I'm a latecomer to the environmental issue which for years seemed to me like an excuse for more government regulation. But I can see that in rich societies voters are paying less attention to economic issues and more to issues of the spirit including the environment.
Why has it seemed that the only way to protect the environment is with heavy-handed government regulation?
The Obama administration now has regulations that tells them that they can no longer promote marriage to these young girls. They can no longer promote marriage as a way of avoiding poverty and bad choices that they make in their life. They can no longer even teach abstinence education. They have to be neutral with respect to how people behave.
A black agenda is jobs jobs jobs quality education investment in infrastructure and strong democratic regulation of corporations. The black agenda at its best looks at America from the vantage point of the least of these and asks what's best for all.
We have lost that which has made us great over the generations and that is the sense of individual and personal responsibility that we can come up we can pursue our dreams and our aspirations and we won't be blocked by government regulation by the inability to get a loan as a small business to make our dreams come true.
Energy and environmental regulation transportation and broadband policy all benefit when legislators have a basic grounding in the technical concepts behind business models products and innovation.
Politicians also have a love affair with the 'small business exemption.' Too much paperwork? Too heavy a burden? Not enough time? Just exempt small businesses from the rule. It sounds so pro-growth. Instead it's an admission that the costs of a regulation just can't be justified.
The great fear that hung over the business community in the 1970s was death by regulation and the great goal of the conservative movement as it rose to triumph in the 1980s was to remove that threat - to keep OSHA the EPA and the FTC from choking off entrepreneurship with their infernal meddling in the marketplace.
Somebody has to tell the E.P.A. that we don't need you monkeying around and fiddling around and getting in our business with every kind of regulation you can dream up. You're doing nothing more than killing jobs. It's a cemetery for jobs at the E.P.A.
But let me tell you what happens when regulations go too far when they seem to exist only for the purpose of justifying the existence of a regulator. It kills the people trying to start a business.
And fifth we will champion small businesses America's engine of job growth. That means reducing taxes on business not raising them. It means simplifying and modernizing the regulations that hurt small business the most. And it means that we must rein in the skyrocketing cost of healthcare by repealing and replacing Obamacare.
It's harder but we're still finding oil in Oklahoma today. The bar has been raised on startup companies but it can still be done. Every regulation and every rule limits you but yes it can still be done. That's the beauty of living in a free country and having the freedom to have an idea and become an entrepreneur.
We are stymied by regulations limited choice and the threat of litigation. Neither consultants nor industry itself provide research which takes architecture forward.