Search






Jeff's Amazon.com Wish List

Archive Calendar

November 2024
M T W T F S S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
252627282930  

Archives

"Unleash American Business"

I’m not familiar with Jim Lacey, but I can tell you this much: he gets it. NRO:

If our best days truly are before us, we must release those willing to dare all and let them get to it. Government has a role in society, but it is a limited one. Over the last 50 years, American government has ignored the limits it was founded on and become a pervasive force throughout society. The good it does or is capable of doing is now far outweighed by the damage it is inflicting. By trying to regulate risk out of society, it has instead impeded progress.

If America is going to soar again, government must let capitalists be capitalists. Let them take risks. Let them suffer when they fail. Let them keep the rewards when they succeed. The men and women who made this country great did not ask for much — protection from foreign invaders and domestic criminals, rule of law, and a level playing field. Beyond that, all they wanted was for the government to stand clear. And if government must take a role, one question should be on everyone’s lips: Will what is proposed grow the economy?

As a first step, we should require every department and agency in the federal government to reduce the number of regulations it imposes by 25 percent — to start. To help them focus, 25 percent of their budget should be withheld until they do so. Since you asked, step two is to do away with the Dodd-Frank financial-regulatory agenda before it irredeemably wrecks the foundations of our system.

And while we’re at it, bury ObamaCare, defund and abolish certain federal departments, push for politicians to take term-limit pledges, and inform our highest court that the actual Constitution — and not prior judicial decisions, many of them demonstrably faulty (and yet considered “settled law,” thanks to stare decisis) — are what drives precedent, and what should once again constrain the courts, and allow them to self-correct, be it on Wickard or Kelo or Roe v Wade.

Then we can sit down and have a talk about where to go next.

(thanks to Mike H at Cold Fury, who has more here.)

27 Replies to “"Unleash American Business"”

  1. geoffb says:

    Another read toward why we need to get to that end. Add it to the Kurtz book which shows the Chicago beginnings and Roddy Boyd’s “Fatal Risk” which delves deep into AIG.

    “Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon” By Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner

    Reckless Endangerment gives the best available account of how the growing chaos in the mortgage and personal finance markets and the rampant bundling of dubious loans into exotically toxic securities plunged the world, and millions of American families, into the gravest financial crisis since World War Two.
    […]
    The villains? An unholy alliance between Wall Street, the Democratic establishment, community organizing groups like ACORN and La Raza, and politicians like Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi and Henry Cisneros. (Frank got a cushy job for a lover, Pelosi got a job and layoff protection for a son, Cisneros apparently got a license to mint money bilking Mexican-Americans of their life savings in cheesy housing developments.)

  2. newrouter says:

    you can’t kill these rats:

    WASHINGTON—The Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday it would move to ban the sale of most pellet rat and mouse poison to consumers, but the decision will face challenges from at least two affected companies.

    link

  3. Entropy says:

    Ehhh… I’ll cut him some slack, as he’s trying to be persuasive.

    But.

    And if government must take a role, one question should be on everyone’s lips: Will what is proposed grow the economy? does it justify sticking a gun in someones face?

  4. Entropy says:

    WASHINGTON—The Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday it would move to ban the sale of most pellet rat and mouse poison to consumers, but the decision will face challenges from at least two affected companies.

    I dunno, newrouter. I think there’s a lot of solid evidence out there that shows poison is clearly poisonous.

  5. newrouter says:

    these folks really are trying to bring back the dark ages.

  6. Joe says:

    That is a very good article.

  7. Jeff G. says:

    I thought the EPA was supposed to make the environment safe for humans and not, say, the Bubonic plague.

    Christ.

    These are just people making rules. If enough people say “fuck you, throw me into a gulag or leave me alone, because I’m not doing what you tell me to,” they’ll figure out something else to do. Like, maybe, nationalize the bead necklace industry.

  8. serr8d says:

    How much will Obama be willing to give up, against the very fiber of his dirty socialist being, to secure his next 4 years so as to complete his still-incomplete task of CHANGE?

    Why Obama Might Still Have One Huge Hand To Play Against The Republicans

    The news tonight is that The White House is considering one more fiscal stimulus in the form of a tax break for employers.

    At first blush this seems unlikely: Why would the GOP give him a “win” that added to the deficit and boosted the economy (and therefore his political standing).

    Probably they won’t give him anything unless… Obama is really ready to go over the top with some kind of “pro-growth” tax cut, tax reform, supply-side package that they can’t say no to.

    Such a move by BHO, if it did work (that’s a huge if) would likely give him another 4 years. With which to do horrendous ancillary damage to our Republic.

  9. Entropy says:

    Eh, that’d be the end of that right there.

    But we don’t have enough people willing.

    Look at the bright side, at least the EPA isn’t executing no-knock warrants and raiding your home.

    Yet.

  10. Entropy says:

    Probably they won’t give him anything unless… Obama is really ready to go over the top with some kind of “pro-growth” tax cut, tax reform, supply-side package that they can’t say no to.

    Wishcasting.

    Never gonna happen.

  11. McGehee says:

    I thought the EPA was supposed to make the environment safe for humans and not, say, the Bubonic plague.

    Hey you speciesist, plague bacteria have rights too!

  12. newrouter says:

    not 100% not 80% no 44% from bankrupt state;

    Gov. Jerry Brown said this afternoon that he has taken 29,398 state-issued cellphones from state employees, a 44 percent reduction.

    Brown made headlines around the state when, within days of taking office, he ordered the return of half the state’s cellphones by June 1. The executive order, the first of Brown’s third term, was one of several popular, heavily symbolic measures Brown has used during the budget crisis to demonstrate his frugality.

    Brown’s office said in a release that further reductions will be made by next month to reach the 50 percent reduction Brown sought.

    link

  13. B. Moe says:

    Nothing like a little disease and pestilence to get the unemployment rate down. I mean that job creatin’ shit is hard.

    Seriously I suspect the money quote in that article is the line about these chemicals still being available to professional exterminators. Another day, another lobby pandered to.

  14. serr8d says:

    The Russkies have an idea for adding a few points to their GDP: sending drug dealers to forced labor camps. Now that’s harshing some mellow.

  15. John Bradley says:

    the money quote in that article is the line about these chemicals still being available to professional exterminators

    Hey, they’re credentialed and licensed and therefore already in thrall to a government that can, on a whim, deny their license and put them out of business.

    Can’t just have people running around, willy-nilly, just doing stuff without the government’s permission. ANARCHY!

  16. It’s not the poison, it’s the dosage.

  17. DarthLevin says:

    Hey, black markets don’t create themselves, you know.

  18. DarthLevin says:

    Sorry, non-raaaaacist-tinged-term-implying-illegality-or-non-sanctioned markets.

    Denouncers are everywhere, gotta be careful.

  19. JHoward says:

    …inform our highest court that the actual Constitution — and not prior judicial decisions, many of them demonstrably faulty (and yet considered “settled law,” thanks to stare decisis) — are what drives precedent…

    Somewhere meya considers its student loan balance and shakes its head vigorously…

  20. motionview says:

    I type this sentence and hit “submit comment” and unexpectedly a comment appears.

  21. geoffb says:

    The Center for American Progress pulls out the leash we conservatives knew they had and waggles it in front of our noses.

    [W]e also include a failsafe mechanism that would ensure significant savings. Our failsafe would be triggered if, starting in 2020, total economywide health care expenditures grow at a rate faster than the economy. Should that happen, we would empower the IPAB to extend successful reforms in Medicare and other public programs to insurance plans offered in the health care exchanges and then potentially to all health care plans, such that the target is met. This will ensure that costs are constrained across the health care sector

    Barkeep, Deathpanels all around and put it on their tabs not mine.

  22. geoffb says:

    Meya better watch out it ain’t Santa Claus knocking.

  23. motionview says:

    geoffb the one thing about the death panels that I think people misunderstand is the idea that they would get a chance to appeal to some board, explain why they should get this treatment, show their circa 2007 OFA membership card, etc. Nonsense. This administration does not have the time for retail life and death decisions – it’s a wholesale operation.

  24. geoffb says:

    You’re right motionview.

    Operating on a statistical basis avoids having to confront the tragedies personally and preserves the comfortable sleep of the rulers.

  25. mojo says:

    “When ya pull a gun, kill a man!”
    — Old Man Clanton, “My Darling Clementine”

    Good advice. And if you’re not willing to, don’t.

  26. geoffb says:

    “If you’re going to shoot, shoot, don’t talk.”

    Tuco, “The Good the Bad and the Ughly”

Comments are closed.