Tag: regulation

At least 80 House Republicans have signed a letter demanding that Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) block any further funding of Obamacare.

7:24 pm

At least 80 House Republicans have signed a letter demanding that Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) block any further funding of Obamacare.

This story illustrates two things. First, the House Republican leadership has been timid about using its power to block the implementation of Obamacare, even though the public clearly wants it blocked. Second, that about a third of the House Republican membership has already signed the letter, with more signatures expected, suggests that the bulk of the Republican Party is not as timid as their leadership. Moreover, I expect the November election to significantly strengthen this fiscally conservative trend.

Thus, it will not surprise me if we see some very radical budget cuts in the next Congress.

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The House Appropriations Committee has approved a $1.4 billion cut in the budget of EPA, also including 31 additional riders limited the agency’s regulatory powers.

1:57 pm

The House Appropriations Committee has approved a $1.4 billion cut in the budget of EPA, also including 31 additional riders limiting the agency’s regulatory powers.

That would make the 2013 EPA budget equivalent to its budget in the early 2000s, numbers that would hardly be crippling.

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Another dismal jobs report.

9:47 am

Another dismal jobs report.

Job growth amounted to a disappointing 80,000, below analyst expectations of 90-100K, while the jobless rate remained the same at 8.2%:

Read the whole article. There’s a lot more, all of its depressing and trending downward.

While no President should be blamed entirely for the unemployment numbers, the policies of any President do have a direct influence on those numbers, and should bear some responsibility, especially in this era where we have ceded so much power to the federal government. Consider this graph (below the fold), which shows the “total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force.” The steep upward swing, beginning in 2008, sadly corresponds too closely with the beginnings of the Obama administration. And it is with this administration that we have seen the worst deficits, the most regulation, and the biggest increase in the power of government in our lifetimes. It is thus no surprise the economy has crumbled.
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A Modest Proposal

9:48 am

“A Modest Proposal.”

Now that the Roberts Court has affirmed that the government has the power to mandate purchases of private goods and services as long as it’s structured as a tax, I propose that we put this new-found authority in the service of an explicit Constitutional right. For far too long, too many Americans have suffered from an inequal distribution of firearms, despite the Second Amendment’s express exhortation to “keep and bear arms,” in large part because income inequality in this nation has kept the poor and working classes from having the proper protection for themselves and their loved ones. We need to end this disparity now by applying the ObamaCare model immediately.

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Obamacare: 0-98

2:37 pm

Obamacare: 0-98

As the nation awaits the Supreme Court’s ruling on President Obama’s centerpiece legislation, it’s worth reviewing the American public’s response to it across the 27 months since Obama signed it into law. Over that span, from March 2010 through a poll released this morning, Rasmussen has conducted 98 polls of likely voters. All 98 times, support for repeal has outpaced opposition to repeal. Across 98 contests, Obamacare has gone 0 and 98.

What amazes me is how completely oblivious the Democratic Party has been to these polls. Despite the public’s clear and passionate opposition to this law the Democrats have continued to act as if they believe the law will win them votes.

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The Dodd-Frank downgrade.

10:11 am

The Dodd-Frank downgrade.

What comes through in the Moody’s assessment [the credit-rating downgrade of 15 banks] and in any review of their returns on equity is that banks have lost significant ability to generate earnings to offset the inevitable losses. The lost earnings power is surely due in part to reduced leverage, which helps protects taxpayers.

But 2,300 pages of Dodd-Frank and countless other federal efforts to put sand in the financial gears are also taking their toll. The Obama tax and regulatory frenzy, of which Dodd-Frank is a part, weighs on economic growth. Those are our words, not Moody’s, but the rating agency does note that the abysmal economic environment is a drag on ratings for everyone.

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Forbidden by the Forest Service from using powered equipment, a shovel brigade of 60 people last weekend made temporary repairs to Tombstone’s water line.

7:30 pm

Forbidden by the Forest Service from using heavy equipment, a shovel brigade of 60 people last weekend made temporary repairs to Tombstone’s water line.

“It took 60 people two days to complete a work project that could have been done in two hours with the appropriate equipment,” Barnes said. “We have a lot more work that needs to be done up there, but we don’t have the permits from the forest service to go back.”

For reasons that only bureaucrats understand, the Forest Service decided that the use of heavy equipment like a bulldozer is more harmful to nature than 60 people with shovels, even though in the end the work done is exactly the same, and that this same work was done repeatedly in the past by heavy equipment.

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The FAA and NASA have worked out their differences concerning their regulation of private commercial space.

4:05 pm

The FAA and NASA have worked out their differences concerning their regulation of private commercial space.

Essentially, NASA has finally conceded with this agreement that it has no control over a private space launch that is not flying to a NASA facility. That the FAA continues to have as much regulatory control is bad enough, but getting NASA out of the loop will at least ease the bureaucratic burden for private companies.

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The real estate crash: We’ve only just begun

11:37 am

A real estate industry group today announced that there was a nine percent jump in foreclosures during the month of May.

RealtyTrac reported that 205,990 U.S. properties received filings last month, including default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions, marking the first monthly increase since January. Bank repossessions climbed steeply, up 7% to 54,844, after hitting a four-year low in April.

The report also noted that foreclosures made up 26% of U.S. home sales in first quarter and that more than 30% of mortgage borrowers were still underwater.

As someone who just moved to Tucson and spent more than six months searching for and finally purchasing a home, I can add a bit of personal experience to these dry statistics. And my perspective is sadly not encouraging.
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“So come and get me if you must, Mr. President. I will not bow to your wicked regulation.”

2:21 pm

We’ve only just begun: “So come and get me if you must, Mr. President. I will not bow to your wicked regulation.”

James Dobson is not to be taken lightly. Under the Obamacare HHS contraceptive mandate, his organization, Focus on the Family, would not qualify for any exemption and would be required to pay for contraceptives and abortion drugs. And if Dobson’s organization defies the federal government here, expect very loud fireworks, as Focus is very large with a very large following.

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More colleges have announced plans to drop their student healthplans due costs imposed by Obamacare.

10:51 am

Repeal it! More colleges have announced plans to drop their student healthplans due costs imposed by Obamacare.

Lenoir-Rhyne University of Hickory, N.C., the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash., and Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa—all private liberal-arts colleges—have told students they are dropping school-sponsored limited-benefit insurance plans starting in the fall. The three colleges said students’ premiums would have gone up roughly tenfold, and they said they could no longer justify making students sign up if they didn’t have their own insurance. [emphasis mine]

And if they don’t drop their healthplan?

The State University of New York at Plattsburgh said its 2011-2012 premium was $440 for a plan that covered up to $10,000 for each injury or sickness. Officials said the premium for the coming year would be $1,300 to $1,600 for a plan that meets the new requirements. The school will continue to require students to carry insurance, either through the school or not.

How’s that hope and change working out for you, students?

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A bank run by an Obama bundler has gotten an Republican-led House committee to exempt that bank from provisions of the Frank-Dodd act, saving the bank $300 million.

5:07 pm

Bipartisan corruption: A bank run by an Obama fund-raiser has gotten an Republican-led House committee to exempt that bank from provisions of the Dodd-Frank act, saving the bank $300 million.

Any law that allows legislators to grant individual waivers isn’t a law at all but a form of extortion: Pay up or you won’t get your exemption. Dodd-Frank, as well as much of all the legislation passed by Congress in the past decade, should be repealed so that everyone gets the exemption.

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An economy built to stall

8:48 pm

“An economy built to stall.”

In his first two years in office, Democrats gave Mr. Obama everything he wanted, save for cap and trade and union card-check, which would have done even more harm to job creation. They passed stimulus, ObamaCare, multiple housing bailouts, Dodd-Frank and more.

Even after Republicans took the House, they gave Mr. Obama the payroll tax holiday he demanded first for 2011 and again for 2012. Far from some new fiscal “austerity,” overall federal spending hasn’t declined. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve has delivered monetary stimulus after stimulus—QE I, QE II, Operation Twist, and 42 months of near-zero interest rates with the promise of 30 months more.

Mr. Obama has had the freest run of policy of any President since LBJ. So maybe the problem is the policies.

Maybe Milton Friedman was right that “temporary, targeted” tax cuts don’t change the incentives to invest or hire because people aren’t stupid. Maybe each $1 of new federal spending doesn’t produce a “multiplier” of 1.5 times that in added output. Maybe the historic burst of regulation of the last three years has harmed business confidence and job creation. And maybe the uncertainty that comes from helter-skelter fiscal and monetary policy has dampened the animal spirits needed for a durable expansion.

As I said yesterday, though no president or Congress is entirely to blame for the state of the economy, they both can do great harm if they make decisions that interfere with the freedom of the market. And sadly, having the government interfere with the freedom of the market has been Obama’s mantra since the day he took office.

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Banned from using heavy equipment by the Forest Service to repair their water supply, Tombstone residents are planning a “Shovel Brigade” in June.

11:30 am

Banned by the Forest Service from using heavy equipment to repair their water supply, Tombstone residents are planning an event in June where thousands will gather to do the work manually with shovels.

According to the Tombstone Shovel Brigade’s website, the group was established for several reasons, including to bring public awareness to the issues facing the city regarding repairs to its historic water system and the “limited cooperation” the city has received from the Forest Service.

“Another goal of the Tombstone Shovel Brigade is to get a lot of work done using hand tools and horses. A few workers can only make so much progress but a couple of thousand people with picks, shovels, ropes and chains can accomplish a lot and will send a loud message to the National Forest Service and the federal government,” states the website.

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“If the quality of the Administration’s economic analysis hadn’t already proven to be nearly worthless the discrepancy here would be stunning.”

9:22 am

“If the quality of the Administration’s economic analysis hadn’t already proven to be nearly worthless the discrepancy here would be stunning.”

The discrepancy refers to a claim made by the Obama administration about one benefit of Obamacare, compared to the reality of what has actually happened.

It is time to repeal this disaster of a law. We should also fire the politicians who foisted it on us.

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California officials have confisicated two stuffed animals from a local bar, after being on display for about a half century.

5:01 pm

Theft by government: California officials have confiscated two stuffed animals from a local bar, after having been on display for about a half century.

Both animals, while now endangered, were not endangered when they were killed, stuffed, and placed in the bar. Their existence is completely irrelevant to saving either species. For the government to confiscate them is nothing more than a expression of naked power. Worse, if there was no payment for them it is illegal. The Bill of Rights has this clause that says government cannot take a citizen’s property without just compensation.

As I said, theft by government.

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Massachusetts state officials are restricting the kinds of foods that can be sold at bake sales.

7:38 am

We’re here to help you: Massachusetts state officials are restricting the kinds of foods that can be sold at bake sales.

Bake sales, the calorie-laden standby cash-strapped classrooms, PTAs and booster clubs rely on, will be outlawed from public schools as of Aug. 1 as part of new no-nonsense nutrition standards, forcing fundraisers back to the blackboard to cook up alternative ways to raise money for kids.

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