Free Republic

I recently said that America "would become France" if a certain bill now in Congress -- which would virtually guarantee that every company becomes unionized -- ever became law. Deceptively named the Employee Free Choice Act, this bill would in most cases take away an employee's right to a secret ballot in a union election and give unions the option to have federal arbitrators set the wages, benefits, hours and all other terms and conditions of employment. Countries other than France have suffered the consequences of bad labor laws. When I was CEO of Handy Dan, the precursor to Home...

A Los Angeles City Council committee unanimously recommended an ordinance that would require home improvement stores that are 100,000 square feet or larger, or any building with 250,000 square feet or more of warehouse floor area, to set aside space for day laborers. The space required must include shelter from the elements, be easily accessible and equipped with drinking water, bathrooms, tables with seating, free condoms, and trash receptacles. Bethany Leal of the Multi-Ethnic Immigrant Worker Organizing Network, urged adoption of the ordinance. “These immigrants have journeyed far from their native countries,” Leal observed. “Most have entered the United States...

Behind the attempt to regulate the Internet is an attempt at destroying our God given constitutionally guaranteed rights of free speech and an attempt to suppress the spread of opinions, news, and ideas. For the Multi-national corporations and it's leftist CEOs there is a need for greed and to limit our choices they way they do with Television. The chance to monopolize the Internet and the video games industry is met with the support of none other than RINOS as well as the far left. Hillary Clinton, John Mccain and to some extent even Obama have expressed support for regulating...

Birth Control Fears Addressed HHS Chief Says Draft Rule Is Not Redefining Abortion Mike Leavitt blogged on the issue. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt has denied that a controversial draft regulation would redefine common birth control methods as abortion and protect the rights of doctors and other health-care workers who refuse to provide them.

This is still a free country, right? Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation to more closely regulate the wages that firms pay workers and to more strictly regulate tobacco products by putting them under FDA supervision. The Los Angeles City Council also approved a one-year moratorium on new fast-food restaurants in a 32-square-mile low-income area in the city; the poor, after all, have “above-average rates of obesity” and must be protected from themselves. Perhaps the government may just want to ask people if they are poor before we let them enter certain restaurants. Barack Obama promises a...

There’s a reason cars have bumpers. They’re designed to absorb the impact of a minor crash to prevent damage to fenders, grilles, headlights, taillights, and other expensive parts. For this to work, bumpers on both vehicles must be the same height. That’s why federal regulations require all car bumpers to be 16 to 20 inches off the ground. But federal bumper regulations do not apply to SUVs, pickups, and minivans. Without a regulatory height requirement, the bumpers on these vehicles tend to be higher than car bumpers. It makes them look more sporty and rugged. But in a crash —...

A federal government water resources inspector went out to a Texas ranch to investigate water use at the large Texas property. The old rancher met him in the drive and told him that he appreciated and understood his job, but that there was one irrigated pasture that the government man simply would not be able to inspect or check out. The government man became a little irritated and said, "What do you mean I can't inspect or check it out?" The inspector then pulled out his official government ID and told the rancher, "You see this ID? It says here...

WASHINGTON -- The housing and financial crisis convulsing the U.S. is powering a new wave of government regulation of business and the economy. Federal and state governments alike are increasingly hands-on in their effort to deal with failing businesses, plunging house prices, worthless mortgages and soaring energy prices. The steps add up to a major challenge to the movement toward deregulation that has defined American governance for much of the past quarter-century since the "Reagan Revolution" of the early 1980s. ... The U.S. has swung back and forth from a hands-on to hands-off regulatory approach over the past 230 years....

An Austin developer has been indicted by a Travis County grand jury on a charge of criminal mischief, accused of illegally cutting down a large cedar tree in South Austin last year. Hunter Wheeler, 36, faces up to two years in prison if convicted of the charge. He declined to comment Wednesday, saying he was not aware of the case. He has previously denied cutting down the tree.

Researchers say industry manipulates the ingredient to recruit new generation of users Tobacco companies are manipulating menthol levels in cigarettes to appeal to newer, younger smokers, part of a deliberate strategy to get younger people, particularly African-Americans, hooked, a new study contends. Menthol makes cigarettes more palatable to the novice smoker. "If anything, menthol is being used as a candy to help the toxin go down," said Dr. Gregory Connolly, senior author of a paper being published in the September issue of the American Journal of Public Health. "If we let the industry go ahead and willy-nilly design the product...

What happens in Vegas... by: Barbara Baker, July 14, 2008 Business and the business of education in Las Vegas is the most restrictive and oppressive that we have experienced out of the five western states in which we operate. We are a private, for-profit private school. We have 3- and 4-year-old classes as well as K-8 grades, that therefore puts us under the close scrutiny of child care agencies. Recently the Clark County/North Las Vegas transferred the monitoring of their North Las Vegas child care centers under the Metropolitan Police Department. They issued a warning that if my establishment were...

U.S. financial markets need to be made more resilient and stable, Bernanke said, possibly by giving the central bank much broader authority. He also suggested the Fed may extend its emergency credit facility program for Wall Street banks. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121551851320135555.html?mod=hps_us_whats_news

Nanny-State Anyone? by: Daniel Smith, July 08, 2008 The August/September edition of Reason, a libertarian publication dedicated to Free Minds and Free Markets, ranks the 35 “worst nanny-state cities in America.” After the analysis was complete, Chicago remained the worst and Las Vegas the best. Scrutiny was based on a cities’ “exercising [for] personal freedom.” Under this broad umbrella of freedom, Reason researched eight categories: alcohol, tobacco, sex, guns, gambling, drugs, movement, and a “catch-all” of food and “other.” According to the article, “the higher a city’s score, the more restrictive it is.” Scoring for six of the categories were...

Regulators need to shed light on derivatives By John Coffee Published: June 29 2008 18:18 | Last updated: June 29 2008 18:18 Worldwide, if securities regulators believe in one thing, it is the value of transparency. Sunlight, they know, is the best disinfectant. But sometimes in confusion they pull down the blinds. This has just happened in the US and, as a result, transparency in the market for corporate control is in danger. Unlike other regulators, the Securities and Exchange Commission has chosen – at least provisionally – to disregard equity derivatives and thus allow acquirers to use them to...

Florida banks say they are tired of playing cops, and some congressional leaders agree. The Florida Bankers Association (FBA) issued a statement Thursday in support of 18 members of Congress who signed a letter asking bank regulatory agencies to ease off on their enforcement of bank-related provisions of the Patriot Act and the Bank Secrecy Act. Parts of the two laws require banks to report the suspicious activity of their customers, especially when conducting international business. The FBA's letter said it has seen very little evidence that banks' reports on potential criminal behavior have deterred such activity or led to...

This year, about 12,000 Americans will be shot to death. It's a staggering figure, and even though lawmakers have continued to pass gun-control laws to try to bring the number down, they have not significantly reduced the murder rate. Indeed, for the last decade, guns have steadily remained the cause of about two-thirds of all homicides. Gun manufacturers insist that these deaths are not their fault, preferring to pin the blame on criminals and irresponsible dealers. They have fiercely resisted even minimal restrictions on sales and have simultaneously washed their hands of responsibility for this "collateral damage." On Thursday, the...

This is from Bob Casey Jr. (Senate, D-PA) letter to the head of the FTC, as posted on his own website (http://casey.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/?id=03D35646-FA50-4BE0-B8D7-D1B377D5F2AF)..."For example, the section of the FTC report on gas prices post-Hurricane Katrina found that, even with local and regional market differences taken into account, eight of the 30 oil refiners audited increased their prices at least five cents more than the national average. These same firms also reported increased profits, which logically means that the increased prices were not necessary to cover bottom line costs. " That's right, he is worrying about five cents per gallon in 2006...

Prepare for change as world tilts to the east American Account Irwin Stelzer “THIS too shall pass,” King Solomon’s advisers told him to engrave on a ring, and refer to it whenever he felt depressed. Or so the legend goes. Not a bad idea for bankers beset by still more dodgy paper to write off, for shareholders at loss-making Lehman Brothers and ailing Morgan Stanley (first-quarter earnings down 58% year-on-year), and for homeowners as they watch the equity in their homes evaporate. Some of our current crises will indeed pass. However, it would be a mistake to believe that when...

Restaurants in New York City with 15 or more outlets nationwide now must conspicuously post the nutritional content of each item on their menus. Similar legislation is coming to San Francisco and Seattle, and is under consideration in about a dozen other cities and state legislatures. At first blush, this seems like a good idea. Why not force restaurants to let their consumers know the nutritional value of what they're about to eat? If we're to believe what the public health world says about our bulging waistlines, perhaps a little more information would be a good thing. The American Prospect's...

Despite the growing cost of commodities like food and energy, the Democratic-controlled Congress wants to raise taxes on individuals and businesses. But we need only to look at the 1970’s to see the foolishness of that proposal. In 1980, as the Carter administration was in its final months, and with the nation still reeling from the oil crisis of the 1970’s, Congress passed a “windfall profits tax” on the oil industry. Despite the initial idealistic claims of its supporters, it only brought in a fraction of the revenue the Feds had expected. And in the end, it hurt American oil...

Why Can’t Our Media and Politicians Get The Oil Story Right? Of course the answer is quite simple! Our pathetic media and politicians can’t get it right because they don’t know how to analyze a market. After all, how many of them have actual experience in managing a client’s portfolio or traded a futures market? The problem is that their ignorance is having an outlandish impact on our lives as their ineptitude to understand and present the facts might very well lead to policies that will substantially hurt this country’s economy for a long time to come. We have precedence...

The dramatic surge in oil prices—including a $16-per-barrel jump in just two days last week—has left Washington regulators scrambling to exert new oversight on futures trading in oil and other commodities. The U.S. regulatory agency's abrupt shift toward more rigorous oversight in the past two weeks also represents a stark example of how the pinch from high gasoline prices has changed the political landscape and made energy traders prime suspects in congressional inquiries. As recently as May 20, the U.S. commodities regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), insisted at a Senate hearing that speculation was not causing the...

Manslaughter is the killing of a human being without expressed or implied malice. Average life expectancy is very highly correlated with per capita income, and income growth is very highly correlated with economic freedom (note accompanying table). When politicians enact anti-economic growth regulations and taxes, even in the name of "global warming," "environmentalism," and "fairness," they are, in fact, shortening the lives of many of their fellow citizens and those in other countries. The political requirements to use corn and other food plants for fuel have driven up the price of food again for billions of people in the world,...

The state now regulates us instead of the economy It's amazing how politicians, whatever their party colour, start to behave in the same way as soon as they gain office. Fresh from serving champagne to celebrate victory in the London mayoral elections, Boris Johnson announced that he would ban alcohol consumption on the London Underground. What is the point of this injunction which, not being backed by law, is unenforceable? Why is this ban acceptable, but not the ban on smoking in pubs, which Johnson opposed? I admit that I dislike people drinking from beer cans on the Tube, but...

The price of crude oil today is not made according to any traditional relation of supply to demand. It’s controlled by an elaborate financial market system as well as by the four major Anglo-American oil companies. As much as 60% of today’s crude oil price is pure speculation driven by large trader banks and hedge funds. It has nothing to do with the convenient myths of Peak Oil. It has to do with control of oil and its price. How? First, the crucial role of the international oil exchanges in London and New York is crucial to the game. Nymex...

AIG shareholders gathered for the big insurer's annual meeting in New York on Wednesday, and the mood wasn't cheery. After a three-year experiment in Eliot Spitzer-imposed management that has cost them billions, more than a few shareholders were pining for the days of former CEO Hank Greenberg. "He did a heck of a job," said one shareholder heading out of the meeting... ...while AIG is suing him for the accounting restatements it took after his departure, he is taking the highly unusual step of suing back. He claims the accounting changes were never justified... A careful and lengthy look at...

-- snip --Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, in a likely preview of the Republican line of attack in the general election, said Democratic leaders and Mr. Obama "get up every morning with three things on their minds: more taxes, more regulation and more litigation." -- snip --

Borrowing to build universities will not help economy Byron Schlomach, Goldwater Institute Daily Email, April 17, 2008 Arizona’s public universities have proposed issuing $1.4 billion in bonds for a university building program. The universities have been asking the legislature for this money for a few years, but the construction downturn provides an opportunity to market it as a “Construction Stimulus Plan.” This plan is fundamentally flawed. First, any stimulating effect will come too late. Proponents of the program say it would “immediately create 14,438 jobs for construction workers.” But the spending would be done over several years, so most of...

Regulation Is the Wrong Answer : Mortgage market will correct itself without Washington’s help Thomas C. Patterson, Goldwater Institute Daily Email, April 09, 2008 Since 2001, the number of employees in government regulatory agencies has grown from 172,002 to 244,000. Their funding has increased 44 percent, inflation-adjusted. As a result, Americans face $30 billion more annually in regulatory costs than they did seven years ago. All told, we pay about $1.1 trillion for regulation and compliance costs, about the same as we pay in federal income taxes. In spite of its massive costs, regulation has been unable to prevent market...

Mr. Chairman, I have never been opposed to regulation, although my idea of regulation differs from that of many people in Washington. The free market and its forces of supply and demand are the most effective regulator of the private sector, and have never been known to fail absent government intervention. But piling more public sector regulation on the private sector will have a detrimental effect on the health of our financial system and sow the seeds for the next financial meltdown. What we in Washington should be discussing is increased regulation and scrutiny of public sector regulatory and oversight...

You might want to put a big red "X" on today's date. It may mark the start of the biggest financial revolution in the nation's history, and is a landmark in the planned, or otherwise, transition from 'free markets' to an emerging 'socialism for the rich' which is aimed at shifting the cost of bailing out bankers and speculators to the wallets of America's working class. It will come packaged as a 200 page set of proposed regulations which broad new powers to the (not really) Federal Reserve, designating it a "market stability regulator". In plain English, it means something...

Central Planning and Herd Mentality Professional politicians, investors, and journalists are working in concert to push forward new legislation to greatly expand the powers and role of the Federal Reserve. "The markets have failed" they protest, and the solution they see is more central planning. The problem is, more central planning will only re-enforce the herd mentality that created the housing bubble and the current commodities spike. The herd theory of the markets is important to understanding how the housing bubble became such a problem, but too often the herd mentality is written off as "irrational." In this article, the...

Shake-up gives Fed a boost Last Updated: 2:02am BST 30/03/2008 AMBROSE EVANS-PRITCHARD SOPHIE BRODIE THE US government will tomorrow unveil a radical overhaul of financial regulation that would give the Federal Reserve greater powers to oversee market stability. The proposals are part of a wider effort to simplify labyrinthine US regulation, consolidate regulators and make the market more competitive. The review began last year, but has become increasingly critical as the Fed struggled to restore confidence in markets shattered by the credit crunch and bail-out of Bear Stearns. advertisement While the plans would allow the Fed to scrutinise more closely...

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration Friday proposed a sweeping overhaul of the way the nation's financial industry is regulated. In an effort to deal with the problems highlighted by the current severe credit crisis, the new plan would give major new powers to the Federal Reserve, according to a 26-page executive summary obtained by The Associated Press. The proposal would designate the Fed as the primary regulator of market stability, greatly expanding the central bank's ability to examine not just commercial banks but all segments of the financial services industry. The administration proposal, which was to be formally unveiled in...

EPA FolliesBy Kevin Drum Mar 28, 2008 (Political Animal) EPA FOLLIES....Last year the Supreme Court ruled, contrary to the Bush administration's wishes, that greenhouse gases were a pollutant that came under the jurisdiction of the EPA. So the EPA's scientists took a look, and they concluded that, yes, greenhouse gases contributed to global warming and ought to be regulated under the Clean Air Act. The White House, of course, was not happy about this, so on Thursday EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson deep-sixed the scientific findings and opened up a "lengthy public comment period" to give corporate contributors the public a...

March 23, 2008 Banking crisis: it’s déjà vu all over again American Account: Irwin Stelzer THE assets making up the balance sheet of a leading bank are unmarketable. Other banks refuse to trade with it, and become so concerned about shoes yet to drop they refuse to lend to even creditworthy borrowers. Not to worry: JP Morgan rides to the rescue, and with some cash from the US Treasury thrown in, arranges a takeover of the troubled bank. And so the panic of 1907 ended. Almost exactly 100 years later, a similar scenario plays out. Bear Stearns becomes illiquid, and...

Collectivism Is Not the Cure : Health Care Market Needs Innovation, not Regulation Thomas C. Patterson, Goldwater Institute Daily Email, March 20, 2008 Have you ever tried to do cost comparisons for medical services? You do it all the time for your car, your house, food and clothes. But it’s not easy to find out what medical services cost before you buy. Of course, most of us aren’t too concerned because we figure we’re not paying the bill anyway. PATMOS Emergiclinic in Greeneville, Tenn., is different. Their charges are prominently posted in the clinic, on their Web site (patmosemergiclinic.com) and...

As traditional news outfits migrate online to become dot-coms, one of their biggest headaches is how to adapt to the sprawling new frontier of public comment.In the pre-Internet world of TV and newspapers, public comment wasn't a problem. Broadcast news didn't have any -- aside from the weekly guest spot, usually some hapless civic association president reading from a prompter and staring terrified into the camera. Papers had their letters pages, but allowed only enough space for a few dozen a week, and they were generally written with care and were easy to prune for taste and diction.Things were nicely...

What do Accountants, Attorneys, Financial Planners, and Bank Tellers all have in common? They are all deputy U.S. Marshall's or at least have been given the privileges of that profession. Thanks to the IRS, accountants now are subject to "preparer penalties" for giving advice or tacitly approving tax strategies that may be later deemed "evasive or fraudulent". Of course, like many IRS requirements, the facts and circumstances surrounding what constitutes evasion verus tax planning is only known to the IRS and will only be discovered in your audit meeting. My experience with that agency in a recent Tax Court case...

Sunny Delight: Sunrise review laws protect entrepreneurs Jennifer Perkins, Goldwater Institute, February 27, 2008 As Ronald Reagan famously noted, “Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States.” Why is it, then, that every year we see more proposed government regulations that make it harder for small businesses to open and operate? Senate Bill 1502 could help address this regulatory creep: It would require the legislature to conduct a “sunrise review” process before erecting new regulatory barriers to entrepreneurship. Sunrise reviews require proponents of a regulation to demonstrate an actual need for...

Rueban Navarrette shows mendacious dexterity in appropriating the language of competitive economics to support an agenda that has nothing to do with improving the economy of the United States. He understands well that competition fosters excellence, but seems to deliberately elide the fact that it also reveals hard truths about the people who lose. Anyone who lays into the Democrats with a quarterstaff for being anti-competitive will usually get my seal of approval. In Navarrette’s case, I withhold my utterly unimportant benediction. He got one or two points correct, but failed to tell the whole story. I’ll do my best...

Raleigh, N.C. — State lawmakers are considering a proposal that would require homeowners and businesses that use private wells to report on how much water they consume.

Sun's low magnetic activity may portend an ice age The Canadian Space Agency’s radio telescope has been reporting Flux Density Values so low they will mean a mini ice age if they continue. Like the number of sunspots, the Flux Density Values reflect the Sun’s magnetic activity, which affects the rate at which the Sun radiates energy and warmth. CSA project director Ken Tapping calls the radio telescope that supplies NASA and the rest of the world with daily values of the Sun’s magnetic activity a “stethoscope on the Sun”. In this case, however, it is the “doctor” whose health...

Democrats in Congress are pushing for new restrictions on credit-card companies in what could become a hot election-year issue. Credit cards are a big concern in Washington because constituents often complain to lawmakers about confusing credit-card terms. The amount of credit-card debt is rising as the economy worsens, which will likely increase the volume of complaints. The banking industry, for its part, is warning that legislative interference could make it even harder for consumers to access credit amid an overall tightening of credit markets. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D., N.Y.) could introduce a bill as soon as today that would require...

"What's shocking about the report isn't what it covers (or that Ars is cited in footnotes 126 and 211), but what it leaves out: it doesn't contain a single extended discussion of the fact that the US has been slipping in a worldwide broadband rankings throughout the decade. That hugely significant fact doesn't mean that the current approach isn't working or that the US is becoming a Luddite paradise, but it does suggest that there are other approaches to be considered, approaches that have proved successful in real-world conditions. As broadband continues to be a key driver of economic opportunity...

Computerworld — After the third day of the auction, bidding reached a total of $6.1 billion for 1,099 licenses in the Federal Communications Commission auction of 700-MHz wireless spectrum.

URGENT!! Proposed polar bear listing threatens YOUR future!! The Department of the Interior and its Fish and Wildlife Service are getting ready to trample on your rights, drive up your cost of living, and regulate virtually every aspect of your life. You need to act immediately - or your energy and economic life will soon be dictated by climate change alarmists in government agencies, courts and environmental groups. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne is dropping hints that he will declare the polar bear a threatened species - within the next few weeks. If he does, any activity that arguably...

Despite urgent pleas to adopt more environmentally acceptable lifestyles, most people continue their profligate ways—driving personal automobiles (often SUVs), excessively heating/cooling their homes, bathing too frequently, eating meat etc. While attention to all these bad habits will eventually be granted, the State of California is presently taking aim at the home thermostat. A proposed revision to the state’s environmental statute (so-called Title 24) calls for all homes to ultimately be equipped with a "programmable communicating thermostat" or PCT. These PCTs would be linked with central computers enabling government officials to monitor and manage conditions in each home. If home owners...

It's often said that the abortion industry is under-regulated. Former abortion clinic employees have described some appalling and filthy conditions inside the centers. Their reports to the outside world describe abortion centers that are anything but clean and sanitary. Last summer, the State of New Jersey forced an abortion clinic to close down for violation of numerous regulations. The Alternatives abortion clinic, located in Atlantic City, was closed after an inspection by the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services' Division of Health Care Quality and Oversight. Stemming from an anonymous complaint, the investigation resulted in a 104-page summary...

Californians may soon have to deal with climate change on a different scale -- and this time the culprit isn't greenhouse gas. The California Energy Commission is proposing a plan which allows the government to regulate household thermostats in the event of an "energy crisis." Under the proposed rules, all new thermostats will be fitted with technology that will allow the government to adjust the temperature of someone's home by plus or minus four degrees. Originally the plans called for mandatory compliance; however, amid public outcry, the plans have been slightly altered to allow an individual to turn off the...