Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Economy, Energy, Taxes, The United States | Tags: Mitt Romney, Bain Capital's Record, Obama's Failed Investments
The Obama Campaign, noted for its brilliance, oddly seems to want to have a debate about which of the two candidates is more qualified to run the world’s largest economy. Obama’s economic policies vs.Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital? Um, you might want to rethink that.
Obama has made it clear that he really doesn’t understand the concept of profit. Liberals are often taught that profit is a bad thing that the rich sometimes do to line their disgusting pockets and pay for their yachts.
It is obvious that the administration is a little unclear about just how jobs are created. Today’s dismal jobs report makes that very obvious. Three and a half years later is really too late to keep blaming George W. Bush. At what point does the economy become Obama’s? When the recession is over? That happened in June of 2009, officially, from the agency that makes those decisions.
The Obama team does understand hiring, and have done a lot of it, creating new government departments and issuing new regulations; but they miss the detail about who pays for what. Government jobs are just another bill for the taxpayers to pay. From the president on down to the lowliest janitor, taxpayers pay their salaries and benefits. Government has no money of its own, a fact that liberals forget until they need more revenue, at which point they expect taxpayers to pony up without complaint funds which, when received, will become ‘government money.’
Bain Capital buys failing companies that they hope to revive, with private money from themselves and from investors. They look at the books carefully before they invest, and determine what is needed— money, better management, eliminating a sector that is losing money, a new business plan — and consider what they can successfully provide. If the business still fails, Bain and their investors will lose money, and have a harder time raising investment money the next time. Not every business can be made to succeed, but under Mitt Romney more than 70 percent of their businesses did succeed, many dramatically so. It’s a very good record.
The Obama Administration has picked businesses to fulfill their ideological interest in green energy. They have listened to promoters’ talk of capacity and potential, and had the benefit of having supporters or campaign bundlers in charge or as investors so there were some familiar faces.
They did not ‘invest” their own money, but invested billions of taxpayer funds in speculative businesses that had no track record nor no evidence of expertise or professionalism. When one of those businesses goes bankrupt, it is just another total loss for the taxpayers. The administration’s goals are policy driven — intended to fulfill green ideology, not return on investment driven. We’re still looking for one clean energy success. Just one.
Mitt Romney showed up at Solyndra’s empty building to make the point that when the administration invested in Solyndra, it wasn’t the administration that lost money, it was the taxpayers. The Obama campaign is trying to claim that Romney’s policies in Massachusetts were an economic failure because during his tenure, Massachusetts unemployment rate was 4.7%. Um, 5% unemployment is usually considered full employment.
Obama has big problems arising from his inexperience. He has made universally bad bets. Attempting to invest in “green” energy in spite of the abundant evidence from Spain and other European countries is folly. You would need extensive investigation from trained professionals in the technology and business prospects. Making investments with politically connected business ventures has led to charges of corruption and cronyism. The largest bets went to friends and contributors to Mr. Obama. The biggest losses went to the taxpayers.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Energy, Environment, National Security, Politics | Tags: "Beyond Natural Gas", American Energy Abundance, Greens Target Fossil Fuels
America has undergone a monumental change, and the major media are just waking up to it. The administration has apparently not heard. America is awash in fossil fuels. We have lots. All that bit about being dependent on foreign oil — nevermind. America has a boom in shale natural gas, and even Fortune magazine admitted it in a cover story.
So, naturally, as night follows day, the Sierra Club has announced a new battle plan called “Beyond Natural Gas.” This is a companion piece to “Beyond Coal,” in which the Sierra Club has been lobbying for rules to force the shutdown of America’s coal-fired power plants, the closure of coal mines, an end to the use of coal — which supplies just a little less than half the electricity in the country.
The theme was previously that coal was dirty, disgusting, dangerous, and we should rely instead on clean natural gas. Now that they have the closure of coal-fired power plants well underway, they are turning to eliminating natural gas. Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune announced their goal this month.”We’re going to be preventing new gas plants from being built wherever we can.” They have rolled out a new website that says:
The natural gas industry is dirty, dangerous and running amok. The closer we look at natural gas, the dirtier it appears, and the less of it we burn, the better off we will be.
Sounds vaguely familiar. But this is no idle threat. The Sierra Club has deep pockets, with 1.4 million members, generous funding from liberal foundations, and the knowledge of just how to work the media and the politicians. The lobby has successfully helped to block new nuclear plants for more than 30 years, the “Beyond Oil” campaign helped to keep much of America off-limits to oil drilling, and its “Beyond Coal” campaign has all but shut down new coal plants, and is working on shutting down the old ones.
The Sierra Club was once a modest affair, founded by John Muir in 1892, to “make the mountains glad.”It is the oldest and arguably the most powerful environmental group in the nation. But it is no longer my father’s Sierra Club. It used to offer summer horse packing trips into the high Sierra, featured Ansell Adams’ beautiful photographs of Yosemite, and grew into photography books, animal books and all those nice things that make us love nature — that we can put on our coffee tables to show how ecologically with it we are. It has grown into a radical environmentalist organization of 1.4 million members with leadership positions held by activists with radical ties. It has managed to maintain a “mainstream” image, but its goals are hardly mainstream.
The radicalism of radical environmentalism is way out there, and makes little sense. They essentially oppose modern civilization, and all its peoples. They are attempting to shut down the power plants that power the wind farms and solar arrays that they, for now, favor. How long will wind energy be acceptable when Congress offer special waivers to the wind farms for the eagles they chop up? The green energy bubble is bursting everywhere. The Energy Tribune notes:
The EU’s ideologically-driven Energy Road Map prioritized ‘green’ renewable energy, diverting away from Russian natural gas dependency and harmonizing energy and environmental needs. The result: a devastatingly inept screw up that threatens continent-wide power outages even, as Die Welt recently reported, in Germany as early as next winter.
In short order, EU energy policies have created an unsustainable, publicly-subsidized, market-skewing ‘green’ energy bubble, eschewed a cheap fossil fuels policy and realistic alternatives to Russian gas imports. Together those failed policies have resulted in the double double-whammy of soaring of energy prices and, as is now being reported, diminishing European industrial competitiveness.
The Sierra Club gets no awards for consistency. They were all for natural gas when the price was $8 or more per million BTUs and the supply seemed to be limited. But gas prices have fallen to $2.50, and natural gas may come to dominate U.S. energy production. Wind and solar and biofuel power may never be competitive. If the subsidies are removed, there will be no profit in wind and solar anyway. It’s ordinary people who will benefit if there is a plentiful supply of cheap natural gas. It will benefit industry and the economy, and there are somewhere around 600,000 jobs in the natural gas industry alone, not to mention the jobs provided by a thriving economy fueled by cheap, abundant energy from natural gas and coal.
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Election 2012, Energy, Politics | Tags: Campaign 2012, Chicago Style Graft, Solyndra & Friends
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Election 2012, Politics | Tags: Excess Regulation, Excess Uncertainty, Sluggish Job-Growth
Recovery? What recovery? In almost every speech, President Obama proudly claims that he inherited the worst recession since the Great Depression. He has added new jobs each month, and while we need to do more, we are heading in the right direction.
According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis which tracks economic performance for each recovery, compares the growth of gross domestic product for each recovery, and job growth for each recovery; there have been 11 recessions and 11 recoveries over the past 60 years. This recovery is near the bottom of all 11.
Average normal job growth is 6.5%. Cumulative non-farm job growth is just 1.9% 34 months into the ‘recovery.’ Cumulative growth of GDP is just 6.8% 11 quarters into this ‘recovery.’ The average is 15.2%, and GDP growth is the worst of all 11 recessions.
The administration has tried every Keynesian method for achieving economic growth to no avail. The recovery remains one of the worst since World War II. The problem lies with the way the “stimulus” was carried out, the uncertainty of a looming tax Armageddon, the anti business rhetoric, and the piles of new regulation. This is, I believe, the first President that has ever run for office opposing capitalism and the free market.
The monetary policy of the Federal Reserve has resulted in extraordinarily low interest rates — almost zero for the past three years. In a normal world, low interest rates wold lead to increased borrowing by individuals and businesses — increasing economic activity. What it has done instead is to help the government to borrow more cheaply, the big banks to recapitalize quickly, and homeowners to refinance at low rates.
The uncertainty concerning ObamaCare and what it will do to business and individuals, higher taxes on business combined with anti-business rhetoric from the administration, and the constant threat from EPA actions has discouraged the kind of borrowing and lending that low rated usually encourage. The low interest rates have meant historically low yields on savings, and encouraged riskier investments.
The president’s fiscal policy has increased expenditures by about $700 billion per year since 2008. The increased spending has had a temporary stimulating effect, but has resulted in an increase in the national debt of over $5 trillion. Where has all the spending gone? The money for the most part, was badly spent. Billions went to reward government employees, and the auto unions. More billions went to training programs that don’t work, (the government has 49 job training programs administered by nine agencies — all ineffective), extended unemployment insurance that reduces the incentive to find work. That which was directed to infrastructure was mostly wasted because those “shovel-ready” jobs weren’t shovel ready.
In Obama’s first three years, 105 major federal regulations have added more than $46 billion per year in new costs for Americans. 32 new major regulations in 2011 increased regulatory costs by another $10 billion annually with an additional $6.5 billion in one-time implementation costs.
The mindset that says that innovation, growth,and job creation come from government; and that the economy will perform better if government tells people what to do; is a real problem. It’s not just the hubris that assumes that they know better, nor the contempt they have for the American people. It is that they simply do not understand who Americans are.
We are a courageous people who picked up our lives and went forth to an unknown country in the hopes of more freedom and a burning desire for a better life. That’s true for the first immigrants, and the most recent. Those who were lacking in courage or content with things the way they were stayed put.
Those who didn’t find what they dreamed of on the East coast picked up and struck out for the West. Americans don’t need a lot of regulation, they don’t need to be told what to do, and they just want government to get out of their hair, and leave them alone to innovate, create, to try, fail, and succeed.
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Election 2012, Politics | Tags: He Can't Stop, President Obama's Whopper, The Spending Binge
“Since I’ve been President, federal spending has risen at the lowest pace in nearly sixty years. Think about that. This other side, I don’t know how they’ve been bamboozling folks into thinking that they’re the responsible fiscally disciplined party. They run up these wild debts , and then when we take over we’ve gotta clean it up.”
The President of the United States actually said that. Is this what Valerie Jarrett advised? Is he so unfamiliar with the real numbers that he thinks he can get away with such a whopper? Did he read the Rex Nutting of MarketWatch attempt to portray the president as being downright stingy “Obama Spending Binge Never Happened?” and being unfamiliar with what the numbers actually were — believed it?
Right at the beginning of Obama’s term in office, Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff, set up a daily economics briefing with his Council of Economic Advisers. We have been told that Obama found it boring and shortly eliminated the meeting. He clearly believes in the part of Keynesian economics that says to pump money into the economy to promote growth, because he is endlessly trying to stimulate the dead economy with more jolts of taxpayer money. Unfortunately, Keynesian stimulus has no record of success.
Mr Nutting uses a typical D.C. trick, often used by Congress. He speaks of annualized growth of federal spending. The trick is — where’s the starting point? Is it zero, or is it just the previous number? You have perhaps heard the frequent plaintive cry from Republicans about zero-based budgeting. Let’s say the Orwell Agency’s budget last year was 1 billion. Congress wants to give them another 20 million. Instead of correctly indicating that the agency budget is now $1 billion, 20 million, they speak of the “annualized growth of the agency is $20 million, That much smaller number sounds ever so much better. That’s the trick Rex Nutting is using.
Obama was inaugurated on January 20, 2009. Usually, the previous president will have signed a budget for the coming year into law around the end of the fiscal year. However, in 2008, Congress refused to pass the budget while George W. Bush was still in office (he might have vetoed?) and they sent to budget to Obama when he took office, and he signed it. But Mr. Nutting gives the whole 2009 budget to George W. Bush. It has TARP, the Auto Bailout, the Stimulus, Cars for Clunkers all Obama’s spending in it, but it doesn’t count under Mr. Nutting’s analysis. Then that number becomes the new base from which Obama’s spending is counted.
Until Barack Obama took office in 2009, the United States had never spent more than 23.5% of GDP, with the exception of the World War II years of 1942-1946. Here’s Obama’s spending record.
— 25.2% of GDP in 2009
— 24.1% of GDP in 2010
— 24.1% of GDP in 2011
—24.3% of GDP (estimates by White House) in 2012
If Obama wins another term spending, according to his own budget would never drop below 22.3% of GDP. He established 2009 as the “new baseline,” and turned a one-off surge in spending due to the Great Recession into the new normal through 2016 and beyond.
Or to put it differently — From the Treasury Department — spending per day: President Reagan– $2.5 Billion. President Clinton–$4.1 Billion. President Bush–$6.8 Billion. President Obama– $9.7 Billion.
President Barack Obama is spinning a fable. His record on the economy is dreadful. He has spent more than all the previous presidents put together, and he is fully responsible for that.
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Politics, The United States | Tags: Death of Hope, Election 2012, Obama's Economy
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Election 2012, Health Care, Law, Politics | Tags: Chief Justice John Roberts, Senator Pat Leahy, Threats to the Supreme Court
The Obama administration has just signed a deal with Public Relations firm Porter Novelli to promote ObamaCare. The Democrats were just sure that everybody would love it once it passed and they “found out what’s in it.” The people did find out what’s in it, and want no part of it. So naturally we must be made to change our minds. It’s an election year, and another $20 million should buy some more votes for Obama.
According to the news accounts, the multimedia campaign is a way to educate the public about how to stay healthy and prevent illnesses. No thank you. A HHS official told Roll Call that the PR effort is meant “to inform the American people about the many preventive benefits now available …as a result of the Affordable Care Act.
Wasted effort. The administration has been trying to sell it to the public relentlessly since the day it was passed. HHS pushed Congress to quadruple its public affairs budget. HHS spent $1.4 million for an online search ad campaign designed to drive traffic to the ObamaCare website.
More than two-thirds of the public, including half of the Democrats surveyed — want the Supreme Court to kill at least the individual mandate, according to a recent IBD/TIPP poll.
The bill is a disaster. It was written with a complete lack of understanding of the American people. Americans don’t much believe in their lives being run by experts in Washington. We don’t believe in their experts, nor do we believe that they are experts. We’re an independent lot. We want to talk over our own health concerns with our own doctor. We don’t believe that our doctor should be told what treatment we can have by some faceless know-nothing bureaucrat in Washington.
Obama has been sending messages to the Supreme Court to let them know that it is not acceptable for them to rule ObamaCare unconstitutional. After all, it’s an election year. The left is trying to intimidate the Supreme Court.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy recently took the extraordinary step of publicly lobbying the Chief Justice after oral argument but before its ruling. “I trust that he will be a Chief Justice for all of us and that he has a strong institutional sense of the proper role of the judicial branch” the far left Democrat declared on the Senate floor. “The conservative activism of recent years has not been good for the Court.” The Senator does not seem to have a strong institutional sense of the proper role of a senator in regard to the Supreme Court.
He added that “Given the ideological challenge to the Affordable Care Act and the extensive, supportive precedent, it would be extraordinary for the Supreme Court not to defer to Congress in this matter that so clearly affects interstate commerce.” That one doesn’t pass the laugh test. How embarrassing, and how disgusting that a Chairman of the Justice Committee should forget his place and the fact that the Supreme Court is an equal branch, not subject to the partisan bullying of an old-time liberal hack.
They are threatening John Roberts with being portrayed a radical who wants to repeal the New Deal and a century of precedent. Such attacks on the court and the Chief Justice are really appalling.
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Energy, Junk Science, News the Media Doesn't Want You to Hear | Tags: "Clean" Energy, And Other Fantasies, Green Jobs
Obama hasn’t a lot to brag about in the way of economic recovery, so he’s trying his best to distract from the economy and turn your attention elsewhere. There is the War on Women, elevated from a matter of taxpayers not feeling that it is necessary for them to pay for women’s birth-control pills ($9. a month or less) into a vast right-wing conspiracy depriving all women of voting age of all rights to everything. The Saga of Julia was just another attempt to make the ‘war’ more believable, but that didn’t work either. How about all his ‘investments’ in clean energy?
Can President Obama name one clean energy success? In an ad campaign from President Obama, a man claims his job was saved by President Obama’s meddling in the auto industry. The man works for Johnson Controls, a company that received $299 million in taxpayer-funded subsidies from the stimulus and promised to build two factories in the United States. They built one in this country and will build the other one in Hungary. They will also be laying off workers in coming months.
A Congressional hearing on May 16 exposed more Obama Cronyism. BrightSource Energy received an even bigger loan guarantee from DOE than Solyndra did. They received $1.6 billion in April last year. Their CEO claimed that the Ivanpah project would create 1,400 jobs, which would amount to $1,43 million per job. The BrightSource chairman was nominated to be Commerce Secretary, and the company has become known as “politically connected.”
First Solar received $1.46 billion in loan guarantees, but announced last month that it will lay off another 2,000 employees. On May 7, they reported lst quarter losses of 8 cents a share, a 12% revenue decline. They are expected to join Solyndra in bankruptcy soon.
Willard & Kelsey Solar Group has gone bankrupt, but claimed they only received money from Ohio taxpayers, but they actually got $6 million from Obama’s green energy loan program as well.
A123 Systems, an electric car battery maker who shipped faulty batteries to Fisker Automotive, has seen its stock fall to $1 and is filing for bankruptcy. They got $279 million from taxpayers
Solar Trust for America declared bankruptcy on Monday after receiving a conditional commitment of $2.3 billion in loan guarantees from the Dept. of Energy. Secretary Chu hailed it as “the largest amount ever offered to a solar project.” But they never got the money.
Abound Solar announced on 2/29/12 that they were laying off 280 workers, a 70% reduction in their workforce. They received 400 million from DOE’s loan program.
Ener1, a lithium-ion battery maker filed for bankruptcy. Ener1 owns EnerDel which received $118.5 million from Obama’s “green” energy stimulus plan.
Amonix, a solar company touted by President Obama in 2010 has laid off 200 of its 300 employees. They got $5.9 million.
These energy companies were supported by Obama’s energy stimulus, and are failing or have already filed for bankruptcy. There are lots more stories , and more will come out over time. It will probably be buried on the back pages of compliant media, who hope you won’t notice.
- Evergreen Solar
- SpectraWatt
- Solyndra (received $535 million)
- Beacon Power (received $43 million)
- AES’ subsidiary Eastern Energy
- Nevada Geothermal (received $98.5 million)
- SunPower (received $1.5 billion)
- First Solar (received $1.46 billion)
- Babcock & Brown (an Australian company which received $178 million)
- Ener1 (subsidiary EnerDel received $118.5 million)
- Amonix (received 5.9 million)
- The National Renewable Energy Lab
- Fisker Automotive
- Abound Solar (received $400 million)
- Chevy Volt (taxpayers basically own GM)
- Solar Trust of America
- A123 Systems (received $279 million)
- Willard & Kelsey Solar Group (received $6 million)
- Johnson Controls (received $299 million)
There are also loans to foreign clean energy companies. It is estimated that 80% of these loans went to President Obama’s campaign donors. The President claims that he has created 2.7 million clean energy jobs. But it looks as if a remarkable number of those were considerably more temporary than expected.
ADDENDUM: More of Obama’s unfortunate “investments.”
- Raser Technologies ($33 million grant) bankrupt.
- ECOTotality $126.2 million for electric car chargers ($45 million in losses) insider trading investigation.
According to Peter Schweizer, 71% of Obama Energy Department grants and loans went to “individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democrat party. Collectively, they raised $457,834 for the Obama Campaign, and were in turn approved for grants or loans of nearly $11.35 Billion.” The Energy Department’s Inspector General has launched more than 100 criminal investigations” according to Politico, related to the department’s green energy programs.
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Election 2012, Politics, Progressivism, Taxes | Tags: Chairman Paul Ryan, Former Chrm. Austan Goolsbee, Fox News Sunday
I don’t know if you watch Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. I cannot embed the video, but you can watch it here. The debate was between former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for President Obama,Austan Goolsbee, and Chairman of the House Budget Committee Paul Ryan. Paul Ryan mops the floor with Goolsbee.
Goolsbee demonstrates why the economy is still in the doldrums. It’s a pretty clear demonstration of how far apart the two sides are. If you believe in Keynesian stimulus, wasting taxpayer money on government bets on improbable energy companies invariably run by Obama bundlers or buddies, then you will find nothing untoward with Mr. Goolsbee’s claims. I would tell a kid of mine to avoid his classes. If you enjoy political confrontation, this is great fun.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Entertainment, Law, Music, Pop Culture | Tags: Confiscating Guitars?, Gibson Guitars, Summer Concerts
Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander is concerned about the summer concert season. Nashville is home to one of Gibson Guitar’s factories, and to many of the famed bands and stars who use Gibson Guitars. According to the Examiner.federal agents are poised to seize the instruments made by Gibson Guitars, theoretically because the wood used in Guitar frets may not meet Indian and Madagascar environmental law, although the governments of India and Madagascar insist that they do.
Gibson Guitar factories in Nashville and Memphis were raided by armed federal agents nine months ago supposedly for violating the Lacey Act; and though they have been operating in a sort of legal limbo since last August, no formal charges have been forthcoming. The Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division (whose career staff is notorious for pursuing a green agenda) and senators are working to solve the situation. Alexander and Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) met with representatives from the music industry, the wood import business and environmental and conservation groups on Thursday to settle on a solution. Alexander said:
“We held this roundtable because instrument makers like Gibson Guitars in Tennessee are an important part of our music industry, and if the Lacey Act as written is keeping them from being able to get the wood they need to make instruments, we need to make every effort to fix the regulation,” said Alexander.
“The law was intended to prevent illegal logging and protect U.S. jobs that are threatened by illegal logging, it was never intended to seize instruments or wood products that were obtained prior to the passage of the Lacey Act amendments in May 2008 because they were made from imported wood—and when laws have unintended consequences, Congress has a responsibility to promptly make changes,” he added.
This is a very odd case. It seems like an example of government gone wild, or at least government asserting their power— because they can. The Justice Department is already in difficult territory with their failure to prosecute the voter intimidation case of the Black Panthers, and Congress is pursing the Fast and Furious gun-running case. There is a significant amount of over criminalization going on. We have a number of departments in the Executive Branch that seem to be out-of-control, and acting illegally. I don’t know how this will play out, but it is very worrying.
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Election 2012, Humor, Politics | Tags: Anything to Distract, Obama's Dismal Record, The War on Women
(h/t: Maggie’s Farm)
Like this:
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Law, The United States | Tags: Needless OverCriminalization, Overregulation, The Destructive Obama Administration
This video was made back in October of last year, when Henry Juszkiewicz , CEO of Gibson Guitar Company testified before Congress. Gibson Guitars has been accused by the Obama Administration of running afoul of the Lacey Ace — one of the oldest U.S. environmental regulations. Gibson’s violations were deemed so severe that armed federal marshals entered its facilities in Nashville and Memphis in August 2011 and seized millions of dollars worth of guitars, which the government alleges may have been constructed of wood illegally harvested in Madagascar and India.
Under the Lacey Act, it is a federal offense “to import fish, wildlife or plants” in violation of any foreign law.” Congress passed the law in 1900 to protect states against poachers who fled with their goods to another state. It thus runs afoul of fundamental tenets of Anglo-American common law: that “men of common intelligence” must be able to understand what a law means. Good luck with that.
It has been nine months since the Gibson raid, and as yet they have not been charged with anything. Gibson was set up. The story here, according to Kim Strassel of the Wall Street Journal says:
The story here is about how a toxic alliance of ideological activists and trade protectionists deliberately set about creating a vague law, one designed to make an example out of companies (like Gibson) and thus chill imports—even legal ones.
The Lacey Act was passed in 1900 to stop trade in illegal wild game. Over the years it has expanded, and today it encompasses a range of endangered species. It requires American businesses to follow both U.S. and foreign law, though with most Lacey goods, this has been relatively clear. Think elephant tusks, tiger pelts or tropical birds.
That changed in 2007, when an alliance of environmentalists, labor unions and industry groups began pushing for Lacey to cover “plant and plant products” and related items. Congress had previously resisted such a broad definition for the simple reason that it would encompass timber products. Trees are ubiquitous, are transformed into thousands of byproducts, and pass through dozens of countries. Whereas even a small U.S. importer would know not to import a tiger skin, tracking a sliver of wood (now transformed into a toy, or an umbrella) through this maze of countries and manufacturing laws back to the tree it came from, would be impossible.
The drive to expand the Lacey Act was headed by” a murky British green outfit called tje Environmental Investigation Agency. The EIA is anti-logging, and understands that the best way to force developing countries to “preserve” their natural resources is to dry up the market for their products. They would prefer that wood be sourced from the US. and Europe where green groups have more influence over rules.”
Gibson has been trapped, as intended. The company is not accused of importing banned wood. The ebony it bought for frets is legal and documented.”The issue is whether Gibson ran afoul of a technical Indian law governing the export of finished wood products. The U.S. government’s interpretation of Indian law suggests that the wood Gibson imported wasn’t finished enough.”
If you wondered why more jobs are not being created in our economy, you only have to look at Gibson, to see why businessmen might be scared and huddling down to wait Obama out. And Gibson is not alone. There are other companies suffering under the loony expansion of the Lacey Act. But there are Congressmen trying to amend the Lacey Act to see that criminal enforcement of the Lacey Act is unnecessary, and leads to miscarriages of justice. Laws should be clear so that people can understand what they must do to follow it.
The solution, of course is deregulation. According to Iain Murray of CEI , if deregulation were implemented correctly, it would provide an almost cost-free stimulus of a trillion dollars or more. According to the Small business Administration, the regulatory burden on our economy is a staggering $1.74 trillion annually. The Obama administration is in full denial, and Cass Sunstein, who heads up the “Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, calls it an “urban myth.”
In Wayne Crews annual report on the growth of the regulatory state Ten Thousand Commandments, notes that the number of pages in the Federal Register has grown from 67,000 to 81,405. Each page delineates a rule that imposes costs on businesses while creating more jobs for bureaucrats. The costs of compliance with regulations average $10,585 per employee. No wonder small businesses, th e usual engine of growth in the economy, have stalled. Over 60 percent of small businesses have no plans to hire in the next year.
Obama’s standard statement is “Private sector employment rose by 130,000 jobs in April. The economy has added private sector jobs for 26 straight months for a total of more than 4,25 million jobs over that period.” Those 130,000 jobs don’t sound like such a big deal when you realize that the economy would h ave to create 125,000 jobs each month just to keep up with population growth. But Mr. Obama has some trouble with math.
