Tag Archives: regulation

The 1st Amendment

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…and the Progressives’ war against it.  They insist that only certain speech is permissible, and they are the arbiters of what we will be allowed to say and what we will be allowed to hear.

If a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News or by Rush Limbaugh for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you’ll see more of them doing it.

President Barack Obama said that to The New Republic in a recent interview.  Plainly, some folks shouldn’t be allowed to talk to their Congressmen, or to influence the vote of that employee.  Nor are news organizations allowed to report on that, unless they’re saying the right sorts of things.

There’s more, as Kirsten Powers noted in the article at the above link.

[T]he White House has kept Fox News off of conference calls dealing with the Benghazi attack, despite Fox News being the only outlet that was regularly reporting on it and despite Fox having top notch foreign policy reporters.

They have left Chris Wallace’s “Fox News Sunday” out of a round of interviews that included CNN, NBC, ABC, and CBS for not being part of a “legitimate” news network.

This is an extension of the attack on that inconvenient clause in that hard-to-understand Constitution that has continued since Obama tried to blacklist Fox News from press conferences in 2009.

It’s not just the Party, though.  Media Matters typifies the assault from outside the Party.  In their Media Matters 2012 memo (copies here and here) [emphasis added]:

…during a recent press conference, ABC‘s Jake Tapper asked Robert Gibbs how Fox News—”one of our sister organizations,” as he put it—is different from any other network.  His question indicates the pervasive unwillingness among members of the media to officially kick Fox News to the curb of the press club.  By legitimizing Fox News as a news organization, reporters and commentators are enabling the network to continue conducting a massive conservative political campaign under the guise of journalism.  In the process, they are permitting Fox News to dominate the national discussion by spreading smears and lies—smears and lies that become conventional wisdom.  They are also defending an organization that has nothing but contempt for journalistic standards—hence undermining their own profession and the public interest at the same time.

Disagreement can only be dishonest, and so the disagree-ers must be prevented from speaking.  Thus, Media Matters proposes “The Solution:”

…we must launch new initiatives specifically designed to push back against Fox News’ partisan tactics.

Media Matters even complains about the reach of the 1st Amendment:

Conservatives are unwilling to yield even to minimal restrictions placed upon the press and speech by our laws….

Because it’s just plain wrong to insist on individual liberty.  When that’s inconvenient to a point of view.  And not a single LiberalProgressive, as Powers notes, is sufficiently embarrassed by these activities to protest.  It isn’t Progressives who favor, in Powers’ words, “cherishing dissent and an inviolable right to freedom of expression.

This is Progressive freedom.

Collective Action

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While the failed trick itself is interesting, what’s relevant here is the interesting event at around 1:00 in the video.

See the folks acting collectively and on their own initiative, without need of government…help…to intervene in the incident to disable the snowmobile to prevent it resuming its runaway journey and then to help the injured spectator.

Do we allow that anymore?  Where was the government?

Out of Control Regulations

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This time at the state level.  The Daily Caller has the story of Louisiana overregulation.

Fresh Markets was selling gallons of milk for $2.99 as part of a weekly promotional deal.  Louisiana requires that retailer price markups be at least six percent above the invoice and shipping costs of the product.

You read that right.  It turns out that $2.99 was less than 6% above the state-allowed minimum price for milk.  Louisiana regulators actually put a floor under the price at which milk is allowed to be sold.  No matter what the private business’ imperative might be for setting a lower price.  No matter how much forcing inflated prices hurts the poor.

State Agriculture and Forestry Commissioner Mike Strain said this with a straight face:

They can sell it six percent over cost all day long.  It’s when they sell it below cost that it becomes a problem[.]

Because selling at cost is actually selling below cost.  Because selling below cost—below actual cost—is a decision poor, dumb businessmen shouldn’t be allowed to make—even as a loss leader.

When even the Courts

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…ridicule Progressives.

From Bloomberg comes this item.  Our illustrious regulatory engine, the Environmental Protection Agency, has (rather, had) a rule that required refiners to mix 8.65 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol into their gasoline output last year.  In light of the fact that last year’s actual US production was 20,000 (!) gallons, all of which was exported to Brazil, the American Petroleum Institute went to court to get the mandate overturned.

Last week, the DC Circuit agreed.  In the court’s ruling is this gem:

Apart from their role as captive consumers, the refiners are in no position to ensure, or even contribute to, growth in the cellulosic biofuel industry.  “Do a good job, cellulosic fuel producers.  If you fail, we’ll fine your customers.”

Of course, the court also was serious in its ruling.  Citing Railway Labor Executives’ Ass’n v. Nat’l

Mediation Bd in the bowlegs, the court noted

(“Were courts to presume a delegation of power absent an express withholding of such power, agencies would enjoy virtually limitless hegemony….”).  Yet that is precisely what EPA appears to have done in projecting cellulosic biofuel production for 2012.

The case is American Petroleum Institute v U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the ruling can be seen here.

Naturally, in response to the ruling, Progressive whining has begun.  Bloomberg reports this, as well.

As a result of the ruling and uncertainty, investments in the nascent industry may fall, said Michael Frohlich, a spokesman for Growth Energy, which represents ethanol producers.

“It dampens any future investment, and creates a further level of vulnerability[.]”

Never mind that if the “nascent industry” can’t stand without government favoritism, it’s not ready for market in the first place.  But the collective views of individual Americans—free market imperatives—don’t count.  Only the collective views of Big Government do.

The Cost of Price Supports

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They’re disastrous for our food costs, which harms our poor especially, and they drive the “need” for food stamps.  Here are some numbers, from a recent op-ed by Burleigh CW Leonard in The Wall Street Journal.  The parity prices for some farm products are these:

  • corn: $12/bushel vs actual market price of $7.01
  • wheat: $18.30 vs $8.33
  • rice: $42.20 per hundred weight vs $14.80
  • milk: $52 vs $21.10.

We care about parity prices because the Agriculture Adjustment Act of 1938 and the Agricultural Act of 1949 require, unless other temporary support prices  are specified by subsequent Congresses, that farm support prices be set to parity according to a formula based on farm prices extant in 1910-1914 [sic].

Notice that: farmers (read: agribusiness, who are the vast majority of our modern farm industry, not the mom and pops over whom our politicians shed so many crocodile tears) can get three times the market price of rice from those supports so they produce to their heart’s content and sell the excess to the government.

This doesn’t actually happen to a great extent, though, because of an epicycle in the government’s Ptolemeic orrery of controls: the government imposes on each farmer (agribusiness) limits on how much (rice) he can produce.  I won’t get into the inconsistent manner in which such limits get applied across farm products.  Nor will I get into the interference such controls represent in each man’s right to choose for himself what he will produce with his labor (and what price he will charge for that produce, or that labor).  (Nor will I get into the mandatory diversion of food into fuel products, which is what the ethanol mandates are.  That’s for another discussion entirely.)

It’s sufficient, here, to see that the price distortion remains.  And the “need” for food stamps remains.

Leonard is on the right track with the solution he offers:

…craft a new long-term farm bill.  Its first step should be to repeal permanent law that governs commodity price support programs.  Then the default setting for US agriculture would be a free market….

He goes too far, though.  There’s no need for a new “long-term bill.”  His proposed bill’s first step is nearly sufficient by itself: repeal the Agriculture Adjustment Act of 1938, the Agricultural Act of 1949, and associated laws.  Then take the only additional step necessary: stop instituting other price support legislation.

Watch the need for food stamps fall precipitously.

There is nothing to fear from free market competition but fear itself.