CEI Today: Internet sales tax, Exxon-Mobil’s carbon tax, and the anti-immigration sentiment

INTERNET SALES TAX – JESSICA MELUGIN

The Washington Times: Internet sales taxes attack states’ rights

Proponents of Internet sales taxes are asking the lame-duck Congress to bless their state tax cartel as part of a larger tax reform package by passing the Marketplace Equity Act (H.R. 3179) and its companion in the Senate, the Marketplace Fairness Act (S. 1832). These aren’t your average tax increases, but grim blueprints for government’s future relationship with the online world. Long after we’ve either swerved at the last minute or gone off the “fiscal cliff” a la “Thelma and Louise,” we’ll have to live with the harmful consequences of expanding government to every corner of the Internet. >

CARBON TAX – MYRON EBELL

Globalwarming.org: Say It Isn’t So! Exxon Supports a Carbon Tax

Big Oil is coming out of the closet. Exxon Mobil confirmed earlier this month in a Bloomberg Businessweek article that they support a carbon tax. Shell and BP have signed a Climate Price Communiqué that was distributed on 29th November at the eighteenth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is meeting in Doha, Qatar, this week and next.

The most obvious reason why big oil and gas companies would support a huge new tax on their own products is that it would kill coal first.

IMMIGRATION – DAVID BIER

Openmarket.org: Anti-Immigrant? Or Just Anti-People?

This Friday, Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) demonstrated exactly this contempt for the most basic fact of the market when he responded to a CEI press release that opposed a bill to reduce immigration. Mehlman scoffs at the notion that “without massive infusions of foreign STEM workers our most vital industries would wither and die.” We never argued such a thing — rather, we argued new foreign workers would expand (almost by definition) America’s industries, increasing Americans’ wealth.