BuckeyeBlog

It’s a victory for all small business in Ohio thanks to the Buckeye Institutes’ 1851 Center for Constitutional Law.  Pour House, a locally owned bar in Columbus, will not be fined for smoking violations thanks to a court decision last Friday.

The court ruled that Pour House should not have been fined since there is no evidence that the owner permitted smoking.  The court also ruled that it is not the bar or restaurant’s job to enforce the smoking ban.  Maurice Thompson, Director for the 1851 Center, discussed the ruling.

After nearly a year of waiting the Stowers family from LaGrange, Ohio will finally have their food returned to them from Ohio Department of Agriculture and the Lorain County General Health District. The 1851 Center for Constitutional Law won a court order for all of the food that was seized back in December of 2008 to be returned to the Stowers within two weeks.

According to the Ohio Department of Agriculture and the Lorain County General Health District the food has been properly stored in freezers, therefore should still be edible. If the food is determined to not be edible the Stowers will seek compensation. The fight in court will continue later this month when the rest of the case is decided. The complete story can be viewed here.

On Saturday October 3, the owners of Moto Verde, a motor scooter shop in Fairfax, Ohio, will exercise their constitutional rights by opening their business to the general public.  Back in June, Moto Verde owners Tim Annett and Ryan Haines thought their own version of the American Dream, running a motor scooter shop, was over. 
 
The Village of Fairfax labeled them an “automobile dealership” and made it clear that Tim and Ryan wasn’t “open for business” to them.  This despite Fairfax’s struggling economy, and statewide employment rate hovering around ten percent.  Some conjectured that Fairfax was trying to keep the storefronts on its main street vacant, in case a big box retailer that would provide more tax revenue wanted to move in.
 
Annett and Haines were shocked, since their business did not have the “open lot” that qualifies a business as an automobile dealership.  The two men through their property rights were being violated, and contacted Maurice Thompson, the Director for the 1851 Center. 
 
Thompson found that Fairfax’s regulations did in fact violate Tim and Ryan’s rights to their property, their right to earn an honest living, and their due process rights.     
 
The 1851 Center sent a threat of litigation to the Mayor of Fairfax and the Village Building Official in July.  After receiving the letter, Fairfax officials agreed to allow Moto Verde to open its doors for business.  Having jumped through its final regulatory hurdles, Moto Verde’s Grand Opening is Saturday October 3.

The 1851 Center sent a threat of litigation to the Mayor of Fairfax and the Village Building Official in late June of this year.  After receiving the letter, Fairfax officials made the decision to let Motor Verde open their doors and revoked the previous classification of the business as an “Automotive Sales Area.”

“If a corporation pays for something political, the government can ban it” — that’s Buckeye Institute Board member Bradley Smith summarizing current campaign law as viewed by federal regulators. Having been a member of the Federal Election Commission, Smith is something of an expert on this topic. As he points out, this view about what can be banned doesn’t just apply to advertisements or pamphlets or other kinds of traditional political speech. It also applies to books (almost all of which are, after all, published by corporations), as the current Solicitor General stated before the Supreme Court earlier this year.

Smith spoke at the Cato Institute on this topic and gave a good summary of the dangers this view poses to every American’s right to speak freely:

The Cato Institute has put out a great video on the conflict between campaign finance restrictions and free speech. As it discusses, if the Supreme Court upholds federal law which bans corporations from paying for advertising deemed political, there is nothing to stop the government from banning political books:

In his health care speech last night, President Obama said he would “call out” those who misrepresent his plan. Fair enough, there has been a lot of misrepresentation about health care reform legislation from those who oppose it. However, there has also been a lot of misrepresentation about this plan from the President and his allies. So, in the spirit of Pres. Obama, I’m going to “call him out” on a few of his misrepresentations last night:

“…in 34 states, 75 percent of the insurance market is controlled by five or fewer companies. In Alabama, almost 90 percent is controlled by just one company. And without competition, the price of insurance goes up and quality goes down.” – True enough. However, Pres. Obama goes on to say the remedy for this is to have the government “compete” against private insurance. How about the government allow private insurance companies to compete against each other? The reason insurance companies can dominate markets like Obama says is because the federal government enacted a law in 1945 leading to a situation where state governments impose rules and regulations on insurance companies that stifle competition. If you want more competition, Mr. President, we don’t need more rules and regulations. We don’t need a government insurance plan. We need the federal government to repeal the McCarran-Ferguson Act and allow insurance companies to compete with each other.

(more…)

What federal agency is the big winner in the health care “reform” debate? The IRS:

Under the various proposals now on the table, the IRS would become the main agency for determining who has an “acceptable” health insurance plan; for finding and punishing those who don’t have such a plan; for subsidizing individual health insurance costs through the issuance of a tax credits; and for enforcing the rules on those who attempt to opt out, abuse, or game the system. A substantial portion of H.R. 3200, the House health care bill, is devoted to amending the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 in order to give the IRS the authority to perform these new duties.

The Democrats’ plan would require all Americans to have “acceptable” insurance coverage (the legislation includes long and complex definitions of “acceptable”) and would designate the IRS as the agency charged with enforcing that requirement. On your yearly 1040 tax return, you would be required to attest that you have “acceptable” coverage. Of course, you might be lying, or simply confused about whether or not you are covered, so the IRS would need a way to check your claim for accuracy. Under current plans, insurers would be required to submit to the IRS something like the 1099 form in which taxpayers report outside income. The IRS would then check the information it receives from the insurers against what you have submitted on your tax form.

If it all matches up, you’re fine. If it doesn’t, you will hear from the IRS. And if you don’t have “acceptable” coverage, you will be subject to substantial fines — fines that will be administered by the IRS.

As I mentioned before, the standard attack of those who support health insurance “reform” is that we who oppose it are doing the bidding of insurance companies. Examiner columnist Tim Carney is continuing to do an admirable job of exposing the fact that insurance companies are strongly behind most of the reform efforts supported by liberals:

The truth, largely ignored in the media, is not useful for Democrats nor does it fall into the standard journalistic framework of regulators-vs-industry: Health insurance companies, which have given nearly twice as much to Democrats this cycle as to Republicans, are lobbying for and running ads in favor of most of the big-government provisions in Democrats’ health care “reform” bills.

We need to be more precise when talking about who is on what side. An ad funded by a labor union charges that “insurance companies and Republicans want to kill President Obama’s health insurance reform.” But things are more complex than that, in part because there are at least four different “reform” bills.

The bills all would require everyone to buy and keep health insurance while subsidizing private insurance. For obvious reasons, the health insurers support these provisions. Some of the bills also include a Wal-Mart-supported mandate that employers offer health insurance benefits to workers — a provision that also profits insurers.

“Reform” bills all would impose regulations on the insurers — for example, barring insurers from turning down customers or charging more for people who have health problems. America’s Health Insurance Plans, the lead lobbying group for the health insurers, has long supported these regulations in exchange for the individual mandate.

Finally, some of the bills would create a government health insurer that would compete with the private insurers. This is the main point of contention between Democrats and the insurers. The other sticking point: One proposed way of paying for the spending programs is through cutting Medicare spending, and Blue Cross administers Medicare in many states.

So, the “villainous” insurers’ lobbying agenda is more in tune with Democrats than with Republicans.

In my previous post, I made a claim in the comments section that I thought little good would come from any health care “reform” bill passed by Congress. A new paper by Greg Scandlen on the Massachusetts health care plan illustrates why I think this. The Massachusetts Plan has many features similar to those being considered by Congress (a mandate that almost everyone purchase insurance, subsidies for some in the state to purchase insurance, an expanded Medicaid program, etc.). As Scandlen shows, the residents of Massachusetts aren’t faring well under it:

It’s raised costs. The plan costs 1/3 more than it was projected to cost and health care spending on a per-capita basis has gone up more than the national average.

It’s hurt the state’s residents. Fifty-one percent of those required to have coverage under this plan said their health care costs have gone up and 60% say the law is hurting them. A majority of lower-income people do not support the law. Wait time for doctors has increased and the usage of emergency rooms has gone up by 17%.

We can expect something similar for the rest of the nation if the health care legislation being debated in Congress becomes law.