Republican presidential candidate and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) says Michigan’s economic woes are rooted in socialist policies, and she blames labor unions, taxes and regulations for the tough economic climate in the state.

Bachmann made the comments on the Steve Deace Show in Iowa before the Nov. 9 debate in the Wolverine State. Deace had asked Bachmann about the “pro-active, positive solution that is the alternative to socialism” in Michigan.

“It’s the fruition of all of the policies of the left which really have their origin in socialism,” Bachmann said of Michigan’s struggling economy. “If there’s anything we should have learned by now it’s that socialism doesn’t work and it’s principles don’t work.”

She also attacked other GOP presidential candidates for supporting the auto bailout, calling it the latest example of socialism in the state and saying “you won’t find any surprises with me.”

“You will find in me a core conviction,” she said, providing a nod to the title of her new book. “I’ve been the only consistent conservative in this race.”

The solution to Michigan’s unemployment problem is reducing union influence by making it a right to work state, which would allow companies to cut back on wages and benefits and be more competitive, she said.

She praised Iowa, which has a law prohibiting union membership or payment of union dues as a condition of employment. About half the states in the U.S. have a similar law; Michigan does not.

“When you have a right to work state then you can have companies adjust wages so they can open up shops to more and more hires and more employees,” Bachmann said.

She said then as more companies opened up, shop wages would eventually increase as businesses work to attract the best talent, especially if taxes and regulations are slashed at the same time.

“If we can have the tax burden lower and if we can have the regulatory burden lower then employers can afford to pay more to bid up wages and bid up benefits and then everybody succeeds,” she said.

The actual wage disparities between right to work states and those that aren’t has been a hotly contested topic for decades — or at least since most of the nation’s 22 right to work states passed their laws in the 1940s and 1950s following the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, which was enacted as a response to (and amended) the Wagner Act of 1935. The latter lays out the rights of workers to unionize, while the former addressed what was then described as too much power by the unions.

Right to work essentially allows all workers at a business where a union has organized to be represented by the union, bound by the union-negotiated contract and use the union as a bargaining agent without ever having to pay union due or join the union.

In 2001 by Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute found that “the most important aspect of right-to-work law is its effect on wages.”

… On average, men in RTW states earn 7.8 percent less than their counterparts in non-RTW states; women in RTW states earn 6.8 percent less. … [W]e find that, even after controlling for regional costs of living, workers in right-to-work states earn less per hour. Particularly interesting is the affect on workers living in cities that are stretch across state line, placing it in both a right-to-work state and a non-RTW state. Seventeen out of 433 metropolitan areas in our sample (nearly 4 percent) spill over from a right-to-work state to a non-RTW state. Our analysis indicates that, in areas where a pure RTW state effect exists (i.e., no spill-over effect), the right-to-work penalty is larger. In fact, we find that living near a non-RTW state helps raise workers’ wages. …

But instead of focusing on individual wages, those that support right-to-work laws often point to a state’s overall economic situation — a similar argument to the one Bachmann made. For instance, the conservative Public Institute at Iowa Wesleyan College (now known as the Public Interest Institute), in a 2000 paper defending Iowa’s right-to-work law, noted a 1998 study that “Iowa outperformed most of its neighboring closed-shop states.”

… Four closed shop states border Iowa: Missouri, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Illinois. From 1947-1992, Iowa’s rate of manufacturing growth was equal to that of Missouri, slightly ahead of Wisconsin, 1.5 times higher than Minnesota, and over 5.5 times higher than Illinois. This is strong evidence that Iowa has done much better economically since enacting its right-to-work law. …

As the May video embedded below shows, Atlanta businessman Herman Cain was a fixture in Iowa early in the 2012 campaign who often attended and provided “star-power” to local GOP fundraisers.

In more recent weeks, however, Cain has sought his fortunes elsewhere and has not been as visible in the first-in-the-nation caucus state. In the interim, the campaign has suffered its own roller coaster ride with staff changes and, more recently, allegations of past inappropriate sexual behavior by Cain.

On Thursday the campaign rolled out an “Iowa Fund,” a fundraising tool with a goal of $999,000 — no doubt selected as nod to Cain’s 9-9-9 economic plan. According to the campaign, “the Iowa Fund will allow Mr. Cain’s campaign to continue to hire additional staff in Iowa, place TV ads, and spread Mr. Cain’s ideas to put Americans back to work.” The fundraising push begins today and will continue through Nov. 9.

Steve Grubbs, chairman for Cain in Iowa, rightfully noted that “the fight for Iowa has already started.”

“The other Republican candidates, the liberal media, and even President Obama have begun to publicly attack Mr. Cain because they are intimidated by his ’9-9-9 Plan’ and his ability to connect with Americans,” Grubbs said in a statement. “As Mr. Cain continues to pull away in the polls, we expect the attacks to continue.”

The campaign also received a boost through an endorsement by Dean Kleckner, who is well known in Iowa and throughout the agricultural industry as a 24-year president of the Iowa Farm Bureau and the American Farm Bureau. The endorsement has already been launched as a radio ad that will air statewide, marking the campaigns first paid outreach specifically to Iowans.

Kleckner argues that Cain will “stand up for farmers,” and that current government regulation is hurting American agriculture.

“Despite the fact that most Iowans live in small towns and cities now, the farm vote is still critical for any candidate seeking the Republican nomination,” Grubbs said. “The endorsement from Dean Kleckner shows the continued momentum Herman Cain is gaining in Iowa. We believe we can bring the farm community onto the Cain Train and make us competitive in the caucuses.”

Outlining the many problems, inconsistencies and scandals that have plagued the PRC since its inception in 1996, the report calls for a complete revamping if not outright gutting of the commission, and at the least it asks that its elected officials be required to have more education or more experience related to the job.

“We’d actually been thinking about this topic for the past five years,” said Nathan. “You don’t need to be a genius to see that the PRC is not professional. The timing of it was just dumb luck on our part. We had no idea that this would happen.”

But happen it did, and what’s different about it so far—and much of it due to timing—is the response it has generated.

“You can pick any dysfunctional state agency and generally the people working at that agency aren’t ever willing to concede to the changes being recommended,” added Nathan. “That’s not the case here. Both commission chairman Pat Lyons and member Jason Marks agreed with our recommendations. So here you have elected officials saying less really is more. That’s very different. And reactions like theirs makes it makes it a somewhat easier sell. We’re not getting the usual pushback from the agency.”

The pushback may come later during the next legislative session. “The challenge now,” admitted Nathan, “is to get the 112 legislators and the governor to agree.”

Given the usual obstreperousness of that particular body and the lagtime between the Block scandal of recent days and whatever news is news next January, when the legislature reconvenes, that’s no small obstacle.

“In small political circles, yes, Block’s behavior is tolerated,” conceded Nathan. “And there’s an overabundance of good ol’ boy stuff, so this will be definitely be a test for the political system. But that’s not a fair assessment of where most citizens stand on this. They want this change. The fairer criticism is that those of us in the electorate need something like this to wake us up.”

The report, from Think New Mexico, calls for streamlining and reducing the duties of the PRC, and increasing the qualifications required of its members. KRQE reports:

Just last week, PRC Commissioner Jerome Block Junior pleaded guilty to multiple felonies including check fraud and embezzlement. Fred Nathan, the founder of Think New Mexico, says the scandal is simply a symptom of the PRC’s larger problem… ”As long as the PRC is so powerful and has so few qualifications for office, we believe it’s going to continue to be a magnet for corrupt politicians like Jerome Block Jr.,” Nathan said.

The report claims that no other state regulator in the country has powers as broad as New Mexico’s does. The Commission regulates utility rates, insurance, fire safety, ambulances, corporation registration and even the rates that in-state motor carriers, including taxis and moving companies, can charge to their customers.

The report calls for shifting some of the PRC’s functions to other agencies, including supervision of the State Fire Marshall’s office, ambulance regulation and registration of corporations. It also calls for eliminating rate regulation of motor carriers. Critics of motor carrier rate regulation argue that it is a separate issue from safety or public health regulation and an unnecessary power of the New Mexico state government.

Think New Mexico is also proposing that commissioners have at least a bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or five years of experience in a relevant field, such as engineering, law or accounting. The report finds that at least 15 states have similar minimum qualifications for their top state regulators.

Reforming the PRC’s structure and purpose would require changes to the state constitution, which means that the Legislature has to pass a proposal and the voters have to adopt it via referendum. Efforts to modify the PRC in recent years have repeatedly stalled in the Legislature.

The Regulatory Accountability Act of 2011 would reform the way federal agencies make rules in order to “reduce unnecessary burdens on job creators.” Opponents of the bill, which was introduced Thursday, say it will stifle health, safety and environmental standards.

Under the proposed legislation, a new regulation would need to have advanced public notice and public comment and be based on scientific and technical evidence. Regulations would also have to undergo a cost-benefit analysis, and agencies would have to adopt the “least costly” alternatives.

The bill creates a class of “high-impact” regulations that would be subject to hearings and would be held to standards that are higher than those set for courtrooms.

“While it is difficult to enact a new law, it’s even harder to get a regulation written correctly,” Peterson said. “In many cases, interest groups try to use regulation to interpret the law in their best interest, instead of following the intent of the law. By bringing transparency and accountability to the regulatory process, the American people will be allowed to have a voice in these policy decisions.”

Andrew Liveris, CEO of Dow Chemical praised the bill.

“We applaud [the lawmakers] for starting Congress down the path toward smarter regulation,” Liveris said in a statement. “America’s business leaders have identified unnecessary and overly prescriptive regulation and the overly burdensome federal regulatory process as major impediments to job creation and growth. The bipartisan Regulatory Accountability Act is a smarter approach to regulation that will meet society’s goals while lessening the economic burden of complex, expensive and often inconsistent rules.”

Liveris was speaking on behalf of the Business Roundtable (BRT), a conservative political group made up of the CEOs of major corporations such as Wal-Mart, GE and Exxon Mobil.

John Engler, president of BRT, praised lawmakers.

“The Regulatory Accountability Act is an important milestone on the road toward meaningful federal regulatory reform,” Engler said. “We stand ready to work with them to achieve smarter regulation and put America back to work.”

But Rick Melberth, director of regulatory policy for the government watchdog group OMB Watch, said the bill is problematic.

“If the provisions of the proposal become law, they will result in a near-moratorium on rules by creating even more obstacles for agencies to overcome in issuing standards that keep us safe from contaminated food, product defects, and polluted air and water,” Melberth wrote. “In addition, the proposal would shift the locus of regulatory decisions to the courts and out of agencies’ hands by providing multiple new opportunities for deep-pocketed corporate interests to challenge agencies at nearly every step of the process.”

He added, “When such special favors are granted to special interests, everyday Americans are further shut out of the regulatory process, giving them less of an opportunity to participate in this essential function of democratic governance.”

The bill contains most of the provisions that the BRT has been lobbying for; on Wednesday, the day before the bill was introduced, the BRT released its own very similar plan.

Martinez appointee Regulation and Licensing Department Superintendent J. Dee Dennis Jr. told the Albuquerque Journal, “This is not driven by any ideological belief, but a commonsense approach to help grow our economy in these tough times while adopting a national energy standard.”

The rules in question require new homes and other buildings be built with higher energy standards than before. Martinez’s administration is looking at moving the standards back down to what they were before Gov. Bill Richardson’s administration raised them. The standards went into effect in January, though there is a six-month grace period. This means the codes will not really go into effect until July.

The Journal reported on the codes themselves:

The current national codes increased energy savings about 10 percent over previous codes. Under the New Mexico version, it’s estimated that new homes would be 20 percent more energy efficient than previously required; new commercial buildings would be about 17 percent more energy efficient, increasing to 20 percent when the 2013 changes took effect.

KSFR spoke to Kim Shanahan, the executive director of the Santa Fe Area Homebuilders Association, who supports the current codes and sees no reason to roll them back.

“Homebuilders believe that this is a good code,” Shanahan told KSFR. “This is one that we can live with and we are for it.”

Shanahan said that he could not say if all builders in the state are for the current code, but indicated that the Santa Fe Homebuilders Association is “by and large” in favor of the regulations.

The Journal reported that another group was not of the same opinion.

“By rolling back the codes, New Mexico remains cost competitive in building new or remodeling residential and commercial properties while still implementing substantial energy savings,” Lynne Andersen, president of NAIOP NM, the commercial real estate development association, said in an April 21 letter to the CID.

The proposal was introducted by Kevin Yearout of Albuquerque. Yearout was a member of Martinez’s Small Business Friendly Task Force, which recommended rolling back a number of regulations.

The liberal blog Clearly New Mexico, a project of the Center for Civic Policy, said that the task force was “dominated by long-time lobbyists for large corporations, including big dairy, which contributed thousands of dollars to Martinez’s campaign; and the oil, gas and natural gas industry from in and outside the state, which gave her hundreds of thousands.”

Yearout is not listed as a lobbyist. He did, however, donate $5,000 to Martinez’s campaign, and his wife, Lian, donated an additional $5,000. A Cheryl Yearout, who listed the same address as Kevin Yearout, donated another $2,000. Yearout Mechanical donated $10,000 to Martinez’s successful gubernatorial campaign as well.

According to a midpoint report obtained by Clearly New Mexico, “The task force doesn’t want New Mexico to do any more than what’s required by the federal government.”

When asked about the Martinez administration statement that this will show that “New Mexico is open for business,” Shanahan said it did not mean anything to him as a builder.

“It’s political posturing from my perspective,” he said.

In one of her first acts as governor, Martinez attempted to halt all pending and proposed regulations for 90-days. Her act, via an executive order, was struck down by the state Supreme Court and Martinez was ordered to publish some regulations her administration had previously halted.

Court documents obtained by the KUNM Government Project found that the dairy industry had helped draft the executive order.

This month, Issa’s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform published a report critical of federal regulatory practices that it considers “impediments to job creation.” The report several times singles out the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as an entity whose regulations create costs for small businesses that inhibit job growth. Given the committee’s Koch connections, it may come as little surprise that its report targets the EPA, as Koch Industries has come into repeated conflict with federal and state environmental protection agencies. The most recent flare-up between Koch Industries and environmental regulators comes in the form of a battle between Koch Industries-owned Georgia-Pacific Paper and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection over a wastewater pipeline Georgia-Pacific wants to route into Florida’s St. John’s River.

The Watchdog report demonstrates that the parallels between the House committee’s criticisms and Koch Industries’ clashes with federal and state regulators certainly may not be mere coincidence. At least six Republican staffers with the Committee on Oversight have demonstrable corporate lobbying connections, according to the Watchdog Institute. Additionally, 11 of the 23 Republican representatives in the committee received financial help from Koch Industries in the last election.

The largest recipient of Koch Industries contributions overall, with $12,500 since 2008, is Chairman Issa, though two other members of the House Committee have matched the $10,000 in campaign contributions from Koch Industries that Issa received prior to last year’s election: Dennis Ross of Florida and James Lankford of Oklahoma. John Mica, of Florida’s 7th district, which includes part of the St. John’s River (though not the site of Georgia-Pacific’s proposed wastewater pipeline), got $2,500 in campaign funds from Koch Industries. Connie Mack, a Florida representative who may be a potential 2012 Senate candidate (though he still refuses to confirm that he intends to run) received $7,500.

New York representative Ann Marie Buerkle received the smallest Koch donation, getting $250 from Catherine Haggett, Director of Federal Affairs for Koch Industries. Michigan’s Tim Walberg, New Hampshire’s Frank Guinta, South Carolina’s Trey Gowdy and Pennsylvania’s Mike Kelly and Patrick Meehan all received between $2,500 and $7,500 in Koch campaign money leading up to the 2010 election.

With the controversial Koch brothers making headlines lately, House Oversight representatives, especially those like Rep. Mack with a reported eye on higher office, may not be that happy to be tied to them. But as long as Issa and his fellow committee members continue to accept Koch money and advocate deregulation that would conveniently benefit Koch Industries and other energy, petroleum and chemical corporations, they may be stuck to Charles and David Koch. Representatives and staffers on the committee have declined to comment on any perceived conflict of interest.

Correction: This story originally said the site of Georgia-Pacific’s proposed wastewater pipeline was in Rep. Mica’s district. It is, in fact, in Rep. Corrine Brown’s district. This has been corrected in the story.

The letter comes as Republicans push the argument that big Democratic policies — health care reform and financial regulatory reform chief among them — are causing businesses to hold back on hiring due to regulatory uncertainty, the belief that rising taxes and new rules might hurt sales. (Others argue a lack of aggregate demand, low consumer spending due to high rates of joblessness, is the obvious culprit.) The letter repeats a request made by Republican Reps. Geoff Davis (Ky.) and Trent Franks (Az.) to the Office of Informaiton and Regulatory Affairs in July. Boehner writes:

It has recently come to our attention that the Administration’s published regulatory agenda includes a total of 191 planned rulemakings, each with an estimated annual cost to our economy of $100 million or more, and that a number of these planned rulemakings may each have an annual economic cost in excess of $1 billion. During a recent job forum conducted through our America Speaking Out initiative, the uncertainty resulting from such rulemakings was cited by private sector job creators as one of the primary impediments to job creation currently facing small businesses.

At first, Chief Executive Officer Dan Porter and his enforcement officer and community manager, Joseph Alminawi, took the Chris Dodd approach to regulation. They made lots and lots of rules, and then tried to enforce them. The two created a list of banned words. … [The] list of banned words [soon] reached an unenforceable 9,000.

In addition, the OMGPOP discovered that publicly scapegoating wrongdoers had a counterproductive effect. Once other rogues heard of a vigilante, they didn’t want to shun him. They wanted to join him — even create a tough new gang to hijack the sweet culture of OMGPOP.

So Porter and Alminawi took a different tack. They involved players in the game, in management, even. Premium members, who have spent sufficient hours on the site, get to test new games, for example. And, like the New York Stock Exchange before the Securities and Exchange Commission, they tried to get players to police one another. Banning still happened. But management worked anonymously and played on the deep human desire not to be excluded from a desirable tribe.

Self-policing, OMGPOP discovered, worked best, with “lollipop policing” trumping “Spitzeresque policing.” Shlaes says that the OMGPOP example “highlights flaws in legislation to overhaul the financial system.”

Except, of course, that the online social communities of teenage girls and the real businesses of Wall Street traders have nothing in common. Shlaes might as well be recommending using the United States’ successful drunk-driving laws to referee the upcoming World Cup.

To state the blindingly obvious: The financial world is zero-sum and profit-driven. The incentive is to put the other players out of business and to reap all of the profits for yourself. The world of OMGPOP is not zero-sum and is community-driven. The incentive is to make friends and play games. Therefore, self-policing makes sense for OMGPOP, where regulators want to weed out bad words and keep all participants happy and chatty. Wall Street cannot and should not be self-policing, because it is competitive and filled with adults who want to make billions of dollars while “[ripping] the face off” some other trader.

Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship testifies before a Senate committee on Thursday. (Pete Marovich/ZUMApress.com)

Under fire for his company’s safety record following a deadly mining accident last month, Massey CEO Don Blankenship tried to shift the blame Thursday, telling Senate lawmakers that interference from federal regulators might very well have caused the disaster.

[Congress1] Not only did the Mine Safety and Health Administration force Massey to alter its ventilation system at the doomed Upper Big Branch Mine, Blankenship charged, but “just days” before the tragedy, MSHA had also certified that the mine was in “good condition,” he claimed.

“We complied with MSHA safety orders even when we strenuously disagreed with them and believed them to be detrimental to the health and safety of the mine,” Blankenship told lawmakers on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor. “They forced us to ventilate backwards by not approving [our] plan.”

Though investigators have yet to determine the source of the blast, mine-safety experts suspect that it was caused by a buildup of methane combined with an accumulation of airborne coal dust — two conditions that mine ventilation systems are designed to alleviate.

To top it all off, Blankenship added, MSHA now wants a closed-door investigation, which he fears could allow the agency to clear itself of wrongdoing without the public knowing all the facts.

The message was clear, and it wasn’t lost on Sen. Robert Byrd. The 92-year-old West Virginia Democrat told Joseph Main, the head of MSHA, “This sounds like someone is trying to blame your agency for the death of 29 miners.”

Main was quick to push back, arguing that the ultimate responsibility for miners’ safety lies with the mine operator. “MSHA did not run the Upper Big Branch Mine — Massey Energy did,” he said. “I have no clue what the basis of [Blankenship's] argument is.”

The comments arrive as federal, state and independent investigators continue to probe the cause of the April 5 disaster. The tragedy, the most deadly mine accident in 40 years, has put the spotlight on Massey’s safety record, reputed to be the worst in the business.

Blankenship defended Massey’s safety record Thursday, maintaining that the number of citations it’s racked up is “probably about average” for the industry. If it’s higher, he added, that’s because mining in Central Appalachia involves “difficult underground conditions,” and because Massey produces more coal in the region than anyone else.

Yet MSHA data don’t support that argument. In 2009, for instance, the Upper Big Branch racked up 515 safety violations while producing roughly 1.2 million tons of coal. Meanwhile, the Robinson Run mine, a Consol-owned operation in West Virginia’s Marion County, produced 5.5 million tons of coal in the same year while receiving just 158 citations.

The discrepancy wasn’t lost on Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers of America, who accused Massey of nurturing a culture where production is prioritized over safety, and workers are scared to file complaints for fear of losing their jobs. “This isn’t the average,” Roberts said of Massey’s safety violations. “This is deplorable.”

“Mr. Blankenship,” Byrd added, “Massey is not average.”

Thursday’s hearing marked Blankenship’s first appearance before Congress since the April 5 blast. But you wouldn’t have known it by the turnout. Although two Capitol police officers roamed the room, no protestors surfaced. And aside from Byrd, only two other Democrats — Sens. Tom Harkin (Iowa) and Patty Murray (Wash.) — attended.

No Republicans showed up at all.