Is anyone doing basic journalistic fact-checking of the statements of fact made by your guests? Just curious, because these sound like soundbites from corporate America. Google's Eric Schmidt admitted that the real problem for small and large businesses now is low demand. People aren't buying because their wages have stagnated while prices of things like gasoline and heating oil have shot up. Start paying people decent wages, and they will buy.

scott, this is incredibly one-sided. the guy just ran down the names of all the "democrats" who support deregulation, yet all of those he named are DINOs, who do NOT represent most of us who feel regulations are necessary and protect the majority of us from pollution and abuse by those who would certainly do that if they could get away with it.

I remember a few years ago when they instituted the contractor ID numbers. Good idea, but what was the point. Last year the pa local news reported an elderly woman had being taken by a contractor who had no insurance, and the attorney general's office indicated they have nothing to do with policing the policy, just enforcing it and collecting the money, so where's the checks and balances in that regulation?


Secondly, on the lead pain issue, mention the fines to be imposed on small contractors not complying with that regulation. The fine is unbelievable.

Is this an infomercial? These two guests seem to be spokesmen for the Tea Party.

What is clean water and clean air? We need science to decide and as the science gets better we learn that our regulations are not good enough to protect human health & welfare.

Are you willing to be the one or your children/grandchildren who gets asthma, cancer, or some other illness because of outdated regulations?

Regulations, financial and environmental, are for the common good of all citizens. Just imagine if we had good financial regulations (and compliance) for the last 20 years. I wonder what the "financial collapse" would have looked like?

Maybe these guests should move to Nigeria, Mexico, China, or Pakistan if they want an economy without regulation.

How about a little reality here? The EPA was founded by President NIxon because it was necessary. Period. For years businesses large and small simply dropped the ball. The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland would catch fire routinely , because it carried such a load of filth. The clean air and water acts, along with other regulations, HAVE been effective, but need to be up-graded. All of this activity creates more jobs than it costs, especially over the long run. Almost all of the studies that have been done have shown this. Yet business STILL acts as if this is all some evil plot to put them out of business; "of course we ALL want a clean environment for our kids, etc." If this desire had manifested itself in voluntary action (which the environmental mess of the 50sand 60s clearly shows was not the case) then these regulations would not be necessary. As our population grows we will need to be more vigilant not less. This is just common sense.

I wonder why Scott didnt bring this up? It was on the front page of the Patriot News yesterday.

Environmentalis ts cite report in disputing 'job-killer' claims

http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/03/us/maryland-regulations-jobs/index.html

A personal point: There might well be any number of unnecessary or burdensome regulations, but these must be taken on a case by case basis. I had a very small business that dealt with food service products. My business failed because of certain state health regulations, but the blame should not be placed on the regulations guarding the health and wellbeing of the consumer. Rather, I must look in the mirror. It was the failure of a faulty business model. I did not do enough research on what was needed to protect the public health. If I had been allowed to go ahead and produce my products using the process I was economically dependent upon, I might have endangered the health of those who bought my products. I could not step up to the necessary production process, so I cut my losses and ended the business. It is my position that the problem is NOT with regulations, per se; it is with either a refusal to accept regulations, ignorance of regulations, or a faulty business plan.

Scott,
I work for the NFIB and I'm one of the guys who talks to business owners daily about these issues. You are welcome to ride with me some day and you can hear these stories first hand. The lead paint compliance issue has doubled the cost for homeowners to replace windows in older homes and two agencies demand the exact same compliance from contractors doubling their cost for no apparent reason. I hear similar stories every day. It's out of control but business owners are stubborn and will fight through the red tape.

Regulatory agencies are often given the ability to regulate without the need for Congress like the EPA, FDA, FCC and others and they usually tend to regulate for businesses not against.

Just take the FDA and look at the number of recalled drugs on almost a daily basis and the number of lawyers advertising they take cases against defective drugs.

This is not evidence of over regulation.

The banking industry has brought our entire country to it's knees because of one regulation that was undone by the government Glass-Stegal. So please explain how this deregulation has helped anyone?

I teach a class on regulation at Susquehanna University. If any of the folks who've commented here are interested I would urge you to visit our campus at the end of fall's semester (December 2012) to listen to our students engage in formal, one-hour debates about regulation. We have four debates addressing, respectively, regulation of the economy, of food, of drugs, and of sex. One team takes the affirmative (favoring regulation) and the other the negative. Check out Susquehanna University's website next December or feel free to contact me at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology.

Your listeners Wednesday did a good job of underscoring the critical importance of effective regulation and exposing the lack of evidence for your guests’ sweeping opposition to regulations. If there had been time to take my call (I was waiting on the line), I would have pointed listeners to the writing of Bruce Bartlett, a former high-level policy person in the Reagan and Bush administrations (http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/regulation-and-unemployment/). In a column tellingly entitled “Misrepresentat ions, Regulations, and Jobs," Bartlett points out that “No hard evidence is offered” for the claim that new regulations are holding back investment and job creation: “it is simply asserted as self-evident and repeated endlessly throughout the conservative echo chamber.” CONTINUED