Just to be clear here. Tea Partiers and conservatives aren’t the friends of big business that progressives like to paint them as. Smaller government and a free market with limited regulation stimulate the economy and raise the standards for all. Socialism with its government controls creates an environment for corruption by politicians and businessmen alike.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government controlled “private enterprises” which were at the heart of the housing bubble, but since they were already so heavily regulated, they’re left out of even the latest financial reform legislation. WalMart supports higher minimum wages because they already pay higher wages, and the measures will hurt Target’s bottom line. Goldman-Sach’s “loves regulations” because they own the legislators:

Remember, out of every dollar that Goldman Sachs spends on buying political influence, 73 cents goes to Democrats. And, as NR has reported more than once, it's not just Goldman, and not just Wall Street. The Democrats are the preferred party of big, entrenched business interests, with a few important exceptions.

via Beer and a Shot: You’ll Need It After Reading These Pieces – Kevin D. Williamson – The Corner on National Review Online.

Gee! What about that separation of church and state? So now the “sanctioned” churches will become mouthpieces for the Obama administration’s messages on Climate Change, Economics and Poverty?

If the Obama administration has its way, the gospel of climate change will be coming to a pulpit near you. That at least seems to be the dream of the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships—a 25-member group of leaders from across the religious spectrum that is part of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

Last month, the council spent a day at the White House briefing senior administration officials on its “final report of recommendations” for improving collaboration between the government and religious organizations. The 164-page document, entitled “A New Era of Partnerships,” takes up the “priority areas” identified by President Obama—Economic Recovery and Domestic Poverty, Fatherhood and Healthy Families, Environment and Climate Change, Global Poverty and Development, and Interreligious Cooperation.

Poverty, families, interreligious co-operation: All pretty standard. But what does an office created to help better provide social services to the needy have to do with climate change?

via The Green Shepherd | The Weekly Standard.

“We’re U.S. citizens; we were born here,” said Jessica Perez, a Tolleson High School student. “It’s not right that they separate us from our parents.”

Arizona immigration bill: H.S. students leave school to join Capitol protest.

‘The presumed right to travel, however, is firmly established in U.S. law and precedent. In U.S. v Guest, 383 U.S. 745 (1966), the Court noted, “It is a right that has been firmly established and repeatedly recognized.” In fact, in Shapiro v Thompson, 394 U.S. 618 (1969), Justice Stewart noted in a concurring opinion that “it is a right broadly assertable against private interference as well as governmental action. Like the right of association, … it is a virtually unconditional personal right, guaranteed by the Constitution to us all.” ‘

http://www.usconstitution.net/constnot.html#travel

And now for two words we should ALL be familiar with: CRONY CAPITALISM

“The Democratic Party is closer to corporate America — and to Wall Street in particular — than many Democrats would care to admit.”

“In fact, Goldman is not opposed to Obama’s Wall Street Bailout Bill at all. As a Goldman official told Politico Monday: “We’re not against regulation. We’re for regulation. We partner with regulators.”

“Obtaining a carve-out isn’t rocket science. Just give Chairman Dodd (D-CT) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) a ****load of money.” And loads of money is what Wall Street has been giving to the authors of the Wall Street Bailout Bill. The Wall Street banker at the center of Goldman’s SEC fraud complaint recently solicited money from his banker friends for Sen. Schumer describing him as “one of the few members of Congress that has consistently supported the hedge fund industry.”

via Morning Bell: The Crony Capitalist Threat to Our Economic Freedom | The Foundry: Conservative Policy News..

BTW: Dodd is the one who designed the enhanced regulations now being debated. Did YOUR special interest give his campaign as much money as Wall Street?

The whole article is very informative. It shows how easy it is to manipulate a populace by getting them to demand we “just do SOMETHING” in response to endless waves of crisis after crisis.

If you’re going to talk the talk, you’ve got to walk the walk. Let’s look at a pair of examples for this Earth Day.

First the talk:

“Now, there are those who still cling to the notion that we ought to just continue doing what we do; that we can’t change; Americans like to use a lot of energy, that’s just how we are; that government has neither the responsibility nor the reason to address our dependence on energy sources even though they undermine our security and threaten our economy and endanger our planet.

“And then there is this even more dangerous idea — the idea that there’s nothing we can do about it: our politics is broken, our people are unwilling to make hard choices. So politicians decide, look, even though we know it’s something that has to be done, we’re just going to put it off. That’s what happened for the last three, four, five decades. Everybody has known that we had to do something but nobody wanted to actually go ahead and do it because it’s hard.” — President’s Earth Day address

http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/obama-earth-day-47042302#ixzz0lqIpuJ00

And now the Walk:

“The parallel visits of Air Force One (a 747/VC-25 aircraft) and Air Force Two (a 757/C-32A aircraft) will delay dozens, if not hundreds of commercial flights at Kennedy and LaGuardia and other nearby airports as no-fly zones are implemented. Jets will be forced to circle and burn more fuel as they wait for the VIPs to come and go. Their security contingents consisting of dozens of cars, SUVs and helicopters will burn even more. Throw in thousands of commuters’ cars and delivery trucks sitting idle in traffic as law enforcement closes large swaths of the city and you have yourself a very Earth-unfriendly day.”

via Obama Earth Day – Carbon Footprint of Air Force One – Wall Street Speech at Cooper Union | NYCAviation.com | Planespotting and Aviation Photography, Breaking Airline News, Aviation Discussion.

Okay, so now Chucky Schumer wants further legislation to ban carry-on fees on airlines.

Joe Scarborough: “Should the Federal Government get involved in this issue?”

Chuckie: “Well, sure! We regulate airlines, we regulate everything else. Why can’t we regulate something that people want?”

Morning Joe: Schumer on financial reform and banning carry-on fees.  (about 1:18)

I think the idea to charge fees for carry-on bags is idiotic, but so’s the checked bag fee. Let’s be serious, though: The airlines cut the costs as much as possible to stay competitive with each other. therefore, they advertise lower basic (discount) fares to attract passengers, then recoup their costs in the add-on fees. One airline will offer a flight for $149 and charge an additional $45 for a bag. The next will charge $225 for the flight and offer free carry-ons. The first will be more attractive to the passenger who has no need for a carry-on, the latter will lure the passenger who can’t go without.

People like Chuckie somehow think that a government regulation will force the first airline to pass up the additional fee, and STILL offer the $149 fare. I think the new law would make it more likely that all the airlines will wind up charging the $225 fare (and higher).

We can fly coast-to-coast for a pittance because of competition between airlines, not because of government regulations. Extra laws only provide corporations with shields to hide behind, while they work through the loopholes.

I think that’s about right:

“President Obama believes that diplomacy is the ultimate intellectual tool to solve world problems,” Lehman tells us. “What he doesn’t realize is that diplomacy is the shadow that is cast by a strong and capable military and an administration that knows how to use if effectively. It’s not some blunt instrument.”

–John Lehman, Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of the Navy

via Lehman: China Gives ‘Naive’ Obama the ‘Slow Roll’ – Robert Costa – The Corner on National Review Online.

There are others with questions (opinions) as well…

The Kremlin realized that the question of how much shale gas Poland will be extracted will depend on which political party wins the next elections there. One option: the party of late Polish President Lech Kaczynski. He was an ardent nationalist, populist, anti-Communist and a man who experienced deep personal pain over the Katyn massacre. Kaczynski made a point of attending commemorations at the site every year.

The other option is the party of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a pragmatist who is ready to be friends with everyone, except Kaczynski — the two refused to even speak to each other.

And then, three days before the commemoration, the two prime ministers — Putin and Tusk — met at Katyn. They especially came in advance so as not to invite Kaczynski and to outflank him.

Three days later, Kaczynski — the unpopular, bad-tempered and despondent man whom opinion polls indicated would lose his re-election bid to any other contender  — flew to Smolensk. He took the entire Polish elite with him in hopes that his personal visit would outdo the pre-emptive showing by the archrival Tusk and the despised Putin.

And when he was told that dense fog shrouded the area and that flight controllers were attempting to reroute the airplane to an alternate airport, it was undoubtedly Kaczynski who gave the command to land anyway, suspecting that the fog was just a political ruse instigated by Putin to disrupt Kaczynski’s participation in the Katyn ceremony.

Putin and Tusk landed at the same Smolensk airport just three days before Saturday’s crash to participate in their own Katyn commemoration ceremonies. For their arrival, special navigation equipment was brought to the Smolensk airport to provide additional safety. It is possible that this equipment was removed before Kaczynski’s plane landed. That would add even more fog to the mysterious crash.

via Scent of Shale Gas Hangs Over Katyn | Opinion | The Moscow Times.

Of course, how credible is the Moscow Times?  I dunno.  Better than Pravda?

Reader, help me here: one of two things seems to be going on. The more a state sets down rules, the more they are simply ignored, to such a degree that basic and necessary zoning and health statutes become more laxly enforced than in red-state, small government cultures.

Or is it  that the state regulators feel enforcement of  myriad of rules would be unfair to, or impossible with, the illegal alien Hispanic community? I rode by one compound, counted five extraneous homesteads of sorts behind the main frame house, a dozen dogs, and all sorts of illegal wiring schemes—a regulator’s dream? My hunch is that the bureaucrat regulator would rather spend time in the Sierra hassling a compliant cabin owner I know for putting on a new metal roof that was without the properly-approved tint.

via Works and Days » A Tour Through Recession America.

VDH notices here something I’ve also seen.  As our legislators churn out countless new laws and regulations every year, it becomes impossible to know or enforce all of them (many are actually contradictory).  This leaves it to the regulators to decide arbitrarily which rule is enforced, and which citizen is regulated.  They exercise their discretion in these matters to control the populace, ignoring infractions of supporters, cracking down on opponents.

Hayek points out in a footnote to “The Road to Serfdom”:

According to the classical exposition by A. V. Dicey in The Law of the Constitution (8th ed., p. 198) the rule of law “means, in the first place, the absolute supremacy or predominance of regular law as opposed to the influence of arbitrary power, and excludes the existence of arbitrariness, of prerogative, or even of wide discretionary authority on the part of government”.

The sheer number of laws out there weigh heavily upon the concept of the Rule of Law, tipping it so severely it threatens to collapse.