UPDATE: Check out photos and video from today’s rally.

Edit: Link to the G Gordon Liddy Show podcast, hour 1.

We spend a lot of time at CEI now proposing wealth-enhancing alternatives to these massive wealth transfers to government contractors and corporations. The right “stimulus” instead liberalizes wealth creation, it doesn’t spread around the dwindling wealth that already exists, like a self-appointed Benevolent Vulture; I submit one important approach–especially in today’s crisis situation–is to inventory all the regulations that impact a small business as it grows, and look hard at rollbacks. Below is the rough inventory I’ve compiled over time, but I’m sure it’s out of date and some things have changed. And this doesn’t even addess industry-specific rules (see endnote), which are probably the ones most in need of reform. I heartily welcome any additions and subtractions. We can’t manage something if we can’t measure it.

FEDERAL WORKPLACE REGULATION IMPOSED ON GROWING BUSINESSES* (Draft—Wayne Crews)

ONE EMPLOYEE

-Fair Labor Standards Act (overtime and minimum wage [27% min. wage increase since 1990])
-Social Security matching and deposits
-Medicare, FICA
-Military Selective Service Act (90 days leave for reservists; rehire discharged veterans)
-Equal Pay Act (no sex discrimination in wages)
-Immigration Reform Act (eligibility must be documented)
-Federal Unemployment Tax Act (unemployment compensation)
-Employee Retirement Income Security Act (standards for pension and benefit plans)
-Occupational Safety and Health Act
-Polygraph Protection Act

4 EMPLOYEES: ALL THE ABOVE, PLUS

-Immigration Reform Act (no discrimination with regard to national origin, citizenship, or intention to obtain citizenship)

15 EMPLOYEES: ALL THE ABOVE, PLUS

-Civil Rights Act Title VII (no discrimination with regard to race, color, origin, religion, or sex; pregnancy-related protections; recordkeeping)
-Americans with Disabilities Act (no discrimination, “reasonable accommodations”)

20 EMPLOYEES: ALL THE ABOVE, PLUS

-Age Discrimination Act (no discrimination on the basis of age against those 40 and older)
-Older Worker Benefit Protection Act (benefits for older workers must be commensurate with younger workers)
-COBRA (continuation of medical benefits for up to 18 months upon termination)

25 EMPLOYEES: ALL THE ABOVE, PLUS

-Health Maintenance Organization Act (HMO Option required)
-Veterans’ Reemployment Act (reemployment for persons returning from active duty, reserve, or Nat’l Guard)

50 EMPLOYEES: ALL THE ABOVE, PLUS

-Family and Medical Leave Act (12 weeks unpaid leave or care for newborn or ill family member)

100 EMPLOYEES: ALL THE ABOVE, PLUS

-WARN Act (60-days written plant closing notice)
-Civil Rights Act (annual EEO-1 form)

*Assumes non-union, non-government contractor, with interstate operations and a basic employee benefits package. Includes general workforce-related regulation only. Omitted are categories such as environmental and consumer product safety regulations, and regulations applying to specific types of businesses such as mining, farming, trucking or financial firms.

1. The US has made a new weapon that destroys people but keeps the building standing,. Its called the stock market - Jay Leno

2. Do you have any idea how cheap stocks are ?? Wall Street is now being called Wal Mart Street - Jay Leno

3. The difference between a pigeon and a London investment banker. The pigeon can still make a deposit on a BMW

4. What’s the difference between a guy who lost everything in Las Vegas and an investment banker? A tie!

5. The problem with investment bank balance sheet is that on the left side nothing’s right and on the right side nothing’s left.

6. I want to warn people from Nigeria who might be watching our show, if you get any emails from Washington asking for money, it’s a scam. Don’t fall for it - Jay Leno

7. Bush was asked about the credit crunch. He said it was his favourite candy bar - Jay Leno

8. The rescue bill was about 450 pages. President Bush’s copy is even thicker. They had to include pictures - Jay Leno

9. President Bush’s response was to meet some small business owners in San Antonio last week. The small business owners are General Motors, General Electric and Century 21 - Jay Leno

10. What worries me most about the credit crunch, is that if one of my cheques is returned stamped ‘insufficient funds’. I won’t know whether that refers to mine or the bank’s

On Sunday’s Meet the Press interview he stressed “shovel ready” projects — shoveling from right-hand to left remains the extent of it. Look at the 5-points in the Politico article: Each wave of the wand diverts an awestruck media and a truly fearful public from the “instead of” –from the reality of what free citizens would have done instead with the resources.

Genuine leadership does not consist of promising to take yet more of other people’s stuff and giving it to corporations, government contractors, the GAO and other federal agencies that should’ve already been energy efficient, wasteful “renewable” energy plans, drafty school buildings, inferior broadband schemes, medical-record “computerization” that can’t work anyway because of still other government regulation. New candidates are sure to pop up next week.

I wrote about stimulus follies in an early 2008 report called Still Stimulating Like It’s 1999 and in several followup articles, not knowing the crisis stage we would reach; but the elements of the wrongheadedness of the bailout culture exist in All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. Yes, you share; but you don’t take other people’s stuff. That notion seems alien to the political class. Washington’s primary function is wealth transfer rather than the actual modest governing referred to in the Constitution (Fred Smith’s line is a good one: “The Constitution isn’t perfect; but it’s better than what we have now.”)

I was off a few decades in the earlier report: in the “New Steal,” we’re stimulating like it’s 1929. Lessons remain unlearned (speaking of investing in education) among politicians of both parties, to whom freedom is a loophole.

Details, as usual, do not exist, other than the obvious golden chains that come with power grid investment: get the cash, but throw it away on inferior “renewable” investments, thereby draining future wealth and resources (for example, no fuel is “greener”—in the proper sense of the term of using fewer overall resources—than petroleum based gasoline). Meanwhile, government power over energy grows.

Labor groups are not merely being placated with the package but helped spearhead it (they insist “millions” of jobs will be created). This helps assure that future generations will see more fiascoes like the disaster in the current auto industry—yes, tomorrow’s productivity will improve, but the workers who are sent home still get paid (that’s the auto industry’s actual problem).

It is beyond argument that America needs to create what I often call “infrastructure wealth”; we need it just as we need financial wealth, real estate wealth, manufacturing and service wealth, and health-care wealth. But like all wealth creation, the root of that wealth is property rights, not transferred tax dollars and favors.

The proper way to maximize infrastructure wealth–and jobs and customer benefits besides—is to clear the path for free enterprise to build it; Yanking funds from unseen, helpless and dispersed taxpayers, and applying it to Rep. Pelosi’s and President-elect Obama’s high-profile, very vocal recipients is a destructive enterprise, not a weath-building one.

Here are a few better steps, but these are only for starters. These are the sort of programs Washington should be implementing.

– With respect to broadband deployment, declare “Net Neutrality” permanently off the table; announce that proprietary networks and investments will never be expropriated in any fashion, that there will be no forced sharing, only voluntary agreements and alliances. Go here for details on why this is important.
– Remove exclusive franchises that make it illegal, not difficult, for firms to compete with incumbent electric companies. Right now, it’s illegal to run an extension cord across the street. (See “The Free Market Alternative to Mandatory Open Access.”)
– Establish an aggressive campaign to liberalize all network and infrastructure indusrtries, which are now artificially segregated into regulatory silos (telephone, electricity, water, sewer, cable, railroad, airline, air traffic control). This would create opportunities for them to work together and jointly invest in new power lines, fiber to the home, roads, bridges, airports, toll roads and more.
– Relax antitrust so that firms within and across industry sectors can combine and create business plans to bring capitalism and infrastructure wealth creation to the next level.
– Liberalize spectrum and secondary markets in it such that wireless wealth is freely created apart from regulators.

These items are only a start. Other initiatives, like privatization of politically provided services, also need to be re-invigorated. I’ve made it clear elsewhere that I regard the nation as now largely ungovernable because of the expansion of government beyond any semblance of constitutionally limited government.

But we have to start somewhere. Throwing money at infrastructure “stimulus” while leaving 19th Century regulation intact is most emphatically not governing; it is not courageous, and it is not commendable.

The U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman, the alarmed Sheila Bair, sounded the warning that the government must devise an “exit strategy” for the bailout.

I regard the lack of an exit strategy as a feature built into every government program. She does not, however, and that’s commendable. But, she’s helpless, as the United States is no longer governable in any normal sense; However her plea is worth repeating to a deaf world:

“We really need to think through the exit strategy because (government guarantees) could become a crutch,” ….Weaker financial institutions “need to be allowed to fail,” Bair added.

The government needs to decide which banks and other institutions receive the financial support, and eventually, “How do we get out?”

Too often, a small step back for government is needed for there to be a giant leap for mankind. Her feeble warning isn’t much given the torrential pro-unlimited-bailout hailstorm coming out of Washington, but I’ll take it.

This is a worthy effort. They are right to say that the right is having its clock cleaned electorally as a result of the online community’s deficiencies in the areas of fundraising and online activism, yet I think there are two more important problems identified. First, as Mark points out, the net holds massive promise for investigative journalism, a point that Paul Chesser of the Carolina Journal has made repeatedly; look at his revelations about the Center for Climate Strategies and the way leftist donors have used it to impose alarmist global warming policies on governors around the country. Meanwhile, here at CEI, we established the Warren Brookes Fellowship to keep alive the tradition of a great columnist who never let opinion or prejudice get in the way of fact. And in the UK, it is conservative and libertarian bloggers who have often pushed against the Labour government when the official opposition was too timid to do so. Guido Fawkes is a great example.

The second problem is identified well by John:

Just to give you an example of what I’m talking about, here’s a generic conversation, some variation of which I’ve had with different congressional aides at least half-a-dozen times over the last four years.

Anonymous Aide: Hawkins, I want to ask your advice.
John Hawkins: Shoot.
Anonymous Aide: We’re thinking about doing idea x.
John Hawkins: Are you out of your mind? That’s going to be a disaster!
Anonymous Aide: Well, they’ve already decided to do it. How do we sell it to the bloggers?
John Hawkins: You’re asking me whether you should put mayonnaise or mustard on a sh*t sandwich. I can give you some advice, but it’s not going to go over well no matter how you spin it.

John is right. The net provides the single best method yet devised of allowing the individual supporter into the messy business of policy formulation. Again, a look across the pond is valuable. The Conservatives in Britain have realized exactly that — ConservativeHome has become a sort of guardian of the Tory conscience, where individual party members have their say on emerging policy issues. The Party’s guarded retreat from the excesses of greenery and the re-emergence of tax as a defining issue have in some degree or another been driven by net-based activism. One might even suggest that the era of the political consultant or guru is over. Creative destruction in action!

Yet I think there is a third opportunity the broader “right” movement is not availing itself of. When it comes down to it, all political debates are about policy. Occasionally an individual candidate might win initially on the force of charisma, but even he has to have some policies if he wants to win re-election. The war of ideas has to be won, whether it be in colleges, on the doorstep or when conversing with the plumber. People need intellectual ammunition, and that is something that goes way beyond the punditry that most people think of when they consider the conservative movement.

Now, when it comes to the free-market intellectual element of the right, I’d suggest that quite a few of us are estranged from the broader conservative movement at the moment. There’s only so much betrayal people can take, after all. That’s why I suggest that all of us in that group start looking at setting up a FreeRoots movement. Its aim would be to win the battle of ideas for liberty online, using values-based communication and providing all sorts of intellectual ammunition from small rounds to heavy ordnance. Conservatives can avail themselves of it or not, but we’ll supply it to anyone willing to fight for liberty. Take a look at BeyondBailouts.org for an example of how this can come together. Obviously, the creation and crafting of ideas takes money, so there would have to be fundraising involved, but it would also be interactive, because you don’t win the war of ideas if nobody fires your intellectual ammo (okay, I’ll drop that analogy now).

The fact is that this should be an easy battle to win (sorry!). The statists are the ones who are what JK Galbraith, that great statist, would call “bookless” right now. Who is the great theoretician everyone on the left is invoking? John Maynard Keynes, d.1946. Sure, there are people like Thomas Friedman, with his Code Green theory-of-everything, but anyone who advanced that theory as a serious political platform would get laughed out of the agora. Capitalism and the free-market have been twirled dizzy by spin and got hit by a swinging political pendulum. Yet all the serious economic arguments about what really caused the current mess recognize the preponderant effects of government intervention. What’s needed is a movement and a vehicle to push these arguments out to the demos, the way Buckley and Reagan did with their similar arguments in the 70s and 80s. Bureaucrash is, of course, already doing that in colleges and with young people. A FreeRoots movement could do it in a much broader sense.

As Fred Smith says, the challenge is to make good policy good politics. Just because we’re right, doesn’t mean we have to lose.

UPDATE: Chris asks below what form this would take. Good question. Are we just going to copy the left? I hope not. Innovation is needed, so any and all ideas gratefully accepted. Feel free to chime in below.

Courtney

Check it out!

We previously explained why the phone companies merit immunity, and how a legal double standard threatens them with liability and potentially billions of dollars in damages. Former attorneys general from both Democratic and Republican administrations have likewise argued that denying protection against lawsuits would be risky and harmful to national security.

Check out Bureaucrash’s latest video on drug lag at the FDA — with real people affected by those delays. Just released on Friday, it already has over 1,000 hits.

Culture jamming is the act of transforming mass media to produce commentary about itself, using the original medium’s communication method. It is a form of public activism which is generally in opposition to commercialism, and the vectors of
corporate image. The aim of culture jamming is to create a contrast between corporate or mass media images and the realities or perceived negative side of the corporation or media. This is done symbolically, with the “detournement” of pop iconography.

That’s quite a mouthful. In any event, The Yes Men employ culture jamming techniques to spread their message. Unfortunately, their message seems to consist mostly of anti-capitalist, anti-trade, anti-corporate ideology. Which brings us to the events of this week.

They had contacted CEI and several other free market think tanks, claiming to be documentary filmmakers retained by the ad agency Hill & Knowlton to make an updated version of Milton Friedman’s landmark series “Free to Choose.” Supposedly, a wealthy private donor had commissioned the new series, and hired H&K to produce it. Several of the groups, taking them at their word, leapt at the chance to talk about how economic freedom leads to an open, prosperous society, and scheduled interviews. By Monday evening, however, troubling details began to emerge.

After some advanced level Google work, we discovered that their cover story was not checking out. The people who we thought were creating a tribute to our hero Dr. Friedman were, in fact, almost certainly setting out to do the opposite. Thus informed, we hit the phones on Tuesday and advised other groups in town of The Yes Men’s lying ways. In addition, we discovered that our friends at the Cato Institute had interviews with their own analysts scheduled for the very next morning. Thus, when Wednesday morning rolled around and the Yes Men crew showed up at Cato HQ on Massachusetts Avenue, everyone was prepared.

First, Cato’s media department informed the crew that they would not be taping any interviews after all. Then, as they were being escorted out of the building, a pro-freedom activist crew led by Bureaucrash Crasher-in-Chief Jason Talley treated them to a little street theater from the other side of the ideological spectrum.

In a way, what Bureaucrash does is not that different from what The Yes Men specialize in. Many past crashes have featured the same kind of re-purposed media and culture jamming techniques the other guys have used, except, of course, in the pursuit of freedom instead of an expansion of government power. During the “Progressives Against Progress” crash in 2004, for example, crashers infiltrated the Green Party national conference in Madison, Wisconsin and got many a Green to sign on to their outrageous satirical petitions.

Over the years, The Yes Men have proven their skill at fooling everyone from conference organizers and government officials to network television producers. One group they couldn’t fool, however, was CEI’s feisty younger brother, Bureaucrash. See the video confrontation below; more details on the crash available here.

Better yet, the protest has garnered a mention in Jason Robertson’s story about Sicko in the Dallas Morning News:

Weeks before the film opened, some health care activist groups began sending e-mails to journalists disputing Mr. Moore’s assessment of America’s health care system, as well as the efficiency of systems in other countries.

Bureaucrash, an international activist group based in Washington D.C., along with members of the Americans for Prosperity, and the Moving Picture Institute showed up at a D.C. premiere carrying signs saying, “Socialism Kills,” and “Guaranteed health care is a Guaranteed Failure.”

Here’s the crash video:

Apparently, in Arkansas, skateboarding is a crime. Witness the ridiculous overreaction of one Hot Springs police officer to the threat of youngsters on skateboards. Law enforcement pulls a jerk move, and YouTube is there:

Credits (in no particular order) include: Erin Wildermuth, Cord Blomquist, Ivan Osorio, Brooke Oberwetter, Jeremy Lott, Megan McLaughlin, William Yeatman, Julie Walsh, Kate McLaughlin, Dominick Saran, Jason Talley, Greg Conko, Christine Hall, Sam Kazman, Al Canata, Holly Jackson and Richard Morrison. Also, special thanks to Philip K. Dick and Scott Frank for a little inspiration.