President Obama, in his State of the Union address Tuesday night, was right to focus on the challenges the United States faces as domestic companies try to compete with low-cost global competitors. But he was wrong to suggest that the United States can “win the future” by getting Washington more involved in innovation and education.

As the president conceded elsewhere, Washington is, in fact, a big part of the problem—with high corporate tax rates and excessive regulation.

Just a week earlier in a Wall Street Journal article, the president elaborated on this, rhetorically declaring a truce with business and laying out the administration’s strategy for moving “toward a 21st-century regulatory system.”

Mr. Obama said this new system would need to strike a balance between the innovativeness, job-creating capacity and robust growth produced by free markets and the responsibility of government to impose “common-sense rules” to protect the public. He called for a “government-wide review of . . . rules already on the books,” and said that “careful consideration” would be given to the costs and benefits of all pending regulations. But as Yogi Berra once said, “This is like deja vu all over again.”

Presidents Clinton and Reagan both signed executive orders requiring that proposed federal regulations be implemented only if their economic benefits exceeded the costs of complying with them. Reagan even established a branch within the Office of Management and Budget—the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA)—to make sure executive branch agencies complied. The executive orders by and large were ineffective.

In fact, the federal government has been expanding its control of the private economy since the 1890s, on the theory that vulnerable people must be protected from cradle to grave by an omniscient bureaucracy that knows what’s best for them. The growth in regulation typically has been justified by analyses, prepared by the regulatory bureaus themselves, which grossly overstate regulation’s benefits and understate its costs.

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Amidst the hustle and bustle of the “lame duck” Congress, another law was passed that didn’t quite get the same media coverage as the Bush tax extension “package,” the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and the new START treaty. The Food Safety Modernization Act was not steeped in the same level of popular controversy as these other pieces of legislation. Nevertheless, its passage may affect our daily lives even more than these, and in a rather stealth manner.

Yes, the week before Christmas, the 111th Congress of the United States gave Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), quite extensive authority over food production in our country. That’s food- from the seeds that grow the plants and the animals that provide the meat and milk, to the Lean Cuisine you had for dinner.

Originally proposed last year by Democratic Senator Dick Durbin,  the new law will cost about 1.4 billion dollars over a four-year period. It arrived, as much legislation does, in response to several major crises. Recent salmonella outbreaks in eggs and peanuts, as well as E. coli, in spinach, caused sickness, and some deaths, within the country. These outbreaks led to food recalls and much criticism of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is under the authority of HHS, for its poor oversight of already known risky food producers.

The new law is intended to redirect the FDA from the position of crisis management of food-borne illness emergencies to that of preventing them. Under the new law, food manufacturers will be required to engage in detailed record-keeping of their processing systems and ways in which they can avoid bacterial contamination of their products. All of these records, and test results proving their systems to be effective means of eliminating contamination, must be shared with the FDA. The agency will now have the authority to order food recalls (currently, it only requests them). and will be required to perform inspections of food producers more often.

So, what’s wrong with this?

There are three issues that should concern us:

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This summer armed government agents raided Rawesome Foods, a Venice, California health food co-op. What were the agents after? Unpasteurized milk, it turns out.

Raw milk raids are happening all over the United States. The Food and Drug Administration warns that raw milk consumption can cause health problems, but a growing community of raw foods enthusiasts are ignoring government recommendations and claiming that they are getting tastier, more nutritious food by going raw.

Reason.tv visited Rawesome to examine the circumstances of the raid and discovered that this particular raw foods case stretches across county lines and involves at least five separate government agencies, despite the fact that not a single member of Rawesome has complained or been harmed by the raw foods. In fact, members have to sign a contract stating that they understand and accept the risks of consuming raw foods before they are allowed to step inside.

If members of a private club sign a waiver stating that they want to drink a certain type of milk, why is the government getting involved? As Jarel Winterhawk, a manager at Rawesome, puts it, “This is America. How are you going to tell me what I can and cannot eat?”

Though no charges have yet resulted from the raid, Rawesome is threated with shutdown due to the involvement of yet another government agency, Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety, and the club’s raw goat milk supplier, Healthy Family Farms, has had its dairy license suspended.

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Smoking, fast food, giant inflatable blue gorillas-no matter what it is, chances are some nanny wants to ban it. And this past month was no exception.

Reason.tv’s October 2009 Nanny of The Month Award went to New York State Sen. Jeff Klein for his efforts to rid the Empire State of fish pedicures.

Who is the Nanny of the Month for November 2009?

The runners up include the California Energy Commission for banning big-screen TVs unless they conform to stringent new energy standards and the Food and Drug Administration, which is waging war against caffeinated booze drinks.

But only one can be Nanny of the Month, and this time it’s …

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Many remember a creation, or rather concoction of The Drew Carey Show, Buzz Beer. The delightfully titled beverage was a mix of coffee and a presumably dark beer… stout perhaps. Buzz Beer almost became a character of its own, as it evolved into an ongoing enterprise, run out of Drew’s garage. If the show were still on the air, writers would be charged with the task of writing-in new federal regulations, regarding Drew’s side-business. Why? Because although fictional, Buzz Beer will soon be outlawed. While this would provide an interesting plot development for a sitcom, it will inevitably cause a slew of problems in real life. Go figure.

On Friday, the Food and Drug Administration notified 27 manufacturers of so-called “alcoholic energy drinks (AEDs),” that they have 30 days to prove the safety of such drinks. If the listed manufacturers fail to comply, or fail to prove the safety of their products, they will be forced to discontinue them. Many companies, such as Anheuser-Busch, MillerCoors, and Diageo have already stopped the sale and production of similar products, in anticipation of the FDA crackdown. Needless to say, in the midst of a recession this is not ideal.

Probes into the safety of AEDs were conducted by a task force, comprised of 18 State Attorneys General and one city attorney. The task force is called the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) Youth Access to Alcohol Committee… doesn’t that have a nice bureaucratic ring to it?

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A provision within Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s health care measure passed by the House the other week rehashes a months-old intramural battle between powerful Democrats over how biologic drugs will face competition from generic drug manufacturers.

While the House bill provides a brand drug maker-backed 12 years of monopoly data protection for these next generation therapies, one component of the bill, buried on page 1,534, beginning on line 15 under the heading, “Restrictions on biological products containing dangerous ingredients,” might raise more than eyebrows.

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Taxpayers foot the bill for office items lost or stolen by members of Congress

Half-a-million dollar NSF stimulus grant pays to search for alternatives to Facebook

Stimulus funds pay to create an online database of bugs

Stimulus funds to pay for talking buses in Ohio; Human voices to replace beeping sounds that alert pedestrians of approaching buses

Congressmen successfully pressure the Food and Drug Administration to approve medical device manufactured by campaign contributor

Spending bills stalled by decision of Appropriations Committees to withhold government reports from the public and other members of Congress

Political ‘scientists’ lobby to keep millions of dollars in federal science grants

Congress will spend more than $100 million to put sand on beaches