Fwd: MyHeritage.org: Offshore drilling ban kills jobs and weakens economy

July 15, 2010 | By Amanda J. Reinecker Offshore drilling ban kills jobs and weakens economy Banning offshore drilling will not clean up the Gulf spill. It will, however, kill jobs and further devastate our economy. That's why it's a good thing federal judge Martin Feldman ruled against the President's proposed deepwater drilling moratorium. And why it's a good thing a federal appeals court rightly upheld his decision to strike it down. But the President has introduced a new ban. On Monday, the Department of Interior issued a new moratorium on deepwater drilling that will last until November 30. Interior, along with the President, claims the moratorium on drilling will help prevent a future spill. But The Heritage Foundation's Nick Loris challenges this extraordinary claim. He argues: One accident, no matter how tragic, is not indicative of an evolving pattern. The explosion of one rig could have been caused by any number of isolated factors unique to the BP rig and cannot be assumed to carry over to all deepwater drilling...The moratorium would do nothing to address the oil spill. Instead, it would unnecessarily destroy jobs in a region struggling to manage an environmental and economic crisis—largely in part because of the federal government. This ban is salt in the Gulf states' wounds. Even the President's own oil spill commission recognizes the ban's adverse impacts. Heritage's Rob Bluey explains, "Commission co-chairman Bob Graham, a former Democratic senator from Florida, bluntly declared Tuesday that there's a 'disconnect between Washington and the Gulf region about the sense of urgency needed.'" And the Republican co-chairman on the commission, former Environmental Protection Agency chief William Reilly, was quoted as saying, "If there's a single point of consensus as we've been down here, it's that the moratorium is doing very significant economic damage to this area." A team of Heritage experts recently returned from the Gulf, where they saw firsthand the economic and environmental devastation the spill has caused. (Read their Live Reports from the Gulf series on the Foundry). They were able to break through the political and media blockades and speak one on one with the people of the Gulf Coast. Based on what they studied, they compiled a to-do list for the government. First on that list is "end the oil drilling moratorium…really." A drilling moratorium is not worth the national pain it is causing. - Stephen Congdon John Stossel showcases Heritage report Tonight at 9:00 p.m. Eastern, Heritage senior legal research fellow Brian Walsh will sit down with Fox Business Network's John Stossel to discuss his latest book, One Nation Under Arrest: How Crazy Laws, Rogue Prosecutors, and Activist Judges Threaten your Liberty. The book documents how over the past 50 years, the expansion and politicization of criminal law and practice have created traps for millions of innocent and unwary Americans. These developments threaten to make criminals out of those who are doing their best to be respectable, law-abiding citizens. Consider, for example, small-time inventor and entrepreneur Krister Evertson, whose story is recounted by Walsh and his Heritage colleague Hans von Spakovsky: In May 2004, FBI agents driving a black Suburban and wearing SWAT gear ran Evertson off the road near his mother's home in Wasilla, Alaska. When Evertson was face down on the pavement with automatic weapons trained on him, an FBI agent told him he was being arrested because he hadn't put a federally mandated sticker on a UPS package. A jury in federal court in Alaska acquitted Evertson, but the feds weren't finished. They reached into their bag of over 4,500 federal crimes and found another ridiculous crime they could use to prosecute him: supposedly "abandoning" hazardous waste (actually storing, in appropriate containers, valuable materials he was using for the clean-fuel technology he was developing). A second jury convicted him, and he spent 21 months in an Oregon federal prison. Since when is it a federal crime to put the wrong stamp on a package or to store your own property on your own land? There are currently over 4,000 federal criminal offenses. Legal experts estimate that the federal government could use the criminal process to enforce as many as 300,000 federal regulations. How can we stop this expansion? The first step is to spread awareness of Evertson's story and those of countless other victims of overreaching criminal laws in America. That's why we hope you'll tune in for Walsh's interview tonight with John Stossel. The interview will re-air on Fox Business at midnight Eastern tonight, at 10:00 p.m. on Friday, 9:00 p.m. and midnight on Saturday and 10:00 p.m. on Sunday. > Other Heritage Work of Note Ending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts is not the way to end the multi-trillion dollar deficit. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Heritage budget expert Brian Riedl exposes the myth that these tax cuts eliminated the budget surplus of the late 1990s and left in place huge deficits. In fact, it was overspending that led to deficits, as Riedl demonstrates using numbers and statistics from the Congressional Budget Office. Most importantly, Riedl explains that rapidly increasing spending, particularly on social programs, will contribute to "100% of rising long-term deficits." If the Bush tax cuts are extended and out–of-control spending is minimized, we will begin to see the deficit fall. "Serious doubts surround President Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which has been tasked to make recommendations to Congress to reduce the federal deficit," argues Heritage's Kathryn Nix. With Social Security set to run large and growing deficits, some sort of reform must be enacted to get the program back into the black. One proposal would raise the age of eligibility for benefits, while another would slow the growth of benefits for the more affluent. Ultimately, plans to fix overspending on programs like Social Security will do more to reduce the deficit than the tax hikes that could be proposed by the commission.Read all of Heritage's Social Security proposals on Heritage.org. Despite the recent discovery of a Russian spy ring here in America, the Obama administration is doing little to acknowledge the threat Russia poses. Why? President Obama is working to hit the "reset button" on Russian relations. Heritage Foundation expert Ariel Cohen argues that even with this "reset," Russia still views the U.S. as an adversary. The Obama administration can't keep sweeping threats to our national security under the rug. Join Heritage at the Family Research Council Action's Values Voter Summit 2010 in Washington, DC, from September 17-19. The event will feature prominent conservatives including Phyllis Schlafly, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR), Bill Bennett, Star Parker, and many more. Heritage will hold a screening of Let Me Rise, our powerful documentary on education reform, and host a panel discussion about the connections between social and economic conservatism. Register at ValuesVoterSummit.org. » Watch the new video about the event > In Other News BP engineers hope a new cap will be able to contain the oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico. A new TIME poll finds that most Americans disapprove of President Obama's liberal policies. Argentinean lawmakers have redefined marriage to include same-sex unions. According to a new Bloomberg poll, more than 7 out of 10 Americans say the economy is mired in recession, and more than half say the deficit is "dangerously out of control." Amanda Reinecker is a writer for MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation. Nathaniel Ward, the Editor of MyHeritage.org, and Stephen Congdon, a Heritage intern, contributed to this report.  Donate    |   Heritage on Facebook View as HTML  |   Update Your Profile   |   Unsubscribe