More Control: Part Two

The amount of government regulation of the private sector makes me sicker everyday. With the health care debacle passed, we must now begin to pay attention to the other regulatory measures trying to be shoved down our throats. Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying forget about health care...we must repeal it! However, I feel issues such as cap and tax, as well as government takeovers are being neglected.

I'll begin with Sen. Dodd's new proposal. In his bill, to make it look good, he has included some consumer safety measures (credit card companies, etc.) that look good to even some conservatives (Rush Limbaugh has even admitted a few are decent). However, these measures are designed to detract from the main piece of legislation in his bill. This bill creates a $50 Billion slush fund that the President and Treasury Secretary can utilize to randomly take over any company, fire its board of directors, or its employees, or even bring it under federal control...this is not a "bailout" persay, more of a "we're gonna shut you down."

What is Dodd's solution? Blame Wall Street. "Cracking down on the biggest players is critical to ending bailouts. And if a Wall Street firm does become too large or too complex and poses a grave threat to our financial stability, the Federal Reserve has the power to restrict its risky activities, restrict its growth, and, Mr. President, even to break up those institutions." It always amuses me how those in Washington are convinced they know how to run a business, where many of them don't even have the slightest idea of working in the private sector...especially Obama. Former Labor Secretary Reich has a similar quote from his interview with Campbell Brown of the C(linton) N(ews) N(etwork); suggesting the tight regulation of banks. "We all pay every time a bank gets into trouble, Campbell. No bank should be too big to fail. In fact, I would personally rather, in the bill, there be a limit on the size of all banks. No bank should be larger than a hundred billion dollars in assets." Thanks Reich. This is how you make an economy fail.

Lastly, cap and trade (cap & tax). This is one bill that makes me ill. I won't discuss this long, because it is just fundamentally wrong in many ways. The one thing that sticks out to me, and that is similar to the health care debate is how the government is once again asserting its authority on how to run a business better than a business owner. It is an inefficient system that punishes a business for either buying too many pollution credits (can't return to gov't), or not buying enough (fines/taxes). It's a lose-lose situation for our job creators.

November 2010 should be very interesting...