There’s a scene in the Oscar winning 1984 movie Amadeus where Mozart is pleading with Austrian Emperor Joseph II to allow him to produce a work many in the court find distasteful: “Forgive me, Majesty. I am a vulgar man! But I assure you, my music is not.” As anyone who’s seen the movie knows, that statement is indeed true – at least in that big screen version of Mozart. The point of the line is simply that it is his work, i.e. not his words, that are important.
It’s a line that I think could equally apply to Donald Trump. The man is indeed vulgar at times. He frequently spouts off without necessarily knowing all the facts, without being clear, sometimes he’s simply wrong, and he frequently shows his thin skin when it comes to anyone who disagrees with him or who he believes has slighted him.
By any measure, if America was looking for a standard bearer of eloquence, someone to be the next Abraham Lincoln, JFK or Ronald Reagan with words that inspire a nation to greatness, that’s likely not Donald Trump. If America seeks to have another John Adams or Thomas Jefferson who leaves behind a virtual library of deep, thoughtful, consequential correspondence, that’s not likely Donald Trump either. But if the nation is looking for someone to do the basic nuts and bolts things that help put the government back where it belongs, helps point the nation towards prosperity, reminds Americans that it’s not government that made America great but rather her industrious people, then Donald Trump may be that man.
In the 50 days since Donald Trump was inaugurated the Trump White House has been a cavalcade of activity seeking to rein in the leviathan of government bequeathed to him by Barack Obama… and truth be told, by most of the dozen or so presidents before Obama as well.
The first and most important step Trump has taken has been the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. In a universe where modern courts seem to create law out of thin air or less, a conservative who recognizes that government power derives from the Constitution and what’s actually in it is exactly what the country needs.
But that’s only one. There are many more. Putting Betsy DeVos at the Department of Education is a genius move. Unlike most of the Education bureaucracy, DeVos understands that education is about the students, not the teachers’ unions. Schools are there to teach students to survive and thrive in the world, not a jobs program for teachers and administrators. DeVos will work to put parents and local communities back in control of their children’s education rather than Washington and teachers’ unions.
Then there is Scott Pruitt over at EPA. In Pruitt Trump has empowered someone who understands firsthand how the EPA has strayed far from Congress’s original intent. Pruitt will seek to reverse the decades long mission creep that jumped the shark back in 2011 when the EPA decided that it could regulate milk spills on farms the same way it regulates oil spills. (Eventually the agency had to explicitly state that it would not regulate milk…) Added bonus, Pruitt understands that energy is what powers the United States and he will seek to reverse the EPA’s war on traditional sources.
And speaking of environmental regulations gone awry, the Trump administration has announced that it will roll back the Obama administration’s last minute jump in CAFÉ standards regulations which would have required automakers to increase fuel economy for new cars to the equivalent of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. Aside from being an indirect subsidy to Elon Musk and the rest of the electric car market, this would have turned the United States into Europe, where practically everyone drives around in Matchbox cars few actually want.
And finally there is regulation itself… On the campaign Trump promised to cut regulation by 75%. While he may or may not ever hit that mark, he has taken two strong steps in stemming the tide of overregulation… which costs the United States almost $2 trillion per year. During the first month of the Trump administration not only stated that there would be $0 budgeted for new regulations, they also stated that for every regulation that might be rolled out, an agency must repeal two existing ones. Add to that a hiring freeze – and a ban on hiring contractors – and Trump has set himself up to at least move down that road.
Donald Trump may not be the kind of guy you want to invite to your dinner table or the guy you want dating your daughter… But so what? He wasn’t elected to be a polite dilettante who makes everyone feel warm and fuzzy. He was elected to be the chief executive of the federal government. His single most important duty in that role beyond national defense is to seek to ensure that the government does only those things that it is Constitutionally empowered to do, and if possible do them efficiently and effectively. By reining in stifling government overreach and overregulation, Donald Trump will hopefully put the United States back in a place where innovators, inventors and entrepreneurs can revive real opportunity and prosperity.
For eight years we had an “articulate” and caring president who did indeed make many people feel warm and fuzzy, and over whom Hollywood, the media and academia fawned… with the result being an avalanche of regulation, a dysfunctional and intrusive government and a GDP growth rate that averaged 1.8% - the worst in eighty years – all while piling another $10 trillion of debt onto the shoulders of American citizens!
There may indeed be sour notes ahead, like the disaster of the Obamacare repeal that is shaping up in the House, or potentially a waffling on taxes or the Paris accords, but today 50 days in, the music coming from the Trump administration has been surprisingly sublime. Like the Mozart of Amadeus, Donald Trump can indeed be vile and sometimes repugnant man, but if he continues on this path and succeeds in returning real prosperity to the United States where a robust rising tide lifts all boats, his legacy will be music to the ears of most Americans…
Showing posts with label EPA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EPA. Show all posts
Friday, March 10, 2017
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
A Post Obama Top 10 List For American Prosperity...
America has a love affair with Top 10 lists. Probably the most well known is David Letterman’s “Top Ten List” that began as a throwaway skit on NBC 30 years ago and soon became a cornerstone of his program, even more so when he later moved to CBS. There’s also ESPN’s Top 10 Plays of the Day… and they even have a Not Top 10 list. And no walk through a grocery checkout would be complete with catching a glimpse of at least one magazine touting a Top 10 list of beauty tips, sexiest men or Hollywood divorces. Then of course there are the Internet’s ubiquitous click bait ads featuring “Top 10 things you didn’t know about…” this celebrity or that food or cute animals.
If nothing else, Top 10 lists are an attempt to focus attention… whether they are seeking to entertain audiences, sell magazines or drive online stats. They can however sometimes be things of consequence. This is one of those times, and this list is about more than just making viewers laugh or readers envious. It’s about the first ten (domestic) things the next president should promise to do immediately upon taking office from Barack Obama. While a complete list would no doubt be exponentially longer, a Top Ten list provides an opportunity to focus the attention of voters and candidates in the months leading up to next year’s election, and provide clarity about what a candidate’s priorities are.
Drum roll please…
Number 10: Refocus NASA on science and space exploration rather than “Muslim outreach”.
Number 9: Eliminate NLRB Ambush Election Rules – This rule is a giveaway to unions and dramatically ties the hands of employers seeking to present a balancing argument against unionization.
Number 8: Eliminate the HUD rule that seeks to “diversify” wealthy neighborhoods… or what I call the Obaminization of your neighborhood.
Number 7: Withdraw all NLRB lawsuits and actions seeking to apply Joint Employer legislation to franchisors. This position threatens the very foundation of the franchise model that has been so extraordinarily successful and has generated a countless choices for consumers, great wealth for entrepreneurs, and tens of millions of jobs across the country.
Number 6: Eliminate the EPA’s job killing and extraordinarily expensive rule requiring a 30% reduction (from 2005 levels) of CO2 emissions by 2030.
Number 5: Announce that the administration will work with Congress to repeal Dodd Frank… the disastrous legislative and regulatory leviathan implemented in the wake of the housing collapse.
Number 4: Repeal every Obama Executive Order pertaining to immigration and amnesty. Simultaneously announce that the administration will not engage in immigration reform until legislation is passed requiring work begin on a wall from Brownsville, Texas to San Diego.
Number 3: Announce that the Department of Commerce will immediately cease all efforts to relinquish control over the Internet and, further, announce that the contract that comes up for renewal in 2017 will be written for 25 years to preclude another attempt to internationalize control over the Internet.
Number 2: Immediately move to have the FCC repeal Net Neutrality and utilize all administration resources to block implementation and enforcement in the interim.
And the Number 1 thing the next president should do upon taking office is to immediately repeal all executive orders and eliminate all waivers pertaining to Obamacare. Simultaneously the president should send a team to work with Congress to repeal Obamacare and replace it, with the goal of passing reforms that allow free markets and entrepreneurship to provide solutions to tackle the American healthcare situation.
Of course this will not be enough, as there would be myriad things remaining to be addressed such as the oppressive tax code and tax rates, a failed federal education bureaucracy and a stultifying energy policy… and of course a catastrophically dysfunctional foreign policy. But by conspicuously unfurling a standard with such a list, a candidate would quickly put voters and the nation on notice that with him, or her, economic freedom, entrepreneurship and the pursuit of widespread prosperity would once again be primary forces driving US domestic policy. One can only hope that after the long national nightmare of Barack Obama’s reign the country still remembers what prosperity looks like and is willing to pull the lever for someone who understands how to achieve it.
If nothing else, Top 10 lists are an attempt to focus attention… whether they are seeking to entertain audiences, sell magazines or drive online stats. They can however sometimes be things of consequence. This is one of those times, and this list is about more than just making viewers laugh or readers envious. It’s about the first ten (domestic) things the next president should promise to do immediately upon taking office from Barack Obama. While a complete list would no doubt be exponentially longer, a Top Ten list provides an opportunity to focus the attention of voters and candidates in the months leading up to next year’s election, and provide clarity about what a candidate’s priorities are.
Drum roll please…
Number 9: Eliminate NLRB Ambush Election Rules – This rule is a giveaway to unions and dramatically ties the hands of employers seeking to present a balancing argument against unionization.
Number 8: Eliminate the HUD rule that seeks to “diversify” wealthy neighborhoods… or what I call the Obaminization of your neighborhood.
Number 7: Withdraw all NLRB lawsuits and actions seeking to apply Joint Employer legislation to franchisors. This position threatens the very foundation of the franchise model that has been so extraordinarily successful and has generated a countless choices for consumers, great wealth for entrepreneurs, and tens of millions of jobs across the country.
Number 6: Eliminate the EPA’s job killing and extraordinarily expensive rule requiring a 30% reduction (from 2005 levels) of CO2 emissions by 2030.
Number 5: Announce that the administration will work with Congress to repeal Dodd Frank… the disastrous legislative and regulatory leviathan implemented in the wake of the housing collapse.
Number 4: Repeal every Obama Executive Order pertaining to immigration and amnesty. Simultaneously announce that the administration will not engage in immigration reform until legislation is passed requiring work begin on a wall from Brownsville, Texas to San Diego.
Number 3: Announce that the Department of Commerce will immediately cease all efforts to relinquish control over the Internet and, further, announce that the contract that comes up for renewal in 2017 will be written for 25 years to preclude another attempt to internationalize control over the Internet.
Number 2: Immediately move to have the FCC repeal Net Neutrality and utilize all administration resources to block implementation and enforcement in the interim.
And the Number 1 thing the next president should do upon taking office is to immediately repeal all executive orders and eliminate all waivers pertaining to Obamacare. Simultaneously the president should send a team to work with Congress to repeal Obamacare and replace it, with the goal of passing reforms that allow free markets and entrepreneurship to provide solutions to tackle the American healthcare situation.
Of course this will not be enough, as there would be myriad things remaining to be addressed such as the oppressive tax code and tax rates, a failed federal education bureaucracy and a stultifying energy policy… and of course a catastrophically dysfunctional foreign policy. But by conspicuously unfurling a standard with such a list, a candidate would quickly put voters and the nation on notice that with him, or her, economic freedom, entrepreneurship and the pursuit of widespread prosperity would once again be primary forces driving US domestic policy. One can only hope that after the long national nightmare of Barack Obama’s reign the country still remembers what prosperity looks like and is willing to pull the lever for someone who understands how to achieve it.
Monday, March 17, 2014
King Barack, the Declaration of Independence and a Textbook Definition of Tyranny
The two great founding documents in American history are the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. Today, more than two centuries after each was written, people often conflate the two. How often have you heard someone say “It’s my right… it’s right there in the Constitution… Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Of course, that phrase is not in the Constitution at all. It’s in the Declaration.
That conflation belies the fact that while both documents are important to our history, they are fundamentally different and do different things. The Declaration of Independence severed the ties with Great Britain, explained the grounds for that split and declared that each state was a sovereign nation unto itself. The Constitution on the other hand articulated how those 13 sovereign nations would come together to form a single nation and how the government would be structured, how powers would be distributed both between the federal and state governments as well as the framework of checks and balances within the federal government itself. A critical element in the passage of that Constitution was the Massachusetts Compromise, without which it would never have passed. It was the Massachusetts Compromise that forged the agreement to add a Bill of Rights as the first order of business when the new Congress met.
During the ratification much of the debate could focus on a Bill of Rights because the checks and balances were already in place within the original document itself: Staggered terms for presidents, senators and congressmen and lifetime appointments for justices; The president’s veto and Congress’ ability to override; The election of congressmen by citizens, senators by states and the president by the Electoral College; Representation in the House based on population and in the Senate by equal numbers, etc.
The whole point of the American Constitution is the United States is a nation of laws, not a nation of men. The founders were too early to have been able to reference John Dalbert-Acton’s famous 19th century quote "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." but they certainly understood the sentiment behind it. As such they gave us a constitution specifically implemented to avoid just that. They were quite clear about how the government can enact laws. Congresses passes bills and the President signs them into law. The Executive Branch then implements and executes them. While presidents have a great deal of leeway, their job is to execute the law, not write it. The whole point of the Constitution was to have the law making power in the hands of the people’s representatives, not in the hands of a would be king.
Unfortunately King Barack doesn’t see the Constitution quite that way. To be sure, Congress has a long history of ceding power to the Executive Branch, largely enabled by FDR’s bringing the Supreme Court to heel, but nonetheless, there is a difference between Congresses’ ill advised delegation of authority to the President and his simply taking it. And that’s what we see in Obamacare.
When laws are somewhat open ended, like the 4,000 word document creating the EPA it should come as no surprise that the Executive Branch takes it upon itself to “clarify” the language as it implements the law. The result today is an EPA that is out of control. While that is a bad thing, it’s easy to understand how it came to be. Obamacare has no such ambiguity. It contains over 400,000 words – half the length of the Bible! And in those almost half a million words you find an employer mandate requirement that stipulates: “Effective Date- The amendments made by this section shall apply to months beginning after December 31, 2013.” (Found under the section titled "SEC. 1513. SHARED RESPONSIBILITY FOR EMPLOYERS.") There is no ambiguity there. There is no opaque timeframe for the requirements to take effect. But that doesn’t matter to Barack Obama. In July of last year he changed the rules by Executive fiat… but not the law. That’s illegal. That’s unconstitutional. As Charles Krauthammer says, “That’s banana republic stuff.”
And there are many more instances of the same. We’ve known since 2008 that Barack Obama was not a fan of the US Constitution, but now that he is in charge of the reins of power, he seems to think that he doesn’t need to pay any attention to it at all. How many times have you heard him say something like “If Congress won’t act, I will”? Frankly, that’s a scary proposition for a country that has been largely free for two centuries. There’s a pattern here that seems troubling. Unlawfully seizing property from the rightful owners… check. Using the power of government to try and silence opponents… check. Lying to voters in order to gain their support for legislation… check. Then deciding that that law says what he says it says rather than what it actually says… check. That is a textbook definition of a tyrant and a decent into a banana republic. One can’t help but wonder how much time he’s putting into figuring out how to bypass the 22nd Amendment.
That conflation belies the fact that while both documents are important to our history, they are fundamentally different and do different things. The Declaration of Independence severed the ties with Great Britain, explained the grounds for that split and declared that each state was a sovereign nation unto itself. The Constitution on the other hand articulated how those 13 sovereign nations would come together to form a single nation and how the government would be structured, how powers would be distributed both between the federal and state governments as well as the framework of checks and balances within the federal government itself. A critical element in the passage of that Constitution was the Massachusetts Compromise, without which it would never have passed. It was the Massachusetts Compromise that forged the agreement to add a Bill of Rights as the first order of business when the new Congress met.
During the ratification much of the debate could focus on a Bill of Rights because the checks and balances were already in place within the original document itself: Staggered terms for presidents, senators and congressmen and lifetime appointments for justices; The president’s veto and Congress’ ability to override; The election of congressmen by citizens, senators by states and the president by the Electoral College; Representation in the House based on population and in the Senate by equal numbers, etc.
The whole point of the American Constitution is the United States is a nation of laws, not a nation of men. The founders were too early to have been able to reference John Dalbert-Acton’s famous 19th century quote "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." but they certainly understood the sentiment behind it. As such they gave us a constitution specifically implemented to avoid just that. They were quite clear about how the government can enact laws. Congresses passes bills and the President signs them into law. The Executive Branch then implements and executes them. While presidents have a great deal of leeway, their job is to execute the law, not write it. The whole point of the Constitution was to have the law making power in the hands of the people’s representatives, not in the hands of a would be king.
When laws are somewhat open ended, like the 4,000 word document creating the EPA it should come as no surprise that the Executive Branch takes it upon itself to “clarify” the language as it implements the law. The result today is an EPA that is out of control. While that is a bad thing, it’s easy to understand how it came to be. Obamacare has no such ambiguity. It contains over 400,000 words – half the length of the Bible! And in those almost half a million words you find an employer mandate requirement that stipulates: “Effective Date- The amendments made by this section shall apply to months beginning after December 31, 2013.” (Found under the section titled "SEC. 1513. SHARED RESPONSIBILITY FOR EMPLOYERS.") There is no ambiguity there. There is no opaque timeframe for the requirements to take effect. But that doesn’t matter to Barack Obama. In July of last year he changed the rules by Executive fiat… but not the law. That’s illegal. That’s unconstitutional. As Charles Krauthammer says, “That’s banana republic stuff.”
And there are many more instances of the same. We’ve known since 2008 that Barack Obama was not a fan of the US Constitution, but now that he is in charge of the reins of power, he seems to think that he doesn’t need to pay any attention to it at all. How many times have you heard him say something like “If Congress won’t act, I will”? Frankly, that’s a scary proposition for a country that has been largely free for two centuries. There’s a pattern here that seems troubling. Unlawfully seizing property from the rightful owners… check. Using the power of government to try and silence opponents… check. Lying to voters in order to gain their support for legislation… check. Then deciding that that law says what he says it says rather than what it actually says… check. That is a textbook definition of a tyrant and a decent into a banana republic. One can’t help but wonder how much time he’s putting into figuring out how to bypass the 22nd Amendment.
Monday, May 20, 2013
Will big government be felled by big government overreach, arrogance and overconfidence?
One of my favorite shows is a program called “Person of Interest’ on CBS. The story revolves around a government computer that knows when someone somewhere is in danger and passes that information along to a team of ex government types who go on to save that particular Person of Interest. The show’s device is that the machine can tap into virtually every piece of electronic data on the planet and harness the video feed from every surveillance camera in the world.
While the heroes saving the day makes for a feel good show, it’s never a cakewalk. Besides the bad guys targeting each week’s Person of Interest, the good guys have to deal with the ongoing threat from a cabal of dirty cops as well as the machinations of the government agency that used to control the machine.
It all makes for great entertainment, because the good guys always win and all the scariness is limited to sixty minutes on the small screen. In the real world such government stories are rarely that entertaining. What makes them lack entertainment value in the real world is that the good guys don’t always win and there’s that small issue of who gets to decide who are the good guys in the first place.
Although Person of Interest is fiction, the idea of a Machiavellian government that seeks to manipulate events, extinguish opposition and deceive its citizenry certainly isn’t. In real life we are seeing just such a government emerge right in front of us. Not that it hasn’t been there for years, because it has, but up until now it was largely cloaked from sight for those depending on the fourth estate to tell them what to see.
Now the onion is beginning to peel. Today Washington is overwhelmed with scandals of the Obama administration seeking to use bully pulpit and the police power of government to effect its political ends. From the constantly shifting talking points of the Benghazi story to the Justice Department seizing AP records, to the EPA head seeking to hide her correspondence to the IRS muzzling groups opposing President Obama, it seems like every day brings a new story of deceitfulness and manipulation.
As much as I’d love to see the Obama administration run out of Washington, they are largely footnotes in the bigger story here. That bigger story is actually quite simple: Big government.
Big government is a bad thing. Big government in the hands of manipulative, pernicious, vain and self righteous bureaucrats and politicians is a worse thing. That is exactly what we have today with a giant all powerful government and an administration that sees itself as all knowing, infallible and beyond scrutiny or accountability.
While part of the solution may be holding Barack Obama and his minions responsible for their despicable actions, that alone does not solve the problem. The same machine with a different operator is just as dangerous, just perhaps to different people. Indeed, the citizens of the United States should not be at the mercy of one man’s or one administration’s propensity for honesty in order to exercise their rights and pursue their happiness. And that idea should apply to everyone, whether a progressive or a libertarian and everyone in between.
The solution to solving the problem we are currently facing is not to be found in throwing the rascals out. The solution is to pare back government to its Constitutional limits, pare it back to such a degree that it does not hold in its arbitrary hands the keys to a citizen’s success or failure or their ability to live their lives or exercise their rights.
The IRS can only threaten citizens because it controls the tax code and has the police power of the government to enforce its capricious rulings. Not only does it control the tax code, it has made that code so byzantine that no one – including its own agents – knows how to interpret it. Replace the income tax with the Fair Tax and you eviscerate the IRS’s ability to intimidate and coerce citizens.
Similarly, the EPA can only dictate a citizen’s prosperity or poverty because it too has the police power of government to enforce its arbitrary judgments. What’s more, over its forty year history the EPA has morphed itself from regulating pollution to regulating virtually anything in the economy that moves, manufactures or energizes. Similar unbounded overreach can be found throughout the government from the SEC to OSHA to the Justice Department.
Across the board the federal government should be winnowed to its bare Constitutional bones. Getting the unaccountable government out of the politics and patronage businesses will once again allow citizens to pursue happiness as they define it without making them hostages to the capricious whims of bureaucrats and politicians.
Might it not be fitting that the Obama administration was brought down by the weight of its own arrogance? That the IRS was felled by its own illegal attempts to hobble groups opposed to IRS overreach? That the march to ever bigger government was reversed as a result of big unaccountable government?
Samuel Adams once said: "If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." He was no doubt talking about the Tea Party movement.
While the heroes saving the day makes for a feel good show, it’s never a cakewalk. Besides the bad guys targeting each week’s Person of Interest, the good guys have to deal with the ongoing threat from a cabal of dirty cops as well as the machinations of the government agency that used to control the machine.
It all makes for great entertainment, because the good guys always win and all the scariness is limited to sixty minutes on the small screen. In the real world such government stories are rarely that entertaining. What makes them lack entertainment value in the real world is that the good guys don’t always win and there’s that small issue of who gets to decide who are the good guys in the first place.
Although Person of Interest is fiction, the idea of a Machiavellian government that seeks to manipulate events, extinguish opposition and deceive its citizenry certainly isn’t. In real life we are seeing just such a government emerge right in front of us. Not that it hasn’t been there for years, because it has, but up until now it was largely cloaked from sight for those depending on the fourth estate to tell them what to see.
Now the onion is beginning to peel. Today Washington is overwhelmed with scandals of the Obama administration seeking to use bully pulpit and the police power of government to effect its political ends. From the constantly shifting talking points of the Benghazi story to the Justice Department seizing AP records, to the EPA head seeking to hide her correspondence to the IRS muzzling groups opposing President Obama, it seems like every day brings a new story of deceitfulness and manipulation.As much as I’d love to see the Obama administration run out of Washington, they are largely footnotes in the bigger story here. That bigger story is actually quite simple: Big government.
Big government is a bad thing. Big government in the hands of manipulative, pernicious, vain and self righteous bureaucrats and politicians is a worse thing. That is exactly what we have today with a giant all powerful government and an administration that sees itself as all knowing, infallible and beyond scrutiny or accountability.
While part of the solution may be holding Barack Obama and his minions responsible for their despicable actions, that alone does not solve the problem. The same machine with a different operator is just as dangerous, just perhaps to different people. Indeed, the citizens of the United States should not be at the mercy of one man’s or one administration’s propensity for honesty in order to exercise their rights and pursue their happiness. And that idea should apply to everyone, whether a progressive or a libertarian and everyone in between.
The solution to solving the problem we are currently facing is not to be found in throwing the rascals out. The solution is to pare back government to its Constitutional limits, pare it back to such a degree that it does not hold in its arbitrary hands the keys to a citizen’s success or failure or their ability to live their lives or exercise their rights. The IRS can only threaten citizens because it controls the tax code and has the police power of the government to enforce its capricious rulings. Not only does it control the tax code, it has made that code so byzantine that no one – including its own agents – knows how to interpret it. Replace the income tax with the Fair Tax and you eviscerate the IRS’s ability to intimidate and coerce citizens.
Similarly, the EPA can only dictate a citizen’s prosperity or poverty because it too has the police power of government to enforce its arbitrary judgments. What’s more, over its forty year history the EPA has morphed itself from regulating pollution to regulating virtually anything in the economy that moves, manufactures or energizes. Similar unbounded overreach can be found throughout the government from the SEC to OSHA to the Justice Department.
Across the board the federal government should be winnowed to its bare Constitutional bones. Getting the unaccountable government out of the politics and patronage businesses will once again allow citizens to pursue happiness as they define it without making them hostages to the capricious whims of bureaucrats and politicians.
Might it not be fitting that the Obama administration was brought down by the weight of its own arrogance? That the IRS was felled by its own illegal attempts to hobble groups opposed to IRS overreach? That the march to ever bigger government was reversed as a result of big unaccountable government?
Samuel Adams once said: "If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." He was no doubt talking about the Tea Party movement.
Monday, January 21, 2013
Life imitates art... Liberals see the world as they imagine it is, not how it actually is
From the 1870s his realistic portrayal of the human form was increasingly seen as passé in an art world increasingly captivated by Impressionism – a style which influenced both Van Gogh and Seurat. By the early 20th century Bouguereau’s work had completely fallen out of favor among cultured art devotees, – i.e. everyone except those uncivilized Americans.
Impressionist art was less precise than that of Bouguereau and most artists who came before him. It began a march that has brought us a century of modern art that is often anything but precise… Think Jackson Pollack or Christo.
Such lack of clarity works well in the subjective world of art. Not so much in the not so subjective world of politics and government. It is perhaps no surprise then that the rise of modern liberalism has evolved over a similar timeline and path as modern art.
Politicians on the left no longer look to objective facts to define the world around them. Rather, they look at the world as they would like it to be and interpret it accordingly. How else could one explain the lunacy that pervades the Democrat party today?
Data clearly show that stricter gun laws lead to more crime but that is of no consequence. President Obama and the rest of the progressives who want to pass gun laws that will magically make the world a safer place... as if there were no knives, swords, cars or anything else that might ever be used as a weapon.
Maybe they forgot about Prohibition? It doesn’t take much looking to see the negative consequences of that. Not only did it not work, but it created a paradise for gangsters to grow rich and powerful. Fast forward 80 years and while smoking is not illegal, per se, many states are trying to tax it out of existence… while simultaneously padding the tattered state coffers at the same time. Surprise… it’s not quite working out the way they had planned. High cigarette locales are seeing their sin tax base actually decline as as much as 60% of the cigarettes sold in their states are illegal. Indeed, even in the face of such failure Chicago is planning on doubling down on its bad bet.
Then there are government schools. Could there be a more crystal clear example of government failure on the planet than public schools? Yet somehow the union backed Democrats continue to fight vouchers and school reform despite the physical and intellectual carnage government schools have wrought on American children.
Of course the most important example of the liberal failing to see exactly what is in front of them is on economics. In 2009, just as Canada was beginning to look at free markets to fix its state controlled healthcare sector Nancy Pelosi was crafting ObamaCare to strangle the American people. Over the last four years, just as Greece, Spain and Italy collapse under the weight of their social programs and confiscatory tax rates, the Obama administration has sought to expand government welfare, increase taxes on those who create wealth and further strangle the economy with regulation.
Government is not like art. In art, the artist can paint what he wants, the way he wants. He can imbue it with hidden messages, explicit messages or no messages at all. The beauty of art is that anyone can interpret it any way they want and in doing so they don’t impact anyone else’s ability to enjoy it. With government on the other hand, the realities of life are quite different. Regardless of the author of a bill’s limited intentions, its passage almost always presages a reinterpretation and expansion once it becomes law. Do you imagine when the 16th Amendment was passed Americans expected tax rates to quickly rise to 90%? Do you think when the Civil Rights Acts were passed in the 1960s the writers expected white and Hispanic firefighters to lose promotions because no black firefighters did well on the promotion tests? Do you think when Nixon created the EPA he planned on the agency eventually seeking to regulate milk spills, rainwater and lightbulbs? No, no and no!
None of that matters to liberals however, and that’s the problem with government: Government regulations are rarely limited to benign interpretation or precise application. They have real world consequences, most of which are unintended, and most of those are negative. And the rest of us are stuck with them because they rarely get repealed and almost always grow more restrictive.
As President Obama begins the second leg of his quest to “fundamentally transform America” we should keep that in mind. Thankfully the Constitution limits his time in office to 8 years, unfortunately the shackles of liberal government he leaves us with will likely last far longer and morph into things even he didn’t imagine. The reality of that hell is one that even Monet would have a hard time blurring.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Ethanol Mandates - the poster child for zombie government programs that never die - regardless of the damage they do
By definition humans are imperfect. Some are more imperfect than others however. Nature has provided us with a mechanism to reduce the most imperfect among us. That mechanism is sometimes chronicled in something called the Darwin Awards. My favorite Darwin award of all time involved a thrill seeking man who strapped a solid rocket booster to his car in an effort to see how fast he could go. He went quite fast, in excess of 300 miles per hour actually… but, shockingly, the brakes for his car eventually disintegrated and he met his end after crashing into the side of a cliff. Thankfully nature’s lessons do not always end so… drastically, usually the only injuries are a few broken bones, a smaller bank account and maybe some wounded pride.
And that is the beauty of humanity. We often learn from our mistakes. We often learn from our experiences in order to make adjustments or better decisions going forward. Unfortunately, although government is made up of humans, it does not share that same skillset.
There is possibly no better example of this than the debacle that is Uncle Sam’s ethanol obsession. Since the Carter administration the government has been diverting your dollars to put ethanol into your gas tank. Initially it was intended to be a tool to help the United States become energy independent, it then morphed into a tool to help increase gas mileage and later it became a critical element in fighting global warming. Now it doesn’t even do any of those dubious, but theoretically positive, things. It’s simply become another failed government wealth transfer program.
The Wall Street Journal states: Corn is also a key ingredient in the combine of political power and corporate welfare that is U.S. alternative energy policy. The food-to-fuel mandate is known as the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) and requires 13.2 billion gallons of ethanol to be blended into the gasoline supply this year and 36 billion gallons by 2022. These quotas are fulfilled almost entirely by corn ethanol.
Ethanol is an industry that enjoys no natural market. The only reason the ethanol market exists in the first place is because of government mandates. And who are the beneficiaries of this corporate welfare that is funded out of your pocket? Mainly members of the farm / finance / producers cabal in the form of the Renewable Fuels Association. This advocacy organization that is simply trying to save our planet is made up of an array good hearted companies that are just too fragile to survive without Uncle Sam’s largesse with your money. Among these are food processor ADM (Rev = $80 Billion, #28 on the FORTUNE 500), transportation company CSX ($11 Billion, #226) and energy companies Kinder Morgan ($8 Billion, #311) and Noble Group ($80 Billion, #139 on the Global FORTUNE 500). This ethanol boondoggle translates into a $45 billion industry… money that comes out of your pocket and could be spent elsewhere if it were not being, literally, set on fire.
The worst part of the entire ethanol fiasco is the fact that not only does it not achieve any of its stated – and oft changing – objectives; it actually causes a wide array of unintended consequences – none of which are good. Number one is the fact that it drives up the cost of one of the most important foodstuffs in the world, corn, the price for which is up almost 300% over the last decade. That in turn drives up the price of virtually every other thing in the economy, from food to transportation to plastics. Then there’s the fact that ethanol damages engines and that the patchwork of ethanol standards across the country causes unnecessary price spikes and shortages. If all of that weren’t enough, ethanol has even scared off much of – but not all – of the anti-capitalist environmental lobby because – among other things – it drives deforestation on a wide scale around the world.
Finally, and most heartbreakingly, the ethanol mandates have driven the prices of American crops to near record levels, resulting in greater hunger in developing nations. One way they do this is to encourage farmers to switch to more profitable corn, which results in less wheat, oats, etc. to meet demand. This in turn results in less food making it into the stomachs of poor children around the world. In a nutshell, the mandates make everything in our economy more expensive, do little to alleviate our energy conundrum, actually harm the environment and make dollars donated feed the hungry not go as far. That seems like a policy that screams to be abolished.
Which brings us back to the Darwin Awards. If government programs operated the same way that humans do, at some point they would die as a consequence of their abysmal failure. Unfortunately however, they are not. Instead they keep on trudging down the same path and, indeed in this case the EPA keeps setting increasingly high ethanol standards that will double the amount of food wasted over the next decade. Of course like a potential Darwin Award candidate who stands on the roof contemplating jumping off to test his plastic wings, the EPA does have the option of stepping back from the ledge. It has the power to issue waivers to the ethanol mandates in emergency situations. One might imagine that the litany of problems caused by the mandates, when combined with the worst drought since the Great Depression, would qualify as just such an emergency. But of course the EPA is government and thus you’d be wrong.
At the end of the day the tragedy of ethanol clearly demonstrates the folly of big government. More than anything the element of common sense is replaced by catastrophic regulations imposed by greedy politicians and enforced by power hungry bureaucrats. In a sane world the ethanol mandates would have been history two decades ago. In the insane world of government however they are not only surviving, they are thriving. One only wishes you could say the same of the average American taxpayer, or more consequentially, the children in Africa who are going to be hungrier as a result of another reckless government program that lives on like a zombie long after it should have been dead and buried.
And that is the beauty of humanity. We often learn from our mistakes. We often learn from our experiences in order to make adjustments or better decisions going forward. Unfortunately, although government is made up of humans, it does not share that same skillset.
The Wall Street Journal states: Corn is also a key ingredient in the combine of political power and corporate welfare that is U.S. alternative energy policy. The food-to-fuel mandate is known as the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) and requires 13.2 billion gallons of ethanol to be blended into the gasoline supply this year and 36 billion gallons by 2022. These quotas are fulfilled almost entirely by corn ethanol.
Ethanol is an industry that enjoys no natural market. The only reason the ethanol market exists in the first place is because of government mandates. And who are the beneficiaries of this corporate welfare that is funded out of your pocket? Mainly members of the farm / finance / producers cabal in the form of the Renewable Fuels Association. This advocacy organization that is simply trying to save our planet is made up of an array good hearted companies that are just too fragile to survive without Uncle Sam’s largesse with your money. Among these are food processor ADM (Rev = $80 Billion, #28 on the FORTUNE 500), transportation company CSX ($11 Billion, #226) and energy companies Kinder Morgan ($8 Billion, #311) and Noble Group ($80 Billion, #139 on the Global FORTUNE 500). This ethanol boondoggle translates into a $45 billion industry… money that comes out of your pocket and could be spent elsewhere if it were not being, literally, set on fire.
The worst part of the entire ethanol fiasco is the fact that not only does it not achieve any of its stated – and oft changing – objectives; it actually causes a wide array of unintended consequences – none of which are good. Number one is the fact that it drives up the cost of one of the most important foodstuffs in the world, corn, the price for which is up almost 300% over the last decade. That in turn drives up the price of virtually every other thing in the economy, from food to transportation to plastics. Then there’s the fact that ethanol damages engines and that the patchwork of ethanol standards across the country causes unnecessary price spikes and shortages. If all of that weren’t enough, ethanol has even scared off much of – but not all – of the anti-capitalist environmental lobby because – among other things – it drives deforestation on a wide scale around the world.
Which brings us back to the Darwin Awards. If government programs operated the same way that humans do, at some point they would die as a consequence of their abysmal failure. Unfortunately however, they are not. Instead they keep on trudging down the same path and, indeed in this case the EPA keeps setting increasingly high ethanol standards that will double the amount of food wasted over the next decade. Of course like a potential Darwin Award candidate who stands on the roof contemplating jumping off to test his plastic wings, the EPA does have the option of stepping back from the ledge. It has the power to issue waivers to the ethanol mandates in emergency situations. One might imagine that the litany of problems caused by the mandates, when combined with the worst drought since the Great Depression, would qualify as just such an emergency. But of course the EPA is government and thus you’d be wrong.
At the end of the day the tragedy of ethanol clearly demonstrates the folly of big government. More than anything the element of common sense is replaced by catastrophic regulations imposed by greedy politicians and enforced by power hungry bureaucrats. In a sane world the ethanol mandates would have been history two decades ago. In the insane world of government however they are not only surviving, they are thriving. One only wishes you could say the same of the average American taxpayer, or more consequentially, the children in Africa who are going to be hungrier as a result of another reckless government program that lives on like a zombie long after it should have been dead and buried.
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