GOVERNMENT REGULATION IS KILLING BUSINESS

This morning, I received a letter from a businessman who had been strangled by government regulations. As he puts it, "I lost two companies due to the state's regulators and federal regulators misconduct."

Fed up, he moved his company to Texas where the climate is business-friendly. Many businessmen have done the same. For instance, Marita Noon Executive Director of CARE, fighting tooth and nail for the right of New Mexicans to develop their natural resources, often writes about the disastrous consequences to our state of our business people moving to Texas because of the EIB.

The attacks on our oil men, our miners, our ranchers and farmers, our retailers and wholesalers, our mom and pop stores, our independents and our chains---business people of every kind---add up to thousands. Thousands of regulations and thousands of business people are harassed by government regulations to the point of anger, frustration and emotional drain that cannot be calculated by any measure save stroke or heart attack.

It is not only the new health care law that looms over us like a vulture ready to feast on what's left of us. American businessmen are interfered with by OSHA, by Anti-trust, by the gross receipt tax, by the unemployed labor tax, by the demand for fees, permits, and licenses, and so forth ad infinitum.

The multitudinous practices, guidelines and rules of regulatory agencies are little more than legalized extortion.

Think of the waste of time and money that government demands of those who are providing us with services and products that make our lives comfortable. Think of the emotional and intellectual drain that are forced upon the minds and souls of those who provide us with values. Values such as getting a hair cut or having your teeth cleaned. Values like going to a movie or eating out or having a pet. Values like computers or having our car serviced or buying clothing for our families without having to spend our time doing such things ourselves.

Business people do all that---plus a good deal more. And business people include employers and employees. Remember that. When businesspeople are attached, it means all of us are attacked.

I wish to say it is not right, it is not just that the very men and women who work to make a profit by providing us with so many good things, that raise our standard of living and provide us with jobs are saddled with regulations that demand an unproductive use of their time. They are forced to do paperwork because of regulations. They are forced to wade through reams of pages of bureaucraeze trying to understand those regulations.

Such a waste of time and money decreases profits, which means decreased savings, which means reduced business expansion, which means a decreased number of raises that can be given and the number of jobs that can be created.

I wish to say that we must demand that regulations be repealed, that regulatory agencies be closed, and that those bureaucrats being paid a salary that businesspeople provide, be terminated.

If you want to know what the January 18 rally is all about, this* is what it's all about.

I encourage you to send this e-mail to every individual you know: business associate, customer, stay-at-home parent, senior retiree, student, friend and neighbor. Let us ask every New Mexican in the state to join us. Rent a bus or borrow one, car pool, ask your local community club to pitch in and join you and rent a van. Get to Santa Fe and bring the New Mexican population with you.

Christmas is right around the corner. We are all very busy. We want to be joyous and free. But I say to you that the most joyous thing, the most liberating and freest thing we can work for is to make Christmas 2011 the Christmas we celebrated knowing that 50% of our regulations are repealed, their agencies closed and those working in them let go.

* FYI: A group of New Mexicans are organizing a massive rally for January 18, the first day of the 2011 Legislative Session. We are calling it We The People. It will be held in Santa Fe, New Mexico from 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM on the Capitol Steps. I am writing a "Decree," modeled on the Declaration of Independence that will call for limited government, fiscal responsibility, de-regulation, free-markets and restoration of individual rights.

But this call for de-regulationn of businessmen need not be confined to New Mexico. I encourage Americans who care about American ideals of individual rights, limited government and free markets to call on both the federal governement and their state government to begin to de-regulate.