Free Republic

For two centuries, America's free market has not only been the source of dazzling ideas and path-breaking products, it has also been the greatest force for prosperity the world has ever known. That vibrant entrepreneurialism is the key to our continued global leadership and the success of our people. But throughout our history, one of the reasons the free market has worked is that we have sought the proper balance. We have preserved freedom of commerce while applying those rules and regulations necessary to protect the public against threats to our health and safety and to safeguard people and businesses...

Republican leaders have begun gathering evidence for sweeping investigations of Barack Obama's environmental agenda, from climate science to the BP oil spill, if as expected, they take control of the House of Representatives in the 2 November mid-term elections, the Guardian has learned. The new Congress will not be installed until next January, but Democrats and environmental organisations say they are braced for multiple, aggressive investigations from the incoming Republican majority. Republican leaders have also raised the possibility of disbanding the global warming committee in Congress, established by the Democratic speaker, Nancy Pelosi.

California's most enduring political battle is over whether its relatively high living costs and taxes and dense regulatory thicket make it uncompetitive in a global economy – or, as one blue-ribbon state commission put it in the 1990s, have become a "job-killing machine." The clash plays itself out in the Capitol each year as labor, environmental, consumer and other groups sponsor dozens of bills that business groups label "job killers" and try, usually successfully, to block. But the debate began three-plus decades ago when, after a string of overtly pro-business governors, a young Jerry Brown won the office and appointed...

Barack Obama’s small business jobs bill contains a dangerous loophole that could encourage billions of dollars in fraud in small business contracting programs, and protect fraudulent companies from prosecution. The bill is currently pending in the U.S. Senate. Section 1341 of H.R. 5297, the Small Business Jobs Act, contains provisions that would allow the Small Business Administration (SBA) to develop policies and procedures that would protect large businesses that have misrepresented themselves as small businesses from prosecution for felony contracting fraud. Since 2003, over a dozen federal investigations have found billions of dollars a month in federal small business contracts...

WINCHESTER, VA. - The last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison's innovations in the 1870s. The remaining 200 workers at the plant here will lose their jobs. "Now what're we going to do?" said Toby Savolainen, 49, who like many others worked for decades at the factory, making bulbs now deemed wasteful. During the recession, political and business leaders have held out the promise that American advances, particularly in green technology,...

A Sacramento judge on Tuesday ordered Attorney General Jerry Brown to reword a ballot initiative that would roll back the state's landmark climate change law. In a ruling Tuesday, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Timothy Frawley agreed with measure proponents charging that Brown's office used misleading language when it drafted the initiative, Proposition 23. As the Democratic candidate for governor, Brown opposes Proposition 23 and supports the state's climate change law, AB 32. Frawley said use of the term "major polluters" in election materials carried negative connotations with voters and ordered Brown's office to use the less loaded term "major sources...

A dire warning from Bay State medical-device companies that a new sales tax in the federal health-care law could force their plants - and thousands of jobs - out of the country has rattled Gov. Deval Patrick, a staunch backer of the law and pal President Obama. “This bill is a jobs killer,” said Ernie Whiton, chief financial officer of Chelmsford’s Zoll Medical Corp., which employs about 650 people in Massachusetts. Many of those employees work in Zoll’s local manufacturing facility making heart defibrillators. “We could be forced to (move) manufacturing overseas if we can’t pass along these costs to...

The Legislature's nonpartisan analyst says California's landmark greenhouse gas reduction law could cost jobs in the near term, while its long-term impact is uncertain. But, Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor concluded in a letter released Monday, the overall impact of the law on the state's gargantuan economy "will probably be modest." The law, known as AB 32, would require the state by 2020 to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions to 1990 levels. It's regarded by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as a key part of what he hopes will be a legacy as a "green governor." The analyst found the state Air Resources Board's...

SACRAMENTO, Calif.—Bills that could hurt the state's business climate would be required to undergo an "economic impact analysis" under legislation to be considered in the state Senate this week. The proposal by Sen. Tom Harman, R-Hungtington Beach, is part of a job-creation package promoted by Republicans that is competing with the Democrats' 27-bill jobs-creation package. The Senate Rules Committee is scheduled to decide Wednesday if Harman's bill should be considered this year. Committees controlled by Democrats already have delayed 14 of the Republicans' jobs bills, leaving Harman's measure the only one still active. Harman, who contends California is regulating businesses...

Officials gather in Copenhagen this week for an international climate summit, but business leaders are focusing even more on Washington, where the Obama administration is expected as early as Monday to formally declare carbon dioxide a dangerous pollutant. An "endangerment" finding by the Environmental Protection Agency could pave the way for the government to require businesses that emit carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases to make costly changes in machinery to reduce emissions -- even if Congress doesn't pass pending climate-change legislation. EPA action to regulate emissions could affect the U.S. economy more directly, and more quickly, than any...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. climate legislation would hike gasoline prices about 13 cents a gallon as oil companies push the price of carbon permits on to consumers, according to report by Point Carbon, an independent consulting company that tracks global carbon and energy markets. Point Carbon analyst Emilie Mazzacurati said oil companies would face substantial carbon permit costs under the legislation because they would get few of the permits the government would distribute to companies during the first years of a cap-and-trade program. But that should not hurt integrated oil companies very much, she said, because they could largely...

The CBO just scored the house version of cap and trade. A House-passed bill that targets climate change through a cap-and-trade system of pollution credits would slow the nation's economic growth slightly over the next few decades and would create "significant" job losses from fossil fuel industries as the country shifts to renewable energy, the head of the Congressional Budget Office told a Senate energy panel Wednesday. CBO Director Douglas W. Elmendorf emphasized that his estimates contained significant uncertainties and "do not include any benefits from averting climate change," but his message nevertheless contrasted sharply with those of President Obama...

As the state's acute budget crisis shows, it is absolutely crucial for California to have a hospitable business climate. Without a healthy economy, there is not enough tax revenue to sustain even basic government programs. One would think this would have finally sunk in with the Democrats who control the Legislature, given the plunge in revenue over the past two years and the resulting budget carnage. One would be wrong. The California Chamber of Commerce's recently released list of “job-killer” bills now pending in Sacramento is like a greatest hits collection of anti-business legislation. There are the usual attempts to...

Last Thursday, Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata removed two freshmen senators from the Senate Appropriations Committee -- thus sending a new signal that he would not allow moderate Democrats to acquire life-and-death power over legislation. Perata acted just one day after the California Chamber of Commerce published its annual list of so-called "job killer bills" and the two events were symbiotically, if not directly, related, reflecting the Capitol's perennial struggle between business and liberal Democratic Party groups. Each year, unions, personal injury lawyers, environmental groups and consumer advocates introduce their agenda and each year, the Chamber of Commerce designates...

California to cut gas emissions Schwarzenegger thinks the federal government will follow suit California's Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a law which sets targets to reduce the state's greenhouse gas emissions.Becoming the first US state to impose such limits, California is aiming to reduce its emissions by 25% by 2020. Details on how the state will achieve the cut have not been worked out, but it seems inevitable that businesses will face tougher emissions limits. While good news for the environment, critics argue that firms may relocate. In addition to companies simply moving outside California, opponents of the Global...

Those words notwithstanding, the greenhouse gas "rollout," as political pros call it, has little or nothing to do with global warming -- it's mostly a symbolic declaration to do something many years hence -- and everything to do with Schwarzenegger's triangulating strategy that already has generated a double-digit, and widening, lead over Democratic challenger Phil Angelides. Conservatives consider the main greenhouse bill, Assembly Bill 32, to be a sop to the environmental leanings of centrist voters, albeit one with a potentially serious impact on business if, in fact, the carbon dioxide emission limits it envisions are imposed sometime in the...

WASHINGTON -- Arnold Schwarzenegger's signing the first statewide, multi-industry greenhouse gas emission limits may be a calculated political move to burnish his green credentials in an attempt to get re-elected governor. Or it may symbolize his sincere belief that California should take a leadership role in reducing the threat of climate change. But whatever his motives, the results will be higher prices for California's consumers, higher unemployment for California's workers and little or no benefit for the environment. (snip) While California is an economic powerhouse and these cuts are substantial, their effect on future climate will be nil. The National...

At the 2004 Republican National Convention, Arnold Schwarzenegger brought a roar from the faithful with his admonition to the economic pessimists on the left, "Don't be economic girlie men!" But when it comes to the environment, it turns out that the Terminator has a distinctly softer, gentler side himself. Last week the California governor signed into law a measure that would require a 25% cut in carbon dioxide emissions by the year 2020. Even assuming that global warming is the threat it's cracked up to be, and that human activity is an important contributor to the problem, such a cut...

California businesses have been hit hard by this past legislative session. First, they have been forced to swallow a minimum wage increase and caps on industrial emissions of greenhouse gases as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger seeks to bolster his centrist stance in an election year. Now, there are dozens of other bills on the governor’s desk that could impose additional costs on doing business in California. Meanwhile, only a handful of bills supported by business made it through. But it could have been worse. Dozens of other bills dubbed “job killers” were defeated in the closing weeks of the session. Among...

SACRAMENTO Sealing a groundbreaking deal to combat global warming, California lawmakers on Thursday sent Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger a bill that would make the state the first in the nation to force its major industries to cut their carbon emissions. The legislation requires California businesses to begin reporting their emissions of greenhouse gases so the state can slash their output an estimated 25 percent by 2020. Schwarzenegger has said he would sign the bill, which incorporates guidelines he outlined last year in an executive order. Lawmakers approved the bill by a 47-31 vote, a day after it passed the Senate. "We...