Rep Mike Kelly Gets a Standing Ovation on House Floor

I guess today is Speech Day. Here's another good one about the cost of federal red tape from Representative Mike Kelly. Note the chants of "USA! USA!" at the end.



(h/t to The Blaze.)

What's Love Got to Do With It?

Yesterday, President Obama gave a speech. Someone in the crowd shouted, "We love you." Obama's response was this.



Love? I don't think that word applies here.

You have tried this before. The Stimulus Bill didn't work. In fact, it worked in reverse. We're much worse off as a result of it. And now you want to try it again?

Mr. President, you can't wave your sceptre and create jobs. Jobs are the natural result of a free market economy. You seem insistent upon remaking our economy into something that's not an economy. You contend that the Republican controlled Congress wants to deny you a political victory.

Here's the truth: A victory for you is a loss for the nation. You got virtually everything you wanted with the willing help of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid for the first two years of your presidency. And the nation is suffering mightily as a result.

It's not that we don't love you as a person: we don't love what you're doing. That is the important difference.

You have criticized the overwhelming majority of the country. You have criticized conservatives, Tea Partiers, Republicans, doctors, corporate jet owners, businesspeople, and average Americans, whom you called "bitter clingers." You have called us "the enemy" more than once. And your actions have proven it more than once. Every action, every regulation, every mandate you have approved is doing nothing but crippling our country in every way imaginable.

And now you want us to love you, when you clearly don't love us? You should understand that this "love" thingy works both ways.

Mr. President, it appears that, judging by your words and actions, you don't love America.

The 112th Congress is the Least Productive in Years – Thank Goodness!

Kathleen Hennessey, reporterette for the LA Times, penned this little piece over the weekend. She thinks that Congress is falling down on the job by not being “productive.”

She actually tries to makes it sound like a bad thing…

The 112th Congress is on pace to be one of the least productive in recent memory — as measured by votes taken, bills made into laws, nominees approved. By most of those metrics, this crowd is underperforming even the "do-nothing Congress" of 1948, as Harry Truman dubbed it. The hot-temper era of Clinton impeachment in the 1990s saw more bills become law.

She goes on to say this –

Experts cite the rise of a brand of conservatism that aims for a government that governs least.

Um, Katy, that’s not “a brand of conservatism,” that is conservatism in its purest form.

It’s clear from her article that Hennessey, like many others, doesn’t understand the very simple founding principle of our government: we are free unless there is a law that specifically prevents a certain action. This is what our current Commander-in-Chief meant when he called our Constitution a document of “negative liberties.”

From the American Thinker link,

…Government does some things which reduce our private rights and yet which increase the common good. Politics is all about where the boundary between broad notions of promoting the general welfare by state coercion and preserving liberty should be. Politicians on the Left have often argued that liberty should be reined in more tightly so that "the people" can live better. But implying that more state power somehow increases liberty is beyond mere Leftism. It is entry into that dead realm of [Orwellian] Newspeak in which language is pureed into nonsense, and then nonsense is presented as argument.

Now this may not seem very important on the surface, but it’s the main reason why we’re staggering under the weight of unprecedented intrusion into our daily lives from the federal government. Soon, we won’t be able to purchase 100-watt incandescent light bulbs. Traditional propellants used in aerosol cans have been outlawed, forcing much more expensive alternatives to be used. Asthma inhalers have more than doubled in price as a result, making formerly affordable relief difficult or even impossible for many. Gasoline is now blended with ethanol, which is less efficient and results in poorer gas mileage and damage to older fuel systems, again the product of legislation from Capitol Hill. Additionally, the seasonal formulations required for gas adds to the price we pay at the pump.

There are many more examples, but the trend is alarmingly clear: we are allowing those we send to Washington to legislate our freedom away at a frightening pace. Much of the reason for the increased price of consumer goods today is the direct result of misguided laws enacted by zealous representatives in Washington who think they are doing the people’s will by enacting as many laws as possible.

This is the primary reason why Obama and the Left received such a “shellacking” in the 2010 midterm elections. It signaled an awakening of we the people to the dangers of a far-too-large federal government and the desire to stop the rampant trampling of our freedom by Progressives in Congress.

So, what the Left sees as a failure, conservatives rightly see as a victory. Slowing the rate at which we’re losing our freedom should be cause for celebration, not derision.

Hennessey’s article reveals quite a bit about the Leftist mindset, that government should be the sole dispenser of the rights of a people in direct contradiction to the intent of our Founders, namely that our freedom is inherent in our existence, given from God at birth, intended to be preserved by representatives who refrain from enacting laws which, under our form of government, rob us of that freedom.

This is the revolution that our forebears fought and died for. A new way of living, a first for mankind, beginning with the idea that man was naturally free, that freedom was no longer the benevolent allowance of an all-powerful monarch, to be dispensed as a reward for fealty to the king.

In other words, less is indeed more when it comes to our form of government. Less laws equal more freedom.

Lost in the Noise – How Well Capitalism Can Work

In the past two years, ever since the election of Barack Obama, we’ve been on a crash lesson in Marxist economics. The results haven’t been pretty, as just about everyone can see. At the risk of flagellating a deceased equine, here a few of the highlights (which are actually lowlights) of this curious witch’s brew of big government and crony capitalism: record numbers of Americans on food stamps for the first time, record numbers living in poverty, the slowest recovery from a recession in history, record high federal deficits, low tax revenue, the list goes on.

To borrow a term, unprecedented.

What’s worse is that we’re being bombarded with the negative results of Obamanomics, so much so that we’re in danger of forgetting that there is a way out of this. The constant drumbeat of more government intervention in an effort to reverse course (a noble aspiration that is failing, as the stats show) is drowning out what we need to do, which is to effect a drastic reduction of government and its leech-like effect on the creation of wealth.

Yes Virginia, there really is such a thing as wealth creation. But you’d never know it from listening and reading the Make Believe Media.

Case in point: this article in the New York Times by one Bob Herbert entitled A Terrible Divide. In what I’m sure he and the Times editorial staff think is a well-reasoned missive on the results of Obamanomics, he manages to criticize conservative solutions to the problems that plague us, as though capitalism is at fault for them. Here’s a taste:

Standards of living for the people on the wrong side of the economic divide are being ratcheted lower and will remain that way for many years to come. Forget the fairy tales being spun by politicians in both parties — that somehow they can impose service cuts that are drastic enough to bring federal and local budgets into balance while at the same time developing economic growth strong enough to support a robust middle class. It would take a Bernie Madoff to do that.

“Service cuts?” Would Mr. Herbert be referring to the funding for Planned Parenthood? That same vital service organization currently struggling to fill the gap left by ACORN by assisting in the sex slavery of under-aged girls? The ones fulfilling the vital service of depriving the country of citizens?

Perhaps he’s referring to the National Endowment for the Arts. Or the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Heaven forbid these necessary services have their budgets cut by one penny. The horror of it all…

But I digress. In this one article lays many of the false assumptions that the left wants the unwashed masses to believe. That conservative thought is dragging the country down by daring to take a realistic look at where our tax money is going. Example after vague example spouted by Mr. Herbert and others form the drum circle, providing a soundtrack to the bad acid trip the country is currently having.

What we have here is a failure to communicate, again. By relying on personal opinion instead of actual journalism by the MBM, you know, where a reporter actually reports the facts with a critical eye seeking the truth, we have instead blame placed in the wrong places, and upon the wrong people.

With all the noise, we’re almost losing sight of the virtues of capitalism and all the positive things it can do. Remember the Twentieth Century? That serves as the best example I can make regarding the power of capitalism to fundamentally transform a nation, but in the good way. Never before has any society done more to advance itself and in the process raise the standard of living for the whole world.

We need to remind ourselves that government was much smaller back then. In fact, I believe a case can be made that the larger any government becomes, the less productive the economy becomes as a direct result. The lesson we should be getting from our current sad state of economic affairs is that our own government has finally reached the point that it’s intervention into the free market is seriously preventing the very growth that a large government depends on for its survival.

How strange that the proponents of massive government programs are seemingly unable to see where the money to fund their utopian dream comes from, and as a result, their efforts inevitably starve the government of the funds it needs.

The lesson we should be learning is this: capitalism works best when left alone. By interfering with the free market, government has the real power to twist and distort capitalism until it actually fails. We’re seeing this in action, but I’ve yet to see any concrete action by this administration to stop their anti-capitalist crusade. They are mysteriously unable to see that it is their meddling in the free market that's causing the downturn.

To draw upon President Obama’s favorite metaphor, he has pushed the accelerator pedal of big government to the floor and is now saying he will back off the throttle just a little bit.

But by all appearances, he has turned on the cruise control. We are headed for a tragic wreck that we may not survive if we, the terrified passengers, don’t reach over and turn the ignition off, pull over and say, “You can’t drive anymore.”

Think Taxes are High? Government Regulations Cost Even More

We are overregulating ourselves to death. It’s not really us, it’s the people in Washington making the regulations, and there are an awful lot of them. It’s their job. It’s what they’re paid to do. But we elect the people in Washington who then appoint the people to the regulatory agencies who make the regulations, so, when you look at it that way, we are doing this to ourselves.

And it’s killing us economically.

When we Tea Partiers start fussing about big government, this is what we’re talking about: the increasingly costly burden placed upon us by governmental rules and regulations. It’s one of those things that we suspect is happening because we see prices rise, but we don’t know exactly why.

If you’ve been in a grocery store lately, you know what I mean. Here in the Backwards household, I do the grocery shopping, and I’ve noticed how much prices have increased in the past four years or so. Many items have doubled in price during that time. I remember this began when gasoline prices approached $4 dollar per gallon. This made everything that was transported by truck more expensive, because the businesses that deliver their products had to pay more money in the form of higher fuel prices, which got passed along to the people who buy those products, namely you and me.

We all understand how and why that happens. And we’re not too angry about it as long as we understand that there may be a valid reason for a price increase, and providing the increase isn’t too much. Business owners don’t necessarily like price increases, as it tends to make them less competitive. After all, the whole point of capitalism is to have low prices for high quality goods.

But when a business incurs an increased cost for no valid reason, then we have a problem. And we have a big problem when it comes to the costs of government regulations. As the size of government increases, the more regulations are created. The more regulations are created, the more they add to the cost of doing business. This can only happen for so long until we can no longer afford to do business.

We’re at that point today.

Finding the actual core cause for any price increase can be difficult. But there are some cases where we can find the cause relatively simply. Let’s go back to the price of groceries for a moment. When the price started going up, most folks knew why: increased transportation costs. But when the price of gas went down, the cost of groceries stayed high. Why? Because around that time, Washington wanted us to start making fuel out of food, namely corn. This sounds like a good idea on paper, but when you understand that most of the meat we buy in the grocery store is fed corn prior to being slaughtered for market, and that corn is present in a great many foods, and that corn is now being made into fuel, then the price of corn goes up. That increase is passed along in the form of higher prices. So we wind up paying for every new governmental regulation.

Every single one.

This hasn’t gone unnoticed. Gus Van Horn over at Pajamas Media has a great article about this very thing. He also links to this study of the cost of regulation for businesses and households in America. It should concern everyone that the cost is high and increasing every year. As one chart in the study shows, the cost per American household to comply with regulation rose at an annual rate of 2.4%. If you compare that with the inflation rate of around 1% (excluding groceries and gasoline), then you can see why prices are going up for everything. Regulatory compliance now costs us almost as much as do taxes. For example, in 2000, the regulatory cost was $10,300. By 2008 that cost was over $15,000. That’s almost a fifty percent increase in just eight years.

Is there any question why our economy isn’t expanding?

Did your salary go up that much during that time? Yeah, mine neither.

However, there are many in Washington who want us to pay even more for the things we need. Do you remember how candidate Obama said that his plan for a cap-and-trade energy bill would make everyone’s utility bills “necessarily skyrocket?”

Why would you want that for the nation, Mr. President? Do you really think that, after a while, you’ve made enough money but you haven’t paid enough for electricity? Why would you want to impose that sort of suffering on your fellow citizens?

Unless, of course, you don’t consider us your fellows at all, and instead consider us an enemy?