CEI Today: Lilly Ledbetter, 1990s job growth, and wind energy tax credits

Today in the News

FACT CHECKING LILLY LEDBETTER – HANS BADER

Openmarket.org: Fact Checking Lilly Ledbetter’s False Speech At The Democratic National Convention

Former pay-discrimination plaintiff Lilly Ledbetter, in speaking at the Democratic National Convention on September 4, repeated the false claim that she learned about the pay disparity she sued over only at the end of her career, in order to suggest that the Supreme Court did her an injustice when it later dismissed her pay discrimination lawsuit as untimely in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.(2007).

In reality, she was aware of the pay disparity for over five years before filing a legal complaint over it. It’s not true, as she claimed to the convention, that she didn’t learn of it until “two decades” after she began working at the company.

 

1990s JOB GROWTH – JOHN BERLAU

Openmarket.org: Want 1990s Job Growth? Go Back To Clinton-Era Deregulation

As much as the term “Forward” was used at the Democratic National Convention this week, the speeches of Bill Clinton and, to an extent, President Obama, hearkened back to the prosperity of the 1990s. But another disappointing employment report today shows that in terms of job growth, these are two-different eras.

But if we want to emulate ’90s growth, there is one Clinton-era policy we can pursue: bipartisan deregulation. And despite Clinton’s finger-wagging in the speech at Republicans for wanting to “get rid of those pesky financial regulations,” Clinton know that the financial liberalization he pursued with the GOP was a key factor in the prosperity during his presidency.

 

WIND ENERGY TAX CREDIT – MYRON EBELL

Globalwarming.org: 64 Free Market Groups Announce Opposition to Wind PTC

Sixty-four non-profit groups sent a joint letter to the Hill this week that urges Representatives and Senators “to let the wasteful wind PTC expire as planned at the end of the year.” The battle lines are now fully drawn between Big Wind and supporters of free markets and affordable energy. The letter was organized by Americans for Prosperity.

On the side of continuing massive tax subsidies to crony capitalist investors in wind farms are President Barack Obama, nearly all Democratic members of Congress, and a sizable number of Republican members from States that have enacted renewable portfolio standards for electric utilities.