Photo by Mike Licht, nationscapital.com

Often overlooked in the class warfare that President Obama is unleashing on America so that he can continue spending, is how business is being strangled by regulations. Every time the government fails to protect our rights and freedoms because it is too busy trying to micromanage our lives, and as a result some calamity descends upon us, the answer is always more regulations. Nowadays, that will typically mean thousands of pages of new laws that turn into tens of thousands of pages of new regulations and those who never met a payroll wonder why we are stuck at 9% unemployment.

Why does this happen? I believe there are two reasons. The first is the expansive view of the Constitution that many progressives hold. There is very little that they believe the federal government is not allowed to do. Most of our law schools are also espousing the concept of a “living, breathing” Constitution, meaning that what the Founding Fathers wrote is quaint but its meaning must change with the times. The graduates of those law schools eventually make it to the bench and even the Supreme Court. The problem is that if you take that view, the Constitution is meaningless.  If you can say the Constitution meant this in 1792, but those same words mean something else today, you no longer have a Constitution.  As Jefferson wrote,

“Our peculiar security is in possession of a written Constitution; Let us not make it blank paper by construction. –Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Wilson Cary Nicholas, Monticello, September 7, 1803.

The progressives are doing exactly what Jefferson said we should not do, turn the Constitution into blank paper, by contriving different meanings from the words than the authors intended.

The second problem is that the function of the Congress is to write laws. They don’t enforce them, that’s the role of the executive branch. So their knee jerk reaction to a problem is to write another law, regardless of whether the previous law is not working simply because it is not enforced.

So what are the checks on this runaway regulation? Congress keeps churning out more and more regulations that are choking the economy, and the Supreme Court has let them wander far afield of the Constitution. There used to be another check on runaway federal power, but that was eliminated with the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution.

When the Founders created the concept of the United States, they envisioned a president elected by the people, a judiciary appointed for life, and a Congress split into two chambers. One of those chambers, the House of Representatives would be the branch of government closest to the people. The other chamber was to represent the states. If you recall it was the states that created the federal government, not the other way around, and the states wanted to have a say in that government. To do so, senators were appointed by state legislatures, and as such, if they wanted to remain in that role they were to represent the interests of the states to the federal government.

The Seventeenth Amendment changed it so that senators would be directly elected by the people. Knowing human nature as I am sure you do, would senators continue to care what their state legislatures wanted or would they start to pander to individual blocks of voters? So with the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment the states were shut out of a direct say in the federal government and were reduced to becoming lobbyists.

If you think of some of the more partisan senators, from both sides of the aisle, do you think they would be appointed by their state legislatures? Do you think there would be any such thing as a federal unfunded mandates? Do you think there would be a Department of Education?, Transportation? Housing and Urban Development? EPA? Most states already have similar departments at the state level. What senators, appointed by their state governments, would pass these laws? Very few, I would venture to say.

Regulations in Action

Consider where we are today. Early in the Bush administration, concern was raised about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and their solvency. Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank said they were fine, and Dodd filibustered any attempt to rein them in. The financial industry blew up and what do we now have? The Dodd-Frank Act that layers on massive regulation to the financial services industry and many banks are just sitting on money rather than lend it.

In 2001, Enron went bankrupt taking billions down the drain with it. The principals of that firm ended up with long prison sentences. The accounting firm that audited the books went out of business, but somehow that was not enough. Massive new regulations were needed to make sure it didn’t happen again. In the following video, listen to Bernie Marcus, one of the founders of The Home Depot, which employs 350,000 people today describe what it would be like to start that company today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjRIM1LFWRM

In an economy that is in desperate need to create jobs, a company that eventually created 350,000 jobs could not get off the ground today because of regulations. How many more Home Depots are out there? How many companies have said, the hell with it, let’s stay private, even if it means curtailing growth, going public is not worth the cost nor the headaches.

Our government is killing us, economically. It cannot slake its thirst for more tax revenues; it cannot stop spending;  it cannot resist telling us something else we should do for our own good; it cannot help trying to craft the perfect law and regulation that will prevent all harm from befalling even the most naive among us. It cannot be done. But unless and until we unwind the coil of regulation that is choking us to death; unless and until we perform liposuction on the laws that are crushing us under their weight; unless and until we return to Constitutionally limited government and fiscal responsibility and personal responsibility, the terms Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness will be redefined to Subsistence, Subservience, and Preying upon each other. Which America do you want to live in?

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

There is an increasingly nasty battle brewing in the Republican race for the nomination to run against Democrat incumbent Tim Bishop in the First Congressional District in New York.  With jobs and the economy the number one issue across the nation, the petty personal attacks may result in potential Republican voters staying home in disgust.

In an excellent article in the Wall Street Journal titled, “New York’s GOP Never Learns,” Kim Strassel concludes her article by saying, “The effect has been to enrage and divide a New York party that should have bigger things on its mind. Say, winning this fall.” 

Chris Cox is trying to play catch-up to the front runner Randy Altschuler who has been actively campaigning for more than a year.  The difficulty for Mr. Cox is that his positions are not that different than those of Mr. Altschuler.  So, while Mr. Altschuler has been taking on the Democratic incumbent Tim Bishop and Bishop’s lockstep voting with Nancy Pelosi, Mr. Cox has resorted to attacking Mr. Altschuler.  Not to leave his flank unprotected, Mr. Altschuler has been forced to respond and now the race, with two weeks to go before the primary on September 14^th, has degenerated into a mudslinging contest.  There is a third candidate, George Demos, who is lobbing attacks from the rear with little effect.

Each candidate is calling themselves the “true conservative,” and Mr. Cox has garnered the support of the Suffolk County 9-12 Project the self-proclaimed “Largest Tea Party organization in Suffolk County.”  Mr. Cox’s father, Ed Cox, is the head of the New York State GOP.  Ms. Strassel reports that the senior Mr. Cox, backed Steve Levy over Rick Lazio for governor to curry favor with the Suffolk County GOP chairman to back his son.  It is all the kind of backroom political dealing that have attracted a rush of newcomer candidates and put incumbents of both parties on the endangered species list.

The Tea Party Endorsement

What caught my eye was the endorsement of the Suffolk County 9-12 Project and the announcement by Bob Meyer, co-founder.  He gave as one of his primary reasons that, Randy Altschuler was one of those people, “getting rich off the backs of hardworking Americans by outsourcing their jobs.”  That sounds more like Jimmy Hoffa, Andy Stern, or Barack Obama’s class warfare than any Tea Partier I know.  A commenter on the 9-12 Project’s site, Judyann Joyner added, “Randy is credited with the creation of ‘white collar sweatshops in India.’”  Pretty strong stuff.  I don’t know if Ms. Joyner or Mr. Meyer visited the company that Mr. Altschuler co-founded in India, but Business Week magazine did.

“The lights burn day and night in the gleaming glass-and-chrome building that towers over a leafy street in the southern Indian city of Madras. Here at OfficeTiger, 1,500 young men and women peer into computers 24 hours a day, analyzing and processing U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission reports and other documents drawn up by lawyers and bankers on Wall Street. Walking the floor, sometimes even at 3 a.m., is 34-year-old co-founder and co-Chief Executive Joseph Sigelman.”

Just because the office operates 24 hours per day, don’t be conned into thinking the same people are at their desks 24 hours a day.  “Gleaming glass-and-chrome building that towers over a leafy street,” yup, sounds like a hellhole to me.  Business Week added, “Indeed, OfficeTiger is the only successful startup in India’s $5 billion outsourcing industry that is owned and managed by a U.S. entrepreneur.”  So we have an American company making money in India, in what seems to be a rather large and competitive field, and this is a bad thing?  Since when did conservatives turn into protectionists?  But what about the jobs they replaced?  Okay, let’s examine that. 

You have some Wall Street firms that are in a competitive business.  A young entrepreneur comes up with an idea to reduce operating expenses by having an external company handle routine clerical tasks that are not one of the firm’s key competencies, that is, people don’t buy that firm’s services because of their typing skills.  The company outsources and reduces costs.  By reducing costs, they prosper and grow; by growing they create more high skill jobs like lawyers, accountants, financial analysts, IT people, etc.  Perhaps even some of the former typists, because of their computer skills can move up the ladder to spreadsheets, and databases.  Do some people lose their jobs, yes, just as buggy whip makers lost their jobs when the automobile came on the scene.  Okay, let’s shift to India.

In India white collar jobs are created; their standard of living improves; they buy consumer goods like iPods and iPhones and their offices need sophisticated IT equipment from companies like Cisco Systems which grow companies like Apple and Cisco creating jobs in the U.S. We live in a global economy and if we want prosperity and peace, the best way to get there is through free markets.  Even Mr. Cox in the policy section of his website blames government policies for companies outsourcing jobs overseas.  If it is the government’s policies that make these jobs uncompetitive here and Mr. Cox knows it, why is Mr. Altschuler wrong for reacting to it and helping American companies that use these services remain competitive?

After selling Office Tiger to RR Donnelly, Mr. Altschuler started another company in the U.S., CloudBlue, that recycles old IT equipment.  So we have an entrepreneur that has started a couple of companies that have created jobs around the world and that makes him a villain?  Perhaps Mr. Meyer should go back and read some of the quotes on his own website:

“You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom.” – Dr. Adrian Rogers

“I have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” – Thomas Jefferson

Mr. Meyer’s key criticism of Mr. Altschuler smacks of the government picking winners and losers.  This business is okay, but not that one.  If your business creates jobs overseas that is bad, but if it creates jobs here it is okay.  Well, Mr. Altschuler has done both and he has firsthand experience doing so, which is what we sorely lack in Washington.  If the strategy of Mr. Cox continues, including creating another party, the TaxPayer party, to run on and split the vote further, Mr. Cox might as well mail his strategy over to the Bishop campaign as I am sure they will find it very useful in the general election.  Not my cup of tea.

The focus should be on defeating the out of control spenders in Congress who got us into this mess, not fighting each other to the death and let the incumbent waltz back into office.  The time is now.  Mr. Cox should focus on what he would do as a Congressman that is better than Tim Bishop and Mr. Altschuler.  If he can’t articulate that, he should drop out.  He is not going to win a lot of support by throwing mud at his fellow Republicans.

Note: In the spirit of full disclosure I have done some volunteer work for the Altschuler campaign

a “wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.”  — Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address

“It’s not that I want to punish your success. I want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance for success, too.  My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody. I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”  — Barack Obama speaking to Joe “The Plumber” Wurtzelbacher and explaining the virtue of taxing successful businessmen and women more.

“We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people.” “It’s time to be patriotic … time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut.”  — Joe Biden in an interview during the presidential campaign [emphasis added].

Now, tell me, which of the three quotations above move you?  Which of them speaks to you of the greatness of America?

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence speaks eloquently about freedom.  While recognizing the need for government he believed that that which governs least governs best.  Government’s main purpose is to “restrain men from injuring one another.”  So we need some basic laws for to protect freedoms of the minority while recognizing the right of the majority to govern.  For that we have the Bill of Rights.  We need some basic laws to be able to create and enforce contracts.  We need national defense to protect us from enemies foreign and domestic.  Some pretty basic things.  Other than that which is spelled out in the Constitution, stand back and let each man and woman live in freedom to pursue their own happiness.

Barack Obama

Obey

Contrast that to Barack Obama’s conversation with Joe Wurzelberger.  Joe asked him why, as he works 10 to 12 hour days with no guarantee of success or income to build his business and create jobs, candidate Obama, should he become president, would want to take more from Joe in taxes.  Obama says, it’s not that he wants to punish Joe, but he needs to take the fruit of Joe’s labor and give it to someone else so that they can be successful too.  He doesn’t ask Joe for the secret of his success.  He doesn’t ask him how he can keep going for 10 to 12 hours per day.  He basically says, this is going to be a new America and you keep working, Joe, but remember part of what you make, I take, and I give it to whom I decide needs it more than you do, because we won.

Joe Biden

Joe “Buck a Day” Biden, doesn’t even try to spin what they plan on doing.  He basically gets in your face and says he is going to take money from those who are successful and put it in the pocket of the middle class and then tries to shame the audience by saying it would be un-patriotic to object.  This comes from a millionaire who gives about $1 per day to charity from his own pocket.  He doesn’t define who the middle class is, that is for the political class and his cronies to decide, most likely based on where the most votes are to keep them in power.

The Decline of America

When you consider the heights of principle from which this country was founded, with ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, to the depths we have sunk today, with little more than bag men going around shaking down legitimate businesses and citizens to pay for a massive expansion of government and control over our lives, with the smug, pompous politicians in Washington directing the smallest detail of our lives.  It is truly sad.

Lady Liberty weeps.