My country tis of thee; land of dependency; what’s happening?

CNN Money reported in April that “more than one in three Americans lived in households that received Medicaid, food stamps or other means-based government assistance in mid-2010,” citing a study by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

“Some 26 percent of Americans lived in households where someone received Medicaid, while the figure was 15 percent for food stamps,” the report continued. “Those programs were by far the largest of the safety net.”

And, when Social Security, Medicare and unemployment benefits are included, nearly half of the nation -- more than 148 million Americans – lived in a household that received a government check, the CNN Money report continued.

It is shocking enough that so many of us get some form of government support – although Social Security and Medicare recipients are receiving money they paid into the system – but most stunning is that the price tag for all of that support hit the $2 trillion mark for fiscal 2010 and that the 2010 figure is nearly 75 percent higher than ten years ago.

Government Gone Wild reports that 41 percent of all births and 60 percent of all elderly long-term care is paid for by government, and that one out of three Americans lives in a household that receives food stamps, subsidized housing, cash welfare or Medicaid.

The food stamp program has been given the stigma-free title “SNAP” (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and the government now spends our tax money advertising food stamps to attract even more takers.

And, according to Judicial Watch, as part of the administrations’ campaign to eradicate “food insecure households,” the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) awarded what the Oregon Department of Human Services (DHS) called a $5 million “performance bonus” for ensuring that Oregonians eligible for food benefits receive them and for its “swift processing of applications.”

It is the fifth consecutive year that Oregon has been recognized by the federal government for “exceptional administration” of the entitlement program, according to the DHS new release. One of every five Oregon residents receives food stamps, 780,000 in all, and that is 60 percent higher than in 2008.

And then there are unemployment benefits, at one point lasting up to 99 weeks – nearly two years. Even in times of high unemployment there are jobs available, but generous benefits provided for an extended period dulls the incentive for people to look for work, or even to start up their own business to earn a living.

The owner of a temporary staffing agency told a Florida newspaper that some prospects just aren't interested in working; they'd rather pick up unemployment checks. Other sources say many of those out of work feel it would be silly to take a job that pays less than the unemployment benefit, while some are comfortable waiting until the “right” job comes along to go back to work or wait until benefits have almost run out to look for work.

Programs that are supposed to provide temporary assistance for people in poverty or out of work have turned into long-term welfare programs that are so generous that they remove the incentive to earn one’s own way from those they are intended to help and turn them into dependents.

President Barack Obama reminded a campaign audience recently, “We’re the country that built the Intercontinental Railroad [yes, that’s what he said], the Interstate Highway System. We built the Hoover Dam. We built the Grand Central Station.” He’s correct about that. Well, not about the Intercontinental Railroad. But America accomplished those great things through self-reliance and positive ambition; it wasn’t done with only about half of us paying taxes to support the federal government while one-third received support from the federal government.

Tax payers are the ones who fund these federal support programs, but Government Gone Wild reports that while the number receiving these benefits is on the rise, the number of tax payers is falling. During Ronald Reagan’s administration only 19 percent of households didn’t pay any federal income tax, under Bill Clinton it jumped to 25 percent, it rose to 30 percent under George W. Bush, and under Barack Obama it has jumped to 47 percent.

A warning about what results from providing too much help to people is making the rounds on the social medium Facebook. It appears in the form of a photo of a newspaper clipping that reads: “The Food Stamp Program, administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is proud be distributing the greatest amount of free meals and food stamps ever. Meanwhile, the National Park Service, administered by the U.S. Department of the Interior, asks us to ‘Please Do Not Feed the Animals.’ Their stated reason is because the animals will grow dependent on handouts and will not learn to take care of themselves.”

America is fast becoming a nation of dependents, and that is dangerous for two reasons. First, we simply can’t afford the cost of supporting so many people. But perhaps more important, continuing to rob people of the incentive to provide for themselves through over-generous government benefits is weakening the strong spirit of individualism that made this nation great. We need more, not less, of that.

Tortured reasoning transforms an unconstitutional mandate into law

Last week U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts joined Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy in correctly identifying the individual mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as unconstitutional. That is what the Supreme Court is expected to do: follow the original intent of the authors, who created a document to protect America from over-reaching government actions like this one.

Writing for the Court’s majority, Chief Justice Roberts said: "The individual mandate, however, does not regulate existing commercial activity. It instead compels individuals to become active in commerce by purchasing a product, on the ground that their failure to do so affects interstate commerce." He continued, correctly identifying the chaos that would result from finding the mandate constitutional: "Construing the Commerce Clause to permit Congress to regulate individuals precisely because they are doing nothing would open a new and potentially vast domain to congressional authority." Exactly. But the majority didn’t stop there.

Instead they decided the individual mandate is not really a mandate, it is a tax, essentially rewriting the statute and thereby making “Obamacare” the law of the land. But if, as Justice Roberts wrote, you cannot regulate individuals “because they are doing nothing,” how then can you tax individuals because they are doing nothing? This turns the definition of “taxation” on its head, taxes typically being levied on working, buying and owning, as opposed to levying taxes on not working, not buying, or not owning.

What exactly caused the Chief Justice, criticized by liberals for his judicial conservatism, to depart from his expected position? Many of those familiar with his thinking say the decision is in keeping with his values — conservative in his judicial views, but also considering the Court’s reputation. If the Court is seen as too conservative – adhering to the Constitution’s original intent too often – it may become unpopular with liberals.

Others believe he worked a brilliant bit of judicial magic by striking down the mandate, but upholding the statute’s constitutionality as a tax, preserving President Barack Obama’s signature accomplishment and allowing him to save face, but at the same time giving the law’s opponents a way to correct its many flaws.

Whatever the motivation, the ruling unfortunately opens the door for darn near any activity – or lack of activity – to be taxed by the federal government. As the legendary Chief Justice John Marshall famously said, “The power to tax is the power to destroy.”

Andrew P. Napolitano, former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, writing in The Washington Times, sees it this way: “If the feds can tax us for not doing as they have commanded, and if that which is commanded need not be grounded in the Constitution, then there is no constitutional limit to their power, and the ruling that the power to regulate commerce does not encompass the power to compel commerce is mere sophistry.”

This statute epitomizes dishonorable legislative methodology and bad law-making. Obamacare has been very unpopular with the public since it was first hatched, and it still is. Yet the Democrat majority in the House of Representatives lurched ahead, conceiving the bill behind locked doors, and the 2,700-page monstrosity was passed by the House before members even had time to read it. Remember then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrogantly telling American citizens that they couldn’t know what was in the bill until Congress passed it? Senate Democrats bought enough votes with pricey concessions to key states to eventually pass the bill.

The measure was advertised vociferously by President Obama and his fellow statists as a mandate, not a tax, and it would not cause any American “making less than $250,000 a year to pay one dime more in tax.” The Act has now been upheld by the highest court in the land because it is a tax, not a mandate, and among the 21 new taxes are seven affecting those making less than $250,000 a year, some already in effect, according to Forbes.com.

They are: 1. The Individual Mandate Excise Tax, the higher of $1,360 or 2.5 percent of adjusted gross income; 2. The Over-The-Counter Drugs Trap denying use of pre-tax funds in special accounts to buy over-the-counter medicines for allergy relief and the like without a doctor’s prescription; 3. The Healthcare Flexible Spending Account Cap of $2,500; 4. The Medical Itemized Deduction Hurdle, increased from 7 to 10 percent of adjusted gross income; 5. The Health Savings Account Withdrawal Penalty of 20 percent, up from 10 percent; 6. The Indoor Tanning Services Tax of 10 percent; 7. The Cadillac Health Insurance Plan Tax of 40 percent.

The Democrats are celebrating their prize legislation’s Alice-in-Wonderland survival of judicial review, but now have to figure out how to explain to the American people that the bill they swore was not a tax on the poor and middle class really is a tax on the poor and middle class, in fact, the biggest tax hike in history.

You cannot sensibly praise the Supreme Court for upholding your flawed law, and then claim that the basis upon which it was upheld was incorrect. That twisted logic is beyond even the Obama administration.

All pain and no gain: Manic regulation kills jobs, produces no benefits

In March of this year the federal Energy Information Administration (EIA) released data showing that in 2011 coal was responsible for 42 percent of U.S. power production, a little lower than years past, but coal still is the most commonly used fuel in producing domestic electricity.

Burning coal is dirty, but it is cleaner today than any time in the last 60  years. And mining coal is risky for workers, but so is commercial fishing, logging, flying airplanes, and farming/ranching, the four most dangerous occupations in the country. Yes, coal has its negatives, but so does every one of the energy sources suggested to replace it.

On the plus side, coal not only produces energy, it produces direct and indirect employment for hundreds of thousands of Americans, and billions in tax revenue from its production and sale, and from the income of industry businesses and workers.

Coal generates electricity in 48 states and is mined in 25 states. According to the National Mining Association (NMA) U.S. coal mining directly employs nearly 136,000 people, and the average coal miner earns $73,000 per year. For each coal mining job, an additional 3.5 jobs are created elsewhere in the economy. For example, 60,000 people work in coal-fired power plants, and thousands more work in the transportation industry delivering coal to customers. The NMA estimates that 50,000 new employees will be needed in coal mining over the next 10 years to meet demand and to replace retiring workers. And, coal is projected to be the dominant fuel for electricity generation in the U.S. through 2035, according to the EIA.

This information ought to be seriously considered when the vast army of government regulators is hard at work making life more expensive, but not necessarily better. It was clearly ignored when the Environmental Protection Agency developed the Utility MACT Rule, which establishes the maximum achievable control technology (MACT) standards for emissions of hazardous air pollutants from coal- and oil-fired power plants. Primarily, Utility MACT targets mercury emissions.

You remember mercury. It’s the poison contained in every one of the new miracle light bulbs, called CFLs, which Congress mandated to replace the popular, inexpensive and safe incandescent bulbs we have used for decades. It is also released by coal combustion and the EPA fears it will settle into water supplies and cause birth defects when consumed by pregnant women.

The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) recently commented on a study by the Competitive Enterprise Institute that disputes the EPA’s data. “The EPA's December 2000 determination that triggered the rule assumed that 7 percent of pregnant women in the United States have blood mercury concentrations exceeding the agency's reference dose. In reality, only 0.4 percent (one in every 250 pregnant women) had blood mercury levels exceeding the reference dose.”

“Furthermore, the EPA's reference dose is overly cautious: the EPA's reference dose is 1/15th the lowest exposure level associated with mild, subclinical effects in epidemiological studies,” the NCPA reports. “Finally, the EPA produces no evidence of mercury exposure at these levels having any effect on unborn children.”

The report also says “EPA estimates that each year 240,000 pregnant women in subsistence fishing households eat enough self-caught fish to endanger their children's cognitive or neurological health, yet the agency has yet to identify a single woman who fits this description.”

The EPA justifies implementing this rule by claiming that the public health benefits of limiting coal burning will be greater than the compliance costs. It claims the Rule will save $80 billion a year, but relies on achieving levels of particulate matter discharge well beyond levels generally recognized as safe.

Furthermore, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission projects the Rule will result in losing 81,000 megawatts of electricity generation, almost eight times the EPA’s estimate.

American coal plants are vastly cleaner than those in other countries, where pollution control is virtually non-existent. China now emits more mercury than the United States, India, and Europe combined, and mercury pollution wafts across the Pacific to foul our air and water. The EPA would better serve Americans if it regulated China’s coal burning.

Americans for Prosperity predicts American families and businesses will see electricity bills rise by an average of 12 percent nationwide and by as much as 24 percent in coal country, and this “burdensome regulation” will destroy over a million American jobs in the coming years.

The U.S. Senate had the opportunity last Wednesday to put a halt to this anti-coal, anti-common-sense scheme, but failed by a 53-46 vote.

Incomprehensibly, two coal-state senators, West Virginia Democrat Jay Rockefeller and Tennessee Republican Lamar Alexander, voted against the measure, along with four other Republicans. Clearly, Senators Rockefeller and Alexander have failed their constituents and their states.

The EPA grossly overstated the dangers of mercury from burning fossil fuels and grossly understated the harmful effects of Utility MACT on the public. These folks will not be satisfied until every detectable particle of every substance that at some level of concentration might be harmful to something or someone is eliminated from the Earth, and they are eager to force job losses and higher consumer costs on us trying to achieve that impossible goal.

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Going Rogue, Part VIII: The EPA’s behavior becoming more egregious

The Environmental Protection Agency. It sounds so good. So … fabulous.

But, as we have seen in this series, “It Ain’t Necessarily So.”

Run by ideologues isolated from the real world and ruled by an obsessive desire to create the impossible perfect world, the EPA is increasingly at odds with what is in the best interest of the American people, pursuing an agenda that has successfully proved immune to both common sense and to the wreckage and pain it leaves in its wake.

From declaring war on the most abundant and most-relied-upon energy sources to imposing water quality standards that common bottled water and commercial apple juice cannot pass, the EPA is likely the most oppressive and out-of-control agency in the federal government, and that, dear readers, is saying a mouthful.

Now the agency has begun using military-style aircraft to spy on Nebraska and Iowa farmers to be sure they are not violating the Clean Water Act. “Nebraskans are rightfully skeptical of an agency which continues to unilaterally insert itself into the affairs of rural America,” Nebraska Rep. Adrian Smith said.

Nebraska’s congressional delegation expressed concerns about the surveillance violating the privacy of cattle farmers and questioned its legality in a joint letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.

The spy drones operate in EPA’s Region 7, which responded to The Omaha World-Herald’s questions about the legality of the spy flights, saying that “courts, including the Supreme Court, have found similar types of flights to be legal,” and offering the assurance that the agency will only use such flights to protect people and the environment from violators of the Clean Water Act. But who assures the people the EPA will act appropriately?

And then there is the following situation.

If you happened to have stumbled on this story in the blogosphere, which is about the only place you would have seen it, you might recognize the name Al Armendariz, the director of EPA Region 6 who revealed the way EPA bureaucrats view their jobs.

Mr. Armendariz was addressing colleagues about EPA enforcement methods, using the following example from Ancient Rome to illustrate how the agency operates. “The Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean,” he said. “They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they would crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years.”

Of course, the term “crucify” was merely a figure of speech, not a literal plan, but his little homily exposes the EPA’s fondness for gleefully intimidating folks into submission. Here in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave people don’t take kindly to that kind of imperious behavior from those hired to serve us.

The video of this comment outraged many of those who saw it, one of whom was Asheville, North Carolina resident Larry Keller. Trying to reach Mr. Armendariz, Mr. Keller sent an email to an EPA external affairs director that read, "Do you have Mr. Armendariz's contact information so we can say hello? – Regards - Larry Keller."

Well, you can imagine the revulsion that must have engulfed the external affairs director, faced with a mere citizen daring to attempt to personally contact a government official and express his opinion, especially an EPA official with a PhD. How dare he ask for the mailing address, email and phone number of the exalted Mr. Armendariz and possibly intend to interrupt him in the midst of planning crucifixions.

In such cases of peaceful rebellion by an uppity citizen there was only one possible course of action, and that is exactly what the EPA external affairs director and/or his/her fellow public servants did: they sent not the requested contact info, but armed federal agents to visit Mr. Keller. But at least he wasn’t crucified! Not yet, anyway. 

Mr. Keller, however, was undeterred by this act of intimidation, and contacted NC Sen. Richard Burr's office. Sen. Burr has agreed to look into the matter, and his office says he "intends to pursue this matter vigorously."

Warning to Sen. Burr: Be careful, lest armed agents visit your home.

One piece of good news has come from this sordid tale of official abuse: Al Armendariz has resigned his post. One down; hundreds to go. The citizens won the Battle of Armendariz; they are losing the war with the EPA.

They are also losing the war against growing authoritarianism from the federal government. From over-zealous regulators without regard for the effects of their excessiveness to agencies like the Department of Education that send in SWAT teams to break down the doors of people who may – may – have some irregularities with their student loans, our government is increasingly intolerant of the individual freedoms our nation is based upon, and puts its own interests ahead of protecting those freedoms and serving the people.

What madness allows the Department of Education to believe it ever needs a SWAT team?

Thomas Jefferson said: “When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”

It is time for a change.

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Wisconsin recall debacle casts negative light on labor unions

Wisconsin’s Republican Governor Scott Walker and Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch, and three of four Republican state senators won the election last week against a public sector labor union-fueled recall movement.

Walker and Kleefisch both won handily against Democrat opponents, 53-46 percent and 53-47 percent, respectively, approximately the same margin by which Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008. 

It was a much bigger victory, however, than some news outlets would have you believe. [begin ital] The New York Times [end ital] and [begin ital]  The Washington Post, [end ital]  for example, said Gov. Walker “survives” recall, as if he won by a point or even a single vote. Some media called Mr. Obama’s 2008 seven-point victory a landslide, but with a seven-point victory, Gov. Walker merely “survived.” Six- or seven-point margins are solid wins, but not landslides, even when Mr. Obama is the winner.

At the root of this upheaval was Wisconsin’s adoption last year of sweeping reforms that curbed collective bargaining rights among government workers, brought the state’s pension system into line with private sector pension systems, and empowered public sector workers to choose whether or not to pay union dues. This bill was passed to save Wisconsin some $30 million in the 2011 fiscal year, helping to reduce a substantial budget deficit.

This was an exercise in union excess. The fact that Scott Walker won the General Election and did what he promised to do in the campaign is not sufficient reason to demand a recall. Given the frequency with which campaign promises are forgotten after the election, one could make a case that the Governor’s performance is reason for celebration.

And speaking of his performance, it has been pretty good.

When he took office on January 3, 2011 the labor force was 3,068,342 strong, 2,828,816 people were working, 239,526 were unemployed, and the unemployment rate was 7.8 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

As of April of this year, BLS numbers showed marked improvement:  the labor force was about the same at 3,068,900 workers, but 2,863,590 were employed, the number of unemployed had fallen to 205,310, and the unemployment rate was 6.7 percent. Approximately 34,000 of the unemployed had found a job. Is that level of improvement in little more than a year bad, or good?

The recall election is a mechanism designed to remove officials during a term of office, but is not a method intended to undo an election because some political faction is unhappy with the results. The people at-large made their decision, and the union faction did not prevail. Barring some illegal activity by those duly elected, everybody should just take a deep breath and wait until the next election.

The ill-conceived recall cost the state millions of dollars and distracted everyone in state government from doing the work they were elected or hired to do. According to polling data, many Democrat voters recognized that the recall was a bad idea, and voted against it because they disagreed with the recall movement more than they disagreed with Gov. Walker’s performance.

This effort is a black eye on the union, conjuring up images of children stamping their feet when they don’t get their way. It epitomizes what is wrong with labor unions, particularly public sector unions: excess.

There is nothing inherently wrong with organized labor, and indeed, there were very good reasons for labor to organize in the past. However, labor law has evolved to a point where laws now mostly control the relationship between employers and employees, eliminating the abuses that were the reason for unions to have originated. Unions simply are no longer needed to protect workers from abuse, and they now focus not on a safe and fair work environment, but on pay levels that are higher than market value and special perks, all of which boost costs for employers.

And that is particularly so in the case of public sector unions. Since government determines the labor climate and is the arbiter of labor disputes, to have a union representing government workers against the government is totally nonsensical.  

The problem posed by the Wisconsin recall madness is far less the responsibility of rank and file union members, many of whom have no choice whether to join a union or not, than of union leadership – which uses political donations and pressure to gain excessive pay, benefits and special perks for members – and the politicians who were more responsive to the lure of financial support and votes than to their responsibility to the taxpayers for whom they work.

It is not the members’ fault if they have an unrealistic level of job perks, and they do feel they are treated unfairly when someone wants to take something away from them. Their position is understandable, even if their level of protest is not.

But the reality is that the level of pay and benefits of public employees places an unfair burden on the taxpayers, and has to be fixed to help restore fiscal stability to the state, and Scott Walker’s first responsibility is to all the people of Wisconsin, not the public employee union.

It is the first step in restoring balance to the realm of public employment.

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Voter photo IDs: Are they evil incarnate or electoral salvation?

There is great consternation and wringing of hands throughout the land over the idea that in order to vote a person must show a photo ID to verify that the voter is who he or she says they are, and is registered and eligible to vote. The resistance to this common sense requirement is astonishing.

Why are so many people afraid of measures to assure that potential voters are legal and registered?

The popular excuses are 1) that requiring a photo ID places an unnecessary hardship on some legal voters, and 2) that it is really just an excuse to disenfranchise minority voters. And, some suggest, racism is at the root of this movement.

On the cable channel MSNBC, anchor Thomas Roberts interviewed former National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chairman Julian Bond, who said that voter ID laws were racist in intent.

Claims of racism are so common these days, and are an automatic response to so many things, that the term is now just one more meaningless buzzword, and that demeans true instances of racism.

Unhappy with the photo ID requirement, Georgia Democrat Congressman John Lewis, also on MSNBC, said this about voting: “To be able to cast a vote should be very simple, like getting a glass of fresh water.”

Yes, Mr. Lewis, it should be, for every legal voter who has the proper credentials.

Voting is one of the most cherished rights we have. If a right is highly cherished it is therefore important, and if voting is important, shouldn’t our electoral system have integrity beyond reproach? That is why we must insure that only legal, registered voters exercise that most cherished right.

However, the fact is that many state election systems lack integrity and are simply a mess.

An analysis by the Pew Center on the States found that close to 2 million Americans who had died were still on the books as active voters. It also found that nearly 2.75 million people were registered in more than one state, and that 12 million voter records had incorrect addresses or other errors.

There are other election problems, as well. “From voter fraud to election chicanery of all kinds, America teeters on the edge of scandal every November,” according to Dr. Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

Despite efforts to downplay it, there is ample evidence of voter fraud in the country. Remember the ACORN voter registration scandal where Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck turned up on registration forms in Nevada?

We have dead people voting and people voting who claim to be someone whose name is on the voter rolls, but is not who they are, one of the most ridiculous examples of which occurred in Washington, DC, in the shadow of the Justice Department where an undercover reporter recorded himself giving his name as (U.S. Attorney General) Eric Holder and being offered a ballot without showing an ID or being questioned about his identity.

Instead of championing efforts to clean voter rolls of dead people and non-citizens, however, Mr. Holder’s Justice Department has ordered Florida’s elections division to halt a systematic effort to purge the state’s voter rolls of non-citizen voters, and is a vocal opponent of photo ID laws.

And on the topic of voter suppression, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported those concerns are not supported by the facts: "In Georgia, black voter turnout for the midterm election in 2006 was 42.9 percent. After Georgia passed a photo ID law, black turnout in the 2010 midterm rose to 50.4 percent,” an increase of more than 17 percent. “Black turnout also rose in Indiana and Mississippi after photo IDs were required," the newspaper reported.

Furthermore, some states with voter ID requirements offer free voter ID cards. Mississippi voters approved a constitutional amendment that would require photo IDs to vote but ensured that "any voter lacking government issued photo identification may obtain photo identification without charge from the Mississippi Department of Public Safety."

Also, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, some states allow voters without ID to vote if they sign an affidavit affirming under penalty of perjury that they are the person they claim to be. And, most states allow provisional balloting so that no one would be turned away from the polls by election officials for lack of a photo ID.

If it is true that photo IDs are difficult for some voters to obtain, groups that help people register to vote can simply adapt their service to help voters acquire photo IDs, and ACORN, or whatever it now calls itself, can substitute this service for creating fraudulent voter registrations.

Complaints that photo ID requirements are efforts to disenfranchise minorities appear to be so much election year hot air, and may be aimed at blocking efforts to get unqualified voters off voter rolls.

Every honest, freedom-loving American should insist upon a system that allows only legal, registered voters to vote. Nothing less is acceptable.

Side note: A photo ID will be required to enter the 2012 Democratic National Convention this September in Charlotte. Wonder if Eric Holder will oppose that?

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More rogue-ness from the feds

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has gone to court to prevent the Colorado-based firm Regenerative Sciences from using stem cells developed in one part of your body (bone marrow) to repair damage in other parts of your body, such as joints. The FDA objects to the fact that these cells are chemicals, the use of which they have the power to regulate even though the cells are taken from your body to later be injected back into your body.

The FDA is accustomed to the process by which it requires that many years and millions of dollars be spent to approve drugs developed in a laboratory before anyone is allowed to use them. Regardless of clinical results that show use of stem cells to be highly effective, the FDA finds it intolerable to let you use the cells in your own body without prior approval by a vast and expensive bureaucracy.

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More federal government control has made things much better, right?

Most Americans probably have at best a foggy concept of the degree to which the federal government intrudes into their lives, and just how many people are paid to conduct that intrusion from dozens, perhaps hundreds, of departments, agencies, bureaus, divisions, boards and other bodies.

In March of this year the U.S. Census Bureau reported that as of March 2010, the last year for which complete data exist, there were 3,007,938 total federal employees, 2,583,768 of them working full-time, with a payroll that month of $16.2 billion.

Depending upon whom you believe, federal employees either make lots more than their private sector counterparts (according to Republicans and other small government advocates) or lots less than private sector employees (according to Democrats and federal employee union leaders). Looking at total wages and benefits, the Republicans and small government advocates are closer to right, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

A CBO report in January of this year concluded that federal employees with no more than a high school education and those with a bachelor’s degree averaged higher total compensation than their private sector counterparts by 36 percent and 15 percent, respectively. But where benefits are concerned, the lower the education level of the federal employee, the greater the disparity in paid benefits. “Average benefits for federal workers with no more than a high school diploma were 72 percent higher than for their private-sector counterparts,” while those “whose education ended in a bachelor's degree were 46 percent higher” than for similar workers in the private sector, whereas workers with “a professional degree or doctorate received roughly the same level of average benefits in both sectors.”

We euphemistically refer to federal government employees as “public servants,” but increasingly it seems that it is we who serve them. And just what is it that they are up to?

Many of them are madly creating rules and regulations with the force of law and enforcing them. Most of them were not created by Congress, the only government branch empowered to create laws, and Congress is not even specifically aware of many or most of them, except when someone writes a letter of complaint. Furthermore, all of this regulating and penalizing often occurs without oversight by anyone besides other bureaucrats.

“A man’s home is his castle” is a phrase that once represented America’s personal freedom, meaning that people enjoyed the position of rulers in their homes, and others had no right to enter without the householder's permission. That is no longer true; now, Washington is in charge.

This situation has become so perverse that attorney and author Mark Levin describes it thus: “America has become a society in which the people are wise enough to select their own leaders, but too incompetent to choose the right lightbulb.” In his brilliant book “Ameritopia: the Unmaking of America” he cites as one example of the degree to which the feds have become entangled in our day-to-day lives the government’s involvement in the food industry where “the federal budget for regulating nearly all aspects of food, from production to consumption, exceeds the entire country’s net farm income.”

And that is just for our food.

Here’s a test: Before reading further, make a list of the things in your most personal space – your home – that government at some level doesn’t regulate. It will not be an impressive or long list.

Now that you have completed the test, here are some of the things in your home about which you have little to say, courtesy of Mr. Levin: washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, dishwashing detergents, microwave ovens, toilets, showerheads, heating and cooling systems, refrigerators, freezers, furnace fans and boilers, ceiling fans, dehumidifiers, lightbulbs, certain renovations, fitness equipment, clothing, baby cribs, pacifiers, rattles and toys, marbles, latex balloons, matchbooks, bunk beds, mattresses, mattress pads, televisions, radios, cell phones, iPods, and other digital media devices, computer components, video recording devices, speakers, batteries, battery chargers, power supplies, stereo equipment, garage door openers, lawn mowers, lawn darts, pool slides, toothpaste, deodorant, dentures and virtually everything one could put in a medicine cabinet.

Things are not improving under President Barack Obama. Dr. Robert Moffit, writing for The Heritage Foundation, reports that “[s]ince President Obama took office in 2009, federal agencies have issued 75 major regulations with an annual additional cost to the economy of $38 billion. Taken altogether, the Small Business Administration last year estimated that the total cost of America’s regulatory burden reached $1.75 trillion—more than twice what Americans pay in individual income taxes,” and more than the annual budget deficits each year since 2009. And that is just from the federal government; state and local bodies also contribute.

And if it isn’t bad enough that these multitudinous rules and regulations stifle productivity and make things cost a lot more, some of them are manifestly stupid. In order to close down a business, Milwaukee, Wisconsin requires purchasing an expensive license, submitting a pile of paperwork on the inventory to be sold, and a fee based on the length of the "going out of business sale."

What has happened to the “Land of the Free” and the self-reliant spirit that made this country great?

More business-like habits in Washington might rescue the country

Some Americans fully understand the potentially cataclysmic economic situation facing the country. They are not the ones we have to worry about.

Who we have to worry about are the ones – the millions – that either do not fully comprehend the problem, or have some level of understanding and either are unconcerned about the problem, are using it to their advantage, or have no idea what to do about it. Many of the people in this group hold positions in the federal government, and are responsible for creating the crisis and/or perpetuating it and making it worse.

While government and business are distinctly different creatures, there are aspects of sound business operation that belong in the Federal Government Operators Manual, and Chapter I is “Fiscal Responsibility.”

The Prime Directive, derived from the U.S. Constitution, is a simple one: Government must remain small with limited scope and interfere minimally in the lives of the citizens it exists to serve. It must be a good steward of the people’s finances, taxing minimally and spending frugally.

If such a manual existed and if it had the force of law, many politicians and bureaucrats would have been jailed or fired for their part in creating a crisis that more and more resembles to a frightening degree what now threatens socialist Europe.

The situation is this: The U.S. has borrowed debt amounting to $50,000 for every citizen in the country totaling nearly $16 trillion. Despite this enormous and growing debt, in most years the federal government willfully spends more than it takes in, averaging deficits of $1.3 trillion annually since 2009, which is approximately 40 percent more than revenue, and has increased the national debt by about a third.

To say it is foolish and risky to have done this for years on end produces one of those “well, duh!” moments. Yet, that is what we have done, and continue to do. Those Americans more concerned with the fate of the nation than with their own political well-being know that we cannot continue on this course.

There are three options to correct this crisis: Reduce spending; increase revenue; or a combination of both. The latter is the best option.

Some people advocate deeply cutting the out-of-control and frequently wasteful and fraudulent spending. These people are responsible citizens and conscientious public servants. They are accused of wanting to throw people out on the street, take food from babies, and other equally cartoonish slurs by those who want to maintain the status quo, people who a) benefit from wasting your tax dollars or b) benefit from government misspending.

Government taxation and spending is where common business practice should be applied: what would a business with costs 40 percent higher than its income do? Unlike government, which can – but shouldn’t – print money at will, if it wants to survive, a business must have more income than spending. Government should have a balance of the two.

One of the first things a business would do is cut non-essential expense. Here, the federal government has a vast array of opportunities: combine the dozens of wasteful duplicated services, reduce employee expense through attrition; fire unproductive and self-serving federal workers, and take the virtually unprecedented step of shutting down programs that do not work. Like Head Start, a true tribute to government inefficiency that a Department of Health and Human Services study found has wasted $150 billion since 1965, but produces no lasting benefits for participants.

It could scale back the frenzied regulatory efforts of the EPA and other agencies that spend our money killing jobs, raising costs for businesses and consumers, but produce negligible improvements, or do more harm than good. It could stop agencies like the GSA from robbing taxpayers to fund lavish get-togethers posing as training activities, and stop giving away the public’s money on dumb ideas like the half-billion President Barack Obama “loaned” to the failed solar company Solyndra, and other self-defeating assaults on the private sector. It could sell the 14,000 federally owned real estate properties that now sit empty and unproductive.

The government could give up its predatory attitude toward businesses and the wealthy in its futile effort to increase government revenue, and the politicians could replace their efforts to gin up class envy with practical steps that would foster job creation, thereby broadening the tax base and actually increasing tax revenue. The idea of raising taxes on rich folks might cause some people to get all tingly, but it won’t make a significant difference in balancing out the treacherous over-spending in which the federal government continues to indulge.

Federal government fiscal negligence predates Mr. Obama’s presidency by many years, but the sign that proclaims “The Buck Stops Here” is on the desk he campaigned so aggressively to earn in 2008, and before he asks a single American to pay a penny more in taxes to support a bloated bureaucracy or higher costs resulting from excessive regulation, he needs to get his administration under control. Some or perhaps most of the ideologues now running the administration are not up to the task, but the country has lots of capable people outside government that can do the job.

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