Free Republic

After years of rapid growth during the Obama administration, the cost of federal regulations is now bigger than the entire economies of all but nine countries in the world. That's according to the latest annual report on the regulatory state issued by the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute, titled "Ten Thousand Commandments." Compiling reports of compliance costs from various government agencies and outside sources, author Clyde Wayne Crews found that the "regulation tax" imposed on the economy now tops $1.86 trillion. By comparison, Canada's entire GDP is $1.82 trillion. India's is $1.84 trillion. The problem, Crews notes, is that the combined...

Throughout the country, states are looking for ways to energize their economies and become more competitive. Each state confronts this task with a set of policy decisions unique to their own situation, but not all state policies lead to economic prosperity. Using years of economic data and empirical evidence from each state, the authors identify which policies can lead a state to economic prosperity. Rich States, Poor States not only identifies these policies but also makes sound research-based conclusions about which states are poised to achieve greater economic prosperity and those that are stuck on the path to a lackluster...

The Department of Energy is looking to regulate two types of household lamps. The Energy Department's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy announced Monday in the Federal Register it is considering new energy conservation standards for general service fluorescent lamps (GSFLs) and incandescent reflector lamps (IRLs). The Energy Department estimates the rules will save the public billions in energy bills over the next three decades and have substantial environmental benefits. But the agency also expects the rules will cost manufacturers more than $90 million, which could lead some to close up shop and cut jobs. It is weighing the...

WASHINGTON – The federal government wants to ban sales of electronic cigarettes to minors and require approval for new products and health warning labels under regulations being proposed by the Food and Drug Administration. While the proposal being issued Thursday won't immediately mean changes for the popular devices, the move is aimed at eventually taming the fast-growing e-cigarette industry.

It’s an improvement, I suppose, over that one time last year when they actually tried to penalize refiners for not complying with the previous year’s standard which also vastly overestimated the amount of the required cellulosic biofuels that would exist in the real world rather than inside their self-righteous faux-green fantasies, but… that is hardly cause for celebration. Via The Hill: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Tuesday retroactively lowered the volume of cellulosic biofuel that refiners must blend into traditional fuels, aligning the 2013 mandated volume to the actual amount of fuels produced.EPA’s original mandate for 2013 was based...

With the exception of the IRS I think we have gotten the unwanted attention of just about every federal, state and local agency that exists. The gauntlet of regulations, fees and penalties have become so daunting that our management team just withdrew our permit application and decided not to pursue the expansion in our county or even state. The deck is so stacked against business today it is necessary to ask oneself if the goal of our government is to create a post industrial society out of America

So many businesses are just someone’s dream—to make an honest living, to serve the community something it’s missing, to use talents to their greatest potential. Every roadblock the government erects makes those dreams slightly less possible. And, those roadblocks aren’t tripping up the lavishly rich. In this case, an unnecessary regulation in Mississippi was keeping hundreds of working- and middle-class black women from making a living doing something their community wanted to pay them for— hairbraiding. One woman fought for seven years to change that. The result is pretty much the whole reason I believe what I believe.I’ve known this...

Anyone wondering why the U.S. economy can't seem to grow at its usual pace should examine one product category where production is booming: federal regulation. Washington set a new record in 2013 by issuing final rules consuming 26,417 pages in the Federal Register. While plenty of government employees deserve credit for this milestone, leadership matters. And by this measure President Obama has never been surpassed in the Oval Office. The latest rule-making tally comes from the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Wayne Crews, who on April 29 will publish his annual review of federal regulation in "Ten Thousand Commandments." This is important...

(CNN) – Hoping to help close the gap between workers' skills and the needs of businesses, President Barack Obama on Wednesday will announce he's putting hundreds of millions toward job training programs that produce highly skilled workers. Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will head to a community college in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania to make the announcement. The funding will come in two parts: $500 million toward a new job training competition that pairs community colleges with businesses, and $100 million for new apprenticeship programs to train workers. The White House says the new initiatives are meant to combat a...

Former Sen. Jim DeMint, the president of the Heritage Foundation, writes in his new book—“Falling in Love With America Again”—about the cozy relationship between big business and big government. “Almost all big corporations benefit from, advocate for, and downright like big government,” DeMint writes. […] “These big companies like to write regulations that make it harder for the smaller companies to compete with them,” DeMint said. “The large companies can deal with a regulatory maze much better than the small companies can. Like the big tobacco companies wanted the FDA to regulate cigarettes because they knew the smaller companies could...

In his State of the Union address earlier this year, President Obama vowed to wield his executive powers when faced with congressional resistance to his legislative agenda: “America does not stand still – and neither will I. So wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation … that’s what I am going to do.”This provocative declaration was startling in its bluntness, but it was hardly a new development. For the last five years, the president has aggressively exploited regulation to get his way. In fact, the Obama administration is very likely the most regulatory in history, issuing 157 new...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Friday it will take a hard look at whether new regulations are needed to cut emissions of methane from the oil and gas industry, part of President Barack Obama's plan to address climate change. Regulators will start by proposing new rules later this year to reduce venting and flaring from oil and gas wells on public lands, one way to begin slashing emissions of the potent greenhouse gas, said Dan Utech, Obama's top energy and climate aide. Most oil and gas production takes place on privately owned land. The Environmental Protection Agency...

In a major setback for innovation in the urban transportation market, the Seattle City Council voted Monday to cap the number of cars that ride-on-demand services like Uber and Lyft may have on the road at any one time. The mayor of Seattle, Ed Murray, has said he will sign it. Under a new ordinance, which is the first of its kind in the United States, companies like Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar will be limited to having 150 cars each on the road at a time. This means that ride-on-demand services will collectively have no more than 450 cars on...

eleste Kelly, Grace Granatelli and Stacey Kollman discovered a profitable niche in the animal therapy market when they found they could turn their passions into successful small businesses. They spent hundred of hours learning animal massage techniques, earned private certification and began their respective animal therapy ventures. Today, they have successful businesses and loyal clients. However, according the Arizona State Veterinary Medical Examining Board, Celeste, Grace, and Stacey are criminals facing jail time. A recent Arizona regulation requires these hardworking entrepreneurs to give up their professions, or pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to become licensed veterinarians (an education that...

Via TCOT Report'Is the Prosecution of ‘Pocketknife Felon’ Jordan Wiser about Electing Harold Specht to a Judgeship?'Many have read with outrage the story of 18 year old Jordan Wiser; a young man whose car was searched without permission at his vocational school, resulting in his expulsion, arrest, felony indictment, imprisonment, and separation from his beloved, terminally ill grandfather. The prosecutor in this case, Harold E Specht, Jr. has been quoted saying the reason for Wiser’s arrest and felony prosecution centers on the discovery of a four-inch pocketknife, which was locked in the trunk, inside his EMT kit – a duffel...

President Obama has ordered his officials to step on the gas and clear as much of his regulatory agenda as possible during the twilight of his time in office. The clock is ticking, creating a sense of urgency in the administration to crank out his new rules without delay. Just a year into the president’s second term, experts and former administration officials say it is do-or-die time for scores of regulatory initiatives across the federal government that could shape his legacy. So Obama is spurring agencies on. “He has directed his entire administration to move as quickly as possible in...

Now, farmers are discovering that the FDA's proposed rules would curtail many techniques that are common among organic growers, including spreading house-made fertilizers, tilling cropland with grazing animals, and irrigating from open creeks. Suddenly, from small family operations nestled in the foothills of Appalachia to the sophisticated organic-grower networks that serve Los Angeles and San Francisco, the farms that celebrity chefs and food-conscious consumers jostle to buy from are facing an unexpected adversary. They're fighting back. Even though full enforcement of the rules is still years away, they are warning customers that some farms would have to close. "They are...

In keeping with his trending pattern of throwing bureaucratic bones to environmentalist groups whilst doing everything he can think of to “act where Congress won’t” (like his administration’s decision last week to initiate a $1 billion “climate resilience fund” that will combat problems of the Obama administration’s own making the effects of weather around the country), President Obama announced today the latest round of fuel-efficiency regulations to be handed down on high from the ever wise and abstemious Environmental Protection Agency: Speaking at a Safeway distribution center in Maryland, Obama instructed environmental and transportation agencies to get to work on...

President Obama—the imperial President, the “I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone” President who can’t wait to show us his “year of action”—once vowed to do exactly the opposite. "The biggest problems that we’re facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all. And that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m President of the United States of America." That was candidate Obama back in 2008. This comment somehow slipped under the radar for the past few years and resurfaced...

In Europe, where fracking is heavily regulated or prohibited altogether, consumers pay more than twice for natural gas than what they do in America (currently $11.59 per mBtu vs $4.78). As consumers, businesses, and electric utilities pay more, the result is a stalled economy and lower standard of living. Thanks in part to its large investment in solar energy, Spain's per capita GDP in current U.S. dollars has dropped from $31,679 in 2010 to $28,624 in 2012. Based on his recent words and actions, Obama wants the same for the U.S. Over half the homes in America heat with natural...