“At a minimum, each Regulatory Reform Task Force shall attempt to identify regulations that (i) eliminate jobs, or inhibit job creation; (ii) are outdated, unnecessary, or ineffective; (iii) impose costs that exceed benefits; (iv) create a serious inconsistency or otherwise interfere with regulatory reform initiatives and policies; ….”
The just-signed Executive Order, “ENFORCING THE REGULATORY REFORM AGENDA” (February 24, 2017), is a great free market moment, one rivaling Ronald Reagan’s EO dated January 28, 1981, that began: “I am ordering, effective immediately, the elimination of remaining Federal controls on U.S. oil production and marketing.” Reagan explained:
…For more than 9 years, restrictive price controls have held U.S. oil production below its potential, artificially boosted energy consumption, aggravated our balance of payments problems, and stifled technological breakthroughs. Price controls have also made us more energy-dependent on the OPEC nations, a development that has jeopardized our economic security and undermined price stability at home.
“‘An inability to tolerate views different’? ‘Rage reactions’? Can we apply this mental health standard to Joe Romm and James Hansen, not to mention Paul Ehrlich in his diatribes against Julian Simon?”
“This is ironic to those of us who have encountered angry neo-Malthusians trying to wake us up to the coming food famine (1960s warnings), resource famine (1970s warnings), and, most recently, climate alarmism. Does this standard apply to them as it does to all things Trump?”
I have resubscribed to the New York Times. I received a 50 percent discount, and with Trump’s upset win in November I wanted to better understand what the intellectual/media elite were thinking. (And the answer is … they still don’t get it.)
In the Letters section of February 14th edition, I encountered “Mental Health Professionals Warn About Trump.”…
“On climate science, our members and supporters cover a broad range of different views, from the IPCC position through agnosticism to outright scepticism…. We regard observational evidence and understanding the present as more important and more reliable than computer modelling or predicting the distant future.”
The UK-based Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is a growing force in UK (and US) climate scholarship and related public policy. Given their relevance in the Trump era, a short history from GWPF’s website follows:
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The Global Warming Policy Foundation was launched by Lord Lawson and Dr Benny Peiser on 23 November 2009 in the House of Lords – in the run-up to the Copenhagen Climate Summit.
Introducing the new think tank, Lord Lawson explained its origin:
“Last year I brought out a book on global warming which (rather to my surprise) generated an enormous feedback, almost all of it positive.…