Its the Regulations That Get you

57% of Americans Worry About Too Much Regulation of Business
We're all anti-statists now.

BY Mary Katharine Ham

A new Gallup poll shos 57 percent of Americans worry about too much government regulation of business, as opposed to 37 percent who worry about too little. When asked if they'd prefer less or more government regulation of business, Americans want less at a margin of 50-24 percent.

Gallup notes the findings jibe with the findings for similar questions in 2009, "despite a significant loss of the public's confidence in banks and skepticism about the honesty and ethics of bankers over the last two years, and with increased focus on the negative impact of the actions of some big banks and other businesses on the nation's financial crisis."

The saving grace for statists is that Americans will often accept new regulations, one by one, especially when a politician is adept at demonizing the business for which they're meant. But it might serve as a warning to Obama, who's attempting to pivot with a populist pitch for new bank regulations, that public opinion on regulations hasn't pivoted his way. The banks have taken a brutal beating from every direction (sometimes deservedly so), while Obama has ostentatiously pitched government regulation as the fix for the damage they caused, and yet no one's lining up for new regs. Perhaps the public is simply losing faith in the federal government at the same rate it lost faith in banks.

Thomas Sowell--Would You Have Believed?

I knew it was going to be bad, but I have an imagination reserved exclusively for fathers and husbands.

via Patriot Post and Patriot Mark Alexander

Opinion in Brief

"Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many 'czars' appointed by the President, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent?

Did you think that another 'czar' would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers -- that is, to create a situation where some newspapers' survival would depend on the government liking what they publish?

Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called 'experts' deciding who could and could not get life-saving medical treatments? Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom. If you have a mother who needs a heart operation or a child with some dire medical condition, how free would you feel to speak out against an administration that has the power to make life and death decisions about your loved ones?

Does any of this sound like America?

How about a federal agency giving school children material to enlist them on the side of the president? Merely being assigned to sing his praises in class is apparently not enough. How much of America would be left if the federal government continued on this path?

... How far the President will go depends of course on how much resistance he meets. But the direction in which he is trying to go tells us more than all his rhetoric or media spin. Barack Obama has not only said that he is out to 'change the United States of America,' the people he has been associated with for years have expressed in words and deeds their hostility to the values, the principles and the people of this country.

... Nothing so epitomizes President Obama's own contempt for American values and traditions like trying to ram two bills through Congress in his first year -- each bill more than a thousand pages long -- too fast for either of them to be read, much less discussed. That he succeeded only the first time says that some people are starting to wake up. Whether enough people will wake up in time to keep America from being dismantled, piece by piece, is another question -- and the biggest question for this generation."

--economist Thomas Sowell

Perfect example of Progressiveism - Are you using your liver?

If our readers don't know what the political philosophy of Progressiveism is or how it is antithetical to democracy, here is the perfect example:

“We think that it’s time for institutions, including government, to become much more user-friendly by enlisting the science of choice to make life easier for people and by gently nudging them in directions that will make their lives better,” they wrote.

“…The human brain is amazing, but it evolved for specific purposes, such as avoiding predators and finding food,” said Thaler and Sunstein. “Those purposes do not include choosing good credit card plans, reducing harmful pollution, avoiding fatty foods, and planning for a decade or so from now. Fortunately, a few nudges can help a lot. …”

Remember, Cass Sunstein is President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), the Regulation Czar (where ARE CZARS mentioned in the Consti...Never mind). He wants to nudge people through regulations, not democratic debate. Because the government knows best, he feels that it would be much more efficient to harvest organs without explicit consent. You can always "opt out."

Mrs. Cargosquid has been involved in the organ transplant field for over 20 years. The ethics debates are endless. And throughout the entire history of American transplant science, the idea of explicit consent has been the rule. Because you are a sovereign citizen, not a resource.

Other countries, such as France, use presumed consent rule, apparently, without a problem. However, the culture and politics in other countries do not put such an emphasis on individual liberty as we do. China has been known to use prisoners as resources. How progressive.

However one feels about this idea, the choice of explicit consent or presumed consent should be done in an open debate, in Congress or State legislature, with input from medical experts, ethics experts, and constituents.

Progressives don't actually like input from the masses. They know what's best for you:

The problem of the deceased’s family is only one issue, Sunstein and Thaler said, admitting that turning the idea of choice on its head will invariably run into major political problems, but these are problems they say the government can solve through a system of “mandated choice.”

“Another [problem] is that it is a hard sell politically,” wrote Sunstein and Thaler. “More than a few people object to the idea of ‘presuming’ anything when it comes to such a sensitive matter. For these reasons we think that the best choice architecture for organ donations is mandated choice.”

Mandated choice is a process where government forces you to make a decision – in this case, whether to opt out of being an organ donor to get something you need, such as a driver’s license.

Mandated Choice? Excuse me? I wonder, has Cass Sunstein signed HIS organ donor card?


h/t Pundette at Hot Air