Time to Tackle the Hidden Tax of Regulation

If you have ever wondered why businesses are reluctant to add to their payroll, or expand read this. If you have ever wondered why all maufacturing is leaving our Country, read this. If you have ever wondered why our economy continues to shrink, read this.

Add to this though, state and local regulations and the costs associated with them. We have created an anti-business environment in this Country just to justify the existence of regulators.

I don't think anyone would suggest that we have no regulations on business. But regulations should serve a purpose other than ensuring the job of an unelected beauracrat. If you take a serious look, these unelected people that are creating and imposing regulations is a violation of our Constitution. Check out this article at the link below and be sure to read the comments... 

From Human Events

Republicans are hitting President Obama on his idiotic call for tax hikes as well as his avaricious appetite for increased government spending, as they should. But here’s a new target for them: The hidden tax of regulation.

A new report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) titled “Ten Thousand Commandments” reveals the vast amount of private-sector capital drowned in the sea of government regulations.

The report’s conclusion is mind-boggling. The cost of complying with federal regulations has hit the $1.7 trillion dollar mark.

That’s trillion, with a T.

To put that number in perspective, it’s larger than the President’s own anticipated 2011 budget deficit of $1.6 trillion. In fact, the current regulatory burden imposed on businesses across America now amounts to 50% of total government spending in one year alone.

That’s nuts!

But guess what? We can top it.

As the CEI report underscores, the compliance cost of regulation is larger than all corporate pretax profits in 2008 and dwarfs the estimated 2010 individual income tax receipts by nearly 50%.

That last point is worth repeating: The cost of abiding by all the government regulations tallies up to $1.7 trillion, which towers over the revenue brought in by all income taxes, in every bracket.

We can also add that the compliance costs amount to more than $8,000 per American employee, but we’ll have to stop the comparisons there or else this editorial would rival Atlas Shrugged in length—but with statistics. Yikes!

So every time you hear some Democrat bemoan the ill-informed view that America is an underregulated society, tell them to put the above numbers in a pipe and smoke them.

Seriously. America is hamstrung by onerous regulation. That anyone can say otherwise defies belief. CEI notes that the Federal Register, which spells out all the government’s proposed and confirmed regulations, runs practically 25,000 pages—an increase of 26% over the last decade.

And thousands more rules are being proposed each year.

A true “stimulus” to the economy would be to relax much of these regulations and allow entrepreneurs and business owners to spend their capital on expansion and product innovation, rather than conforming to the obligations of some bureaucratic scheme. That’s not to say scrap all federal oversight, but the way things operate now, agencies are encouraged to brainstorm new policies without taking into account how they would negatively impact the economy.

It’s worth noting how the report “Ten Thousand Commandments” explains such perversity:

“Agencies face overwhelming incentives to expand their turf by regulating, even in the absence of demonstrated need, because the only measure of agency productivity—other than growth in their budgets and number of employees—is the number of regulations they produce.”

One step Congress can take immediately—and Republicans should adopt—is to arrest the power of unelected bureaucrats to codify these “commandments” in the first place. We can’t hold the troglodytes in the Environmental Protection Agency accountable for the laws they devise. But we can hold politicians accountable, which is why any proposed regulation by any federal agency that has any direct or indirect economic blow must be approved by Congress.

Sort of like, of the people, by the people.

U.S. Postal Service reports $2.2 billion loss

The post office reports a 2.2 BILLION dollar loss in ONE QUARTER! Holy crap! You almost have be trying to fail to have a loss like that in only three months.

You realize that this is a government agency and that that we, the taxpayers, will be covering that loss. Holy crap! This has got to be the most mismanaged mess on the planet. Isn't there anyone keeping an eye on the budget? Shouldn't people be getting laid off to cut expenses? Oh, wait, these are all union people. The union will allow the entire organization to fall of a cliff before they make concessions.

When you think about supporting obamacare, keep the post office in mind. It is being run by the same government that brought you crappy service and a 2.2 BILLION dollar loss...

By Ben Rooney - CNNMoney

The U.S. Postal Service continues to hemorrhage money, with a loss of $2.2 billion in the most recent quarter.

The national mail service said Tuesday that it expects to have a cash shortfall and reach its statutory borrowing limit by the time its fiscal year ends in September. That means the agency could be forced to default on some of its payments to the federal government.

Patrick Donahoe, the Postmaster General, said the service is still seeking changes to federal laws that would allow it to change its business model and potentially save enough money to avoid a default.

"The Postal Service may return to financial stability only through significant changes to the laws that limit flexibility and impose undue financial burdens," Donahoe said in a statement.

At issue is a 2006 law requiring the service to pay between $5.4 and $5.8 billion into its prepaid retiree health benefits each year. In addition, the agency is seeking Congressional approval to eliminate Saturday mail service.

The postal service has estimated that moving to five day service could save $3.1 billion. But the Postal Regulatory Commission, which oversees the agency, issued an advisory in March that put the savings at a much more modest $1.7 billion.

While the Postal Service is not strictly a government agency, it is not exactly a private business either.

Federal Borrowing on Pace to Hit Debt Limit in Less Than Week

Where does it end? Since obama has been president, debt has been accumulating at $4.5 BILLION a DAY!

Can you believe that number? Every single day our government spends $4.5 BILLION dollars that we don't have. How long can we keep that up? I guess as long as China keeps loaning us money. But then what? Do we find another lender? Who would that be? This is complete madness. There is no way that we can sustain this.

Write your congress critters people, let them know that you want the spending to STOP. Let them know that their jobs depend on it...

By Terence P. Jeffrey- CNSNews

Federal borrowing is on pace to hit the legal limit on the national debt in less than a week.

As set in a law passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama on Feb. 12, 2010, the legal limit on the national debt is $14.2940 trillion. As of the close of business Tuesday, according to the Daily Treasury Statement released at 4:00 pm today, the portion of the national debt subject to this legal limit was $ 14.268365 trillion. (The total national debt, including the portion exempted from the legal limit, was $14.3205 trillion.)

This left the U.S. Treasury with the authority to borrow only an additional $25.635 billion before it hits the statutory debt limit.

On April 4, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) in order to warn Congress that the Treasury was approaching the legal debt limit. In an appendix to this letter, Geithner pointed to the rapid pace at which new debt was accumulating.

“On average,” Geithner wrote, “the public debt of the United States increases by approximately $125 billion per month (although there are significant variations from month to month).”

In a 31-day month, $125 billion in new debt works out to an average of $4.03 billion in new debt per day. At that pace, the $25.635 billion in legal borrowing authority the Treasury had left at the close of business on Tuesday would be exhausted in less than seven days.

Geithner’s letter did not spell out the time period he used to determine that the debt increases at approximately $125 billion per month. In fact, according to the official debt figures published by the Treasury itself, the debt has been increasing at a somewhat faster pace than $125 billion per month during the Obama presidency.

On Jan. 20, 2009, the day Obama was inaugurated, the portion of the nation debt subject to the legal limit (a small portion of the debt is exempted from the limit) was $10.568142 trillion. By April 19, 2011, the portion of the national debt subject to the limit had increased to 14.268365 trillion. That means that during the first 821 days of Obama’s presidency the debt increased by $3.700223 trillion—or $4.5 billion per day.

U.S. Gov't Agency Plans $2.84 Billion Loan for Oil Refinery—In Colombia

We can't drill here to become energy independent, but we can finance drilling operations in foreign countries? We haven't built an oil refinery in this Country since the '70s and we can finance a new one in Columbia? What in the hell are these people thinking? Every day it becomes more apparent that our government has no clue what it is doing.

Stock up on ammo people, you may need it sooner than you think...

By Terence P. Jeffrey - CNSNews

The U.S. Export-Import Bank, an independent agency of the federal government, is now planning a $2.84-billion loan for a massive project to expand and upgrade an oil refinery--in Cartagena, Colombia.

The money would go to Reficar, a wholly owned subsidiary of Ecopetrol, the Colombian national oil company.

“This is part of a $5.18 billion refinery and upgrade project in Cartagena, Colombia supplying petroleum products to the domestic and export markets,” the Export-Import Bank said in a statement.

The U.S. government-controlled bank says the $2.84-billion in financing it plans to undertake will be the second largest project it has ever done. The largest was $3 billion in financing for a liquid natural gas project in Papua New Guinea.

The statement released by the bank said that on April 7 the bank’s presidentially-appointed board of directors had “voted to grant preliminary approval for a $2.84 billion direct loan/loan guarantee” for the Colombian refinery project.

Export-Import Bank Spokesman Phil Cogan told CNSNews.com that the bank could not say at this time how much of the $2.84 billion would be directly loaned to the Colombian refinery company and how much would be in loans guaranteed by the bank--although he expected it to be a combination.

“It is conceivable it could be all a direct loan,” said Cogan. “Right now it is set up so that the board could do either a complete direct loan or a combination of direct loan and guarantee. That hasn’t been determined yet.”

Since December, the bank has also approved almost $880 million in other loans and loan guarantees to Reficar’s parent company, Ecopetrol. So, in total, if the new $2.84 billion in loans is finalized, the Columbian national oil company and its wholly owned subsidiaries will have received $3.72 billion in financing backed by a U.S.-government-controlled entity within a span of five months.

Read the rest at the link above...

Are you fucking kidding me?

Go read the rest of Wirecutter's rant at Knuckledraggin my life away. He makes a lot of very good points. obama asks, no demands, that we get back on a path that will pay down our debt. This is the same asshole that forced obamacare on us. The single biggest piece of economy killing, job killing legislation ever devised. The same asshole that has increased our debt by 5 TRILLION DOLLARS in half a term as president. The very same asshole that wants to tax the very businesses that employ millions of hard working Americans.

obama would like for you to believe that the Republicans are some how responsible for the mess we are in. That's great, it just isn't true. Before the 2010 elections, the democrats controlled the purse strings for about four years. And let's also remember that democrats controlled the house, the senate and the presidency for the first two years of obama's term.

While all of us out here in the real world have had to tighten our belts, washington has remained on a massive spending spree. They have no regard for the effects their actions have on us, or that our children's children will be paying the price or their recklessness for many years to come.

Keep this in mind when obama talks about Republicans starving Grandma and denying sick children needed care, if entitlement spending isn't brought under control NOW, there will be no money for entitlements for ANYONE in the very near future. We can't continue down this path and obama has no plan except to tax us further and play stupid accounting shadow games. Smoke and mirrors will not fix our economy...

By Wirecutter - Knuckledraggin my life away

"We have to live within our means, reduce our deficit and get back on a path that will allow us to pay down our debt," the president said in a speech at George Washington University a few blocks from the White House. - barrack hussein obama

Live within our means? What in the FUCK do you know about living within my means? Any means?

Motherfucker, my bills are constantly one month behind and one jump ahead of a final notice. I shop for clothes at a thrift shop. I buy my tires at a used tire shop. I grow food in my backyard and not because I enjoy doing it. I keep the fish I catch to eat and you have no idea how much that hurts me - I can no longer afford to practice catch and release. I clip coupons. My heat in the house is non-existent (thank God I live in a somewhat temperate climate) and I don't even consider AC until it's above 90 degrees inside. Meat on the weekends is a fucking luxury as is dinner most nights, and yes I have had popcorn for dinner, you bastard. My TV service was cancelled by me months ago and I dearly miss it at times. Coyote hunting? Yeah right. Not so far this year.

And I make 23 bucks a fucking hour here in in Kalifornia. Seriously.

Obama, one week of your lifestyle would give me and my garden-sharing neighbors a life of luxury for a fucking year...

Obama to Congressional Leaders: Hurry Up and Strike a Budget Deal

What do you bet Boehner folds again? This guy has way less balls than I thought. He is in a very good position right now. He doesn't have to compromise. He should be able to force the democrats to make some REAL spending cuts. He won't though.

I about half hope there is a shutdown. As long as the government is shutdown there is a lot less stupid spending going on. And if the government does shut down, it will be the fault of both parties. The democrats will try to spin it as unwillingness on the part of Republicans to make a compromise, but really it will be the unwillingness of the democrats to make real spending cuts in an out of control government...

From FoxNews

President obama told the leaders of the House and Senate on Saturday to hurry up and strike a deal on the budget to avoid a government shutdown next weekend, the White House said.

obama made separate calls to House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, urging them to "reach a final solution and avoid a government shutdown that would be harmful to our economic recovery," the White House said in a readout of the call.

Negotiators are discussing spending cuts in the $33 billion range but haven't agreed on where to make them. Talks were continuing through the weekend. Funding for the government expires at midnight Friday.

Boehner is under pressure from Tea Party-backed conservatives to not compromise after the GOP-led House passed a budget bill in February that cuts $61 billion from current spending levels.

During the phone call, Boehner "reminded the president that there is no 'deal' or agreement on a final number, and he will continue to push for the largest possible spending cuts," Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said.

Post Office is going belly up...

By September 30th of this year, the post office will be broke. They are scheduled to pay the federal government $5.5 BILLION in advance for medical costs for future retirees and another $1.3 BILLION for workers comp in November. They won't have the money though, they are broke.

And this is the same government that we are supposed to trust with our health care?

Our government does not have a clue about running a business. If you need even further proof than the post office, just look at their inability to manage the budget. I know it is a big ass budget, but damn, we are paying thousands of people to keep an eye on that stuff.

The post office is a symptom of a much larger disease. This is only the beginning. Stock up on ammo folks, it will be the currency of the future...

Government Waste By the Numbers: Report Identifies Dozens of Overlapping Programs

My blog is a little over two years old now, and I have been saying since almost day one, that there is no accountability in washington. There is no system of checks and balances. There is no adult supervision. We send billions and billions of our hard earned dollars to these dumbasses every year in the form of taxes and nobody cares enough about us to pay attention to how it is spent.

And it's not just the overlap of stupid programs, it's the fraud and outright theft that bothers me even more. There are plenty of government employees who know how to manipulate the system. They know how to funnel millions of dollars of these overlapping funds into their own pocket. They are 100% aware that there is no reliable system in place to track their government credit card purchases. The list goes on and on. And even when these thugs are caught they are rarely prosecuted and they usually pay back a very small portion of what they have stolen. And thanks to the unions, many of them even get to keep their jobs! How does that work? If I was caught stealing from my job, not only would I rightly be terminated, I would more than likely wind up in jail. Why do we continue to put up with this?

We trust our elected officials to be good stewards of our money. We trust them to make good hiring decisions, by hiring trustworthy people. We are getting screwed in this deal. Sometimes I doubt their is an honest person in our entire government. I'm sure there are some, somewhere, I think the good guys are outnumbered though.

Go over to FoxNews and read the rest of this story. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Can you begin to imagine all of the programs they haven't discovered yet? The people we trust waste TRILLIONS of our tax dollars every year and then they wonder why the budget and deficit are so far out of whack. If we ran our household budgets like washington manages our tax money, can you imagine the chaos?

From FoxNews

The federal government hosts 47 job-training programs, 44 of which overlap. It runs 80 programs for the "transportation disadvantaged."

Another 82 programs spread across 10 separate agencies endeavor to improve teacher quality -- something hundreds of local school districts are already focused on.

These are just a few of the findings in a blockbuster report on government waste and inefficiencies released by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office. The report identifies billions of dollars in potential savings if Congress just had the will to streamline initiatives that target politically popular causes.

Though lawmakers in both parties have long struggled to eliminate the common culprits of waste, fraud and abuse, they seized on the findings Tuesday. House Republican Leader Eric Cantor vowed to "get our fiscal house in order" in light of the report.

"Now again, we have said enough is enough. Our Congress is about delivering results," Cantor said.

"This report confirms what most Americans assume about their government. We are spending trillions of dollars every year and nobody knows what we are doing. The executive branch doesn't know. The congressional branch doesn't know. Nobody knows," Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said in a statement Tuesday morning. "This report also shows we could save taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars every year without cutting services."

The well-timed release comes as Republicans and Democrats fight over how much to cut from the rest of this year's budget, not to mention next year's $3.73 trillion spending plan. Democrats have so far balked at GOP plans to cut $61 billion from the 2010 fiscal year budget. But while both parties are squabbling over a relatively small slice of the budget pie -- discretionary spending -- the GAO report suggests Congress could keep cutting and leave the operation of government intact.

1,500 Teachers Paid to Do Union Business While Missing Class

Does this seem right to anyone? I mean, anyone who isn't in a union. Even to union people this should be wrong. Why does a teacher make their entire salary to do only a small portion of their duties? And another teacher has to be paid their full salary to do those duties? Holy crap, what a mess. And it can all be laid at the feet of unions and democrats.

The State of New York is in dire straits financially. The State could be facing $50 billion in budget deficits in 2012. The $9 million that paying teachers not teach is only a drop in that bucket, but damn, you have to start somewhere. If the government of New York took all of these $9 and $10 million dollar wastes of tax dollars and added them up, they would probably be surprised what the total is.

It's the same on a National level. Our Country wastes more money on stupid bullshit every year than they can even count. Matter of fact, I doubt they do count it. There is no accountability at all, none, zip, nada. Of course, when you jump past the BILLIONS and into the TRILLIONS, it's a little more difficult to close that gap, but still, you have to start somewhere...

New York Post

In New York City's funny math, you get only one teacher for the price of two.

The Department of Education pays about 1,500 teachers for time they spend on union activities -- and pays other teachers to replace them in the classroom.

It's a sweetheart deal that costs taxpayers an extra $9 million a year to pay fill-ins for instructors who are sprung -- at full pay -- to carry out responsibilities for the United Federation of Teachers.

With Mayor Bloomberg calling for thousands of teacher layoffs to balance the 2012 budget, critics say it's time to halt the extravagant benefit.

"In these tight fiscal times, it defies common sense to pay two different people to do one job," said Dick Dadey, executive director of Citizens Union, a government watchdog. "It's a waste of money."

That $9 million would cover the salaries of 198 new teachers at the current annual $45,530 starting pay.

The DOE lets 40 experienced teachers collect top pay and fringe benefits, but work just one class period a day.

Under a contract agreement since 2003, the DOE excuses these veterans to work for the UFT -- currently 38 as district representatives and two as union vice presidents. The UFT pays them another salary, plus expenses.

English teacher Tom Dromgoole, for instance, collects top teacher pay, $100,049 a year, from the DOE for his slot at Leadership and Public Service HS in downtown Manhattan. But he is relieved for most of the day to serve as a UFT high school rep. The UFT supplements his salary by $50,461, records show.