The Washington Times published an informative article this week (Wed., 2/1/2012) by Sue Thayer, “a former Planned Parenthood clinic manager from Storm Lake, Iowa.”  Thayer ran the Planned Parenthood clinic in Storm Lake from 1991 to 2008.  Originally, this clinic did not offer abortions, but in 2008 Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa required the clinic to perform “telemed abortions.”

Thayer made the following observations about telemed abortions:

….  Telemed abortion is the practice by which an abortion doctor from a remote location simply presses a button, which opens a drawer containing the dangerous abortion pill, after a brief teleconference call with the woman.

Telemed abortion doesn’t only result in the death of an unborn child; it strips women of their dignity by denying them the courtesy of an in-person visit from a doctor concerned for their health and well-being. It risks their lives by sending them away with no support and a drug that has led to massive bleeding and hemorrhaging, infection and even death.

So what does Planned Parenthood, the “trusted friend of women,” love so much about telemed abortions? Low overhead costs.

My superiors justified telemed abortions, lauding the financial benefits of not having to worry about or pay for specialized equipment, staff and a traveling physician – all required with surgical abortions.

When I expressed my concerns, I was “let go,” supposedly because of “downsizing.”

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On Wednesday the Obama Administration again rejected the construction of an oil pipeline, the Keystone XL, that would have carried oil 1,700 miles from Canada to refineries in the United States.  The pipeline would have been the largest infrastructure project in the United States with an estimated cost of $7 billion.  It is estimated that Keystone XL would have created 10-20,000 jobs.

President Obama apparently indicated to the Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, that the pipeline would be approved after the November election.  Environmentalists are a major constituency of the Democratic Party, and they oppose the pipeline for many reasons but primarily because they believe that killing the project will stop the production of unrefined oil from Canadian tar sands.  This is folly because the Chinese are more than willing to buy the oil, so the oil will be produced, and it will be consumed somewhere.

The United States imports dangerously large volumes of crude oil, but it also has massive resources that could be used to reduce our dependence on unfriendly governments who produce oil.  Yet, our current government has anti-energy policies that will inevitably lead to more importing and higher prices.

Oddly enough President Obama chose to go to Disney World on Thursday (1/19) to press the flesh and promote tourism in Florida.  Florida has an unemployment rate of 10.0%, and it depends greatly on tourism.  It has Disney World and all the nearby entertainment parks.  It has a large cruise ship industry, and it has a wonderful climate and beaches that people visit from all over the world (e.g., South Beach, Miami).

How do people get to Florida to enjoy these various tourist activities?  They consume a pretty substantial amount of fossil fuel like the stuff we won’t be getting from the Keystone XL pipeline.  As energy prices climb due to lack of production, the health of the vacation and entertainment industries will be imperiled.  I hope some Floridians asked the president about that.

Furthermore, the political Left hates energy production and the economic productivity it brings.  It doesn’t seem to have occurred to them that one of the reasons our standard of living is so high is that we use these fuels to run engines that increase our real productivity.  Take a look at the History Channel’s program “Modern Marvels” sometime.  Almost all the episodes rely on the use of fuel or electricity to run machinery that expands human productivity enormously.

The environmental movement has a basic problem with this fact.  Remember that in 1992, Al Gore wrote in his book, Earth in the Balance, that the internal combustion engine posed a greater threat to the United States than actual military enemies.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Engines of various kinds have been one of the factors that have allowed mankind to escape the grinding poverty it had known for millennia.

The United States has 55,000 miles of oil-carrying pipelines, and Keystone XL would have expanded that total only marginally.  That was not the problem for the environmentalists.  They just want to shut down all new energy production except for inefficient renewable energy (wind, solar) that has no hope of powering our economy.  The long-term continuation of policies like this will have profound effects on the ability of the United States to grow economically and increase the standard of living for American families.  More basically, it will help determine whether many families will be able to heat there homes economically.

The American people are going to have to choose the vision of reality they endorse.

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Bartholomew Sullivan (Scripps Howard News Service) has written an important article raising the possibility that the student college debt/loan issue may become a significant issue in the presidential race:

Outstanding student loan debt — which exceeds $1 trillion, more than what Americans owe on credit cards — is likely to be a major political issue this election year as students and their parents question the rising cost and value of a college education.

Sullivan presents some alarming statistics about loan defaults:

The rate of defaults rose from 7 percent in 2008 to 8.8 percent in 2009, the latest official figures available. That’s 320,194 of the 3.6 million people who began repayment that year, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

The rate in 2009 is about one in twelve – a high rate.  Concern runs from the political Right to the Left.  As a Univ. of Pittsburgh English professor, William Scott, associated with the Occupy movement observed, “Schools keep raising their tuitions because they know their students have easy access to these student loans.” “It’s almost become a type of predatory lending.”  At the same time, Rep. Ron Paul believes the loan programs should be abolished because they are “an absolute failure.”

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It seems that the United States is not alone in having colleges and universities that chronically graduate students who are unable to find work.  Some countries find this situation unacceptable, however, and plan to make some corrections.

Jay Schalin, of the excellent John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy (Raliegh, NC), has written an op-ed in the Washington Times discussing some educational reviews that may be coming in China:

China’s state-run universities have been churning out graduates so quickly that many can’t find good jobs, even in a booming economy.

In response, China will “soon start evaluating college majors by their employment rates, downsizing or cutting degree programs in which the employment rate for graduates falls below 60 percent for two consecutive years,” the Wall Street Journal reported recently.

Much is imperfect with this authoritarian approach, but it seems more sensible than having no feedback in a system – like ours – that continues to sink students in unproductive majors and degree programs with loads of debt.  (See the Wall Street Journal article by Laurie Burkitt who writes from Beijing.)

As Schalin observes – after noting that employment rates are not the only evaluative measure that should be used:

But using data on the employment of graduates is still a valuable evaluation tool, and it serves as a useful guide for reforming higher education.

The Chinese exhibit hard-nosed common sense by looking at the actual results of their higher-education system; forward-looking U.S. public universities should do the same. If they won’t end their excesses voluntarily, perhaps it’s time for state legislatures to consider Chinese-style standards.

Results matter; it’s time to judge universities on how well graduates perform once they’ve left the security of the ivory tower.

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Praise needs to be given to recent work of the Young America’s Foundation.  Ron Meyer and Nathan Harden of the foundation published an insightful op-ed in the Washington Times entitled “Generation Y Asks ‘Why Us’?”.  The article begins by noting that President Obama’s approval among the young has fallen by 30 percent.  The authors believe that “America’s youth are taking an economic beating.”  At FRC, we agree.

It isn’t just that their unemployment rate is higher than that of any other group in the general populace, but the young are being subjected to “record-smashing college debt levels.”  This is taking place while the national debt explodes.  Youth employment stands at 17.4%, and college debt has reached $26,300 for the typical graduate.  The national debt now stands about 100% of GDP – 15 trillion dollars.  More significantly in one sense: the interest payments alone are now equal to $3,000 per taxpayer.

Young America’s Foundation recognizes the economic problems facing the young and has developed a “Youth Misery Index.”  The Index reflects a value for youth unemployment plus college debt levels and per capita national debt.  This is a good idea, and I look forward to the Index’s release each year.

(One suggestion might be to adjust the national debt component to also reflect the finding of Reinhart and Rogoff (This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly) that debt levels above 90% of GDP have a detrimental effect on long-term growth and stability.)

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As the year ends there is more news on the education front.  An article by Ben Wolfgang in the Washington Times (12/15/2011, “Record Numbers Fail to Clear No Child bar”).  At the outset of the article, Wolfgang notes, “The numbers keep getting worse for the nation’s education system.”  In the 2010-11 academic year, the No Child Left Behind statute’s standards were not met by 48% of public schools.

There is a great deal of debate even among conservative education scholars whether the NCLB’s standards have become increasingly unrealistic.  There is disagreement over whether NCLB should continue as a national guide.  Whatever one’s feelings about NCLB, it seems clear that many schools and students are not proficient in reading and math.  Proponents note that the law “require[s] states to publish test-score results in math and reading for each school in grades 3 through 8 and again in grade 10.”  Parents can see how their children’s school is doing, but see this article that argues the federal yardstick  is defective.

The debate will continue next year as the NCLB law needs to be reauthorized by the Congress.  That may not be possible in an election year.  As with many other things much depends on the outcome of the presidential election.

One area in which there seems to be positive news is in “virtual” schooling.  “Virtual” education refers to taking classes online using the internet as the teaching device.  It seems completely obvious that online learning – if packaged properly – will revolutionize education.  See the Khan Academy.  A recent article notes the rapid growth in this new avenue for learning.  I think it is a positive development for a market-based approach to make an appearance in schooling.

The New York Times published a lengthy incredibly negative article on virtual learning recently.  Virtual learning probably has its difficulties, but it also strikes at the core of the modern public school power structures by giving parents more choices.  Lindsey Burke at the Heritage Foundation has some good observations on this debate.  One wonders if the Times is more worried about that than learning.

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Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a law professor at the Universityof Tennessee.  He is also the founder of the Instapundit blog.  Professor Reynolds has taken a considerable interest in the skyrocketing cost of higher education and the accompanying debt spiral.  He wrote about the topic first in a Washington Examiner column in June 2010 (“Higher Education’s Bubble Is about to Burst”) and then again in an Examiner column in August 2010 (“Further Thoughts on the Higher Education Bubble”).  He also gave a lecture on the topic in the Fall of 2010 at the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism at Clemson University (“The Higher Education Bubble and What Comes Next”).

At its core, Reynolds thesis is simple.  He notes that education costs have risen at multiples of the general level of inflation in the economy.  Roughly speaking over the past thirty years, U.S. inflation was about 106%; health care costs increased 251%; and, college tuition costs increased 439%.  Next, he borrows the economist Herbert Stein’s maxim that things that are unsustainable, won’t be sustained.  These levels of excess cost increases for higher education are so great that they cannot and won’t be sustained over time.

This weekend, Professor Reynolds, had another column on this topic in the Washington Examiner.  Reynold made a couple of additional points.  First, he believes that college loan debt should be subject to elimination in bankruptcy.  That is not possible now.  Related to this he makes the following recommendation:

For higher education, the solution is more value for less money. Student loans, if they are to continue, should be made dischargeable in bankruptcy after five years — but with the school that received the money on the hook for all or part of the unpaid balance.

Up until now, the loan guarantees have meant that colleges, like the writers of subprime mortgages a few years ago, got their money up front, with any problems in payment falling on someone else.

Make defaults expensive to colleges, and they’ll become much more careful about how much they lend and what kinds of programs they offer. China, which has already faced its own higher education bubble, is simply shutting down programs that produce too many unemployable graduates.

Second, Reynolds argues that it may be time for skilled trades to make a return along with a return of vocational education.  (As he writes, “We need people who can make things, and it’s harder to outsource a plumbing or welding job to somebody in Bangalore.”)

Ultimately, he argues correctly that the skill that is most needed for young workers now is adaptability.  That seems to be clearly correct.

Check out the articles and the lecture, they are worth your time if you have an interest in this topic.

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The United States just agree to place 2,500 Marines in Australia as a signal to the Chinese that even the Obama Administration recognizes, perhaps dimly, that something is amiss in Asia and the Pacific.  (See the informative AP story that seems to be doing some chest thumping for the Administration.)  In any case, China is in the news, and, as we know, it’s “One Child Policy” is a brutal offense to human rights whose enforcement requires the sort of intrusive police state that seems to get little attention in the American press.  That is merely one type of oppression which the Chinese people face.  The Washington Times has been running a series of articles from a new book, Bowing to Beijing: How Barack Obama is Hastening America’s Decline and Ushering A Century of Chinese Domination, by Brett Decker and William Triplett II.  If you are doing some Christmas book shopping for someone who has an interest in China, take a look at Brett Decker’s useful list of “Ten Books You Need to Read about the Chinese Threat.”

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I have read several more education articles in the past couple days.  Each is worth a look and some consideration:

The first, a news story in the Washington Times, discusses “the latest installment of [President Obama’s] ‘we can’t wait’ campaign against Congress” in which the president issued new executive orders dealing with the Head Start program;

The second article by Michael G. Morris, CEO of American Electric Power, makes note of a looming worker shortage needed to fill millions of skilled jobs being vacated by retiring baby boomers that, in many cases, might not require debt-inflicting college degrees;

Finally, Michael Barone has a thought-provoking column about student debt and an Occupy Wall Street protester who acquired $35,000 in debt to study puppetry.  Yes, puppetry.  Barone defends his choice and considers him to be something of an entrepreneur.  Read it.

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Over the past several days some interesting articles have been published on specific education topics.  Each is worth reading:

• The first, an editorial in the Washington Examiner, focuses on the impact charter schools are having on education in theDistrict of Columbia.

• The second article focuses on the difficulties being experienced in reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind law. (Rightly or wrongly, the author believes that: “Failure to update the 2001 No Child Left Behind law, despite considerable support from both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill, would have the practical effect of giving President Obama a much freer hand in setting federal education policy and pushing his favored reforms.”)

• The third article, by former congresswoman Melissa Hart, describes some unusual circumstances surrounding a federal False Claims Act lawsuit against Education Management Corporation (a for-profit) that was joined by the Dep’t of Justice in May 2011.  (Here is a New York Times piece with some background information and a different point of view.)

All in all, these articles lead one to conclude that the size of the D.C.-based education-industrial-complex is so massive that it needs to be drastically reduced or eliminated.

Coincidentally, in a speech given today at the Family Research Council, Representative Michelle Bachmann, stated that, if elected president, she would repeal all federal education laws (i.e., policy authority).  She added that she would eliminate the Department of Education.  The key step, however, would be eliminating the education laws because erasing the Dep’t of Education alone would do nothing to end the programs, activities, and spending that are required under all these federal statutes.  Only statutory repeal will do that.  It was interesting to hear Rep. Bachmann make this distinction.

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Diana Furchtgott-Roth, economist and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, concluded a recent column on Obamacare: “Yes, health care will be affordable for low-income Americans – but only if they’re unmarried.”  Her column doesn’t appear to have received a great deal of attention, but Furchtgott-Roth was describing one line of analysis from an October 27^th hearing conducted by the House Committee on Government Reform.  The hearing was entitled “Examining Obamacare’s Hidden Marriage Penalty and Its Impact on the Deficit.”  The details are a bit complicated, so I recommend reading the Furchtgott-Roth article.  (A committee staff report is also available.)  Suffice it to say that there is much to learn about Obamacare as Mrs. Pelosi once told us.

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Doug Schoen, the former pollster for President Bill Clinton, has written an interesting article for the Wall Street Journal on the world view of the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters now sitting in Manhattan’s Zucotti Park.  A senior researcher at his polling firm, Arielle Alter Confino, interviewed nearly 200 of the OWS occupiers on October 10^th and 11^th.   She found that they “have a distinct ideology and are bound by a deep commitment to radical left-wing policies.”

Schoen describes their thinking in more detail:

Our research shows clearly that the movement doesn’t represent unemployed America and is not ideologically diverse. Rather, it comprises an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence. Half (52%) have participated in a political movement before, virtually all (98%) say they would support civil disobedience to achieve their goals, and nearly one-third (31%) would support violence to advance their agenda.

He adds that the OWS is bound by a “a deep commitment to left-wing policies: opposition to free-market capitalism and support for radical redistribution of wealth, intense regulation of the private sector, and protectionist policies to keep American jobs from going overseas.”  Schoen goes on to express his opinion that alignment with those who hold such opinions would be electorally destructive.

That said, Repair_Man_Jack on RedState has a nice blog post discussing the skyrocketing cost of college tuition and its impact on young adults.  Stories had run indicating that some of the OWSers were protesting about the burden of student loans.  Given Schoen’s interview results this might have been a story line intended to make the protesters more sympathetic.  On the other hand, a bunch of Marxists might just want their debts repudiated.

Whatever they believe the RedState article recognizes this dissatisfaction.  The underlying problem is real and FRChas expressed its concern with the existence of the higher education racket.  (Paul Peterson of Harvard accurately called it the “Education Industrial Complex“ in 2008.)  American education is defective at the primary and secondary levels, but higher education is also deeply in need of reform.  Price competition and alternative forms of professional credentialing are needed badly.  An astute politician could garner great support from young voters merely by recognizing that a problem exists.

(Stephanie Guttman also discusses the OWS/education link on October 7 in a post on NRO’s Corner.  However, she attributes “E-I-C” to Michael Medved and raises the desirability of a return to vocational schools.)

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Peggy Noonan’s most recent column in the Wall Street Journal (Friday, October 14), “It’s No Time for Moderation,” had some keen insights on recent developments in public opinion.  She is thinking about the coming of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement and other manifestations of discontent and asks:

Why is this happening now, and not two years ago? Because at some point in the past year or six months, people started to realize: The economy really isn’t going to get better for a long time. Everyone seems to know in their gut that unemployment is going to stay bad or get worse. Everyone knows the jobless rate is higher than the government says, because they look around and see that more than 9% of their friends and family are un- or underemployed. People put on the news and hear aboutEuropeand bankruptcy, and worry that it’s going to spread here. Eighteen months ago smart people could talk on TV about how we’re on a growth path and recovery will begin by fall of 2010. Nobody talks like that now.

And people have a sense that nothing’s going to get better unless something big is done, some fundamental change is made in our financial structures. It won’t be small-time rejiggering—a 5% cut in this tax, a 3% reduction in that program—that will get us out of this.

She also comments perceptively on the demise of President Obama’s job’s proposal and why it lacked any momentum:

President Obama’s jobs bill failed in the Senate this week, and the headline is not that it lost, it’s that it lost and nobody noticed. Polls actually showed support for various parts of it. You know why it failed? Because he was for it. Because he said, “Pass this bill.” So weak is public faith in his economic leadership that people figure if he’s behind it, it must be a bad idea.

In conclusion, it appears that the political energy that characterized 2010 lies ready to be tapped by candidates with good, BIG ideas in 2012.

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Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post has written a powerful article  (“The Forgotten Christians of the East”) describing the growing danger to Christians living in Muslim countries – and most recently in Egypt:

On Sunday night, Egyptian Copts staged what was supposed to be a peaceful vigil at Egypt’s state television headquarters in Cairo. The 1,000 Christians represented the ancient Christian community of some 8 million whose presence in Egypt predates the establishment of Islam by several centuries. They gathered in Cairo to protest the recent burning of two churches by Islamic mobs and the rapid escalation of state-supported violent attacks on Christians by Muslim groups since the overthrow of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in February.

According to Coptic sources, the protesters Sunday night were beset by Islamic attackers who were rapidly backed up by military forces. Between 19 and 40 Copts were killed by soldiers and Muslim attackers. They were run over by military vehicles, beaten, shot and dragged through the streets of Cairo.

Maggie Michael of Associated Press wrote an analysis piece from Cairo that was carried in the Washington Times.  Michael noted that Mubarak’s fall and the subsequent “fading of authoritarian rule [in Egypt] empowered Islamist fundamentalists, known here as Salafis, who have special resentment for Christians.”  This appears to be the general pattern in the countries that have experienced the “Arab Spring.”  As old power structures toppled, the political replacement in contemporary Arab politics tends toward Islamist extremism.  It is a dangerous trend for religious minorities that needs to be opposed by the United States government.

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Bill Gertz has an alarming story in his “Inside the Ring” column in today’s (10/6/2011; p. A9) Washington Times entitled “Anti-Terror Trainers Blocked.  According to Gertz, theCIA and the Department of Homeland security “abruptly canceled” an August conference on “homegrown U.S. radical extremism in what officials close to the issue say was an effort to block two conservative anti-terrorism experts from presenting their views.”

Gertz claims the event was canceled “after Muslim advocacy groups contact the Department of Homeland Security and the White House about scheduled speakers, who included Stephen Caughlin and Steven Emerson, both specialists on the Islamist terror threat.” According to Gertz, “Mr. Caughlin, a former Pentagon Joint Staff analyst, is one of the most knowledgeable counterterrorism experts specializing in the relationship between Islamic law and terrorism.”  Emerson heads “the Investigative Project on Terrorism” and “is a leading expert on Islamic violent extremism, financing and operations.”

Apparently stopping the conference wasn’t enough for the White House.  Gertz was told by one official “that to prevent the two experts from taking part in future conferences,  the administration is drafting new guidelines designed to prohibit all U.S.government personnel from teaching classes on Islamic history or doctrine.”  These rules will also “seek to prohibit the use of federal funds to pay contractors for such training.”

These actions bears closer examination, but they fit within the growing pattern of attacks from the Left on those – also including Frank Gaffney – who oppose Islamist extremism.

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Some writers on technology and law argue that there is no shortage of the electromagnetic spectrum through which television, radio, and broadband can be broadcast.  One Supreme Court case, Red Lion, points to spectrum scarcity as a basis for Federal Communications Commission (FCC) jurisdiction to regulate broadcasting – including the promulgation of its indecency rules.

Of relevance to this debate, the Washington Times recently published two articles on the FCC’s proposal to reallocate spectrum from broadcasting to broadband.  The first article contains an interview with former-senator Gordon H. Smith, president of the National Association of Broadcasters.  The second story contains more details about the potential impact of the spectrum swap (grab?) on broadcasters.

Whatever the pluses and minuses of the idea of a swap, it is pretty clear that there isn’t enough spectrum to go around.  Furthermore, as the number of wireless applications grows, the demand for spectrum will only increase until some completely superseding technology arises.

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According to a Washington Times editorial (9/30/11), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) filed papers in a court proceeding earlier in September in which EPA discusses the scope of the greenhouse-gas regulations it would like to impose on the nation.  Here are the amazing figures:

The agency is defending sweeping greenhouse-gas emissions rules that if fully implemented would require 10,000 new state-level employees to process permits. At the federal level, it would take 230,000 new officials and a $21 billion budget expansion – quite a boost for an outfit that currently has 17,417 bureaucrats and $10.3 billion to spend. EPA admits it would be “absurd or impossible to administer” the rules all at once, but “that does not mean that the agency is not moving toward the statutory thresholds.”

These facts reinforce why conservatives have to focus their attention on the regulatory tsunami that is now hitting America.

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Last Friday, September 23^rd, Congressman Chris Smith, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights (Committee on Foreign Affairs) held a hearing on China’s One-Child Policy.  The same day the Washington Times carried an article by Louise Watt (Associate Press) talking about whyChina’s “moneymakers” are interested in leavingChina.  The story contained the amazing statistic of the 20,000 Chinese with at least $15 million in individual assets, 27% have already emigrated and 47% are considering it.  The source of this statistic was a “report by China Merchants Bank and U.S. Consultants Bain & Co. published in April.”  Shouldn’t these people want to stay given their success?

There were a number of reasons given for this lack of enthusiasm for remaining in China.  They included the following:  1) the test-centric Chinese educational system; 2) the desire to live in a place with better health care; and, 3) the objective of preserving their assets and preparing for retirement.  Also of interest to these Chinese was “having more children and making it easier to develop overseas business.”  (emphasis added)

This is fascinating: the communist state cannot even relax the rules suppressing family size to accommodate the business leaders who are making the economy grow.

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Thanks need to go to the Washington Examiner’s editorial page (Monday, 9/19/11) for bringing our attention to a significant report by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chaired by Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), examining the “regulatory tsunami” unleashed by the Obama Administration.  Entitled “Broken Government: How the Administrative State has Broken President Obama’s Promise of Regulatory Reform,” the committee report argues that the regulatory burden on the American economy is now so great that “it has stifled productivity, wages, job creation and economic growth” and it “has caused job creators to lock down at a time when we need them to expand.”  The report also argues that federal agencies are “avoiding meaningful scrutiny by employing numerous gimmicks” including: “1) refusing to perform accurate cost-benefit analysis; 2) overturning decades of precedent without justification; 3) entering into sue and settle agreements; 4) enacting policy changes through guidance documents; 5) improperly issuing emergency rulemakings.”

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Fortunately, last week’s earthquake near Richmond was incapable of producing a damaging tidal wave.  Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Washington’s massive bureaucracies and, most specifically, the Environmental Protection Agency.

According to House Speaker John Boehner, the Obama Administration has a regulatory agenda that includes at least 219 new rules that could each impose a regulatory burden of 100 million dollars or more. Such rules are called “major” rules.  (See David Boyer’s article in the 8/31/11 Washington Times.)  Also, EPA is going ahead with seven rulemakings that the agency estimates will together cost over $125 billion (with a “b”) annually – yes that is annually.  (See Conn Carroll’s story in the 8/30/11 Washington Examiner.)

According to an editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal (behind its pay firewall), Speaker Boehner asked the administration for a list of rules it had in the works with potential costs exceeding one billion dollars per year.  The administration responded providing a list of seven rulemakings – four from EPA and three from the Department of Transportation.

Speaker Boehner’s overarching point was that the “economy cannot withstand the barrage of major new federal regulations planned by the administration.”  Of course, the Obamacare and financial industry regulations are also on the drawing board somewhere.

Mark Levin had an excellent commentary on our state affairs at the beginning of his 8/30 broadcast.  He believes that we no longer have a “representative republic.”  This condition exists in large measure, Levin argues, due to unchecked regulation.  He also thinks that we now have an “Imperial Presidency.”

That said, Levin later gave a boldface example.

Listen to the absolutely chilling interview Levin conducts with the CEO of Gibson Guitar who was raided on 8/24/11 by federal agents. (Start at minute 92:00.)  Here is John Hayward’s Human Events background article.  The federal government claims that Gibson is illegally importing wood to make its guitars from India and Madagascar.  Gibson claims that officials from those countries have certified the legality of these exports from their nations.  Additionally, Gibson’s competitors apparently use the same woods from the same sources and have not been raided.  Only time will tell how this will turn out, but this iconic company may not be able to survive the legal costs of fighting a criminal investigation while its productive activities are interrupted.

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