How Government Regulations Hurt You

"Soap doesn't work. Toilets don't flush. Clothes washers don't clean. Light bulbs don't illuminate. Refrigerators break too soon. Paint discolors. Lawnmowers have to be hacked," writes Jeff Tucker. "It’s all caused by idiotic government regulations that are wrecking our lives one consumer product at a time, all in ways we hardly notice. It’s like the barbarian invasions that wrecked Rome, taking away the gains we’ve made in bettering our lives."

When his car ran out of gas, Tucker discovered one more government screw-up: newly regulated gas cans have no vent.

The whole trend began in (wait for it) California. Regulations began in 2000, with the idea of preventing spillage. The notion spread and was picked up by the EPA, which is always looking for new and innovative ways to spread as much human misery as possible.

An ominous regulatory announcement from the EPA came in 2007: “Starting with containers manufactured in 2009… it is expected that the new cans will be built with a simple and inexpensive permeation barrier and new spouts that close automatically.”

The government never said “no vents.” It abolished them de facto with new standards that every state had to adopt by 2009. So for the last three years, you have not been able to buy gas cans that work properly. They are not permitted to have a separate vent. The top has to close automatically. There are other silly things now, too, but the biggest problem is that they do not do well what cans are supposed to do.

[snip]

Ask yourself this: If they can wreck such a normal and traditional item like this, and do it largely under the radar screen, what else have they mandatorily malfunctioned? How many other things in our daily lives have been distorted, deformed and destroyed by government regulations?

If some product annoys you in surprising ways, there’s a good chance that it is not the invisible hand at work, but rather the regulatory grip that is squeezing the life out of civilization itself.

To The Women Who Make a House a Home: Happy Mother's Day

In a poignant tribute entitled Something Wonderful, Donald Todd writes of a mother, whom he lost at a young age in life, and a wife who rekindled the sense of home in him.

In our household, my father was the head and my mother the heart — or, if you will, the glue. She held things together because each of us was an extension of her heart.  She was the connection for each and every one of us. Everything ran through mom. She made the home and we got to live in it.

[snip]

So for several decades I did not have a home. I had a place in a house, or in a barracks. I stayed in a monastery, I lived in a dormitory, and shared an apartment with other men. But I did not have a home. In all of my experience, men do not create homes.

Then I married, and my wife, a homemaker, made a home for me. I finally got to come home. ... A woman inhabited my heart, and I became an extension of her heart.

Each time I find myself using the term 'wonderful' I remind myself that it means "full of wonder." 'Homemaker' and 'homemaking' are words that are full of wonder for me in an age that commonly seems to disparage wonderful things.

I think — actually I hope — we are near the end of this era. It is a particularly difficult era for women. Their own kind condemn them by denigrating marriage as a form of slavery or being a housewife as some kind of evil servitude. There's the discourtesy of being called a “domestic engineer,” and of discounting titles such as ‘wife’ and ‘mother,’ while actively discouraging mutual self-donation (married life) and motherhood. Many reasons are given to avoid that particular wonder.

I might be accused of looking for Ozzie and Harriet, but I don’t believe we can go backward to that time. We might, however, go forward to a new time when good family lives are found around the heart of the family: the woman who makes a home.  Now that would be wonderful.

To all the women who make a house a home, Happy Mother's Day.

Benghazi Hearings: What We Learned

We learned 7 things from the Benghazi whistleblowers, argues Bryan Preston, despite Republicans' mishandling of the whistleblowers' hearing.

1. There were multiple stand-down orders, not just one — ready-to-go special military operations forces in Tripoli were told twice NOT to go to Benghazi to rescue Americans under assault, even though a diplomat's team was able to arrive in Benghazi from Tripoli to offer aid before the assault ended. "This is the first time in my career that a diplomat has more balls than someone in the military," said one military officer.
2. Ambassador Stevens' reason for going to Benghazi has been cleared up — he was there at the bidding of Hillary Clinton who wished to have a permanent post in Benghazi.
3. Hillary Clinton was briefed at 2 am on the night of the attack, was never told that a movie had anything to do with the attack by those on the ground in Libya, yet blamed the movie anyway -- US deputy diplomat Greg Hicks spoke with Clinton personally via phone at 2 a.m. telling her it was a terrorist attack.
4. Whistleblowers were intimidated into silence — when one whistleblower (a career diplomat) questioned Susan Rice's claim that Benghazi was a video-induced protest, his career was sidelined and he was subsequently demoted.
5. "The YouTube movie was a non-event in Libya" — the video was pure political invention, and blaming the movie did "immeasurable damage " to our relations with Libya and delayed the FBI investigation.
6. Democrats were uninterested in getting at most of the facts, but were very interested in destroy Mark Thompson — Thompson was a member of the Foreign Emergency Support Team, which was cut out of the decision making during the attack.
7. House hearings are a poor way to determine who did what and why during and after the attack — given the extensive misinformation and cover up, Benghazi deserves a probe by a special prosecutor.

Preston argues that the Republicans mishandled the hearing by compressing too much information in one day's testimony. Read the full article for greater insight.

UPDATE:  Jonah Goldberg also has a great article, Bad Faith and Benghazi.

If you see a child struggling in the ocean, you have no idea how long she will flail and paddle before she goes under for the last time. The moral response is to swim for her in the hope that you get there in time. If you fail and she dies, you can console yourself that you did your best to rescue her.

But if you just stand on the beach and do nothing as the child struggles for life, saying, "Well, there's just no way I can get to her in time," it doesn't really matter whether you guessed right or not. You didn't try.

But we know the administration ordered others who were willing, able and obliged to come to the consulate's rescue to "stand down." They in effect told the lifeguards, "Don't get out of your chairs."

Rout of the Environmentalists

"If you want to understand how the United States is suddenly eating everyone's lunch when it comes to energy," writes Steven Hayward, "see the chart below from the Financial Times."

No wonder Europe is getting off its duff and trying to move forward with plans to expand its own shale natural gas potential.  Not coincidentally, cheap natural gas is starting to prompt several states to back off of their renewable portfolio standards that mandate the purchase of uncompetitive and grid-destabilizing wind and solar power. The rout of the environmentalists continues.

"

Taranto: Back-Alley Abortion Never Ended

"...the claim that Roe v. Wade made America safe from back-alley abortion stands exposed as a cruel hoax, and a deadly one for women and children alike,"  writes James Taranto, drawing this little known bloody history about abortionist Kermit Gosnell from the pages of the Philadelphia murder indictment report:

It was called the Mother's Day Massacre—the brainchild of Harvey Karman, an eccentric California man without medical training who had served 2½ years in prison for performing illegal abortions in the 1950s. Karman teamed with a young Philadelphia doctor who offered to perform abortions on 15 impoverished women, each between four and six months pregnant, who were bused to the Philadelphia clinic from Chicago on Mother's Day 1972.

Gang of Eight Reform: Too Much Too Fast

From the Heritage Foundation, "the Gang of Eight Immigration Bill, explained in one infographic."

Despite Sen. Marco Rubio's sincere belief in the need to fix immigration—and let's face it, who doesn't believe immigration needs fixing—the 844-page Gang of Eight's "comprehensive immigration reform" may simply be too much for Americans to endure after Obamacare, another comprehensive piece of legislation that has already thrown our economy and our health care system into a dangerous tailspin.

"In my view," writes John Hinderaker, "the bill is flawed at its core ... and efforts to improve it are misguided. Here is why..." 

Hinderaker lists 5 sound reasons, chief among them that this legislation will not stop what he argues is the "insane policy" of "chain immigration," which allows newly legalized residents to "bring over their family members, ad infinitum." 

He estimates when all is said and done, this bill covering 11 million initially will quickly result in 30 million newly-legalized U.S. residents — each eligible, as the Heritage infographic notes, "for government benefits such as welfare and entitlements." (Is now a good time to point out that the newly arrived Boston terrorist family received more than $100,000 in welfare payments?)

"Conservatives," he argues, "should propose one, and only one, reform: an end to chain immigration, as part of a recalibration of our immigration law that would seek to serve the interests of existing American citizens, and no one else."

 Americans are still on the floor from the economic body blow of Obamacare. Is it too much to ask from Washington that it give the country a chance to get back on its feet before knocking it down with immigration reform?

Out-Spent, Out-Numbered, Out-Researched

"We've read plenty about women voters who supported President Obama 55-44, creating an 11-point gender gap," writes Sabrina Schaeffer. "But we have paid scant attention to the wealth of Progressive women’s organizations that helped drive this victory, their vast funding capability, or the fact that they’re armed with a new science of politics."

Schaeffer lists several of the many liberal "research, grassroots, and fundraising machines" that pour resources into wooing women: Emily's List—$51 million; Catalyst—$12 million; League of Women Voters—$9 million; Women's Voices Women Vote/WVWV Action—$8 million.

Against this tapestry of Progressive organizations pouring millions into research and programs, what do we have on the Right? The reality is when it comes to securing women voters conservatives are out-numbered, out-researched, and outspent.

AEI’s Christina Hoff Sommers said it best at a recent IWF policy forum, “Conservative leaders and funders don’t take women’s issues seriously. They tend to treat women’s groups like the Ladies Auxiliary and women’s issues as a distracting side show.”

Sommers is right... The Right can count among their ranks exceptional individuals like Hoff Sommers, Diana Furchgott-Roth, June O’Neill, Carrie Lukas, and Kay Hymowitz, writing independently at different think tanks. There are a handful of women’s groups like the Independent Women’s Forum, where I’m the executive director, and our sister organization the Independent Women’s Voice, as well as Concerned Women for America, Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, Smart Girl Politics, and VIEW Pac, which raised a mere $346,000 during the 2012 election to help elect Republican women candidates.

What the Right lacks is serious interest and investment in finding out how to move more women to our side. If conservatives truly want to shrink the gender gap and win elections, women can no longer be an after-thought. Conservatives need to invest meaningful resources into the groups that are speaking to women. And conservatives must embrace social science research, digital communications, and boots on the ground to find out what works and with whom.

Read her full article in Forbes.