Media Hit

President Barack Obama is beginning today what appears to be a full court press to try to get people to sign up for the ACA, a key to its success. MDN editorial board cites IPI's Merrill Matthews, who points out: "One of Obama’s primary justifications for demanding health care reform was to help the uninsurables get coverage, and he has closed that provision to new entrants.”

"We need to champion those climbing the economic ladder," Cruz said last week during the 25th anniversary celebration of the Institute for Policy Innovation at the Frontiers of Flight Museum. "We should be defenders and champions of the 47 percent."

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz said Thursday that he’s not thinking about running for the White House in 2016. “My focus is entirely on the U.S. Senate,” Cruz said before speaking at the silver anniversary of the Institute for Policy Innovation. “Right now the U.S. Senate is the battlefield for preserving liberty.”

Assistant U.S. Trade Representative-Intellectual Property and Innovation Stan McCoy is optimistic that negotiators of the Trans-Pacific Partnership can come to a "world-class result" for "strong and balanced" intellectual property protection, despite ongoing debate over the rigidity of those protections, he said at an IPI forum commemorating World Intellectual Property Day.

While Rep. Steve Womack takes another crack at legislation that would help states collect taxes on Internet sales, IPI's Bartlett Cleland warns the measure would hurt businesses. Cleland says businesses will shoulder the burden of increased audits and additional tax payments that should be collected by states "who can't figure out how to clean up their own messes internally" and collect the tax from customers.

If passed, the MFA will increase taxes as “multiple jurisdictions lay claim to the same transaction and demand payment,” said IPI's Bartlett Cleland. The proposal “does away with any requirement that a business have a physical connection in a jurisdiction before it can be required to levy taxes on its sales.”

IPI's Bartlett Cleland says the Marketplace Fairness Act would compel businesses to comply with every single tax code in the nation if they want to sell their goods everywhere. And noncompliance could mean a costly audit from the states where sellers are sending their products.

Rep. Rene Oliveira has filed a bill to make sure that Texans can do whatever they want with tickets they buy for live events -- and that ticket sellers and venues can't restrict the resale or gifting of tickets. Now is the time to address the issue, said Tom Giovanetti.

As options for watching movies ave expanded and become more sophisticated, so have attempts to pirate the content, leaving studios seeking new ways to discern the impact on their bottom lines.

From their publication in 2006 through the debate over the Stop Online Piracy Act that ended early last year, the film industry frequently has cited the findings of a study by IPI that found film piracy was costing the U.S. economy $20.5 billion annually.