Tag Archives: Regulation

News

Canadian government to limit environmentalist obstruction of energy development

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From Fox Business: the Canadians embrace federalism.

Excerpt:

The Canadian government released details Tuesday of its plan to dramatically streamline reviews for big energy and mining projects, capping the timeline for federal reviews and ceding more regulatory oversight to the country’s provinces.

The Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said for months it would move to speed up the regulatory review of big energy, mining and infrastructure projects. It has expressed frustration at the sometimes-lengthy review timelines for big projects.

Mr. Harper’s government said in its annual budget announcement last month that it would cap federal reviews. Resources Minister Joe Oliver released details Tuesday, saying that federally-led hearings would be applied only to major initiatives that risk some environmental harm.

Further, the government said it was prepared to hand over more responsibility for the review to Canadian provinces, so long as their regulations meet or exceed federal standards. Canadian provinces already enjoy considerable regulatory oversight.

“It is counterproductive to have the federal and provincial governments completing separate reviews of the same project,” Oliver said in a speech in Toronto.

[…]The government had previewed in its budget last month that reviews for major projects would be limited to 24 months. Meanwhile, regular inter-provincial pipeline reviews, as conducted by the National Energy Board, would be limited to 18 months.

Oliver said Tuesday that Enbridge Inc.’s (ENB) proposed Northern Gateway pipeline – which envisions shipping oil from Alberta to Canada’s West Coast — would benefit from the quicker review. The line has been mired in stiff opposition from native groups in British Columbia, and the government has accused foreign-funded environmental groups of tying up the project in regulatory hearings. Government officials said the new rules would also limit who could participate as intervenors in the review process.

[…]In Toronto, Oliver said the current process is unworkable, with over 40 federal departments involved in reviews. He said he would pare that back to only three federal agencies: the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency; the National Energy Board; and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

The Canadian process, as it stands, forces investors to go “through hoops and hurdles as far as the eye can see,” Oliver said. “We simply have to turn that around.”

Canadians don’t want to scare businesses away from Canada – they want the jobs to come to Canada. That’s the exact opposite of what Obama’s socialist “Environmental Protection Agency” does – they regulate energy development, in order to block it or slow it down.

And Canada lowered corporate taxes to 15% compared to our 35% – and their revenues held steady.

Canada: Corporate tax cuts, not stimulus spending
Canada: Corporate tax cuts, not stimulus spending

They cut their corporate tax rate, but then businesses saw the lower rate and just kept on expanding in order to make more money. As businesses grow, they pay more in taxes. So government revenues from taxes haven’t dropped at all, even with the lower corporate tax rates! More businesses moved in to Canada to capitalize on the lower tax rates, generating revenue for the government. More workers moved off of unemployment and welfare as demand for labor grew, and they started paying income taxes and sales taxes, generating even more revenue for the government. Do you know what makes consumers more confident, so that they spend more? Having a job.  Not being dependent on government.

Look at their unemployment rate:

Canada and US unemployment rates
Canada and US unemployment rates

When we embraced “stimulus” spending, they went for the corporate tax cuts. Our unemployment rate used to be LOWER than theirs, before Pelosi and Reid took over Congress in January 2007. Now we are HIGHER than they are. That’s not rhetoric – that’s data. Even though Canada’s economy is linked to ours, and has suffered as a result of that, they have been signing free trade deals left, right and center. They did this in order to decouple themselves from our collapsing economy, massive debt and devalued currency. Barack Obama, of course, opposes free trade. He has to – he’s in the back pocket of the socialist labor unions.

Free trade empire: (click for larger image)

Canada: Free Trade Empire
Canada: Free Trade Empire

What a contrast Canada’s energy policy makes with Obama’s politicized “Cash for Cronies” energy policy. But then again, Canada hired a conservative right-wing capitalist economist to run their country. We could have just done the same and put in economists like Thomas Sowell or Walter Williams to run our economy, but we put in an unqualified community organizer instead.

News

Arizona governor signs bill to protect unborn children after 20 weeks

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From Fox News, good news for unborn children in Arizona.

Excerpt:

Gov. Jan Brewer on Thursday signed legislation making Arizona the latest state that generally bans abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

The Republican-sponsored legislation also institutes new disclosure mandates that include requiring the state have a website with images of fetuses at various stages of development for women to view.

The 20-week abortion ban does not apply in medical emergencies, and it would affect a tiny percentage of abortions performed in Arizona.

[…]Brewer signed the bill two days after House approval completed final legislative action.

She said in a statement that the bill “strengthens Arizona’s laws protecting the health and safety of women, and recognizes the precious life of the preborn baby.”

[…]Nebraska enacted a 20-week ban in 2010. It was followed by Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, North Carolina and Oklahoma last year.

The bill signed by Brewer would require the state health department maintain an extensive website that provides information about alternatives to abortion, medical risks and descriptions and images of fetuses at various stages of development.

The proposal increases the current requirement that an ultrasound be performed before an abortion from one hour to 24 hours before. It also requires abortion clinics to post signs providing notice that it’s illegal for anyone to coerce a woman to have an abortion.

Democrats like regulating businesses, so I don’t see how they could complain about this. I think we need to regulate the abortion business more. And let this be a lesson to pro-life voters: Jan Brewer is a Republican governor, and Republicans are pro-life.

News

Number of Americans not in labor force hits record high of 87,897,000

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Employment to population ratio down 4.5% since Democrats took the House and Senate in January 2007
Employment to population ratio down 4.5% since Democrats took control of the House and Senate in January 2007

The Obama administration has pursued an economic policy of raising taxes on job creators, imposing regulatory burdens on businesses and shoveling mountains of taxpayer money into the hands of green energy firms which are often linked to Democrat fundraisers. Does it work to create jobs? Let’s see.

A record number of Americans are unemployed

From Breitbart.

Excerpt:

Amid disappointing unemployment numbers that fell 80,000 jobs short of projections, another number is raising eyebrows: the number of Americans not in the labor force has hit a record high 87,897,000.

This figure explains why overall unemployment dropped from 8.3% to 8.2%, as the Department of Labor’s unemployment figure does not include people who have given up hope and are not actively seeking employment.

When the number of individuals who have stopped looking for a job and/or who are working part-time but desire full-time employment is included–a figure known as the “underemployment rate”–real unemployment stands at 19.1%.

If you want to know if the President is doing a good job of creating jobs, just count the number of people who are unemployed. If the number of people who are unemployed is at a RECORD HIGH, then you need to elect a new President. Preferably someone who understands basic economics.

The real unemployment rate is 14.5%

From the American Enterprise Institute.

Excerpt:

Recall that back in 2009, White House economists Jared Bernstein and Christina Romer used their old-fashioned Keynesian model to predict how the $800 billion stimulus would affect employment. According to their model—as displayed in the above chart, updated—unemployment should be around 5.8% today.

But the true measure of U.S. unemployment is far worse:

1. If the size of the U.S. labor force as a share of the total population was the same as it was when Barack Obama took office—65.7% then vs. 63.8% today down from last month—the U-3 unemployment rate would be 10.9%.

2. But what if you take into the account the aging of the Baby Boomers, which means the labor force participation (LFP) rate should be trending lower. Indeed, it has been doing just that since 2000. Before the Great Recession, the Congressional Budget Office predicted what the LFP would be in 2012, assuming such demographic changes. Using that number, the real unemployment rate would be 10.5%.

3. Of course, the LFP rate usually falls during recessions. Yet even if you discount for that and the aging issue, the real unemployment rate would be 9.4%.

4. Then there’s the broader, U-6 measure of unemployment which includes the discouraged plus part-timers who wish they had full time work. That unemployment rate, perhaps the truest measure of the labor market’s health, is still a sky-high 14.5%.

5. The employment-population ratio dipped to 58.5% vs. 61% in December 2008. An historically low level of the U.S. population is actually working.

People keep talking about intelligent Barack Obama is. But shouldn’t we judge a person’s intelligence based on what they can produce? If you measure Obama’s intelligence based on his results – adding trillions and trillions of dollars to the debt while lowering the number of people who have jobs to a record low – then a fair-minded observer would say that Barack Obama is a person of low intelligence. He simply is out of his league. He would be out of his league if he tried to run a lemonade stand. If no one – Republican or Democrat – would hire this man to work in a private business that they owned, why would we ever elect him to be President?