Category Archives: regulation

Is the Department of Education Living on Borrowed Time?

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Probably not but Congressman Thomas Massie (R, KY) has introduced a bill in the House of Representatives to eliminate it.  It’s unlikely to pass, more’s the pity, but we can hope.  Massie’s bill is short and sweet, too, consisting of this in its entirety:

The Department of Education shall terminate on December 31, 2018.

I’d add a second sentence, though: “All employees and associates of the Department of Education shall be returned to the private sector and not reassigned elsewhere in the Federal government.”  I’d also add a third sentence: “All rules and letters promulgated by the Department of Education shall be null and void.”  The third one may be unnecessary from a strictly legal standpoint, but I think it’s necessary for absolute clarity.

The Wall Street Journal, in the op-ed at the link, had a slightly different view:

Our view would be to put Representative Massie’s close-down bill on hold for at least four years, while the rest of us give Mrs DeVos a chance at making good on reforms that put the students at the front of the line.

I disagree. As long as it exists, the DoEd will be a Progressive-Democrat threat to our children.  More, the Federal government has no place in our education system; eliminate its presence in altogether—no matter the good intentions of an incumbent Secretary.

There’s not even a need for a rump Department to issu[e] block grants to states based on population and performance of education systems at state level, as one commenter at the op-ed suggested.  There should be no Department, rump or full-up, and there should be no Federal money transfers at all. Aside from those block “grants” never appearing without Federal strings, there’s no reason a New York tax payer should be paying into Texas’ education system, or a Californian paying into Illinois’, or….

A Carbon Tax Proposal

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No less a pair of lights than George Shultz and James Baker III have one regarding atmospheric carbon emissions.  They’re prefacing their case on their then-boss, President Ronald Reagan’s successful negotiation of the Montreal Protocol to rein in the failures of atmospheric CFCs that were destroying the ozone layer.  Not that the two have anything to do with each other, but it makes for good obfuscation.

Shultz and Baker have four “pillars” to their proposal:

First, creating a gradually increasing carbon tax. Second, returning the tax proceeds to the American people in the form of dividends. Third, establishing border carbon adjustments that protect American competitiveness and encourage other countries to follow suit. And fourth, rolling back government regulations once such a system is in place.

Their first pillar echoes ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) promise to let electricity generators use all the coal they wanted; Obama’s policies just would put them out of business.  No carbon emissions. Period.  Never mind that there’s very little need to reduce carbon emissions.  Atmospheric CO2 used to generate acid rain, but that pollution is long since reduced to the point of elimination.  Beyond that, the EPA’s pseudo-science “finding” notwithstanding, atmospheric CO2 is plant food, not a pollutant.  We eliminate that plant food at risk.

Return the tax proceeds to us as dividends?  That’s just wealth redistribution by government fiat.  Haven’t we had enough of Progressive redistribution failure already?  Not to mention the cynically internally illogical mechanism for the redistribution.

A $40-per-ton carbon tax would provide a family of four with roughly $2,000 in carbon dividends in the first year, an amount that could grow over time as the carbon tax rate increased.

How could the dividend grow—isn’t the tax supposed to reduce emissions significantly?

Border carbon adjustments?  Pit importers against exporters again.  That’s the outcome of the existing border adjustment tax being proposed in the House today.

Roll back the regulations once “such a system is in place?”  Really?  Can Shultz or Baker name two programs that have been rolled back once they’ve been enacted?  They’re not that naïve.

This is just more Progressive foolishness, now being spouted by two fine gentlemen who’re past their age of usefulness.

A National Parental Leave Policy

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AEI has a piece on this; unfortunately, their piece proceeds from some false premises.

Developing a National Paid Parental Leave Policy

It’s interesting that folks of a bent proceed from such claims. They always decline to establish, for instance, that we need a national policy for parental leave. It’s such a widespread failure that I have to conclude it’s deliberately Alinsky-esque in its attempt to control the discussion.

The United States is one of two countries without a national policy providing new mothers with rights to paid leave following the birth of a child.

And then this non sequitur keeps getting dragged out as if it matters that we don’t look like the rest of the world. Never mind that, more substantively, we aren’t like the rest of the world, so there’s no reason we should look like the rest. There aren’t very many federated republics extant.

At present, we simply do not know what the ideal leave program for the US would look like.

Yes we do. It’s what each of the 50 States in our republic think one would look like–it’s what the citizens of each of those States think is best for themselves. Full stop.

The Noise of Freedom

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European Central Bank President Mario Draghi is worried.  The European is afraid of any relaxation of banking regulations in the US; it might cause some instability.  Never mind that instability is a Critical Item for innovation and growth, whether economic, political, technological, or anywhere else.  As he testified before the European Parliament Committee on Economic Affairs,

The last thing we need at this point in time is the relaxation of regulation….

The fact that we are not seeing the development of significant financial stability risk is the reward of the action that legislators and regulators and supervisors have been undertaking since the crisis erupted[.]

No, the suppressed economic growth we’ve experienced is the punishment from the action that legislators and regulators and supervisors have been undertaking.  The noise of freedom and innovation and growth is so terrifying that the punishment is better than the progress.

Or the bureaucrat simply is dismayed at the potential loss of power because the contagion from the US might spread to Europe.

Transparency or Government Snooping?

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Senator Ben Cardin (D, MD) had a letter to The Wall Street Journal‘s editor over the weekend.  He’s objecting to Congress’ removal of his (and Senator Richard Lugar’s (R, IN) Cardin-Lugar piece of Dodd-Frank that required public companies to disclose their payments to foreign governments.  Ostensibly, this was to track bribery actions, but like the rest of Dodd-Frank, it overstepped.

There’s nothing like a Democrat desperate to protect his legacy (Lugar was not silent on the matter; he voted for its repeal).

There is no unreasonable burden to businesses in asking them to track operating payments that should be part of the normal course of legitimate business.

Normal course of legitimate business. The Democrat Senator is oblivious to the irony of his claim. The normal course of legitimate business is no concern of Government; such things are strictly the concern of businesses, their owners, and their customers in a free market.

If Government is concerned, there is already a suitable and sufficient law: get a warrant.