The Credit CARD Act of 2009 (Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act) went into effect today. These new rules impose restrictions on lenders and are intended to promote transparency and protect consumers from being blindsided with changes in payment due dates, interest rates, etc.

Tthe changes are meant to put more information in the hands of consumers who often struggle to understand language written by lawyers in the fine print of their statements. Here are some changes that will surely be welcomed by consumers.

- Eliminating universal default. Pay one account late and the interest rate on your other accounts zooms up? Not any longer.

- Limiting interest rate hikes. For example, the APR you have on a new account can’t increase during the first year unless you have a “teaser rate,” the rate is tied to an index, or you’re more than 60 days late on a payment.

- No more pay to pay. You can’t be charged to pay your bill over the telephone, electronic transfer or any other method of getting your money in on time.

- Total payout disclosure. Clearly written on your statement will be how long it will take to pay the account if you only make the minimum required payments – and how much it will ultimately cost.

- 45 days notice of significant changes to terms. If your credit card company is going to hike your APR or fee charges, you now have plenty of notice. Even better: you can opt out of the increase by suspending the card and concentrating on repaying the balance.

Also, according to the WSJ,

“Customers can only exceed their credit limit if they agree ahead of time to pay a penalty fee. And unless a cardholder misses payments for more than 60 days, interest-rate increases will affect only new purchases, not existing balances.”

While the changes appear to be positive, the flip side is that they are likely to elicit a backlash from banks in the form of drawing down on credit lines, higher interest rates and all sorts of fees. These regulations on credit card lenders are estimated to cost the industry $12 billion annually. While these rules may stem from a desire to protect consumers, they may result in a diminishing of credit lines at a time when millions of Americans are struggling and might have planned to tap into their lines of credit. As Newton’s law reminds us, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, and this case is no exception to the rule. As the WSJ warns, “get ready for higher annual fees, higher balance-transfer charges, and growing charges for overseas transactions.”

So it turns out that these regulations may turn out to be less helpful for consumers than they appear on the surface. This is what the current administration and majority in Congress can’t seem to understand; overreaching in the private sphere via this kind of regulation is not a foolproof formula for helping consumers. Sure, lenders operate according to a profit motive, but people run their own budgets similarly. The government should focus on providing incentives for businesses to expand and hire if they’re worried about people’s ability to pay off their debt, not on strangling lenders. And with lenders already hard-hit by the economic crisis and customers defaulting on their debts, they will look to make up lost profits elsewhere or decrease lending, which is bad for lenders and consumers alike.

Back in May of 2009, I wrote that Congress should tread lightly on credit card reform for this very reason. Erecting obstacles to the extension of credit is no way to get yourself out of a credit crunch. Here we are in 2010, and the Obama administration still hasn’t gotten this message. And once again, consumers will be stuck footing the bill for  their mistakes in the form of new fees soon.

In a short, but powerful piece, “Watching Social Security Eat the Young Alive”, a father writes about his concern for his son’s future and the mess that has been made of Social Security.

In the article, Bill Frezza tells us of a letter his 26 year old son receives from the Social Security Administration.

“The two-page pamphlet entitled “What young workers should know about Social Security and saving” reminds us that 50 million, or one in six, Americans will collect more than $614 Billion dollars in Social Security benefits this year. It informs young people that the Security Taxes they now pay go into a “Trust Fund” that is used to pay current beneficiaries. Paying off early investors with funds taken from later investors is precisely how Wikipedia defines a Ponzi scheme. The pamphlet advises that the Social Security Board of Trustees estimates that the “Trust Fund” will be depleted before my son’s 54th birthday.”

The pamphlet goes on to provide a formula young taxpayers should use to calculate how much money they need to save each month to prepare for retirement — aside from the taxes they’re already paying into a system they will never benefit from, of course.

This is outrageous, ridiculous and tragic all wrapped into one nice, neat package. As someone who graduated from college in a post 9-11 world, I can attest to the difficulty my peers and I had finding jobs after graduation. Many opted to go to grad school in the wake of financial firms and other businesses cancelling employment offers to new grads. Armed with a great education and a boat-load of debt, we entered the workforce between 2004 and the present — only to face the same unstable job market once again.

Eventually, necessity rules the day, and everyone finds something — even if it isn’t the dream job you might have envisioned. And, we begin to fulfill our duty to pay taxes, including Social Security, which we’re now told will most certainly be depleted by the time we reach the ripe old age of retirement.

Frezza asks “why do kids put up with this?” With young people voting overwhelmingly for Barack Obama and the Democrat party in last year’s election, the question arises, what will it take for young people to stop voting for politicians that “promis[e] to stick them with the bill for an ever-expanding menu of unfunded middle class entitlements?”

Frezza wonders if his generation raised their kids to float through life, believing that they would always have enough, because that’s been their experience thus far. Rather than stand up to a government that wants to take more and more of their personal earnings to fund new entitlement programs, they accept it. Perhaps it’s because they can’t think for themselves as Frezza posits. Perhaps others live with it because they don’t believe they have the power to change anything.

But with government mandated health care on the horizon along with government efforts to control private business and individuals through environmental regulations, cap-and-trade and increasing the power of unions, it’s time for young people to become aware that they (literally) cannot afford to ignore these political issues.

In an op-ed piece in yesterday’s WSJ, Zachary Karabell warns of just that. This timely article looks back to the relationship between Britain and America, when Britain was the superpower, and America was the underdog. After two world wars, Britain found itself cash-strapped. America strategically lent it the money it needed, under its terms, which included making the dollar the reference point for global exchange rates. Karabell makes the argument that ultimately, these negotiations culminated into the end of the British Empire.

Karabell sees parallels between the relationship between Britain and the U.S. in the mid-20th century, and the U.S. and China today. He points out:

“Trajectories can change, but the recent implosion of the American financial system has only accelerated China’s rise.

And while the level of current indebtedness is manageable for the U.S.—and in fact tethers the Chinese closely to the U.S. economy in ways that are arguably beneficial for both countries—the fact that these economies are currently bound together does not mean that their interests will always be in sync.

The Americans have not had to deal with a true economic rival since the British more than half a century ago. America today is as unaccustomed to global economic competition as the British were at their apex. The U.S. often seems lumbering and ill-suited to the demands of economic rivalry.”

The way out of this pattern for America is to “reinvigorate economic life,” according to Karabell. Indeed, as government spending (and therefore, borrowing) continues to increase, all signs point to Karabell’s analogy as a relevant one that our politicians should take heed of. Just earlier today, Sen. Cornyn of Texas cited a statistic that for every dollar spent by the U.S. government today, 43 cents is borrowed money. If the private sector continues to suffer, where will the money to repay this debt come from?

Steve Wynn was entirely right on this weekend when he appeared on Fox News Sunday and stated:

“I think that the priorities of the administration should have been more directly focused on job creation. From the day of the inauguration forward, the priority should have been job creation. And the most powerful weapon and the tool that the government has for that is its tax policy. If the government had used its power to restrain its tax collection they would have given everybody who runs small businesses, large businesses, a chance to hire more people and that could have been done an entirely different way. With eight or $900 billion we could have created four or five million jobs, which would have made a big difference.”

The only way to ensure that history is not repeated, is as Wynn suggested, for government to focus on creating incentives for the private sector to get creative, to start new businesses, to hire more employees, etc. Karabella’s warning hits home that arguing over big-government programs like health care reform and climate change during this economic crisis is “the cultural equivalent of fiddling while Rome burns.” If the U.S. continues to borrow and spend at this rate, China’s economic dominance globally looks more and more secure.

Phillip Levy of the American Enterprise Institute thinks so. Leaders at the summit released a statement, vowing to “continue the process of recovery” by:

It’s been seven months since the stimulus bill was passed. Just shortly after his inauguration, President Obama issued this statement.

“There are many numbers in this plan…It will put billions of dollars in immediate tax relief into the pockets of working families.

But out of all these numbers, there is one that matters most to me: this recovery plan will save or create more than 3 million new jobs over the next few years. “

Despite this promise, unemployment today stands at 9.7%, the highest it’s been since 1983. The broader unemployment rate is a staggering 16.8%. Last month, unemployment surged in 27 states.

For the most part, there seems to be a consensus that unemployment is a lagging indicator, meaning its rise is delayed until after other segments of the economy have already improved. Even so, since the recession began in December 2007, 7.4 million jobs have been lost. 4 million of those have been shed since December of 2008, just a month before President Obama’s official transition to power. As of last month, 9.1 million people had accepted part-time work, unable to find full-time, permanent employment.

In fact, job creation as a result of the stimulus has been limited to government jobs. USA Today reports:

“Fourteen of the top federal agencies responsible for spending under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act say they’ve hired about 3,000 workers with stimulus money. That’s helped fuel the continued growth of the federal government, which increased by more than 25,000 employees, or 1.3%, since December 2008, according to the latest quarterly report.”

It gets even worse. Not only has the stimulus failed to create private sector jobs, but the administrative structures created to implement and oversee the stimulus are depleting the emergency funds they were created to oversee.

“Thirteen agencies that report stimulus-related administrative expenses separately on their weekly spending reports say they’ve spent $186.8 million so far on salaries and other overhead. Those agencies have reported spending $46.1 billion in stimulus funds overall.”

Supporters of the stimulus would argue that distributing the funds and creating jobs costs money. And, to a certain extent, that is true for any government action aimed at creating growth. Tax cuts also cost money — in theory — in decreased revenue for the government. But, they don’t drain the government of funds set to up to increase jobs, funds that are borrowed and upon which interest accrues.

Back in January, The Heritage Foundation pointed out that if the stimulus created 3.675 million jobs, each job would cost $217,000. I wonder if their figure included all the various administrative costs required to create the jobs in the first place. Or to oversee the distribution of the funds.

Presumably, there are some stimulus projects that have gotten underway. Road paving projects for one — because they are faster to get off the ground than construction projects that have numerous environmental hurdles to overcome. But, we now have seven months worth of data and no evidence that the stimulus has created any jobs — save for government jobs. As for saving jobs that would otherwise have been eliminated, I have yet to see anything that offers up a method of calculating this shaky proposition.

So, seven months into the program, unemployment is climbing, and jobs that were promised to Americans if only they trusted Washington to pass the biggest spending bill in U.S. history, are nowhere in sight.

In the statement quoted earlier, the President also promised:

“I can also promise that my administration will administer this recovery plan with a level of transparency and accountability never before seen in Washington. Once it is passed, every American will be able to go the website recovery.gov and see how and where their money is being spent.”

In addition to calling the stimulus bill a jobs bill, the President and his administration promised an unprecedented level of transparency related to the stimulus funds. Recovery.gov is a website that became all too familiar to Americans (well, except to Vice President Biden who famously blanked on the ‘number’ during a live TV spot). Yet, here we are seven months later, and recovery.gov offers nothing more than a very general overview of how stimulus funds have been distributed by state and department.

But, we now have a firm date for the new site, October 1. State and local contractors and other entities will have 10 days each quarter to provide specific information identifying the funds they received, how they were spent and how many jobs were created out of those funds.

But, even this is not without it’s problems. BusinessWeek reports:

“Put another way, without careful auditing, the government will have little way of judging whether all those tens of thousands of stimulus funds recipients are accurately relaying where they spent the money and how many jobs were truly created.”

Seven months in and unemployment is rising, job losses of 550,000 per week are nothing out of the norm, consumer spending is low despite the rebates included in the stimulus, and with Democrats’ health care reform and cap-and-trade proposals still on the table, the spending spree may not be over.

It’s time for Washington to come to terms with the fact that the stimulus is not working. Perhaps they should listen to the 60% of Americans who doubt that the feds will use the stimulus funds as promised on infrastructure or to the 75% of voters who do not believe that the stimulus has helped the economy.

The right thing to do is to cancel the stimulus and regroup. But, as Democrats have made clear with health care, their biggest fear is that they do not have time on their side. So, they refuse to tear up the old plans and start anew; instead, they’ll continue to pull numbers out of the air like ‘the stimulus has saved 1 million jobs.’ And sadly, in another 7 months, things might not look that different than they do today.

President Obama continued his sales pitch for health care reform this weekend, making the rounds of the Sunday talk show circuit. During an interview with George Stephanopoulos that aired today, Obama said, “We’re not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you.” To say this was an unexpected sentiment coming from this President would be an understatement. Praising personal responsibility, meeting obligations and self-sufficiency have not been trademark items for this President who so famously touted the benefits of ’spreading the wealth around’ on the campaign trail.

His statement was in regard to the “$900, on average — our families [pay] in higher premiums because of uncompensated care.” The President’s position is to regulate behavior and force everyone to either carry insurance or pay a fine.

“The — for us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase. What it’s saying is, is that we’re not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore.“

As I wrote last week here on AIP, this assertion that we are all collectively picking up the tab for the uninsured to the tune of $900 to $1100 a year per family, is false. Unfortunately, the media has been slow to fact-check the President’s talking points on health care reform. The WSJ picked up the story about Otto Raddatz just last week when I wrote about it on AIP almost a month ago. Perhaps now that the President has repeated this fallacious claim about the uninsured a few more times, the media will cast some sunlight on the truth.

But, the President’s flawed data isn’t the only issue. It’s the sentiment he expressed in defending his plan, that we’re not going to have some people carry the burden for others. For today only, and only when it comes to this topic of the uninsured and their effect on premiums, the President positioned himself as against pinning the burden on one segment of society for the benefit of another.

But, isn’t this what his Presidency is based on? On all of us being each other’s keepers? How many times has he told reporters that successful people like him should pay more in taxes than the waitress struggling to make ends meet (an example he took a liking to on the campaign trail)?

Yet today, by the President’s logic, he expressed that when people don’t shoulder their responsibilities, when they expect for everyone else to carry them, everyone else pays the price. The collective suffers. And, this time, President Obama finds this unacceptable.

Surprised? Why the change from his normal philosophy of fairness — that is, taking from one group to pay for another because it’s the fair, socially just thing to do? What are we missing? What happened today?

The answer is that this is a good for today only, health-care specific policy he’s carved out. There is no reconciling his statement today with his belief that ’spreading the wealth around’ is the only way to success.

Charles Krauthammer wrote an excellent article this weekend on President Obama’s shaky relationship with the truth. He writes, “Obama doesn’t lie. He merely elides, gliding from one dubious assertion to another.” When one tactic doesn’t work, he moves on to the next ploy. Krauthammer perfectly sums up Obama’s approach to his health care pitch. If you like your insurance, you can keep it — didn’t work. The public option is just an option — didn’t work. I will not sign a plan that adds a dime to the deficit — didn’t work. Illegal immigrants will not be covered under our plan — didn’t work.

So, our salesperson-in-chief moved on to his next gambit. Is it to obfuscate? To sound conservative? I’m not sure. What I do know is that President Obama’s policies embrace a philosophy that is completely opposed to the one he peddled today. But, with his health care proposals remaining unpopular, I guess he’ll try anything to sell his plan — including throwing a little conservative philosophy in there.  Many including Karl Rove and George Will have pointed out that when the President talks about health care, the poll numbers go down. This week’s numbers will tell whether this new untrustworthy sales tactic worked.

*Originally published September 20, 2009 on the American Issues Project Blog, here.

Yesterday, CBS’s Declan McCullagh reported on documents obtained from the Treasury Department under a FOIA request by the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The documents provide an internal overview and analysis of the cap-and-trade scheme. The first memo contains this disclosure.

“In his February 24, 2009 Joint Session address, President Obama called for a greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program, underscoring his commitment to domestic climate policy. While such a program can yield environmental benefits that justify its costs, it will raise energy prices and impose annual costs on the order of [REDACTION] dollars. At the same time, given the Administration’s proposal to auction all emission allowances, a cap-and-trade program could generate federal receipts on the order of $100 to $200 billion annually.”

So there you have it, from an internal Treasury Department document that cap-and-trade could generate federal receipts, i.e. tax revenue, in the range of $100 to $200 billion a year. McCullagh reports that at the upper end of that range, cap-and-trade would cost every American household an extra $1,761 a year.

Does that cost sound familiar to you? The Heritage Foundation has long predicted that:

“The annual cost of emissions permits to energy users will be at least $100 billion by 2012 and could exceed $390 billion by 2035.”

“Economic costs will likely be on the order of 1% of GDP, making them equal in scale to all existing environmental regulation.”

That’s another prediction offered up without any details as to timeline or the effects of this scheme, not just on increased costs for families but on businesses and job losses.

These internal memos confirm what the Heritage Foundation, the Brookings Institution and the National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC) all agree on — that cap-and-trade will produce “significant losses in employment and gross domestic product.”

According to Heritage:

“The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis found that, for the average year over the 2012-2035 timeline, job loss will be 1.1 million greater than the baseline assumptions. By 2035, there is a projected 2.5 million fewer jobs than without a cap-and-trade bill. The average GDP lost is $393 billion, hitting a high of $662 billion in 2035. From 2012 to 2035, the accumulated GDP lost is $9.4 trillion (in 2009 dollars). The average of the climate tax revenue–what the government gets to spend or give away–is $236 billion from 2012 through 2035 and adds up to $5.7 trillion in tax collections.”

Brookings concluded:

“The Brookings analysis of the Waxman-Markey bill finds loss in personal consumption of $1-2 trillion in present value. The more stringent carbon targets in subsequent years produce even higher costs. Brookings projects that an additional 8 percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions increases costs 45 percent. GDP in the United States would be lower by 2.5 percent in 2050, and unemployment would be 0.5 percent higher (1.7 million fewer jobs) in the first decade below the baseline or without cap and trade. The total allowance revenue (tax revenue) generated by 2050 would be $9 trillion.”

And, the NBCC predicted:

“The National Black Chamber of Commerce found the following adverse effects from Waxman-Markey: In 2015, GDP would be 1 percent ($170 billon) below the “no cap-and-trade bill” baseline. In 2030, GDP will be 1.3 percent ($350 billon) below the baseline, and by 2050 the study projects a reduction in GDP of 1.5 percent ($730 billion). The study also projects higher unemployment of 2.3-2.7 million jobs in each year of the policy through 2030–after accounting for “green job” creation.”

Treasury’s $100 to $200 billion a year estimate is a private admission that Heritage, Brookings and the NBCC have it right. But, the figure stops shorts of examining the widespread effects this huge tax scheme will have as it raises costs for consumers and simultaneously forces businesses to cut jobs.

“In particular, the Heritage analysis projects that by 2035 the economic impacts (in constant 2009 dollars) of this bill are:

• Gasoline prices will rise 58 percent (or $1.38);
• Natural gas prices will rise 55 percent;
• Heating oil prices will rise 56 percent;
• Electricity prices will rise 90 percent;
• A family of four can expect its per-year energy costs to rise by $1,241;
• Including taxes, a family of four will pay an additional $4,609 per year;
• A family of four will reduce its consumption of goods and services by up to $3,000 per year, as its income and savings fall;
• Aggregate GDP losses will be $9.4 trillion;
• Aggregate cap-and-trade energy taxes will be $5.7 trillion;
• Job losses will be nearly 2.5 million; and
• The national debt will rise an additional $12,803 per person ($51,212 per family of four).

The income losses, the job losses, the tax increases, and the mounting debt all get worse over the coming decades. The Waxman-Markey bill forces a bad deal on a generation that does not have the option to turn it down.

The $9.4 trillion of lost income, the 2.5 million lost jobs, the $5.0 trillion of additional national debt, and the $5.7 trillion in new taxes will buy no more than a 0.2 degree (Celsius) moderation in world temperature increases by 2100 and no more than a 0.05 degree reduction by 2050.”

Christopher Horner, the CEI scholar who requested the documents put it best, “They’re not telling you the cost — they’re not telling you the benefit, what are they telling you? They’re just talking about global salvation.”

The verdict is in: a majority of Americans now oppose ObamaCare. According to Rasmussen, 53% oppose Democrats’ proposals, with disapproval ratings up 9% since June. 51% believe health care costs will increase under Obama’s plan, and just 19% think the proposed measures will bring health care costs down.

Gallup has compiled a ten-point list summarizing Americans’ problems with Democrats’ plans based on voter surveys taken in late July. They conclude that while Americans want some reforms in the long-term, they are in no hurry to see health care legislation pushed through quickly.

The list points out that Americans are primarily concerned about government spending, and in light of the enormous stimulus bill, which less than a third believe has made the economy better,  their concern is with the country’s economic well-being. The failure of the stimulus to stimulate anything (other than the government) has prompted them to step back, examine the details of the legislation and question how it would affect their lives.

The outrage significant numbers of people have expressed is due to the fact that they feel manipulated, and they’re sick of being lied to. The President and his administration had much success using his sales tactics and urgent rhetoric to sell people on the necessity of his plans early on in his Presidency – especially when it came to the stimulus. The President toured the country then too, telling people that the only way to get the economy back on track was to spend more – namely in the areas of health care, energy and infrastructure. Yet, here we are in August, with only about $70 billion of the $787 billion having been spent.  And even with a slight drop in the unemployment rate last week, with payrolls declining, struggling Americans who aren’t seeing any change in their lives are getting frustrated with Washington’s rabid spending, crafty rhetoric and overall incompetence.

And yet today, President Obama looked people in the eye at the town hall gathering in New Hampshire and lied to them once again. He was dishonest a few times, but the time I’d like to focus on is when he mentioned that he would not sign any bill that increased the deficit.

The current price tag for health care is a whopping $1 trillion. The CBO estimates that the proposals will increase the federal deficit by $239 billion over the next ten years. After the next 10 years, health care could add more than $880 billion to the deficit. And it gets worse with the possibility that the CBO may have underestimated the cost of health care by $1 trillion.

Despite these facts, Obama once again renewed his promise today to provide health care coverage to (almost) all Americans, bring down costs and make the system more efficient - without adding to the deficit.

Americans know when something seems off. And, after the stimulus debacle, they don’t want to be lied to. If liberals are going to sell their health care bill, they must engage voters honestly and have a real debate over the proposals. People went along with the stimulus because they believed that without spending that money, the economy would collapse. No one would be spared its effects. But, Americans learned their lesson, and they’re not buying anymore.

If anything, President Obama’s performance at the town hall today hurt his cause more than it helped it. All but a couple questions were from health care supporters who had already made up their minds. And, he stuck to the liberal talking points and continued to lie – about everything from the cost of the plan, to the alleged competitiveness it would foster, and even about his own prior position on a single-payer system.

It caught my attention when at one point, President Obama said, “if you’re in private insurance, first of all, your private insurance can do whatever you want.” That’s exactly the point Mr. President. Now how about some more of that honesty in the town hall forums coming later this week?

*Originally published on The American Issues Project Blog, here.

This week, the House passed a bill that imposes further regulations on financial firms – on executive pay which is bad enough in itself, and to add insult to injury, on the way those firms and employees do business. The bill is“aimed at preventing financial firms from adopting compensation systems that encourage excessive risk-taking.” Once again, this overly broad, intrusive language coming out of Congress raises a plethora of questions – what is “excessive” risk-taking? Who decides where to draw that line? (Perhaps another czar? Or, do we already have one reigning over Wall Street?) And most importantly, isn’t this what Wall Street players do – take risks? Some pay off, some don’t. When they pay off, people flock to try to get a share of the rewards, and when investments fail, people pull away. Some have the foresight to see failure coming and stay away from the beginning. Isn’t that’s the beauty of the marketplace?

Two quotes in the WSJ article I linked to above (here) nicely sum up the debate. First, Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama “suggested the measure would allow the government to impinge on the rights of private corporations. “Government bureaucrats don’t know what’s best for America,” he said.” On the other side, Rep. Brad Miller of North Carolina said, “We have found out what happens when there are no rules, when there is no oversight, when there is no watchdog.”

There you have the two side of this debate. Each side is concerned with the broader ramifications of action and inaction. Action in terms of this bill puts the government in the driver’s seat once again, imposing terms on private companies and interfering instead of letting self-interested individual choices play out and determine the winners and losers. Inaction, we are warned, is what led us to the economic crisis we face now. So, action is urged.

But there are fundamental flaws in this second argument. First, as to the cause of the current crisis, it’s foolish and untrue to point to a lack of regulation as the cause of the crisis. A simple Google search of ’causes of the economic crisis 2008′ brings up 50,100,000 hits. This is too big a topic to delve into in this post, but I think it’s fair to say that government intervention through Fannie and Freddie along with individual greed and poor choices all played a part in bringing down the housing market. And, as far as I’m aware, banks, while they were greatly over-leveraged, were playing by the rules – investing in the safest market since Americans are known to pay this bill before all others – mortgages. To point the finger at banks and claim that a lack of regulation is to blame for the current situation amounts to singling out and demonizing Wall Street at worst and oversimplifying at best.

Second, it is simply a lie to claim that there were no rules, regulations or watchdogs around, and that in turn, their absence led to the dire economic situation we face. Securities laws and the Securities Exchange Commission were created long ago. They already dictate the makeup of boards of directors, including how many interested and disinterested directors there must be on each board. Further, unlike shareholders, boards of directors have a fiduciary responsibility to the company and must act in the interest of the company and its shareholders. A shareholder, however, can be anyone like you and me who purchases a stock and owes no responsibility to the company to become informed of the company’s structure, liabilities or finances at all. And unlike a director, if a shareholder becomes unhappy with the company, they can sell their shares and cut all ties instantly without any consequences.

It is always easy to blame the haves for anything that goes wrong. But it is irresponsible for members of Congress and the administration to oversimplify, spread misinformation and use the current economic climate to their advantage to inflate government at the expense of private industry and individual freedom. If people think a CEO’s salary is disconnected to his worth for the company, don’t buy that company’s stock. If they think a company is taking unnecessary risks, don’t invest in that company. Government interference is not going to solve problems that were created by many players, over an extended period of time, overnight. And, the ramifications of government continuously overstepping its boundaries like this should be worrisome for all of us.

*Originally published August 2, 2009 on The American Issues Project Blog, here.

As some readers know, I recently took a much-needed break and travelled to Puerto Rico for a week. I am always anxious when travelling, but my anxiety was higher than normal on this trip due to the fact that I had to travel with a few liquid medications. These medications are all natural and therefore, not prescribed to me via the traditional route. Since I needed them, I couldn’t take the chance of checking them in with my luggage, so being the studious, rule-following person that I am, I called TSA ahead of time, seeking their guidance on the best way to travel with them so as to minimize any potential headaches while getting through security. To my surprise, I found the TSA agent pleasant, informative and reassuring. The medicine needed to be kept in the original containers in a clear, gallon-sized zip lock bag. Done.

Fast forward a week. We arrive at the airport early, I walk up to security, declare that I have medicine and pull the bag out of my carry-on. Aside from the fact that I was pulled to the side and searched for ten minutes because the metal detectors did not like the buttons on my jeans, which the TSA agent noted but proceeded to pat me down everywhere anyway, afraid to use her brain (by noting my demeanor, close-fitting clothing under which nothing could be concealed, etc.) I then had to deal with TSA agents when I came out of the glass box I was confined in during the search, telling me that my medicine would not be allowed on the plane.

So, I spent another ten minutes pleading, explaining, pulling out doctors’ notes, and telling the TSA employees of the conversation I’d had just one week earlier with the TSA representative who’d taken down my contact and flight information and assured me that every airport follows the same rules.

The response I received: smirks, confused looks, laughs, shrugs. The TSA employees at the airport had never heard of the rules I was told on the phone (despite the fact that these same rules are clearly laid out on their website). Then, the manager, the ultimate authority over what does and doesn’t get on the plane, walked over and very nonchalantly said to the agents, “do whatever you want”.

And, just like that, after performing a ‘vapor test’ on the medicine, I was allowed to take it through. (What does the vapor test do? Other than give the security people some semblance of legitimacy, I have no idea.)

While I remained calm during the ordeal, I was shaken up afterward. And, I couldn’t help but marvel at the disaster that is the TSA. They are supposed to keep us safe? Could they be any more disorganized? So, let me get this straight. The TSA is paid for by flyers and taxpayers. It receives funding from 1) the 9/11 fee assessed on airplane tickets, 2) airlines (in other words, people who fly who also presumably pay taxes) and 3) directly from taxpayer support.

After 9/11, the federal government decided to use taxpayer money to create the TSA. So, we paid someone to create the policies, to create a website detailing those polices, to answer phones and consult with flyers like me and explain/reassure them of the policies. And, we pay the security agents at the airport who somehow don’t follow the same polices. How does this make any sense?

Don’t get me wrong – if there is one function the federal government should have, it’s to provide protection. And, I have no problem with being questioned or searched at the airport for I have nothing to hide. But, how much time did these agents waste with me, only to let me take my medicines onboard, when they could have been searching people who were a real threat? And, how about if we must have them, why not hire people we trust to be thinking and rational to make judgments about who does and does not present a real security threat?

While the analogy has been made that having the government run health care will result in health care that makes us feel like we’re at the DMV – waiting in long lines, being at the mercy of the government bureaucrats and employees and having no other choice, I think comparing it to dealing with security at the airport is an even better analogy. They hold all the power – to decide who gets what treatment, who gets to go through and who doesn’t. The TSA is a perfect example of a government organization that is mismanaged and disorganized. It is the epitome of a government creation that has turned into a monster – is this who we want to run our health care?