After World War II, Cleveland was booming, thanks to its leadership role in heavy industry and a business-friendly climate. Today, the city’s high taxes and onerous regulatory demands make it nearly impossible for new businesses to set up shop while choking the life out of existing companies. While relatively laissez-faire cities such as Houston are growing even during the current recession, Cleveland remains stuck in a rut. How can city officials make the city a more welcoming place for entrepreneurs to thrive?

Reason Saves Cleveland with Drew Carey is written and produced by Paul Feine; camera and editing by Roger Richards and Alex Manning; narrated by Nick Gillespie; music by the Cleveland band Cats on Holiday.

This is the fourth of six episodes that will air March 15-19, 2010. Go here for a full episode guide and links to other segments.

Approximately 10 minutes long. Go to Reason.tv for iPod, HD, and audio versions of this video.

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Faced with the daunting prospect of being significantly outspent by his Republican opponent, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown spoke to a labor group Tuesday and urged them to go on the offensive.

“We’re going to attack whenever we can, but I’d rather have you attack,” Brown said at a gathering of the California delegation of the Laborers’ International Union of North America in Sacramento. “I’d rather be the nice guy in this race. We’ll leave [the attacks] to … the Democratic Party and others.”

Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for GOP candidate Meg Whitman, said Brown’s pitch was unseemly and perhaps even illegal.

“I think this is pretty clear evidence that Jerry Brown is actively seeking independent support to prop up his campaign from the unions attacking Meg Whitman,” Bounds said. “And more importantly, I think, it’s Jerry Brown in his own words laying out a very cynical campaign strategy that’s playing fast and loose with the campaign rules in California.”

Read the whole thing here.

Let’s put this in context by reviewing the supposedly nonpartisan numbers that the JCT has produced. The Senate bill has big tax increases on insurance companies, medical device makers, and so-called cadillac health plans. The House plan, meanwhile, largely relies on higher income tax rates on investors and entrpreneurs. And both bills impose huge marginal tax rate increases on middle class taxpayers thanks to the phase out of subsidies, as explained in gruesome detail by my Cato Institue colleage Michael Cannon.

While we don’t know at this point all of the tax increases that might be part of a reconciliation bill (which House Democrats are demanding in order to modify the Senate bill), the big implicit marginal tax rate increases on the middle class would become law if and when the House approves the Senate bill. These higher tax rates, along with the higher tax rates that are agreed as part of reconciliation, will discourage productive behavior. And as explained in the video above (as well as in Part I and Part II of the Laffer Curve series), this will result in less taxable income. This, of course, means that the JCT revenue estimates are artificially optimistic. Combined with the deeply flawed spending numbers produced by CBO, this means the road to healthcare disaster is paved with fraudulent numbers.

P.S. Some people doubtlessly are wondering why Republicans did not fix the problems at CBO and JCT during the 12 years they controlled Congress. I also wish I knew the answer to that question.

The silly theory, which I called “doubtful,” solicited a reaction that surprised even me.  Besides Robert Gibbs himself tweeting about it, I scored the lefty trifecta: MediaMatters, DailyKos and a blogger for Salon.com all responded.

A rash of hysterical e-mails also came through.  Consider this gem:

Really Mr. Olson, REALLY? While I’m aware you wingnuts are not the brightest bulbs around, and the fact you are associated with the huge steaming pile of moron known as Breitbart indicates you are quite possibly mentally retarded…

Or this:

God, you are one dumbf–k.

Did your pal, Dickybird suck your brain out your toe?

Lastly:

Hey jackass,

Will you be doing a story about how you took Robert Gibbs wearing a bracelet in support of a little girl with cancer and twisted it into a bulls–t, partisan rant?

Partisan rant?  Please.  That’s the most offensive accusation leveled here.  If anything, it was an American, pro-freedom pondering.

The very fact that Robert Gibbs and the radical left felt the need to respond to a theory I myself called “doubtful” shows how sensitive they are at this point.  The votes don’t appear to be there for ObamaCare and they ain’t happy about it.

Or are they growing overly sensitive about their connection top White House visitor and Enforcement Czar Andy Stern?

The pressure all the above are putting on moderate Democrats is immense.  SEIU has pledged to support Democratic challengers to incumbents who oppose ObamaCare.  Michigan Pro-Life Democrat Bart Stupak already has an intra-party opponent.  Thankfully, for the good of his country’s unborn, he at this point is standing tall.  We’ll have to see if that continues to be the case or if the pressure is more than he can bear.

So Robert – or can I call you Bob? – I said a prayer with my son for the girl with cancer.  But I also said a prayer for our country and that it has leaders who, like our Founding Fathers, believe rights come from our Creator and not from our government.

We’ll have to see how each are answered.

The bracelet is kind of a signal to tell Stern that the administration has it under control and ObamaCare will be delivered.  Just a few more Democrats need to be shown the Chicago way.

Am I making too much out of nothing?  Maybe.  Who knows.

I do know the presidential administration Gibbs serves is doing whatever it can to deliver health care reform to Andy Stern and SEIU.

After all, that’s pretty much the only lot that wants it at this point.  Even members of the president’s own party don’t want it, which is requiring them to twist arms in a way that would make Stern proud.

And this reminded me of another time a signal was being sent by the White House some time back.

During his grand jury testimony Monday prosecutors questioned President Bill Clinton about the necktie he wore on the day Monica Lewinsky testified before the federal grand jury.

Lewinsky claims she gave the president the tie he wore Aug. 6, the day she appeared, fully immunized, before Independent Counsel Ken Starr’s grand jury.

Prosecutors asked Clinton Monday if he was trying to send a signal to the former White House intern by wearing the gold necktie at a Rose Garden event on handgun control.

During the questioning prosecutors reached into a pouch and pulled out a photograph of the tie the president was wearing the morning of Lewinsky’s testimony.

Two sources, loyal to the White House, who were briefed on the president’s testimony said they were told, the president leaned back in his chair and smiled and then expressed bewilderment at the question.

…

Lewinsky told prosecutors she gave the president a half dozen or so ties and sent notes asking him to wear them as a demonstration that he was thinking of her.

Was Gibbs sending a signal to Stern, ala Clinton and Lewinsky?  Doubtful.  But anything is possible in the lead-up to the intra-Democratic Party showdown to deliver health care reform for Andy Stern and SEIU.

But one alum from our college, Jordan Barab, CMC ‘75, is making it tougher still in his capacity as acting head of the Office Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

But with Barab, we have the opportunity to not only examine the implication of his appointment but also surmise what he will do and what he has already one in office by carefully considering his and OSHA’s history.

During the past eight years, Barab spent his time excoriating the Bush administration’s laissez faire labor policies from his blog, Confined Space. Left unexamined, of course, is whether those same labor policies account for us having one of the lowest unemployment levels in U.S. history during the Bush years.

Among other things, Barab argued that the Bush administration was refusing to enforce OSHA regulations and statutes that allegedly would have helped workplace safety. He published scary (and utterly unfounded) statistics pushed by organized labor:

More than 15 workers are killed every day on the job in this country and a worker becomes injured or ill on the job every 2.5 seconds. The overwhelming majority of deaths, injuries and illnesses could have been easily prevented had the employers simply provided a safe workplace and complied with well-recognized OSHA regulations or other safe practices.

Assuming that the figure is accurate, which it is probably not, there are many questions that just this paragraph leaves unanswered such as whether this figure is high or low relative to all time standards, and whether or not OSHA regulations have any effect, positive or negative, in decreasing workplace accidents. In fact, as the U.S. moves from an agricultural to industrial to knowledge based economy, the number of deaths have been declining every single year.

Like the minimum wage laws that lead to unemployment for lower level workers, the outcome of all these OSHA regulations is to drive up the cost of hiring workers, a policy which gives more power to the union members that have already been hired or to workers with seniority. If companies are mandated to spend millions to improve the workplace environment, they’ll be less likely to hire the workforce they need.

People often price their lives very differently and are willing to work dangerous, humiliating jobs in exchange for a certain level of pay. Shouldn’t they be allowed to make choices about what they deem precious and valuable? (Just ask illegal immigrants or anyone who has ever worked a job from Craigslist.)

Barab is critical of the “president’s cronies” in his final blog post – a bit of the pot calling the kettle black, given that Barab worked for one of the more radical unions in the country, the AFL-CIO.  He decries the Bush Administration and the Republican congress’s efforts to repeal a costly, hastily imposed Clinton-era regulation on ergonomics that would have forced employers to cover the cost of employees’ carpal tunnel syndrome. (Just how do you tell if the secretary got her stiff hand from working on the job or surfing the internet at home?) The costs were estimated by some to be as high as $100 billion and earned the dishonor of being what U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO, Tom J. Donahue, called, “the most costly, burdensome, and far-reaching government regulation in U.S. history.” Even unions estimated that the cost of compliance would be in excess of $8 billion.

Don’t expect Barab to be persuaded that OSHA is a waste of money and beholden to the unions he formerly worked for. Barab, in the days since he became acting OSHA head, has promised that “OSHA is back.”

Back from where? And just what kind of OSHA can we expect from Barab? Here it is instructive to look at his record, but before we do that, it’s worth pointing out his Facebook (publicly accessible from here) where he lists himself as a fan of the so-called “Employee Free Choice Act” (card check) and George Orwell. (I guess that I read 1984 as a warning and that he read it as an instruction manual.) Even the left-leaning, former presidential candidate, George McGovern has come out against card check, an effort to eliminate the secret ballot from America’s workplaces.

Either Barab hasn’t looked into the actual track record of OSHA — or worse, he just doesn’t care. Had he, he would see OSHA’s record of utter and abysmal failure which he should have recognized when he served as special assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA until 2001.

After spending two years on a request from an employer about complying with OSHA from a home office — now that’s speedy regulation! — OSHA finally responded and told the employer community that OSHA standards applied to those working at home as well as those working at the office. Public outcry forced them to reconsider, but that was after employers wasted an estimated $1000 dollars per home getting them up to OSHA standards and after it took OSHA two years to respond. All of this stopped more flexible work arrangements by forcing employers and employees to bear the cost of a stupid regulation. Many of those who were adversely affected were women, who wanted to stay at home with their kids and still have a career from their home office.

Not egregious enough for you? Let’s look at what happened in 2000, when Barab was also working for OSHA. Many college students will go on to work in the for-profit sector and like me, have aspirations of working on your own start up. At first, many of your employees will be paid hourly wages if they work on a new firm, that is, of course, until you all make serious bank when the company goes public, thanks to your diligence and hard work. But thanks to OSHA’s unclear and silly regulations in 2000 which mandated that stock options be included in overtime pay, many firms just turned around and refused to award stock options to their hourly employees. It was simply too complex and not worth the legal hassle. It wouldn’t be too far of a stretch to argue that some of the early programmers who were denied those stock options might not have been too incentivized to work their hardest on the new firms that had hired them. In the freelance economy of Silicon Valley, this couldn’t have been good for start ups looking for people to move through their ranks.

Of course, OSHA, being a government entity, doesn’t regulate one of the most unsafe workplace environments in the entire federal government, the totally wasteful U.S. Postal service, which according to Reason Magazine, “accounted for 29 percent of all federal agency workers’ compensation claims in fiscal 1994. In the same year, it paid out over $521 million in workers’ comp, death benefits, and medical expenses.” Putting it simply, we’re not only paying for the 750,000 employees of the Postal service’s generous government benefits and subsidizing the whole government-run business, we’re ignoring the very real human costs that it puts on the workers out there who would undoubtedly be safer in competitive firms that had to compete on safety, wages, etc. for the best workers.

Now to be fair, Mr. Barab wasn’t around in 1994, but that policy is still in effect. Will he change it? I doubt it. To his credit, Barab was critical of the lavish display of attention when the shuttle Columbia exploded, decrying the double standard between the attention spent on astronauts and dead industrial workers who often get ignored by the mainstream media. He missed the lesson from this, of course. Space exploration is simply too dangerous to be left up to governments, and so, apparently is delivering the U.S. mail.

Of course, another government group that doesn’t get appropriate OSHA scrutiny is the U.S. Congress. The Hill recently reported that more than 70 percent of congressional offices violate OSHA standards. (What a shame that Congress didn’t get shut down for noncompliance, huh?)

Jordan Barab believes that penalties for OSHA aren’t high enough, as Safety News reported.

Right now, the average fine for a serious violation is between $900 and $1,000. Barab says that’s not enough of a disincentive to force companies to address safety hazards.

It would be up to Congress to change OSHA’s penalty structure, and there is a bill introduced to do just that.

Ultimately, Barab says he’d like OSHA fines to be comparable to those EPA is able to issue for environmental violations.

He’d also like Congress to make it easier for OSHA to bring criminal penalties for egregious violations.

By forcing companies to pay more and more money to solve a problem that has been declining every year, OSHA harms the very U.S. workers it is supposed to help. The effects of not being able to receive a job due to regulation are difficult to measure, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t real. So you’ll forgive me if I wish Barab were just like all those other CMC alums right now – out on the market looking for a job.

This is an extension of OFA’s and Health Care for America Now’s campaign to flood last summer’s town hall meetings with union members and left-wing activists supporting Obama’s government takeover of health care.

The intent then, just as it is now, was to drown out average taxpayers showing up  to voice their concerns or vent their frustrations.  The intent is also to run out the clock on real debate and take a vote on health reform with as little resistance as possible.

HCAN and ACORN were busing non-constituents, some from as far as 200 miles away, to fill the seats and skew the crowd.  It was to give the false impression that constituents really wanted ObamaCare.

But the result was even worse.  HCAN and union members, particularly SEIU, were filling the seats which would have otherwise been occupied by the average person just getting out of work.

So, the campaign now is geared toward achieving the same result: flood different talk radio shows with left-wing activists and ObamaCare apologists.  The OFA’s website has a talk radio du jour with a call-in number and “discussion points” – talking points for the latest version of the Democrats’ plan.

Be aware and be prepared, Talk Radio: The president’s got your number and his foot soldiers are coming for you.