By Rick Manning

Limited government demands that the administrative state base regulations upon a foundation of sound science and transparency. But transparency and evidence-based science are not just a limited government issue; they're a better governance issue that should enjoy bipartisan commitment.

In particular, there’s a lot at stake in ensuring that the best and most reliable available research and evidence is behind rules proposed and implemented by federal agencies. The total cost to businesses and consumers of complying with Washington’s tens of thousands of regulations and rulings has been estimated at up to $2 trillion.

If a regulation is based on wrong or biased information, it could mean not only that money and effort is wasted but that massive amounts of resources are expended on rules and policies that are counterproductive to the very goals legislators and agencies purport to achieve.

In recent years, a bipartisan effort in Congress on evidence-based policymaking – captured in legislation forming the U.S. Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking to study and report back on the subject, along with follow-on legislation passed late last year – has focused on “dramatically improv(ing) transparency about (government’s) collection and use of data.” A report from the commission envisioned “a future in which rigorous evidence is created efficiently, as a routine part of government operations, and used to construct effective public policy.” 

Unfortunately, much of the activity involved with this effort has focused on process instead of the substance of data. Specifically, the evidence-based policymaking movement has not zeroed in on the fact that for years, important decisions by federal agencies in issuing new rules have been based on data and research that has not been fully revealed to policymakers, other experts or the public.

Moreover, this so-called “secret science” has not been reviewed by peers or made available for other scientists to examine and attempt to reproduce, another critical test of credibility. And resulting rules have often led to questionable policies in areas such as the environment and new innovations affecting public health.

The Heritage Foundation has just released a study that concludes, “Agencies should have to evaluate the science more carefully. They should not be able to work backwards by identifying desired policy outcomes and then selecting the science that helps to reach those outcomes. Some critics of transparency promotion seem more concerned with efficiency and ease of using desired science. They fail to recognize that this entire transparency discussion is not occurring within the vacuum of a scientific community. Instead, it is occurring within the context of the lawmaking process.”

The Heritage report calls for an executive order that would, in part:

• Make the science that [federal agencies] disseminate or use in policymaking available to the public.
• Include any data, assumptions, computer code or other relevant material for the public to properly evaluate the science.
• Inform the public in a clear fashion which science has been used in any of their decisionmaking. This includes explaining why some studies were chosen while other reliable studies were excluded.
• Take appropriate steps to prevent improper disclosure of personally identifiable information or confidential business information.
• Ensure that privacy and confidentiality concerns are not unnecessarily abused to block the disclosure of information.

President Trump has acted in cooperation with Congress to advance other evidence-based policymaking efforts, including the formation of a Federal Data Strategy. The Trump administration has also taken steps to increase access to, and accountability for, the research underlying regulatory decisionmaking. 

The Environment Protection Agency is reportedly pressing forward with a regulation it proposed in 2018 to make research underlying rule-making “publicly available in a manner sufficient for independent validation.” Trump has also issued an executive order to the same effect for existing regulations, ensuring that they rely on science that is available to the public and fully reproducible.

Now the job is to extend that executive order to all agencies and prospective regulations. 

The order should require that these studies be peer-reviewed to ensure wide acceptance and reliability, while also including safeguards to ensure that proprietary and personal information are kept private.

In its report, the Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking indicated that in “assessing regulations” among other government activities, “evidence should play an important role in key decisions” to “make sure our government’s decision-making process is among the best in the world.” 

To ensure better government, the commission’s and Congress’s process-driven focus on data needs to be complemented with a commitment to fully revealing the research underlying regulation to the scientific community and the public, and rigorously testing it to ensure its quality and reliability.

Rick Manning is president of Americans for Limited Government and co-author with Star Parker of the just released book “Necessary Noise: How Donald Trump inflames the culture war, and why that is good for America.”

To truly understand American politics, you need a translator

 

By Bill Wilson

To truly understand American politics, you need a translator.

Recently we were given a rare inside glance at the true meaning of politics in America, not the sugar-coated day-dreams of the establishment old-guard or the spitting rage and indignation of the professional Left.  Instead we got to see exactly how the whole thing works.  It is not pretty but none of it should be a surprise.

The facts are simple.  After years of propaganda, threats and outright attempts at legal bribery from the federal government, the then Republican controlled General Assembly in Virginia enacted a massive expansion of the government socialist healthcare program known as Medicaid.  More than 400,000 more people were to be included in a program that is literally breaking the backs of taxpayers at the national and state levels.

The Medicaid expansion had been a key element of Obamacare, that reckless exercise in Soviet-style central planning that has been an underlying factor in politics for a decade.  The Republicans caved when offered a “deal” from Democrat Governor Ralph Northam.  If the Republicans would just expand Medicaid by 400,000 people – eventually costing Virginia taxpayers billions of dollars – the Governor would ask the federal government for a waiver to require some portion of the new people to find or seek work.

Known as the work requirement, the Left and their lackeys in the media and the Democrat Party howl with pain anytime the issue of asking someone who the taxpayers support to contribute anything.  And they did again.  But many more seasoned political observers warned it was a ruse, the second they had the opportunity to break the deal and simply ignore the work requirement they would.

And predictably, these observers were labeled every name under the sun.  Don’t you know that “compromise” is the essence of our government?  Why do you refuse to trust the Democrat regime, accept their word that a deal is a deal?  “Obstructionists” screamed the corporate media propagandists. 

In the end, a handful of so-called “Republicans” voted with the Democrats to accept the “deal.”  Fast forward to this week.  Governor Northam announced that Virginia would “take a pause” in efforts to require the work rule.  And, on cue, the few Republicans who accept this nonsense expressed their “disappointment.”    The pathetic little play had moved into the final act.  Government expands, taxpayers get reamed, Republicans shake their heads and pledge to “get them next time,” and the Democrats reap the benefits of the growing dependent class.

Were this the only time we had seen this obscene theater we should shrug our shoulders and look to return to the fight to restore liberty in America.  But it isn’t.  This is but the most recent of a continual string of such defeats the stretch back many decades for the Virginia GOP. The quislings there still sit like vultures in a tree waiting for the next chance to swoop down and grab defeat from the jaws of victory. 

But recriminations aside, there is one big lesson here, a lesson that anyone concerned about the direction of our country must take to heart and practice every day. 

The lesson is simple translation: There is no dealing with the Left.  Their word is no good.  You cannot make a deal with someone who thinks lying and stealing are mere tactics, which the Marxists actually brag about.

Ayn Rand captured the essence of this situation when she wrote, “Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles.”  Hopefully Governor Northam’s recent exercise in back-stabbing will drive this message home.

Bill Wilson is the President of the Market Research Foundation and a former board member and former President of Americans for Limited Government.  

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Trump economic miracle continues with unemployment at 50-year low of 3.5 percent

Dec. 6, 2019, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement on the latest jobs report:

The unemployment rate is at a 50 year low at 3.5 percent. In the past year, 1.6 million people entered the workforce and an incredible 1.8 million people got jobs – this is an unprecedented run of job growth exceeding people entering the workforce at what many economists consider to be beyond full employment.  Even more significant, people who wanted work but had given up on applying was down 26 percent and people not looking because they believe no jobs are available for them was down 28 percent from a year earlier. Finally, and most importantly, fewer people are unemployed since the year 2000, when there were 19 million fewer Americans in the workforce.  The Trump economic miracle continues to astound as more and more Americans are achieving the American dream, and it is clear that the factless impeachment is a desperate partisan attempt to distract the nation from the greatest economy in any of our lifetimes.”

To view online: https://getliberty.org/2019/12/trump-economic-miracle-continues-with-unemployment-at-50-year-low-of-3-5-percent/

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Rick Manning: When We Self-Censor on Politics and Religion, the Left Wins

 

To listen online: https://soundcloud.com/breitbart/breitbart-news-daily-rick-manning-december-4-2019

By Robert Kraychik

Conservative self-censorship on themes of politics and religion aids the left’s push to eliminate Judeo-Christian ethics from America, said Rick Manning, president of Americans for Limited Government and author of Necessary Noise: How Donald Trump Inflames the Culture War and Why This Is Good News for America, in a Wednesday interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily.

Manning described a Judeo-Christian ethos as central to American values and as the foundation of an objective moral framework for the nation.

“Our DNA is a Judeo-Christian DNA. It’s built into the Constitution [and] the Declaration of Independence; all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights,” Manning remarked. “It’s part of the DNA of America, and when President Obama said we were a post-Christian country, he stated that almost as a triumph, and for the left it is, because here’s what it means: the underpinning of a certitude that there is, in fact, right, absolute truth, and everything else falls aside, that exists [within] a Judeo-Chistian ethos.

Manning warned of growing moral relativism in the wake of continual erosion of Judeo-Christian values across America

“It doesn’t exist anywhere else,” Manning said of the Judeo-Christian ethos. “So the concept of absolute truth underlies the rule of law, [and] it underlies the entirety of our civilization, and when you destroy the Judeo-Christian ethic, you destroy the rule of law and everything else becomes situational ethics, and what you see is, it’s okay to lie to accuse a Supreme Court nominee [of sexual impropriety] because the objective is to make sure that person isn’t confirmed. The ends justify the means. When we lose the Judeo-Christian ethos of our country, we lose the capacity to have objective [and] rational conversations between right and wrong.”

Marlow asked if the undermining of Judeo-Christian ethics is circumstantial or wrought by design.

“There is a concerted effort to destroy America,” noted Manning. “We’ve closed our eyes to it and allowed those who would destroy America to take over the institutions of America, and as a result, we wake up and we wonder, ‘Well, how the heck did this happen? How do we find ourselves with an Obama administration suing a school district in Illinois saying you have to let boys shower with girls or go in the girls’ locker room? When did we vote on that?’”

Manning added, “The left has been doing this over time and has developed a consensus in academia, and they just haven’t let the rest of us in on it. There is a concerted effort [to destroy America], but because there’s a concerted effort it is something we can attack and defeat.”

Conservative self-censorship on the subjects of politics and religion in order to avoid possible contentiousness in discussion amounts to withdrawal from the ideological battlespace, explained Manning.

“Because we’ve turned a blind eye, because we’ve said, ‘Oh, the things we can’t discuss are religion and politics,’ well, when you say you can’t discuss religion and politics, effectively, you say you can’t discuss anything that matters in the world,” stated Manning. “So consequently, we say you can’t discuss religion and politics in polite company, yet the other side does.”

Marlow reflected on those deliberately avoiding political or religious discussions around the Thanksgiving dinner table.

“I was thinking about this over Thanksgiving because I was at a house where we were discouraged from talking politics — which is fine for me because I talk politics all day every day, so I’m more than happy to have a day where we talk about other things — but overall, as this becomes a greater trend, I think this is very bad,” determined Marlow. “I think we’re all getting very soft to being able to handle criticism and [being able] to disagree civilly, which I think is a lost skill that used to be necessary and assumed, and now, basically, if anyone disagrees with you that is a microaggression, if not a macroaggression.”

Marlow continued, “I find all these [phenomena] to be certainly not good, and perhaps devastating for the future of the country if we’re going to control speech and forget how to disagree politely. I don’t like this stuff, and it’s becoming more and more commonplace.”

Manning described conservative self-censorship on matters of politics and religion as a surrender of critical analysis of such subjects to news media outlets.

“I think it’s important to remember that the speech they want to control and say you can’t engage in is the speech that they don’t control,” Manning said. “When I say ‘they’ I mean the major media and the elites who are sitting there and basically putting us through an inundation through all the entertainment that we consume of almost complete leftist agenda with little pushback.”

Manning went on, “They’re inundating us everyday with stuff throughout MSN headlines on MSN.com — they’re tilted left. Everything we see is tilted left, and as a result we can’t discuss it because that would be pushing back. We have to accept that norm. So yes, it’s a manipulation and it’s dangerous.”

Conservative self-censorship in political and religious discussions allows left-wing and partisan Democrat news media and academia to control Americans’ understandings of such subjects, concluded Manning.

Permalink here.

 

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