Tag: regulation

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free trade & free markets national politics & policies property rights too much government

Renegade Regulatory Agencies

Americans often express astonishment when they learn that many of the nation’s laws — the bulk of its “regulations” — have not been written by Congress. Though the Constitution grants to Congress alone the power to legislate, Congress cedes most of that power to Executive Branch bureaucracies.

Last Wednesday, Sen. Rand Paul hosted a panel on government regulatory abuse. Covering this “round table” discussion, Lou Dobbs, the Fox anchorman, interviewed Sen. Paul, and the two highlighted a number of regulatory horror stories:

  • A man from Hungary was put in jail for three years for cleaning up an illegal dump that had been put onto land that he had purchased.
  • A family was harassed for raising rabbits without a license — fined $3,000,000 but given the out of a mere $90,000 fine if they paid within 30 days by credit card.
  • Members of another family found themselves face to face with EPA bureaucrats, who halted their housing project, demanded costly site restoration, and charged them with criminal liability for not immediately complying.

The law that’s directed against this latter family, by the way, “is about wetlands,” which, Rand Paul informs us, Congress has never enacted laws about: “‘Wetlands’ is something defined into existence by regulatory agencies.”

In The Road to Serfdom F. A. Hayek showed how undemocratic and abusive “central planning” becomes. Apparently, even without a grand, overarching plan, regulation of the micro-​managing kind navigates the same path.

Demand more “regulation”? Expect arbitrary judgment and unreasonable requirements — tyranny — as the result.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Liberals Against Fracking

Fracking — not just for Battlestar Galactica nerds any longer.

Colloquial for “hydraulic fracturing,” fracking is a process of forcing water deep into oil shale to bring up natural gas. Combined with horizontal drilling (that is, and I’m not making any of this up, drilling somewhat sideways to avoid topside damage), fracking promises to be the next big breakthrough in energy development.

Just so long as government doesn’t mess it up.

Well, there’s debate about this. Gasland, a recent documentary, cited numerous examples of contaminated well water. And yet, last week Judge Nancy Freudenthal reversed federal government regulations against fracking, dismissing Gasland-promoted harms as “speculative.”

Anti-​factual? Anti-science?

Not according to science writer Ronald Bailey, who has argued that fracking itself is harmless. Things can go wrong in any industrial process, and in cases where substantial damage has occurred because of negligence or incompetence, major judgments against energy companies have been awarded to their victims.

Just as things are supposed to go, in a free society.

But folks leaning to the left prefer the “precautionary principle,” at least when it comes to business. “[T]he new reality,” according to a Washington Examiner editorial, is that “those who are now seeking to stop history — or at least the development of new energy technologies — are liberals, led by President Obama.”

Had the Examiner used “progressive” instead of “liberals,” the irony of today’s Progressives being against progress might have unearthed one of this age’s sadder political truths. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets media and media people national politics & policies

What’s Going Up

When it comes to government policy and the politics that supports it, why people advocate what they advocate can get complicated. 

It’s obvious that people don’t always vote their wallets, their narrowly perceived “self interest.” But it’s just as obvious that even the biggest advocates of “sacrifice” and “public spirit” often come off as greedy and narrowly pandering to at least some interests.

And then there’s the issue of fuel to throw on the fire of ideology.

Gasoline, especially, leads to some bizarre expressions of opinion.

When gas prices rise, people talk “conspiracy.” Chris Cuomo makes the case that “speculators” drive fuel prices up — though I notice that neither he nor his guest seemed much inclined to use actual economic analysis to explain anything. “The facts” Cuomo makes much of are embarrassingly superficial.

Two U.S. senators now push for regulators to “apply the breaks” on speculators. Current prices are, as one of them puts it, “unwarranted.”

In past decades, I remember some prominent politicians talk about adding huge taxes to gas, “just like in Europe,” to discourage consumption and “encourage green energy” and thereby “save the planet.”

I don’t hear those notions often, anymore. Could it be that none of us wants to pay more, so when gas prices rise, we forget our ideologies and other fine notions and just yearn (or scream) for cheaper gas?

Not exactly a rational attitude towards policy. But maybe not that mysterious, either.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies

One Industry’s Boom Time

The current economic slump lumbers along, but one industry is booming: Health-​care lobbying.

Over 180 groups have registered to help shape the new health care law, prompting CNNMoney to explain that “President Obama’s drive for health care reform has been a years-​long boon for lobbyists”: 

Over 2009 and 2010, $1.06 billion was spent on lobbying, with more than $500 million spent on lobbying the issue in each year.… In addition, lobbyists for 1,251 organizations disclosed that they worked on health care reform in 2009 and 2010.… The number of individual lobbyists who reported working on health related legislation last year hit 3,154.…

Bad or good?

Well, it’s to be expected. The more the federal government involves itself in any domain of life, the more reactions to expect from those engaged in that domain. And it’s not just big business petitioning government for favors or forbearance or simply an ongoing “in.” Unions and associations and non-​profits are onboard, too. After all, a simple line or even a word in a law can make or break a concern. 

Besides, if our legislators insist on regulating every aspect of life, they’ll need all the help they can get. But since that “help” inevitably emanates from ever larger legions of back-​slapping lobbyists huddling with glad-​handing politicians, it’d be better if Congress left well enough alone.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

Stop the Mortgage Madness

The New York Times wonders how “home buying [might] change if the federal government shuts down the housing finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.” Despite vague agreement that misguided government policy somehow encouraged short-​sighted, irresponsible conduct, many want government to keep it up.

It’s supposedly “well understood” that Fanny and Freddie “misused” government’s support to back “millions of shoddy loans.” Shoddy how? Shoddy because awarded to high-​risk debtors on terms impossible without the government’s easy credit, subsidies, regulations, exhortations and bailout net. Many of the loans would not have been made by creditors obliged to consider not only potential profits but also all the actual and potential costs, without government interference.

In the article’s very next paragraph, however, we learn that although the consequences of “misused” government support for untenable loans are now “well understood,” there’s a “much more divisive question” now in play: “whether the government should preserve the benefits that the companies provide to middle-​class borrowers, including lower interest rates, lenient terms and the ability to get a mortgage even when banks are not making other kinds of loans.”

Huh? You mean, many politicians and beneficiaries of government largesse are “divided” over whether a policy of destructively encouraging irresponsible conduct should be clung to with only cosmetic, if any, changes — even though this policy sank the economy?

Scavengers picking carcasses may not care about the long run. But the rest of us should.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

The Latest Mixed-​Economy Mix

Mix special interests, politicians-​on-​the-​make, and expanding bureaucracies and what do you get? E15 gasohol.

Matthew Wald of the New York Times’s “green” blog reports that government ethanol mandates and subsidies make it harder to sell gas efficiently. Converting gas tanks to accommodate the new 15 percent ethyl alcohol/​gas blend, E15, could mean shortages of gas for customers with cars that can’t use it. Moreover, ethanol can damage some engines and gas pumps.

A slew of engine manufacturer associations have sued the EPA to block approval of E15. On the other side of the special-​interest coin, it’s worth noting that it was the ethanol industry that pushed for E15 approval in the first place. 

The approval by itself wouldn’t mean much if buyers and sellers weren’t being forced to use ethanol. New fuel products have been introduced by market participants in the past; with E15, producers and resellers could offer — and consumers buy — the fuel that makes the most economic and technological sense. Instead, the current innovation is an artifact of government policy. You can be sure that the problems caused by imposing ethanol will trigger other political “solutions” that worsen market disruptions, triggering even worse “solutions,” and so forth.

Our “mixed economy” isn’t generally efficient, like free markets tend to be. In a mixed economy, the political winners win big; the rest of us lose.

It’s a mixed bag. The headier mix resulting from freedom? Far better.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.