President Obama recently told a group of CEO’s that America had “been a little bit lazy” about “selling America and trying to attract new businesses into America.” Is this the case, or has the quality of the product simply declined? America’s descent in the Heritage Index of Economic Freedom would certainly tend to suggest that it’s the latter. The reality is that laziness is not to blame for any increasing unattractiveness to foreign investors; government policy is.

There are two looming policies, in particular, that are threatening foreign investment in the US. One of those is the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), passed in 2010 in an effort to raise revenue for the HIRE Act through greater tax enforcement. The other is an IRS proposed regulation which would require reporting of interest payment information on foreign depositor accounts, despite the fact that the US has no use for the information. Both policies are misguided, counterproductive, and will drive investment out of the US.

FATCA is designed to compel foreign financial institutions to become deputy tax collectors for the IRS. By 2014, these institutions will be expected to have implemented expensive new data collection and reporting systems, and those that have not complied will face a 30% withholding tax on US source payments to the institution. As if those costs aren’t enough, FATCA also conflicts with local privacy laws in many countries, placing FFIs in an impossible position. Already, institutions are deciding that it makes more sense to simply drop their US clients and disinvest in US markets than to continue jumping through IRS hoops. The result is billions in lost foreign investment, and there is only more to come.

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We’ve all seen the staggeringly horrific sales figures for the Chevy Volt. In any other market for any other consumer good, this hunk of junk would’ve been left in the dustbin of historic manufacturing failures, like the Apple II. Just ask Steve Jobs.

Under no coherent, rational interpretation of “market efficiency” should the Chevy Volt even be a production consideration for a private firm. Not only does sticker shock prevent most people from buying the Volt, but for those misguided few who do, costs to fix them are more than those of a less expensive Chevy Malibu.

Curious onlookers must be all the more flummoxed, then, after the recent announcement that GM and electronics manufacturing giant LG have teamed up to continue development of the Volt:

Under the agreement signed on Wednesday by GM Chief Executive Daniel Akerson and LG President Juno Cho, the two companies said they would design a range of electric vehicles that would be sold in markets around the world… “This is a strategic development for LG and we fully support GM’s goal to lead the industry in the electrification of the automobile,” LG’s Cho said in a statement.

Supporting GM’s goal to bend to the will of progressive environmentalists in the Obama administration shouldn’t be surprising, since LG is itself a healthy recipient of so-called “stimulus” funding:

President Obama visited Holland Michigan on Thursday to participate in the groundbreaking ceremony of the new LG Chem battery plant. This plant was funded in part by a DOE stimulus grant of $151 million with a matching $151 million provided by LG Chem. Once fully operational in 2012, the plant will be capable of producing enough cells for 200,000 hybrids and electric cars, and will specifically be making the cells both for the Chevrolet Volt and the upcoming Ford Focus Electric, expected to go on sale in 2011.

“This is about more than just building a new factory,” said Obama. “It’s about building a better future for this city, for this state, and for this country.”

The Obama administration has pledged a goal of putting 1 million electric cars on US roads by 2015. So far the Recovery Act has contributed $2.5 billion towards United States electric car battery and component plants, 26 of which are already in some stage of construction. Nine of these are battery plants, including ones from A123 Systems and Johnson Controls. These facilities can collectively expect to produce 500,000 electric cars annually, and are expected to help transform Michigan into the electric car battery capital of the country.

The 650,000 square foot LG Chem plant is expected to produce 300 jobs.

Wow – a $151 million win-the-future “investment” will create a whopping 300 jobs? At $500k per job, I’m clearly in the wrong business.

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In 2005, Kelo v. City of New London made eminent domain infamous. The widely reviled Supreme Court ruling gave the go ahead for the city of New London to use eminent domain for taking private property in order that it be given to a private company for “economic development.”

The public response was one of outrage. Facing the potential wrath of voters,  politicians across the country moved to add new protections against such abusive seizures. But that wasn’t enough to save the homes of the folks in New London, whose property never would be developed. Pfizer, the intended beneficiary of the land theft, walked away years ago from their development plans.

Now, to add new insult to injury, the vacant lot is a dump. Literally.

Following hurricane Irene, the city designated the site as a place to dump storm debris, and citizens can be seen doing just that in this video on the local paper’s website.

Doesn’t that make you feel all warm inside? The Supreme Court reassured us in Kelo that the government orchestrated theft “would be executed pursuant to a “carefully considered” development plan.” What they forgot to mention is that careful consideration from politicians is worth about as much as the city’s new debris dump, which is to say: diddly squat.

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It turns out that health policy under President Obama is just wrong-headed, it’s also corrupt. The Obama administration is now allowing left wing health care companies to shape policy in exchange for big campaign donations.

The Washington Examiner’s Lachlan Markay broke news this week about the appointment of a major liberal donor, Judith Faulkner, CEO of Epic Systems Corporation, to the Health & Human Services Health Information Technology Policy Committee. Markay reports that Judy Faulkner was appointed to a stimulus-created board that is charged with disbursing billions of taxpayer dollars for health information technology adoption despite her opposition to the administration’s interoperability goals, which require that health records be shareable across platforms.

Faulkner and her company oppose the president’s vision for health IT, but Epic employees are massive Democratic donors. They’ve given nearly $300,000 to Democrats since 2006, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Faulkner is also the sole representative for the health IT industry on the committee, which has the power to set industry standards. Does anyone doubt that any adopted standards will work to the benefit of Epic Systems? This is a serious conflict of interest for Epic Systems and the Department of Health and Human Services. It is, however, a fairly predictable conflict of interest, highlighting one of the myriad objections to central planning known as regulatory capture. Simply put, regulatory capture is when government agencies work in the interest of specific commercial interests instead of their original charter, and is extremely common due to the fact that industry has the strongest incentive to assume control of the regulatory process. Given this, why should Americans trust any decision made by HHS on Health IT policy?

Sadly, that’s not all there is to the story.

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An orchestrated campaign is underway to attack and discredit a prominent free-market organization. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is the latest target of the left-wing smear machine, no doubt singled out for its effectiveness in advancing free-market principles and limited government at the state level. The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), a far-left organization founded by anti-capitalist activists, is leading the charge with their “ALEC Exposed” project, which insinuates that through ALEC, corporations are given undue influence over the legislative process. Nothing could be further from the truth, and their attacks on ALEC should be considered an attack on all who support free-market capitalism and limited government.

The Nation magazine is prominently featuring the attack on ALEC in its August 1-8 issue, including a cover that describes ALEC as “the right-wing group subverting our democracy.” The left-wing magazine is putting on a full court press, publishing half a dozen separate attacks on ALEC and their efforts. These attacks are not only baseless, they are a dishonest attempt to pass off what amounts to ideological objections from a far-left viewpoint under the guise of concern for democratic legitimacy.

In the interests of full disclosure, I interned at ALEC in the fall of 2009. I am not currently affiliated with the organization in any way, but I know from first-hand experience what ALEC is all about, and it has nothing to do with the nonsense being generated by CMD and disseminated by The Nation and other liberal outlets.

ALEC is a membership organization that brings the public and private sectors together in the common cause of limited government. Both public and private sector members work together to draft state level model legislation tackling common issues with solutions based upon organizational principles of “free markets, limited government, federalism, and individual liberty,” which members can then introduce in their states if they so choose.

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I, like many others, made light of the President’s recent shocking display of economic ignorance.  In an interview on NBC’s TODAY, the President claimed that productivity, the source of our prosperity, is really a “structural issue” holding back the job creating benefits of his policies.

Hogwash, obviously. But what came later in the interview was perhaps even more disturbing (the transcript at the link wasn’t completely accurate so I cleaned it up):

[T]here are some structural issues with our economy, where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers. You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM; You don’t go to a bank teller. Or you go to the airport and you’re using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate. So all these things have created changes in the economy and what we have to do now, and that’s what this job counsel is all about, is identifying where the jobs of the future are going to be, how do we make sure that there’s a match between what people are getting trained for and the jobs that exist, how do we make sure that capital is flowing into those places with the greatest opportunity.

Obama’s fundamental problem – his fatal conceit, if you will – is that he thinks we need him and his jobs counsel to figure out what the jobs of the future are going to be. We no more need this today than it was necessary for past leaders to identify the jobs of today. This is a task for the private sector, and one which only its vast network of dispersed information and decentralized decision-making is capable of determining.

What does Barack Obama know about the technologies of today, much less the future? Why does he imagine he can direct capital and resources to the right place better than investors? When has history ever shown politicians capable of doing so?

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It’s easy to complain about the IRS, but more often than not the bureaucrats are simply carrying out the bad policies imposed by Congress. There certainly are some egregious cases of IRS abuse, but it’s typically the fault of lawmakers for enacting bad law.

But such is not the case with a regulation currently under consideration which would require that American banks put foreign tax law above U.S. tax law. The regulation deals with the obscure issue of reporting requirements for bank deposit interest paid to foreigners, but the economic impact would be significant. Worst of all, the IRS is seeking to overturn existing law. In some ways, this is the tax equivalent of the EPA’s notorious power grab scheme to impose cap-and-trade with regulatory edicts.

A bit of background. On January 7th, the IRS proposed this regulation (REG-146097-09) to force American financial institutions to report any interest payed to foreigners. Typically, U.S. tax authorities only require information used for U.S. tax purposes. And since Congress wants to attract this investment to the American economy, the law has clearly stated for 90 years that foreigners won’t get taxed, leaving no need to collect any information about this income. But now, as part of global efforts to undermine tax competition and usurp fiscal sovereignty, the IRS is unilaterally asserting the right to demand this information. Only it’s not to enforce American law, but in order to hand the information over to foreign governments so that they can tax this U.S.-source income.

There is good reason why investors would want to protect their personal information.

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Following Judge Vinson’s declaration that Obamacare is in fact unconstitutional, many on the left have responded by seizing an old conservative lament – judicial activism.  The right has unnecessarily handed the left a minor rhetorical foothold by using the term in an ambiguous way in the past, albeit to criticize decisions fully deserving of such. Because of these past conservative attacks on judicial activism, attacks which were deserved but ill-defined, Obamacare’s defenders have managed to stumble onto some semblance of a point, though not the one they think. Judicial activism, properly understood, can be either good or bad, proper or improper.

It is necessary to start this discussion with some definitions. Specifically, just what is judicial activism? The worst partisans simply use the term to mean any decision they do not like. Some conservatives and liberals alike have used the term this way, and I suspect many Obamacare supporters are now using it thusly. Using judicial activism in this manner accomplishes nothing, as all sides simply talk past one another.

Another definition, one many on the right have historically embraced, holds that judicial activism occurs when judges reach beyond their institutional authority and write legislation, instead of judging it. Under this paradigm, activist judges are seen as supplanting the legislative will with their own policy preferences. This practice is certainly both that of an activist nature and deserving of condemnation, but is it wrong because the judge acted, or because he did so wrongly? It seems to me the real objection ought to be that such decisions stray from the Constitution. There are proper times to overrule legislative action, after all, and which leads me to the third definition.

The third definition is the one now being used by the left to criticize the decision overturning Obamacare, and simply holds that activism is the reversal of legislative acts. This definition is reasonably intuitive – the judiciary is “activist” when it acts – and conservatives have been willing to use it this way as well. For instance, it is this understanding of judicial activism that has lead some conservatives to counsel judicial deference in the face of legislative acts – that courts should only overturn the most egregious legislative overreaches. Hopefully, these conservatives are beginning to see the fault of this approach. The judiciary should be neither principally deferential nor confrontational; it should be Constitutional. Conservatives need to be more careful in their use of such phrases and better isolate the exact fault of particular judicial actions.

To understand this important distinction, let’s consider two landmark Supreme Court cases.

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Despite being one of the more  unpopular policies in America, the death tax is set to be resurrected on January 1st. How high it will ultimately rise remains to be seen. If the tax deal passes, it will return at a 35% rate and a $5 million exemption. While not good, that’s certainly better than the 55% rate and $1 million exemption we’ll see if the deal fails. Still, both rates would mean disaster for family businesses and farms.

The hard left has inexplicably decided that not pushing hard enough for excessive taxation without respiration is where they draw the line in the sand. Nancy Pelosi referred to any deal that would lesson the fleecing of Americans upon death as “a bridge too far.” Others have referred to its inclusion in the tax deal as “gratuitous.” That’s funny, given how apt the word describes the tax itself.

What are we to make of this inexplicable drive for such an unpopular policy? One explanation is that the left simply holds a profoundly distorted view of social fairness. Rather than seek equality before the law, they look to government to enforce equality of outcomes. But other forces might be at work as well.

Another possible explanation comes courtesy of a new issue brief by the American Family Business Foundation, which highlights the cozy relationship between the life insurance industry and big government. Because life insurance benefits are untaxed, even an overpriced plan can result in more money being passed on to heirs than a simple bequeathal. The life insurance industry benefits heavily from this arrangement, with an estimated $12.5 billion in revenue coming due to estate planning. Without a death tax, much of this revenue would be lost, making the $50 million per year spent on lobbying by the industry seem like a bargain.

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The impact of the Tea Party has been felt. After an historically short period in the wilderness, Republicans have recaptured a share of the government, and brought with them a fairly impressive new class of small government advocates.  However, with so little time for the party to absorb the lessons of its prior losses and adjust accordingly, there is reason to be worried about whether Republicans truly get it.  It is therefore imperative that advocates of limited government continue to hold their collective feet to the fire.

When Republicans were the controlling majority, they lost their way and vastly expanded the size and scope of government. For this, they were severely punished in the voting booth. Despite these losses, many in the Republican establishment argued for further promotion of big government and marginalization of principled conservatives.

The Tea Party stepped in to battle these establishment Republicans over the future of the party. Some of them were taken down in primaries, but many more remain. Due to the extraordinarily radical Obama administration, Republicans were not in the wilderness for long. This meant less time to clean house. And right this very minute, the remaining establishment figures are looking for ways to “co-opt” the new class. They will try to stack their offices with establishment staffers, and teach them how to go-along-to-get-along.

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Illinois, like many states, is broke. Its credit is even worse than that of California and its highly publicized financial quagmire.  In such a fiscal environment, taxpayers are rightfully demanding that governments tighten up and are increasingly zealous about ensuring that money is spent productively. One way in which they may be surprised to find that local Illinois governments, along with those all over the country, collectively waste millions of dollars is by lobbying other governments for handouts.

Thanks to a recent report conducted by Diana Lopez of Sunshine Review, we know that local governments in Illinois have spent at least $6.2 million since 2005 on the lobbying of other governments. I say “at least” because local officials don’t like to disclose this information in a systematic and open way. The report, furthermore, only looked at the state’s 10 most populous counties, and also didn’t capture state government expenditures. So you can bet the actually numbers are much, much higher.

Individually it might be hard to blame these governments. They shouldn’t ever be spending taxpayer money lobbying for specific policies at higher levels of government, as many are, but in the case of begging for state and federal funds, they might be bringing in more money to the district than they are spending. They are therefore acting in their interests, as would be expected.  The problem is the offering of these funds in the first place, because it’s unequivocally bad for taxpayers and serves as a barrier to good governance.

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For the last 7 1/2 months your labor has belonged to someone else – the state.    You have slaved away for the majority of the year to pay for the bailouts, subsidies, vote buying, earmarks and redistribution schemes that make up the majority of spending by governments at all levels, in addition to the price of burdensome regulations.   Today, August 19, is the day you have finally payed off your share of the cost of big government.

Every year, Americans for Tax Reform calculates Cost of Government Day, or how long it takes the average American to earn enough to pay off the financial burdens imposed by government.  In 2010, it took 231 days of work.  That’s 8 more than last year, and more than an extra month from 2008, before Obama took office.

The Cost of Government site provides a detailed breakdown, along with the full report by ATR.  The report includes a lot of information, including a breakdown by state.  The earliest COGD occurs in Alaska, while the latest is in Connecticut.

The factor which not as many people see, but is captured nonetheless by COGD, is the economic burden created by government regulation.

Not only are the federal bureaucrats enforcing these regulations excessively overpaid, but what they are paid to do also does harm to the economy.  The average American works 74 days out of the year to make up for these dead-weight losses.

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We landed on the moon over two generations ago, and ever since NASA has been used as intellectual support for those who think we can solve any problem with a wave of the legislative or regulatory wand.   “If government can put a man on the moon,” goes statist conventional wisdom, “it can do anything.” If you’ve ever been in a debate with a true believer in the magic of big government, you’ve probably heard some variation of this generic argument.

Despite the significant flaws in this logic, it was always difficult to convince the general public just why it was wrong.  Now, with the ridiculous admission of NASA Administrator Charles Bolden that the so-called space agency’s priority is to boost Muslim self-esteem, this last fig leaf of big government has finally been removed.  Believers in grand government solutions to all social problems are left naked for all to see.

The comment itself isn’t really the big story.  Yes, it’s outrageous.  It represents everything that is wrong with the PC-obsessed, America-bashing, leftist administration currently occupying the White House.  But it’s merely the latest  in a lengthy list of NASA disappointments.  The real story is the slow, drawn-out transformation of NASA from a symbol of American exceptionalism into a national embarrassment.

Given the dramatic and iconic bang with which NASA introduced itself to the public, it’s easy to overlook that it’s a government bureaucracy just like any other.  It suffers from all the typical failings of government institutions.  Without market pressures, NASA has grown increasingly wasteful.  A recent GOA report found that 9 out of 10 assessed projects experienced cost overruns and delays.  That’s almost a perfect score in inefficiency.

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It was an article of faith among Obamacare supporters that worry over so-called death panels was simply a cynical ploy by conservative leaders to scare the peasants. Blatant fearmongering, they claimed. Now it’s looking more and more like a valid concern.  Writing at the Daily Caller, Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute highlights quotes from Dr. Donald Berwick, President Obama’s nominee to be director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which suggest that death panels might be on his wish-list.

“I am romantic about the National Health Service. I love it,” he has said about the British health care system.  His favorite part of British health care seems to be its rationing arm, the National Institute for Clinical Effectiveness (NICE).  NICE is responsible for determining whether or not the life-extending benefits a patient receives are worth the cost to the government.  Dr. Berwick calls this institution a “global treasure.”

How much is a human life worth? About £30,000 per year, according to NICE.  Anything more than $44,000 per year of extended life, and NICE is likely to deny treatment.  Important drugs that prolong the life of cancer patients, such as Lapatinib and Sutent, are not allowed.  Alzheimer’s drugs are also heavily restricted for those in the early stages of the disease despite the fact that the early stages are when treatment can provide the most benefit.  Originally pitched as nothing more than a board to promote “best practices,” NICE has become a rationing, death panel machine.

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Much of the animosity we’ve witnessed directed at the Tea Party over the last year has come from political and cultural elites who find regular people disturbing, if not downright disgusting.  The peasants, according to elites, are prone to temper tantrums and just don’t get how things work in the sophisticated political world. That same attitude was on display this weekend following the primary defeat of Sen. Bob Bennett.

On Sunday’s Meet the Press, David Brooks described Bennett’s defeat as a “damn outrage.”  Liberal E.J. Dionne went a step further and called it “a nonviolent coup” because the Utah voters dared “deny the sitting Republican senator even a chance of getting on the primary ballot.”   Why, it’s almost like these voters think they’re allowed to choose their own representatives or something!

Brooks insists that Bennett is a “good senator” just “trying to get things done.” Unfortunately, what he was trying to get done was not what his electorate wanted him to get done.  While he was busy supporting TARP and advocating an individual mandate for health care, the people of Utah wanted spending restraint and less intrusive government.  On the most important votes regarding these issues, Bennett was too often on the wrong side for their taste.

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“Astroturf” is one of those common refrains used by the left when they want desperately for opposing views to be discredited.  The George Soros funded mouthpiece non-ironically lobbied just that charge at a new, anti-net neutrality website called NoNetBrutality.com this week.

Think Progress claimed the website was part of a “secret plan to attack net neutrality.”  CNET News showed otherwise:

On its Think Progress blog, the liberal advocacy group announced it had “obtained” a PowerPoint document “which reveals how the telecom industry is orchestrating the latest campaign against Net neutrality” through a pseudo-grassroots effort. The story was echoed on Slashdot, Boing Boing, and innumerable pro-regulation blogs.

There’s just one problem with Think Progress’ claim: It’s not, well, accurate.

In a case of truth being stranger than astroturf, it turns out that the PowerPoint document was prepared as a class project for a competition in Florida last month. It cost the six students a grand total of $173.95, including $18 for clip art.

And just how secret was this nefarious plot?

Not only was the PowerPoint document presentation no secret, but it was posted publicly on the competition’s blog, along with an audio recording of the event in Miami where the student contestants presented their ideas to the judges.

The online liberal echo-chamber then picked up the false story and ran with it.

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Coinciding with Earth Day, a group of teenagers launched a new program called GreenMyParents, which seeks to “help young people teach their peers and parents how to work together to help the economy, earn money at home, and save the planet through simple, everyday actions.”  Looking for ways to help their families save money while protecting the environment are laudable goals, but I have some concerns.  I don’t want to insult these kids by assuming that they are just puppets of any other organization, but they should be aware of the fact that many will seek to use their organization to advance their agenda.

These kids should be commended for designing a program that relies on persuasion and free choice.  All too often, environmental groups have sought to circumvent public opinion and free choice by appealing to governmental force.  Mandates on personal behavior and restrictions on liberty are not how people should seek to affect change in a democratic society. I hope they will stay focused on their model of persuasion and stay away from politicized issues like cap-and-trade.

While wading into the issue of personal choices, I also hope they will stop and consider some of the trade-offs adults have to make.  It is easy to condemn their parents for wasteful behavior while they are still too young to have to be responsible for things like safeguarding a family.  For instance, in a write-up by the New York Times, it was suggested that the group would advise “washing in cold water, walking or biking to school/work and kicking the bottled-water habit,” as ways to save money and help the environment.  Walking or biking to school might save both money and reduce pollution, but it also exposes children to greater risk of violence or kidnapping.  These are the types of things that responsible adults have to consider.

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The University of Washington held a “debate” over the constitutionality of the health care bill in which none of the participants argued it was at all unconstitutional.  Explaining this farce, the university claimed they couldn’t find any law professors to argue the opposing view.  Liberal blogs such as TalkingPointsMemo and Think Progress, the blog for the Soros funded mouth-piece known as Center for American Progress, picked up the story to brag that the left can’t find any law professors to argue that Obamacare is unconstitutional.  Clearly they haven’t looked hard enough.

Cato Institute legal scholar Ilya Shapiro, who is also an adjunct professor at George Washington University Law School, has issued a simple challenge.  He’ll debate the constitutionality of Obamacare “anywhere at anytime.”

It’s not as if he’s the only one.  Randy Barnett teaches constitutional law at Georgetown University and recently wrote in the Washington Post about different possible challenges to Obamacare.  He concluded that several “constitutional challenges to health-care reform have a sound basis in the text of the Constitution.”  Richard Epstein, of the University of Chicago, is another well-known skeptic of the bill’s constitutionality, and several months ago authored a piece explaining why in the Wall Street Journal.  There are plenty more.

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No tragedy is beyond exploitation by the left.  When census worker Bill Sparkman was found dead and it was leaked that “Fed” was scrawled across his chest, the entirety of the conservative and Tea Party movements were immediately convicted by the online left.  They were wrong, and we now know that Sparkman committed suicide.  Despite significant evidence to the contrary, the left also tried to hang Joseph Stack around the neck of the Tea Party.  Again they failed.

They are now doing the same song and dance with Pentagon shooter John Patrick Bedell.  Despite the fact that he’s a registered Democrat and 9/11 Truther, the left and their media sycophants are stretching to tie him to the Tea Party movement, though the best that they can honestly come up with is that he distrusted government.

That’s what it really boils down to.  At the end of the day, they know none of these guys will hold up as right-wingers.  Their real objective is simply to shame anyone who thinks government should be smaller, rather than bigger.  Anyone who thinks that the IRS is often used to bully Americans isn’t simply wrong, you see, but is also dangerous.  Anyone who thinks that a limited government would better promote prosperity and ensure individual liberty isn’t merely antiquated, but also a potential shooter of government employees.

They are essentially trying to use the acts of these lone nutjobs – which were despicable in every way – to make big government into the victim. The magnitude of this Orwellian endeavor is so unbelievable that it’s hard to describe in a manner that doesn’t sound over-the-top.  It’s better just to remind you of some of big government’s greatest hits.

The 2005 Kelo decision ruled that government can take property from one private person or group and give it to another in order to raise tax revenues. Such abuse didn’t just start with Kelo, however.  In the 4 year period from 1998 to 2002, over 10,000 properties faced at least the threat of condemnation in order to benefit another private party, according to a report by the Institute for Justice.  These are individuals being threatened and bullied by a massive government to give up their fundamental human right to administer their lawfully owned property as they see fit.

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The Conservative Political Action Conference isn’t all fiery speeches and political red meat.  Following the rousing speech by Rep. Mike Pence on Friday, a much more subdued presentation by Dr. Eric Novack described the efforts of states to pass a version of the Health Care Freedom Act, which I previously discussed here.  Much has happened since I last talked about the efforts of states to protect individual health care rights.

The number of states advancing legislation to protect individual choice from federal mandates has increased since December from 24 states to 35.  But merely introducing legislation isn’t enough; we need victories.

Virginia delivered a first step toward just that, as its state House recently passed a version of the Health Care Freedom Act. Elsewhere, the Tennessee Senate passed the bill 26-1, while other states, such as Idaho, have successfully advanced the bill out of committee.

These bills offer to protect citizens in two crucial ways. First, they would guarantee the right to purchase care directly, so that bureaucrats cannot be forced between patients and doctors against their will. Second, it would assure that citizens are protected from unconstitutional mandates to purchase insurance by allowing them to opt-out from any such federal program.

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