Category Archives: regulation

Never Let a Crisis….

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The Democrats, led by President Barack Obama and Senators Diane Feinstein (D, CA) and Chuck Schumer (D, NY) want to “discuss” gun control and make it harder/impossible for us to retain our 2nd Amendment rights.  But this would make us more like Europe, and that’s a Good Thing, isn’t it?

Here’s what Europe is blathering on about in re the Newtown mass murder.

[The Newtown massacre] is once again the unavoidable result of a national culture….  Once again, the United States is debating its gun laws, even if the discussion is likely to be short and inconclusive.  But the real thing that must change (though it hardly will), is the misunderstanding that America’s formative myth of “freedom” allows for weapons to be as widespread as smart phones.

And from Süddeutsche Zeitung, this:

Their [Republicans and the gun lobby] opposition to almost any kind of gun control borders on political complicity in murder and manslaughter.

And from Die Welt, this, even as they “recognize” the legitimacy of private ownership of guns:

A country-wide weapons registry would make sense. … [A]t least a ban on semi-automatic weapons, such as the one that existed during the administration of Bill Clinton, makes sense.

And from Stuttgarter Zeitung, this:

[T]this variety of martial liberalism is a relic of a bygone era that no longer fits in the time.

Never mind our Creator’s endowment of rights and the expression of them in our Bill of Rights.  The latter exists to facilitate our satisfaction of our individual endowment of obligations, which includes our obligation to help each other enjoy those inalienable rights.  Which demands an ability to defend ourselves and our fellows by force of arms, if necessary, not only against other members of our compact and intruders from outside it, but also against an overweening, overly intrusive government that is a necessary evil and not the fount of our rights, responsibilities, and freedoms.  Which in turn demands a 2nd Amendment that explicitly acknowledges our inherent right to be adequately armed for executing that self- and mutual defense.

Disarming us, as even the Süddeutsche Zeitung understood elsewhere in its editorial, cannot have prevented such mass murders.  Disarming us would not disarm the criminals, or the insane, or the criminals who would use the insane.  Progressives dismiss this as ridiculous, a catch phrase, but it is no less a truth for that.

Nor has the threat receded in a modern, dangerous world, as the Stuttgarter Zeitung so innocently hopes.  Thinking so is dangerously naïve.

Government has no need to know what its employers have in our possession.  Fishing expeditions, which include a national gun registry with its associated limits on the purpose for which we might be permitted to possess and use a firearm, and of which restrictions on what we are in the end permitted to own are a subset, are at once an early step in the erosion of freedom and a textbook example of why another requirement was written into our Bill of Rights: the need for a separately court-approved search warrant before our government might pry into our private affairs.  A government that assumes, a priori, that its employers are dishonest is a government that, even more so, cannot be trusted.

What those who idolize Government, those who truly think that government is the origin of our rights, responsibilities, and freedoms—rather than an unfortunately necessary tool for helping us preserve our individual liberties and satisfy our individual responsibilities—do not understand is that these are truly individual; our liberties and obligations are individual and are inherent in us as individuals.  Thus, we cannot wish them away onto another entity for preservation or satisfaction.  They cannot be divorced from us any more than our lives can be.

In the end, the only ones who want to disarm a population are those in Government with guilty consciences about their own designs on liberty and those who truly believe that freedom flows from Government and not from God.  Both sorts are dangerous.

Misguided Conceptions

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Another example is “conservative” complaints that, with Obamacare here to stay (misconception number one; although its repeal has gotten harder), the states perforce must set up state health insurance exchanges, rather than leaving that to the Federal government.  One example is from Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Congressional Budget Office Director under President Bush the Younger, who has

repeatedly warned GOP officials that they will be “outfoxed and overrun” if they leave the exchanges to Obama administration officials.

He warned that the administration could impose too many regulations, ultimately ruining the exchanges and opening the door to a “Washington takeover of health care.”  He added, “If conservatives allow it to happen, they will be consenting to an unprecedented and potentially irreversible intrusion into states’ economies and health-care systems.”

Holtz-Eakin misunderstands, though.  With the Feds retaining the rules by which the exchanges will be allowed to operate—including what coverages must be offered and the rate bands within which they must be offered—and declining to discuss costs, a “Washington takeover of health care” is already in progress.  State-run exchanges, whose function is controlled by the Federal govenrment already represent “an unprecedented and potentially irreversible intrusion into states’ economies and health-care systems.”  That’s the primary misconception in this context: that the states have any useful control over “state-run” exchanges.

Moreover, any Federal funds allocated to state-run exchanges will be on the one hand, by design inadequate to cover the total cost of the exchanges and on the other hand are easily withheld or cancelled outright, leaving the whole of the expense to the states’ citizens to cover.  But this risk simply draws the states further into dependency on the Federal government.

The upshot is that these exchanges contribute to placing the states into the same relationship to the central government as counties are relative to their states: “merely as districts to facilitate the purposes of domestic order and good government,” in John Jay’s words.

The states are right to decline to share the costs, and they are right to decline voluntarily to participate in the continued derogation of their position vis-à-vis the Federal government.

Spending

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Here‘s an interesting table, from The Motley Fool.

A couple of notes.  Spending in 2012, the fourth year of the Age of Obama, relative to our nation’s total economic output, our GDP, is up 18%.  The government spends nearly a quarter of our total economic production, production that by the government’s usurpation we in the private sector cannot use for our own ends.

Defense spending is down more than 17% from its long term average.  Even so, President Barack Obama is bent on gutting our defense capability by another half-trillion dollars, starting next month.  Never mind that al-Qaeda is resurgent across northern Africa, the Middle East, and western Asia.  Never mind that Iran is on the verge of a nuclear breakout.  Never mind that Russia and the People’s Republic of China both are increasing their own military spending and that the PRC, especially, is becoming increasingly aggressive militarily with their growing capability.

Welfare spending is nearly 9% of our GDP, up nearly two-thirds from a skosh over 5%.  Yet Obama wants to increase welfare spending even further.  I’ve written here about the trap that is welfare; one can only speculate about Obama’s motives for this.

Rule of Law and Prosperity

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House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R, VA) has issued a report that discusses, among other things, the relationship between rule of law and national prosperity and freedom.  Some excerpts follow.

From

Less noticed, but perhaps even more important—especially to the over 20 million Americans currently out of work or underemployed—is the link between a breakdown in the rule of law and reduced economic growth and individual prosperity.

Property rights and rule of law are essential for the proper and efficient functioning of society and the economy.  Unambiguous laws and procedures provide a framework by which free people agree on the scope and reach of their government’s actions, whereas unclear laws or arbitrary enforcement undermine individual liberty and the notion of popular sovereignty.  Clear, transparent, predictable rules that are applied without preference or prejudice allow individuals to invest, build businesses, and create jobs.  When there is a breakdown in the rule of law, increased uncertainty leads to reduced investment and less growth.

Numerous economic studies have documented the relationship between a strong rule of law and economic growth. In 2008, The Economist published the following chart alongside a story entitled “Order in the Jungle.”

The chart aptly illustrates the strong relationship between adherence to the rule of law and economic growth.  As economist Hernando de Soto—a leader in the field of the impact of property rights and rule of law on economic growth succinctly stated: “So the origin of the rule of law— which will allow a modern nation to grow and so bring peace, stability, and prosperity to the world—is property rights.  And the rule of law will actually generate prosperity.”

And

In the United States, the ultimate law is the Constitution, which specifically provides how laws are to be enacted and requires the President to take care that the laws that are enacted are faithfully executed.  The laws of the United States establish the process whereby individuals can enforce their property rights and private contracts and provide the framework by which executive agencies are to conduct rulemakings and the other regulatory activities.

When “laws” are created without going through Congress; when laws are selectively executed; when an administration intervenes into the normal judicial process and diminishes an individual’s property rights; and when the normal regulatory process is circumvented, the rule of law is eroded.

All of this increases uncertainty.  Individuals, families, and businesses now not only face uncertainty with respect to the policy decisions made by government, but they face uncertainty as to how those decisions will even be made.  Numerous economic studies and surveys indicate that uncertainty itself (which is certainly increased with the breakdown in the rule of law) also hinders economic growth.

While Administrations of both political parties have been known to test the bounds of the limits of their power, the breadth of the breakdown in the rule of law in recent years has reached new levels.  In the Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal‘s annual Index of Economic Freedom, the United States scores lower today on the rule of law than it did in 2008.  As the 2012 report notes, “Corruption is a growing concern as the cronyism and economic rent-seeking associated with the growth of government have undermined institutional integrity.”  Individuals and businesses are increasingly forced to rely on the courts to enforce their most basic substantive and procedural rights.

To

There is no excuse for this continuous disregard of legislative authority and the Constitutionally-required separation of powers.  In some instances, President Obama attempted to garner legislative authority, failed and then acted unilaterally in defiance.  In other instances, the President never even sought to find consensus and instead ignored Congress and its authority from the outset.  In speeches, the President has proudly acknowledged that he has acted without Congress, contending that he has no other alternative.

This is no way to govern.  The President has set a precedent that even his supporters should find troubling.  After all, what would now prevent a subsequent President, with opposite policy predilections, from bypassing the checks on his own authority and enacting his own policies in this same manner?  The Founding Fathers wisely gave the President many powers, but making law was not one of them.  They understood that laws should not be made by one individual acting alone, but rather through elected representatives working to achieve consensus.

House Republicans have acted to prevent and overturn the President’s harmful actions in order to return economic growth, opportunity and certainty to the American people and American job creators.  However, the majority of the bills the House has passed are sitting idly in the Democrat-led Senate, without any action on the part of Democratic Leader Harry Reid or President Obama.

Throughout our nation’s history, presidents have sought common ground and achieved legislative success with opposing party leaders.  Many of the laws circumvented in this report were achieved in that manner.  Congressional authority must not be disregarded to suit political interests, create unpopular regulations and to avoid the hard work of bipartisan negotiation that has been a hallmark of our Republic since its inception.

Note that such measures as are required by the erosion/breakdown of the rule of law as bringing legal cases to court only adds to business’ and individual’s current costs and increases their uncertainty, since court outcomes are largely unpredictable.

RTWT.  It’s a long-ish read, but it also includes a list of current examples.

 

h/t Grim’s Hall

Negotiating?

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The Progressives in our Federal government insist, with a straight face, that the Republicans have put forward no concrete proposals in the present budget…negotiations.  They carefully ignore the fact that the Republicans already have put forward three concrete proposals: two House-passed budgets (for 2011 and 2012, which contained explicit spending, taxing, and entitlement reform steps), and the proposal on which they campaigned last fall.

Oh, wait—the Progressives studiously ignored those, too—in the Senate, where they refused even to permit debate on the budgets and ever since, with their pretense that the spending, tax, and entitlement reforms of the campaign don’t exist.

The Progressives’ current position?  As The Wall Street Journal reports,

[M]any Democrats have ruled out any changes to Social Security during the current fiscal talks.

And

A senior administration official said the White House would make no new offers until Republicans changed their opposition to raising top tax rates.

Throughout this entire shabby charade, President Barack Obama has been accusing the Republicans of holding middle-class America hostage against their refusal to agree to tax rate hikes on his hated Americans.  Yet the Republicans and Progressives already agree on making permanent current tax rates on 98% of Americans.  It’s Obama who is threatening to blow up our economy on his ego trip of demanding 100% of a tax deal for which he already has 98%.

It’s Obama who’s threatening to blow up our economy by refusing to discuss spending cuts and entitlement reform at all—after agreeing that they should be on the table shortly after the election.

It’s Obama who’s threatening to blow up our economy with his insult of demanding sole debt ceiling authority in utter disregard of the Constitutional role of Congress—and not the President—in setting spending.

Update: Speaker John Boehner (R, OH) and a number fellow members of the Republican leadership made a counterproposal Tuesday that included much of Obama’s precious tax revenue increases–not as rate increases–to the tune of $800 billion, and $1.2 trillion in spending cuts.  Obama blew this off within the hour.  So much for negotiating.

Ex-Senator Rick Santorum, last night on Greta van Susteren’s On the Record,  said that Obama’s fallback–his Plan A–of Sequestration and tax rate increases across the board makes him entirely willing to take our economy over the cliff: Obama gets his tax rate increases, and he gets the Progressives’ decades-long fought-for cut in defense spending, a $500 billion reduction.  Obama sees this as a heads, I win; tails, you lose situation.

I think Santorum is right.