by R. Lee Wrights
BURNET, Texas (Nov. 19) – President Obama has found something else to blame for the recession, adding to a list that includes his Republican predecessors, the weather, and fortune. He thinks that American business people are “lazy” because they haven’t focused more on attracting foreign investment. The president told a group of CEOs at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Hawaii recently that they’ve “been a little bit lazy … over the last couple of decades” because they had “taken for granted” that “people will want to come here” and were not “out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new business into America.”
I don’t know if it is more appalling that President Obama once again used a foreign trip to criticize America or that he is so very, very out of touch with reality. He obviously has not read, probably has not even seen, the Code of Federal Regulations, which clutters more than 25 feet and ten shelves in the Library of Congress. The CFR is a compilation of all the rules and regulations written by all federal executive departments and agencies, under the statutory authority Congress gives them. It’s considered administrative law, written by lawyers for lawyers (and judges), and interpreted by bureaucrats.
In 2000, reporter John Stossel showed just how America’s licensing laws, government regulation and taxation stifle business. He did a report for ABC news on his attempt to open a Frisbee store that met all legal and regulatory requirements in Hong Kong, New York City and India. (“Is America Number One?” ABC News Special, Sept. 1, 2000) In Hong Kong the entire process took hours. In NYC it took weeks. In India it would have taken years! In another ABC program, Stossel took one title of the CFR, dealing with federal election laws, removed the pages from the binding, taped them together and rolled them out over the length of a football field, and halfway back again.
The CFR is so big that if you read 100 pages a day, every day, it would take you more than two years to complete it … but you probably never could finish reading because bureaucrats add more pages with every new piece of federal legislation. In a recent video posted on the website EconomicFreedom.org, the Charles Koch Institute noted that regulatory compliance costs U.S. businesses $1.75 trillion. That would be enough to hire 43 million workers, a quarter of the nation’s work force.
After chastising the business leaders for being “lazy,” the president said the solution to their indolence was to create — you guessed it — another federal bureaucracy to help foreigners cut the Gordian Knot of local, state and federal regulations. This is the classic technique used by politicians to increase their power. It’s the one thing government is good at. As Harry Browne said, “Government is good at one thing. It knows how to break your legs, hand you a crutch and say, ‘See, if it weren’t for the government you couldn’t walk.'”
The average federal regulator destroys 150 private sector jobs per year. State regulators do even more damage. Several states have attempted to drive African-Americans out of the hair-braiding business by requiring them to get a $5,000 cosmetology license — taking a year-long course from schools that don’t even teach braiding. Texas regulators force computer repair technicians to get a costly private investigator license that requires a three-year apprenticeship. Louisiana even force florists to pass a rigorous licensing exam, even though experts can’t tell which floral arrangements were created by “licensed” professionals.
Why then should any foreign investor want to spend money in the United States when our own local and federal governments treat productive and prosperous entrepreneurs as mere “sources of revenue,” to be regulated, controlled, and taxed to support the “less fortunate” or to serve the “common good.” Why should foreign businesses, banks and governments invest in America when they can simply lend money to an American government run by politicians who cannot control their spending addiction?
The problem is not that American business is lazy, it is that our ruling elites have bankrupted our country and continue to drive us deeper into debt. The problem is that our political leaders lack the moral and intellectual courage to make the hard choices needed to turn the economy around. Only by stopping the spending, and lifting the regulatory loads that burden-down entrepreneurs and stifles the creative and productive spirit of America, will we see our nation’s economy improve.
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R. Lee Wrights, 53, a libertarian writer and political activist, is seeking the presidential nomination because he believes the Libertarian message in 2012 must be a loud, clear and unequivocal call to stop all war. To that end he has pledged that 10 percent of all donations to his campaign will be spent for ballot access so that the stop all war message can be heard in all 50 states. Wrights is a lifetime member of the Libertarian Party and co-founder and editor of the free speech online magazine Liberty For All. Born in Winston-Salem, N.C., he now lives and works in Texas.
Lee Wrights for President
Contact: Brian Irving, press secretary
[email protected]
919.538.4548
Hi Robert @24 –
I was not then and am not now a member of the Libertarian party nor privy to the various disagreements among the factions thereof. I’m just referring to Clark’s self-characterization as a “low-tax liberal” and a peace candidate with Koch’s reputation as a supporter of conservative political causes with a libertarian bent. Neither may be accurate based on the realities of the early 80’s – I really can’t say.
I actually worked for Koch Oil back then – I had a summer job pumping gas at the Colonial gas station in North Manchester, IN – a Koch company!
Hi Mke @23 –
The joke I thought I might make was about Wrights implication that remarks made in Hawaii were somehow made on foreign soil, thus implying that if he were correct and/or serious he thinks that Hawaii is not a state. It was neither very clear nor very funny…
19 wf: … Koch as his running mate brought together the left and right sides of the Libertarian spectrum, recognizing the value in each.
me: Please expand. My recollection of that period was there was no left/right L divide. The Reason crowd were hawkish; there was a kind of divide between anarchos and minarchos; and then there were the agorists, who pretty much stayed to themselves. I don’t recall Clark and Koch having much if any disagreement on policy.
Jake @4:
I think wolfefan @1 was referring to this gaffe instead of any birther stuff:
http://news.yahoo.com/obama-admits-being-born-asia-214219978.html
Each of the candidates has a bunch of friends they can ask off the record to vet their motion.
wolfe,
I don’t think your disappointment is unjustifiable.
You’re wanting the candidates to get things right.
In this case, the candidate got a couple of things wrong.
If he’s smart — and I know him well enough to say that yes, he is smart — he’ll learn from it and improve.
whoops – that should be “some (most?)…”
Hi TK –
That’s fair enough. I guess part of my disappointment is that I would like to find a Libertarian candidate that I can feel comfortable voting for. Others have run over the pros and cons of the various candidates here and in other places so I don’t want to go over all that again.
From an outsider to the party Wrights reminds me a little of Ed Clark. I voted for Clark – I had the sense that if lightning struck and he won he would actually have a clue about how to govern, and having Koch as his running mate brought together the left and right sides of the Libertarian spectrum, recognizing the value in each. So few candidates today seem to have any interest in doing that, and some )most?) seem to actively despise other wings of the party.
Of course, Wrights/Clark may not be an entirely fair comparison. Clark had Koch’s money behind him, which meant he had a staff to do the work of fact-checking, researching, writing, polishing etc. While some of the candidates seem to have more money and staff than others, there’s no way any of them will match the Koch contributions. It could be that I’m hoping for too much at this point in the campaign.
wolfefan,
I don’t want to get too deeply into defending the piece, but I can buy “foreign trip” as “poor phrasing” rather than “big gotcha mistake.”
I also think that Wrights just misread Obama’s comments, as opposed to getting his interpretation of them from Perry/Romney.
Obama goes out of his way to say as little as possible of substance, but with maximum verbosity. If you’re not careful, it gets very easy to read your own guess as to what he “would” say into your understanding what he actually “did” say.
I don’t believe Bill Still can be taken seriously as a candidate. He does not respond to questions outside of bank reform. That is why he should be a staff member. When he talks about money and banking no one running against him to going to get to his level, but greenback theory is not LP foundational.
RJ Harris is a tea party candidate. He wants to be famous. Normally, you need to be famous or notorious prior to asking for the nomination if you have no credibility.
I like Lee because he is what the founders had envisioned as a citizen politician. He is just a regular guy who loves freedom. I don’t think his campaign is going to go global. I don’t think he can win his own state.
It is a long way off.
Thanks TK and others for your help. I had reviewed the transcripts on the WH website and couldn’t find what Wrights is talking about.
I’m kind of stunned that Wrights was taking the word of people like Rick Perry about what Obama (or anyone else) said. It’s not a good indicator.
I also think the “foreign trip” thing is disingenuous at best, and deliberately misleading at worst. If I fly from Virginia (where I live) to my birth state of Ohio, make a speech, and then fly on to Canada, have I made my speech as part of a foreign trip? I think most people would say no.
While I am glad to see Wrights try to address issues besides the war and foreign policy, this particular example does not provide me any confidence in his judgment or in his ability to accurately read and interpret a situation.
LP presidential candidates never lose debates with either major party because, unfortunately, LP presidential candidates never get to HAVE debates with either major party.
From among the current field, if I had to bet I’d bet on Wrights. He may not be on the short list of History’s Greatest Orators just yet, but he’s becoming increasingly comfortable and articulate on the stump, and his platform is in accord with the LP’s direction.
Gary is a long-time activist and a good guy, but I’ve watched the debates and he isn’t really laying out his campaign vision in a particularly compelling way.
Still is mostly a single-issue candidate, and his position on that single issue doesn’t track with the LP’s “mainstream.” That puts the count at 0-2, with no chance of a walk, and I just don’t see him hitting it out of the park from some other direction.
Person’s already peaked in terms of how seriously his candidacy will be taken. He’s probably not the craziest candidate the LP has ever drawn, but he’s in the general Daniel Imperato/Jeffrey Diket/Charles Collins area — at least a little “off” and not going anywhere.
Harris just ain’t gonna happen — like I said, “developing.”
Right now, if I had to bet money on the current field, I’d bet on Wrights.
But of course the field could change.
The more I read his work the more I move toward the conclusion that Lee Wrights should be an adviser on policy rather than a candidate.
If Wrights advised on domestic policy and Bill Still advised on bank reform policy, that candidate, if trained properly at public speaking, wouldn’t come close to losing a debate to either major party.
Lee reminds of Harry Browne.
Hawai’i SHOULD be a independent nation! However, the Kingdom was overthrown in 1893, the U.S. Congress apologized in 1993, yet has never made any attempts to give the Hawai’in people the opportunity to reclaim their independence.
@11,
Good catch — it was, indeed, a “foreign trip” even though there was a stop in Hawaii.
Not the best phrasing, especially given that it’s something conspiracy types could stretch into a “birther” admission, but not really a horrible blunder.
Also, the same trip reaches Bali, Indonesia, so the trip is foreign even if the speaking location was in Hawaii.
wolfefan @ 8,
Yes, a transcript exists, and the article above is just flat incorrect.
Obama specifically criticized the US government, not business, for getting “lazy” about promoting foreign investment in the US.
That’s a problematic position for libertarians as well, and even for some of the same reasons (the solution is still to cut, not expand, government), but not Obama’s target in that statement was neither workers nor “business leaders,” but government bureaucrats.
Hi Jake @4 –
I thought about making a joke about that, too. Even if he does, it’s a case he’d be foolish to try to make and based on the stuff I’ve seen here Mr. Wrights doesn’t seem like a fool.
Does anyone have a link to a transcript of these remarks? I’ve learned that when a quote has ellipses in it there’s often a lot there that can change the context and meaning. I haven’t found an actual transcript of this speech – does one exist? Thanks in advance!
3 I believe it was Cain who said “develop”, such as advancing form nuclear to thermonuclear devices, new missile deliver systems, etc.
make that: EVEN WITH massive US deregulation
It’s not a matter of “promotion,” as BHO seems to think. Capital flows to the highest ROI. Capital knows about the US…it’s not like our nation is a secret or something!
There is PLENTY of direct foreign investment in the US. It’s just that places like the BRIC nations have been experiencing much faster growth rates. This should be no surprise, since they have such low bases.
I suspect Wrights is correct that government regulation dissuades direct foreign investment to some extent. Whether US ROIs would exceed the ROIs in China and India without massive deregulation seems unlikely, however.
@1 Since Obama was born in Hawaii does that mean the Wrights campaign does not believe he is a U.S. Citizen?
Nov 18, 2011: There is something ironic about criticizing someone for being out of touch when one neglects the gross failures of American ‘democracy’ and the abuse of citizens in DC, Samoa, PR, Marianas ……………
And he thinks main land China is JUST NOW gaining atomic capabilities [not 1964 !!!!!!!!]
“speaking of foreign countries,
especially those whom doubt the superiority of their culture……..”
[five hours ago] ……….. the four Western European countries and in the U.S., those who did not graduate from college are more likely than those who did to agree that their culture is superior, even if their people are not perfect.
The Pew Research Center did not inquire about other potential reasons Americans no longer believe their culture is superior.
There is something ironic about criticizing someone for being out of touch when one thinks Hawaii is a foreign country. 🙂