Government Fines Businessman for Creating Jobs

A CEO recently told Congress about how he was fined for hiring too many people: “I incurred more than $500,000 in legal bills to mitigate a more severe regulatory outcome as a result of hiring too many workers. I have also been prohibited from opening up additional offices. I had a major expansion plan that would have resulted in my creating hundreds of additional jobs. Regulations have forced me to put those jobs on hold.” The testimony from the CEO of Euro Pacific Capital illustrates that “job-killing” regulations are a reality, not just a conservative talking point.

Discussing the job-killing nature of some regulations is a big no-no to liberals, who claim that merely raising the issue is uncivil. The Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank wrote a long, sanctimonious editorial devoted almost entirely to the alleged incivility of referring to Obamacare as “job-killing,” which he regarded as rhetorical “poison.” While liberal newspapers were  largely silent about death threats made against Republican lawmakers in Florida and in Wisconsin, they feigned indignation about factual references to the health care law as being “job-killing” (a claim based partly on Congressional Budget Office findings that Obamacare would reduce the size of the American labor force by perhaps 800,000 people).

Since the liberal policies they favor typically wipe out jobs  (like the $800 billion stimulus package, which wiped out jobs in America’s export sector, while subsidizing foreign green jobs, and which the CBO admitted would shrink the size of the U.S. economy in “the long run“), it’s not surprising that liberal journalists like Milbank would want to squelch discussion of “job-killing” policies.

Incivility is simply a label that liberal journalists attach to speech they don’t want to hear. Incivility from the left is invisible to them. For example, The Washington Post and New York Times enlisted left-wing public figures who themselves had histories of incivility and inflammatory rhetoric to lecture America about the need for civility in the aftermath of the Tucson shootings. Al Sharpton preached about the “dangers of inflammatory rhetoric” in The Washington Post, despite his being found guilty of defaming a prosecutor and helping incite a deadly race riot. Former Congressman Paul Kanjorski lectured about the need for “civility” in the Times, despite his 2010 statement that Florida Governor Rick Scott (R) should be shot.