President Reagan’s national security advisor, Robert C McFarlane, recently offered some thoughts on a government mandate he considered would actually support a free market. First, he lays out some background:
Petroleum products drive 97% of all air, sea and land transportation in our country. Oil is truly the lifeblood of every industrial economy.
The price of oil is set by a foreign cartel. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) owns almost]80% of global oil reserves yet produces only 36% of daily global supply.
[I[ncreasing domestic production of oil or increasing fuel efficiency can reduce our trade deficit and the $400 billion (at current oil prices) we send overseas annually, but they won’t change the price we pay at the pump.
And thus, he says,
To outmaneuver OPEC we need to eliminate oil’s monopoly as the only transportation fuel.
His alternative fuel is natural gas from all those vast deposits embedded in shale, primarily in Pennsylvania, New York, Texas and Oklahoma. Cleaned up and compressed, CNG (compressed natural gas), or with some processing, methanol, would make a fine fuel for our cars and truck, McFarlane says. And he’s not far wrong on this, albeit NG has a considerably lower energy density than does gasoline.
Then he gets to his point:
Let’s open our market to good old American competition. …. Bills are now pending in both houses of the Congress…that seek to do exactly that by requiring car makers to enable fuel competition in their own product lines—adding flex-fuel, all electric, hybrid electric, or any other way auto makers choose to implement the law.
But this misses the point of a free market, capitalist economy with its inherent competition. If the product is viable in the market place—IFF the product is something folks actually want and would buy—then a mandate to produce is unnecessary. That natural market demand will drive production.
It’s true enough that some products have high barriers to entry, high initial costs to guts up a market; however, the automobile industry demonstrated that these need not prevent a market from developing: the car companies built their expensive factories, got their expensive distribution networks set up, and they did it all in a cutthroat competition environment. So it is with flex fuel vehicles. If there is a market for flex fuel cars and trucks, it’ll develop without need of mandates.
These bills don’t represent competition; they are government interfering in business decisions and in the market place. The mandate contained in the bills is no different than a mandate that all of us must buy, oh, say, health insurance or contraceptives, whether or not we want or would use them. Furthermore, mandates to produce (methanol) are mandates to buy (methanol); buying and selling are inseparable from each other—so such mandates limit both parties’ freedom of choice.
Our illustrious Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner had this to say in a recent The Wall Street Journal op-ed about the role of government in private decision making. In setting up his meme, he described Bear Stearns’ risky investments and our own risky mortgage borrowing behavior.
Neither the Fed, nor any other federal agency, had the necessary comprehensive authority over investment firms…or the government-sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Regulators did not have the authority they needed to oversee and impose prudent limits…. And they had no authority to put these firms, or bank holding companies, through a managed bankruptcy.…
Household debt rose to an alarming 130% of income, with a huge portion of those loans originated with little to no supervision and poor consumer protections.
Hmm…. He decries the lack of government control over our businesses and our personal borrowing. He decries government’s inability to bypass the bankruptcy court system (except for two dinosaur car companies, whose government regulation he doesn’t mention).
He insists that Government knows better the risks, government knows better the decisions that ought to be made. His solution, thus, is increased intrusive government management of our decisions and our businesses. As to the costs of this, he dismisses them:
Are the costs of reform too high? Certainly not relative to the costs of another financial crisis. Credit is relatively inexpensive….
He omits to add that cheap credit is due entirely to artificially suppressed Federal Reserve Bank rates—through which the Federal government is imposing an extreme inflationary risk on our economy. He omits to acknowledge that the financial institutions are under resumed government pressure to quit sitting on cash and to lend—by lowering credit standards again—another government-imposed risk to our economy.
Are these reforms complex? No more complex than the problems they are designed to solve. And, it should be noted, most of the length and complexity in the rules is the result of the care required to target safeguards where they are needed, not where they would have a damaging effect.
He chooses complexify a fundamentally simple problem: let the experts in business and business risk—businessmen themselves, exercise their own judgment, and suffer the consequences of bankruptcy if their judgment is faulty—or if they have bad luck. He doesn’t mention the fact that the same government that wants to insert its own lending judgment in the place of our own and our business enterprises is the same government that is still owed tens of billions of dollars by those two American car companies that can never be paid back—and that one of those dinosaurs isn’t even American anymore; it’s Italian. He also complexifies what is truly straightforward: get government out of the way, streamline regulations, and keep only those that are useful, with no overlap or conflicts. He also demonstrates a lack of understanding of the problem: if the targets of the safeguards need “length and complexity” to address, it’s because the regulators don’t understand the targets well enough to articulate them simply and clearly, so that, if actually needed, they can be “targeted.” The very complexity is another government-created risk.
Is there some risk that these reforms will go too far with unintended consequences? That depends on the quality of judgment of regulators in the coming months as they flesh out the remaining reforms.
Indeed. That’s another enormous risk imposed by a Know Better government. Look for instance, at the performance of the NLRB and the EPA, two example regulatory agencies devoid of objective judgment. These are Progressive regulators, but there’s no reason to believe that “conservative” regulators wouldn’t wind up just as abusive, just as lacking in judgment, albeit in another direction. The problem here is the existence of the regulators, not their political agendas. Today’s problem, though, is compounded by so many of the regulators being subject to no oversight.
“devastating legislation” and “the latest ploy in the Republican agenda of disrespecting the health of American women.” Planned Parenthood claimed the “dangerous proposal” would have allowed “your boss”—yes, yours—to decide “which prescriptions you can get filled and which medical procedures you can have,” including cancer screening, maternity care and AIDS medications.
Of course, it was nothing of the sort. It was simply an effort to restore choice to women’s (and men’s) health decisions. Yet, as the WSJ points out,
The fact that Democrats don’t dare to accurately describe their own positions, or the regulations that they want to foist on everyone else, shows how extreme those positions and regulations really are.
This is, then, what the Progressive government stands for. A big, intrusive Federal government making business decisions for Americans and our businesses and deciding our health issues for us. All, of course, with the best of intentions: to protect us from ourselves, and to protect us from our foolish decisions and their outcomes. But at what cost?
At the cost of our freedom to make stupid decisions, our freedom to make decisions with which our governmental Betters might disagree, and our freedom to profit from risky decisions, or safe ones, of our choosing and not of our Betters’. At the cost of our freedom to decide for ourselves what our health care might—or might not—entail..
At the cost of our ability to make any of our own choices. At the cost of honoring our responsibilities ourselves, rather than having them surrendered to government to handle for us.
Here is a sample of the kind of campaign that President Obama is running in his attempt to get reelected.
They’re obsessed
By Jim Messina, Campaign Manager on
In just about 24 hours, Mitt Romney is headed to a hotel ballroom to give a speech sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, a front group founded and funded by the Koch brothers.
Those are the same Koch brothers whose business model is to make millions by jacking up prices at the pump, and who bankrolled Tea Party extremism, and committed $200 million to try to destroy President Obama before Election Day.
So in the hours before Romney courts two men obsessed with making Barack Obama a one-term president, let’s see how many of us can chip in to the Two-Term Fund.
Here’s what Mitt Romney told his supporters just after his victory in the Florida GOP primary:
“We must not forget what this election is really about: defeating Barack Obama.”
Pitch in $3 or more over the next 24 hours to show that, while that message may fire up two oil-industry billionaires, it’s also one that plenty of us are tired of hearing.
The Koch Companies’ President of Government and Public Affairs, Philip Ellender, responded to this in a well-publicized manner. I won’t go into that letter; however, a copy of it can be seen here.
What’s interesting, though, is Obama’s response, through Messina, to the Koch Industries letter. I’ll cite relevant parts; the whole letter can be read at the link.
I am writing in response to your letter, in which you portrayed the oil and gas executives you represent as average citizens trying to make their voices heard.
Of course, no such representation was made. They did mention the “tens of thousands of members and contributors from across the country and from all walks of life” with respect to Americans for Prosperity. Of course Obama knows that there are not “tens of thousands” of oil and gas executives all across the country; this is deliberate, Alinsky-esque distortion.
But it is a cynical stretch to describe the political activities of your employers as furthering democracy when they are courting huge checks from special interest donors to pay for negative ads, with no public disclosure of the identity of those donors.
Hmm. Obama claims to know of “huge checks from special interest donors,” but there is “no public disclosure of the identity of these donors.” Which side of Obama’s mouth should we believe, here? Or is Obama confessing to domestic spying on private American citizens?
You argue that Americans for Prosperity is a grassroots organization of everyday citizens. But its emphasis on rolling back environmental protections and blocking a clean energy economy appears to be nothing more than an effort to promote the corporate interests of your employers and others who lavishly, and secretly, fund its operations.
This is another deliberate distortion. AFP doesn’t espouse rolling back environmental protections or blocking clean energy. AFP, along with all thinking Americans, do espouse eliminating excessive EPA regulations that hinder business—of any type—with no discernible gain for the environment. Nor do we Americans seek to block clean energy. We do object to Obama wasting our money on the Solyndras of the nation, and we do object to Obama wasting our money on “green” enterprises whose product cannot survive in an honestly competitive free market without those props.
You note in your letter that Americans for Prosperity has tens of thousands of members and contributors from all walks of life across the country, suggesting that this is the source of AFP’s funding. There is one way to verify your point: disclose those donors for the public to make that judgment.
How very Axelrod of Obama. He doesn’t have to supply any evidence. He just has to accuse, and given the accusation, of course the accused is perforce guilty unless he can prove his innocence.
But, even though I’ve spent some time on this, it’s all just cynical distraction, which is Obama’s intent with his Messina letter. What’s most important here is that at no time does Obama address the issues raised in the Koch Industries letter response to his original ad hominem attack.
If the President’s campaign has some principled disagreement with the arguments we are making publicly about the staggering debt the President and previous administrations have imposed on the country, the regulations that are stifling business growth and innovation, the increasing intrusion of government into nearly every aspect of American life, we would be eager to hear them.
and
It is understandable that the President and his campaign may be “tired of hearing” that many Americans would rather not see the president re-elected. However, the inference is that you would prefer that citizens who disagree with the President and his policies refrain from voicing their own viewpoint. Clearly, that’s not the way a free society should operate.
and
I…hope the President will reflect on how the approach the campaign is using is at odds with our national values and the constitutional right to free speech.
Oh, yeah—Obama did pretend to address the nation’s debt explosion:
That is why the President introduced a plan to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion and put us on a path to solvency.
Obama’s “plan” is two budget proposals so ludicrous that even the Democratic party voted it out of town unanimously, and the second proposal, just last month, doubles down on that bad joke.
But he carefully elided the Progressive regulatory environment and the increasing intrusion of the Progressive government into the lives of ordinary Americans and our businesses.
And on free speech,
When you attempt to drown out their voices through unlimited, secret contributions to pursue a special-interest agenda that conflicts with what’s best for our nation, you must expect some scrutiny of your actions.
Once again, cynically unsubstantiated accusations of secret donations (since you know of them, Mr Obama, provide the data), while continuing the free speech of ad hominem attacks.
Two reasons come to mind for such a campaign. One is the naked intimidation of those with dissenting speech in which Obama is so plainly engaged. He simply will not brook any disagreement with his own hallowed positions, and he attacks, personally and with demonization, all those who do disagree. Is this the sort of President of which we want another four years?
The other reason is that Obama simply is incapable of forming an argument that defends his own position, and so he runs away from the issues at hand and dives for the cover of the ad hominem as a means of changing the subject. He knows his policies have failed utterly, but he lacks the moral rigor to acknowledge that and change course: he is capable only of avoiding the issues and engaging in personal attacks. Is his the sort of President of which we can afford to risk another four years?
Just to look at one small aspect of Americans’ liberties, here’s an item: mandated coverage of women’s contraception.
Senator Roy Blunt’s (R, MO) amendment was an attempt to restore a measure of liberty; a copy is here; it said, in part [emphasis added]
(E) While PPACA provides an exemption for some religious groups that object to participation in Government health programs generally, it does not allow purchasers, plan sponsors, and other stakeholders with religious or moral objections to specific items or services to decline providing or obtaining coverage of such items or services, or allow health care providers with such objections to decline to provide them.
It also says
(A) FOR HEALTH PLANS.—A health plan shall not be considered to have failed…on the basis that it declines to provide coverage of specific items or services because—(i) providing coverage (or, in the case of a sponsor of a group health plan, paying for coverage) of such specific items or services is contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions of the sponsor, issuer, or other entity offering the plan; or (ii) such coverage (in the case of individual coverage) is contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions of the purchaser or beneficiary of the coverage.
The measure was voted down in the Senate on Thursday by a nearly straight party-line vote of 51-48. In the run-up to the vote, Senate Democrats had cast it as an attempt to limit women’s access to birth control. They also had claimed
[T]he bill is “a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” and may allow employers to exclude coverage for any conditions they find religiously or morally objectionable.
They say this could become a slippery slope, resulting in the exclusion of coverage for HIV & AIDS, mental health, hemophilia, STD’s and more
The Obama administration blasted Blunt’s amendment in a press release Wednesday, saying the president’s supporters need to “stand for a woman’s right to make her own health decisions.”
I certainly hope the amendment, had it passed, would have allowed exclusion—or a decision not to purchase—for “and conditions” that are “religiously or morally objectionable.” This is an area in which our Constitution, so routinely disregarded by the Progressive administration, explicitly barred the Federal government from entering. Furthermore, aside from the freedom of choice issues related to mandating coverage—and so paying for this coverage when it’s unwanted or unneeded—and the ludicrous “essential health benefits” aspects of contraception, what religious or moral grounds would be cited? The Progressives have carefully declined to offer any examples.
Senator Frank Lautenberg (D, NJ) was especially disingenuous in his argument against this amendment.
I don’t want Republican politicians making decisions about my family’s health care. Women are capable of making their own health-care decisions.
Except, no, they’re not. Not after Lautenberg got his way: their decision is thrust upon them by this Progressive and his fellows. Senator Lautenberg and the Federal government now will make health-care decisions in lieu of them. Obama claimed to “stand for a woman’s right to make her own health decisions,” but with this vote, women are not allowed to decline to purchase a health-care service they do not want or will not use or find morally or religiously objectionable. They must buy. They cannot make their own health decision. Read again the Section E quoted at the start. See the freedom of choice that the Progressives voted down.
According to President Obama, speaking through his Treasury Secretary and his OMB Acting Director, apparently the answers are, respectively, “No” and “Yes.”
