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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (77357)	2/9/2010 1:19:01 AM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 90947

Poll: People don't want Obama's new regulations By: Byron York Chief Political Correspondent beltway-confidential 02/06/10 1:50 PM EST A new Gallup poll, taken after Barack Obama used his State of the Union address to advocate a series of new government regulations, finds that most Americans are worried about giving the federal government new regulatory powers, and a large majority do not want to see the government become more involved in regulating and controlling business. Gallup asked, "Which worries you more? Too much regulation of business by the government or not enough regulation of business by the government?" Fifty-seven percent of those surveyed say they're more worried about too much government regulation, while 37 percent say they're more worried by not enough regulation. (Six percent say they have no opinion.) Then Gallup asked, "Which of the following do you most agree with -- the federal government should become more involved in regulating and controlling business, the federal government should become less involved in regulating and controlling business, or things are about right the way they are?" Fifty percent say the government should become less involved, versus 24 percent who say it should become more involved, and 23 percent who say things are about right the way they are. There are striking differences between the political parties when it comes to regulation, but the Gallup survey suggests the issue tilts in the Republicans' favor; Republicans, and people who lean Republican, are quite united in their opposition to more regulation, while Democrats, and people who lean Democratic, are significantly less united in their support of it. (The poll did not give results for independents.) For example, 76 percent of Republicans say the government should become less involved in regulation, while just 36 percent of Democrats say the government should become more involved. Looking at it from the other end, just 13 percent of Republicans say the government should become more involved, while 27 percent of Democrats say it should become less involved. Thirty-three percent of Democrats say things are about right the way they are, versus 11 percent of Republicans. However you look at it, far more people favor less or the same amount of regulation than favor more regulation. Interpreting its findings, Gallup notes that in the State of the Union, Obama "mentioned the need to institute a fee on the biggest banks in order to continue to recover money given to banks; a proposal to slash tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas; instituting new regulations for financial institutions in order to provide more information to consumers; financial reforms that would affect lobbyists; and the healthcare reform effort that entails a great deal of government involvement in the nation's healthcare system. While the American public may favor some of these initiatives on an individual basis, the current results underscore the degree to which the average American in a general sense is concerned about too much government involvement in business." That's a dry way of saying Obama and his Democratic allies are going to have a hard time winning the sort of wide-ranging new regulations they want to impose on American economic life. washingtonexaminer.com

To: Sully- who wrote (77357)	2/10/2010 2:38:20 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 90947

Drill Somewhere, Drill At Some Point By: Daniel Foster The Corner Some neat investigative work and FOIA-jockeying is on display at BigGovernment on the topic of offshore drilling. It seems as if the Obama administration chose the issue as a show-pony for their transparency initiatives by including a lengthy period of public comment, and then went to great lengths to suppress those comments when they showed a support for offshore drilling at-odds with the administration's preferences. The most concerning bit is in the last paragraph below, in which it appears an Interior Department official is coordinating an effort to mislead the public about the results of the comments: <<< In April of 2009, during a discussion about offshore exploration in San Francisco, Salazar said that President Obama directed him to “to make sure that we have an open and transparent government” and that “these are not decisions that are going to be made behind closed doors.” Salazar went on to say that President Obama wanted to make sure that DOI was “maximizing the opportunity for the public to give us guidance on what it is that they want to do.” Yet, more than four months after the comment period ended, the Department of the Interior has failed to make any public announcement about the results, even though sources have told American Solutions for months the comments show a 2-1 advantage in support of offshore drilling. It took American Solutions almost four months and the power of the Freedom of Information Act to finally uncover indirect confirmation that, out of over 530,000 comments submitted, pro-drilling comments outnumbered anti-drilling comments by a 2-1 margin. In an email dated October 27, 2009, Liz Birnbaum, director of the Minerals Management Service, informs other Interior officials that a preliminary tabulation of the results of the comment period had not yet gone to Secretary Salazar, adding “[s]o the Secretary can honestly say in response to any questions that he’s [SIC] has not yet seen the analysis of the comments - staff is still working on it. I did, however, confirm to him the 2-1 split that these guys [at American Solutions] are emphasizing.” >>>