George Rebane
America is being harmed beyond measure by its government. It is no longer death by a thousand cuts – we have advanced to the slash and burn level of self destruction. The Competitive Enterprise Institute in cooperation with the Weidenbaum Center has compiled these astounding stats from the feds’ own data. Under the Obama administration –
– $1.752T is the FY2012 cost of regulatory compliance inflicted on the country’s private sector. This is more than one tenth of the country’s entire GDP.
– In FY2012 Obama issued another $216B in regulatory costs. This was actually an election year pullback which will be remedied in the remainder of his second term.
– In FY2013 the feds will spend $59B in regulatory enforcement.
– Regulatory agencies employ 283,600 people in full time staff positions.
And according to the WH Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (the outfit run by Cass Sunstein), during the Great Recession (aka Depression2) –
– Obama’s administration issued five times more regulations during his first three years than Bush2 in his eight years.
– The cost per regulation for Obama has been 3.5X the cost under President Clinton.
And this is only a small part of the whole trail of tears onto which Washington has marched the country. It is hard to accept that this self-administered pain and suffering during a time of economic hardship is being inflicted by a pro-America government vs a regime with another agenda. Perhaps we err as we hopefully continue to view it as iatrogenics.
[update] The Washington Post reported a WH leak about Obama’s 2013-14 operating strategy, and it does not involve making progress on any of the fiscal or regulatory issues.
“The goal is to flip the Republican-held House back to Democratic
control, allowing Obama to push forward with a progressive agenda on gun
control, immigration, climate change and the economy during his final
two years in office, according to congressional Democrats, strategists
and others familiar with Obama’s thinking,”
The current MO of Obamunism (q.v.) is to ropadope the electorate into believing that Obama is sincere about solutions to things like deficits, debt limits, immigration reform, etc. Instead the leak reveals that the administration’s strategy is to propose and counter with ‘solutions’ known to be unacceptable to Republicans from the gitgo, and instead spend their main energy demogauging about Republicans as the gridlock party. The idea is to have the voters be so disgusted with the Republicans by 2014 as to bring both houses of Congress back into the Democrat fold. With the then Pelosi2 regime in the House, Obama will use the remaining two years of his administration to push through a socialist agenda that promises to be the progressives’ dream on everything from the environment to gun control. Stand by for ram.
[7mar13 update] Back to gun control which may be the most serious iatrogenic initiative governments are again pursuing after Sandy Hook. And I may be totally naive in ascribing the initiative to iatrogenics, for it may have nothing to do with unintended consequences given the other preparations now taking place.
Readers familiar with my take on guns and gun control, that are here a matter of record, recall that I have proclaimed for years that governments are the greatest killers of people in the world. I have cited RJ Rummel’s research in Death by Government numerous times. The book is dated in the sense that it does not include the horrendous toll wreaked by Red China during its Cultural Revolution. That democide alone took over 100M lives. Democide is the word for government killing its own civilians by policies other than suffering war casualties. I received the link to this compelling video – ‘Gun Control Works’ – that highlights the democides of the 20th century.
rebanesruminations.com 
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