Beach House Bailout, Voting Rights and Trade War with Mexico
Congress to likely consider a controversial plan for taxpayers to subsidize disaster insurance in risk-prone states.
Attorney General Eric Holder keeps quiet about the recent court win by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in which white voters in Mississippi were found to have been disenfranchised at the polls.
Mexico threatens to impose tariffs on 90% of goods imported from the U.S.
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1. BUSINESS
Congress to likely consider a controversial plan for taxpayers to subsidize disaster insurance in risk-prone states.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Eli Lehrer on the unfairness of a beach house bailout:
“Tiger Woods, Sylvester Stallone, and John Travolta all own property near the coast in Florida. Donald Trump just sold his Florida mansion for $100 million. There’s no way that taxpayers should work to support lower property insurance rates for the super-wealthy.”
2. POLITICS
Attorney General Eric Holder keeps quiet about the recent court win by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in which white voters in Mississippi were found to have been disenfranchised at the polls.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Special Projects Counsel Hans Bader on Holder’s racial politics:
“It has been more than 30 years since a unanimous Supreme Court ruled in McDonald v. Santa Fe Trail Transportation Company (1976) that all races — including whites – are covered by the civil rights laws. That ruling, which allowed white employees to challenge their race-based firing, was authored by the Supreme Court’s first black justice, Thurgood Marshall, who had earlier successfully argued the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education, which struck down school segregation in 1954. But apparently, the principles of the liberal icon Thurgood Marshall are just too ‘right-wing’ for this left-wing administration.”
3. TRADE
Mexico threatens to impose tariffs on 90% of goods imported from the U.S.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Adjunct Analyst Fran Smith on the threat to free trade:
“Mexico said it would impose tariffs on about 90 U.S. exports in retaliation for a recent bill that violates the North America Free Trade Agreement by restricting Mexican trucks from transporting goods in the U.S. The spending bill signed last week cancels a pilot program allowing Mexican trucks to carry their cargo in the U.S. Unions, especially the Teamsters, have campaigned against the program – and against NAFTA. President Obama, when he was campaigning for the Democratic nomination, had said he wanted to renegotiate the trade agreement, which includes Canada and Mexico – the number one and number three trading partners with the U.S.”
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