adding to the $28.9 trillion (and counting) national debt. Yet a new Ivy League economic analysis undercuts every single one of these claims. 

Analysts at the Wharton School of Business reviewed President Biden’s latest $1.85 trillion framework proposal and ran the numbers to project its likely economic impacts, under two distinct scenarios. One is the rather unrealistic scenario where it actually only costs $1.85 trillion. Yet because the proposal is structured with many budget gimmicks and short-term spending authorizations that would likely be reauthorized if implemented, its real cost could be as much as $4.25 trillion. Wharton also modeled the likely impact of this scenario. 

In the first case, where the president’s plans cost only what he claims, the analysis still finds his promises falling short on nearly all counts. The tax increases included would not, in fact, pay for the entire proposal, and it would lead to a 2 percent increase in government debt over the long run. (That might sound small, but it’s hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars!) And, while Wharton projects that wages would increase slightly, it finds that the overall economy would shrink, not grow, while business investment and hours worked would decline. 

Erm… how’s that revitalizing America? And those dismal results are under Biden’s rosy assumptions. Under the more realistic scenario where spending provisions are accurately accounted for and the real cost is north of $4 trillion, the investment’s return is even more spectacularly awful.  

Government debt would increase by 25 percent over 30 years—that’s trillions and trillions in new spending that is not, in fact, paid for. The economy would shrink—not grow—nearly 3 percent over this timeline compared to the baseline, while wages would decline 1.5 percent and hours worked would fall 1.3 percent. 

It’s easy to see why government spending could have these meager results. Proponents of big government spending, like Joe Biden, focus solely on the purported benefits of their plans.

Yet every dollar spent somewhere must ultimately, directly or indirectly, come from somewhere else in the economy. The resources invested by the government in one area are, by definition, resources that would have been invested somewhere else by the private sector. 

The tax hikes to partially fund the spending discourage work and tax away money that would have otherwise been invested. The debt incurred to partially fund the spending “crowds out” resources available for private sector investment. It’s not just a wash, either. In taking resources that would have been allocated via market signals and instead allocating them based on politics, government redistribution generally leads to net economic losses. 

As Ludwig von Mises famously put it, “The government and its chiefs do not have the powers of the mythical Santa Claus. They cannot spend except by taking out of the pockets of some people for the benefit of others.” 

It’s with the reality of trade-offs in mind that the Wharton analysis is able to reliably predict the negative impacts of Biden’s plans. 

This analysis is nothing short of devastating for the president’s plans. Biden wants to confiscate and spend trillions of our taxpayer dollars and is promising us the world in return for this investment. But Ivy League analysts and basic economic principles alike expose how empty those promises really are.

WATCH: TikTok’s 5 Worst $15 Minimum Wage Arguments (DEBUNKED)

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Brad Polumbo

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a libertarian-conservative journalist and Policy Correspondent at the Foundation for Economic Education.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Ivy League Analysis Destroys Biden’s Entire Argument for Multi-Trillion-Dollar ‘Build Back Better’ Spending Plans

Biden Administration’s New ‘Woke’ Corporate Disclosure Rules Will Cost Companies Billions, Experts Warn

Under the Biden administration’s leadership, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has proposed new “woke” corporate disclosure rules. A new form of social-justice-based financial regulation, the federal agency’s rules would mandate that companies track, report, and disclose a wide array of data on issues such as climate change emissions and diversity. 

This might poll well or look nice at first glance. But like any complex federal regulation, the woke reporting rules will have many unintended consequences—namely, they’ll cost businesses billions.

“Business groups are trying to calculate just how much money public companies might have to shell out to comply with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s planned new ‘woke’ corporate disclosure rules, and initial estimates aren’t pretty,” Fox Business reports. “While no exact estimate can be determined, the SEC’s new disclosure mandates involving everything from the environment to board diversity is likely to cost U.S. public companies well into the billions of dollars.” 

The goal of the SEC regulation is to promote environmentalism and racial equality, with regulators likely having good intentions. But they are either unable or unwilling to foresee the adverse consequences that could accompany this virtue-signaling effort.

Heritage Foundation senior fellow David R. Burton, a specialist in tax and financial regulation, laid out the many ways these rules will likely backfire in a letter to the SEC. 

He agreed that “requiring all public companies to develop climate modeling expertise, the ability to make macroeconomic projections based on these models and then make firm-specific economic assessments based on these climate and economic models will be expensive,” likely costing billions.  

The result? 

“These expenses would harm investors by reducing shareholder returns,” Burton explained. This means it’s not just Big Business, but the millions of Americans who invest in the stock market or rely on it for their retirement, who could bear the costs. 

Burton further warns that these woke disclosure rules would result in “the creation of a new compliance eco-system and pro-complexity lobby composed of the economists, accountants, attorneys and compliance officers that live off of [regulatory compliance].” Simply put, they would even further entrap firms into wasting money on red tape compliance costs. 

The Heritage expert also added that the rules would fuel a huge rise in costly litigation.

Meanwhile, it’s unclear what, if anything, the SEC’s woke disclosure mandates would accomplish—beyond merely virtue-signaling, of course. 

"This whole ESG thing is just one giant waste of time and money," said Chris Whalen, chief of Whalen Global Advisors. "It’s just a big show that only benefits the consultants and the lawyers who are making money off of this.”

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Brad Polumbo

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a libertarian-conservative journalist and Policy Correspondent at the Foundation for Economic Education.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Biden Administration’s New ‘Woke’ Corporate Disclosure Rules Will Cost Companies Billions, Experts Warn

Biden Says ‘Generous’ Unemployment Benefits Not Responsible for Biggest Jobs Report Miss in History. He’s Wrong

Following a dismal April jobs report, President Joe Biden took to the podium Monday to defend his administration’s economic policies.

“There’s been a lot of discussion since Friday’s report that people are being paid to stay home rather than go to work," Biden said. “We don’t see much evidence of that.”

A US employment report released Friday showed the economy added just 266,000 jobs in April, down substantially from the 770,000 jobs added in March and about one quarter of what forecasters had predicted.

“Economists were hoping for a figure roughly 1 million jobs larger,” Axios reported, “making this the biggest miss, relative to expectations, in the history of the payrolls report.”

Bloomberg writer Mohamed A. El-Erian, an economic adviser at Allianz SE, said the report constituted “the biggest data miss on record.”

Paid More to Not Work?

The jobs miss comes two months after Biden signed into law a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package that included a six-month expansion of federal unemployment benefits, which pay unemployed workers an additional $300 per week on top of their state unemployment benefits.

These increased benefits mean in many cases people make less money returning to work, which economists warned prior to passage of the legislation would create a disincentive for workers to return to the labor force.

“Expanding unemployment benefits during a recession has a predictable result: slower employment recovery,” Texas Tech economist Alex Salter told FEE in February. “We should be helping people get back to work—not making it more financially attractive to stay home.”

This is precisely what the Biden administration did, however. The results have been a weak economic recovery and a record labor shortage. For some, like Larry and Roxane Maggio, who ran a deli in New Jersey for a decade, the labor shortage has proven fatal to their business.

“We just can’t find anyone to work,” the Maggios recently told The Philadelphia Inquirer, as they prepared their final catering orders at Ludovico’s.

The Maggios’s experience is not unique. The weak jobs report, the New York Times notes, is an indication the labor shortage business owners have been describing is quite real.

“These numbers are consistent with the story many business leaders are telling, of severe labor shortages — that demand has surged back but employers cannot find enough workers to fulfill it,” writes senior economics correspondent Neil Irwin.

Biden, however, is reluctant to admit that the dismal April jobs report stems from the government’s “generous unemployment benefits.”

“Americans want to work,” Biden told reporters. “As my dad used to say, a job is about a lot more than a paycheck. It’s about your dignity.”

A Case of Perverse Incentives

Biden’s father was not wrong that employment is about much more than a paycheck. I’ve pointed this out myself.

My first job, a groundskeeper on a golf course, paid me $5 an hour—which doesn't sound like much. But the job offered me much more than compensation. It taught me how to get up really early and punch a time clock on time, and how to drive a stick-shift and operate light machinery. I received a crash course in landscaping, learned how to take orders, and execute directions. I even managed to improve my slice (just a little) while working there that summer.

It was one of the most rewarding and important jobs of my life, but it would not have happened if someone had said I could make more money by not showing up at 5:30 a.m. each day and working under the hot sun for eight hours. It wasn’t that I was lazy. It’s just that you can’t expect people to go to work for less money than they’d be getting to stay at home. Incentives matter.

Indeed one of the first lessons in economics is that if you tax something, you get less of it. If you subsidize something, you get more of it. This is why economists warn lawmakers must be especially careful about what types of behavior they subsidize.

"You cannot subsidize irresponsibility and expect people to become more responsible," the economist Thomas Sowell has observed.

It’s not complicated stuff. This is why it was obvious to economists from Salter to Lawrence Summers, who served in the Clinton and Obama administrations, predicted that Biden’s juiced unemployment benefits would have negative consequences.

They were right, and those consequences are becoming visible now.

The best thing the Biden administration could do is call a special session and terminate the perverse incentives that are causing people to choose unemployment over work. This is unlikely to happen, however, because it violates the first rule in politics: never admit a mistake.

Fortunately, thanks to federalism, some states are taking matters into their own hands. South Carolina, Arkansas, and Montana, recently fully opted out of the federal unemployment benefit program.

"Continuing these programs until the planned expiration date of September 4, 2021, is not necessary and actually interferes with the ability of employers to fill over 40,000 job vacancies in Arkansas," Gov. Asa Hutchinson wrote in a letter.

Turning away federal money is not an easy thing to do, but it is the proper course.

Joe Biden’s father was right. Work isn’t just about a paycheck; it offers dignity and more, which is precisely why we should reject policies that discourage it.

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune.

Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times. 

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Biden Says ‘Generous’ Unemployment Benefits Not Responsible for Biggest Jobs Report Miss in History. He’s Wrong

Biden’s ‘Green’ Infrastructure Plan Would Actually Hurt the Environment, Top Economist Warns

President Biden’s multi-trillion-dollar “infrastructure” proposal is about a lot more than traditional transportation infrastructure. In some ways, it’s a light version of the Green New Deal, including $10 billion to create a “Civilian Climate Corps,” $20 billion for “racial equity and environmental justice,” $175 billion for electric vehicle subsidies, and even money to make school lunches “greener.”

But one prominent economist is warning that the supposedly “green” plan would actually backfire and leave the global environment worse off. In a new analysis, Mercatus Center Senior Research Fellow Veronique de Rugy argues that the plan would lead to more pollution because it would push economic activity abroad to poorer countries with lower standards.

“Higher income taxes on top of the many costly labor and environmental mandates in the bill would… raise production costs in the United States,” she writes. “That would shift production of many products to other countries that have more competitive tax rates and lower production costs—but also, oftentimes, questionable environmental standards.”

In this way, Biden’s multi-trillion-dollar green spending boondoggle could actually lead to higher carbon emissions and more pollution. Moreover, an Ivy League analysis found that this plan would reduce economic growth in the long run—and growth is the key to a clean environment.   

“Ultimately, we know that the best green policy is the prosperity made possible only by economic growth,” de Rugy concludes. “The wealthier we are, the more we can afford to attend to the environment. Unfortunately, the Biden administration's preferred path of more taxes, and more politically motivated spending and regulations will not just make us financially poorer; it also comes at a high cost for the environment.”

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Brad Polumbo

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a libertarian-conservative journalist and Policy Correspondent at the Foundation for Economic Education.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Biden’s ‘Green’ Infrastructure Plan Would Actually Hurt the Environment, Top Economist Warns

Biden’s $2 Trillion Infrastructure Plan Is Loaded With Corporate Welfare

President Biden has just unveiled a new $2.3 trillion “infrastructure” plan, but a shockingly large portion of this bill is actually unrelated to infrastructure.

The plan includes massive subsidies for corporations as well as state and local governments, and comes right after the administration’s proposed increase in the corporate tax rate, which would raise the rate from 21 percent to 28 percent.

There’s $300 billion for manufacturing, $100 billion for electric utilities, $100 billion for broadband, $174 billion for electric vehicles, and a whole lot more. A significant portion of this spending is directed at subsidizing big corporations.

What the plan overlooks is that corporations are already investing heavily in the industries they aim to subsidize. For example, companies like Tesla and Volkswagen have invested billions into developing electric automobiles and charging infrastructure. Biden’s plan would aim to influence consumer spending decisions through the creation of further incentives for such vehicles. In other words, these companies would see their profits boosted as a result of artificially increased demand. The same goes for Verizon and T-Mobile that have invested in broadband, and Mitsubishi and Siemens that have invested in wind energy.

Subsidizing multi-billion dollar corporations and pumping up their profits is corporate welfare, not an infrastructure plan. The private sector built hundreds of thousands of gas stations across the country, and if there is demand for it, they will do the same with charging stations for EVs. A federal takeover of business investment decisions in this manner will inevitably have repercussions.

The Biden administration has included $100 billion to “decarbonize” the US electric grid, essentially eliminating coal and natural gas, alongside $213 billion for affordable housing and $400 billion to bolster home health-care. Despite President Biden’s push for bipartisanship, partisan political spending runs through his plan.

This plan comes on the heels of Biden's proposed corporate tax hikes.

The current administration is betting that damage caused by jacking up taxes will be outweighed by the massive amount of federal spending in this proposal. As the president of the Tax Foundation, Scott A. Hodge put it, “Based on CBO’s (Congressional Budget Office) assessment of the economic and budgetary effects of federal investment, there is no reason to believe that the economy will be better off with such a trade.”

The CBO estimates that $2 trillion in federal spending will yield about $1.3 trillion in actual investment. Since government investment only results in half the returns of private investment, we would be much better off if the $2 trillion in corporate tax increases that Biden needs to fund this plan were left in the hands of the private sector.

This plan would be a massive circular flow of revenue with increased corporate taxes funding subsidies for large companies, ultimately decreasing investment and long term capital formation. As federal spending increases to unprecedented levels, state and local governments become nothing more than the administrators of a giant national government.

Bureaucracies are notoriously and inherently inefficient, the economist Ludwig von Mises has pointed out.

“It is a widespread illusion that the effi­ciency of government bureaus could be improved by management engineers and their methods of scientific management. . . . What they call deficiencies and faults of the management of administrative agencies are necessary properties. A bureau is not a profit-seeking enterprise; it cannot make use of any economic calculation. . . . It is out of the question to improve its management by reshaping it ac­cording to the pattern of private business."

Expanding bureaucracy will only exacerbate these effects. The expenses and delays involved in collecting trillions of dollars in additional corporate taxes, running them through Washington and eventually using them to finance countless programs only serve as further discouragement against pursuing such a plan.

Overall, a thorough analysis of this proposal reveals that it would ultimately do more harm than good. In addition to the high levels of political spending and unnecessary intervention in business investment decisions, this plan would be a burden on the economy, reducing investment, growth, and prosperity over the long run.

Aadi Golchha

Aadi Golchha is the author of "The Socialist Trap: How the Leftist Utopia Will Destroy America" and an independent political analyst.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Biden’s $2 Trillion Infrastructure Plan Is Loaded With Corporate Welfare

Biden Administration Argues for Warrantless Home Entry and Gun Seizures Before the Supreme Court a Year After Breonna Taylor’s Death

In a case argued before the US Supreme Court on Wednesday, the Biden Administration, along with attorneys general from nine states, submitted arguments asking the justices to uphold warrantless home entry and gun confiscation by police.

The case stems from a domestic dispute between an elderly married couple, Edward and Kim Caniglia. After an intense argument between the two that led to Edward dramatically telling his wife to shoot him with one of his handguns, Kim left the home to spend the night in a hotel. The next day she was unable to reach her husband and became concerned.

She reached out to police for a wellness check and an escort back to the home. But upon their arrival, police manipulated Edward into a psychiatric evaluation even though officers admitted in their incident report that he “seemed normal” and “was calm for the most part.” The police officers then lied to Mrs. Caniglia and told her Mr. Caniglia agreed to confiscation of his weapons. Even though Edwards was promptly released from the hospital, he was only able to regain his property after filing a civil rights lawsuit.

How Are Warrantless Seizures Okay?

Police in the case relied upon a narrow exception to the Fourth Amendment called “community caretaking.” This exception is a half-century old Supreme Court-created doctrine designed for cases involving impounded cars and highway safety. Essentially it was meant to give law enforcement a legal way to remove cars from the side of the interstate or clear wrecks.

While the First Circuit US Court of Appeals acknowledged the doctrine’s reach outside the context of motor vehicles is “ill-defined,” it upheld the arguments in this case and allowed the exception to extend to private homes. In its finding the Court states that this exception is “designed to give police elbow room to take appropriate action.”

But attorneys for Caniglia argue that extending the community caretaking exception to private homes would be an assault on the Fourth Amendment and would grant police a blank check to intrude upon the home.

An amicus brief filed by the ACLU, the Cato Institute, and the American Conservative Union agreed with the attorneys and pointed to jurisdictions that have extended such provisions leading to warrantless invasions of homes for things like loud music or leaky pipes.

Potential Problems

One does not need to have a long memory to understand exactly how such permissions could go awry. For anyone who has paid attention to the news cycle over the past year, it is jarring to see a Democratic administration argue for warrantless home entry and gun seizures merely one year after Breonna Taylor’s death.

Taylor was killed in her home by police after a no-knock entry (tied to a falsified warrant) led to cops spraying her apartment (and surrounding ones) with bullets. Taylor’s boyfriend, believing the home was being broken into by criminals during the middle of the night, fired in defense and was originally charged in the case (all charges were later dropped and he is suing the department).

The case created a national firestorm that elevated conversations around Second Amendment rights and self-defense, no-knock warrants, Fourth Amendment protections, and the need for policing reform and accountability. If such atrocities occurred under our current laws, it is pretty scary to imagine what law enforcement might get away with should the Biden administration get its way in this case.

Such arguments before the Supreme Court show that for many progressives their admirable instinct to restrict police power quickly goes out the window when they see an opportunity to chip away at gun rights.

This is severely misguided. A cursory overlook of the justice system’s operations reveals that the expansion of police powers almost always impacts marginalized communities more harshly— communities the Democrats claim to stand for.

In a 2016 speech on the senate floor, Senator Tim Scott (R, SC) spoke about his own experience with racial bias in policing as a black man in this country. “In the course of one year, I’ve been stopped seven times by law enforcement,” Scott said. “Not four, not five, not six, but seven times in one year as an elected official.”

There is no reason to think that an extension of the community care exception would not have the same effect on communities of color.

To cite just one study out of hundreds, the US Sentencing Commission found that when it comes to federal gun crimes, black people are more likely to be arrested, more likely to get longer sentences for similar crimes, and more likely to get sentencing enhancements. If the Supreme Court upholds the administration’s argument, it is not difficult to predict which communities will be impacted the most by this new expansion.

Progressives are not the only ones experiencing a disconnect in principles at the moment either. Many Republicans were surprised in recent months to see police departments readily enforce unconstitutional lockdowns—carting business owners off to jail and fining law-abiding people who simply wanted to go to work. Likely, the majority on the right will be aghast at the arguments presented in this case and their clear violation of both our Second and Fourth Amendment rights. But it should not escape them who is arguing for these violations, nor who would ultimately enforce them.

In another amicus brief filed by the public interest litigation giant, the Institute for Justice, attorneys argued “The Fourth Amendment protects our right to be secure in our property, which means the right to be free from fear that the police will enter your house without warning or authorization. A rule that allows police to burst into your home without a warrant whenever they feel they are acting as ‘community caretakers’ is a threat to everyone’s security.”

The Breonna Taylor case should have been a turning point in our nation’s history and spurred legislation that would strengthen and uphold our essential individual rights and restrict police power. Many hoped it would be the final straw that brought an end to egregious practices like no-knock warrants. Instead, despite much public outcry and demand, we continue to see politicians on both sides of the aisle push for increased police power and an erosion of our right to be secure in our homes and our property.

Former Congressman Justin Amash (L-MI) said protection from warrantless searches is central to the Bill of Rights.

“The warrant requirement isn’t optional; it’s at the heart of the Fourth Amendment,” Amash told FEE. “Treating the Fourth Amendment as though it flatly permits searches and seizures that seem ‘reasonable’ in the eyes of government officials, regardless of whether a warrant has been obtained, drains it of its purpose: protecting the right of the people to be secure in their persons and property.”

Make no mistake, this is among the most appalling attacks on our fundamental rights and way of life currently occurring. It is an attack on property rights, on our right to self-defense, and on our right to privacy, and if it is allowed there will be gross violations of individuals as a repercussion.

It is vitally important to remember that police brutality is a direct consequence of a government that has grown too big and powerful. The more power we give to the government and its agents, the more prone it is to abuse. It’s time we address the root cause of the problem and put the government back in its place.

Hannah Cox

Hannah Cox is a libertarian-conservative writer, commentator, and activist. She's a Newsmax Insider and a Contributor to The Washington Examiner.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Biden Administration Argues for Warrantless Home Entry and Gun Seizures Before the Supreme Court a Year After Breonna Taylor’s Death

Wharton Study Warns Biden’s Expensive ‘Stimulus’ Plan Will Hurt Economy in the Long Term

President Biden is hitting the road and traveling across the country to pitch his $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus and relief spending proposal to voters.

The legislation includes $1,400 relief checks, a further six-month expansion of “temporary” super-generous unemployment benefits that often pay more than work, $350 billion for bailouts for state and local governments, partisan provisions like a federal $15 minimum wage, and much more. Economists interviewed by FEE warned the package was an “economically unjustified” plan that “incentivizes unemployment.”

Yet with his road trip and ongoing lobbying efforts, Biden hopes to persuade voters and members of Congress that his stimulus proposal is necessary for long-term economic recovery. But a new Ivy League analysis suggests the opposite. 

Scholars at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business analyzed the plan and found that the massive spending splurge—which costs roughly $13,260 per federal taxpayer—would only cause a “slight uptick” in economic growth in 2021. The analysts warned that this minor boost would just be “instant gratification,” and that the skyrocketing government debt caused by the blowout legislation would undermine any gains in the medium-to-long term.

“The existence of the debt saps the rest of the economy,” Wharton analyst Efraim Berkovich said. “When the government is running budget deficits, the money that could have gone to productive investment is redirected.” 

“Effectively, what we’re doing is taking money from [some] people and giving it to other people for consumption purposes,” he continued. “That has value for social safety nets and redistributive benefits, but longer-term, you’re taking away from the capital that we need to grow our economy in the future.”

Biden’s costly plan would explode the national debt. This, per Wharton, would lead to a “crowding out” effect over the coming years as more loan money is taken away from productive business/private sector investments and instead consumed by government debt. 

As a result, the analysts find that workers would see a small decline—not an increase—in their hourly wages by 2022 and a slightly larger decline in their hourly wages by 2040. In 2022, the overall number of hours worked would actually fall due to the plan. 

So, Wharton concludes, Biden’s spending binge would actually lead to a smaller economy in 2022. How’s that for “stimulus?”

And we must also consider the other elements of Biden’s plan that would sabotage the economic recovery, like the inclusion of a federal $15 minimum wage. This partisan provision would eliminate millions of jobs, devastate struggling small businesses, and lead to higher consumer prices.

You might be wondering: Why would anyone support a stimulus effort that offers only small short-term gain in exchange for long-term economic detriment? It’s due to a common flaw in policy thinking that focuses on the seen benefits while ignoring the unseen costs.

Famed economist Frédéric Bastiat discussed this fatal flaw of policymaking in his essay "What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen in Political Economy.”

“[A] law gives birth not only to an effect but to a series of effects,” Bastiat wrote. Only the first effect is foreseen by naive policymakers who fall victim to this fallacy, while the many second-order consequences remain unseen.

“It almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favourable, the ultimate consequences are fatal, and the converse,” he wrote. “Hence it follows that the bad economist pursues a small present good, which will be followed by a great evil to come, while the true economist pursues a great good to come—at the risk of a small present evil.”

It’s fair to say that in this case, the president is thinking like a bad economist. (Or a good politician). 

Biden knows that the short-term benefits of his proposal—like $1,400 checks in many peoples’ mailboxes—will be seen and felt by millions of voters who will directly credit him for it. (His name will even be on the checks). Yet the vast and diffuse costs imposed on people by the plan over time will most likely never be directly traced back to the legislation itself, instead observed only by economists and analysts who parse broad economic data and trends. 

So, Biden’s proposed stimulus can simultaneously be an economic net-negative and a political winner. And, unfortunately, many of our politicians won’t mind the tradeoff—because the only loser in this political bargain is the average American citizen.

Brad Polumbo

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a libertarian-conservative journalist and Opinion Editor at the Foundation for Economic Education.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Wharton Study Warns Biden’s Expensive ‘Stimulus’ Plan Will Hurt Economy in the Long Term

Economists Slam Biden Stimulus as ‘Economically Unjustified’ Plan That ‘Incentivizes Unemployment’

President Biden has abandoned bipartisan compromise and pushed full-steam-ahead to pass his entire sweeping $1.9 trillion COVID-19 spending package. The president’s proposal includes $1,400 “stimulus” checks for more Americans, $350 billion to bail out state and local governments, a renewal of super-charged unemployment benefits through September, money for vaccine distribution, a federal $15 minimum wage, and much, much more. Democrats in Congress are determined to mark up the bill over the next few weeks and pass it by early March.

But the state of the economy doesn’t support this spending bonanza—not even close. 

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is projecting a “rapid” resurgence in economic growth and a slower but steady return to pre-pandemic employment levels without any further stimulus. (We’ve already spent an astounding $4 trillion). And top free-market economists interviewed exclusively by FEE all argued that Biden’s drive for more massive stimulus is driven by politics, not sound economics.

Expanding unemployment benefits during a recession has a predictable result: slower employment recovery.

“We absolutely don't need another multi-trillion dollar stimulus,” Texas Tech economics professor Alex Salter said. “We've already spent $4 trillion fighting COVID since last year. Lack of spending isn't our problem. Government should spend more on producing and distributing the vaccine, and otherwise get out of the way.”

Meanwhile, economist Stephen Moore of FreedomWorks argued that government spending can actually be a negative for the economy, because the money has to come from somewhere else. 

“Helicopter money merely redistributes wealth—it does not create it,” he said. “We don't need this extra stimulus.”

Moore, who served as a top economic advisor for former President Trump, compared the Biden effort to similar stimulus bonanzas under the Obama administration, which resulted in the slowest economic recovery since the Great Depression.

“We learned from the Obama $830 billion "shovel ready" plan that Keynesian stimulus does not work,” Moore said. “Obama’s own numbers indicate that we ended up with fewer jobs than if we had done nothing at all to ‘stimulate’ the economy.” 

Another prominent free-market economist, Mises Institute Senior Fellow Robert P. Murphy, offered a similar assessment. He called the Biden proposal “economically unjustified” and suggested that “any of its good features could be achieved more directly through other policies.”

The $400 a week unemployment benefit bonus included in the proposed bill incentivizes unemployment because it pays people not to work.

The economists interviewed by FEE took issue with not just the Biden plan’s massive spending levels and sticker price, but also several of its specific proposals such as more “stimulus” checks and the further expansion of ultra-generous unemployment benefits—originally sold as “temporary” last March—that would result in many Americans earning more money by not working, thereby disincentivizing employment.  

“More checks don't make sense,” Salter, the Texas Tech economist, said. “Household balance sheets are strong. Many households saved large portions of the previous checks. Yet another direct payment isn't about economic stability. It's about buying political support.”

For his part, Murphy sympathized with the plight of those crushed by COVID-19 lockdowns but still viewed the checks as a misguided proposal.

“It is understandable that citizens want relief checks to compensate for coercive measures preventing them from earning income, but we shouldn't continue this trend of everyone getting checks from the government,” he said. “Ultimately the public isn't made richer by paying taxes that are then partially handed back to them.”

The economists had particularly harsh words for Biden’s proposed expansion of unemployment benefits way above normal levels. Unemployment payouts have long been shown in economic research to prolong unemployment and increase its baseline level.

“The best thing we can do for long-run economic health is get everything opened back up safely,” 

“Expanding unemployment benefits during a recession has a predictable result: slower employment recovery,” Salter argued. “We should be helping people get back to work—not making it more financially attractive to stay home.” 

“The $400 a week unemployment benefit bonus included in the proposed bill incentivizes unemployment because it pays people not to work,” Moore added. “Passing this bill means risking the loss of more than 5 million jobs if people opt to receive unemployment benefits rather than work.”

In sum, though, the economists all agreed that no amount of spending can “stimulate” an economy that is in some places still locked down, and in many places still at least partially restricted. If people cannot legally go to work or engage in commerce, no amount of money-printing or number of blank checks can bring about prosperity, they agreed.

“The best thing we can do for long-run economic health is get everything opened back up safely,” Salter said. 

Murphy reached a similar conclusion, arguing that “the best way to help the economy is to end political lockdowns, allowing businesses, workers, and  customers to find the optimal mix of protective measures to deal with the threat of COVID-19.”

Of course, Biden’s “stimulus” legislation is really a political wishlist, chock-full of partisan policies like a $15 minimum wage and subsidies for poorly-managed blue states. Yet this isn’t immediately obvious from Biden’s rhetoric or much of the media’s coverage. As a result, the proposal polls well with voters.

With the growing chorus of free-market economists calling out the president’s pretense, hopefully the public will soon realize that there’s little economic justification for Biden’s political spending push.

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Brad Polumbo

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a libertarian-conservative journalist and Opinion Editor at the Foundation for Economic Education.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Economists Slam Biden Stimulus as ‘Economically Unjustified’ Plan That ‘Incentivizes Unemployment’ /a>