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Rick Perry has apparently just discovered another department of government he'd like to do away with -- Homeland Security. What do you know... Perry almost said something I agree with for once, other than the fact that the better part of this discussion with Neil Cavuto this Monday on Fox was completely ridiculous.

More scandal mongering in the wake of this NSA leak and more conflating it with all of their other drummed up "scandals" go keep their lemming viewers thoroughly confused and agitated at the Kenyan usurper.

Rick Perry tells Fox News that ‘part time Congress’ would prevent NSA surveillance:

Speaking to Fox News host Neil Cavuto on Monday, the Republican governor said recent revelations about the NSA showed that an over-sized and “out of control” government was now “a reality.”

“The reason I truly believe we need a part time Congress is because when they’re not there all the time, they’re not sitting around dreaming up new things to do to us — or for us, in their opinion,” he explained.

“The key is once you fund that government that can be there 24/7, 365 days out of the year you get that type of intrusion into your lives,” Perry continued. “That’s the reason states like Texas — our legislature only meets for 140 days every other year. I’ll suggest to you we keep the legislature out of town, keep government agencies restricted in their size, their efforts, and Texans live with more freedom than nearly any other state.”

Yeah, that's the ticket. Let's all be just like Texas. No thanks Rick. Although, since the Republicans have been back in charge of the House, I think they're doing their best to act like Texas when you look at the number of days they're not in session.

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Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman on Sunday clashed with Fox News host Greta Van Susteren after she asserted that President Barack Obama's administration was strangling small businesses with "laughable" regulations.

"No one's paying much attention to these small businesses," Van Susteren opined during an ABC panel discussion. "The regulations that are strangling them, some are laughable and silly, but they have profound impact on the job creators, those who are making jobs. They can't afford to hire people."

"There's been tons of work on this," Krugman pointed out. "And what's holding small business back is not regulation, it's the fact that they don't have sales. There's no correlation."

"Which parts of the economy do small businesses complain about regulation, which don't -- there's no correlation between that an actual job creation."

ABC host George Stephanopoulos suggested that the "one exception" could be Obama's health care reform law, which requires businesses with 50 or more employees to provide health insurance.

"Don't you see some firms cutting off at 49?" the ABC host wondered.

"There might be but you can't see that in the numbers," Krugman explained.

"Instead of looking at just numbers, why don't you sit down and talk to them?" Van Susteren interrupted. "And if you actually talk to these people, a lot of them are struggling with this. They don't understand a lot of the things that happen to them, they don't understand a lot of things that happen in Washington. They're very cautious because they see a dismal economy out there."

"I have talked to them, that's not what they're saying to me," Krugman shot back.

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From this Monday's America Live on Fox, it seems regular Stuart Varney is just begging for another tongue lashing from Stephen Colbert. He just can't seem to stop himself from worshiping the British series Downton Abbey and the good old days where we didn't have any of that messy "ultra-democracy" where those poor "fat cats" are asked to do things like pay their taxes, or have the food they're selling inspected, or do their part to make sure we live in a civil society.

It looks like Varney has been beating this drum for about a month or so now, but apparently hasn't gotten tired of it yet. He was also continuing his attacks on "goodies" such as universal preschool, which he was attacking last week. Who wants their kids going to school when they could be waiting on some benevolent aristocrat instead?

Here's part of Varney's exchange with Megyn Kelly:

VARNEY: What other TV show have you ever seen in modern TV shows where the rich are made to look generous, honest, classy and looking after people with their money and their power? Where else do you see this?

KELLY: Yeah.

VARNEY: You are taught in America today these people, the rich, well they are evil, they are unscrupulous, they're abusers, they are as the President says "fat cats" and they should pay their fair share. The President wants to demonize the rich and make them pay for all the goodies which are showered upon our democracy. [...]

Let me throw something else at you. Where else in modern American television, do you see profit and the pursuit of profit to be good. That's what you see in Downton Abbey. They introduced profit into the running of the Earl's estate to save the estate. Profit is good. It keeps people in jobs. When do you see that today in modern television? [...]

Well, we're taught that rich people, the aristocrats, they treat people badly and to be governed by these people is a very bad system. Juxtapose that with the way we are governed today in this ultra-democracy. Are you happy to be pushed around by the bureaucracy? Are you happy to have people from the government tell you what to do, where to go, what to have inspected, how much to pay in taxes and have money taken off you? It's a ultra-democracy. It doesn't look quite so good with a critical eye.

As I said, Varney is just begging for Colbert to do round two of a segment like this one.

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As I've already written about here in my post on Neil Cavuto bringing in a speed reader to attack government regulations, as Media Matters pointed out, Fox News began a week long assault on government regulations in conjunction with the GOP's push to roll those regulations back as well. During their weekly address, Rep. Peter Roskam continued that assault.

Some of the businesses he named off have already been written about at C&L, such as the Gibson guitar case, and the GOP's attempt to gut the NLRB and their union busting in the Boeing case. Roskam also mentioned a business called Chicago White Metal Casting, which is "a third-generation family-owned die casting company employing 250 workers in suburban Chicago", that apparently isn't too happy about the amount of paperwork they're having to do in order to comply with the Clean Air Act and mercury emissions standards.

Fox did some follow up on the numbers being pushed over at Fox "News" on the costs of regulations which I'm sure were fed to them straight from the GOP here -- Fox's Attack On Regulations Relies On Widely Discredited Cost Estimate:

As part of a weeklong series helping to push an anti-regulatory agenda, Fox News is citing a discredited estimate that regulations cost businesses on average $161,000 each year. The estimate, which comes from a report prepared by outside researchers for the Small Business Administration, has been criticized for using a flawed research design, cherry-picking the highest cost estimates, and relying on "crude" data.

Lots more there and I don't want to just copy and paste all of their research here, so just go read the rest. And they also followed with another post this weekend which took a closer look at just what government programs, laws and regulations Fox, and by default the GOP were carping about as "burdensome" to small business owners.

Fox's War On Regulations Takes On Child Labor, Workplace Safety, Civil Rights Laws:

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As Media Matters has reported, Fox News has launched a new campaign coinciding with a push by the Republicans to roll back government regulations, this segment above just being one recent example where Neil Cavuto brought in a speed reader as some gimmick to prove that all of these government regulations out there are just too cumbersome for anyone to make heads or tails of.

I'm not sure why being able to speed read makes this guy an expert on anything, other than being able to read really fast, but that didn't stop Fox from thinking the man had something meaningful to add to a conversation on whether any of the rules and regulations he was reading through are actually considered burdensome for businesses and industry or not. And it definitely doesn't tell us a thing about why some of these rules or regulations were written in the first place and whether they are actually something outdated or redundant that could be eliminated, or rules that make sense if we want businesses and contractors to be following safe work practices and so we don't have say someone building a house that's just going to fall down later, have the pipes rupturing or unsafe wiring and the house burns down after the homeowner is in it, or if they're rules that make sense if we don't want businesses and industry to follow practices that harm or kill either their employees, their customers or those living around their businesses.

Cavuto opened up the segment saying that the Texas utility Luminant was going to lay off workers because of being forced to comply with new EPA rulings. If this post is correct, it appears unlike most of the other utilities in Texas that chose to start complying with new regulations that pretty much everyone knew were coming down the pipe for years now and work with the EPA, that utility chose to fight them instead and now are threatening layoffs. Of course Cavuto didn't bother to ask why the other utilities in the state saw these changes coming and somehow managed to be ready for them and aren't having to threaten plant closures and layoffs as well.

Here's more from Media Matters on Fox's latest campaign aiding the Republican agenda -- Regulation Nation: Fox Begins Weeklong Assault On Government Regulations:

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As Rachel Maddow noted, these so-called anti-regulation Republican hypocrites sure seem to love regulations if it means shutting something down they don't like.

New state regulations could shutdown last three abortion clinics in Kansas:

Due to new regulations drafted by Kansas officials, the state’s last three operating abortion clinics could be closed down — making Kansas the first state to have absolutely no abortion access.

According to the Associated Press, “the top executive for Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid Missouri said he’s concerned imposing the new regulations so quickly will force all three clinics to shut down.”

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment has until July to decide whether or not they will give the clinics, which include a Planned Parenthood clinic, the licenses they need to operate.

The AP reports:

[The state agency] is imposing the rules under Republican-backed legislation that was signed into law last month by GOP Gov. Sam Brownback, a strong abortion opponent. The department sent Planned Parenthood a letter earlier this month saying its clinic would be inspected and notified by July 1 whether it would have a license. The other clinics received similar letters. [...]

The new law requires annual inspections of abortion clinics and gives the department the power to issue fines or go to court to shut clinics down for violating the new standards. The plan was approved by the Republican-controlled Kansas Legislature earlier this year.

However, Planned Parenthood is considering entering a legal battle with the state over the new regulations and the “process used to impose them.” Read on...

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David Gergen makes Karoli's point from the other day about big business and how they treat a Democratic President. Even after all of the deference shown by President Obama to Wall Street and the big monied interests in America it's still not enough to suit them and they're sitting on their cash instead of investing it.

BLITZER: His mind never stops as I personally noticed when I interviewed him in Cape Town, South Africa, not that long ago. Let's talk a little bit about the related subject, the need for money and the charm offensive going on right now by the president to try to woo back some of his big supporters from Wall Street.

GERGEN: On this one, wolf, I have to tell you, that I think the president's got a big high hill to climb because relations between the big business community, not small business, but big business community and the White House have become quite hostile. Traveling around the country I've been surprised even in the Chicago business leadership community, where the president got so much of his early support as a senator, they -- there are a lot of people there who have soured.

They feel, as Jeff Immelt of GE put it in Italy a few days ago, it appears the Obama administration doesn't like us, and we don't like them, and that -- and entrepreneurs and government are out of sync.

I have to tell you, Wolf, I think that among business people at least, what one hears increasingly is we're not investing as much money as we might because we're not sure whether people in Washington are going to go after us.

You know, we're uncertainty what the climate, is and there's a lot of money sitting on the sidelines that's a little uncertain where rules and regulations and laws are going next.

BLIZTER: It's a major initiative the president has now to try to get some of those big business supporters he had, the Democrats had, in 2008, back on board, because a lot of them are very nervous right now. All right. You make a good point. David, thank you.

GERGEN: Thank you.

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Sarah Palin appeared on Fox & Friends and was asked if she's reconsidered her position on offshore drilling after this disaster we've seen in the Gulf.

Palin: No. We still need to drill, baby drill, and we need to drill safely and ethically. And if we don’t do that here then we will be outsourcing our energy production and developments into countries and foreign waters that do not have the strict standards that we have. The problem here with the Gulf Spill is that we didn’t adhere to those standards and the MMS didn’t regulate aggressively enough and BP told the government some things that now we’re finding out aren’t necessarily true. So there's a lot of blame to go around but certainly the American public can't be blamed for the tragedy in the Gulf and they should not be punished with Cap and Tax either, a tax on energy that now Obama is talking about in kind of a response to the Gulf spill and we shouldn't be punished by outsourcing our energy development and more than we're already outsourcing.

I find it rather ironic to hear her talking about "outsourcing" of our energy development when the company doing that drilling is not an American company. She also says Obama needs to "ramp up" the regulation on the existing rigs but doesn't agree with the moratorium put in place to allow for some time to look into some of them.

Anyway, she goes on to slam Obama for not meeting with BP CEO Tony Hayworth sooner, as though he's going to tell the President anything different than we've been seeing from his ass-covering lawyered up appearances on the television already.

She is then asked about her offer for Obama to "Call Me" if he needed any advice on the oil disaster. You can read more on that from our own Jon Perr, Palin to Obama: Call Me on Oil Disaster and Shannyn Moore, Palin's Phony "Call Me!" Offer who both do a fine job of explaining why Sarah Palin is the last person President Obama needs to be getting any advice from.

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Barney Frank visited the set of the Rachel Maddow Show to talk about the TARP hearings and at the end of the interview he said something that was music to my ears.

Maddow: Should they be constrained from doing those things by rules rather than just being shamed for when they don't do it?

Frank: There's no question about it for the future. Look there's a problem in the American system and we as liberals should be honoring this. The principle that you don't go back and do things retroactively is a very important liberal principle so some of the things that the Bush administration let them do we can then undo. We can prevent them from going forward and this I can guarantee you.

We will very soon be adopting a set of regulations. We're going to be doing essentially now what Franklin Roosevelt had to do in the New Deal, what Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson had to do around the turn of the last century. There is a whole lot of new financial activity that's going on and it's caused some damage and done some good, but it's gone on without rules and the one thing I am most confident about is we know how to stop this from happening again. Banning the bad subprime loans. Restricting the excessive kinds of leverage they've had.

Yeah, this is a very high priority for us and I think by the summer we're going to have a set of rules in place. It's going to be comparable I think to what FDR did with the New Deal, with the Securities and Exchange Commission and other rules. We will not depend on their good will. We will put some tough rules in place.

All I can say is I hope he means it, and that he follows through on what he said tonight. I don't know much about economics. It frankly bored me and was just never something I took an interest in. But I'm not a stupid person and I know after watching the 60 Minutes segment A Look at Wall Street's Shadow Market that if we didn't do something to regulate Wall Street that nothing was going to improve in our economy because there would be no trust of our current system.

I make that assumption because I don't trust it now and I'm probably like a lot of other people out there who thought they were spreading their risks in their 401(K)s, if you were lucky enough to have one, and watched it tank by close to forty percent over the last year. For anyone close to retirement age like a lot of my co-workers, those sort of losses are just devastating. You think you're doing the right thing and trying to prepare for retirement and poof, years and years of savings just vanished in a matter of a few weeks or sometimes a few days. I watched friends walking around in what was close to a state of shock when the market crashed.

So I welcome Barney Frank's talk of regulating these markets. I think it's overdue, and this summer could not come fast enough if that's when they try to get it through. For contrast, here's your standard talking head on the "news" saying 'thank goodness Tim Geithner didn't come out with any crazy talk about regulating this mess'. Yeah, that's the ticket, Joe Johns. Forget any regulation that might stop these industries from continuing to cook their books and leverage themselves in a way that would put a regulated insurance company out of business.

As John said before, and I'll repeat it for him: ....Why aren't there hundreds of economists on my TV explaining the stimulus package? And why am I seeing people like Joe Johns tell us what we should think of regulating the industries that drove our economy off the edge of a cliff?

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Robert Redford talks to Rachel Maddow about the Bush administration sneaking through changes to land leases and environmental regulations on election day this year hoping no one would notice. For more you can read Redford's post at the Huffington Post Americans Rejected 'Drill, Baby, Drill'--Bush Should Respect Our Choice.

Maddow: You've got a lot of experience in this field. You've been fighting on behalf of wilderness protection since the early seventies. Do you think these last minute lease plans are really serious? Do you think they'll get away with it?

Redford: Well I don't know, I think they're serious because they've been serious all along. I mean, look, Bush's policies have been a, environmental policies have been a disaster. But that's no surprise when you look at the history of what he's done since he came in. So I think they're totally serious. Whether it's going to work or not I think is going to depend on whether the public wakes up to what's really going on that's going to affect their own personal interests.

Here you have if you look at the Bush administration's cynicism and it's also been devious because when, whenever they couldn't get a bill passed legitimately they would go behind our backs. And when you stop and think about thirty years, thirty years of hard work to get certain protections passed into law like clean water, clean air, the Environmental Policy Act, those were acts to protect the American public and the land that we claim we cherish.

Well he's tried in his eight years to undo just about every one of those laws. And we stop and think it all began with Cheney doing a behind the closed doors energy policy designed with energy companies. You can pretty well see where it was all going to go, so it's pretty cynical and it's, it's in my opinion it's criminal in the sense that what are we going to have to give to our children and theirs if we tear up everything for short term gains that are tied to non-renewable energy sources? I mean do the math you've got non-renewable energy sources which are oil and gas and coal. You've got renewable energy sources which are now totally viable, safer, cleaner, better economically. What are we going to invest in?

[snip]

The thing that really is awful, I mean really, really deeply awful what it's doing behind the American public's back, the cynicism of designing a plan like this, putting out oil leases, gas leases, coal leases in 360,000 acres that surround national parks and monuments and canyons and rivers is pretty devastating in terms of the pollution and the economics of it and so forth.

The fact that they would do that on election day when everybody was distracted by the election and set a date for Dec. 19th, and the sister agency, this came through the BLM, okay, so the sister agency, which is the National Park Service wasn't even told about it. They went behind their backs so they could jam it through, so obviously there's a plan that Bush goes out and as he goes out the door he'd like to give us one good kick in the tail on his way out. This to me is the most cynical, very dangerous and as you said Rachel, that once it's done, it's intractable so I'm mad, the American people are mad and we can stop this. I mean President-elect Obama has a plan to go in a forward direction. Not a backward direction like Bush's planning. So just as the guy is coming into office this guy tries to sneak one past us before the guy can even take office. Pretty cynical and I hope it's stopped. It should be stopped.

Maddow: I know there's a thirty day public protest period which ends the first week in December which is coming up very shortly. Do you think that that public protest, that form of public official protest would help stop this lease sale?

Redford: Well look I'm just this one voice in the wilderness, I mean excuse the pun, but I mean I'm just one voice out there but I'm glad to go on this show simply to say if we pull together the American people get up, now and contact their local official and say we don't want this. This is our land. It's not his land. It's our land. It's our heritage and you're going to trash it for some short term gain that's going to destroy some of the most beautiful places on the face of the earth? I think the American people will stop it and can stop it but they're going to have to act fast because these guys are trying to pull an end around.