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By Michael F. Cannon

Michael F. Cannon

A congressional oversight committee recently renewed its request for documents from an ethically suspect Internal Revenue Service, which ignores such requests with impunity. But this time, the Supreme Court has taken away the agency’s excuse for not cooperating.

In 2014, the IRS began imposing the individual and employer mandates on 70 million Americans even though the Affordable Care Act expressly exempts them from those taxes. The IRS may impose the disputed taxes, the ACA explains, only “through an Exchange established by the State.” The IRS ignored that plain language and imposed those taxes on 70 million taxpayers in the 38 states that did not establish a health insurance Exchange.

This past June, the Supreme Court issued one of its worst decisions in recent memory. In King v. Burwell, the Court rewrote and expanded the ACA in order to save the IRS’s extra-legal taxes, and hundreds of billions of dollars of related spending.

As Chief Justice John Roberts explained, “the context and structure of the Act compel us to depart from” what all nine justices agreed is “the most natural reading of the pertinent statutory phrase.” Ironically, after invoking the ACA’s broader context to justify ignoring its operative text, Roberts then ignored the many elements of the act’s context that flatly contradict his interpretation.

“For four years, the IRS has been stonewalling Congress’ efforts to determine what agency officials knew.”

Just as the IRS imposed never-legislated taxes and spending by regulation, the Court did so via judicial opinion. The result is that Americans are living under an illegitimate law, paying taxes and underwriting government spending that no Congress ever authorized.

An important question remains, however. Congressional investigators found evidence suggesting that IRS officials imposed those taxes even though they understood that the ACA flatly denies them any authority to do so. Yet for four years, the IRS has been stonewalling Congress’ efforts to determine what agency officials knew.

In 2012, the House’s oversight committee requested documents related to the IRS’s decision to expand the reach of these taxes. IRS officials provided no substantive documents.

Under continued pressure, IRS officials allowed investigators to view certain documents “in camera.” Ironically, that means the investigators could read the documents, but take no notes and make no copies. It was in these documents that investigators nonetheless found evidence that IRS officials knew the ACA prohibited them from imposing the disputed taxes.

The committee again …read more

Source: OP-EDS

By Matthew Feeney

Matthew Feeney

Despite widespread media coverage of police shootings, no one knows for sure how many Americans are killed by police officers each year. That’s why FBI director James Comey’s announcement this week that the FBI plans to collect more data related to police shootings was initially encouraging to policy analysts like me. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like Comey’s proposal will provide accurate numbers.

The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program does include data on the number of police officers killed on the job and the number of “justifiable homicides” committed by officers, but this information is not very helpful because the FBI relies on law enforcement agencies to voluntarily hand over the information. Perhaps unsurprisingly, not every police department complies.

“It’s frustrating that amid important discussions on much-needed reforms to police accountability, tactics, and training that information about police killings remains so unreliable.”

Those departments that do report data, however are asked to report police shootings which take place in their jurisdiction. As the Wall Street Journal  pointed out in December last year, some California Highway Patrol shootings may not be accurately reported because the shootings take place in a location under another department’s jurisdiction. The report showed that the inefficiencies in the reporting for the UCR program results in hundreds of police killings being left uncounted.

Regrettably, Comey seems to be doing little to provide law enforcement agencies with incentives to volunteer more accurate use-of-force data. Given the United States’ federalist system, the FBI cannot currently demand that law enforcement agencies hand over data on use-of-force incidents.

While government data on police killings is poor, two newspapers are keeping track of such incidents this year. The Washington Post is collecting information on police shootings (741 so far this year) and The Guardian is tracking all police killings (875 so far this year). For the time being, it looks as if the best source for police killings in the United States will be non-government projects like these.

Comey’s call for better data on police killings should be welcomed. It’s frustrating that amid important discussions on much-needed reforms to police accountability, tactics, and training that information about police killings remains so unreliable.

However, Comey has little influence on what data state and local law enforcement agencies choose to release. As much as he should be applauded for his concern about the state of reporting on police shootings, it’s unlikely that his rhetoric alone will produce …read more

Source: OP-EDS

By Mises Institute

Joseph Salerno at the Nassau Institute in the Bahamas

Prof. Salerno delivered a lecture on money and banking last Wednesday in Nassau, Bahamas. The Nassau Institute described the talk:

“Dr. Salerno will briefly describe the era of sound money that existed under the gold standard during the 19th century and up to the onset of the First World War. He will then discuss how government and central bank policies destroyed the gold standard and ushered in the era of pure fiat currencies and permanent inflation after the collapse of Bretton Woods in 1971. He will show how the logic of central banks and fiat money led inevitably to the housing bubble, the financial crisis, and the Great Recession, and how quantitative easing and other inflationary “unconventional” monetary policies are now setting the stage for a recurrence of monetary and financial chaos, and possibly even hyperinflation.”

Photos from the event:

September 30, 2015Mises Institute

By Mises Institute

Tags

Political Theory

Newly Discovered Recording of Mises

September 30, 2015

Mises Institute

…read more

Source: MISES INSTITUTE

By Mises Institute

Aphorisms in Honor of Liberty

September 30, 2015Ryan McMaken

By Mises Institute

Anderson: The Coming Corporate “Crime Wave”

September 30, 2015Mises Institute

…read more

Source: MISES INSTITUTE

By K. William Watson

K. William Watson

Negotiators from the 12 countries of the nearly completed Trans-Pacific Partnership are meeting this week in Atlanta to find agreement on remaining contentious issues. The meeting offers the United States one more opportunity to correct its past mistakes by ensuring the mandatory inclusion of fair use exceptions to copyright protection in the TPP’s intellectual property chapter. Doing so would bring the TPP’s copyright rules more in line with U.S. law and improve the TPP’s core mission of liberalizing trade in a 21st Century economy.

The United States has long insisted on minimum standards for IP protection in trade agreements. Proponents of this policy tout the importance of IP-related industries to U.S. economic growth and the problems they face ensuring the protection of IP rights in foreign markets. The goal, they claim, is to raise foreign IP protections to the same level as the United States.

But critics rightly point out that U.S. trade agreements fail to capture the balance of creator and user interests imbedded in U.S. IP law. Trade agreements have been a one-way street that set a minimum level of protection. Limitations on creators’ rights—like fair use—are an important part of U.S. law but don’t get included in the agreements alongside things like longer monopoly terms and stricter enforcement.

“IP rules in trade agreements reflect not what the law really is but what certain industries want it to be.”

What this means is that the United States is not actually exporting U.S. copyright law. It is instead merely pushing regulations thatlook like U.S. copyright law for the benefit of movie studios and record labels. IP rules in trade agreements reflect not what the law really is but what certain industries want it to be.

The result can be trade rules that directly conflict with U.S. law. In 2013 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal copyright law doesn’t prohibit the resale in the United States of foreign editions of copyrighted books lawfully purchased abroad. Technically, that ruling places the United States in violation of article 4.11 of theU.S.–Jordan Free Trade Agreement, because U.S. negotiators were wrong about what U.S. law actually requires. Many parts of U.S. law are unclear or in flux, and trade negotiators are not taking that into account.

Imposing minimum requirements for protection through trade agreements also restricts the ability of Congress to reform U.S. copyright law. Copyright reform advocates who …read more

Source: OP-EDS