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Daniel Hannan, MP has a new book coming out. He blogs about it in the Telegraph Blogs, UK.
Barack Obama born in Kenya? Pah! If anything, he was born in Brussels. The policies his administration is pursuing amount to comprehensive Europeanisation: European carbon taxes, European foreign policy, European healthcare, European daycare, European disarmament, European industrial intervention and, inevitably, European unemployment rates. …
…I’m not saying that everything in the US is good and everything in the EU is bad, far from it. It’s just that the aspects of Euro-politics which your rulers seem most intent on copying are those which have demonstrably failed: the centralisation of power, higher state spending, welfare dependency, excessive regulation.
Why does this model fail? Why does the current administration seem so drawn to it? Is there still time to turn aside? Can US conservatives get their act together? Will the Tea Party succeed? Is there such a thing as American exceptionalism? Why does the success of the US matter to Britain? I address these and other questions in The New Road to Serfdom: A Letter of Warning to America, out tomorrow.
In the WSJ, Nicole and Mark Crain explain how government regulation hurts the economy, discourages hiring, and increases your cost of living.
The annual cost of federal regulations in the United States increased to more than $1.75 trillion in 2008, a 3% real increase over five years, to about 14% of U.S. national income. This cost is in addition to the federal tax burden of 21%, for a combined cost of 35% of national income. One out of every three dollars earned in the U.S. goes to pay for or comply with federal laws and regulations, and new policies enacted in 2010 for health care and financial services will increase this burden. …
….In a report released last week for the Office of Advocacy of the U.S. Small Business Administration, we find that small businesses bear a disproportionately large share of regulatory costs. The portion of these costs that falls initially on businesses overall was $8,086 per employee in 2008. But these costs are not borne equally by businesses of all sizes. Larger firms benefit from economies of scale in compliance; small businesses do not have that advantage.
…Small manufacturers bear compliance costs that are 110% higher than those of medium-sized firms and 125% higher than large firms’ costs. As much as it is fashionable to blame China for the demise of small manufacturing in America, the evidence suggests that looking for some reasons closer to home is warranted. …
…In per-household terms, the combined federal burden of regulation and taxes is a remarkable $37,962. Increased transparency in both the cost and benefit side of the regulatory equation is necessary to determine whether what we spend is worth the 35% of national income that it costs, and whether the distribution of the burden is relatively efficient. This is particularly true now that the federal government is undertaking Herculean efforts to stimulate the economy while increasing regulations costly to businesses.
Tony Blankley writes about a remarkable movement, and the hope that true change is coming.
…Christopher Lasch‘s “The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy,” posthumously published in 1995. The noted historian, whose intellectual journey carried him from the left in the ’60s to the populist right by the ’90s, would have been giddy over the Tea Party.
…The very idea of virtue and other absolutes has fallen into disfavor with the elites. Lasch described the emergence of elites who “control the international flow of money and information, preside over philanthropic foundations and institutions of higher learning, manage the instruments of cultural production and thus set the terms of public debate.” These elites would undermine American democracy in order to fulfill their insatiable desire for wealth and power and to perpetuate their social and political advantages. …
…The Tea Party movement will assert middle-class values, economic nationalism, patriotism and other concepts derided by postmodern elitists. The movement’s central tenets – small government, decentralization of power and an end to profligate spending – are precisely what Lasch prescribed to restore American democracy.
The elites’ fear and loathing of the Tea Party movement is rooted in the recognition that the real change is only now coming. They are right to be fearful, for the ultimate outcome of the Tea Party‘s triumph will be to constrain the elites’ economic and cultural hegemony. This reversal of fortune, with power flowing from the privileged back to the middle class, will take time to fully manifest itself. But an inexorable movement has begun. …
With his trademark clarity of thought and word, Thomas Sowell gives us an explanation of gold and freedom.
One of the many slick tricks of the Obama administration was to insert a provision in the massive Obamacare legislation regulating people who sell gold. This had nothing to do with medical care but everything to do with sneaking in an extension of the government’s power over gold, in a bill too big for most people to read.
Gold has long been a source of frustration for politicians who want to extend their power over the economy. First of all, the gold standard cramped their style because there is only so much money you can print when every dollar bill can be turned in to the government, to be exchanged for the equivalent amount of gold.
When the amount of money the government can print is limited by how much gold the government has, politicians cannot pay off a massive national debt by just printing more money and repaying the owners of government bonds with dollars that are cheaper than the dollars with which the bonds were bought. In other words, politicians cannot cheat people as easily. …
In the National Review, James Capretta reviews the Obami abuses of power related to the establishment of the Obamacare bureaucracy.
…It’s now been six months since Congress passed Obamacare — not a long time given the sweeping nature of the legislation and the long phase-in schedule for its most significant provisions. Even so, it is already abundantly clear that Obamacare’s critics were dead right: The new health law has set in motion a government takeover of American health care, and a very hostile one at that. The Obama administration’s clumsy and overbearing behavior since its passage proves the point.
First, there are the heavy-handed statements coming out of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Two weeks ago, HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius sent a letter to the nation’s insurers with a plainly stated threat: Either the insurers conform to the political agenda of the administration and describe the reasons for premium increases in terms acceptable to the Democratic party, or they will be shut out entirely from the government-managed insurance marketplace. What could possibly have provoked a cabinet secretary to launch such an indiscriminate broadside against an entire industry? Simple: A handful of insurers had dared to utter the truth, noting that the new law has imposed costly insurance mandates that will raise premiums for everyone. For that offense, the federal government has essentially threatened to put the truth-telling insurers out of business. And what’s truly astonishing, and telling, is that the new law almost certainly gives the HHS secretary the power to do so if she really wants to.
Then there is the matter of Dr. Donald Berwick. Recall that President Obama took more than a year to settle on Dr. Berwick as his nominee to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) — and then moved in a matter of weeks to put him in place without Senate confirmation. The president tried to blame Republicans for this blatant end-run around constitutional checks and balances, even though Democrats control the Senate and could have held a hearing and a vote if they had wanted to. The truth is that Democrats didn’t want Dr. Berwick to be confirmed in the Senate. They wanted him on the job, for sure, because he is an ardent government-takeover enthusiast, and is prepared to use all of the levers at his disposal to advance that objective. The president and his Democratic allies just wanted to get Dr. Berwick in place without the public’s really noticing. So they chose to circumvent the normal process and put him in the CMS position with a time-limited recess appointment. For the next year and a half, Dr. Berwick is free to use CMS’s enormous new powers to force doctors and hospitals to conform to his vision of effective health care, and he is essentially accountable to no one but the president. …
The ABC Sunday Morning show began to develop a following for Jake Tapper. Then the idiots in charge of ABC put Christiane Amanpour in the anchor’s chair. Jennifer Rubin describes the result.
ABC News decided to put the overtly biased and under-informed Christiane Amanpour in the host chair for “This Week.” Perhaps they thought she had star quality or that MSNBC’s netroot viewers could be lured. But the result is a weekly display of journalistic malpractice. …
AMANPOUR: All right. But really a lot of people — I mean, people from all over the world, frankly, say to me here comes a president with a huge mandate, a huge reservoir of goodwill, huge promises to change, and with all of that, his popularity is down. People don’t appreciate some of the amazing legislative agenda that he’s accomplished. Is this a failure of leadership? Has he allowed the opposition to define him? [Emphasis added.]
Good grief. Is she on the White House payroll?
Peter Wehner agrees with Rubin, and adds these thoughts:
Apropos your posting, Jennifer, Christiane Amanpour has been ABC’s “This Week” host for nine Sundays — and a week ago last Sunday, on September 19, the show dropped to its lowest ratings in the 25-54 age demographic in more than seven years. According to Mediaite, the last time ABC had a lower rating in the demo was the August 24, 2003 show. Year-to-year, the show was down 29 percent in total viewers and 38 percent in the demo, while its popularity declined in both categories week-to-week as well (while that of NBC and CBS grew).
Just like the Philadelphia Eagles head coach Andy Reid acknowledged his mistake in making Kevin Kolb the starting quarterback and has now replaced him with Michael Vick, ABC’s brass should recognize the error of its ways and replace Amanpour with Jake Tapper, who not only received higher ratings than Amanpour but is also a far better (and more objective) host. Tapper is, in fact, among the nation’s best political reporters. For reasons Jen details, Amanpour is not.
And we have Steve Krakauer’s piece from Media-ite to which Wehner referred.
…Last Sunday, September 19, the show didn’t just finish in third place, behind NBC’s Meet The Press and CBS’ Face The Nation – it was the lowest ratings in the A25-54 demographic in more than seven years.
… Year-to-year, the show was down 29% in total viewers and 38% in the demo, while it declined in both categories week-to-week as well (while NBC and CBS grew).
It’s not like it had anything to do with the guests either – This Week put together arguably the best guest list last Sunday. Amanpour had a Sunday exclusive with President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as well as an interview with Sec. Hillary Clinton. On paper, it was a strong show. But the ratings, which haven’t been spectacular from the very beginning, have continued to see a decline, despite these high profile bookings. ..