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.

Tweets on Twitter

Here are some Tweets I posted this past week:

Posted 9-27-10
To establish capitalism, man's need to be free, & therefore prosperous, must be recognized.

We should demand de-regulation of our economy. We should declare the new health care law unconstitutional.

We should begin to phase out some of the most strangulating regulations, such as the Anti-Trust Laws.

We should begin to dismantle the welfare state. We should restore individual rights, limited government and free markets.

Posted 9-28-10
Gov't does not create values. Only free minds working voluntarily create values---such as food, shelter, clothing, transportation.

Gov't does not create jobs. Offering values, private individuals create jobs, which they offer to other men.

Big gov't stifles innovation, strangles free competition, invites corruption and wastes money.

The present number of gov't employees is about two million individuals. Their salaries range from $50,000 to $150,000 per annum.

2 million times an average of one hundred thousand dollars = $20,000,000,000,000 per annum that taxpayers pay for.

Posted 9-29-10
To restore individual rights and implement capitalism, we should start to de-regulate the economy.

We should de-regulate transportation, returning buses, subways and trains to private enterprise from which they were confiscated.

We should start to de-regulate the banks, savings and retirement accounts. Get the gov't out of our pocketbooks.

Posted 9-30-10
To restore individual rights and implement capitalism, we should get gov't out of education and gov't control of textbooks.

We should start to phase out gov't regulation of agriculture, trucking, shipping, the importing and exporting of goods.

We should start to de-regulate real estate, mortgages, land, business and residential development. Close Fannie and Freddie Mae.

De-regulate communications including radio, TV, telephone and telegraph.

Posted 10-1-10
Gov't employees number about 2 million. Average salary is $75,000 per year, which sums to $150,000,000,000, which taxpayers pay.

Terminate all the jobs held by those individuals presently in the agenices that regulate the economy.

Sell or rent to private enterprises the buildings that presently house the regulatory agencies.

The money saved and the revenue gained should be used to off-set and lower income taxes on all Americans.

Posted 10-2-10
Spending earnings increases trade; saving earnings expands production. Both actions raise the standard of living.

Gov't salaries don't raise living standards. Elected officials salaries exceed taxpayers', whose taxes pay gov't salaries.

Reps and Senators number 535. Salaries range from $160K to $237K. Average is $198,500 times 535 = $106,197,500 per annum taxpayers pay.

Terror-Fried

Here are two comments made on my blog site responding to my May 27, 2010 post.

May 27, 2010 10:39 PM
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May 31, 2010 7:18 AM
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No doubt the web master censored them because they contain foul language.

Given my innocuous post, it's easy to identity what prompted these writers to make such coarse and probably illiterate remarks. They are terrified that their days of freeloading would be over should food-stamps and other so-called "entitlement" programs be ended. They are also terrified that should regulations be repealed they'll no longer be able to scream violation of this or that regulation---ignoring the employer and employee rights violated by the regulation.

Americans' universally-recognized-and-sometimes-sneered-at-generosity is a matter of choice. That choice can be withheld. The malingerer knows it. He also knows that after decades of screaming that the productive owe him for being needy, the productive are beginning to realize they owe him nothing---especially because he's needy.

Now that would indeed be very terrifying to know, if one has the soul of a malingerer, or a killer. One would surely start using a half dozen four-letter words in place of tears and sores. That's what "entitlements" have always boiled down to: when whining doesn't work, use insults and get the government to force productive workers to provide for malingerers.

It would be even more terrifying to know that no matter how loudly the grasping and the envious cry, their pleas might one day bounce off of indifferent ears. Surely indifference would be warranted---especially after a century of hearing the virtues of productivity and profit attacked as greedy blood sucking.

But more deeply, those two who posted foul-language comments on my blog site are terrified that the days of self-sacrifice as a moral good are coming to an end. Slowly Americans are beginning to recognize that government has no right to loot Paul to give to Peter, and that to do so is a vice, not a virtue.