Monday, September 26, 2011

All things Obama

Time for a Regulation Time Out

Last year, the Food and Drug Administration issued a warning to a company that sells packaged walnuts. Believe it or not, THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CLAIMED THE WALNUTS WERE BEING MARKETED AS A DRUG. So Washington ordered the company to stop telling consumers about the health benefits of walnuts.

Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a new rule on fossil-fuel emissions from boilers that—by the EPA's own admission—would cost the private sector billions of dollars and thousands of jobs. THE OWNER OF A SMALL BUSINESS IN MAINE TOLD ME THE PROPOSED RULE WOULD REQUIRE HIM TO SCRAP A NEW, $300,000 WOOD WASTE BOILER HE RECENTLY INSTALLED.

No wonder America's employers dread what is coming next out of Washington. Our country cannot afford regulations run amok at a time when no net new jobs are created and unemployment remains above 9%. But at least we're safe from health claims about walnuts.

America's overregulation problem is only getting worse. RIGHT NOW, FEDERAL AGENCIES ARE AT WORK ON MORE THAN 4,200 RULES, 845 OF WHICH AFFECT SMALL BUSINESSES, the engine of job creation in our country. MORE THAN 100 ARE MAJOR RULES, WITH AN ECONOMIC IMPACT OF MORE THAN $100 MILLION EACH.


When you give people jobs writing regulations, they will write regulations.  When you run out of things that should be regulated, they will find things that CAN be regulated.





Did Massive Government Spending during World War II end the Depression?

…Perhaps ironically, one of the most powerful challenges to any Keynesian diagnosis of economic ailments also focuses on inadequate investment spending, but from a wholly different perspective. That challenge is today most closely associated with the economist Robert Higgs.

Higgs' careful look at the data on the Great Depression and World War II convinced him that (1) A U.S. ECONOMY PRODUCING GENUINE PROSPERITY WASN'T RESTORED UNTIL 1946, AND (2) INVESTORS HUNKERED DOWN, ESPECIALLY FROM 1935-40, BECAUSE NEW DEAL REGULATIONS -- along with President Franklin Roosevelt's increasingly vocal hostility to enterprise and successful risk-takers -- created too much uncertainty about how government would treat profits and wealth accumulation.

The "regime uncertainty" -- described by Higgs as "a pervasive uncertainty among investors about the security of their property rights in their capital and its prospective returns" -- unleashed by actual and threatened New Deal interventions made private innovation and entrepreneurial effort simply too unattractive. So PRIVATE INVESTMENT SPENDING LARGELY GROUND TO A HALT DURING FDR'S REIGN.

The "Great" was thus put into the Great Depression.


It appears that FDR’s death may have had more to do with the ending of the Depression than did the massive government spending. 

Eight Questions for Protectionists


An excellent article.  Here were my favorite four questions of the eight asked. 

1. DO YOU THINK POLITICIANS AND BUREAUCRATS SHOULD BE ABLE TO TELL YOU WHAT YOU’RE ALLOWED TO BUY?

As Walter Williams has explained, this is a simple matter of freedom and liberty. If you want to give the political elite the authority to tell you whether you can buy foreign-produced goods, you have opened the door to endless mischief.

2. IF TRADE BARRIERS BETWEEN NATIONS ARE GOOD, THEN SHOULDN’T WE HAVE TRADE BARRIERS BETWEEN STATES? OR CITIES?

This is a very straightforward challenge. If protectionism is good, then it shouldn’t be limited to national borders….

6. DO YOU RECOGNIZE THAT, BY CREATING THE ABILITY TO OFFER SPECIAL FAVORS TO SELECTED INDUSTRIES, PROTECTIONISM CREATES ENORMOUS OPPORTUNITIES FOR CORRUPTION?

Most protectionism in America is the result of organized interest groups and POWERFUL UNIONS trying to prop up inefficient practices. And they only achieve their goals by getting in bed with the Washington crowd in a process that is good for the CORRUPT NEXUS OF INTEREST GROUPS-LOBBYISTS-POLITICIANS-BUREAUCRATS….

8. CAN YOU POINT TO NATIONS THAT HAVE PROSPERED WITH PROTECTIONISM, PARTICULARLY WHEN COMPARED TO SIMILAR NATIONS WITH FREE TRADE?

Some people will be tempted to say that the United States was a successful economy in the 1800s when tariffs financed a significant share of the federal government. That’s largely true, BUT THE NATION’S RISING PROSPERITY SURELY WAS DUE TO THE FACT THAT WE HAD NO INCOME TAX, A TINY FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, AND VERY LITTLE REGULATION. And I can’t resist pointing out that the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff didn’t exactly lead to good results.

We also had internal free trade, as explained in this excellent short video on the benefits of free trade, narrated by Don Boudreaux of George Mason University and produced by the Institute for Humane Studies




I’ve seen many of the arguments mentioned here put forth by those on the left.  These are excellent questions that will allow you to answer their charges.  FYI, here’s some information on Smoot-Hawley





Another Reason Liberal Hate Fox News

The Fox News Channel beat out local television and CNN as Americans' number one source of television news on national and international issues, according to a survey published Thursday by the Pew Research Center for The People & The Press.

In the survey, which was conducted July 20-24, Pew asked 1,501 American adults whether they got most of their television news on national and international issues from local television, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News Channel, or if television was not a main source of news for them.

FOX CAME OUT ON TOP WITH 19 PERCENT SAYING THEY GOT MOST OF THEIR TV NEWS THERE. THAT WAS FOLLOWED BY LOCAL TELEVISION AT 16 PERCENT, CNN AT 15 PERCENT, NBC AT 10 PERCENT, ABC AT 8 PERCENT, CBS AT 7 PERCENT, AND MSNBC AT 6 PERCENT….



The biggest problem for liberals with Fox is that they don’t like what Fox covers.

 



Michio Kaku Comments on the CERN particle experiment

…Reputations may rise and fall. But in the end, this is a victory for science. NO THEORY IS CARVED IN STONE. Science is merciless when it comes to testing all theories over and over, at any time, in any place. Unlike religion or politics, science is ultimately decided by experiments, done repeatedly in every form. There are no sacred cows. IN SCIENCE, 100 AUTHORITIES COUNT FOR NOTHING. EXPERIMENT COUNTS FOR EVERYTHING.


I’m a big fan of Dr. Kaku and this is an excellent piece.  The last statement is an important one when you want to say there is a consensus or that the science is settled. 





Global Warming Update

In a fresh challenge to claims that there is scientific "consensus" on climate change, PROF IVAR GIAEVER HAS RESIGNED FROM THE AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY, WHERE HIS PEERS HAD ELECTED HIM A FELLOW TO HONOUR HIS WORK.

The society, which has 48,000 members, has adopted a policy statement which states: "The evidence is incontrovertible: global warming is occurring."

But Prof Giaever, who shared the 1973 Nobel award for physics, told The Sunday Telegraph. "INCONTROVERTIBLE IS NOT A SCIENTIFIC WORD. NOTHING IS INCONTROVERTIBLE IN SCIENCE."

The US-based Norwegian physicist, who is the chief technology officer at Applied Biophysics Inc and a retired academic at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the oldest technological university in the English-speaking world, added: "GLOBAL WARMING HAS BECOME THE NEW RELIGION."…


Professor Gaiever’s resignation is a big deal as is Michio Kaku’s quote above. 





Yale Paper on Climate Change

.....Professor Dan M. Kahan and his team surveyed 1540 US adults and determined THAT PEOPLE WITH MORE EDUCATION IN NATURAL SCIENCES AND MATHEMATICS TEND TO BE MORE SKEPTICAL OF AGW CLIMATE SCIENCE. Of course this means that people will less education are more apt to be duped by it.

Surprised? Here’s an excerpt of the study’s abstract (emphasis added):

The conventional explanation for controversy over climate change emphasizes impediments to public understanding: Limited popular knowledge of science, the inability of ordinary citizens to assess technical information, and the resulting widespread use of unreliable cognitive heuristics to assess risk. A large survey of U.S. adults (N = 1540) found little support for this account. ON THE WHOLE, THE MOST SCIENTIFICALLY LITERATE AND NUMERATE SUBJECTS WERE SLIGHTLY LESS LIKELY, NOT MORE, TO SEE CLIMATE CHANGE AS A SERIOUS THREAT THAN the least scientifically literate and numerate ones.....


In other words, the more you know, the more likely you are to doubt that climate change is a serious threat which is the opposite what the warmist love to charge. 

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