Freedom Line Blog

There’s no exercise of government power quite as nauseating when seen up close as a relatively small industry’s attempts to team up with government and either (A) shake down or (B) close down a rival who has built a better mousetrap. In his book “Government’s End: Why Washington Stopped Working” (one of the best political reads of the past few decades, by the way) — a volume dedicated to this trend — Jonathan Rauch describes how Washington D.C. bike messengers, for instance, lobbied heavily against the use of fax machines in the nation’s capital, for no other reason than that they were bad for business (a stand reminiscent of Frederic Bastiat’s famous satirical letter to the French Parliament in which it was claimed that candlemakers were suffering unfair competition from the sun).

This trend is rearing its ugly head again in Washington D.C., where city government is trying to crack down on Uber, one of the great innovations of the smart phone era. Uber is a private car service operating in a handful of major cities that allows you to instantly request a sedan from your smart phone, have it arrive in minutes, and then have all of the billing (including the tip) taken care of straight from your credit card. Uber eliminates all of the inconveniences of the taxi experience (your humble correspondent, for instance, recently waited 45 minutes for a cab in Silicon Valley after being told by dispatchers that it was five minutes away) and usually does so at a cheaper price. And of course, D.C. can’t have that! From the Daily Caller:

Members of the Washington, D.C. City Council haven’t given up on their efforts to bring the efficient and reliable luxury sedan-on-call service, Uber, under the authority of the company’s competitors in the taxicab industry.

Council members previously tried to establish a price floor for the company. More recently, at a July 10 meeting, a number of City Council members voted to bring the sedan service under the authority of the D.C. Taxicab Commission, a regulatory body strongly influenced by the taxi industry.

…

“I was opposed to them not being regulated, period,” councilman and former D.C. Mayor Marion Barry told The Daily Caller. “This was a compromise. I think if it’s not a regulated service, it really has an impact on the D.C. taxi industry.”

Of course it has an impact! That’s generally what happens when someone decides to build a company that can deliver a better product at a lower price.

Let’s hope Uber can resist the legislative strong-arming. At least they have this going for them: there are few inadvertent blessings as sweet as having Marion Barry be your chief antagonist.

We’ve made a bit of a cottage industry here at CFIF of chronicling the downfall of California, a truly great state where metastasizing liberalism threatens to kill its host. Over the weekend, the Daily Caller’s Angelica Malik put the results into sharp relief:

The California Manufacturing and Technology Association found in a recent study that 82 percent of companies surveyed did not consider California when expanding or opening a new facility.

The study also noted that companies looking to expand their operations favored states with proximity to their customers, generous tax incentives, low cost labor, proximity to suppliers and a comprehensible and a favorable tax system.

California ranked last or bottom tier in all of those categories.

This comes on top of the recent news that the Golden State ranked last in CEO magazine’s ratings of state business climates for the eighth straight year.

The upshot: billions in lost revenues, millions in lost citizens, and hundreds of fleeing businesses (with scores more downsizing or dismissing the prospect of heading to California in the first place).

There’s little here in the way of silver linings, except for this: there’s a fair bit of education here for the rest of the nation. If the Lilliputians of liberalism can tie down even mighty California, they can wreak untold havoc anywhere. No one is immune. It’s just a shame that it requires such a significant casualty to convey this point.

If Republicans win control of Congress and the White House in November, expect conservatives to zero in on trying to eliminate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Created by the Dodd-Frank legislation, CFPB is largely exempted from congressional oversight because it is housed in the unaudited Federal Reserve.  It’s also able to self-fund through fees it sets and assesses on financial institutions.

But though it’s technically an independent agency, CFPB is turning out to be – surprise! – remarkably in synch with the Obama campaign’s anti-capitalist positions.

Piecing together several months-worth of visitor logs, Mary Kissel at the Wall Street Journal presents strong circumstantial evidence of improper coordination between political branch officers and supposedly neutral bureaucratic administrators.

CFPB chief Richard Cordray has been to an Obama cabinet strategy session.  He briefed the press about student loan policy alongside White House Press Secretary Jay Carney and Education Secretary Arne Duncan.  He’s also held calls with the White House Chief of Staff for Policy.  His subordinates are in frequent contact with White House advisors.

Conservative opponents of CFPB’s unprecedented powers and structure like Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) are taking notice.  McHenry sent a letter requesting more details from CFPB officials about its working relationship with the White House.  Though that may seem quaint, remember that Darrell Issa’s investigation of Fast and Furious has largely proceeded by letters of inquiry met with silence, denials, and ultimately admissions.

Kissel puts the process into perspective:

Rep. McHenry’s requests will, in all likelihood, be stonewalled too. But that doesn’t mean that the Congressman’s letter is a waste of time. The 2010 Dodd Frank law gave the consumer bureau an unprecedented—and perhaps even unconstitutional—immunity from traditional checks and balances. If Republicans win a Congressional majority come November and want to eliminate the agency, they have to start demonstrating now to the public why that’s necessary. Letters like Rep. McHenry’s are a good start.

It’s good to know someone is doing the yeoman’s work of reining in a small but important part of the federal bureaucracy.  If McHenry’s letter helps build a case for dismantling CFPB, conservatives will be thanking him for taking steps like this.

In one of my other incarnations I teach public policy and legal interpretation at Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy.  One of the cases we discuss every fall is Massachusetts v. EPA, a controversial standing decision by the Supreme Court that allowed the Bay State and others to bend the rules for suing the EPA for not regulating greenhouse gases.

This was in the halcyon days of the George W. Bush Administration when conservative EPA appointees had the temerity to point out that the Clean Air Act gave the agency no authorization to interpret carbon dioxide as pollution to be regulated.

No bother, said then-Justice John Paul Stevens in his majority opinion that included Justice Anthony Kennedy, author of last week’s immigration decision in Arizona v. U.S.  In the EPA case, Justice Stevens said that states like Massachusetts are due “special solicitude” when litigating at the federal bar, especially when their sovereignty is threatened by eroding coastlines thanks to future speculated rises in sea levels from global warming.  (I’ll bet Arizona Governor Jan Brewer would have liked Justice Kennedy to remember her state’s “special solicitude” regarding the integrity of its borders.)

Now we’ve got a different Administration and a different outcome.  The Obama EPA was all too happy to make the carbon dioxide endangerment finding the Supreme Court made possible.  The energy industry sued claiming EPA lacked jurisdiction, and last Tuesday the D.C. Court of Appeals upheld EPA’s unenumerated power to redefine pollution.

Unless the Supreme Court intervenes and overrules the D.C. Circuit, the fight will now move to how EPA uses its newfound regulatory power.  What are the likely outcomes?  The New York Times summarizes two of the main arguments:

“This decision ensures that a regulatory approach to emissions cuts will take place, whether or not Congress acts legislatively,” said Paul Bledsoe, a senior adviser at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a nonprofit group that specializes in energy and environmental issues. “The question is, does the industry push Congress to develop a more efficient, less costly approach now that regulation is inevitable?”

But Representative Fred Upton, the Michigan Republican who is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said that Congress’s refusal to approve greenhouse gas limits constituted a decision and that lawmakers should act now to reverse the E.P.A. emissions rules. Carbon regulation “threatens to drive energy prices higher, destroy jobs and hamstring our economic recovery,” he said.

So, an overweening federal agency emboldened by implied powers of regulatory control is going to act “whether or not Congress acts legislatively”?  My sympathies are with Chairman Upton’s point that no decision is a decision, but that’s clearly not a roadblock to activist bureaucrats with case precedent on their side.  It’s time for Congress to get back in the game and rein in the administrative state with clear and direct commands.  They know how to write those kinds of statutes.  It’s time they did more of it.

Previously, I’ve agreed with Charles Krauthammer’s concerns about unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or drones) being allowed into domestic airspace because of the threat to privacy from so-called “eyes in the sky.”

Now, Todd Humphreys, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, is showing how tech savvy terrorists can, and very likely will, exploit a “gaping hole” in the government’s flight security structure.

Last Tuesday, in the barren desert of the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, officials from the FAA and Department of Homeland Security watched as Humphrey’s team repeatedly took control of a drone from a remote hilltop. The results were every bit as dramatic as the test at the UT stadium a few days earlier.

DHS is attempting to identify and mitigate GPS interference through its new “Patriot Watch” and “Patriot Shield” programs, but the effort is poorly funded, still in its infancy, and is mostly geared toward finding people using jammers, not spoofers.

According to Humphreys, “Spoofing [a drone’s GPS receiver] is just another way of hijacking a plane.”

For about $1,000 and with a little bit of technical training a terrorist could take control of any civilian-operated drone and wreck havoc.  Without a human pilot at the controls, the drone’s onboard computer will simply follow whatever commands it is given, regardless of where they originate.

And while some terrorists may be interested in taking over surveillance drones for intelligence gathering purposes, the real danger is if a drone as large as a cargo plane – which FedEx plans to use when domestic drones are approved – is overtaken and flown into planes carrying people or into crowded buildings.

As Humphreys says, “In 5 or 10 years you have 30,000 drones in the airspace.  Each one of these would be a potential missile used against us.”

So not only would a terrorist hacker not need to buy a drone in order to fly one, he wouldn’t even need to go through an invasive TSA screening to reenact the 9/11 tragedy.

Because of pressure from the military and drone manufacturers, Congress is requiring the Federal Aviation Administration to fast-track regulations as part of the FAA’s reauthorization act.  Significant rules that will impact every American are to be conceived, written, and finalized within weeks of each other, and an entire regulatory scheme is mandated to be implemented in less than a year.

If you think that kind of statutory mandate translates into greater bureaucratic efficiency, think again.

The time-crunch – and the deliberate lack of oversight from Congress by pushing the rule writing onto an agency – means that everyday Americans will not be privy to the decision making process that will dramatically impact their safety in the air and on the ground.

Congress needs to rein itself and this process in.  With arguably illegal waivers being given to certain groups to avoid provisions of ObamaCare and No Child Left Behind, we’ve seen how arbitrary and capricious federal regulators can be when it comes to expedited rulemaking.  There’s no reason to expect a more coherent approach from an FAA trying to balance competing interests like privacy, profit, and public safety on an irrational deadline.

We need open debate and deliberation from our elected officials about the costs and benefits of domestic drones.  If Congress won’t engage the issue because it’s too politically painful, then the American people shouldn’t suffer a lapse in safety and privacy because their representatives would rather pass the buck than take responsibility.

Michelle Steel, the Republican Vice Chair of California’s Board of Equalization – an independent tax gathering arm of state government – found a pernicious little wood tax tucked away in Democratic Governor Jerry Brown’s recent budget proposal (emphasis below is mine):

The new tax is expected to raise $30 million annually, but that revenue won’t go to the general fund or to debt payments. According to the revised budget, lumber tax revenue will go to support the regulatory activities of the Departments of Forestry and Fire Protection, Fish and Game, Conservation, and the State Water Resources Control Board related to Timber Harvest Plan review.

California’s forest practice regulations are the most restrictive of any state in the nation. Regulatory compliance costs California forest-landowners more than 10 times what it costs similar companies in Oregon and Washington. According to a recent Cal Poly San Luis Obispo study, “California’s regulatory environment is having the unintended consequences of harming forest health,” by making it so difficult to manage timberland that owners are selling their land to housing developers.

Excessive environmental regulations are turning our forests into suburbs. Yet, instead of saving tax dollars by reducing regulation, the governor has chosen to compound the problem by increasing the funding of an inefficient regulatory program.

California tax policy: deforesting the woodlands in order to save them.

H/T: Jon Fleischman’s FlashReport

The Center for Individual Freedom (“CFIF”) this week joined a coalition of leading free market organizations opposing the federal Black Box Mandate, a provision included in the Senate version of the Highway Bill (SEC. 31406 of S. 1813) that would require all passenger motor vehicles in the United States, beginning with model year 2015, to be fitted with event data recorders (EDRs) that would collect all driving habits of consumers. 

The provision, which is currently being contemplated in a House-Senate conference committee on the Highway Bill, threatens to violate the privacy rights of consumers and burdens manufactures and small businesses with yet another costly, misguided and unnecessary federal mandate.

CFIF is encouraging all of our supporters and activists to visit the coalition website and sign the pledge to their Members of Congress and President Obama “to oppose any federal action to mandate the use of black box data recorders in personal vehicles.”  The pledge goes on to state that the Black Box Mandate:

1. Is an infringement on personal privacy and freedoms. 
2. Would be a slippery slope for Government to track citizen’s transportation habits and location. 
3. Is both an unnecessary expansion of government police power and an undue mandate on consumers and business.

Visit http://www.blackboxmandate.org to sign the pledge now.

In a recent report and video, the Institute for Justice gives an excellent summary of how government licensing requirements to enter occupations like interior design, massage therapy, or shampooing are raising time and cost barriers to people who just want to work.

In this video IJ research director Dick Carpenter shares the results of a study of 102 low to middle income jobs (i.e. not doctors and lawyers) that impose on average require would-be workers to: (1) pay $209 in fees, (2) pass an exam, and (3) endure 275 days of training, or the equivalent of about 9 months.  All this before earning a paycheck!

IJ also notes that burdensome licensing requirements have not been shown to protect public health and safety.  Rather, they increase costs to consumers and keep would-be competitors out of legally protected (i.e. licensed) industries.

As the IJ video and study show, not every regulatory problem is a federal creation.  State lawmakers have an easy method for spurring job growth and entrepreneurial activity – reduce or eliminate licensing requirements so that citizens can get working.

Salon highlights the combination of state-based interests lining-up to convince the Federal Aviation Administration to award it one of six licenses to operate a domestic drone test site.

The deal is this: Prove that drones – unmanned surveillance aircraft – can be operated safely in civilian airspace, and the FAA will remove regulatory barriers restricting where drones can fly.

By extension, locations with test sites will be positioned to become hubs for drone-related activity.

Salon notes that while states like Florida, Ohio, and Colorado have already pitched plans to the FAA to land a test site…

…the most fully developed proposals for running the test sites are likely to come from state consortiums of industry, government and universities, which will put up the money to run the sites. The FAA is not providing any funding for the sites.

According to the article, the parties most interested in promoting drone usage domestically are defense industry contractors, state research universities, and municipalities adjacent to military bases.

If you’re having trouble seeing the private sector in any of this, you’re not alone.  Commentators across the ideological spectrum are deeply disturbed by the near certainty that introducing drone surveillance into domestic airspace will do little more than empower government at every level.

Of course, there is one benefit promised for greater drone use: jobs.  As one retired Air Force colonel involved in Colorado’s plan told Salon, “The more freedom of movement the FAA allows, the greater the private business will be.  If unmanned vehicles have access similar to that enjoyed by manned aircraft, I think the commercial business will be ten times larger than the Department of Defense business.”

That’s an amazing forecast considering that military spending is 98.6 percent of the $7 billion-plus drone industry.  Until then, why not let government agencies up and down the food chain grow their budgets testing unmanned surveillance vehicles?  What could go wrong?

What we’re seeing with the rollout of the domestic drone issue is an example of one of the greatest threats to liberty and fiscal sanity today – a network of government actors negotiating among themselves over public resources.

If the system keeps mutating this way, privacy won’t be the only casualty.  We’ll also redefine what it means to create jobs.  Gone will be the idea that lower taxes and less regulations spur hiring and expansion.  In will be the notion that transfer payments between government entities are the best way forward.

And I think we all know how long that system is sustainable.

The Kauffman Foundation for Entrepreneurship’s newest report on business creation rates across the United States offers some intriguing insights for policymakers.

According to Robert Litan, the foundation’s vice president of research and policy, “The Great Recession has pushed many individuals into business ownership due to high unemployment rates.”  “However, economic uncertainty likely has made them more cautious, and they prefer to start sole proprietorships rather than more costly employer firms.  This ‘jobless entrepreneurship’ trend negatively effects job creation and the larger economic recovery.”

No doubt, regulatory barriers and confiscatory rates of taxation are causing start-ups to make the same kind of cost-saving hiring decisions as larger, more established firms.  Across nearly every industry these days companies are hiring people to independent contracts rather than salaries, converting many ‘company men’ into standalone consultants.

While becoming an accidental entrepreneur may not be the first career choice of many people – and according to the Kauffman study the college educated cohort saw the steepest decline in their willingness to start their own business – the movement of millions of people into the ranks of the self-employed could have huge consequences for policymakers.

For starters, this army of new business owners is much more likely to demand rollbacks of costly regulations and profit-killing tax rates on corporations.  Your perspective changes when you go from receiving a paycheck to making a payroll.

Remember, the people that lose a job and start a business are the people whom the government should want to help the most.  They aren’t looking for a hand-out or even a hand-up, just space to make a contribution that others in the free market will reward.

This constituency is a natural growth area for the conservative movement.

The best part about the Kauffman report is that entrepreneurial activity can be found in important electoral pockets.  Consider:

• Entrepreneurial growth was highest among 45- to 54-year-olds, rising from 0.35 percent in 2010 to 0.37 in 2011
• The top five highest entrepreneurial rates among the fifty states were:

(1) Arizona with 520 per 100,000 adults creating businesses each month during 2011;

(2) Texas with 440 per 100,000 adults;

(3) California with 440 per 100,000 adults;

(4) Colorado with 420 per 100,000 adults; and

(5) Alaska with 410 businesses started per 100,000 adults

The key to our economic recovery rests on policymakers understanding that Americans want to work.  I submit that any politician willing to make the necessary changes to tax and regulatory rules so that start-up owners can become employers as well as entrepreneurs will find a loyal constituency, and one well worth fighting for.

President Barack Obama may never tire of blaming his predecessor for every current economic problem, but a new study by the Heritage Foundation shows that when it comes to the cost of federal regulation, Obama is king.

The numbers don’t lie, Mr. President.  Job growth is anemic, the employment rate is stagnant, but your regulatory agenda continues to add billions of dollars in costs to the only real job creators – employers.  After three years of your policies imposing five times the costs of compliance than under the Bush regime it’s time for something radically different.

Reuters explains how a new Health and Human Services regulation announced today on the state-directed health insurance exchanges lays the groundwork for a total government takeover of the healthcare industry.

In a 642-page final rule, the government provides guidance on how states should establish exchanges, qualify health plans for participation and determine the eligibility of both individuals and small businesses that want to use exchanges to provide health coverage to their employees.

Industry and consumer groups welcomed the regulations, saying they provided states with the flexibility necessary to meet consumer needs for choice and quality protections. They also said the regulations shift policy focus to the state level, where the new rules must be implemented.

That is, until States drown in a sea of future regulations interpreting and implementing this “final” rule.  At that point, States will be happy to cede control over policy details to federal bureaucrats so long as the money keeps flowing.

As an example, just look at the rush by States to accept extra-legal requirements like the Common Core curriculum standards from the Department of Education in exchange for No Child Left Behind waivers.  Implementation of ObamaCare will be no different.  Unless the law is repealed, elements like health care exchanges and IPAB will eventually turn over all healthcare decisions to central planners; first in state capitols, then in Washington, D.C.

Philip K. Howard, author of Life Without Lawyers, has a thought-provoking essay in the Atlantic about how to repeal old laws in order to make room for new policies that will unleash American ingenuity and discretion:

Fixing what ails America is impossible, indeed illegal, without a legal spring cleaning. The goal is not mainly to “deregulate” but to restate programs in light of current needs and priorities.

As a practical matter, this requires Congress to authorize special commissions to make proposals, area by area. Using the base closing commission model, these proposals would be submitted to Congress for an up or down vote.

Going forward, Congress should incorporate sunset provisions in all laws with budgetary impact. The goal is not to end good programs but to impose a discipline that is essential for a functioning democracy that must constantly make tough tradeoffs.

Howard’s point about including sunset clauses into all new laws with budgetary impact would be a HUGE step in the right direction.  In Texas government, where I once worked as a legislative staff member, every state agency is subject to elimination pending the outcome of a once-a-decade review.

Each session the legislature is given the option to continue, modify, or eliminate state agencies falling within a policy area (e.g. all agencies having jurisdiction over education).  In practice, very few agencies are eliminated completely, but the many are consolidated and streamlined.  In every case, legislators get a chance to think through issues like whether the agency is meeting its mission; if not, why not; and if so, is there a better way?

There’s a case to be made that reforms that do little more than add to the existing body of law are, in practice, de-forms of public policy.  We don’t need more laws; we need less of the ones we have, and better versions of those.

My apologies for gorging on the disastrous impact of meddlesome food czars, but the news is even worse than kids throwing away uneaten salads and smuggling in junk food to curb their hunger pangs.  According to the Federal Register, the Agricultural Department’s new calorie caps on federally subsidized breakfasts and lunches will hit local school districts with an additional $1.7 billion in mandated, uncompensated spending over the next five years.

The reason is twofold.  First, the new regulations require schools to spend money on higher priced foods like whole grains and fresh produce to stay below the calorie cap.  Second, the feds are only contributing an average funding increase of 6 cents per meal – an amount that falls far short of the estimated 10 cents increase for each lunch and 27 cents increase for each breakfast that will result from the new rules.  Thus, a $1.7 billion deficit gets passed onto cash-strapped school districts.

Whatever one thinks about the propriety of trying to force kids to eat healthier foods at school – and there are compelling reasons to consider some of the proposals – no can argue that yet another underfunded mandate is a serious long-term solution to this problem.

The drive to force schoolchildren to eat healthier meals continues unabated, despite overwhelming evidence that serving adult-oriented meals increases kids’ use of junk food.  In today’s San Francisco Chronicle one local school district food advocate (yes, they exist) thinks that new federal rules mandating increased use of red, yellow and green vegetables and protein-rich legumes will result in a generation of kids yearning for spinach.

“Parents can now imagine their children coming home from school with a newfound love for spinach, sweet potatoes and whole-wheat spaghetti,” said Dawn Undurraga, staff nutritionist with Environmental Working Group, which works on public health issues, in a statement. “That’s a positive development that will have a lasting impact as they grow into strong, fit young adults.”

Would that it were so.  As a parent myself, I can vouch for the flights of fancy we sometimes entertain when junior’s decision-making process does not mirror our own.  On occasion I’ve tried to convince myself that maybe if I just eliminate sugar from my son’s diet he won’t want it anymore.  Of course, his taste buds and Grandma intercede and the game is up.  He knows that there’s a much better tasting alternative to the wheat-filled slag Dad is serving.  It is one thing for a parent to be paternalistic, but it’s quite another when public sector food bureaucrats (or “activists”) think they can socially engineer a kid to crave certain food.

Unfortunately for the Berkeley-based Ms. Undurraga, my column on the Los Angeles Unified School District’s failed food experiment points in the opposite direction.  According to reporting from the Los Angeles Times students confronted with mass produced health food are reacting in a way all too familiar:

For many students, L.A. Unified’s trailblazing introduction of healthful school lunches has been a flop. Earlier this year, the district got rid of chocolate and strawberry milk, chicken nuggets, corn dogs, nachos and other food high in fat, sugar and sodium. Instead, district chefs concocted such healthful alternatives as vegetarian curries and tamales, quinoa salads and pad Thai noodles.

There’s just one problem: Many of the meals are being rejected en masse. Participation in the school lunch program has dropped by thousands of students. Principals report massive waste, with unopened milk cartons and uneaten entrees being thrown away. Students are ditching lunch, and some say they’re suffering from headaches, stomach pains and even anemia. At many campuses, an underground market for chips, candy, fast-food burgers and other taboo fare is thriving.  (Emphasis mine)

What?  A black market for comfort food seething right below the pad Thai noodles and quinoa salads?!  Obviously, the next step is to confiscate the hamburgers and punish those responsible.  Perhaps Michelle Obama could be called in to force-feed yummy bowls of spinach until the little ones develop that “newfound love” of greens everyone is so eager to foist upon them.

The news of President Barack Obama’s unconstitutional and dubious recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was met with near universal outrage, especially here at CFIF.  Already a legal argument is emerging that could stop Cordray’s pledged lurch for power before it takes a second step.

From the Daily Caller:

But an obscure paragraph in the 2010 law that created the bureau may keep Cordray in check unless the Senate formally approves of his hiring — an approval Obama sought to circumvent by making him a so-called “recess” appointment.

Section 1066 of the law says many of the bureau’s new powers are to be held by the secretary of the Treasury “until the Director of the Bureau is confirmed by the Senate.”

That legal technicality ensures that Cordray’s power will be legally crippled, said Roger Pilon, the founder and director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies.

“I don’t think he would have the authority to act” because he still hasn’t been confirmed by the Senate, Pilon said. “As soon as he did [try to impose a decision], it would be challenged [in court] by one of the people or entities that is affected.”

So now it looks like Obama violated both the Constitution and the federal law that created Cordray’s position.  Next Question: Does this qualify as a high crime or a misdemeanor?

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

Huzzah to the 241 members of the House of Representatives who, in a thinly bipartisan vote today (4 Democrats voted in favor), passed H.R. 10, better known as the Regulations from the Executive In Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act.  As the acronym indicates, the bill wants to limit President Barack Obama’s ability to impose job-killing regulations on the economy.

How does the REINS Act purport to do its job?  If passed by the Senate and signed by the President then every new federal agency regulation inflicting at least $100 million in economic costs would be subject to an up-or-down vote by both houses of Congress.  ($100 million is the threshold for “major” regulations these days.)  When those bills fails – which they almost certainly will unless they are inextricably intertwined with a national security issue – the bureaucrats who dream up these obstacles to economic growth will have to go back to the drawing board and divine a less expensive way to grow the federal government.

Characteristically, the Democrats running the Senate and the one occupying the White House have promised to do nothing to help pass this bill.  (The President even threatened to veto it should enough Senate Dems have the temerity to save their states’ small business owners from the paperwork onslaught thanks to 219 new regulations poised to add thousands of dollars per worker in compliance costs.)

Today, fiscal conservatives can cheer passage of a real “job creation” bill thanks to the conservative plurality in the House of Representatives.  Next year, it will critically important to elect more of these to the Senate – and hopefully the presidency – so that America can get back to work.

Under the false banner of “deregulation,” New Jersey state Senator Bob Smith (D) today introduced telecommunications legislation that would actually increase unnecessary and job-killing regulation over an industry critical to economic growth and jobs.

Smith claims that S-3062 relieves regulatory burdens, but it would in fact broaden regulatory authority for the Board of Public Utilities while heaping even more bureaucratic mandates and obligations upon telecom companies.  Among other things, the law would reinstate Board power over competitive services, even though such oversight was removed by the state legislature years ago.  The proposed bill would also mandate tariffs for services classified as competitive, while discriminatorily imposing filing requirements on some businesses but not others.  Moreover, the legislation would complicate and add uncertainty within the patchwork of overlapping federal and state regulations, and expand Board power in the video realm.

The fact that Sen. Smith attempted to characterize new regulatory proposals  as deregulatory shows that even he knows our current economic environment is not one in which the public desires even  more government interference.  Unfortunately, that’s what his bill would do.  What struggling New Jersey citizens need are more jobs and more telecom competition, not more bureaucracy.

In an interview with CFIF, Richard Trzupek, a chemist, consultant and writer who has worked in the environmental industry for decades, discusses his recently released Encounter Broadside titled, “How the EPA’s Green Tyranny is Stifling America.”

Listen to the interview here.