Phil Brennan
Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2003

If you pay any attention at all to the rantings and ravings of the nine socialists now running for the Democrat nomination for the presidency, you will hear diatribes blaming the weak economy on President George W. Bush.

Aside from the fact that it was under their beloved President Clinton that things started to go sour, the real blame for the slowdown in economic growth lies with the incredible growth of socialist regulatory policies these same nine pseudo-Marxists and their comrades have gleefully embraced and imposed on the nation.

Government regulations are strangling the economy, choking off economic growth, driving businesses overseas and crippling the efforts of farmers, ranchers, lumbermen, miners, doctors and those in a host of other enterprises to survive.

According to the invaluable Grandfather Economic Report series, government is costing us more than the taxes we see because it's difficult to see the extra cost of complying with government regulations:

• Complying with government regulations consumes $1.2 trillion yearly ($899 billion federal mandates, $298 billion state and local government mandates).

   

• That’s 14 percent of the economy – $4,154 per man, woman and child.

   

• Adding this cost to the $12,041 the government already spends per person equates to $16,195 per person of government impact.

   

• Federal expenditures on regulatory activity increased 2.7 times faster than economic growth since 1960 – at 14 percent per year compounded.

"Government mandated regulatory compliance costs are huge amounts: as much as all spending by state & local governments (education, police, welfare, etc.), or twice as much as Social Security & Medicare spending, or 3 times more than national defense. And, government does not budget or account for these huge costs – although $100 hammers are accounted. Despite congressional mandates, government has been dragging its feet for years to account, measure & control – thereby placing the economics of our young generation at incalculable risk.

"Of the $1.2 trillion, federal regulatory compliance costs are $899 billion (incl. about $200 billion for paperwork just complying with tax codes, which is rapidly increasing); state & local government compliance costs are $298 billion."

Call this whatever you want, but it is nothing less than socialism being wrapped around the necks of the American people, primarily by members of the National Socialist Democrat Party (NSDP) and their allies in the media, the radical environmentalist movement, teachers unions and sundry other Marxist-oriented organizations.

It has been noted that as a society becomes more government-dependent due to its expansion at a faster pace than that at which the general economy expands, the free-market sector and individual freedoms are compressed – contrary to the intent of the founders of our Constitution, who valued economic freedom and property rights as the foundation of individual liberty.

If 10 percent of an economy's national income depends on government spending and control, then its economy can be called 10 percent 'socialistic' and 90 percent free-market. Today, shockingly, fully 42 percent of the economy is socialistic, that is, utterly reliant on government spending. Thus only 58 percent of the economy is free, and that figure is rapidly diminishing.

Call it "creeping socialism" – it's happening one step at a time, so it's hardly noticeable until we wake up one morning and discover that Karl Marx has replaced George Washington as the father of our country.

Under the phony banner of environmentalism, the individual property rights of Americans are being slowly eliminated. Writes Gerald P. O'Driscoll Jr. a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, and Lee Hoskins, a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute, "Prosperity and property rights are inextricably linked."

They explain cogently that "The importance of having well-defined and strongly protected property rights is now widely recognized among economists and policymakers. A private property system gives individuals the exclusive right to use their resources as they see fit. That dominion over what is theirs leads property users to take full account of all the benefits and costs of employing those resources in a particular manner. The process of weighing costs and benefits produces what economists call efficient outcomes. That translates into higher standards of living for all.

"It is only in the last few decades, however, that economists have accepted the importance of property rights. Throughout much of the history of modern economics, the subject was given short shrift. Even stalwart supporters of the market economy glossed over the subject. Not surprisingly, much bad development policy resulted from that neglect. Even if policymakers in developed countries and international institutions now recognize the critical role played by a system of private property in economic development, they are limited in what they can do to help developing countries evolve such a system. Policymakers can, however, avoid recommending policies that undermine private property."

But to the feds and the well-financed fat cats in the so-called environmentalist movement, property rights are up for grabs. At the root of their philosophy is the credo of Karl Marx – that it is the state that owns what you mistakenly believe is yours and it can thus be taken from you, or your right to use it as you see fit eliminated by government edict. And that is happening all across America.

Dr. S. Fred Singer, Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia and director of the Washington-based Science and Environmental Policy Project, is a geophysicist specializing in atmospheric and space science who previously served as Deputy Assistant Administrator of EPA, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and Chief Scientist of the Department of Transportation.

He had this to say in a recent article in which he analyzes current trends in the United States and elsewhere toward excessive regulation, examines the consequences for jobs and living standards, and proposes specific remedies to increase productive employment, hence economic growth.

In the article he exposes such fallacies as "Tougher regulations produce more jobs and promote better health."

In fact, he writes, "the opposite is true. Over-regulation may create non-productive jobs, but at the expense of a larger number of productive ones; it is costing the average US household $1500 per year, monies that could be better spent to promote the health and well-being of families."

He wonders why "politicians oppose the idea of regulation based on rational concepts" instead listening to "[e]nvironmental zealots who advocate specific policies who have managed to subvert science or ignore it altogether.

"One cannot stress enough the importance of sound science in setting environmental regulations. Recent history is replete with examples of policies instituted on the basis of nothing more than press releases that were not backed up by peer-reviewed scientific data. There are many examples where the science is ignored or misused in order to push particular policies. There are even examples of where the science has reversed itself; yet the policies march on as if nothing had happened.

"It is easy to see why politicians, bureaucrats, and regulators would oppose any such rational approaches to environmental regulation. It would restrict their freedom of action, limit their power, and rob them of demagogic influence.

"As the level of regulation in the United States has grown exponentially – measured either in number of laws or in pages of the Federal Register – we may be approaching the critical level where in fact the economy is being strangled – where enterprise is re-strained, where entrepreneurship is stifled.

"After all, the level of regulatory costs is now in excess of $600 billion per year, over 10 percent of the GNP, according to Prof. Thomas Hopkins of the Rochester Institute of Technology. Prof. Murray Weidenbaum, director of the Center for Study of American Business at the Washington University in St. Louis, estimates that one-quarter of the regulatory costs are connected with the environment, and are the fastest growing segment.

"This outlay does not appear in the federal budget but is reflected in higher prices in the stores and lower real incomes. Raising the costs of all goods, energy, and transportation levies an average annual burden of nearly $1500 on every American household – a thoroughly regressive tax. Householders could spend this sum in ways that better advance their health and well-being than do current environmental controls. It is well established that people who are well-off live healthier and longer lives. Making men and women poorer, as these regulations do, can only degrade their health and shorten their years."

Dr. Singer discussed some of the outrageous programs engendered by phony science:

"There are many examples – too many – of misguided regulations based on pseudo-science or worse, and applied without regard for geographic differences or other common-sense factors. The 1990 Clean Air Act gives us many good examples. One title deals with urban smog and prescribes what to do about it. As Kenneth Chilton of Washington University reminds us, the data are suspect, the criteria are misplaced, and national control policies are pitched to making Los Angeles smog-free – an impossible goal. The costs to the nation, not surprisingly, will be enormous.

"Another title of the same law deals with air toxics, the emission of substances that could conceivably cause cancer. The problem is that the cancer risk is calculated for a susceptible person who is maximally exposed to the atmosphere for 70 years, and that the risks are computed based on dubious scientific data. Furthermore, the analysis neglects the obvious: the fact that the person will be indoors for much of his life exposed to an indoor air quality that is likely to be much more hazardous. Even so, cancer risk, normally about 25 percent, would be reduced to only 24.99999 percent, but at a cost of multi-billion dollars that could have been used to save many more lives by reducing more down-to-earth risks.

"Yet another title deals with the acid rain problem, the acidification of rain by sulfur dioxide from coal-burning power plants. It calls for emissions reduction nationally of 10 million tons per year – a nice round number for which there is no scientific justification whatsoever, except that it would cut the remaining emissions in half. Over the last twenty years, the emissions have already been reduced by 25 to 30 percent, without much noticeable impact on acidity. Furthermore, the science has changed completely since the early 80s when there appeared to be some cause for concern about the health of lakes and forests. By the end of the decade these fears had disappeared. A major scientific study, conducted under government auspices, had demonstrated that most small lakes affected are naturally acidic and that forests are not harmed. This new scientific evidence was never disputed; it was simply ignored. Those who wanted to pass the extremely expensive control legislation that would add some $5 to 10 billion to the cost of electricity simply declared the scientific studies to be "not policy-relevant."

"One final example: the precipitous phase-out of production of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). The policy decisions here were driven by hype and fear, by false stories of blind sheep and rabbits in Patagonia, and by exaggerating the fear of skin cancer. Press releases about ozone depletion always refer to it as "worse than expected." The question was never raised whether the theory underlying the expectations was wrong, whether the observations were wrong, or whether both were wrong; yet these are the only logical choices. "

These few facts should warn the American people that their liberties are being slowly but surely taken from them by the proponents of Marxism – a creed under which millions have been murdered in the name of humanity over the last century and a half.

If our economy is ever to recover and thrive as it once did, making America the wealthiest, freest country in the world, we are going to have to get rid of these stifling Marxist regulations, which are killing the goose that laid the golden eggs of America's free enterprise system.

Phil Brennan is a veteran journalist who writes for NewsMax.com. He is editor & publisher of Wednesday on the Web (http://www.pvbr.com) and was Washington columnist for National Review magazine in the 1960s. He also served as a staff aide for the House Republican Policy Committee and helped handle the Washington public relations operation for the Alaska Statehood Committee which won statehood for Alaska. He is also a trustee of the Lincoln Heritage Institute and a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers