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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; regulations</title>
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		<title>Bill Whittle: Tie-Dyed Tyranny</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/truthrevolt-org/bill-whittle-tie-dyed-tyranny/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=bill-whittle-tie-dyed-tyranny</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/truthrevolt-org/bill-whittle-tie-dyed-tyranny/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 15 Sep 2014 04:26:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[TruthRevolt.org]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Washington State]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=240987</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A Truth Revolt video. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>Back in the Bad Old Days, tyrants bent others to their will with machine guns and death camps. But what fig leaf can modern, touchy-feely, petty tyrants use to make sure other people remain &#8220;in compliance?&#8221; How about Saving the Planet?</strong></p>
<p><strong>In his latest FIREWALL, Bill Whittle examines the Tie-Dyed Tyranny that has taken root under the guise of environmentalism in Washington State. See the video and transcript below. </strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/NPJSAnm3NTQ" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p style="color: #000000;">TRANSCRIPT:</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">TIE-DYED TYRANNY</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Hi everybody. I’m Bill Whittle and this is the Firewall.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">The first half of the Twentieth Century was a time of truly unbelievable oppression and murder. In Germany and Russia, secret police forces such as the Gestapo or the NKVD used terror – murder and random arrests – to make millions obey the will of the handful of those pulling the levers of power.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Now of course, in the early Twenty-First Century, packing people into cattle cars or shooting them in the back of the head in the basement of the Lubyanka Building, is considered bad form. So how does one of those petty bourgeois tyrants – those genetic defectives who simply are not happy unless you bend a knee to their will – get their way in this touchy-feely, politically-correct era? What fig leaf is there for these naked power and money grabs, now that the Worker’s Paradise or the Aryan Superman shams have been exposed?</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Well, how about if we save the planet? You like the planet, don’t you? You don’t want your children frying to a crisp or drinking insecticide, do you? Of course not. Give us all your freedom. That’ll be $40,000.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">That may sound a little hyperbolic, but that’s what’s a happening – all across the country but especially in the Northwest.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">I was in Washington State recently on a speaking engagement, and on the two-hour drive from Seattle airport to Bellingham, Washington, I got a chance to hear tales of our new Tie-Dyed Tyranny, the Dictatorship of the D-Student, the Empire of the Eco-Weenies, as related to me by Glen Morgan, Property Rights Director of the Freedom Foundation.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">What kind of Patchouli-scented Police State is there in Washington, and coming for the rest of us? Well, this kind:</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Let’s say you and your children are hiking in beautiful Olympic National Park.  Oh, look! Moose antlers! If you or your child – who didn’t shoot the moose I hasten to add; you simply found the molted antlers lying on the trail – pick up the antlers – again, not leave the park with them but simply pick them up – well, that is a five thousand dollar fine and up to six months in jail, according to  Federal Law 36 CFR 2.1(a)(1)(i). That fine, of course, will go to the US Treasury to help pay for the billboards that we have posted in Mexico saying that deported illegals are welcome to come back to the United States. The main thing is to keep our priorities straight.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">After fifty years of trying to eradicate the incredibly destructive pocket gopher, a small but exploding population of these pests lives and breeds in the innumerable shell holes and ground fractures caused by the Ft. Lewis artillery range. A subset of these gophers &#8212; of which we have no shortage – have been given endangered species protection by the US Fish and Wildlife Agency. Why give endangered status to a species that is in fact so out of control that it can only be called a pest? Well, because the males in this small sub-population apparently have larger-than-average reproductive organs. That’s not proven, by the way – merely asserted – but it was enough for the anti-growth, anti-human eco-weenie zealots in Thurston County to put draconian restrictions on what people can do own their own property in the name of protecting these fragile, delicate, large-membered gophers that were bred on an active artillery range. Since these are obviously conservative gophers the irony becomes almost unbearable.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Here’s an act of eco-terrorism that must not go unpunished. This outdoor sculpture, located on the private property of the 40 year old Lambiel Museum, was put up 19 years ago. But a permit was not filed 19 years ago, and so the artists who created this modest statue, on private property, two decades ago, are being fined $1000 per week, because…</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">And while we could do this all day, let’s just close with the story of Joe Remenar, a former Department of Justice special agent who had performed drug interdiction missions in places as far away as Afghanistan. This domestic terrorist – in the eyes of Whatcom County, Washington State, at least – decided to put a pond on his own property. In order to process mercury tailings from his Gold mine? In order to bury radioactive waste from his nuclear reactor?</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">No, in order to build a wetlands habitat for migrating birds.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Joe was very careful when he built his pond. He did not apply for grants and spent not a dime of public money. He did not interrupt the flow of an existing stream. State fish and wildlife biologists reported that his pond was a clear and obvious wildlife enhancement project, which he built at his own expense on his own property.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">But, as Glen Morgan reported, for this crime against bureaucracy he was going to be punished.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Whatcom Counties lead central planner – Lyn Morgan-Hill – determined that Joe Remenar must destroy his wildlife habitat in order to save his wildlife habitat. She ordered that the pond be filled back in, and that Mr. Remenar would have to pay one of the country-approved “preferred consultants” to have it done.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Then, with the clear understanding of whose property that really is, Joe could beg forgiveness, ask and pay for the hefty fees necessary to get the permit, and then would be allowed to construct the exact same pond in the exact same place on the exact same piece of so-called “private property.” Heck, they probably would give him a government grant to do it.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Once he takes a knee to his bureaucratic masters.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Washington State now employs high-tech drones to photograph everyone’s private property several times a year, and high-tech software allows our aristocracy to determine if a peasant has had brush cleared, or a tree removed, deep in what used to be called that person’s “private property.” If any of these things have been done without a permit, large fines will be levied. You might think that this is simply because they want the permit money – well, they do, but that’s not the real reason.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">The real reason is because you will take a knee to your insect overlords and you will be in compliance with their lunatic regulations. It’s not about the environment. It’s about money and mostly it’s about power. And while it may still sound funny, or trivial, or both – it’s neither. Glenn calls the phenomenon Gang Green and the Government Staff Infection. It’s the bludgeon of control and extortion under the fig leaf of ecology, and it is – as Glen so cleverly puts it – an infection. It’s a disease.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">It’s a Tie-Dyed Tyranny, and it’s not just coming – it’s here.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Environmentalist Attack on America</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/obamas-environmentalist-attack-on-america/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-environmentalist-attack-on-america</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 03 Jun 2014 04:50:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=226848</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The devastating consequences of the president's unilateral enactment of cap-and-trade. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/obama-speaking-angry.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-226849" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/obama-speaking-angry-443x350.jpg" alt="obama-speaking-angry" width="294" height="232" /></a>Apparently the reality that America’s economic output <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/samanthasharf/2014/05/29/u-s-gdp-dropped-1-in-the-first-quarter-2014-down-from-first-estimate/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">declined</span></a> by 1 percent in the first quarter, retail and home sales are <a href="http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-30/has-next-recession-already-begun-americas-middle-class"><span style="color: #1255cc;">plummeting</span></a>, and a record-setting <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/1-8-american-men-between-ages-25-54-are-not-working_793938.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">1 in 8</span></a> (or 10 million) American men in their prime working years between ages 25–54 aren&#8217;t working or looking for work will be no impediment for a president determined to impose a radical environmentalist agenda on the nation. On Monday, the Obama administration <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/06/02/obama-to-announce-rule-to-limit-emissions-from-fossil-burning-plants-part-his/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">announced</span></a> the first-of-their-kind national limits on carbon emissions from the nation’s more than 600 coal-fired power plants. The proposed regulation, implemented by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), will demand a 30 percent cut in emissions by 2030.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">At a Feb. 11, 2014 hearing of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations related to the status of clean coal programs, Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) <a href="http://energycommerce.house.gov/sites/republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/files/Hearings/OI/20140211/HHRG-113-IF02-MState-M001151-20140211.pdf"><span style="color: #1255cc;">spelled out</span></a> the real-world consequences of such a plan, explaining that Americans could expect an increase in electricity costs ranging from 40 percent at a coal gasification facility, to as much as 80 percent at a pulverized coal power plant, according to the Department of Energy’s own documentation. The reliably leftist <i>New York Times</i> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/02/us/politics/epa-to-seek-30-percent-cut-in-carbon-emissions.html?emc=edit_na_20140601&amp;nlid=62431058&amp;_r=0"><span style="color: #1255cc;">illuminates</span></a> the implications, noting that the regulations could lead to the closing of “hundreds” of such facilities.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Unsurprisingly, the effort completely bypasses Congress, undoubtedly because it would be as DOA as it was when the Democratically-controlled legislative branch <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-25/cap-and-trade-failure-aided-u-s-to-cut-carbon-emissions.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">failed</span></a> to pass such cap-and-trade legislation in 2010. Thus our constitutionally-comtemptuous president has rendered members of Congress superfluous, even as the EPA becomes their de facto replacement.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The administration offers a degree of flexibility in achieving these goals. They include allowing states to reduce emissions by installing solar, wind or other energy-efficiency technology, and by creating or joining cap-and-trade programs at the state or regional level that allow such entities to cap emissions, and then buy and sell permits that allow plants to continue to emit greenhouse gases—as long as they pay a suitable fee for doing so. That fee that will inevitably be passed down to consumers. Yet in keeping with the administration’s imperialist impulses, if such state- or regionally-imposed rules do not satisfy the EPA’s guidelines the agency will act unilaterally to <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/06/01/Obama-to-Slam-Power-Plants-With-More-Stifling-Regulations"><span style="color: #1255cc;">force</span></a> such entities into compliance.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Those affected are planning to sue. “Clearly, it is designed to materially damage the ability of conventional energy sources to provide reliable and affordable power, which in turn can inflict serious damage on everything from household budgets to industrial jobs,” said Scott Segal, a lawyer with Bracewell &amp; Giuliani, a firm representing coal companies in anticipated litigation. Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt also plans to <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/05/29/ag-epas-cap-and-trade-scheme-would-violate-the-clean-air-act/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">challenge</span></a> the regulations in court. “The Clean Air Act clearly sets out a role for EPA to suggest guidelines, while granting states authority to develop and implement specific proposals to achieve the goals of the Clean Air Act,” he told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Should the EPA’s proposed regulation force states to adopt a ‘cap and trade’ scheme or any other specific proposal, it would violate the law and likely be challenged in court.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Such challenges, as well as litigation anticipated by other industry groups and other states such as West Virginia, North Dakota, Alaska and Texas <a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/epas-approach-on-carbon-limits-to-spark-court-challenges-1401406854"><span style="color: #1255cc;">revolve</span></a> around the EPA’s use of a little-used section of the Clean Air Act to create its new regulations. The implementation of section 111 (d) of the Act is necessitated by the reality that carbon dioxide isn&#8217;t regulated under major Clean Air Act programs that address air pollutants. The EPA claims it has used that section to previously regulate five sources of air pollutants, but none of those approach the magnitude of their attempt to regulate carbon dioxide.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">As the <i>Wall Street Journal</i> explains, the relatively rare instances in which section 111 (d) has been invoked, creates the &#8220;unusual circumstance in which potential challengers to the carbon rules would be litigating largely on a blank slate against the EPA,” thus testing &#8220;how far a president can go in using the long-standing air-pollution law to try to address climate change.” The paper further notes that such a blank slate accrues to the EPA’s advantage, because courts generally give deference to administrative agencies, provided they are not imposing regulations in an &#8220;arbitrary and capricious manner.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Moreover, the courts have an already-established track record of siding with the EPA. Recent decisions include the Supreme Court’s ruling last month that allowed the EPA to curb power-plant emissions blowing across state lines, while appeals courts have upheld the right of the EPA to regulate mercury emissions from power plants, rules on auto emissions, and the agency’s 2009 contention that CO2 and other greenhouse gases posed a threat to public health. Washington environmental lawyer Sean Donahue spelled out the implications. &#8220;There&#8217;s more room to make legal arguments because the courts haven&#8217;t specified what the statute means and doesn&#8217;t mean, but it also leaves more room for the agency&#8217;s judgment,” he explained.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">It is a judgement completely aligned with global warming alarmism, irrespective of two realities. First, even if one buys the notion of global warming, the key word is “global.” According to the International Energy Agency, by 2012 the United States had cut CO2 emissions <a href="http://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/news/2012/may/name,27216,en.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">more than</span></a> any nation on earth since 2006, due in large part to the already occurring shift from coal to gas in the nation’s power sector. The world&#8217;s leading polluter is now China, which <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/obamas-carbon-curbs-nullified-by-expanding-china-india-20140602-zrumd.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">emitted</span></a> 9.0 billion tons in 2012, compared to only 5.3 billion metric tons released by the U.S. By 2020 that total is expected to top 11.5 billion metric tons, while we remain flat, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Moreover, China and India will be constructing three-quarters of the 1,200 coal-fired plants being proposed globally, according to the World Resources Institute in Washington. As Robert Stavins, director of Harvard University&#8217;s Environmental Economics Program explained to Bloomberg News, even if America reduced its carbon emissions to <i>zero</i>, &#8220;global emissions would continue to increase. So, the direct impacts of the new power plant rules on atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations will be small.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The reasons for the increases are blindingly obvious: underdeveloped nations wish to raise their standard of living, and no amount of hectoring by the nation with one of the highest standard of living on the planet is likely to alter those ambitions in any substantial way. Nonetheless the administration remains tethered to the notion that cutting emissions will give American climate change negotiators a stronger hand at the United Nations General Assembly next fall, when governments engage in the attempt to hammer out a worldwide treaty by 2015. “I fully expect action by the United States to spur others in taking concrete action,” said Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework on Climate Change.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In the meantime, such &#8220;concrete action&#8221; by the United States will do serious damage to an already damaged economy. &#8220;The administration has set out to kill coal and its 800,000 jobs,&#8221; Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) <a href="http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/politics/epa-seeks-cuts-in-power-plant-carbon-emissions/26281348"><span style="color: #1255cc;">said</span></a> in the GOP weekly address Saturday. &#8220;If it succeeds in death by regulation, we&#8217;ll all be paying a lot more money for electricity &#8212; if we can get it.” The Chamber of Commerce <a href="https://www.uschamber.com/press-release/energy-institute-report-finds-potential-new-epa-carbon-regulations-will-damage-us"><span style="color: #1255cc;">contends</span></a> the new regulations will cost the economy $50 billion per year, and the loss of 3.5 million jobs over 15 years, while the National Center for Public Policy Research asserts that they will &#8220;disproportionately hurt lower income people and minorities.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The EPA counters that the cost will be “only&#8221; $8.8 billion annually in 2030, but &#8220;will lead to climate and health benefits worth an estimated $55 billion to $93 billion per year in 2030.” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/02/politics/epa-carbon-emissions/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">dismissed</span></a> the jobs losses as a &#8220;doomsday scenario,&#8221; and EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy claimed the nation will need &#8220;thousands of American workers in construction, transmission and more to make cleaner power a reality.” President Obama asserted that carbon-dioxide emissions—which humans exhale with every breath&#8211;are a national health crisis. “We don’t have to choose between the health of our economy and the health of our children,” Obama said in his weekly address Saturday. “As president and as a parent, I refuse to condemn our children to a planet that’s beyond fixing.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">So who’s right? As always, progressives ignore real world evidence that doesn’t accrue to their agenda. In Spain 2.2 jobs were <a href="http://www.aei.org/outlook/energy-and-the-environment/the-myth-of-green-energy-jobs-the-european-experience/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">destroyed</span></a> for every green job created. In Italy, the capital needed to create one green job could create five in the general economy. In Denmark, the commitment to wind power generated the highest electricity rates in the EU. And in Germany, the green energy job creation myth is currently <a href="http://www.thegwpf.org/germanys-green-jobs-miracle-collapses/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">collapsing</span></a>, as seven-out-of-ten green jobs will be lost without continuing government subsidies. Oliver Krischer, deputy leader of the Greens in the Bundestag, acknowledged inconvenient reality. &#8220;A few years ago the renewable sector was the job miracle in Germany, now nothing is left of all of that,” he conceded.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Nothing is a relative term, and the real agenda here may be a familiar one: the Obama administration’s desire to have government determine the nation’s “winners” and “losers” by executive fiat. &#8220;Given the facts, we must consider the possibility that this is not about global warming at all but is instead simply another tax, and a relatively large one, that will be used to underwrite favors for Democratic interest groups while creating corporate subsidies for politically connected businesses — namely, those liberal financiers who have large financial positions in so-called clean-energy technologies and stand to make a hefty profit from government mandates for renewables,” <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/379293/epa-super-legislature-editors"><span style="color: #1255cc;">writes</span></a> the editors of the National Review. &#8220;Come for the feel-good greenwashing, stay for the corporate welfare.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The EPA plan is slated to go into effect in June 2016, following a one-year comment period—and a likely plethora of lawsuits. In the meantime, Americans already beset by the weakest recovery since the Great Depression can anticipate what they will shortly endure as the result of what the <i>Times</i> characterizes as Obama&#8217;s &#8220;legacy-making global deal.” <i>America’s</i> legacy, which now <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/03/business/the-middle-class-is-steadily-eroding-just-ask-the-business-world.html?hp&amp;_r=1"><span style="color: #1255cc;">includes</span></a> the reality that the middle class may be headed for <a href="http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/28-signs-that-the-middle-class-is-heading-toward-extinction"><span style="color: #1255cc;">extinction</span></a>, is somehow lost in the mix. For progressives, destroying the economy is a small price to pay for “saving the planet.&#8221;</p>
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		<title>The EPA&#8217;s Science Problem</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/the-epas-science-problem/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-epas-science-problem</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/the-epas-science-problem/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 15 Apr 2014 04:45:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
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		<category><![CDATA[clean air act]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[EPA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gina McCarthy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[regulations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[science]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=223491</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Startling revelations about the agency's misrepresentation of data. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/44.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-223495" alt="44" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/44.png" width="297" height="219" /></a>In a stunning admission, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-hollingsworth/epa-concedes-we-can-t-produce-all-data-justifying-clean-air-rules">revealed</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to House Science, Space and Technology Committee chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) that the agency neither possesses, nor can produce, all of the scientific data used to justify the </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.epa.gov/ttn/atw/eparules.html">rules and regulations</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> they have imposed on Americans via the Clean Air Act. In short, science has been trumped by the radical environmentalist agenda. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The admission follows the issuance of a subpoena by the full Committee last August. It was engendered by two years of EPA stonewalling, apparently aimed at preventing the raw data cited by EPA as the scientific foundation for those rules and regulations from being independently verified. Two studies, the 1993 Harvard Six Cities Study (HSC) and the American Cancer Society’s (ACS) 1995 Cancer Prevention Study II, had verified that fine airborne particles measuring 2.5 micrograms or less were responsible for killing thousands of Americans every year. They became the baseline by which the EPA regulated particulate emissions from power plants, factories and cars. Airborne particles of that size are equivalent to approximately 1/30th the diameter of a human hair.</span></p>
<p>Apparently Smith and other Republicans had an inkling of what was going on at the EPA last November. At that time, Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ) <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/02/07/house-gop-bill-aims-to-end-secret-science-in-epa-rulemaking/">introduced</a> the Secret Science Reform Act aimed at barring the agency from proposing new regulations based on science that was neither transparent nor reproducible. &#8220;Public policy should come from public data, not based on the whims of far-left environmental groups,” Schweikert said in a statement. “For far too long, the EPA has approved regulations that have placed a crippling financial burden on economic growth in this country with no public evidence to justify their actions.”</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The bill was co-sponored by Smith, as well as fellow House Science Committee members Jim Bridenstine (R-OK) and Randy Neugebauer (R-TX). Smith </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/190319-rep-smith-to-introduce-bill-stopping-epa-use-of-secret-science">echoed</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> the concern expressed by Schweikert. &#8220;It appears the EPA bends the law and stretches the science to justify its own objectives,” he said. &#8220;The EPA must either make the data public, or commit to no longer using secret science to support its regulations.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">At that time, McCarthy was singing a different tune. She defended the EPA’s “high-quality science,&#8221; and referenced a report by the Office of Inspector General praising the EPA for its research. In testimony before the Committee, she insisted that science is the &#8220;backbone of the EPA&#8217;s decision-making.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">By February, the list of co-sponsors for Schweikert’s bill had </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/feb/7/gop-bill-would-force-epa-reveal-science-behind-reg/">reached</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> about a dozen, prompting the inevitable </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/07/secret-science-reform-act_n_4748024.html">pushback</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> from Democrats and their media allies. The &#8220;climate denier” label, used by the left to cut off debate regarding whether or not climate change is man-made or a natural occurrence, was dutifully applied to </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://science.house.gov/subcommittee-environment-0#overlay-context=">environment subcommittee</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> chairman Schweikert by the </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/16/house-science-schweikert-_n_4613145.html">Huffington Post</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> and </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.salon.com/2014/02/11/house_republicans_hold_hearing_to_expose_the_epas_secret_science/">Salon</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">. When </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.azcentral.com/news/election/azelections/articles/2008/09/11/20080911elex-congfiveheadtohead-CP.html?nclick_check=1#ixzz2qarY1YpR">running</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> for office in 2008, Schweikert offended the doyens of political correctness. &#8220;Understanding what part of climate change is part of a natural cycle and what part has human components is the first step,&#8221; he at the time. &#8220;Our elected officials must be careful to react to facts and not folklore.”</span></p>
<p>Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA) was similarly offended. “The bill attacks the mainstays of scientific investigation,” he wrote in an email to <i>The Huffington Post.</i> “It would strip away the EPA’s authority to make any rules due to the stringency of the data disclosure requirements. The peer review process is the foundation of science inquiry in our society, and is a trusted evaluation of scientific evidence around the world. This legislation attempts to dictate how the scientific method is employed. The Secret Science Reform Act is an attempt by climate change deniers to stop the EPA from doing its job.”</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">On March 7, such objections were revealed for the fraudulent nonsense they truly are. In a </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.cnsnews.com/sites/default/files/documents/EPA%20letter%20to%20Smith%20March%207%202014%20(1).pdf">letter</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> sent to Smith, McCarthy acknowledged that the Committee’s subpoena sought data from aforementioned studies, along with analyses and re-analyses of that data. After conducting a “diligent search” of the data in their own possession, the agency noted that it also conducted a search for additional data from outside sources, using the Shelby Amendment as the vehicle to obtain that information. They further acknowledged that they have not withheld any data relevant to the subpoena.</span></p>
<p>Then came the admission. “The EPA acknowledges, however, that the data provided are not sufficient in themselves to replicate the analyses in the epidemiological studies, nor would they allow for the one to one mapping of each pollutant and ecological variable to each subject.” Yet in the very next sentence, the agency remained utterly defiant. “For reasons explained in our previous letters on this topic, these acknowledgments do not call into question the EPA’s reliance on these studies for regulatory actions.”</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Really? Why not? The scientific method is all about reproducing reliable data that can be independently verified. The EPA and their leftist allies are essentially saying &#8220;trust us,” even as they denigrate climate change skeptics for their failure to embrace “settled science.” Such overt hypocrisy would be laughable were it not for the reality that the EPA is moving forward with even </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://science.house.gov/press-release/witnesses-say-epa%E2%80%99s-forthcoming-ozone-standards-impossible-meet">more regulations</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> that could place 90 percent of the American public in “non-attainment” areas. They are </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://ohioepa.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/905/~/definition-of-air-quality-nonattainment">defined</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> as areas &#8220;considered to have air quality worse than the National Ambient Air Quality Standards as defined in the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970.” </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Moreover, there are studies that refute the data on which the EPA relies. “</span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://junksciencecom.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/california-pm25-experience-2007-2010-final.pdf">Airborne Fine Particulate Matter and Short-Term Mortality,”</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> looked at virtually the entire state of California from 2007-2010. Its author, Johns Hopkins-trained biostatistician Steve Milloy, who posted its results on his </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://junkscience.com/">junkscience.com</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> website, revealed the fraud the EPA has been perpetrating for decades. &#8220;EPA says that when PM2.5 levels go up, people die every day,” he </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-hollingsworth/study-no-statistical-correlation-between-fine-airborne-particles">told</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://cnsnews.com/">CNSNews.com</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">. “But if PM2.5 is killing people, my data would show it, especially in Los Angeles, which has some of the worst air quality in the U.S. Not only was there no relationship there, I found a negative correlation in the LA area….If a significant causal relationship between PM2.5 and mortality existed, that relationship should have been visible in this study. But it was not.” </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Milloy’s results were not anomalous. Another study, </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.cnsnews.com/sites/default/files/documents/young080113.pdf">&#8220;Assessing Geographic Heterogeneity and Variable Importance in an Air Pollution Data Set,”</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> authored by S. Stanley Young and Jessie Q. Xia of the National Institute of Statistical Sciences, was equally revealing. It contends that the &#8220;association between PM2.5 with mortality, when compared to the associations between other variables and mortality, shows that the importance of PM2.5 is relatively small.” Young and Xia conclude that the &#8220;data set does not support the claim that decreasing PM2.5 will increase longevity. If the cost of decreasing PM2.5 is high enough there could well be a </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">net loss</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> in longevity.” (italics mine)</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In an equally damning revelation, they refute the level of importance placed on fine particulate matter </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">per se</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, explaining that insufficient income, cigarette smoking and a lack of education are more influential on longevity. Thus they contend that “policymakers might better focus on improving the economy, reducing cigarette smoking, and encouraging people to pursue education.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">These studies underscore the need for the Secret Science Reform Act, aka, </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/documents/HR4012%20.pdf">HR4012</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">. It intends to prohibit the EPA from “proposing, finalizing or disseminating regulations based upon scientific information that is not publicly available in a manner sufficient for independent scientific analysis.” It would amend the Section 6 (b) of the Environmental Research, Development and Demonstration Authorization Act of 1978 in the following manner: </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&#8220;The Administrator shall not propose, finalize, or disseminate a covered action unless all scientific and technical information relied on to support such covered action is (A) specifically identified; and (B) publicly available in a manner that is sufficient for independent analysis and substantial reproduction of research results.” </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">That such eminently reasonable demands are necessary at all reveals the contemptible levels to which the EPA and the Obama administration will stoop to advance the radical environmentalist agenda. “As it stands now, only EPA-funded researchers do the work and review the work, and nobody gets to see the data,” explained Milloy. &#8220;These are very expensive regulations, and the alleged benefits are entirely based on this PM/death relationship.” It is a relationship revealed to be an utter fraud. It’s time for a thorough cleaning of the EPA itself. It has been polluted by a poisonous ideology for far too long.</span></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Really Understanding Obamacare</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/discover-the-networks/really-understanding-obamacare-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=really-understanding-obamacare-2</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/discover-the-networks/really-understanding-obamacare-2/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 23 Jan 2014 05:29:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Discover The Networks]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[law]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mandates]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[regulations]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=217072</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A concise overview of every vital fact you need to know about this legislative monstrosity.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/obamacare_leaflet_reuters.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-217073" alt="obamacare_leaflet_reuters" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/obamacare_leaflet_reuters-450x337.jpg" width="315" height="236" /></a>You undoubtedly have heard countless commentators—on both sides of the Obamacare debate—speak about how the new healthcare law will affect you. But if you&#8217;re like most people, there are many aspects of this immensely long and complex piece of legislation that you don&#8217;t know anything about. Moreover, you may wish that you felt better-equipped to answer the claims of devoted leftists who confidently assert that Obamacare is a benefit for the American people.</span></p>
<p>To address these concerns, Discover The Networks today announces the publication of one of the most important special features it has ever produced: <strong><a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1957"><i>Obamacare: Before and After</i></a></strong>. This new addition to our website: (a) examines the state of healthcare in America prior to Obamacare&#8217;s passage; (b) lays out free-market solutions that could have effectively addressed the problems that Obamacare was ostensibly created to solve; (c) explains all the major provisions contained in the Obamacare legislation itself; and (d) examines the politics of Obamacare—laying bare the unspoken yet transformative political agendas that sit at the very heart of this law.</p>
<p>Everything in <strong><a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1957"><i>Obamacare: Before and After</i></a></strong> is arranged in a reader-friendly, bullet-point format designed to make the complex simple, and to let you easily zero in on the topics that most concern or interest you. You will not get lost in dense and interminable text. Rather, you&#8217;ll get plain talk and clear, succinct information. Just a few of the vital facts that you will learn in this feature include the following:</p>
<p>* Politicians have commonly sought to win public favor by passing laws requiring insurance companies to include an ever-expanding range of mandatory benefits in all their healthcare plans, regardless of whether the insured even wanted them. As of 2009, there were 2,133 of these mandates which were, in some places, increasing the price of basic insurance by as much as 50%. Mandates like these are antithetical to a free marketplace.</p>
<p>* Consumers have long been barred from purchasing healthcare policies from insurers located in other states. This has dramatically reduced competition among insurers, and has kept the cost of premiums much higher than they would have been in a truly free marketplace.</p>
<p>* Government healthcare programs like Medicare and Medicaid egregiously shortchange doctors and hospitals when reimbursing them. Thus, healthcare professionals who accept Medicare and Medicaid patients are forced to charge their privately insured patients higher rates than would otherwise be necessary. This causes families with private insurance to pay an extra $1,500 to $1,800 for their premiums each year.</p>
<p>* From the moment President Obama and the Democrats began pushing for healthcare reform, they repeatedly emphasized the notion that 46 million Americans lacked insurance. This bogus figure included (with some overlap) 10 million who earned over $75,000 annually; another 8 million who earned between $50,000 and $75,000; 14 million low-income Americans who were fully eligible for government insurance programs but simply had never taken the time to enroll; 6 million who were eligible for employer-sponsored insurance but chose not to take advantage of it; more than 10 million (including many illegal immigrants) who were not U.S. citizens; and millions of young “invincibles” who chose not to purchase insurance because low-cost, bare-bones plans without a litany of mandates were not available in their states.</p>
<p>* Obamacare&#8217;s employer mandate stipulates that every business with 50 or more <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324616604578304072420873666.html">full-time workers</a> must provide insurance coverage for all of them. Thus, business owners now have an incentive to limit their full-time work forces to 49 people or fewer, and to rely more on independent contractors.</p>
<p>* The Obamacare employer mandate adds, on average, $1.79 per hour to the cost of keeping a single person on the payroll full-time, and $5.51 per hour to the cost of employing a full-time worker with dependents.</p>
<p>* President Obama consistently promised that his health reform plan would “bring down premiums by $2,500 for the typical family.” But the <a href="http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/10/enrollment-in-obamacare-exchanges-how-will-your-health-insurance-fare">premiums</a> for insurance plans available on the Obamacare exchanges are higher than pre-Obamacare rates in at least 45 of the 50 U.S. states. For middle-aged policy holders in 32 states, the premium increases range from 26% to more than 100%. In 27 states, the Obamacare premiums for young adults are between 51% and 252.5% higher than pre-Obamacare levels.</p>
<p>* When Obamacare was being debated, the President repeatedly <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HE-rGGKksQ">pledged</a> that “no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase.” But Obamacare imposes at least 18 new taxes, tax hikes, or official policies designed to collect <a href="http://blog.heritage.org/2012/08/20/obamacares-18-new-tax-hikes/">hundreds of billions</a> of dollars in revenues. Many of these will affect people at <a href="http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/04/obamacare-impact-on-taxpayers"><i>all</i></a> income levels.</p>
<p>* The architects of Obamacare knew that if the economics of the law failed to work out as projected, insurers could lose a great deal of money. To address this possibility, Obamacare explicitly contains a provision designed to <a href="http://news.investors.com/politics-obamacare/120513-681900-two-thirds-oppose-obamacare-insurance-industry-bailout.htm">bail out</a> insurers whose costs prove to be higher than originally anticipated.</p>
<p>* Obamacare was passed, without a single Republican vote, by means of a stunning series of sleazy backroom deals and procedural maneuvers.</p>
<p>* As early as February 2010, the President demonstrably <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4O_AkcwoFwk">knew</a> quite well that Obamacare&#8217;s “grandfather” provision for the preservation of existing plans was toothless, and that millions of Americans were likely to lose their insurance. The Obama administration&#8217;s own officials explicitly <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/10/31/obama-officials-in-2010-93-million-americans-will-be-unable-to-keep-their-health-plans-under-obamacare/">predicted</a> that as a direct result of Obamacare, some 93 million people would in fact lose their existing insurance plans and would be forced to purchase new ones.</p>
<p>* It is a matter of public record that President Obama and many other leading Democrats view <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=615">Obamacare</a> not as a final solution to the nation&#8217;s healthcare problems, but rather as a stepping stone toward the ultimate goal of a single-payer system administered entirely by the federal government.</p>
<p>* One of the leading objectives of Obamacare is the redistribution of wealth, mostly from middle- and high-income households to: (a) tens of millions of low-income people who will be funneled, en masse, into Medicaid, and (b) moderate-income households that will be newly eligible for federal (taxpayer-funded) subsidies. This redistribution will have the effect of promoting an entitlement mentality and a greater dependence on government.</p>
<p>* Another Obamacare objective is political payback. The law has designated some <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/node/363699/print">$67 million</a> in taxpayer funds for nearly 50,000 so-called “navigators” to help people enroll in Obamacare plans. These navigators are mostly affiliated with <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/hhs-obamacare-navigators-95575.html">more than 100</a> leftist organizations that have strongly supported President Obama over the years.</p>
<p>* Obamacare is also designed to serve as a vehicle for Democratic voter-registration.</p>
<p>* Obamacare is designed to increase the size and power of the federal government. The IRS, for instance, will hire more than 16,000 new agents to monitor and enforce compliance with Obamacare&#8217;s financial mandates. Moreover, Obamacare will be administered by at least 159 newly created boards, commissions, and agencies—with the assistance of dozens of existing federal bureaus.</p>
<p><b>Click this link to view: </b><a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1957"><b><i>Obamacare: Before and After</i></b></a><b>.</b></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Common Core and the EduTech Abyss</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/michellemalkin/common-core-and-the-edutech-abyss/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=common-core-and-the-edutech-abyss</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 09 Jan 2014 05:05:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michelle Malkin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=214854</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How filthy rich tech giants like Apple and Google will make a killing from federal regulations.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Screen-Shot-2014-01-08-at-12.35.52-AM.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-214855" alt="Screen Shot 2014-01-08 at 12.35.52 AM" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Screen-Shot-2014-01-08-at-12.35.52-AM-450x320.png" width="315" height="224" /></a>The Common Core gold rush is on. Apple, Pearson, Google, Microsoft and Amplify are all cashing in on the federal standards/testing/textbook racket. But the EduTech boondoggle is no boon for students. It&#8217;s more squandered tax dollars down the public school drain.</p>
<p>Even more worrisome: The stampede is widening a dangerous path toward invasive data mining.</p>
<p>According to the Silicon Valley Business Journal, the ed tech sector &#8220;is expected to more than double in size to $13.4 billion by 2017.&#8221; That explosive growth is fueled by Common Core&#8217;s top-down digital learning and testing mandates. So: Cui bono?</p>
<p>In North Carolina, the Guilford County public school district withdrew 15,000 Amplify tablets last fall. Pre-loaded with Common Core apps and part of a federal $30 million Race to the Top grant program, the devices peddled by News Corp. and Wireless Generation were rendered useless because of defective cases, broken screens and malfunctioning power supplies.</p>
<p>Last year, the Los Angeles Unified School District dumped $1 billion of scarce resources into a disastrous iPad program. Educrats paid $678 per glorified Apple e-textbook, pre-loaded with Common Core-branded apps created by Pearson. As I&#8217;ve reported previously, Pearson is the multibillion-dollar educational publishing and testing conglomerate at the center of the federally driven, taxpayer-funded &#8220;standards&#8221; scheme. Pearson&#8217;s digital learning products are used by an estimated 25 million-plus people in North America. Common Core has been a convenient new catalyst for getting the next generation of consumers hooked.</p>
<p>Students breached the LAUSD&#8217;s iPad firewalls and made a mockery of their hapless adult guardians. Despite hefty investments in training and development, many teachers couldn&#8217;t figure out how to sync up the tablets in the classroom. Taxpayers now realize they were sold a grossly inflated bill of goods, but the district wants to buy even more iPads for computerized test-taking. School officials recklessly plan to use school construction debt-financing to pay for the new purchases.</p>
<p>Los Angeles taxpayer Planaria Price summed up swelling outrage perfectly in a letter to the Los Angeles Times this week: &#8220;Cash-strapped LAUSD — which in 2012 cut libraries, nurses, thousands of teachers, administrators and support staff &#8230; is spending more than $1 billion on one of the nation&#8217;s most expensive technology programs. &#8230; I would say that &#8216;something is rotten in the state of Denmark,&#8217; but few would understand because the teaching of Shakespeare has also been cut.&#8221;</p>
<p>By its own account, Apple dominates 94 percent of the education tablet market in the U.S. Microsoft is pushing its own Common Core-aligned Surface RT tablet and app suite, along with &#8220;Bing for Schools.&#8221; Rival Google wants in on the game on the taxpayers&#8217; dime, too.</p>
<p>The company&#8217;s &#8220;Chromebooks,&#8221; which use a cloud-based operating system mimicking the Google Chrome browser, are gaining market share rapidly. While they are cheaper than iPads, they depend on reliable WiFi. Google offers a suite of Google Apps for Education (GAFE) for &#8220;free.&#8221;</p>
<p>But is this really about improving students&#8217; academic bottom line — or Google&#8217;s bottom line?</p>
<p>In one school district, the Google devices are used as glorified whiteboards. A recent news article touting Chromebook adoption in Nebraska&#8217;s Council Bluffs school district described how kindergarteners drew &#8220;dots on the rubber-cased tablets clutched in their hands. Then they wrote what they&#8217;d done as a math equation: 3 + 3 = 6.&#8221; No one explained why pencil and paper were insufficient to do the elementary math, other than a teacher gushing that she likes to &#8220;mix it up&#8221; and provide a &#8220;variety of experiences.&#8221; The district is one of 50 across the country piloting Google Play for Education.</p>
<p>Google is building brand loyalty through a questionable certification program that essentially turns teachers into tax-subsidized lobbyists for the company. The GAFE enrollees are &#8220;trained&#8221; on Google products. They take classes, attend conferences and hold workshops (some, but not all, funded by Google). After passing GAFE tests, they earn certification. Next, the newly minted GAFE educators open up consultancy businesses and bill their school districts (i.e., the public) to hawk Google&#8217;s suite of products to other colleagues. And they tell two friends, who tell two friends, and so on and so on and so on.</p>
<p>Google can collect student/family data to target ads through related services outside the GAFE suite, such as YouTube for Schools, Blogger and Google Plus. These are not covered under the already watered-down federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. Under the Obama administration, Grand Canyon-sized loopholes in FERPA have already opened data mining to third-party private entities.</p>
<p>One parent shared her kids&#8217; experience with the Chromebooks online: &#8220;The biggest problems to date are that kids figured out quickly how to bypass security so they could look at non-approved web material and that kids have problems drawing figures when taking classes such as Chemistry or Physics. &#8230; Many preferred traditional textbooks; others resented the teachers being able to spy on them with the software embedded in the Chromebook.&#8221;</p>
<p>Another savvy mom noted: &#8220;If you think Google won&#8217;t be handing over any and all data it gets from your kids using their Chromebooks, you&#8217;re nuts.&#8221;</p>
<p>Let&#8217;s be clear: I am not opposed to introducing kids to 21st-century tools. My 13-year-old daughter taught herself Java, HTML and Photoshop. My 10-year-old son mixes music on Logic Pro. I support competent, focused and practical instruction exposing school kids to coding, 3D design and robotics. What I&#8217;m against are bungled billion-dollar public investments in overpriced, ineffective technology. Fed Ed&#8217;s shiny education toy syndrome incentivizes wasteful spending binges no school district can afford.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Are Guns the Problem?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/walter-williams/are-guns-the-problem-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=are-guns-the-problem-2</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/walter-williams/are-guns-the-problem-2/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 01 Oct 2013 04:05:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Walter Williams]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[access]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[background checks]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Guns]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=205870</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why were there fewer shootings at a time of lower regulations than there are today? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/gun-store.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-205871" alt="gun-store" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/gun-store-450x328.jpg" width="270" height="197" /></a>Every time there&#8217;s a shooting tragedy, there are more calls for gun control. Let&#8217;s examine a few historical facts. By 1910, the National Rifle Association had succeeded in establishing 73 NRA-affiliated high-school rifle clubs. The 1911 second edition of the Boy Scout Handbook made qualification in NRA&#8217;s junior marksmanship program a prerequisite for obtaining a BSA merit badge in marksmanship. In 1918, the Winchester Repeating Arms Co. established its own Winchester Junior Rifle Corps. The program grew to 135,000 members by 1925. In New York City, gun clubs were started at Boys, Curtis, Commercial, Manual Training and Stuyvesant high schools. With so many guns in the hands of youngsters, did we see today&#8217;s level of youth violence?</p>
<p>What about gun availability? Catalogs and magazines from the 1940s, &#8217;50s and &#8217;60s were full of gun advertisements directed to children and parents. For example, &#8220;What Every Parent Should Know When a Boy or Girl Wants a Gun&#8221; was published by the National Shooting Sports Foundation. The 1902 Sears mail-order catalog had 35 pages of firearm advertisements. People just sent in their money, and a firearm was shipped. For most of our history, a person could simply walk into a hardware store, virtually anywhere in our country, and buy a gun. Few states bothered to have even age restrictions on buying guns.</p>
<p>Those and other historical facts should force us to ask ourselves: Why — at a time in our history when guns were readily available, when a person could just walk into a store or order a gun through the mail, when there were no FBI background checks, no waiting periods, no licensing requirements — was there not the frequency and kind of gun violence that we sometimes see today, when access to guns is more restricted? Guns are guns. If they were capable of behavior, as some people seem to suggest, they should have been doing then what they&#8217;re doing now.</p>
<p>Customs, traditions, moral values and rules of etiquette, not just laws and government regulations, are what make for a civilized society, not restraints on inanimate objects.</p>
<p>These behavioral norms — transmitted by example, word of mouth and religious teachings — represent a body of wisdom distilled through ages of experience, trial and error, and looking at what works. The benefit of having customs, traditions and moral values as a means of regulating behavior is that people behave themselves even if nobody&#8217;s watching. In other words, it&#8217;s morality that is society&#8217;s first line of defense against uncivilized behavior.</p>
<p>Moral standards of conduct, as well as strict and swift punishment for criminal behaviors, have been under siege in our country for more than a half-century. Moral absolutes have been abandoned as a guiding principle. We&#8217;ve been taught not to be judgmental, that one lifestyle or value is just as good as another. More often than not, the attack on moral standards has been orchestrated by the education establishment and progressives. Police and laws can never replace these restraints on personal conduct so as to produce a civilized society. At best, the police and criminal justice system are the last desperate line of defense for a civilized society. The more uncivilized we become the more laws are needed to regulate behavior.</p>
<p>What&#8217;s worse is that instead of trying to return to what worked, progressives want to replace what worked with what sounds good or what seems plausible, such as more gun locks, longer waiting periods and stricter gun possession laws. Then there&#8217;s progressive mindlessness &#8220;cures,&#8221; such as &#8220;zero tolerance&#8221; for schoolyard recess games such as cops and robbers and cowboys and Indians, shouting &#8220;bang bang,&#8221; drawing a picture of a pistol, making a gun out of Lego pieces, and biting the shape of a gun out of a Pop-Tart. This kind of unadulterated lunacy — which focuses on an inanimate object such as a gun instead of on morality, self-discipline and character — will continue to produce disappointing results.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Eco-Assault on America</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/obamas-eco-assault-on-america/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-eco-assault-on-america</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/obamas-eco-assault-on-america/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 27 Jun 2013 04:50:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[carbon]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=194698</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why the poor and middle class will suffer from Obama's sop to wealthy enviro-radicals. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/r.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-194702 alignleft" alt="Obama speaks at the G8 Summit in Northern Ireland" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/r.jpg" width="270" height="180" /></a>On Tuesday, President Obama <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10142279/Barack-Obama-to-cut-emissions-in-vow-to-save-planet.html">announced</a> a sweeping series of initiatives, including the use of executive powers, to combat global warming. The plan will involve federal funding for renewable energy technology, and spending for areas hit by storms and droughts aggravated by an allegedly changing climate. Yet the most ambitious part of his agenda is an effort to force a reduction in so-called greenhouse gases from the nation&#8217;s coal-fired power plants. Prior to the speech, Daniel P. Schrag, a White House environmentalism adviser and director of the Harvard University Center for the Environment, <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/wh-climate-adviser-war-coal-exactly-what-s-needed_737807.html">got</a> to the nub of that agenda: &#8220;Politically, the White House is hesitant to say they’re having a war on coal,&#8221; he explained. &#8220;On the other hand, a war on coal is exactly what’s needed.” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) explained the consequences of such a war. “Declaring a ‘War on Coal’ is tantamount to declaring a war on jobs,” he  said. “It’s tantamount to kicking the ladder out from beneath the feet of many Americans struggling in today’s economy.”</p>
<p>McConnell is exactly right. While the percentage has been declining, coal-fired power plants are still responsible for <a href="http://www.heraldonline.com/2013/06/24/4970925/governors-across-us-voice-opposition.html">producing</a> 40 percent of the nation&#8217;s electricity. Yet that is an overall number. Some states are far more dependent, including West Virginia, which garners 97 of its electrical needs from coal. Curtailing coal usage for generating electricity will invariably drive up the cost of purchasing electricity for households and businesses.</p>
<p>The president couldn&#8217;t care less. Like so many leftists, he has bought into the idea that <i>any</i> challenge to the global warming agenda is tantamount to heresy. &#8220;We don&#8217;t have time for a meeting of the flat-Earth society,&#8221; Obama <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/307655-obama-we-dont-have-time-for-a-meeting-of-the-flat-earth-society#ixzz2XFsQ5mgH">said.</a> &#8220;Sticking your head in the sand might make you feel safer, but it&#8217;s not going to protect you from the coming storm.&#8221;</p>
<p>The so-called coming storm may take a while to get here. A report released by Spiegel science journal <a href="http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/04/15/scientists-baffled-as-report-proves-global-warming-has-stopped/">reveals</a> that global warming has stopped. “[Fifteen] years without warming are now behind us&#8221; writes Spiegel journalist Axel Bojanowski. &#8220;The stagnation of global near-surface average temperatures shows that the uncertainties in the climate prognoses are surprisingly large.&#8221; Moreover, despite a <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2013/05/26/to-the-horror-of-global-warming-alarmists-global-cooling-is-here/">report</a> in March by <i>The Economist</i> noting that the world has added &#8220;roughly 100 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010,&#8221; comprising &#8220;about a quarter of all the CO2 put there by humanity since 1750,” no global warming occurred during that time frame. In fact, some scientists are actually predicting that we may be on the verge of another Little Ice Age similar to the one that occurred from 1275 to 1300 A.D., due in large part to an unexplainable collapse in sunspot activity.</p>
<p>Which scientific camp is right? That is something the scientific community must determine, based on scientific evidence &#8212; not the political coercion that far too often accompanies government-funded studies. Yet the president has staked out his position irrespective of science. He is directing the EPA to draft rules on the allowable levels of carbon emissions by existing coal plants, rules he expects to be completed by 2015. Obama intends to reduce Americans&#8217;s greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2025. Under current law, the EPA has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases, due to a 2007 Supreme Court decision. However, under the provisions of that Clean Air Act, the EPA <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/25/obama-will-reportedly-introduce-new-carbon-emissions-rules-in-climate-change/">cannot</a> do so on its own, but must develop standards in accordance with the states.</p>
<p>Congress is another story. As far as the president is concerned, congressional input is completely unnecessary. “This is a challenge that does not pause for partisan gridlock,” Obama contended.</p>
<p>Ironically, partisan gridlock on this particular issue is nowhere to be found. No Congress, controlled by either party, has been able to approve <i>anything</i> resembling the kind of carbon reduction scheme being proposed by the president. That includes a cap-and-trade plan that <a href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/06/obama-executive-orders-climate-change/66568/">died</a> in 2010, when Democrats had unassailable control of both houses of Congress and the presidency.</p>
<p>House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) directly addressed that reality, and the economic one as well. “These policies, rejected even by the last Democratic-controlled Congress, will shutter power plants, destroy good-paying American jobs and raise electricity bills,” he said in a statement. Scott H. Segal, who represents utilities at the law firm Bracewell &amp; Giuliani was even more direct. “The administration needs to explain why it needs old-style, command-and-control regulation when the market is moving in that direction anyway,” he said, referring to the reality that both falling prices of natural gas and increased use of it is already moving the nation away from coal.</p>
<p>The president&#8217;s plan would dramatically alter that trajectory. According to the Heritage Foundation, the artificial shrinkage of coal supplies would drive up the cost of natural gas by as much as 42 percent by 2030. Furthermore, as Heritage’s Herbert and Joyce Morgan Fellow Nicolas Loris <a href="http://blog.heritage.org/2013/06/24/previewing-president-obamas-climate-change-speech/">notes</a>, even measures far more radical than those proposed by the president will be of little consequence:</p>
<blockquote><p>But let’s pretend we were able to stop emitting all carbon immediately. Forget the electricity to cool our homes in the summer months. Shut down the power plants. Stop driving our cars. No talking. The Science and Public Policy Institute found that the global temperature would decrease by 0.17 degrees Celsius&#8211;by 2100. These regulations are all pain no gain.</p></blockquote>
<p>They are also completely anathema to emerging nations like India, China, and a host of other countries who aren&#8217;t about to reduce their standards of living to accommodate Obama&#8217;s pie-in-the-sky priorities.</p>
<p>Those priorities more than likely include killing the Keystone XL Pipeline project. The president insisted it can only be approved if it would not &#8220;significantly exacerbate&#8221; greenhouse gas emissions. Russell K. Girling, the chief executive of TransCanada, the company seeking a permit to build Keystone, contends the project meets the president&#8217;s proposed standard, even as he warned that substitute transpiration for Canadian oil, such as trucking or rail, poses significant environmental problems as well.</p>
<p>Even more disastrous is the president&#8217;s call for massive investment in &#8220;renewable electricity generation,&#8221; meaning large-scale wind- and solar-generated electrical facilities. Because the wind doesn&#8217;t always blow and the sun doesn&#8217;t always shine, such facilities would <a href="http://spectator.org/archives/2013/06/26/obamas-climate-obsession/1">require</a> conventional backup systems. As the Energy Information Agency reveals such inefficient and costly systems only become feasible &#8220;in response to federal tax credits, state-level policies, and federal requirements to use more biomass-based transportation fuels.”  In other words, without government coercion, no one would build an electrical generating facility requiring backup &#8212; or use food food fuel &#8212; simply to assuage environmentalist sensibilities.</p>
<p>Or is that the sensibilities of the so-called one-percenters? It is truly remarkable how many wealthy individuals are dedicated environmentalists, as long as that dedication only applies to &#8220;other people.&#8221; Perhaps the ultimate personification of such overt hypocrisy is Al Gore, who has made millions promoting the cataclysmic effects of climate change, even as he rides around in private jets and limousines, maintains a 20-room home and pool house that <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/GlobalWarming/story?id=2906888#.UcsNcesjH1w">used</a> more than 20 times the national average of electricity usage in 2006, and recently <a href="http://blogs.tennessean.com/politics/2013/washington-post-writer-rips-environmentalist-al-gore-for-sale-to-oil-backed-al-jazeera/">sold</a> his media network to an oil-funded company for $500 million.</p>
<p>Gore is far from alone. As a 2007 <i>Wall Street Journal</i> column by Robert Frank <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118791212669107260.html">reveals</a>, the rich long ago reconciled the disconnect between their environmentalist sensibilities and lavish lifestyles. Their purchases of &#8220;carbon offsets&#8221; ostensibly atone for the sin of living large, and frees them to pressure &#8220;lesser mortals&#8221; to embrace a more &#8220;environmentally correct&#8221; lifestyle, also known as a lower standard of living. It&#8217;s a nice racket if you can afford it. Not so nice if you are poor or middle class and the radical one-percenters expect you to make do with less or do without.</p>
<p>Whether the president himself embraces such overt hypocrisy is irrelevant. There will never be a single moment in which he or any member of his family will be forced to &#8220;walk the environmentalist walk&#8221; he would readily impose on the American public, whether they want it, or not. That would be the same American public who will bear the brunt of higher costs for virtually everything, which means higher standards of living will be even more difficult to obtain for the less (and least) well-off.</p>
<p>Americans will also bear the brunt of unintended and unforeseen consequences, best described by the <i>Washington Times&#8217;</i> Paul Driessen. He explains the EPS&#8217;s heavy-handedness will lead to &#8220;unprecedented sleep deprivation, lower economic and educational status, and soaring anxiety and stress&#8230;likely to lead to greater risk of strokes and heart attacks; higher incidences of depression, alcohol, drug, spousal and child abuse; more suicides; and declining overall life expectancy.&#8221; He further notes the government&#8217;s push with regard to fuel-efficient cars &#8220;will force more people into smaller, lighter, less-safe cars&#8211;causing thousands of needless additional serious injuries and deaths every year.&#8221;</p>
<p>Driessen then illuminates the Obama administration&#8217;s modus operandi, explaining that &#8220;increasingly powerful bureaucrats&#8211;who seek and acquire ever-more control over our lives&#8211;remain faceless, nameless, unelected and unaccountable. They operate largely behind closed doors, issuing regulations and arranging sweetheart &#8216;sue-and-settle&#8217; legal actions with radical environmentalist groups to advance ideological agendas, without regard for the impacts on our lives.&#8221;</p>
<p>Tellingly, on the same day the president gave his speech, <a href="http://CNNMoney.com/">CNNMoney.com</a> <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/24/pf/emergency-savings/index.html">published</a> the results of a sobering survey conducted by <a href="http://Bankrate.com/">Bankrate.com</a>. It revealed that a whopping 76 percent of Americans are &#8220;living paycheck-to-paycheck.&#8221; Less than 25 percent of Americans have enough money saved to cover six months of expenses, 50 percent have a three month total, and 27 percent have no savings at all. &#8220;After paying debts and taking care of housing, car and child care-related expenses, the respondents said there just isn&#8217;t enough money left over for saving more,&#8221; the article reported.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s the <i>real</i> catastrophe most Americans face. Yet a president whose most recent pressing initiatives have included gun control, immigration reform and combatting global warming, not only remains willfully oblivious to that catastrophe, but bound and determined to exacerbate it.</p>
<p>In short, Obama is determined to destroy America in order to save it. Unfortunately, there is no &#8220;offset&#8221; for such unbridled hubris.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Gov. Rick Perry: Why Texas Works</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/gov-rick-perry-why-texas-works/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=gov-rick-perry-why-texas-works</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 16 May 2013 04:50:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=189660</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The governor describes the keys to the Lone Star State's success at the Freedom Center's Texas Weekend. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em>Editor’s note: Below is the video and transcript of Gov. Rick Perry&#8217;s speech at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s Texas Weekend. The inaugural event took place May 3rd-5th at the Las Colinas Resort in Dallas, Texas.</em></p>
<p><iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/65718340" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>
<p><a href="http://vimeo.com/65718340">Governor Rick Perry</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user15333690">DHFC</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>
<p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none;"><strong>Rick Perry: </strong> And, David, it&#8217;s an honor to get to see you again and be in your presence.  And we&#8217;re certainly glad to have you here in Texas.  And even if your mailing address does continue to be in California.  (laughter)  I mean, really, California?  It &#8212; all the cool kids are moving to Texas, David.  (laughter)</span></p>
<p>But I&#8217;m just kidding because, I mean, God knows, if there is a place that needs David Horowitz, it is California.  (laughter) So, you know, the basic question I love to ask folks when I talk to people in California or Illinois or overseas, for that matter, is that, you know, what makes Texas so special?</p>
<p>And there&#8217;s a number of ways to go about that answer.  We are a unique culture.  We&#8217;re proud.  We are patriotic.  Fiercely dedicated to the values of individual freedom and responsibility.  We are a mix of backgrounds.</p>
<p>We are incredibly diverse state, culturally, ethically, philosophically.  No matter where you come from or what you believe, you can feel right at home in Texas.  Granted, if you&#8217;re a liberal, Austin&#8217;s probably about the only place that you&#8217;re going to feel really at home.  (laughter)</p>
<p>But it&#8217;s a great place and they love it there.  If you enjoy the finer things in life from world class orchestras to world class food, you can find it in Texas.  Same if you enjoy camping, fishing, hunting, hiking or even surfing, we have it all.</p>
<p>Of course, that&#8217;s what truly sets us apart over the last decade has been our economic climate.  And that&#8217;s something that we&#8217;ve worked very hard to develop, to cultivate.  It&#8217;s a climate built upon the fiscally conservative principles that have served us well through good economic times and throughout major national recessions.</p>
<p>CEOs are looking for something simple.  And that simplicity is predictability.  And in Texas, they know that they&#8217;re going to get just that.  They know they won&#8217;t be taxed into bankruptcy.  They know that they &#8212; that we have a low tax burden here.  That&#8217;s the foundation of this state&#8217;s tax philosophy.</p>
<p>We do that because we realize that more money in the hands of Texans is how you create more jobs in this state.  We realize that more jobs for hard working Texas tax payers means more options, more freedom, healthier Texas families.</p>
<p>People have gotten that message, too.  Our population continues to grow at somewhere north of 1,000 people every day move into this state.  Employers also know that they can put down roots in Texas.  That they won&#8217;t be tied up in miles and miles of government red tape.</p>
<p>That doesn&#8217;t mean that we don&#8217;t take care of our own.  That we don&#8217;t have appropriate regulatory climates.  As a matter fact, we&#8217;ve cleaned up our air in the last decade more than any other state in the nation during that same period of time.</p>
<p>But it&#8217;s proof that you can have thoughtful regulation and at the same time lift your environmental quality as well.  What it means is that we&#8217;re reasonable.  We&#8217;re efficient when it comes to the regulatory process.</p>
<p>Don&#8217;t a &#8212; just take my word for it.  Ask people like Andy Puzder.  Andy was the CEO of Carl&#8217;s Jr.&#8217;s, headquartered out in California.  He said that opening a new restaurant in California takes eight months.</p>
<p>Eight months before you can even break ground to start the construction.  In Texas, it takes about six weeks.  That&#8217;s a big reason you&#8217;re seeing more Carl&#8217;s Jr.&#8217;s as you drive around, Pat.  I don&#8217;t know if you use that establishment or not but you&#8217;re going to see a lot more of them in Texas.</p>
<p>Employers know that the Texas court system, for instance, won&#8217;t allow for over suing.  Someone in the audience said a thank you as I walked in for &#8212; in 2003 we passed the most sweeping tort reform in the nation.  And there &#8212; and in 2011 we passed loser pay.</p>
<p>And again, sending the message (applause) that you can come to the State of Texas and you won&#8217;t be over sued.  The more time and money that&#8217;s spent in courtrooms is less time that you&#8217;re creating jobs in this state.</p>
<p>And then finally employers know that we have cultivated a work force that stands ready to fill any need as &#8212; that that employer may have.  Whether it&#8217;s on an assembly line, whether it&#8217;s on a sales line or whether it&#8217;s in a laboratory.</p>
<p>We&#8217;re about a decade into these efforts to improve our economic climate.  And I think the results speak for themselves.  <i>Foreign Direct Investment</i> magazine recently awarded Texas the 2012 Governor&#8217;s Award for being the most successful state in the nation in attracting foreign investment. And that publication is far alone in its praise for the Lone Star state.</p>
<p><i>Chief Executive</i> Magazine named Texas the country&#8217;s best state for doing business for the eighth consecutive year.  We&#8217;ve committed to making that nine, I would suggest to you, in the very short future.  (laughter)  Texas also received accolades from media outlets like <i>USA Today</i> and CNBC, <i>Wall Street Journal</i>, <i>Forbes,</i> <i>Site Selector</i> magazine.</p>
<p>More importantly than good press, though, is the fact that Texas continues to be the nation&#8217;s epicenter for job creation.  Texas employers have added more than a half million private sector jobs over the last two years alone.  A total of nearly 1.4 million jobs in the last ten years.</p>
<p>And as exciting as our present is, our future, I will suggest, is holding even more promise.  We remain very proud of our status as a national home to energy production.  Now, Mr. Hanley and I were talking about the energy industry in the State of Texas.</p>
<p>And we&#8217;re likely to find even more of that in the near future, I would suggest to you.  Though our healthy economy and strategic investment in research and young, innovative companies is what I want you to focus on just a bit.</p>
<p>There &#8212; I think during the presidential race someone made the comment that, &#8220;Gosh, come on, it&#8217;s easy being governor of the State of Texas.  I mean, that&#8217;s like going, playing poker and drawing four aces, right?&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s not quite that easy, sir,&#8221; as I told him.  (laughter)  I said, &#8220;It&#8217;s not quite that easy in the State of Texas.&#8221;  The point they were making is you&#8217;ve got all that oil and gas so obviously your economy&#8217;s going to be good.</p>
<p>In 1984, right before Texas teetering on the brink and going down on a long, long journey downward economically, oil and gas made up approximately 14% of our Gross State Product.</p>
<p>Today, after all of the massive amounts of gas and oil that have been discovered over the course of the last five and six years in particular with George Mitchell&#8217;s extraordinary innovation of hydraulic fracturing and the hor &#8212; or the directional drilling that&#8217;s going on.</p>
<p>All of the shale gas that has been found, the Eagle Ford and the Barnett shale, the Haynesville and even in the old Permian Basin, renov &#8212; rejuvenated.  Even with all of that, and oil at close to $100 a barrel, oil and gas industry makes up less than 10% of the Gross State Product in the State of Texas today.</p>
<p>This state has exploded in a very diverse way.  In biotechnology and medical technology and manufacturing.  And after today at the N.R.A. I&#8217;m pretty sure we&#8217;re going to get some more weapons manufacturers moving into the State of Texas.  (applause)</p>
<p>Last year Batelle reached a study &#8212; released a study that said that Texas was the top job creator in biotech.  That trend will only increase as we go into the future.</p>
<p>Just a couple of months ago GlaxoSmithKline announced that they were going to join up with Texas A&amp;M University in a private sector effort there and public &#8212; profit partnership, expending $91 million to create a new vaccine facility at that university that is going to be able to address issues not only of terroristic threats but also pandemic events that can occur in the world.</p>
<p>So in Texas you&#8217;re going to see the ability to address.  Historically it took nine months to go from one strain to another strain because it was an egg-based concept.  An egg-based process.  And they have developed a process of which it&#8217;s cell-based.  And now they can go from one strain to another strain in 45 days.</p>
<p>Soon in Texas there will be a process in place to create vaccines so that half a world away where Third World countries are being decimated by diseases or viruses and to save literally the potential of millions of lives, that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re about in this state.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s what we&#8217;ve created here because we&#8217;ve been innovative and we created an environment where entrepreneurs know that they can risk their capital and have a chance to have a return on their investment.  We&#8217;ve helped start-up companies keep their discoveries that are made here in Texas, instead of going to either coast.</p>
<p>That was historically when our universities came up with a great innovation it took off for the coast because that&#8217;s where the money was.  That&#8217;s where the technology and the researchers to take it to the next step, the gap funders, if you will.</p>
<p>That is truly changing and has changed where those companies are staying in Texas.  As a matter of fact, we are recruiting those mature companies from either coast to the State of Texas now.  (applause)</p>
<p>You think about, historically Texas has been a place where innovation did occur, whether it was the integrated circuit at T.I., whether it was during the space race of the &#8217;60s at Johnson Space Center, whether it was &#8212; again, I mentioned George Mitchell and that unlocking of the vast energy resources around the world.  That came from Texas technology.</p>
<p>And whether we&#8217;re on the cutting edge of energy or biotech or communications or commerce or privatized efforts to get our world back into space, Texas is going to be at the forefront of that movement.</p>
<p>The question before us now is how do we preserve and improve our economic health in the years to come?  Probably the biggest obstacle that we have, and this is part of human nature, is our own success.  With our economy surging, our revenues our collections are on a very steep upward trajectory primarily based on sales tax here in the State of Texas.</p>
<p>And that&#8217;s led a lot of people, whether it was in the media, the newspaper, the television and our own legislature, to make the case that the time for fiscal conservatism is over.  They all talk about how much extra money we have floating around these days.</p>
<p>Of course, they&#8217;re ignoring that it&#8217;s our policies of restraining spending and limiting taxes that have led to that economic success.  They&#8217;re also ignoring the fact that there is no such thing as extra money.</p>
<p>And the tough decisions that we will make this session are no different than the tough decisions that we made in previous legislative sessions.  We still have to prioritize, we have to separate wants from needs.  We still have to think about what&#8217;s in the best interest, the long-term best interest of our communities and our state.</p>
<p>We still need to make good decisions now to ensure that we remain the economic power that we have grown to be.  And other states aren’t going to make it easy.  I saw Bobby Jindal today as we were passing.  And Bobby&#8217;s in the process of trying to do away with the personal income tax in Louisiana.</p>
<p>And I told him, I said, &#8220;You&#8217;re going to make me really uncomfortable if you do that.&#8221;  (laughter)  He said, &#8220;Good.&#8221;  And I said, &#8220;Awesome.&#8221;  I said, &#8220;That&#8217;s what we&#8217;re about to compete against each other.&#8221;</p>
<p>That&#8217;s the future of this country, I will suggest to you.  To Washington to recognize these laboratories of innovation that we have in this country, to allow these states to compete against each other, to get away from this one-size-fits-all whether it&#8217;s on social issues or whether it&#8217;s financial decisions and economic decisions.</p>
<p>Allow the states to come up with the answers that they need, that they want for their people.  That&#8217;s the way that we make America strong again.  (applause)  This administration, and frankly this Congress, is &#8212; will continue to try to force these foolish, costly mandates down our throats.</p>
<p>And when we don&#8217;t go along with them is really, they&#8217;ll chide us and they will say that we&#8217;re not being properly cooperative, was the words that the President used this last week.  That&#8217;s how President Obama described it.</p>
<p>He said that we were not properly cooperative.  And I know that he did not mean that as a compliment but I took it as one.  (laughter)  I actually took it as a compliment.  I am not properly cooperative with them on that issue of Obamacare.</p>
<p>We said no to setting up a state exchange.  (applause)  And it&#8217;s only a state exchange.  It&#8217;s only a state exchange in name only.  They call it a state exchange but here are all the rules and this is what you have to &#8212; it has to look like this.  It&#8217;s totally and absolutely mandated by Washington, D.C.</p>
<p>We also refused on multiple occasions the idea of expanding Medicaid in the State of Texas.  (applause)  Medicaid expansion, simply put, is just misguided.  It is ultimately a doomed attempt to mask the shortcomings of Obamacare.</p>
<p>Just this week we started seeing warning signs across this country of insurance companies, insurance premiums going to skyrocket.  We&#8217;re hearing rumblings about a lot of people losing their jobs, Pat, because of Obamacare.</p>
<p>We realized early on that pouring millions of dollars into this broken system was foolish.  I made the example, David, that putting more people into Medicaid was no different than putting more people on the Titanic knowing how that was going to end up.  I mean, it truly is a place that is going to bankrupt your state if you participate in that.</p>
<p>Think about what&#8217;ll happen when the case loads explode.  It will be a massive disaster across this Texas.  I mean, across this country.  Excuse me.  And we are our own country, so to speak.  (laughter) We have a marketing campaign, David, that&#8217;s called Texas:  A Whole Other Country.  (laughter)  And some people get disturbed about that.  But it&#8217;s a fun thing.  So.</p>
<p>But anyway, I want to share with you in wrapping up what fiscally conservative, thoughtful policies, what having freedom, for me, and I think freedom for our founding fathers was about freedom from over taxation, freedom from over regulation, freedom from over litigation.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s the pillars of a powerful economy.  For a little over a decade now we have put those into place in this state.  And let me share with you one of the byproducts that&#8217;s powerful.  And I want to share it with you in a bit of a &#8212; not in an anecdotal way but in just a story that reflects the point.</p>
<p>In 2001, in the spring of 2001 I&#8217;d been governor for six months.  And we got the call that one of the great names in the corporate world was considering relocating their corporate headquarters either in Chicago or Dallas-Fort Worth.  Boeing.</p>
<p>Boeing was moving out of the Pacific Northwest.  We became ecstatic.  We gathered up all of our staff and the economic development division, the Department of Economic Development and said, &#8220;We must go win this.&#8221;</p>
<p>Was only a hundred and &#8212; I think 135 jobs total.  But it was just the cache, it was the name of getting Boeing to come to Texas.  What a powerful message that would&#8217;ve been.  Well, we made a lot of smoke and not much fire and we found that we weren&#8217;t very good at economic development.  And Chicago was the winner.</p>
<p>But we came back and sometimes in defeat is how you become stronger.  I&#8217;m hoping that&#8217;s the case, anyway, Pat.  (laughter)  Sometimes in defeat it is how you become stronger.  We came back to Austin, Texas, and we analyzed our economic development effort in this state and realized that we weren&#8217;t very good at it.  And that we were cumbersome, we were not flexible, we didn&#8217;t have the ability to attract, we didn&#8217;t have incentive programs.</p>
<p>And that next legislative session in 2003 we created the Texas Enterprise Fund which is an incentive program to be able to lure these companies into the State of Texas.</p>
<p>We collapsed the Department of Economic Development into a trusteed agency and moved it into the governor&#8217;s office so it could very quickly move and be flexible without a board to have to go through.  And to work directly with the governor&#8217;s office.</p>
<p>We put into place the most sweeping tort reform in the nation during that legislative session and we filled a $10 billion budget shortfall without raising taxes to send the message that we truly were going to be responsive to businessmen and -women and not just say, &#8220;Oh, we can&#8217;t make the hard decisions.  We&#8217;re going to have to raise your taxes.&#8221;</p>
<p>And over the course of the next years we stayed, adhered to those principles.  Oh, and as an aside, about a year after that Boeing thing went down, we heard through very well placed sources that one of the reasons, a strong reason that the decision makers at Boeing chose Chicago was because the spouses of the decision makers felt that the cultural arts were more expansive in Chicago to their liking than in Dallas-Fort Worth.</p>
<p>Now, I&#8217;m not going to make that argument today whether that&#8217;s true or not.  But that was the perception.  And so much in this business perception is reality.  Here&#8217;s what I&#8217;m going to fast forward with you in just a moment and go to 2011, a short decade later.</p>
<p>In Texas, Fort Worth has built a new museum of modern art.  The Kimbell has expanded greatly.  The Basses have built one of the great symphony halls in the world.  Dallas has finished two performing arts facilities.</p>
<p>The AT&amp;T, the Meyerson.  Nasher moved their sculpture gardens to Dallas.  The American Film Institute now is headquartered in Dallas.  Austin, Texas, the little government and university town, has a new museum of modern art.</p>
<p>They have the ba &#8212; the Long Center of Performing Arts.  The Topfers built a new wing onto the Zachary Theater.  San Antonio is building a new performing arts facility.  And Houston tonight has more theater seats available than any other city in America outside of New York City.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s happened in a decade.  And it&#8217;s happened, I will suggest strongly, because we&#8217;ve allowed the private sector to keep more of what they earn.  And they made the right decisions about putting that money into those charitable causes, into the cultural arts.</p>
<p>Today I can assure you as we recruit from New York or from the Silicon Valley or from Illinois.  As a matter of fact, I was in Chicago just ten days ago inviting those people to come.  That our cultural arts today are expansive and they get to keep more of what they work for.</p>
<p>That is a powerful message.  It&#8217;s what America needs to be talking about.  We need to have this great discussion across this country about red state policies and blue state policies.  (applause)</p>
<p>And if we do that, if we will stand up and unabashedly and when &#8212; courageously stand up and say, &#8220;These are the policies that will allow you to live free.  These are the policies that will allow your family to be secure.  This is the way that your family will have a better future.&#8221;  We will have an America for the next generation that we are proud of and that truly is a beacon for all the world.</p>
<p>Thank you and God bless you.  (applause)</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Why Doesn&#8217;t New York City Government Focus on Real Issues?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ronn-torossian/new-york-city-focus-on-real-issues-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=new-york-city-focus-on-real-issues-2</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 27 Mar 2013 04:08:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ronn Torossian]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Business is hurting. New Yorkers are hurting. Why is the city pushing more anti-job regulations?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ronn-torossian/mayor-bloomberg-focus-on-new-yorks-real-issues-2/s-2/" rel="attachment wp-att-183192"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-183192" title="s" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/s-441x350.jpg" alt="" width="265" height="210" /></a>Business owners in New York City have plenty of real issues to worry about &#8211; global competition to America’s soft economy, high rents, and astronomical 50% taxes for entrepreneurs who live in the great Borough of Manhattan, and so much more.  There are real issues which business owners in NYC – and anywhere – need to be concerned with as I know first hand as founder of a <a href="http://www.5wpr.com/about5wpr/index.cfm">PR firm</a>.</p>
<p>For many, Mayor Bloomberg’s attempt to rid NYC of sugary drinks larger than 16-ounce portions was ridiculous. Now, comes something more ridiculous – which is actually dangerous for business &#8211; the NYC City Council has a “proposed paid-sick-days law.”</p>
<p>Under the proposed bill, the NYC Department of Health (DOH) would require small businesses to give their employees at least five sick days a year.  Business would be required, upon demand, to turn over their employment records to DOH investigators.  Imagine the shock of a consulting firm or foreign bank if the “Department of Health” knocked at their door? Sounds like a communist country or a bad drama movie.<em> </em>Indeed, if this bill passes that will be the fate of many New York business owners.</p>
<p>As if business owners don’t have enough to worry about, under this proposed law they’ll need to give multilingual written notice to all employees and post similar posters in a visible place in the office. If the Department of Health finds that an employer fired a worker for calling in sick too many times, they have the right to be compensated for at least $5,000 as well as receive benefits —&#8221;including reinstatement and promotion.&#8221; Has all of <a href="http://www.newyorksightseeing.com/">New York</a> State gone union and forgotten to notify us? Forced reinstatement and promotion?</p>
<p>Imagine staffers in President Obama’s office feign sickness the day of the State of the Union and other very busy days.  Will they be given promotions for not showing up? Employees will also be able to accumulate unused paid sick days into future years.</p>
<p>Naturally, the proposed rules don’t require employees to provide much besides their word.  An employer may not demand a physician&#8217;s note until the third day out – and of course, the employer cannot withhold pay if the worker fails to produce even such minimal documentation. Of course, then some other government office will come knocking.</p>
<p>Employees shouldn’t be taken advantage of – but nor should employers.  In America, people have the right to quit their jobs if not treated well. I have lived and worked in New York City my whole life. My mother raised my sister and I and never took a sick day because she needed to provide for us.  She didn’t take a vacation in 10 years – because the bills don’t stop coming and she wanted to advance at work.</p>
<p>From the age of 12, I worked in a local pizzeria for an Italian immigrant who worked 80 hours a week to put his kids through school – he didn’t take sick days.  There’s nothing wrong with being sick – but there’s also nothing which requires the law to mandate employers to offer sick days.  People always have the right to quit their jobs if they aren’t happy.  Why is this something government needs to be involved with?</p>
<p>For a state which already ranks at the very bottom of the “<a href="http://www.sbecouncil.org/news/display.cfm?ID=4689">Small Business Survival Index</a>” this is more activity that is bad for business. The Tax Foundation, a non-partisan Washington, D.C. tax research group ranked New York State as the worst place in the nation for establishing a business based on taxes. This move will damage business owners who already pay high taxes, and have to deal with strict regulations.</p>
<p>As owner of a white-collar <a href="http://www.5wpr.com/about5wpr/index.cfm">PR agency</a> which employs over 100 people in the heart of Manhattan, all our employees receive 2 weeks vacation, and a mixture of 5 sick/personal days.  They also receive many other holidays, federal and otherwise, like the day after Christmas, etc.  We treat them well and thankfully people stay a long time.  This bill won’t affect us – and at my business like any other, people unfortunately sometimes do quit.  But we treat them well, and it’s none of the governments business, as indeed people do have choices.</p>
<p>Building a small business in the once great city of New York has never been harder than today.  Absurd government regulations seek to tell entrepreneurs what to do.  The role of a business owner is to create wealth and jobs.  Entrepreneurs drive the economy and the global marketplace – they create jobs and so much more.</p>
<p>It is already hard enough to build a business – the government shouldn’t make it harder. It would be nice, if just once, business was helped and not hurt by government. Businesses in America aren’t the bad guys – don’t keep punishing and hurting business.  It harms the economy – and the people.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Reining In Obama&#8217;s Big Labor Activists</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/earl-capps/reining-in-obamas-big-labor-activists/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=reining-in-obamas-big-labor-activists</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 30 Jan 2013 04:50:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Earl Capps]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Private companies rejoice at high court's ruling on the president's unconstitutional recess appointments. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/earl-capps/reining-in-obamas-big-labor-activists/00_labor_usc1008872_nlrb_sign_800px-2/" rel="attachment wp-att-175321"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-175321" title="00_LABOR_USC1008872_NLRB_sign_800px" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/00_LABOR_USC1008872_NLRB_sign_800px1.jpg" alt="" width="237" height="158" /></a>Efforts by the Obama administration to pursue an aggressive pro-union agenda via the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) suffered a major setback on Friday. A three-judge federal appeals court <a href="http://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/D13E4C2A7B33B57A85257AFE00556B29/$file/12-1115-1417096.pdf" target="_blank">in the Noel Canning case unanimously found that recent recess appointments of NLRB board members violated the Constitution</a>, ruling that &#8220;[b]ecause none of the three appointments were valid, the Board lacked a quorum and its decision must be vacated.&#8221;</p>
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<p>If the ruling is upheld by the Supreme Court, to which the Obama administration is expected to appeal the case, it would be a long-awaited victory for Republicans and business organizations who have long objected to the Board&#8217;s growing reach into non-union workplaces and increasingly pro-union rulings. It would also be vindication for Senate Republicans who have sought to check the administration&#8217;s political agenda via the confirmation process, which the recess appointments bypassed.</p>
<p>In this case, attorneys for <a href="http://www.noelcorp.com/" target="_blank">Noel Canning, a Washington State canning and bottling company</a>, sought to appeal a ruling in which the <a href="http://mynlrb.nlrb.gov/link/document.aspx/09031d4580811c29" target="_blank">Board ruled against the company and imposed a collective bargaining agreement</a> after the company had refused to execute the agreement, claiming that wage-benefit packages for union members had not been agreed upon. In the appeal, the company’s attorneys argued that as the Senate was still meeting in pro forma session, three recess appointments made to the Board by the Obama administration were invalid. These appointments included:</p>
<ul>
<li>Sharon Block, who filled a seat that became vacant on January 3,  2012,  when Board member Craig Becker’s recess appointment expired. Block was a former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Congressional Affairs at the U.S. Department of Labor, Senior Labor and Employment Counsel for the Senate HELP Committee, where she worked for Senator Edward M. Kennedy and received the John F. Kennedy Labor Law Award.</li>
<li>Terence F. Flynn, who filled a seat that became vacant on August 27, 2010, when Peter Schaumber’s term expired. Flynn, who has since left the Board, was previously Chief Counsel to former Board Members Brian Hayes and Schaumber, as well as an attorney in private practice, specializing in employment and labor law.</li>
<li>Richard F. Griffin, who filled a seat that became vacant on August 27, 2011, when Wilma B. Liebman’s term expired. Previously, Griffin was General Counsel for International Union of Operating Engineers and served on the board of directors for the AFL-CIO Lawyers Coordinating Committee.</li>
</ul>
<p>In the ruling, the Appellate Court agreed with the attorneys for Noel Canning:</p>
<blockquote><p>It is undisputed that the Board must have a quorum of three in order to take action. It is further undisputed that a quorum of three did not exist on the date of the order under review unless the three disputed members (or at least one of them) were validly appointed.  It is further agreed that the members of the Board are “Officers of the United States” within the meaning of the Appointments Clause of the Constitution, which provides that the President “shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law.” (p. 15)</p></blockquote>
<p>The board presently has three members, two of whom are Block and Griffin (Flynn left the board in July of last year). Their removal from the board would reduce it to one member, leaving it unable to issue further rulings until new appointments could be made, as well as invalidate a number of recent Board rulings, such as the Noel Canning ruling. This could impact a number of controversial NLRB initiatives, including:</p>
<ul>
<li>The Poster Rule, which would require workplaces to post notices about employees&#8217; right to organize a union, <a href="http://www.nam.org/Communications/Articles/2012/09/Manufacturers-Renew-Court-Battle-Against-the-NLRB.aspx" target="_blank">remains on hold while the case is being appealed </a>following split rulings where a South Carolina federal court struck the rule down and a Washington D.C. court upheld the Rule.</li>
<li>Several rulings in which the Board ruled the language of employee handbooks in non-union workplaces placed restrictions upon employee communication, which the Board argued could inhibit the ability of employees to organize a union if they chose to do so (<a href="http://www.bakerlaw.com/alerts/nlrb-to-non-union-employers-we-just-may-be-the-boss-of-you-5-4-2012/" target="_blank">Hyundai America Shipping Agency Inc. </a>and <a href="http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/nlrb-finds-that-employer-lawfully-fired-24031/" target="_blank">Karl Knauz Motors</a>).</li>
<li>A ruling (<a href="http://mynlrb.nlrb.gov/link/document.aspx/09031d4580e80f3d" target="_blank">WKYC-TV, Gannet Co., Inc.</a>) that overturned a five-decade precedent by directing employers to continue to withhold union dues after the expiration of a collective bargaining agreement.</li>
</ul>
<p>Republicans were quick to seize upon the ruling as a chance to go after the NLRB. Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander, the ranking Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, demanded <a href="http://www.humanevents.com/2013/01/25/sen-alexander-demands-nlrb-resignations/" target="_blank">the resignations of those board members whose appointments were challenged in the ruling</a>, calling the ruling &#8220;proof that the administration defied the Constitution’s separation of powers and its concept of checks and balances, which are the guard against an imperial presidency.&#8221;</p>
<p>Allen Gray, a lobbyist with Carolinas AGC, a construction industry association based in North and South Carolina, and head of the industry association&#8217;s human resources committee, said the court &#8220;followed the letter of the law&#8221; and predicted the ruling would &#8220;force the President to choose between picking nominees with more moderate positions who could win a confirmation vote or not appointing anyone at all.&#8221; Likewise, Senator Tim Scott (R-South Carolina) expected that future NLRB nominees sent to the Senate for confirmation should be willing to take less pro-union stances. Scott warned &#8220;the agency&#8217;s pattern of punishing states like South Carolina for their successful right-to-work policies has to end. Any future nominees must demonstrate a commitment to treat the families and businesses of pro-worker states just the same as anyone else.&#8221;</p>
<p>In addition to allowing many of the Board’s recent rulings to be vacated, the appellate court&#8217;s ruling &#8211; if upheld &#8211; could affect other recess appointments made by the Obama administration, most notably that of <a href="http://www.consumerfinance.gov/the-bureau/about-rich-cordray/" target="_blank">Rich Cordray, the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau</a>, who has come under fire from the banking industry for advocating excessive regulations and oversight.</p>
<p>The Obama administration is expected to appeal this ruling to the Supreme Court instead of conceding defeat to Republicans, who are eager to force President Obama to moderate the political tone of his nominees. With the GOP getting more aggressive about using the confirmation process to check Obama&#8217;s agenda, it&#8217;s clear that a high-stakes game between congressional Republicans and the White House is underway. Should the Supreme Court uphold the appellate court’s ruling, it would be a major setback for the administration and a major victory for those who&#8217;ve sought to rein in the NLRB&#8217;s radical pro-union agenda.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Why Obama Gives Video Game Violence a Pass</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/why-obama-gives-video-game-violence-a-pass/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=why-obama-gives-video-game-violence-a-pass</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 17 Jan 2013 04:49:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Guns]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[video games]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[violence]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=173818</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[For the Left, the entertainment industry is sacrosanct. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/why-obama-gives-video-game-violence-a-pass/violentgames2/" rel="attachment wp-att-173848"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-173848" title="violentgames2" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/violentgames2.jpg" alt="" width="240" height="181" /></a>Using children whose letters pleading for gun control were <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/wh-releases-letters-little-kids-pleading-gun-control_696099.html">released</a> to the Associated Press as props for his political theater, President Obama <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2013/0116/Unveiling-gun-control-initiative-Obama-cites-common-sense-measures">unveiled</a> a panoply of sweeping proposals aimed at ostensibly curbing gun violence. Included in those proposals were <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/01/16/list-executive-actions-obama-plans-to-take-as-part-anti-gun-violence-plan/">23 executive orders</a> that run the gamut from unnecessary, in that they don&#8217;t really require an executive order to carry out, to those that come perilously close to violating privacy and infringing on states&#8217; rights. Bowing to constitutional reality, the president further noted that congressional approval is required for the more restrictive measures. &#8220;To make a real and lasting difference, Congress must act,&#8221; Obama said. &#8220;And Congress must act soon.&#8221; Thus, the president has focused on most every factor related to lawful gun use. Conspicuously absent from the conversation are violent video games and other aspects of the sacrosanct entertainment industry.</p>
<p>The new <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/01/16/obama-urges-new-restrictions-on-assault-weapons-magazines-as-part-gun-control/">measures</a> requiring congressional approval, including a new and tougher assault weapons ban, a 10-bullet magazine limit, a ban on private possession of armor-piercing bullets, and criminal background checks that would encompass nearly all guns sales throughout the country, have been met with a great deal of skepticism regarding their odds of getting through a divided Congress, as well as outright <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/01/16/obama-gun-plan-meets-resistance-on-capitol-hill/">criticism</a>. &#8220;Nothing the president is proposing would have stopped the massacre at Sandy Hook,&#8221; said Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL). &#8220;President Obama is targeting the 2nd Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens instead of seriously addressing the real underlying causes of such violence.&#8221; &#8220;Instead of a thoughtful, open and deliberate conversation, President Obama is attempting to institute new restrictions on a fundamental constitutional right,&#8221; said Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), who further predicted the initiative would elicit &#8220;drawn-out court battles.&#8221; &#8220;Only honest, law-abiding gun owners will be affected, and our children will remain vulnerable to the inevitability of more tragedy&#8221; offered the NRA.</p>
<p>On the other side, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), in typical fashion, completely missed the point. &#8220;[The president] was exactly right when he said &#8216;weapons designed for the theater of war have no place&#8217; in our society. I couldn&#8217;t agree more. These weapons have one purpose: to kill the most people in the shortest amount of time possible,&#8221; she said. That would be the same Diane Feinstein who was <a href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/sen.-feinstein-suggests-national-buyback-of-guns/article/2516648">considering</a> a law creating a gun buy-back program from legal gun owners &#8212; that could be made <em>compulsory </em>&#8211; as recently as last December. She was joined by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo who, prior to ramming the toughest gun law in the nation through the state legislature, also suggested that &#8220;confiscation could be an option.&#8221; It is precisely that totalitarian impulse that drives Americans to want &#8220;weapons designed for war.&#8221;</p>
<p>Thus, it is entirely unsurprising that while the American left and their media enablers envision a &#8220;safer&#8221; world with less guns, their ham-fisted efforts are producing exactly the opposite of what they intend. Sales were &#8220;through the roof&#8221; at a gun show in Idaho <a href="http://www.kboi2.com/news/local/Boise-Gun-Show-186655341.html">last</a> Saturday. &#8220;These guns and ammo are going out the door in arm loads. Some people can hardly walk they&#8217;ve got so much stuff,&#8221; said organizer Paul Snider. In South Dakota, Michael Mooney, owner of Southern Hills Tactical, <a href="http://www.kotatv.com/story/20577058/gun-sales-skyrocket">reports</a> that he has sold 85 assault weapons in three days. &#8220;Never seen sales like this at all,&#8221; he said. In Kentucky, guns <a href="http://www.14news.com/story/20586887/brisk-gun-sales-leave-store-shelves-bare">are</a> &#8220;flying off store shelves,&#8221; and several gun shop owners are reporting &#8220;lines out the door.&#8221;</p>
<p>In Virginia, people showed up more than two hours <a href="http://wtvr.com/2013/01/13/busy-saturday-for-gun-show-in-richmond/">before</a> a gun show opened, and lines stretched hundreds of yards throughout the parking lot. “This is just a perfect example and sign that when the government starts trying to legislate new gun laws it’s going to create panic,” says Mark Lilly, who owns a small market across the street from the event. An annual gun show in Las Vegas has <a href="http://lasvegas.cbslocal.com/2013/01/15/60000-expected-to-attend-vegas-gun-show/">issued</a> credentials to nearly 60,000 people, who began showing up on Tuesday.</p>
<p>The FBI was also inundated. They revealed that the number of background checks conducted through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) <a href="http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/national_world/2013/01/02/gun-sales-set-record.html">set a record</a> in December, with nearly 2.8 million in sales transfers reported, up from the previous record number of 1.9 million sales recorded in December 2011. Checks for all of 2012 were record-setting as well, totaling 19.6 million, a number representing a 19 percent increase over 2011. These numbers only reflect checks of sales from commercial vendors with a federal license. They do not cover activity between private parties, nor do they reflect the number of actual guns sold, as someone who passes the FBI check can buy multiple weapons.</p>
<p>And in yet another unintended consequence, the Nation Rifle Association (NRA) has <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/01/15/nra-membership-has-grown-by-250000-in-one-month">reported</a> an increase in membership totaling 250,000 in the month since the tragedy in Newtown. Andrew Arulanandam, the NRA&#8217;s public affairs director minced no words explaining the the surge. &#8220;I would say that every time President Obama opens his mouth and Sen. Feinstein opens her mouth, and they talk about gun bans and restricting the rights of law abiding Americans, people pay attention to that and sign up,&#8221; he contended.</p>
<p>The organization also blistered the president in a new 35-second video on its website, describing him as an &#8220;elitist hypocrite&#8221; whose own children are protected at school, even as he has expressed skepticism about providing armed security in all schools. “Are the president’s kids more important than yours?” the narrator asks. “Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools when his kids are protected by armed guards at their school? Mr. Obama demands the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes, but he’s just another elitist hypocrite when it comes to a fair share of security.”</p>
<p>For those who might take issue with that description of the president, it is useful to remember his own <a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0408/Obama_on_smalltown_PA_Clinging_religion_guns_xenophobia.html">description</a> of &#8220;bitter&#8221; small-town Americans in places like Pennsylvania, who &#8220;cling to guns or religion.&#8221; Obama believed job losses were the primary driver of their bitterness. After four years of one of the weakest recoveries in history, the president has done next to nothing to alleviate that bitterness, even as he has apparently driven the number of those who wish to join the ranks of gun &#8220;clingers&#8221; to record levels.</p>
<p>Obama has apparently <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/01/15/ore-sheriff-says-wont-enforce-new-gun-laws/">reinvigorated</a> federalist impulses as well. Officials in Oregon and Texas have indicated that they will not enforce any new restrictions they consider unconstitutional. &#8220;We must not allow, nor shall we tolerate, the actions of criminals, no matter how heinous the crimes, to prompt politicians to enact laws that will infringe upon the liberties of responsible citizens who have broken no laws,&#8221; wrote Oregon sheriff Tim Mueller in a letter to Vice President Joe Biden. In Texas, Republican state Rep. Steve Toth will introduce legislation making it illegal to enforce restrictions on semi-automatic firearms or magazine sizes, even as he warned that federal officials attempting to do so would be subject to felony charges.</p>
<p>As for the idea that the president&#8217;s proposals will curb gun violence, even the leftist <em>New York Times</em> was <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/16/us/politics/obama-gun-proposal-to-look-beyond-mass-shootings.html?_r=0">forced</a> to acknowledge reality. &#8220;A new federal assault weapons ban and background checks of all gun buyers&#8230;might have done little to prevent the massacre in Newtown, Conn., last month. The semiautomatic rifle that Adam Lanza used to shoot 20 schoolchildren and 6 adults complied with Connecticut’s assault weapons ban, the police said, and he did not buy the gun himself,&#8221; the paper states. As for limiting the number of bullets in a magazine, Manhattan lawyer and gun-rights advocate Jerold E. Levine <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/new_law_has_lot_of_holes_BORK25RPsC6r4jNwBUpdVK">reveals</a> the folly of believing that represents any sort of solution. &#8220;A 30-round magazine is no more dangerous than two 15-round magazines, or more dangerous than three 10-round magazines, or more dangerous than six 5-round magazines,” he said. “It takes only two seconds to change the magazine in a semiautomatic gun.&#8221;</p>
<p>Conspicuously missing from the discussion to curb violence in America are video games and movies. Despite being <a href="http://www.currentargus.com/ci_22360812/video-game-industry-defense-gun-control-talks">summoned</a> to meet with Joe Biden&#8217;s task force last week, during which the Vice President wondered if video games contributed to a &#8220;coarsening of our culture,&#8221; the administration was apparently satisfied with a statement released by the Entertainment Software Association contending that &#8220;independent, scientific research conducted to date has found no causal connection between video games and real-life violence.&#8221; During that meeting, industry officials expressed fear they might be scapegoated &#8212; exactly like the administration is attempting to do with guns &#8212; for the carnage in Newtown.</p>
<p>Biden also <a href="http://thecelebritycafe.com/feature/2013/01/joe-biden-summons-hollywood-reps-washington-talk-gun-violence">met</a> with Hollywood and TV industry association executives, including MPAA chairman and former Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd, National Association of Broadcasters president Gordon Smith, and National Cable and Telecommunications Association president Michael Powell. They too emerged <a href="http://tv.yahoo.com/news/movies-tv-come-unscathed-meeting-violence-biden-181206228.html">&#8220;unscathed,&#8221;</a> with Dodd promising he would be “vehemently” against any government restrictions on violence in movies.</p>
<p>In his Jan. 16 address, Obama weakly called for Congress to pass funding for more studies on video game violence, but it is of course nothing compared to the president&#8217;s demonization of firearms. Such reticence on the part of the administration to suggest restrictions on the First Amendment rights of video game manufacturers and Hollywood, even as law-abiding gun owners&#8217; Second Amendment rights remain a target, reeks of a political double-standard. Obama and the Left have fixated on the type of guns used in recent mass shootings, but there has been almost a complete indifference to the shooters&#8217; universal obsession with video games, including Cho Seung-Hui, Jared Loughner, James Holmes and now Adam Lanza.  One may be forgiven for wondering where the current focus would be if Hollywood and video game execs were bedrock conservatives. Obama contended that &#8220;if there is even one thing we can do to reduce this violence, if there&#8217;s even one life that can be saved, then we&#8217;ve got an obligation to try.” Since video games and Hollywood have been excluded from such obligations, one is left to assume the president believes not a single life has been endangered by the steady stream of on-screen and video game violence produced by those he wishes to politically ingratiate himself with.</p>
<p>Until the president is willing to confront members of his own political constituency who contribute as much &#8212; if not more &#8212; to the coarsening of the culture and subsequent violence this administration ostensibly ignores, Obama&#8217;s efforts should be recognized for what they really are: the tiresomely familiar exploitation of a crisis in order foist another element of the progressive agenda on the American public while it remains emotionally vulnerable. Nothing more, nothing less.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Bad Inventions</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ann-coulter/bad-inventions/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=bad-inventions</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ann-coulter/bad-inventions/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 03 Jan 2013 04:35:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ann Coulter]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dishwasher]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fiscal cliff]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Government]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hand dryer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[inventions]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[silence]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=171953</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A list for all those sick of the fiscal cliff. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ann-coulter/bad-inventions/img_0098/" rel="attachment wp-att-171980"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-171980" title="IMG_0098" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/IMG_0098-450x337.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="202" /></a>I am bored with politics, refuse to pay attention to the news and am watching only True Crime TV shows and Turner Classic Movies these days. With the Democrats controlling the Senate and presidency, nothing good can possibly come out of Washington for at least another two years. So I thought I&#8217;d start the new year with something useful, like a short list of bad inventions.</p>
<p>(1) SILENT DISHWASHERS</p>
<p>Are people installing dishwashers next to their beds? I&#8217;ve checked my &#8220;Top 500 Daily Irritations&#8221; list and dishwasher noise is not on it.</p>
<p>What possible benefit derives from having a dishwasher that makes absolutely no noise? Was that gentle whooshing sound driving some homeowners bonkers? Is this a product designed by the same people who gave us the electric car, a vehicle so silent that the first sign of its approach is the sound of your pelvis breaking as the car hits you?</p>
<p>Not only are the virtues of a silent dishwasher elusive, but there&#8217;s one big disadvantage: You can&#8217;t tell if it&#8217;s running. A dishwasher doesn&#8217;t have to sound like the Concorde blasting off to provide some indication that the thing is working.</p>
<p>Now, in addition to the usual steps of washing dishes &#8212; loading the dishwasher, inserting the cleaning agent and turning on the machine &#8212; the fancy new quiet dishwashers demand yet another step of the homeowner: You have to hang around and keep putting your ear against the door hoping to hear activity. If you forget to perform this bonus time-waster, every once in a while you&#8217;ll start unloading dishes the next morning and notice that they&#8217;re still dirty.</p>
<p>The whole point of having a dishwasher is to minimize the work involved to get clean dishes. The dishwasher is a product that&#8217;s devolving.</p>
<p>(2) TELEPHONES WITH NO &#8220;OFF&#8221; BUTTON</p>
<p>There are only two crucial functions of a telephone: enabling you to talk to someone who is not in the same room, and to ring or &#8212; this is important &#8212; NOT ring. Without those, you have nothing.</p>
<p>For people with home offices, babies, small apartments or unusual hours, it&#8217;s the &#8220;not ring&#8221; feature that is the telephone&#8217;s most critical function. A phone with no ringer-off button is like a front door without a lock.</p>
<p>But over the past few years, cordless phone manufacturers have decided you should never be able to turn the ringer off. Like liberals, they think, &#8220;I don&#8217;t need an &#8216;off&#8217; button, so I don&#8217;t know why anyone else should, either.&#8221;</p>
<p>On nearly any modern landline phone, the only way to turn off the ringer is to read the manual. So now, something that used to be accomplished with the flick of a button reading &#8220;High-Low-Off&#8221; &#8212; a process so simple you could do it on a phone you had never laid eyes on before, in the dark, on a hotel phone, while sleepwalking &#8212; requires flipping through pages and pages of helpful tips from the manufacturer, such as &#8220;Do not submerge phone in bathtub&#8221; in order to find the seven counterintuitive steps required to turn your ringer off.</p>
<p>(Ironically, when I&#8217;m staying in a hotel and there&#8217;s no &#8220;ringer off&#8221; button on the telephone, I usually end up submerging the entire unit in the bathtub.)</p>
<p>Modern phones have loads of buttons to do things like change the ringer sound to chirping birds or Beethoven&#8217;s Fifth, or to emit beeps in case you&#8217;ve left it under a couch cushion. Those aren&#8217;t among the vital functions of a telephone. Turning off the ringer is.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s why people are abandoning their landlines for cellphones. True, home phones don&#8217;t work in cars or out on the street. But I think the main appeal of cellphones is that they have &#8220;off&#8221; buttons.</p>
<p>(3) AUTOMATIC FAUCETS, PAPER TOWEL DISPENSERS AND HAND DRYERS</p>
<p>Sensor-activated bathroom accoutrements are mostly found in airports. Airports are natural monopolies, meaning consumer satisfaction is not a factor. If you live in St. Louis, you can&#8217;t say, &#8220;I hate Lambert-St. Louis International Airport &#8212; let&#8217;s fly out of the San Francisco airport instead.&#8221;</p>
<p>Consequently, airports always have the most up-to-date technology for annoying the customer.</p>
<p>Were travelers tiring themselves out with the strenuous, back-breaking work of turning a faucet 15 degrees clockwise? Half the time, the sensors are broken, anyway. Free tip: James Bond technology isn&#8217;t all that &#8220;James Bond&#8221; if it doesn&#8217;t work.</p>
<p>If engineers can design a paper towel dispenser that saves consumers the exhausting motion of gently pulling down &#8212; instead, forcing them to wildly wave their hands in front of a non-working sensor like signers for the deaf at a Louis Farrakhan speech &#8212; can&#8217;t these same design mavens figure out how much paper a normal person needs to dry his hands? Does no one notice that people are always walking out of airport bathrooms picking toilet paper off their hands?</p>
<p>The blowing hand dryers often turn on and make that reassuring whooshing noise we miss on our dishwashers. The one thing they have absolutely no capacity to do is dry hands. I gather the idea is that if you stand there long enough your hands will eventually drip dry, long after your flight has pushed back from the gate. (At least no one in an airport has to be anywhere important.)</p>
<p>Some newer hand dryers on the market actually do dry hands in about 10 seconds. You see these hand dryers in restaurants and other commercial establishments that cater to customers. You will never see one in an airport. (What are travelers going to do? Fly out of a different airport?) I suppose we should be happy that instead of a row of toilet stalls, airport restrooms don&#8217;t just give us a long, floor-level trench.</p>
<p>Only liberals believe all novelty is progress. Monopolies such as airports give them free rein to impose their pointless, irritating devices on the rest of us. And the biggest monopoly of all is government. If you think airport hand dryers blow, wait until you read the fine print on the fiscal cliff deal. Which I won&#8217;t. I&#8217;ll be busy watching &#8220;Forensic Files.&#8221;</p>
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		<title>China: The Deadly Dragon</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/eric-burns/china-the-deadly-dragon/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=china-the-deadly-dragon</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 10 Dec 2012 04:40:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Eric Burns]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[China]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[regulations]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[A new book chronicles the casualties of the U.S.-China trade war. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/eric-burns/china-the-deadly-dragon/110118_china_us_flags-380/" rel="attachment wp-att-168587"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-168587" title="110118_china_us_flags.380" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/110118_china_us_flags.380.jpg" alt="" width="230" height="174" /></a>Around 5:30 a.m., on August 24, 2012, in Harbin City, Heilongjiang province, Manchuria, a ramp leading to the main roadway of the 9.6-mile Yangmingtan bridge collapsed, as did a 130-foot long section of the main roadway, depositing four trucks onto the road below; killing three and injuring five. Pictures of the accident showed the 130-foot long main roadway section dangling downward at a 45-degree angle, while one of the trucks lay on its side, looking as if it had been crushed by a giant foot. Dubious reasons were offered for the bridge collapse. Huang Yusheng, Deputy secretary of Harbin’s municipal government, blamed the collapse on overloaded trucks. Nevertheless, the bridge design and construction materials have come under intense scrutiny, and evidence points to culpability on the part of Harbin city officials.</p>
<p>Construction of the $294,000,000 (1.88 billion yuan) bridge was supposed to take 3 years, but was rushed to meet an 18-month deadline, imposed by Harbin authorities. A comment by Harbin’s construction committee is telling, “Because the commanding office for the construction of the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-19365154">Yangmingtan bridge</a> dissolved (after the completion of the project), we can’t track down the specific unit that was responsible for the segment of the bridge.”[1]</p>
<p>However, stories of injuries and fatalities resulting from shoddy Chinese workmanship and materials reverberate far beyond China. In May 2006, an ambulance in New Mexico, riding on Chinese-made tires, went out of control when the tires blew out. In August 2006, a van using Chinese-made tires crashed on the Pennsylvania turnpike, killing two passengers and causing serious brain damage to another. The American retail distributor, Foreign Tire Sales, Inc, (FTS) inspected the shredded tires. They found that the Chinese manufacturer, Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber Company(HZ), had removed a .6 millimeter thick gum strip, which prevents a tire’s steel belts from separating from the rubber, to save money on production costs. However, because the cost might put them out of business, FTS postponed asking the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to issue a recall. When FTS failed to submit all of its test results until June 2007, the victims’ attorney sued them.</p>
<p>However, FTS pressed HZ about the missing gum strips; the Chinese company issued a boilerplate denial, effectively stating that the tires were not a problem. At a face to face meeting in Hangzhou, China, FTS pressed the Chinese importer to take responsibility for the recall, and replace the defective tires. <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2007-07-22/an-importers-worst-nightmare">Admitting they had removed the gum strips,</a> HZ was nevertheless noncommittal on replacing defective tires; and silent on which tires lacked gum strips. After issuing a recall on June 11, 2007, the NHTSA sent HZ a letter, effectively stating that their inability to afford a recall wasn’t acceptable. The Chinese importer then questioned the needed recall, reiterating that the tires weren’t defective. As a result, FTS now routinely tests tires, and is considering new contracts; that would obligate Chinese manufacturers to pay for future recalls. New contracts would also obligate the Chinese to settle disputes in Hong Kong, where the legal system is better adapted to American commercial interests. Subsequently, in the case of <em>McCulley v. General Motors</em>, HZ motioned for a protective order from the plaintiff’s discovery requests, which sought “tire specifications, formulas, and change orders.” HZ asserted “…that the information constituted trade secrets, and was irrelevant to pending disputes….” The motion was dismissed on May 6, 2008, when the trial judge characterized it as “an improper attempt to circumvent a judge of co-equal jurisdiction.” [2]</p>
<p>However, Chinese criminal negligence and penny pinching practices include the manufacture of food and medicine. Zhao Lianhai, a well-known activist who had participated in the June 1989 demonstrations in Tiananmen square, was jailed for 2 ½ years in 2010, for campaigning for compensation for victims of a 2008 contaminated baby milk scandal. It was found that the manufacturer had laced the milk formula with melamine, a toxic industrial chemical, to give it a high protein content reading; resulting in the deaths of 6 infants, one of whom was Zhao’s child. Melamine is usually used to make plastics, concrete, and fertilizers; but when added to food, it can cause kidney stones and kidney failure. 300,000 children were sickened by <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11724323">melamine tainted milk</a>; and in 2008, melamine was found in the products of one of every five dairy suppliers in China.</p>
<p>From defective building materials to defective consumer goods, to industrial waste chemicals in manufactured food, to dimethyl fumarate in furniture; to cornering and manipulating the world market in rare earths and industrial metals; to rapacious practices in space exploration; to keeping the value of the yuan artificially low; China is indeed out to impoverish and poison its neighbors, and seemingly itself.</p>
<p>Included in this laundry list of predatory practices, should be stealing American trade secrets, product designs, and top secret military intelligence; in the name of economic domination. Along the way, China has amassed a huge reserve of foreign capital, mostly in U.S. dollars, and they’ve used that reserve to buy U.S. treasury bonds, and strengthen their military. China now owns at least one-third of the $16.3 trillion U.S. debt, and at least 50% of America’s trade imbalance is from China. China has increased its defense budget “by double digits” every year for the past 20 years.[3] The Chinese Navy is now strong enough to challenge the U.S. Navy in the waters off the Chinese mainland, in Indonesian waters; off of Taiwan; and in the Yellow Sea, off Korea. China is arguably the world’s most dangerous nation. What is to be done?</p>
<p>A recent book, “Death by China: Confronting the Dragon—a global call to action,” by University of California economists Peter Navarro and Greg Autry, answers this question admirably. (Prentice-Hall 2011) The authors carefully break down the debilitating economic effects of trading with China, on their terms, and the health risks to those who buy Chinese consumer goods, in chapters titled, “Death by Chinese Poison,” “Death by Chinese Junk,” “Death to America’s Manufacturing Base,” and “Death by Currency Manipulation.”</p>
<p>They also mention that since 1999, China has systematically destroyed America’s manufacturing base, with the U.S. economy growing at a paltry 2.4% per year, on average; while simultaneously, China’s economy has grown, on average, at 10% annually. America’s rate of growth during the first decade of the 21<sup>st</sup> century was 25% below the 3.2% average growth rate of 1946-1999. [4]</p>
<p>In “Death to America’s Manufacturing Base,” Navarro and Autry explain how China has accomplished this destruction; by several unfair trade practices, which they call “Eight Weapons of Job Destruction.” These include export subsidies, currency manipulation, theft of American corporate product ideas/designs; lax health and safety regulations—which result in untold numbers of injuries and deaths of Chinese workers; restricting the export of necessary industrial materials, such as bauxite, fluorspar, silicone carbide, and zinc; jealously guarding their domination of the world rare earth market (China accounts for over 90% of world rare earth production); and high tariffs on imports. [5]</p>
<p>More specifically, the authors emphasize that “America imports almost $1 billion a day more than it exports to China every business day,” and then explain exactly how China’s currency manipulation has devastated American manufacturing. They then mention that as a candidate, President Obama repeatedly promised to pressure China on unfair trade practices. As President, Obama has not only refused to brand Chinese currency manipulation, he has “wrongly put politics and his administration’s short-term financing needs ahead of America’s prospects for long term economic recovery,” by encouraging China to keep buying U.S. Treasury bonds, without taking meaningful action on trade reform. They are also concerned that “President Obama seems totally incapable of connecting the increasingly obvious dots between America’s economic malaise and China’s Weapons of Job Destruction.” [6]</p>
<p>Equally important, the authors emphasize American corporate complicity with outrageous Chinese trade practices. They assert that our current problems with China began partly as a result of “ideological rigidity” on the part of <a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/">President George W. Bush</a>, who had serious misconceptions about China’s responses to American trade initiatives. Bush was convinced that making China a normal trade partner would mean “much lower trade barriers and enormous opportunities for U.S. exporters.”  However, Navarro and Autry further assert that much of America’s trade problem with China results from a lack of patriotism on the part of many American CEO’s, as evidenced by three waves of offshoring. When American CEO’s realized that production could be accomplished cheaply in China, they began to enter into draconian trade agreements with Chinese companies; that often require American companies to surrender control of the enterprise, and mandate forced technology transfers. These transfers have resulted in the “forced export of Western research and development facilities to China,…a gross violation of World Trade Organization rules,” which result in job creation in China, not America. Information contained in these unconscionable and self-destructive transfers is often conveyed to the Chinese government. Specific examples are given, such as GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt transferring GE’s “entire global avionics business” to China, so GE could participate in the development of a Chinese passenger jet. [7]</p>
<p>However, the best part of <em>Death by China </em>is the final chapter, “<em>Life with China: How to survive and prosper in the Dragon’s Century.</em>” It includes practical suggestions as to how America can combat and solve the problems listed above; and how America can reduce China’s cyber warfare, aggressively prosecute Chinese spies, and meet China’s challenge in space. The solutions they offer include: putting Chinese consumer goods back on the shelf, unless absolutely needed; demanding more specific ingredient labeling; tort reform that makes Chinese importers liable, and legislation that foils China’s “Weapons of Job Destruction.” <strong>Death by China</strong> is an easy read, for the layman wanting a straightforward explanation of American-Chinese trade problems; and for the legislator wanting a comprehensive guide to solving a large chunk of America’s unemployment problem.</p>
<p><strong>Notes:</strong></p>
<p>[1] <a href="http://1-www.ministryoftofu.com/2012/08/Another-tofu-dreg/tag/Yangmingtan-bridgeproject">www.ministryoftofu.com/2012/08/Another-tofu-dreg/tag/Yangmingtan-bridgeproject</a>.</p>
<p>[2] Opinion of Judge William Manfredi, Court of Common Pleas, Philadelphia County, Pa.; October 15, 2008; David Welch, &#8220;An Importer&#8217;s Worst Nightmare,&#8221; at <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2007-07-22/an-importers-worst-nightmare" target="_blank">www.businessweek.com/stories/<wbr>2007-07-22/an-importers-worst-<wbr>nightmare</wbr></wbr></a></p>
<p>[3] “Morning Bell,” Heritage Foundation Newsletter, 11/17/2011; Death by China: Confronting the Dragon, a global call to action; by Peter Navarro and Greg Autry (New York: Prentice-Hall 2011), 68.</p>
<p>[4] Death by China, 52.</p>
<p>[5] Ibid., 55-66.</p>
<p>[6] Ibid., 68, 73-74, 224.</p>
<p>[7] <a href="http://7-www.ontheissues.org/George_W_Bush_Foreign_Policy.htm">www.ontheissues.org/George_W_Bush_Foreign_Policy.htm</a>; Death by China, 81, 87.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>ObamaCare Already Hurting Workers</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/obamacare-already-hurting-workers/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamacare-already-hurting-workers</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 12 Oct 2012 04:05:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[50 employees r]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[business]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Darden]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[employers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[regulations]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=147855</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The unintended consequences of leftist policies. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/obamacare-already-hurting-workers/rtr2xk6k/" rel="attachment wp-att-148146"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-148146" title="RTR2XK6K" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/RTR2XK6K.gif" alt="" width="315" height="228" /></a>The Left is expert at selling its statist, government-knows-best agenda as being in the service of the &#8220;greater good,&#8221; improving the overall quality of life for individual citizens. These policies, however, almost always cause unintended consequences that leave the targeted individuals &#8212; and scores of ancillary parties &#8212; at the mercy of myopic government meddling. The ever-expanding list of unintended consequences produced by the disastrous Obamacare law provide a case in point.</p>
<p>The latest example concerns Darden Restaurants, an Orlando-based company that operates such franchises as Olive Gardens, Red Lobsters, and LongHorn Steakhouses. The company is <a href="http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-10-07/business/os-darden-part-time-workers-20121007_1_darden-restaurants-health-insurance-olive-gardens">reacting</a> to the mandates imposed by the Affordable Healthcare Act, aka ObamaCare. According to one of the mandates in the the bill, employers do not have to provide health-insurance coverage to part-time workers, as long as they work less than 30 hours a week. Another says that a company with 50 or more employees must provide health insurance for their employees, or face fines of up to $3000 per worker for failing to do so.</p>
<p>Darden Restaurants is &#8220;experimenting&#8221; with a way to get around both of those mandates. In &#8220;a select number&#8221; of restaurants in four different and as yet undisclosed markets, Darden is putting almost their <em>entire</em> roster of employees at each location on part-time hours. In an emailed statement to the <em>Orlando Sentinel,</em> the company contends that staffing changes are &#8220;just one of the many things we are evaluating to help us address the cost implications health care reform will have on our business. There are still many unanswered questions regarding the health care regulations and we simply do not have enough information to make any decisions at this time.&#8221;  Darden is attempting to answer one of those questions by limiting every employee to 28 hours of work per week. Former Olive Garden busboy Keaton Hasty noted the level of seriousness behind the initiative. &#8220;It was 29 1/2 (hours), and they&#8217;d kick you out,&#8221; said Hasty, who now works at a pharmacy. &#8220;They&#8217;d always print off a little slip every day and say who was getting close.&#8221;</p>
<p>Thus, Darden has met the first of the two aforementioned mandates head-on. The other part of this equation concerns companies that employ 50 or more workers, who must also provide those employees with health insurance, or face a significant fine for failing to do so. <em>That </em>particular part of the equation is hardly unintended, as progressives have made no secret of the fact that &#8220;incentivizing&#8221; businesses to pay the fine and drive their workers to government exchanges, is part of the long-term goal of getting every American on a government-run health plan.</p>
<p>Yet again, dynamic behavior will inevitably produce the obvious unintended consequences of this arrangement: companies with a roster of employees close to the threshold number of 50 will have almost no reason whatsoever to hire any additional workers, if those additional workers put them under the statist boot they can otherwise avoid. And a company with slightly more than 50 employees may be perversely inspired to find a way to <em>reduce</em> their number of workers, also in order to get below the threshold. If the volume of work necessitates additional help? Companies will likely <a href="http://www.obamacarewatch.org/primer/employer-mandate">outsource</a> the work even if it is more inefficient than hiring new employees directly.</p>
<p>In effect, Darden has solved the problems imposed by both mandates. Since part-time workers are not required to be covered, Darden can have as many employees as it wants to hire, and as long as they work less than 30 hours per week, they will not be liable for healthcare coverage, <em>or</em> the fine imposed for failing to provide it. Unsurprisingly, Darden Restaurants are not alone. Analysts contend other companies, including the White Castle hamburger chain, are looking to do the same thing. &#8220;I think a lot of those employers, especially restaurants, are just going to ensure nobody gets scheduled more than 30 hours a week,&#8221; said Matthew Snook, partner with human-resources consulting company Mercer.</p>
<p>Yet that is only part of the equation. Since Darden is large enough and profitable enough, progressive critics <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/10/11/995131/restaurant-company-uses-obamacare-as-an-excuse-to-shift-to-part-time-workers/">contend</a> that it is &#8220;prioritizing profits over employees’ satisfaction and well-being&#8221; and that additional laws could be added to ObamaCare to prevent such &#8220;benefit-dodging.&#8221; This is due to the reality that ObamaCare &#8220;only modestly increases health care spending for large firms,&#8221; an increase progressives apparently feel it is the &#8220;duty&#8221; of large companies to absorb. They further contend that imposing ObamaCare on small businesses <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/10/09/979101/study-obamacare-reduces-costs-for-small-businesses/">reduces</a> their healthcare costs based on three factors: the less than 50 employee exemption, a tax credit to help with the costs of healthcare premiums for companies that employ 25 workers or less (with an average salary of $50,000 or less), and a more competitive market produced by the state-run healthcare exchanges mandated by the plan.</p>
<p>The first factor has already been debunked. As for the second, tax credits only matter if a small company wants to provide their employees with insurance&#8211;assuming they have the wherewithal to do it in the first place. Many small companies operate on low profit margins, and <em>any</em> extra burden imposed on them by government is a disincentive to hire. The idea that a tax credit&#8211;as opposed to maintaining a profit margin&#8211;will incentivize not only additional employment, but the acquisition of an employee healthcare plan as well, is the stuff of progressive dreams.</p>
<p>Yet it is the idea of state-run exchanges where the whole scheme falls apart. Part of the Supreme Court ruling that deemed the healthcare law constitutional also <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/304729/states-resist-obamacare-michael-tanner">allowed</a> the states to resist setting up those exchanges. Thus, in yet another classic example of unintended consequences, several states have already decided to do just that. As a result, the burden to do so would fall on the federal government. Yet that burden has neither been included in the cost projections of ObamaCare, which have already been revised <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/critical-condition/316153/obamacare-it-s-still-gateway-single-payer-health-care-sen-tom-coburn">upwards</a> to $1.7 trillion over the next decade, nor has it been part of any additional budget appropriations enacted by Congress. Furthermore, the taxes and/or penalties imposed on companies with 50 or more employees only applies if at least one employee qualifies for subsidies that would be available using these exchanges. Thus it is very possible that individual states could invalidate the entire concept of an employer mandate.</p>
<p>No doubt for many progressives and their top-down centralized government ambitions, the concept of states rights&#8217; itself is one of those &#8220;annoying&#8221; unintended consequences.</p>
<p>In the meantime, 25 percent of Darden&#8217;s workforce is full-time. And as ironical as it gets, every one of their approximately 185,000 employees is offered health insurance. Many of those employees are offered a limited-benefit plan, which may or may not be sufficient to cover all of their needs. But it is certainly better than no plan at all. Unfortunately, limited-benefit plans are yet <em>another</em> casualty of ObamaCare, which is phasing out such coverage, and will eventually ban annual limits on most health plans. Thus, Darden may be permanently phasing out full-time employment in response.</p>
<p>As far as progressives are concerned, all of the above can be filed under the heading of &#8220;unintended consequences,&#8221; with the implication being that they did their best, but no one could foresee what would actually occur. Such preposterous nonsense is no longer acceptable. Progressives and their ideology will be responsible for the millions of Americans who will be relegated to a future of part-time employment&#8211;if they can find employment at all. Moreover, Americans have been far too tolerant regarding the failure of progressives and their &#8220;good intentions.&#8221; In this case, they are little more than perverse disincentives for job creation, for which progressives offer no solutions other than ginning up guilt&#8211;or introducing even more government mandates into the equation: the Obama administration has claimed they can <em>unilaterally</em> rewrite the healthcare law to close the exchange loophole.</p>
<p>Given this administration&#8217;s utter lack of respect for the constitutionally-mandated separation of powers, it is more than likely they will pursue this strategy. But they should expect two results in return. First, any changes in the law will undoubtedly be challenged, likely ending up in the Supreme Court yet again. Second, no matter what the outcome of that challenge will be, Americans will react dynamically to it&#8211;all unintended consequences included.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The EPA&#8217;s Disturbing Human Experiments</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/the-epas-disturbing-human-experiments/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-epas-disturbing-human-experiments</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 02 Oct 2012 04:45:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[carcinogens]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[EPA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[human experiments]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lisa jackson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[regulations]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=146415</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Unhealthy people purposely exposed to what the agency defines as lethal amounts of toxic gas. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/large_ljackson.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-146445" title="large_ljackson" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/large_ljackson.gif" alt="" width="375" height="251" /></a>If the shocking allegations contained in a lawsuit <a href="http://nlpc.org/stories/2012/09/25/epa-sued-over-heinous-experiments-humans">filed</a> last Friday by responsible science advocate Steven Milloy are accurate, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a major scandal on its hands. As reported by the <a href="http://nlpc.org/stories/2012/09/25/epa-sued-over-heinous-experiments-humans">National Legal and Policy Center</a>, Milloy initiated litigation in U.S. District Court in Virginia, based on evidence he accumulated via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). He alleges that the EPA engaged in disturbing experimentation that deliberately exposed human beings to airborne particulate matter the agency itself considers lethal. The experiments were conducted at EPA’s Human Studies Facility at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. “That EPA administrator Lisa Jackson permitted this heinous experimentation to occur under her watch shocks the conscience,” said Milloy.</p>
<p>The suit <a href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/examiner-local-editorial-epa-accused-of-illegal-human-experimentation/article/2509226">accuses</a> the EPA of paying as many as 41 participants $12 an hour to breathe in concentrated diesel exhaust, for as long a two hours at a time. The exhaust was directly piped in from a truck parked outside the Chapel Hill facility. According to the lawsuit, the fine particulate matter, called “PM2.5,&#8221; was piped in at levels 21 times greater than what the EPA calls its &#8220;permissible limit.&#8221;</p>
<p>Yet even that phrase is misleading. In testimony <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/06/epas_unethical_air_pollution_experiments.html">delivered</a> to Congress in September of 2011, EPA chief Lisa Jackson claimed that exposure to fine particulate matter of 2.5 microns&#8211;or less&#8211;was <em>lethal.</em> &#8220;Particulate matter causes premature death. It&#8217;s directly causal to dying sooner than you should,&#8221; she testified at the time.</p>
<p>Milloy learned about the experiments last year, after reading about them in a government-supported scientific journal. In June, he <a href="http://nlpc.org/stories/2012/06/15/epa-bind-over-hazardous-experiments-humans">filed</a> a complaint with the North Carolina Medical Board, accusing Drs. Andrew Ghio and Wayne Cascio, both of whom were employed by the EPA, along with Dr. Eugene Chung, who worked for the University of North Carolina, of violating EPA standards of conduct in human research and the Hippocratic Oath. &#8220;During these experiments, the study subjects were intentionally exposed to airborne fine particulate matter (&#8216;PM2.5&#8242;) at levels ranging from 41.54 micrograms per cubic meter to 750.83 micrograms per cubic meter for periods of up to two hours,” Milloy wrote to Dr. Ralph C. Loomis, president of the NC Medical Board. “The EPA also believes that PM2.5 is carcinogenic to humans,” he added.</p>
<p>Dr. David Schnare, a former EPA litigator who is now director of American Tradition Institute’s Environmental Law Center, which filed the lawsuit, painted a detailed and chilling picture of exactly how the experiments were conducted. “EPA parked a truck’s exhaust pipe directly beneath an intake pipe on the side of a building,&#8221; he revealed. &#8220;The exhaust was sucked into the pipe, mixed with some additional air and then piped directly into the lungs of the human subjects. EPA actually has pictures of this gas chamber, a clear plastic pipe stuck into the mouth of a subject, his lips sealing it to his face, diesel fumes inhaled straight into his lungs.”</p>
<p>Milloy added some historic perspective to the mix. “In the context of rules established after scientific horrors of World War II and the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, the notion that EPA would pipe high levels of PM2.5 and diesel exhaust into the lungs of unhealthy people to see what would happen is simply appalling,” he said in a press release announcing the lawsuit.</p>
<p>&#8220;Unhealthy&#8221; is an accurate assessment. The 41 subjects who took part in the experiment included people who were elderly or suffering from asthma, hypertension or metabolic syndrome. One of them, an obese 58-year-old woman with a history of health problems and family history of heart disease, experienced an irregular heartbeat (atrial fibrillation) and had to be hospitalized as a result. Another subject developed an elevated heart rate. Both resumed normal respiratory and cardiac functions within two hours&#8211;according to an EPA report.</p>
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		<title>Obama’s One-Man Empire</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/obama%e2%80%99s-one-man-empire/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama%25e2%2580%2599s-one-man-empire</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/obama%e2%80%99s-one-man-empire/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 16 Aug 2012 04:50:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bureaucracy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Congress]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Czars]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Federal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[regulations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rules]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[separation of powers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Supreme Court]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=140352</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How bureaucracy turned into tyranny. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/o-speaks.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-140560" title="o-speaks" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/o-speaks.gif" alt="" width="375" height="253" /></a>If you ever played computer solitaire at work, failed to put up a wheelchair accessible ramp or snipped the tag off a mattress, then you may already be on the wrong side of the law. There are thousands of Federal criminal statutes and hundreds of thousands of regulations that carry criminal penalties; so many that most people violate one or more of them every year without even knowing it. Under Obama, the number of violations has increased dramatically with omnibus 2,000- and 3,000-page bills, whose full contents no one knows, rushed into law, making every American into a potential criminal.</p>
<p>In just the first two years, the Obama Administration imposed 40 billion dollars worth of new regulations. Obama added over 100,000 federal employees, an increase of 6 percent, to pad out the byzantine bureaucracy of his regulatory empire. Under his 2012 budget the size of government will have doubled from when he took office to 2021. In 2001, federal outlays were below 2 trillion. In 2006, when the Democrats took Congress, they hit 2.66 trillion, and last year they approached 4 trillion dollars.</p>
<p>All that money and power is going into an empire of czars and commissars. While cabinet members have to be approved by the Senate, czars do not. Obama has 38 czars, compared to 8 for Bill Clinton, that cover everything from Asian carp (yes there’s an Asian carp czar) to the automobile industry to online security to ethics. Bypassing the cabinet also allows Obama to bypass the traditional limitations on executive power.</p>
<p>From massive bills to unregulated czars, the dominant theme of this administration is paranoid secrecy. The expansion of government that we know about is a fraction of the true expansion occurring below the radar, packed away in a subparagraph on the 1209<sup>th</sup> page of a 3000-page bill and in the functions of the bureaucracies that they create and the czars who oversee their empires.</p>
<p>As part of the 2011 budget deal a number of the more egregious czars were supposed to be eliminated, but Obama broke the budget deal and inserted a signing statement that claimed the deal violated the separation of powers between the branches of government. The appeal to the separation of powers was stunningly hypocritical as the entire purpose of his empire of czars was bypassing Senate confirmation.</p>
<p>Obama’s separation from the separation of powers only increased this month as he signed into law the “Presidential Appointment Efficiency and Streamlining Act of 2011” which widens the scope of the imperial presidency. Rosa Gumataotao Rios, Obama’s nominee for Treasurer of the United States, had to be confirmed by the United States Senate. Rosa however will be the last Treasurer to require Senate confirmation now that the Act has become law.</p>
<p>Among the other key positions that can now be filled without Senate approval is that of Chief Scientist of NOAA, a hub of Global Warming activism. The Obama Administration had been unable to get its pick for Chief Scientist through the Senate legally. That will no longer be an obstacle. Also exempted from Senate confirmation are the directors of the Office for Domestic Preparedness, the United States Mint, the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the National Institute of Justice. The Council of Economic Advisers will also no longer require Senate confirmation.</p>
<p>Most cabinet positions will still require confirmation, but many assistant secretary positions will not, which will make it possible for Obama to move more radical appointees into higher positions within the Department of Defense, the Department of Agriculture, the Treasury Department and the Justice Department. Additionally the leadership of the Commodity Credit Corporation, which has a great deal of influence on the life of the American farmer, will no longer require Senate confirmation.</p>
<p>But Obama has become expert at making unilateral appointments even without the benefit of the “Presidential Appointment Efficiency and Streamlining Act of 2011.” When Obama couldn’t get the appointments he wanted, he bypassed the Senate by making recess appointments even when the Senate was not in recess. And the purpose of all those appointments and czars was to build an infrastructure that would allow him to maintain complete control of the United States of America without the need for legislative action and even in defiance of legislative and judicial action.</p>
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		<title>The Business That Government Built</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/jlaksin/the-business-that-government-built/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-business-that-government-built</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/jlaksin/the-business-that-government-built/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 19 Jul 2012 04:45:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[regulations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Small Business]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=137801</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[President Obama thinks that government deserves the credit for small businesses' success. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/100927_obama_small_business_owner_ap_392_regular.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-137802" title="100927_obama_small_business_owner_ap_392_regular" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/100927_obama_small_business_owner_ap_392_regular-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" /></a>Like most office seekers, President Obama has been relentless in professing his support for small businesses, which he calls the “<a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/05/13/small-businesses-backbone-americas-economy">backbone of America’s economy</a>.” So it was revealing when the president went off-script in Roanoke, Va., recently and announced that to the extent that businesses succeeded in the marketplace, the credit belonged elsewhere.</p>
<p>“If you’ve got a business &#8212; you didn’t build that,&#8221; Obama explained. &#8220;Somebody else made that happen.&#8221; He went on to lecture entrepreneurs that “you didn’t get there on your own &#8230; somebody along the line gave you some help.” As to who that &#8220;somebody&#8221; was, the president&#8217;s emphasis on government funding for roads, bridges and the Internet spoke volumes. Even as he confined himself to praising the “unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive,” it was patently clear that Obama’s conception of entrepreneurial success was predicated at least in part on the benevolent hand of government.</p>
<p>On one level, the president’s comment is unobjectionable. It is doubtless true that government funding for transportation infrastructure has made it easier to do business in America, though that ignores the obvious corollary that taxpayers, including business owners, financed it. But on another level, the president’s insight is remarkably tone-deaf, ignoring both the tremendous personal sacrifices of time and money that small business owners and entrepreneurs make to start and sustain their ventures, and the considerable hurdles that the government erects to their success.</p>
<p>Though it might surprise the president, many successful small business owners did &#8220;make that happen.&#8221; To do so, they made an investment of time, financial resources and intellectual capital that was both tremendous and unaided by government assistance. They incurred massive amounts of debt. They took out second mortgages or borrowed money from their retirement accounts. They worked punishing hours to make their businesses profitable. They gave up paychecks in order to pay their employees. “We hear that narrative a lot from our members,” says Cynthia Magnuson, a spokesman for the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), which represents small businesses.</p>
<p>Their risk has not always brought reward. From January to June of this year, over 30,000 businesses filed for bankruptcy &#8212; a stark reminder of what those who start businesses have to lose, especially when one bears in mind that the numbers represented a significant improvement on recent trends. At a time when capital is scarce – more than two of five small business owners have been <a href="http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/2833-small-business-capital-access.html">unable to find funding </a>in the last four years when they have needed it – starting a business amounts to a great gamble. One might suppose that the president would want to applaud those who brave the odds and the harsh economic climate to start a business. Instead the president wants to tout the government&#8217;s alleged role in their success.</p>
<p>That role is in any case vastly overstated. Small businesses often succeed despite government, not because of it. A December 2011 survey by the by the NFIB found that 19 percent of respondents cited government “<a href="http://www.nfib.com/research-foundation/surveys/small-business-economic-trends?utm_campaign=SBET&amp;utm_source=Releases&amp;utm_medium=Releases">regulations and red tape</a>” as their biggest business problem – trailing only “poor sales&#8221; and &#8220;high taxes.&#8221; It&#8217;s not hard to see why. If there is one task at which government is unrivaled, it’s creating cumbersome new regulations. Every year some 80,000 pages of new rules and regulations are added to the <em>Federal Register. </em>The Obama administration has been no slouch in this regard, imposing 106 new major regulations, at a cost of $<a href="http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/03/red-tape-rising-obama-era-regulation-at-the-three-year-mark">46 billion annually</a>.</p>
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		<title>Time for an &#8216;American Reset&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/time-for-an-american-reset/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=time-for-an-american-reset</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/time-for-an-american-reset/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 13 Jun 2012 04:18:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan W. Dowd]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[regulations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reset]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Spending]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=134681</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The top five dead weights dragging the country down. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/american-flag.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-134718" title="american-flag" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/american-flag.gif" alt="" width="375" height="257" /></a>The Obama administration made a big deal about its “Russian Reset”—a policy aimed at emphasizing U.S.-Russian relations by basically starting over. The fact that the Russian Reset yielded little more than some <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19719.html">embarrassing moments</a> for the secretary of state is a subject for another essay. What’s relevant here is that after some 40 months of President Barack Obama, it’s time for an “American Reset.”</p>
<p><strong>Reset federal spending</strong><em><br />
</em></p>
<p>President Obama has added $5 trillion in debt. The federal government has spent more than 24 percent of GDP in each of President Obama’s years in the White House, far above the historic average of 20 percent. The federal debt, as a share of GDP, is the highest it has been since World War II—when we had a much better reason to run up record debt. And each and every year he has been in office, President Obama has carried a deficit above $1 trillion—an unprecedented feat.</p>
<p>Not even the president’s friends in the mainstream media can ignore the reality that the Obama administration has engaged in the most profligate spending spree in American history. <em>The Washington Post</em>, for instance, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/the-facts-about-the-growth-of-spending-under-obama/2012/05/24/gJQAIJh6nU_blog.html">notes</a> that “the compound annual growth rate for President Obama’s spending starting in 2009 is 5.2 percent” and “in every case, the president wanted to spend more money than he ended up getting.”</p>
<p>In other words, Congress actually reined the president in—but not before he spawned the Affordable Care Act. According to his own numbers, the president’s healthcare behemoth will cost $1 trillion. That number will surely grow larger than his actuaries predict. It pays to recall Washington’s poor track record when it comes to out-year projections. <em>The Wall Street Journal </em>reminds us that in 1965, Congress estimated Medicare would cost $3.1 billion in 1970. The actual cost was $6.8 billion. Two years later, Congress predicted that Medicare would consume just $12 billion in 1990. In fact, it was $110 billion.</p>
<p>Given that the president found a way to grow the federal government by 25 percent—with little to show for his stimulus programs, bailouts and government takeovers—returning spending to 2008 levels seems eminently sensible.</p>
<p><strong>Reset regulations</strong><em><br />
</em></p>
<p>Contrary to the president’s recent slip of the tongue, the private sector isn’t doing fine. One of the reasons is the vast web of regulations he has spun in the banking, financial, healthcare and energy sectors. A Heritage Foundation study found that the Obama administration has issued four times as many major <a href="http://blog.heritage.org/2012/03/18/chart-of-the-week-obama-tops-bush-with-more-costlier-major-regulations/">regulations</a>—regulations costing $100 million or more—as its predecessor. The result: taxpayers and industry have been forced to cough up $46 billion to comply with new regulations—more than five times the cost of Bush-era regs.</p>
<p>Some of President Obama’s most costly regulations are not even fully realized yet. Take the EPA’s regulations on coal, for instance. As <em>The New York Times</em> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/business/energy-environment/even-in-kentucky-coal-industry-is-under-siege.html?_r=1&amp;hp">reports</a>, 100 of the 500 coal-burning power plants in the United States will be closed in the next few years largely “because new pollution rules have made coal plants more costly.” Retrofitting a coal-electricity plant in Kentucky in order to meet the Obama administration’s coal-killing regulatory requirements will cost $1 billion and has triggered a 30-percent increase in electricity rates, according to the <em>Times</em>.</p>
<p>“This EPA is fully engaging in a war on coal,” as Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) argues. The EPA’s war is killing coal-derived electricity, which will have a long-term effect on consumers and their pocketbooks. “Coal-fired power plants,” the pro-market group American Commitment reports, “are now generating just 36 percent of U.S. electricity, versus 44.6 percent just one year ago”—thanks to regs handed down during the Obama administration.</p>
<p>Speaking of long-term effects, the drag ObamaCare will place on the economy is only now beginning to show. The CBO projects that the IRS will need 17,000 new employees to enforce elements of the healthcare law. The president’s healthcare entitlement creates 159 new sub-agencies, committees, bureaus and commissions, each with a regulatory role. All told, according to a <em>Washington Post</em> analysis, between 100,000 and 250,000 new government employees are needed to meet the growing demands of President Obama’s supersized government.</p>
<p><strong>Reset the social contract</strong><em><br />
</em></p>
<p>The Heritage Foundation reports that “more people than ever before—67.3 million Americans, from college students to retirees to welfare beneficiaries—depend on the federal government for housing, food, income, student aid or other assistance once considered to be the responsibility of individuals, families, neighborhoods, churches and other civil society institutions.” Government dependence didn’t start under President Obama, but it has certainly accelerated. The Heritage Foundation’s Index on Government Dependency concludes that dependence on government has jumped 23 percent since 2008.</p>
<p>Consider some specific examples: <em>Investor’s Business Daily</em> <a href="http://news.investors.com/article/613655/201206041914/obama-economic-recovery-worst-since-great-depression.htm">reports</a> that the number of Americans on food stamps, which now eclipses 45 million, is the highest on record. <em>The Wall Street Journal</em> adds that nearly <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2012/05/26/number-of-the-week-half-of-u-s-lives-in-household-getting-benefits/">50 percent</a> of Americans live in a household that receives some form of government assistance—up from 44 percent in 2008, which was up from 30 percent in the early 1980s. <em>The Washington Post</em> <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/job-recovery-is-scant-for-americans-in-prime-working-years/2012/05/29/gJQAnza9zU_print.html">reports</a> that some 4 million out-of-work Americans have stopped looking for work, choosing instead to take early retirement (if they are 62 or older) or to try to ride out the worst of the recession on unemployment (which, at up to 99 weeks, is more generous than it’s ever been).</p>
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		<title>EPA&#8217;s &#8216;Crucifixion&#8217; of Energy Sector Exposed</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/rich-trzupek/epa-abuse-takes-center-stage/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=epa-abuse-takes-center-stage</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/rich-trzupek/epa-abuse-takes-center-stage/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 27 Apr 2012 04:44:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Al Armendariz]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[crucify]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[environmental protection agency]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[OIL]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[regulations]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=130229</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A glimpse into the zealotry governing Obama's out-of-control agency.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/120110_obama_jackson_epa_ap_605.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-130231" title="120110_obama_jackson_epa_ap_605" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/120110_obama_jackson_epa_ap_605.gif" alt="" width="375" height="247" /></a>For those of us in industry who have watched the agency grow in power and arrogance over the decades, there wasn’t anything all that surprising about somebody suggesting that the EPA uses threats and intimidation against the regulated community. We all know, from long and bitter experience, that’s how the EPA works. What was remarkable is that it was an EPA official admitting it.</p>
<p>Al Armendariz, EPA Region 6 administrator, <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/04/26/epa-official-apologizes-for-call-to-crucify-oil-companies-senator-investigating/">was caught on tape</a> urging the troops attending a 2010 meeting to be ruthless in their dogged pursuit of dirty rotten polluters (aka: anybody in the private sector). “You make examples out of people who are in this case not complying with the law &#8230; and you hit them as hard as you can,&#8221; he said. But it was the spectacularly inappropriate analogy Almenadariz utilized to underline the point that really caught the public’s attention:</p>
<p>&#8220;It was kind of like how the Romans used to, you know, conquer villages in the Mediterranean,&#8221; he said. &#8220;They&#8217;d go in to a little Turkish town somewhere, they&#8217;d find the first five guys they saw, and they&#8217;d crucify them. And then, you know, that town was really easy to manage for the next few years.”</p>
<p>Yet, as spectacularly inappropriate as that analogy was, it was also dead-on accurate. When the EPA undertakes an <a href="http://www.epa.gov/compliance/data/planning/initiatives/index.html">enforcement initiative</a> against one industry sector or another, it goes for the jugular. We’ve seen it time and time again. The initial “crucifixions” take the form of crushing fines against a handful of supposed bad actors, which serves to send a singular message to the rest of the companies in a particular industry sector: resistance is futile. It doesn’t matter whether the administration in power is Republican or Democrat. It’s an EPA thing. Congress has handed the EPA a tremendous amount of power over the years and the Agency isn’t at all shy about wielding it.</p>
<p>Consider the Clean Air Act, for example. Under the Clean Air Act the EPA has the authority to levy fines of up to $25,000 per day for <em>each</em> violation. Those violations don’t have to (and frequently don’t) have anything to do with emitting more pollutants into the air than are allowed by applicable regulations. If the EPA finds that a company didn’t file the right paperwork at the right time, or failed to keep a required record in exactly the right form, or committed a host of other environmental sins that don’t have anything to do with protecting the environment, they can wield their $25,000 per day per violation cudgel to get what they want. And what they want is revenue, both as an end for its own sake, and as a tangible means to “prove” to enviro-activists and Congress that they are doing their job. As I detailed in my book <em>Regulators Gone Wild: How the EPA is Ruining American Industry</em>, the more complex regulations become, the more opportunity the EPA has to pick meaningless nits and jack up enforcement revenue.</p>
<p>It’s all about the price point, as is the case with any protection racket. If the target is a big corporation, you have to load up a lot of alleged violations such that the possible penalty is huge, and then hit them with a settlement offer that makes just a little more fiscal sense than the company deciding to lawyer-up.</p>
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		<title>Americans Have Become Compliant</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/walter-williams/americans-have-become-compliant/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=americans-have-become-compliant</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/walter-williams/americans-have-become-compliant/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 16 Mar 2012 04:05:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Walter Williams]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[control]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Food Police]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Government]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nanny state]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[regulations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rules]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=125864</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Nanny-statism is crippling the spirit and commonsense of the country. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Michelle-Obama-New-Food-Group-Icons.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-125886" title="Michelle-Obama-New-Food-Group-Icons" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Michelle-Obama-New-Food-Group-Icons.gif" alt="" width="375" height="259" /></a>Last month, at a Raeford, N.C., elementary school, a teacher confiscated the lunch of a 5-year-old girl because it didn&#8217;t meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines and therefore was deemed nonnutritious. She replaced it with school cafeteria chicken nuggets. The girl&#8217;s home-prepared lunch was nutritious; it consisted of a turkey and cheese sandwich, potato chips, a banana and apple juice. But whether her lunch was nutritious or not is not the issue. The issue is governmental usurpation of parental authority.</p>
<p>In a number of states, pregnant teenage girls may be given abortions without the notification or the permission of parents. The issue is neither abortion nor whether a pregnant teenager should have an abortion. The issue is this: What gives the government the authority to usurp parental authority?</p>
<p>Part of the problem is that people who act as instruments of government do not pay a personal price for usurping parental authority. The reason is Americans, unlike Americans of yesteryear, have become timid and, as such, come to accept all manner of intrusive governmental acts. Can you imagine what a rugged American, such as one portrayed by John Wayne, would have done to a government tyrant who confiscated his daughter&#8217;s lunch or facilitated her abortion without his permission?</p>
<p>I believe that the anti-tobacco movement partially accounts for today&#8217;s compliant American. Tobacco zealots started out with &#8220;reasonable&#8221; demands, such as the surgeon general&#8217;s warning on cigarette packs. Then they demanded nonsmoking sections on airplanes. Emboldened by that success, they demanded no smoking at all on airplanes and then airports and then restaurants and then workplaces — all in the name of health. Seeing the compliant nature of smokers, they&#8217;ve moved to ban smoking on beaches, in parks and on sidewalks in some cities. Now they&#8217;re calling for higher health insurance premiums for smokers. Had the tobacco zealots demanded their full agenda when they started out, they would not have achieved anything.</p>
<p>Using the anti-tobacco crusade as their template and finding Americans so compliant, zealots and would-be tyrants are extending their agenda.</p>
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