Why Are They After the Banks?

Big Brother loves 'financial reform'
Intrusive Office of Financial Research threatens civil liberties

The next time you make a withdrawal from an automated teller machine, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner might be watching over your shoulder. Boosted by the sweeping, 1,400-page financial regulatory proposal currently making its way through the Senate, Mr. Geithner would have unprecedented, real-time access to a wealth of personal and corporate financial data - all in the name of protecting the public.

The legislation, sponsored by Senate banking committee Chairman Christopher J. Dodd, would create the innocuously named Office of Financial Research as a central repository for transaction-related records held by financial companies.

According to proponents, "decision-makers" like Mr. Geithner need up-to-the-minute information to act in order to prevent what they refer to as another Wall Street meltdown. The proposed agency would also provide statistical analysis and research, purportedly to monitor systemic risk to the financial system.

The idea raises a number of red flags, not least of which is the plan's fundamentally flawed premise that a central committee of unelected bureaucrats would be qualified to judge what's right and what's wrong for the economy. Our economic woes of the past three years would not have been solved had Treasury officials been armed with crisper charts and more accurate PowerPoint slides.

Yet the details of the proposal show that this new agency's mission is not meant to be limited to improving the quality of financial data. Mr. Dodd's legislation would grant the agency director the coercive power of subpoena to obtain records and rulemaking authority to force private-sector firms to maintain their internal financial records in a format acceptable to the government. The legislation also grants sweeping authority to maintain a data center that would collect and maintain "all data necessary" to carry out the director's wishes. Needless to say, the government's history of losing hard drives and laptops filled with sensitive information suggests entrusting more to
a federal agency is not a smart idea.

Of more concern is how the proposed law treats government employees with legal access to this gold mine of information. Bureaucrats would be allowed to exploit their knowledge of market conditions as private-sector consultants one year after leaving the agency. Not only would individuals who had such privileged access to confidential information command a high price in the private sector, they also would be equally rewarded while employed at public expense.

The already generous limitations of the general schedule of salaries and benefits would not apply to the Office of Financial Research. The agency's director could pay salaries in excess of $200,000 a year to as many bureaucrats as he saw fit to hire.

Indeed, the law sets up a semi-independent fiefdom where the agency director would set his own budget by imposing taxes on large financial firms and not have to answer directly to any elected officials.

There's no telling how much a multimillion-dollar boondoggle of this magnitude might end up costing in monetary terms, but it's enough to know the price in the loss of financial privacy and freedom is too great. The Senate should vote down this intrusive and wasteful bureaucracy.

Virginia AG Puts His Foot Down

EDITORIAL: Cuccinelli fights the EPA
Virginia attorney general questions global warming red tape

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli took a gutsy and intelligent step Feb. 17 when he petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its ill-advised "finding" that carbon dioxide creates an endangerment for human health.

The endangerment finding would let the EPA battle alleged global warming by regulating emissions of CO2, which of course is the gas that every animal and person exhales with every breath. The finding was ludicrous from the start, and now Mr. Cuccinelli makes a reasonable case that it also was unlawful.

"Attorney General Cuccinelli believes that the EPA acted in an arbitrary and capricious fashion and failed to properly exercise its judgment by relying almost exclusively on reports from the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an arm of the United Nations] in attributing climate change to [human-caused] greenhouse gas emissions," the AG's office explains. "The IPCC is an international body that is not subject to U.S. data quality and transparency standards and the IPCC prepared their reports in total disregard to U.S. Standards."

Since the EPA finding was issued, the IPPC's reports have become subject to scandal on multiple fronts. Those scandals reached a crescendo when a British newspaper, the Daily Mail, reported Feb. 14 that "The academic at the centre of the 'Climategate' affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble 'keeping track' of the information. ... And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no 'statistically significant' warming."

Obviously, if the EPA were relying on bad data like all of the other climate-change fanatics, it ought to reconsider its plans to further strangle our struggling economy with more unnecessary red tape.

Mr. Cuccinelli argues that the EPA failed to meet its responsibility to conduct appropriate cost-benefit analysis, and that the economic harm to American citizens - including Virginians - would outweigh any purported benefits of the new regulations.

As the AG put it, "We cannot allow unelected bureaucrats with political agendas to use falsified data to regulate American industry and drive our economy into the ground." Of course, he's spot on.

DC Protest Warrior: Will We Make It To 234?

DC Protest Warrior: Will We Make It To 234?
Judi McLeod over at Canada Free Press has some insight into what Americans must do to insure we do.

Let this July 4th be the time to tune out on the broken record of Obama.

Replace all the talk of Obama with the resolve to bring America back from the brink, a time to replace talk with action.

Unless Obama brings to a halt his rampage over America, it is time for Americans to find the way out of the dark; time to take their country back, and time to stop being the tax base of Congress megalomaniacs.

Promote the General Welfare

The dhimmicrats and the chosen one, (may be paeace be upon him), are deliberately sabotaging the efforts of middle class Americans to achieve the American Dream. Economic independence is the cornerstone of success. It's what makes this country different from all others. We are in the unique position of having the freedom to make our own decisions about how to best achieve economic independence.

It is the duty and responsibility of the government to provide and maintain an environment conducive to the average citizen's efforts towards that goal. Thats what "promote the general welfare" means.

Any action which impedes or inhibits the ability of the average citizen to achieve economic independence is un-Constitutional and anyone who votes for such action is in violation of their oath of office and should be impeached and removed from office.