When you think about a highly aggressive cartel teaming up with politicians to pass protectionist laws that kick entrepreneurs out of work, you probably don’t think about interior designers.

But you should.

The American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) represents less than 3 percent of all designers, but its members have designated themselves as spokespeople for the entire industry. ASID has spent over 30 years and millions of dollars lobbying from coast to coast for interior design licensing schemes.  Not surprisingly, the schemes they propose would force all interior designers to have the exact same credentials as required for membership in ASID.

The group has worked relentlessly to enlist state legislatures in its campaign for total industry cartelization. The Institute for Justice has documented these efforts in a study titled “Designing Cartels.”

Florida is ground zero right now in this epic battle.

After 17 years of wasteful and unnecessary government licensing, Florida is considering legislation to unlock economic opportunity for countless would-be entrepreneurs by eliminating needless licensing laws for more than 20 occupations—including interior design.  Not surprisingly, the interior design cartel fighting hard to keep its government-enforced monopoly Florida through a lobbying campaign of misrepresentation, deceit and baseless scare tactics.

The video above, produced by the Institute for Justice, debunks three of the cartel’s key myths:

• Myth #1: Most states regulate interior design
• Myth #2: Unlicensed interior design threatens public safety
• Myth #3: Interior designers will not be able to work without government regulation

In fact, none of these myths are true.  The reality is that Florida is one of only three states that regulate the practice of interior design.  And in 47 states, interior designers are doing just fine without licensing schemes, while consumers enjoy lower prices and more choices.

In Forbes this week, Institute for Justice president Chip Mellor explains that Florida’s regulation of interior designers presents a case study in cartels:

If Americans want to see how to create jobs, they should stop looking to Washington, D.C. for answers and turn their attention southward to Florida. There, as a means of reducing the state’s higher-than-national-average unemployment rate, Gov. Rick Scott has proposed eliminating job-killing licensing requirements in 20 occupations, ranging from auto repair shops to ballroom dance studios and hair braiders.

But businesses that have long benefited from government-enforced cartels in these occupations aren’t giving up without a fight. The most vocal of those seeking to maintain their protected status are interior designers . . . . [T]he designers’ cartel has hired a high-powered lobbyist to wage an aggressive PR campaign to remove interior design from the should-be deregulated industries.

But what about public health and safety?

The cartel claims all sorts of ills will befall Floridians if the state deregulates interior design.  My favorite:

By not allowing interior designers to be specialists and focus on the things they do, what you’re basically doing is contributing to 88,000 deaths every year.

That gem is documented in a St. Petersburg Times news story from Friday.  Not to be outdone, another cartel member featured in the article offers this bizarre assertion:

Do you know the color schemes that affect your salivation, your autonomic nervous system?” she said. “You don’t even have correct seating. And somebody chose that for you.

Apparently, cartel members know all about color schemes that affect human salivation, therefore Florida must preserve its interior design cartel.

In reality, however, the cartel has never produced a single shred of evidence to support those bogus health and safety claims.  A reporter for NBC-TV Austin who covered a similar cartelization battle in Texas, asked a cartel leader if she could give a single actual example of harm coming from the unlicensed practice of interior design.  You have to watch her response, it’s priceless:

Conservative icon George Will has even weighed in on the issue, along with many other reporters and journalists.  In a Washington Post column called Wallpapering With Red Tape, Will writes:

[G]overnment licenses professions to protect the public and ensure quality. It licenses engineers and doctors because if their testable skills are deficient, bridges collapse and patients die. The skills of interior designers are neither similarly measurable nor comparably disastrous when deficient. Perhaps designers could show potential clients a portfolio of their work, and government could trust the potential clients to judge . . . . Thomas Hobbes thought that liberties “depend on the silence of the law.” From lawmakers here, and everywhere else, more silence . . . would be welcome.

The bill that would deregulate 20 occupations in Florida, including interior design, is now before the House now and will soon move to the Senate.  If the passes as is, interior designers and their customers will once again be free from anti-competitive government licensing.  But if it fails, or if the cartel succeeds in removing interior design from the bill, Florida will remain one of just three states in the nation to regulate the practice of interior design—and a golden opportunity to strike a blow for economic liberty will have be lost.

Do you live in Florida?  Is there anything you can do to help make sure that this golden opportunity for economic liberty will not be thwarted by powerful special interests?   For more information on this struggle and the nefarious interior design cartel, visit www.ij.org/interiordesign. Please get involved today.

Join Team IJ on facebook.

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:

1) Will this new law really make our food safer?

In an article in Forbes Magazine, Gregory Conko provides a thorough assessment of this legislation. He asserts that the new law is a waste of tax-payer money and will not achieve its stated goals. Conko explains that, first, while “more frequent inspections may seem superficially appealing…the new law would merely require inspections for most facilities every five years [instead of ten years], and once every three years for identified “high-risk” facilities.” Clearly, alot can happen in three to five years.

Second, Conko points out that even more frequent inspections of the visual type performed by FDA and other agency inspectors cannot detect microscopic bacteria that cause food-borne illness. A food production facility may look clean, but is it really? Conversely, a cluttered area in a facility may be sterile, but just a little messy.

Conko goes on to observe that, as with many systems imposed by bureaucrats who have little knowledge of the industry they are regulating, the detailed risk-reduction record-keeping, required by the new law, may only serve to pile up more cumbersome paperwork on private food companies that could be using their time to develop more effective food safety practices.

2) How will the type of food we grow and produce be controlled?

This is probably the most important issue affecting us with this new legislation because the new law is vague in its language of what constitutes a “farm” (Is a garden a “farm?”), and how the Secretary of HHS can regulate the types of seeds that are planted and fertilizers used (Will “manure” be permitted?) And what about people who enjoy foods in their raw form, like milk and honey? Will these be outlawed as well because we all now have to eat and drink the same foods that are most easily regulated by the Secretary of HHS?

The bill was supported by huge food companies like Campbell’s Soup and Cargill, and industrial seed companies like Monsanto, which spent millions of dollars lobbying for its passage. Large industrial seed companies are big producers of genetically modified seeds and, in recent years, have become increasingly threatened by the presence of small organic farms, farmers’ markets, and the local food movement which celebrates the benefits of heirloom and genetically true vegetables and fruits, as well as organic farming methods and fertilizers. For the latter, the direct farmer to consumer relationship is what matters, and the government will be in the way.

According to Conko, industrial seed giants are wealthy enough to pay the huge costs associated with the more frequent inspections required by the new law.  In addition, they already have in place much of the expensive record-keeping system that will now be required of smaller farms that could be forced out of business by costs of the new procedures.

Enter another Democrat, Senator Jon Tester of Montana, himself a small farmer, to “appear to”  save the day. He produced an amendment to the bill which recognized that small farmers would have a difficult time complying with the requirements of the new legislation. His amendment, which was included in the law, sets a dollar amount, namely $500,000, as the cut-off between the definitions of “small farmer” and “big farmer,” a line that hardly seems easily defined. As is often the case, the Democrats produced a huge piece of legislation with far-reaching consequences, and tried to make it more popular by adding yet more legislation to it.

3) What will the costs of the new law be for Americans?

As already noted, farms and food producers will be paying more fees to the government for all the increased inspections and record filings. These will, ultimately, be passed on to consumers. So, if we are not paying more for food because of inflation caused by the Federal Reserve printing money, we will be paying more because of the Food Safety Modernization Act.

However, the real cost of the legislation will be the increase of tax-payer dollars needed to support the mounting number of FDA and other HHS personnel performing more inspections in the field. In fact, the legislation gives the Secretary of HHS the authority to hire 4,000 federal employees in 2011 alone in order to implement the law. By 2014, 5,000 federal employees will be hired by this agency in support of this law. Clearly, in this new legislation, the current administration underscores its belief that the only way to handle problems is by expanding the power of the federal government.

It remains to be seen whether the Food Safety Modernization Act will be on the “Defund” list of the new Republican House of Representatives.

They apparently are now the editors at Forbes Magazine.

Yes, Forbes Magazine has released its list of the “100 Most Powerful Women in the World”, and from the get-go of the article it starts defending itself in saying that the standards are changing.

Obviously.

Number one on the list? First Lady Michelle Obama.

Forbes gives a biography listing why they feel she is powerful. It states that she has a fitness program for kids and that she is a style icon. Oh, and 54% of people like her according to a poll.

That is all it takes now to be considered the most powerful woman in the world? I am going to J. Crew right now and opening a store credit line.

If she were not the President’s wife, she would not be on the list. Period.

Harsh some might say? Possibly, but true. What warrants her being ahead of ten heads of state? Women who have control of countries, economies and people’s very lives in their hands every day are less powerful than someone who some consider to have style and popularity?

Forbes snubbed every woman who ever achieved anything by their own hard work and initiative at any level in life.

If you want to be powerful, you better marry up.

I do not agree with Oprah or Nancy Pelosi in regards to just about anything, but at least I can list more than their style choice as a reason that they are powerful, and I don’t have to think about who they married as to why they are considered so.

Ironically, #3 Oprah is so powerful, she was an arguable force in getting Obama elected, thus setting up the First Lady to take the top spot.

It is fitting that this title comes almost a year to the day of her husband being named a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. They both now have accolades that are completely unwarranted.

If the First Lady at number one wasn’t enough, they list Lady Gaga at #7. Yes, that woman who is so desperate for attention she must flaunt her sexuality to the point that it loses all sexiness, wears outlandish shoes that she can’t even walk in and has even been known to slap on a flank steak and call it a dress is considered more powerful than House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the three women on the Supreme Court and nine heads of state.

If you don’t want to marry up girls, at least you know you can hooch it up and still make the list.

Some other head-scratchers who made the list? Singer Beyonce Knowles at #9, Talk Show Host Ellen DeGeneres at #10,  Foul-mouthed entertainer Chelsea Handler at #35, Model Heidi Klum at  #39 and Actress Sarah Jessica Parker at #45.

All of these women ranked higher than the Prime Minister of Australia, and Presidents of Ireland, Finland, Argentina, Iceland, Costa Rica, and Liberia. Not to mention the women who are the heads of multi-billion dollar companies.

With this list, Forbes Magazine reduced the list of power to nothing more than the part of your high school yearbook that listed “Most Popular”, “Best Dressed”, and “Cutest Couple”.  The editors of both publications show obvious bias.

In the past day, there was a spate of news articles about California’s trans-fat ban due to go into effect on New Year’s Day. I voted against this new law.

California has the 4th-highest unemployment rate, a $21 billion budget deficit, and a severe water shortage, so, what do lawmakers do?  Pass a law that will fine restaurants $1,000 for using margarine in their foods.

One of the articles said:

Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine, criticized the new law as an example of nanny government with little beneficial impact.
“Not every human problem deserves a political solution,” he said. “That’s the fallacy my colleagues engage in.”

I’ve been criticized for voting against all sorts of nanny state bills that expand the police power of government in the name of making us safe from ourselves. I’ve often argued that we might as well pass a blanket bill outlawing stupidity and rudeness in California.

Since 2004, I and most of my Republican colleagues have opposed bills that:

• Mandate the kinds of light bulbs we use
• Outlawed the spanking of children by parents
• Banned texting in cars (we already had a law against reckless driving and this new law is near-impossible to enforce as dialing a number remains legal)
• Mandated costly home energy audits at the time of a house sale

And, if we had the time, the list would go on for pages.

Is it any wonder Forbes magazine ranks California as having the worst combination of taxes and regulations of any state in America?

Lest those in other, more fortunate venues chortle at California’s misfortune remember, for better or for worse, what starts in California often spreads to the nation.  One of the chief vectors of California’s Big Government infection is Senator Barbara Boxer, who approves of all of this liberty-infringing, Big Government nonsense.  In fact, she regularly mines the ore of California’s bad laws for inspiration for her own Big Government agenda in Washington.

Liberals are driven to burden us with law upon law for one overriding reason: the conceited will to control because they think they know what’s best for all of us.  Putting a stop to this is a strong motivator for me as I work to unseat Sen. Boxer in 2010.

The cause of my extended rant?  AB 1953, a law passed in 2006 that goes into effect on January 1, 2010, the purpose of which was to define lead-free plumbing from 4% in fixtures down to the European Union standard of 0.25%.  Not that the science supported this change.  Once lead was removed as a gasoline additive, taken out of paints, and removed from plumbing (the Latin word for plumbing is where we get the chemical symbol for lead: Pb), human lead exposure dropped significantly.  Having a small percentage of lead bound up in a brass alloy plumbing fixture isn’t going to add a statistically meaningful amount of lead exposure to anyone.

Today’s story began when my family bought a 4-bedroom house in Irvine in 1998.  The house, built in 1979, had the original chrome-plated sink fixtures when we moved in.  As soon as I could afford it, I installed solid brass bathroom fixtures.

Well, our master bathroom faucet sprung a very slow leak on the cold water handle a few months back.  Having a few spare hours, I found the leak on the valve, took it apart, and trekked down to Lowe’s.

Lowe’s didn’t have the part, so I went over to the plumbing fixtures aisle and looked for a replacement.  Then I looked again, and again. There was a sole, lonely brass fixture in the vast expanse of hundreds of makes and models.  I frowned.  My wife, Diane, likes brass.  She doesn’t like chrome.  And, she really hates “brushed nickel” or anything that looks like someone took steel wool to a chunk of corroded pot metal, pronouncing it “antique.”

Then it hit me.  The culprit was AB 1953!  The floor debate over this bill came rushing back to me as anger built up in aisle 14. AB 1953 was why retailers catering to the do-it-yourself crowd were manifesting the changes demanded by this law. The result: traditional brass plumbing fixtures are vanishing quickly as they will be illegal in California next month and the low-lead brass manufacturers have yet to meet demand.

I debated against AB 1953 as it passed the Assembly for the first time on a 41-37 vote, the minimum needed to pass. It went to the senate, was amended, and passed 21-18, again, with no votes to spare, always a sign of a particularly bad bill in the very leftwing California Legislature. The bill came back to the Assembly for final passage: 42-36.  In its three floor votes, AB 1953 only picked up one Republican “aye,” but, as he does with depressing frequency, Governor Schwarzenegger signed the bill anyway.

So, here we are in California, a state with America’s fourth-highest unemployment rate; a state losing 3,000 productive, tax-paying citizens every week to places such as business-friendly Texas.  But, a state carrying 32% of the nation’s welfare caseload with what Forbes Magazine calls the 50^th worst business tax and regulatory climate in the nation; and a state with a legislature that thinks nothing of layering new rules on top of new rules in the constant quest to make California the most perfect state in which no one can afford to live or find a job.

Coming soon?  An eBay-enabled California black market in brass plumbing-fixtures and normal-flow toilets and shower heads.