Free Republic

The most recent cover of Time Magazine — or I should say.., given its parent company's recent decision "reducing ... circulation and frequency" of the formerly iconic publication — calls President Donald Trump's cabinet "The Wrecking Crew" on a mission of "dismantling government as we know it."  Separate reports singled out EPA Director Scott Pruitt, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and HUD Secretary Ben Carson for scrutiny.The cover's word selection is obviously out of line, as none of the three is proposing to "dismantle" — meaning to "take (something) apart" (and not put it back together) — the agencies under their charge....

The government has added an average of 13,000 new restrictions annually for the past 20 years. Under Trump, the number of new regulations is near zero. In a speech on October 11 promoting his tax-reform plan, Donald Trump spoke rosily of America’s economic revival, crediting himself for having cleared the way for growth. “Since January of this year, we have slashed job-killing red tape all across our economy,” the president said. “We have stopped or eliminated more regulations in the last eight months than any president has done during an entire term. It’s not even close.” It seemed a characteristic...

Monday is “Deregulation Day” for the federal government as declared by President Donald Trump, and thus is an opportune time to deliver the findings of The Heritage Foundation’s latest tracking of regulation. The bad news is that the final year of the Obama administration brought the private-sector costs of its reign of regulatory excess to $122 billion a year. And that’s the low-ball figure. On the other hand, the Trump administration, in its first six months, launched a multifaceted reform agenda that has slowed regulatory output. Some rules have been blocked and others rescinded, along with the withdrawal of hundreds...

'Public expenditures on the council and related forums have produced few benefits' President Trump, while still a candidate, promised that he would get a better deal for America. Or, in fact, better deals. Since he’s taken office, he’s talked about cutting funding for the United Nations, renegotiating the NAFTA trade deal. He already pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord. All of which have taken extensive discussion and defending. On Friday, he decided to get a better deal for the U.S. with a simple move: he simply canceled an entire federal program begun by President Obama. It was...

The number of people working for the federal government has declined by 13,000 in 2017, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. At the same time, overall government employment in the United States increased by 7,000 as the number of people working at the state government level and the local government level both increased. Meanwhile, the significant increase in manufacturing jobs that started last December halted in September as the nation lost 1,000 jobs in that sector. {..snip..}

The National Institutes of Health is spending nearly $700,000 for a study that will pay obese teenagers to not eat as much. A University of Minnesota study that began earlier this year is analyzing whether teens who receive financial incentives for replacing meals with liquid shakes is an effective anti-obesity tool. "Severe obesity is the fastest growing category of pediatric obesity, with a reported prevalence near 6 [percent] in the United States," according to the grant for the project. "Unfortunately, conventional treatment approaches rarely result in sufficient weight loss in adolescents with severe obesity; therefore, innovative and effective strategies are...

The National Institutes of Health is spending roughly $200,000 on a study of tweets about electronic cigarettes. The project, "Toward Fine-Grained E-Cigarette Surveillance on Social Media," will analyze hashtags and "follower-friend connections" of people talking about e-cigarettes online. Operating on the premise that the popular smoking cessation products are harmful, researchers say it is necessary to document what is being said on Twitter and Reddit for one year. {..snip..}

Misunderstandings and neglect create more confusion in this world than trickery and malice. At any rate, the last two are certainly much less frequent. –Goethe It is our nature, whenever we are examining the failings of our enemies, to assume the absolute worst of motives and purposes. We want our enemies to be evil, so all of their mistakes and failures are cast as proof of their villainy. It’s human nature. This is particularly true in politics, where there is no benefit to acting honorably. In fact, the normal virtues are vices when it comes to jockeying for power in...

Why thieves love America’s health-care system! INVESTIGATORS in New York were looking for health-care fraud hot-spots. Agents suggested Oceana, a cluster of luxury condos in Brighton Beach. The 865-unit complex had a garage full of Porsches and Aston Martins—and 500 residents claiming Medicaid, which is meant for the poor and disabled. Though many claims had been filed legitimately, some looked iffy. Last August six residents were charged. Within weeks another 150 had stopped claiming assistance, says Robert Byrnes, one of the investigators. Health care is a tempting target for thieves. Medicaid doles out $415 billion a year; Medicare (a federal...

The past two weeks have not been kind to the Trump administration. Aided and abetted by a press drunk on their own moral certitude and delusions of Watergate-era public spiritedness, the unelected arms of the executive branch have begun asserting themselves as the hall monitors of democracy, who can hobble or even remove an elected leader simply for failing to live up to their swamp-generated standards of propriety. It is dangerous, disgusting, and dispiriting, and if the President wants to serve a full term or see any of his agenda enacted, he needs to get a handle on it.Obviously the...

Over the past eight decades, Congress has gradually relinquished its lawmaking role and left it to the administrative state, said a conservative senator at a Capitol Hill event on Wednesday. “Many Americans now feel that they are not in control of their own government,” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said during an event hosted at the Federalist Society’s fifth annual Executive Branch Review Conference. “The administrative state is designed to be insulated from the will of the people.” The Utah senator said that one way he is working to combat this phenomenon is through an initiative he has started called Article...

Subtitle: How to Neuter the Administrative State. Newt Gingrich’s 1996 Congressional Review Act (CRA) is a Constitutional counterthrust to an unconstitutional fact of life. Presented in the form of regulations, the executive branch writes most of the laws we live under, in violation of Article I § 1. Loathing the CRA. In this inverted reality of legislative power, unelected bureaucrats write the laws for the nation. Agencies do not submit proposed regulations for congressional approval. Instead, in our corrupted system, regulations go into effect unless congress and the president stop them! I loathe the CRA because, without saying, it elevates...

As President Donald Trump reaches his 100th day in the White House on April 29, he will have worked with Congress to rescind more regulations using the Congressional Review Act than any other president. “We’re excited about what we’re doing so far. We’ve done more than that’s ever been done in the history of Congress with the CRA,” Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., told The Daily Signal in an interview, referring to the law called the Congressional Review Act. The Congressional Review Act, the tool Trump and lawmakers are using, allows Congress to repeal executive branch regulations. Once the House and...

Recently, President Trump signed a landmark executive order (EO) largely curtailing the climate change initiatives of President Obama. According to American Action Forum (AAF) research, this order addresses $14.6 billion in past rulemakings and more than one million paperwork burden hours. Designed to promote domestic energy, “with particular attention to oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear energy resources,” the order directs federal agencies to “suspend, revise, or rescind” past regulations, mainly from EPA and the Department of Interior. The order also states that these efforts may work in conjunction with EO 13,771, which established a regulatory budget in the United...

'Profound' benefits from deregulation for taxpayers! President Donald Trump and Congress have saved an additional $60 billion in regulatory costs by rolling back Obama administration rules, according to a new report. The American Action Forum, a center-right policy institute, released a report Tuesday documenting the most recent ways the administration and Congress have used the Congressional Review Act to repeal regulations. The report found the recent repeal and delay of regulations could lead to $86 billion in net fiscal effects for taxpayers from deregulation. {..snip..}

On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump promised to roll back federal regulations. And at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in February, chief strategist Steve Bannon said that the goal of the administration was the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” Trump has delivered on those pledges, signing over a dozen laws reversing Obama-era regulations, marking the most substantial legislative achievement of his first 100 days in office. Politico has downplayed Trump’s slew of repeal laws, describing them as “the only substantive bills Trump has signed so far.” And, in keeping with a media-wide effort to separate Trump from his...

President Donald Trump campaigned to reduce regulations and unleash American jobs. He has unraveled the administrative state in 20 ways. The 20 measures are: {..snip..}

If the Trump administration wants to “dismantle the administrative state,” it might examine state-based efforts to tame the bureaucracy—the oldest being that of Georgia, where a Democratic governor moved state employees away from stringent civil service protections that blocked accountability. {..snip..}

It’s not law yet, and it doesn’t cut overall spending that much. Nor does it significantly cut the deficit or come close to balancing the budget, which will never come under control until the 800 lb. elephant in the room — “entitlements” — are gutted dramatically. And it doesn’t go as far as I would in slashing and burning the DC bureaucracy — largely unconstitutional — a giant sucking sound of redistribution of wealth from hardworking Americans to the blood-sucking leeches in the nation’s capitol. {..snip..}

In his first public remarks since the election, White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon recently told a packed house at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that the “deconstruction of the administrative state” was one of the major goals of the Trump administration. In so doing, Bannon took aim at our modern form of government, in which legislative, executive, and judicial powers are delegated to myriad agencies and bureaus that have come to comprise a fourth branch of government. For constitutionalists of all stripes, the administrative state undermines the idea of representative government by empowering bureaucrats at the expense of...