Monday (11/20/2017) Trump’s deregulation reforms second only to judicial picks

An op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal by Christopher DeMuth, former head of the American Enterprise Institute, suggests to us that President Trump’s deregulation reforms may be second only in importance to his outstanding judicial picks. DeMuth writes:

With some exceptions (such as business as usual on ethanol)…President Trump has proved to be a full-spectrum deregulator….

First, Mr. Trump has appointed regulatory chiefs who are exceptionally well-qualified and are determined reformers…

Second, the Trump administration is turning back from unilateral lawmaking….

A third indicator is the introduction of regulatory budgeting…[A}gencies may issue new rules only by simultaneously withdrawing some existing rules, with the estimates of the costs imposed and saved used to make the trade-off commensurate.

Latest deregulation reforms

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is planning to roll back the net-neutrality rules imposed by the Obama administration to allow its political friends —  Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix, and PornHub — to get a free ride on the internet at the expense of internet hardware and bandwidth providers.

At Veterans Affairs, its top official, David Shulkin, “wants to make the VA’s hospital system compete with private-sector providers for military veteran customers, which he said would give veterans greater choice over their health care. His view on the future of the VA resembles that of the politically conservative Koch brothers, who recently announced they are launching a major effort to reshape the future of the nation’s largest health-care system,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

No more falling for China’s “rope-a-dope” trade concessions

The Trump administration is also determined not to fall for the “rope-a-dope” trivial concessions that satisfied previous US administrations in dealing with China’s heavy-handed mercantilism. The administration is refusing to concede China the market-economy status it covets in the World Trade Organization (WTO) and no less pointedly refused China’s invitation to join it in the public announcement that China would now open its financial industry to foreign investment. Characteristically, the Chinese government kept foreign investors out for several years so that domestic companies could achieve market dominance — before foreign companies were allowed entrance to scrounge for the remaining crumbs.

Yes, you are next, Mr. President

In yesterday’s Founders Broadsheet we speculated that the main reason Democrats and their press followers were belatedly admitting President Bill Clinton’s sex crimes is that they wanted to set up a context for then turning against their real target, President Trump. Well, we didn’t have to wait long for confirmation. “Why is Trump off the hook?” asks the headline of a column in The Seattle Times:

“[W]hy the hell is Trump the only one who is immune?”

“Great question! More than a dozen women came forward last year alleging Donald Trump had in some way physically violated them, and one of the women retains an active civil suit against him (all the other claims were beyond the statute of limitations).”

Similarly, Ross Douthat, the New York Times‘ house conservative, muses that maybe prosecutor Kenneth Starr was right and “Clinton probably should have been pressured to resign.” Douthat cites as backup Matthew Yglesias writing in Vox that “Bill Clinton should have resigned. What he did to Monica Lewinsky was wrong, and he should have paid the price.”

It’s not hard to to see where this is going. But will it fare better than the Russian collusion story did? Clinton the rapist, serial aggressor, adulterer, stonewaller, seducer of interns, and perjurer does not have the making of a credible comparison with Trump.

Click here for yesterday’s Founders Broadsheet (“Trump to launch another failed Palestine peace plan?”)