Mar 19

No one even knows how many federal agencies there are

Columnist Paul Driessen discusses a recent report by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, “Ten Thousand Commandments.”

The report details the bone-crushing costs of federal regulations. Regulations keep business from starting. Regulations keep poor people from launching successful careers. Regulations make America poorer. See here.

No one even knows how many Executive Branch agencies there are – estimates range from 60 to 438 – much less how many new rules they implement and impose each year.

The report estimates that regulations add $1.9 TRILLION dollars of costs (and produce not much benefit) to the economy each year!

Mar 17

Little Rock, Arkansas has only one taxi business because of overregulation

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Governments everywhere have overregulated transportation and travel. In typical regulatory schemes, a good-ol-boy taxi service lobbies for laws that prevent competitors from starting up and competing with them.

The laws are generally passed with assurances that the laws are needed to “protect the public” from dangerous, unsafe, diseased cabbies, etc.

Of course, the laws create the opposite environment. Studies show that government-approved cab businesses provide worse service, and are dirtier and less safe than services such as Uber and Lyft.

Little Rock, Arkansas has only one taxi business … and it’s illegal to start another.

The Institute for Justice has teamed up with taxi entrepreneur Ken Leininger to file a lawsuit, seeking to reinvigorate the Arkansas Constitution’s anti-monopoly clause, to open Little Rock’s taxi market to competition, and to remind the city that monopolies are un-American. See here.

Mar 17

Fed Continues to Claim it is “Bipartisan” Even as its Officers Overwhelmingly Support Big-Government Political Campaigns

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Central banking and big governments have long shared in something of a symbiotic relationship. Central banking allows governments to give their subjects the appearance that government is a “good deal.” By running up massive debts to central banks, governments can trick their subjects into thinking that big government is “worth it.”

Modern Americans, for example, are highly taxed. But government appears to provide a large amount of goods and services–beyond what mere taxation would justify.

The magic of central banking! Governments simply run deficits and deflate their currencies.

Now it has come out that the highest officers of the Federal Reserve Bank tend to donate to Democratic, big-government campaigns and not small-government political campaigns.

The Fed Chairwoman has now been forced to go public with a claim that the Fed is “bipartisan”! See here.

Mar 16

Socialist Venezuela shuts down for a week as electricity is rationed

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When people are free to choose and purchase energy in free markets, there are rarely any power outages or energy shortages. The private sector can quickly scramble to profit from people’s energy needs.

But in centrally planned economies like Venezuela, government picks and chooses energy sources for everyone. Government also chooses what prices will be paid for energy.

Now there is news that Venezuela is in the midst of a week-long power shutdown.

Electricity is being rationed, even though the government subsidizes the oil energy heavily. See here.

Mar 13

Palace Intrigue in North Korea: Those Who Trust Government Most are the Most Likely to be Purged

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Another recurring lesson for those who trust government most. It is they who will always be targeted by jealous rivals when their dreams of government power bear fruit.

The history of the Soviet Union was filled with examples where the most loyal communists were– –again and again– — purged or prosecuted by government officials they adored and supported.

Jealousy and power are the calling cards of government supremacists.

The New York Times is reporting that North Korean president Kim Jong Il has ordered the execution of two more loyalists in the office of Kim’s own uncle Jang Song-thaek. Prior to 2014, Jang had been a rising star in the government and was considered by some to be the second-highest government leader.

As the New York Times reports,

Hundreds of officials were gathered there to witness the execution of Mr. Jang’s two trusted deputies in the administrative department of the ruling Workers’ Party.

The two men, Ri Ryong-ha and Jang Su-gil, were torn apart by antiaircraft machine guns, according to South Korea’s National Intelligence Service. The executioners then incinerated their bodies with flamethrowers.

The Times report has some interesting details about the socialist regime:

Mr. Jang’s name has been expurgated from all official records in the North. Hundreds of his associates were purged. His wife is alive but sickly, according to the South Korean intelligence agency.

The Times report also details some of the opulent luxuries of the North Korean officials — — in a land where millions go hungry and live in poverty.

Mar 11

Government again demands that all must be naked before the state

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Every government that ever existed sought the same powers: total control over all resources, all property, all thought and speech– –and the authority to kill all who resist.

Now the U.S. government- – -the president and most of the prominent members of the Senate – – are (again) seeking to enact a “law” requiring all devices be open to the government. See here.

The justification, now and for centuries in the past, is “terrorism: a threat that is less likely to cause an American’s death than bee stings or lightning strikes.

Mar 10

U.S. Government Spending Hundreds of Millions on “Global Warming” Theory–Despite Lack of Congressional Authorization

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‘Manmade-global-warming-by-carbon-dioxide’ is a government theory. It is a theory that supports (actually, begs for) further government expansion and control over energy and industry.

Despite what the theory’s proponents claim, the theory is highly contested in scientific circles.

Yet ‘the science is settled’ among government circles. And among those who trust government.

The U.S. government is slightly more democratic than most governments in the world, however, and the public has managed to defy government on this issue–in part by electing congressional representatives who are skeptical of the theory.

Now it emerges that the U.S. President and his State Department have been bypassing congressional approvals, and simply dispensing State Department funds (intended by Congress for other purposes) into the ‘global warming’ promotional arm of the United Nations. See here.

Mar 08

Global Warmists’ Theory that Fossil-Fuel interests are entirely responsible for climate skepticism is based on “one sentence in one memo”

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Columnist Brian McNicoll nails the claim among government-trusters that skepticism of the government’s manmade-global-warming theory is all funded by energy companies. See here.

The entire body of proof of this great conspiracy . . . comes down to one sentence in one memo written in support of a PR campaign by the coal industry that did not even end up occurring. The sentence cited the need to “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact.”

A whole cottage industry of enviro-crazies has sprung up around that quote – which was about PR strategy; not the kind of scientific dissembling found so often on the green left. Al Gore sites the quote. So does Naomi Oreskes, the “scientific historian” who carries so much water for the global warming cult. So does George Monbiot, the Union of Concerned Scientists and others. Robert Brulle, an academic from Pennsylvania
carries so much water for the global warming cult. So does George Monbiot, the Union of Concerned Scientists and others. Robert Brulle, an academic from Pennsylvania, has promoted this yarn for years.

Beyond that, books have been written, accusations leveled, careers, funding and even liberty threatened. And now a sitting U.S. senator wants to throw people in prison for decades because they do not share his fantasies about imminent destruction from global warming.

All because of a supposed conspiracy of which most observers can find little evidence.

Mar 06

D.C. Police raid homes based on little or no evidence

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American criminal justice has collapsed. Decades of pro-government rulings by the courts have opened the door to wholesale violations of basic protections by unaccountable police.

Now the Washington Post — -which generally trumpets the claims of the government — –has finally taken notice of the practice of police raiding homes armed with “search warrants” based on little or no evidence.

14 percent of all “search warrants” executed in the past two years stemmed from a person arrested for drug or gun charges on the street. The cops have gotten into the habit of simply looking up the person’s address and then getting a warrant to search the address, claiming “probable cause” that drugs will be found.

The cops swear under oath that their “training and experience” justified such searches; and the judges universally agree!

In about 60 percent of the 284 cases, police executing the warrants found illegal items, ranging from drug paraphernalia to guns,. . . usually small, ranging from residue to marijuana cigarettes to rocks of cocaine.

About 40 percent of the time — in 115 cases — police left empty-handed.

In a dozen instances, The Post found, officers acted on incorrect or outdated address information . . . .

Mar 06

Government welfare policies have greatly harmed the poor

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Here is a Reason Magazine interview regarding a new study of the impacts of welfare on poor people.

Since the 1970s, welfare policies have made poor people poorer; mostly by incentivizng poor people not to work or better themselves.