Tag: policy

Alaska is going to sue the Obama administration for blocking the construction of a 10 mile long road necessary to give people in a remote village access to emergency medical care.

9:46 pm

Alaska is going to sue the Obama administration for blocking the construction of a 10 mile long road necessary to give people in a remote village access to emergency medical care.

The lack of a road has led to the deaths of 19 people. And why is the Obama administration allowing these people to die? Let me quote Interior Secretary Sally Jewell:

During an August visit to Alaska, Jewell was told that building a road that connects King Cove and Cold Bay was vital. But in December, Jewell rejected the road saying it would jeopardize waterfowl in the refuge. “She stood up in the gymnasium and told those kids, ‘I’ve listened to your stories, now I have to listen to the animals,” Democratic state Rep. Bob Herron told a local television station. “You could have heard a pin drop in that gymnasium.” [emphasis mine]

4 comments

The IRS scandal spreads.

11:53 am

The IRS scandal spreads.

This article does an excellent job of connecting the dots, both in terms of who and when, based on what we now know, from solid evidence. The author’s conclusion:

We now have a sitting Democrat congressman, Elijah Cummings, a sitting Democrat senator, Sheldon Whitehouse, the Federal Elections Commission, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the Internal Revenue Service all implicated in the scandal. Flax’s involvement puts the abuse squarely into the IRS commissioner’s office. But it takes an entity above all of those agencies to coordinate their actions. That entity can only be the White House.

Flax worked for the head of the IRS at the time, proving once again that this harassment was not instigated by “low-level employees in Cincinnati”, as claimed by Lois Lerner.

4 comments

Newly released emails show that former IRS Official Lois Lerner discussed prosecution of conservative tax exempt groups with Eric Holder’s Justice Department even as she was publicly admitting that the harassment of conservatives was improper.

9:31 am

Working for the Democratic Party: Newly released emails show that former IRS Official Lois Lerner discussed prosecution of conservative tax exempt groups with Eric Holder’s Justice Department even as she was publicly admitting that the harassment of conservatives was improper.

One comment

Why we should be sympathetic to the Bundy family in Nevada.

8:28 am

Why we should be sympathetic to the Bundy family in Nevada.

The author notes that the Bundy’s don’t have a legal leg to stand on, but then explains why what is happening to them is still unjust. The best quote:

So let’s have some sympathy for Cliven Bundy and his family. They don’t have a chance on the law, because under the Endangered Species Act and many other federal statutes, the agencies are always in the right. And their way of life is one that, frankly, is on the outs. They don’t develop apps. They don’t ask for food stamps. It probably has never occurred to them to bribe a politician. They don’t subsist by virtue of government subsidies or regulations that hamstring competitors. They aren’t illegal immigrants. They have never even gone to law school. So what possible place is there for the Bundys in the Age of Obama?

8 comments

Another look at the BLM’s range war with the last remaining rancher in Nevada.

10:23 am

Another look at the BLM’s range war with the last remaining rancher in Nevada.

“Years ago, I used to have 52 neighboring ranchers,” [rancher Cliven Bundy] said. “I’m the last man standing. How come? Because BLM regulated these people off the land and out of business.” This is why the whole question of whether he “paid his fees” is a red herring. The government changed the rules in an effort to drive people like him out of business. Even if he had paid them, he’d still have had to break their rules to survive. That’s the position they put him in. Obey our silly, arbitrary rules designed to protect a desert tortoise that no one can show he’s hurting in any way or give up your way of life.

9 comments

“The left is entering a new phase of ideological agitation — no longer trying to win the debate but stopping debate altogether, banishing from public discourse any and all opposition.”

7:21 pm

“The left is entering a new phase of ideological agitation — no longer trying to win the debate but stopping debate altogether, banishing from public discourse any and all opposition.”

Let there be no confusion about this. On every controversial issue before us the left has decided that any disagreement is unacceptable and that any one who refuses to kowtow to their vicious fascism must be destroyed. While few have linked the IRS scandal with this totalitarian desire, it is part and parcel to it. The left has adopted McCarthyism as their number one tactic for winning the debate.

5 comments

“A lot of investment in green technology has been a giant scam, if well intentioned.”

9:36 am

“A lot of investment in green technology has been a giant scam, if well intentioned.”

The quote, and entire interview, are significant for two reasons. First, the interview is seeped with many skeptical opinions about human caused global warming, is very critical of that movement’s effort to politicize science, and the person being interviewed is James Lovelock, the founder of of the concept of Gaia, a former strong advocate of global warming but now a skeptic.

Most significant however is where the interview is published. It is in Nature, one of the most important and influential science journals, which previously has been aggressively pushing global warming politics for years. That they allowed these politically incorrect opinions within their walls and then broadcast them to their readers signals a major cultural shift within the science community. It is beginning to be acceptable to be a skeptic again!

4 comments

Liberal mob rule.

8:59 am

From a Democrat! Liberal mob rule.

Even for those of us who support same-sex marriage, the virtual manhunt of Mozilla chief Brendan Eich was scary to watch. His heresy was a private donation in support of an anti-gay marriage initiative six years ago. Mob rule enforcing groupthink is as illiberal as it gets, and yet it was liberals demanding uniformity of thought — or else.

Another incident of muzzling those without the proper worldview received less attention. Kickstarter, the nation’s biggest crowd-funding site,refused to accept a film about convicted abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell unless descriptions of his crimes were removed.

Read it all. It is refreshing to see a liberal Democrat recognize and condemn the modern oppression of the left.

2 comments

An op-ed in Ebony (!) notes that despite getting an Obamacare insurance policy the writer cannot get any doctor to take her as a patient.

8:49 am

Pigs fly! An op-ed in Ebony (!) notes that despite getting an Obamacare insurance policy the writer cannot get any doctor to take her as a patient.

What makes this article even more shocking, coming from a black publication, are the comments, which are almost all strongly critical of Obama and Obamacare, while actually complementing tea party advocates and conservatives for warning that this might happen, beforehand.

2 comments

A government investigation has found evidence of numerous IRS employees of performing illegal political activity in support of President Obama and fellow Democrats.

8:41 am

Working for the Democratic Party: A government investigation has found evidence of numerous IRS employees of performing illegal political activity, while working, in support of President Obama and fellow Democrats.

These activities were independent of the IRS’s management effort to harass conservatives, and provide further evidence that the tax agency was aggressively using its power during the 2012 election to get Democrats elected.

Leave a comment

Congress and NASA administrator Charles Bolden battled over ISS, Russia, crew transport, and commercial space yesterday in a hearing before Congress.

8:20 am

Congress and NASA administrator Charles Bolden battled over ISS, Russia, crew transport, and commercial space yesterday in a hearing before Congress.

Not surprising. Congress wants to know what NASA will do if Russia pulls out of ISS and Bolden really has few options if they do. He in turn was trying to get Congress to focus on funding commercial space so that we can launch our own astronauts to ISS and not depend on the Russians. A true confederacy of dunces. More here.

3 comments

An update on the story of the BLM’s attempt to confiscate a man’s cattle in Nevada while outlawing free speech in vast parts of the land the agency administers.

10:02 pm

An update on the story of the BLM’s attempt to confiscate a man’s cattle in Nevada while outlawing free speech in vast parts of the land the agency administers.

From the details in this story, it sounds as if the BLM might have some justification to take the man’s cattle. Voiding the Constitution while they do so, however, is unacceptable.

One comment

From now until January 1 Obamacare does not allow you to buy health insurance.

9:53 pm

Finding out what’s not in it: From now until January 1 Obamacare does not allow you to buy health insurance.

“It’s all closed down. You cannot buy a policy that is a qualified policy for the purpose of the ACA (the Affordable Care Act) until next year on January 1,” says John DiVito, president of Flexbenefit which has 2,500 brokers.

John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas adds, “People are not going to be able to buy individual and family policies, and that’s part of ObamaCare. And what makes it so surprising is the whole point of ObamaCare was to encourage people to get insurance, and now the market has been completely closed down for the next seven months.” That means that with few exceptions, tens of millions of people will be locked out of the health insurance market for the rest of this year.

An open enrollment period has been standard for federal healthcare for decades, but in the private sector you were always free (what a word!) to buy insurance whenever. Obamacare has ended that freedom.

One comment

A survey of health insurance brokers suggests that health insurance rates are increasing at the fastest rate ever seen since these surveys began.

6:22 pm

Finding out what’s in it: A survey of health insurance brokers suggests that health insurance rates are increasing at the fastest rate ever seen since these surveys began.

The average increases are in excess of 11% in the small group market and 12% in the individual market. Some state show increases 10 to 50 times that amount. The analysts conclude that the “increases are largely due to changes under the ACA.”

The analysts conducting the survey attribute the rate increases largely to a combination of four factors set in motion by Obamacare: Commercial underwriting restrictions, the age bands that don’t allow insurers to vary premiums between young and old beneficiaries based on the actual costs of providing the coverage, the new excise taxes being levied on insurance plans, and new benefit designs. [emphasis mine]

4 comments

According to the deputy head of Russia’s space agency, they are not planning any retaliatory sanctions against NASA.

2:45 pm

According to the deputy head of Russia’s space agency, they are not planning any retaliatory sanctions against NASA.

Whew! That’s a relief.

Seriously, I never expected them to do anything, as the sanctions NASA has imposed, excluding ISS, are so minor that they mean nothing to Russia. The only people NASA really hopes will react to these sanctions are Congressmen and Senators when they realize how dependent we are on the Russians to get to space.

One comment

A new study has found that there is zero correlation between increased spending and improvements in education.

9:03 am

A new study has found that there is zero correlation between increased spending and improvements in education.

While spending has just about tripled in inflation-adjusted dollars and the number of school employees has almost doubled since 1970, reading, math and science scores for students have remained stagnant.

“That is remarkably unusual,” Coulson wrote in his study. “In virtually every other field, productivity has risen over this period thanks to the adoption of countless technological advances — advances that, in many cases, would seem ideally suited to facilitating learning. And yet, surrounded by this torrent of progress, education has remained anchored to the riverbed, watching the rest of the world rush past it.”

Click on the link just to see the main graph. While math, reading, and science scores have remained unchanged for literally decades, spending has skyrocketed. To put it bluntly, we aren’t getting our money’s worth.

Note this quote also:

But if spending has no affect, then why do students at private schools, which charge tuition, perform better than students in public schools? “Actually, the average per-pupil spending in private schools is substantially below the average per-pupil spending in government schools,” Coulson said. He pointed to a study he conducted in New Mexico’s neighboring state of Arizona in which Coulson said average per-pupil spending at private schools was about 66 percent of the cost of public schools.

I wonder if the phrase “public sector unions” comes to anyone’s mind as an explanation for this sad situation,

2 comments

Obamacare rules have killed a New Jersey healthcare plan aimed at providing healthcare for children.

9:11 pm

Finding out what’s in it: Obamacare rules have killed a New Jersey healthcare plan aimed at providing healthcare for children.

While the federal government was trumpeting the benefits of Obamacare to boost enrollment earlier this year, about 1,800 families in New Jersey were receiving letters telling them their children would be losing their health coverage last week. The Affordable Care Act — the federal law that mandates everyone have insurance — effectively killed FamilyCare Advantage, a low-cost option for kids in New Jersey created six years ago for parents who earned too much to qualify for Medicaid and other subsidized programs but too little to buy on a policy on their own. The state program was the first of its kind in the nation.

We have only just begun. The disaster that is Obamacare is going to continue bulldozing its way through the healthcare insurance industry, destroying everything it touches.

However, the two unintended positive consequences of this terrible law might be that 1) it will destroy the careers of many of the Democratic politicians who forced it on us. The Democratic Party has needed a house-cleaning for about two decades. Obamacare might finally give it to us. 2) The destruction of the healthcare industry as we have known it might actually be a good thing in the long run. It might return us to a system where the patient pays for the medical care, which will force prices down and get rid of the middleman insurance company.

Leave a comment

Watch how Chicago’s middle class has been destroyed by the radical leftwing Democratic Party during the past forty years.

10:00 am

Watch as a single graph illustrates how the policies of the radical leftwing Democratic Party during the past forty years has destroyed Chicago’s middle class.

Though the propaganda goal of this story is to push the Democratic Party’s new talking point of income equality, the graph does a better job of showing us the consequences of Democratic rule. Chicago has been run by Democrats forever, but only by radical leftwing Democrats since the 1970s, which is exactly when the middle class there started to flee.

Leave a comment

Six Senators on Wednesday demanded the Air Force open up competition to more companies for launching its military satellites.

9:22 am

The competition heats up: Six senators on Wednesday demanded the Air Force open up competition to more companies for launching its military satellites.

U.S. senators on Wednesday urged the Air Force to allow more competition in the multibillion-dollar market for launching government satellites, citing rising costs and concerns about Russian-made engines that power some of the U.S. rockets.

Lawmakers said the Air Force’s budget plan for fiscal 2015 reduced opportunities for privately held Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and others to gain a foothold in a program now dominated by the two biggest U.S. weapons makers, Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co.

This demand also bodes badly in an indirect way for SLS. It indicates that these senators are beginning to notice the cost benefit of competition and of using the private market. Such a realization is going to eventually leak into their peanut brains about SLS, and that will not do that program any good, especially if the new commercial private companies like SpaceX continue to show success.

One comment

In a vague announcement with unclear ramifications, a NASA memo today suspended “all contact with Russian government officials,” though it exempted all activities in connection with ISS.

12:38 pm

In a vague announcement with unclear ramifications, a NASA memo today suspended “all contact with Russian government officials,” though it exempted all activities in connection with ISS.

Given Russia’s ongoing violation of Ukraine¹s sovereignty and territorial integrity, until further notice, the U.S. Government has determined that all NASA contacts with Russian Government representatives are suspended, unless the activity has been specifically excepted. This suspension includes NASA travel to Russia and visits by Russian Government representatives to NASA facilities, bilateral meetings, email, and teleconferences or videoconferences. At the present time, only operational International Space Station activities have been excepted. In addition, multilateral meetings held outside of Russia that may include Russian participation are not precluded under the present guidance.

It appears they are suspending all NASA activities with Russia except ISS, which means that the most important and the bulk of the cooperative work will continue. However, it does mean that the Obama administration has decided to politicize NASA’s operations with Russia in a way that has not been done since the fall of the Soviet Union.

I will be doing a segment on John Batchelor tonight on this developing story.

2 comments

Climate scientists think the first major El Niño since 1997-1998 is beginning to brew in the Pacific.

9:55 am

Climate scientists think the first major El Niño since 1997-1998 is beginning to brew in the Pacific.

The first sign of a brewing El Niño weather pattern came in January, as trade winds that normally blow from the east reversed course near Papua New Guinea. Barrelling back across the tropical Pacific Ocean, they began to push warm water towards South America. Now climate scientists and forecasters are on high alert.

A major El Niño event — a periodic warming of waters in the eastern equatorial Pacific — could boost temperatures and scramble weather worldwide. The most recent major event, in 1997–98, was linked to thousands of deaths and tens of billions of dollars in damage from droughts, fires and floods across several continents. Yet more than 15 years later, forecasting the timing and intensity of El Niño remains tricky, with incremental improvements in climate models threatened by the partial collapse of an ocean-monitoring system that delivers the data to feed those models.

Note the date of the last event, 1997-1998. This was also the last time the world’s global temperature saw an increase. At the time global warming scientists were saying that global warming would increase the number and severity of El Niño events, which in turn would raise havoc with the climate. Instead, we have gone more than a decade and a half without any significant El Niño event, and the global temperature rise has ceased.

Note also that the article focuses on the difficulty scientists have had in predicting El Niño. These are the same global warming scientists who are also certain they can predict the exact temperature rise for the next two hundred years.

2 comments

Obama declares that “The debate about repealing Obamacare is over.”

4:54 pm

Obama declares that “The debate about repealing Obamacare is over.”

Why does the left always want to shut down debate (“The science is settled!” “The debate is over.” “Deniers should be put in prison!”)?

Meanwhile, there is this story: Obamacare takes a life.

The story is heart-rending, and describes how the regulations imposed by Obamacare literally caused this man’s death. As his doctor said, “You can thank Mr. Obama for this.”

But the debates over! What business is it of this doctor or this dead man’s children to complain? The President has spoken. The discussion must now end!

5 comments

A complete list of the Obama administration’s Obamacare.delays.

9:36 am

A complete list of the Obama administration’s Obamacare.delays — so far.

As the article quite correctly notes, “Despite all the Obama administration’s talk about Republicans ‘obstructing’ the health-care law, federal officials and Obamacare administrators have done far more damage to Obamacare by delaying some of its most central provisions.”

Worse, the delays have also done significant damage to the rule of law, since under the law the Obama administration had no right to make these delays in the first place.

Leave a comment

Whose side are you on?

9:17 am

Whose side are you on?

The three most important words in politics are: “Compared with what?” And I am more than a little sympathetic to conservatives’ complaints about the failures of elected Republicans in Washington, who consistently disappoint us even when they are in the majority. I am also sympathetic to the view that our situation may have deteriorated to the point that even a unified Republican government under the leadership of principled conservatives may not be enough to turn things around. And though I reject the notion that Mitt Romney wasn’t good enough for true-believing conservatives, let’s say, arguendo, that that was the case. Unless you are ready to give up entirely on the notion of advancing conservative principles through the ballot box, you might consider looking at things this way: Even if you do not think that it matters much whether Republicans win, it matters a great deal that Democrats lose.

Maybe you were not that excited that 2012 gave you a choice between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. I sympathize — I liked Rick Perry. But how is President Romney vs. President Obama a hard choice? How is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell vs. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid a hard choice? How is Speaker of the House John Boehner vs. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi a hard choice?

It isn’t.

Read it all. He smashes to pieces the reasoning many passionate conservatives use to justify not voting at all when they are presented with a choice between a hard leftwing Democratic and what he calls a “squishy RINO.” By abstaining they help put radical leftwing Democrats in power, a circumstance far worse for the country.

This is not to say that we shouldn’t put hard pressure on the squishies to make them less so, only that when push comes to shove, they are still a better option than a politician who is liberal and not squishy.

11 comments

According to a new report from the federal government, only 6 percent of the country’s electricity comes from green energy sources.

4:57 pm

According to a new report from the federal government, only 6 percent of the country’s electricity comes from green energy sources.

What strikes me about this figure is that, if I remember right, back in around 2001 or so green energy sources only contributed about 3% of our electrical needs, and Vice President Dick Cheney then made the point that even if we doubled that number it wasn’t going eliminate the need to burn fossil fuels. For that comment Cheney got pilloried by the press and by green activists for being a barbarian who was against saving the planet.

Well, here we are, about a dozen years later, and we have doubled our use of green energy, and Cheney was 100% right, we are still reliant on fossil fuels.

10 comments

The odious Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid.

3:11 pm

The odious Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid.

And why are they odious? Because they have the nerve to attack a free American citizen for merely disagreeing with them publicly.

“But, senator, can’t we have a disagreement about how charity is funded without calling somebody un-American?” Scarborough countered. He continued to press Schumer to answer his question. “Do you think David Koch is un-American?”

Schumer finally said, “The commercials he runs are not part of the American mainstream. No two people [David Koch and his brother Charles] should have such a huge influence on our politics. That’s not First Amendment … I think the commercials he is running are against the American grain and un-American, yes …. I think what Harry Reid was saying was the actions are un-American. And they are, and they should change.”

I wonder if people quite appreciate how disgusting this all is. Here we have two Democratic senators labeling a private citizen as being “un-American” because that citizen is vocally advocating public policies they disagree with.

Can you imagine the media (and Hollywood) firestorm if Senator Ted Cruz went to the Senate floor and repeatedly accused, say, Jeffrey Katzenberg of being “un-American”–and Mike Lee echoed the charge?

But hey, they’re Democrats, so they must mean well! In fact, they must be so correct that the proper thing to do would be for us to put together a lynch mob and get these un-American Americans. How dare David Koch, or anyone, criticize a Democrat?

18 comments
1 … 267 268 269 270 271 … 319