The EPA punishes refineries for not using a non-existent fuel
Touching our lives every day: More on the EPA’s decision to punish refineries for not using a non-existent fuel.
Tag: oppression
“I’d hoped for something different.”
“I’d hoped for something different.”
Me too. But Rome wasn’t built in a day. And this is all the more reason to vote more conservatives into power. And to not be afraid of new faces whom we’ve never heard of. The familiar names surely aren’t doing what is necessary.
The EPA is fining companies millions because they didn’t use a fuel that doesn’t exist
Touching our lives every day: In 2011 the EPA fined companies millions because they didn’t use a fuel that doesn’t exist.
“Who wouldn’t firing these people?”
“the EPA touches on the lives of every single American every single day.”
Obama today: “The EPA touches on the lives of every single American every single day.”
Truer words were never spoken, but not in the way the President intended. He was speaking to a gathering of EPA employees in Washington, DC, and was praising them for their work. To the rest of the nation, however, the EPA’s effort is increasingly seen as a terrible burden that is squelching both the economy and the freedom of Americans.
Democratic dead people receive ballots to vote in New Hampshire primary
The dead, mostly Democratic, get to vote in the New Hampshire primary.
The story includes video of election workers handing out the voter ballots for deceased voters to whomever asks and telling them they didn’t need to show id to use those ballots to vote.
The Supreme Court looks hard at the EPA and doesn’t like what it sees
The Supreme Court looks hard at the EPA and doesn’t like what it sees.
This case is about the EPA’s ongoing effort to steal property from private landowners.
The Sacketts wanted to build a home on a 0.63-acre lot near Priest Lake in the Idaho panhandle that they bought for $23,000. But after three days of bringing in fill dirt and preparing for construction in 2007, officials from the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ordered the activity stopped and said they suspected the land contained wetlands.
Months later, the agency sent the Sacketts a “compliance order” that said the land must be restored as a wetlands before the couple could apply for a building permit. The government acknowledged Monday that fines for failure to comply with the orders could be as much as $75,000 a day.
Two TSA workers who pleaded guilty to stealing $40,000 from a drug mule’s luggage were each sentenced to six months in prison today.
A slap on the wrist: Two TSA workers who pleaded guilty to stealing $40,000 from a passenger’s luggage were each sentenced to six months in prison today.
I wonder if the TSA will give them their jobs back when they get out. They seem perfectly qualified for the work the TSA does.
The New Authoritarianism
If Obama does win, 2013 could possibly bring something approaching a constitutional crisis. With the House and perhaps the Senate in Republican hands, Obama’s clerisy may be tempted to use the full range of executive power. The logic for running the country from the executive has been laid out already. Republican control of just the House, argues Chicago congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., has made America ungovernable. Obama, he said during the fight over the debt limit, needed to bypass the Constitution because, as in 1861, the South (in this case, the Southern Republicans) was “in a state of rebellion” against lawful authority. Beverley Perdue, the Democratic governor of North Carolina, concurred: she wanted to have elections suspended for a stretch. (Perdue’s office later insisted this was a joke, but most jokes aren’t told deadpan or punctuated with “I really hope someone can agree with me on that.” Also: Nobody laughed.)
Read the whole essay. It is a remarkably concise and accurate description of the beliefs and desires of my liberal readers, which was further illustrated by their quick willingness in the comments here, here, and here to excuse an unconstitutional power-grab by Obama. This quote says it all:
Let leaders lead.
Very depressing.
Homeland Security is monitoring journalists
Gotta have my KGB: Under an initiative that came out in November, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has begun monitoring journalists.
Specifically, the DHS announced the NCO and its Office of Operations Coordination and Planning (OPS) can collect personal information from news anchors, journalists, reporters or anyone who may use “traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed.”
According to the Department of Homeland Security’s own definition of personal identifiable information, or PII, such data could consist of any intellect “that permits the identity of an individual to be directly or indirectly inferred, including any information which is linked or linkable to that individual.” Previously established guidelines within the administration say that data could only be collected under authorization set forth by written code, but the new provisions in the NOC’s write-up means that any reporter, whether someone along the lines of Walter Cronkite or a budding blogger, can be victimized by the agency.
FAA grants exemption, allowing ultra-light plane to resume whooping crane escort flight
Gee, isn’t that nice of them: The FAA has granted a one time waiver, allowing an ultra-light plane to resume this year’s whooping crane escort flight.
This infuriates me. What business is it of the FAA whether the ultra-light plane pilots make money on this or not?
This is a perfect example of “mission creep.” The FAA was originally chartered to manage airports, install required landing and navigational equipment, and monitor the designs of aircraft for safety hazards. Somehow, this mission now includes regulating who and what aviation groups are allowed to make money. Disgusting.
NASA administrator Bolden met with former Apollo astronauts today to smooth over his agency’s attempt to prevent their ability to sell artifacts from their missions.
NASA administrator Bolden met with former Apollo astronauts today to smooth over his agency’s attempt to prevent their ability to sell artifacts from their missions.
The Obama administration announced a federal ban Monday on new mining claims affecting a million acres near the Grand Canyon.
The Obama administration announced a federal ban Monday on new mining claims affecting a million acres near the Grand Canyon.
As much as I love the Grand Canyon and want to protect it, this ban has little to do with the canyon itself. The land involved surrounds the canyon, and is in remote areas that tourists never see. And though the Obama administration claims this is to protect the waters of the Colorado River, none of the mining would take place anywhere near the river.
What this ruling illustrates is the left’s fear of doing anything. They prefer to shut everything down, on the remote chance that something might go wrong, even if that wrong might be very temporary and fixable. Following this philosophy, it is not surprising that the economy has been in the doldrums for the past three years.
The national debt now equals the entire U.S. economy
The day of reckoning looms: The national debt now equals the entire U.S. economy.
The amount of money the federal government owes to its creditors, combined with IOUs to government retirement and other programs, now tops $15.23 trillion. That’s roughly equal to the value of all goods and services the U.S. economy produces in one year: $15.17 trillion as of September, the latest estimate. Private projections show the economy likely grew to about $15.3 trillion by December — a level the debt is likely to surpass this month.
But don’t worry. The press is focused like a laser on more important issues, such as whether the states might someday consider outlawing the pill.
A different perspective of last year’s shootings in Tucson, by one of its victims
A different perspective of last year’s shootings in Tucson, by one of its victims.
A U.S.-Canadian partnership to re-establish migrating cranes has been halted by the FAA because it doesn’t meet its regulations.
We’re here to help you! A U.S.-Canadian partnership to re-establish migrating cranes using human-powered ultralights has been halted by the FAA because it doesn’t meet its regulations.
FAA regulations say only pilots with commercial pilot licenses can fly for hire. The pilots of Operation Migration’s plane are instead licensed to fly sport aircraft because that’s the category of aircraft that the group’s small, open plane with its rear propeller and bird-like wings falls under. FAA regulations also prohibit sport aircraft – which are sometimes of exotic design – from being flown to benefit a business or charity. The rules are aimed, in part, at preventing businesses or charities from taking passengers for joyrides in sometimes risky planes.
What goddamn business is it of the FAA to “prohibit sport aircraft … from being flown to benefit a business or charity”? Isn’t that exactly how the aviation industry got started, taking passengers on short flights during the barnstorming era?
Tucson school system loses $5 million in funding because it has refused to dump ethnic studies
The Tucson school system has lost $5 million in funding because it refuses to close its Mexican studies program.
“The assertion that TUSD’s Mexican American Studies Program was designed and implemented only to promote cultural diversity and a greater understanding of the role of Mexican Americans in this nation is inaccurate and incomplete,” Huppenthal stated today. “Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican American Studies Program courses, curriculum and classroom materials have been found to (1) promote resentment toward a race or class of people; (2) be designed primarily for the pupils of a particular ethnic group; and (3) advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.”
In other words, this leftwing program was designed to promote hatred of whites and America within the immigrant Hispanic community, all good reasons for the local liberal, blue-state Democratic politicians of Tucson to want to support it, no matter the consequences.
Why the Doctor Won’t See You
Estimates are that ObamaCare will succeed in insuring 32 million otherwise uninsured people. If economic studies are correct, once these folks are insured, they will try to double their consumption of health care. On top of that, ObamaCare does something that Massachusetts did not do. It will force the vast majority of people who already have insurance to switch to more generous coverage. For example, everyone will have to be covered for a long list of preventive care and diagnostic screenings, with no copay and no deductible. Once people have this extra coverage, they will be inclined to take advantage of it.
Get prepared, then, for a huge increase in the demand for care. The result will be growing waiting lines — at the doctors’ offices, at hospital emergency rooms, at the health clinics, etc.
The pattern here has been the same worldwide, in every country that has tried it: Let the government interfere with the “invisible hand” of the market and the market gets distorted in ways that no one predicted that are also counterproductive.
Labor unions get the bulk of Obamacare waivers
Obama’s crony government: Labor unions have been gettting the bulk of Obamacare waivers.
Playing Politics with the Constitution and the Law
Playing politics with the Constitution and the law.
All of Obama’s appointments yesterday are illegal under the Constitution. And, in addition, as too little noted by the media, his appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is legally futile. Under the plain language of the Dodd-Frank Act that created the CFPB, Cordray will have no authority whatsoever.
The Dodd-Frank act explicitly requires Cordray’s confirmation by the Senate in order for his authority to go into effect. Prior to that confirmation he has no authority.
Once again, the issue here is what Obama’s actions tell us about him as an elected official, suggesting that he an arrogant man who is willing to trash the Constitution and create legal hell for business and the government all for the sake of election-year politics. Not a good recommendation at all.