Obama: The government is us and we’re doing things right
In a statement Monday, President Obama explained that Americans should not be cynical about the government inefficiencies, citing several examples of his administration’s effort to develop new technologies to improve government.“We can’t just take comfort in being cynical. We all have a stake in government success, because the government is us and we’re doing things right,” he insisted.
Obama pointed out that the federal government was “saving lives” by delivering data on health care costs and by tracking weather effectively.
Obama also complained that a lot of poorly designed legislation was bogging down government officials in their effort to streamline services.
"We're doing a lot of this work administratively but unfortunately there are still a bunch of rules, a lot of legislation that has poorly designed some of our agencies and forces folks to engage in bureaucratic jump-hoop - hoop jumping - instead of just going ahead and focusing on mission and delivering good service to our citizens," he said.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/article/2532779
101M Americans Get Food Aid from Federal Gov’t; More Than the Number of Private Sector Workers
The number of Americans receiving subsidized food assistance from the federal government has risen to 101 million, representing roughly a third of the U.S. population.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that a total of 101,000,000 people currently participate in at least one of the 15 food programs offered by the agency, at a cost of $114 billion in fiscal year 2012.
That means the number of Americans receiving food assistance has surpassed the number of private sector workers in the U.S.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), there were 97,180,000 full-time private sector workers in 2012.
The population of the U.S. is 316.2 million people, meaning nearly a third of Americans receive food aid from the government.
Of the 101 million receiving food benefits, a record 47 million Americans participated in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps. The USDA describes SNAP as the “largest program in the domestic hunger safety net.”
The USDA says the number of Americans on food stamps is a “historically high figure that has risen with the economic downturn.”
SNAP has a monthly average of 46.7 million participants, or 22.5 million households. Food stamps alone had a budget of $88.6 billion in FY 2012.
The USDA also offers nutrition assistance for pregnant women, school children and seniors.
The National School Lunch program provides 32 million students with low-cost or no-cost meals daily; 10.6 million participate in the School Breakfast Program; and 8.9 million receive benefits from the Woman, Infants and Children (WIC) program each month, the latter designed for low-income pregnant, breastfeeding, and postpartum women, as well as children younger than 5 years old.
In addition, 3.3 million children at day care centers receive snacks through the Child and Adult Care Food Program.
There’s also a Special Milk Program for schools and a Summer Food Service Program, through which 2.3 million children received aid in July 2011 during summer vacation.
At farmer’s markets, 864,000 seniors receive benefits to purchase food and 1.9 million women and children use coupons from the program.
A “potential for overlap” exists with the many food programs offered by the USDA, allowing participants to have more than their daily food needs subsidized completely by the federal government.
According to a July 3 audit by the Inspector General, the USDA’s Food Nutrition Service (FNS) “may be duplicating its efforts by providing participants total benefits in excess of 100 percent of daily nutritional needs when households and/or individuals participate in more than one FNS program simultaneously.”
Food assistance programs are designed to be a “safety net,” the IG said.
“With the growing rate of food insecurity among U.S. households and significant pressures on the Federal budget, it is important to understand how food assistance programs complement one another as a safety net, and how services from these 15 individual programs may be inefficient, due to overlap and duplication,” the audit said.
- See more at: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/101m-americans-get-food-aid-federal-gov-t-more-number-private-sector-workers#sthash.7u8hROrc.dpuf
Recovery woes: America's second-largest employer is a temp agency
Behind Wal-Mart, the second-largest employer in America is Kelly Services, a temporary work provider.Friday's disappointing jobs report showed that part-time jobs are at an all-time high, with 28 million Americans now working part-time. The report also showed another disturbing fact: There are now a record number of Americans with temporary jobs.
Approximately 2.7 million, in fact. And the trend has been growing.
In the first quarter of 2013, U.S. staffing companies employed an average of 2.86 million temporary and contract workers, according to the American Staffing Association. This represents a 2.9 percent growth from the same period in 2012. For just the month of June, there was a 6.7 percent growth in the number of staffing jobs than last year.
Temp jobs made up about 10 percent of the jobs lost during the Great Recession, but now make up a tenth of the jobs in the United States. In fact, nearly one-fifth of all jobs gained since the recession ended have been temporary.
It's a sad state of affairs for our country. While part-time and temp jobs reached highs last month, full-time jobs decreased by another 240,000. The recovery, or lack thereof, is being fueled by a shift from full-time to part-time work.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/recovery-woes-americas-second-largest-employer-is-a-temp-agency/article/2532778
Oh, good: Broke cities looking to unload expensive retirees on ObamaCare, i.e. taxpayers
The Obama administration’s short-term panicked desperation to avoid ObamaCare-related consequences in the 2014 midterms is only matched by their relatively longer-term panicked desperation to convince young and healthy Americans to get with the program en masse. They’re going to need a heck of a lot of people with relatively inexpensive health-insurance needs to participate in and subsequently subsidize the inherently riskier and more expensive insurance pools the program creates by deliberate design — a redistributive fact of which the law’s supporters and administrators are all too aware.But, heck, as long as ObamaCare is offering what we’re promised will be this miraculously subsidized (affordable?) health care system, why shouldn’t municipalities with insolvent pension and benefit programs take this wondrous opportunity to siphon off some of their incurred costs and just ease them onto the national system? Problem, solved — amirite? Via Bloomberg:
Detroit is facing bankruptcy, and Chicago wants to cut retiree benefit costs. Both are turning to President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul in what could become a road map for cash-strapped cities. …
“That will become an option that I think a lot of employers and a lot of cities would look at,” said Ario, now a managing director of Manatt Health Solutions, a Washington consulting firm that advises insurers. …
In Detroit, reducing benefits for 30,000 employees and retirees is part of Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr’s plan to avoid the largest U.S. municipal bankruptcy by erasing a $386 million deficit and attacking a long-term debt of at least $17 billion.
The city had 19,389 retirees eligible for health, life-insurance and death benefits as of June 30, 2011, according to Orr’s plan. The insurance benefits cost the city $177.4 million in fiscal 2012. Retirees contributed an additional $23.5 million.
Orr wants to give current and former workers health-reimbursement accounts. The city would pay from $100 to $250 a month to help with medical costs or premiums under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, according to a proposal to city unions.
That would cost the city as little as $27.5 million annually, according to Orr’s plan.If more indebted cities (states?!) cotton on to the potential for savings by ending their plans with currently insured older Americans and transferring them to the exchanges, then who knows what this will look like, but I would suggest that ObamaCare and the prices for the younger subsidizers are going to get still more expensive than anyone predicted. …Ah, well. After all, who could’ve seen this coming, really?
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/07/07/oh-good-broke-cities-looking-to-unload-expensive-retirees-on-obamacare-i-e-taxpayers/
Obamacare’s Dirty Dozen Implementation Failures
Last week, the Obama Administration attempted to spin its announcement of a one-year delay in Obamacare’s employer mandate as an effort to implement the law “in a careful, thoughtful manner.” Don’t be fooled. Even Democrats have admitted the law has turned into a massive “train wreck,” with delays, glitches, and problems aplenty. Here are a dozen more Obamacare implementation failures.
1. The CLASS Act: ABANDONED, THEN REPEALED
One Democrat famously called this new long-term care entitlement “a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing that Bernie Madoff would have been proud of”—and so it proved. In the fall of 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) admitted CLASS could not be implemented in a fiscally sound manner—and Congress eventually repealed the program outright.
2. Exchanges: MISSED DEADLINES
Most states resisted Obamacare’s call to create insurance exchanges, choosing to let Washington create a federally run exchange instead. However, a Government Accountability Office report released last month noted that “critical” activities to create a federal exchange have not been completed, and the missed deadlines “suggest a potential for challenges going forward.”
3. HHS mandate: DELAYED; UNDER LEGAL CHALLENGE
Last year, the Administration announced a partial delay for Obamacare’s anti-conscience mandate. However, many employers have filed legal actions against the mandate, which forces them to fund products they find morally objectionable or pay massive fines.
4. Small business plan choice: DELAYED
The Administration announced in April that workers will not be able to choose plans from different health insurers in the small business exchanges next year—a delay that liberal blogger Joe Klein called “a really bad sign” of “Obamacare incompetence.”
5. Child-only plans: UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
A drafting error in Obamacare has actually led to less access to care for children with pre-existing conditions. A 2011 report found that in 17 states, insurers are no longer selling child-only health insurance plans, because they fear that individuals will apply for coverage only after being diagnosed with a costly illness.
6. Basic health plan: DELAYED
This government-run plan for states, created as part of Obamacare, has also been delayed, prompting one Democrat to criticize the Administration for failing to “live up” to the law and implement it as written.
7. High-risk pools: UNDERPERFORMING; FUNDING LOW
This program for individuals with pre-existing conditions faced higher costs and lower enrollment than advertised. Though it was originally projected to cover up to 700,000 individuals, only about 110,000 have enrolled—yet the Administration had to halt new enrollment and take other radical measures to prevent the $5 billion program from running out of money.
8. Early retiree reinsurance: BROKE
The $5 billion in funding for this program was intended to last until 2014—but the program’s money ran out in 2011, two years ahead of schedule.
9. Waivers: UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
After the law passed, HHS discovered that some of its new mandates would raise costs so much that employers would drop coverage rather than face skyrocketing premiums. Instead, the Administration announced a series of temporary waivers—and more than half the recipients of those waivers were members of union health insurance plans.
10. Co-ops: DEFUNDED
Congress blocked additional funding to this Obamacare program in January, and with good reason: In one case, a new health insurance co-op was called “fatally flawed” by Vermont’s state insurance commissioner.
11. “Employee free choice”: REPEALED
This provision, which would have allowed certain workers to use contributions from their employers to buy exchange health plans, was repealed in April 2011, as businesses considered it too complex and unworkable.
12. Medicaid expansion: REJECTED BY MANY STATES
Last year, the Supreme Court made Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion optional for states, ruling that Obamacare as written engaged in “economic dragooning” that puts “a gun to the head of states.” Many states are resisting Obamacare’s call to expand Medicaid, knowing that expansion will saddle them with additional, unsustainable costs.
As these examples demonstrate, it’s not just the employer mandate that’s flawed—it’s the entire law. Recognizing these myriad, massive failures, Congress should hold the line and refuse to spend a single dime on Obamacare implementation.
http://blog.heritage.org/2013/07/08/morning-bell-obamacares-dirty-dozen-implementation-failures/?roi=echo3-16186320779-13566433-e5fb8b4faa0af80a23d101ea11ad4c03&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
Obamacare backers launch campaign, want moms to convince their youths to get coverage
The Obama administration and its allies need lots of healthy young adults to sign up for insurance this fall to make the president’s health-care law successful.So they are going after their moms.
They are collaborating with Elle and Cosmopolitan magazines, organizing mom-oriented wine-and-cheese parties and preparing commercials that will run during shows popular with mothers, such as “Good Morning America.” And soon, they plan to deploy first lady Michelle Obama, the nation’s mother in chief, who has already put her stamp on health-care with her anti-obesity “Let’s Move!” campaign.
The targeted messaging is part of an enormous grass-roots campaign mobilizing this summer and fall to persuade uninsured people to sign up for coverage beginning Oct. 1, when systems are expected to be in place for them to find benefits as well as financial assistance from the government, if they qualify.
But it may not be an easy sell, and the effort comes at a time of increasing doubts about the viability of the health-care law. Last week, the administration disclosed it was delaying a key provision that would have required large employers to offer health coverage to all full-time workers.
That came on the heels of an announcement by the National Football League that it probably would not lend its name to the law’s promotion efforts — a particular blow in the campaign for young men.
The share of 19- through 25-year-olds who lack coverage has dwindled since the passage of the law, which requires insurers to cover children up to age 26. But 41 percent were still uninsured in 2012, according to the Commonwealth Fund.
Costly campaigns
The White House is aiming initially to sign up 2.7 million healthy young adults for coverage. Young men especially are cheap to insure and are therefore critical to keeping the law on a good financial footing.
As it stands, however, advocates worry that young men will forgo insurance and instead pay the fine, which begins at $95 for the first year.
As a result, insurers, advocates, hospitals and others eager to see the law succeed are mounting costly campaigns to persuade people, particularly young and healthy ones, to buy insurance. And many see mothers as a potent part of that effort.
“In the end, it will be the moms of America who are going to decide if their families get coverage,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who has conducted focus groups for health exchanges in three states. “They will decide and then insist their children and husbands sign up.”
Women, Lake said, are responsible for 80 percent of the health-care spending decisions for families, and they will probably be the ones to delve deeply into the new health insurance options and obligations under the law.
According to her research, when asked whom they would turn to for trusted information about the health-care law, the top answer in that demographic was their mothers.
Mothers, however, have been turned off by the divisive nature of the debate over the law, Lake said.
Even for mothers engaged in politics, the law’s close association with President Obama is not always a plus. While unmarried moms overwhelmingly supported him in last year’s election, married mothers leaned slightly toward Obama’s Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, who had promised to try to repeal the health-care law, exit polls show.
A poll commissioned by Enroll America, a large umbrella group mounting a multimillion-dollar enrollment effort this year, shows that while many poor, uninsured women would like coverage, they are skeptical that they will be able to afford it even with government assistance.
Hadley Heath, health policy analyst for the conservative Independent Women’s Forum, said she believes mothers will ultimately advise their children based on what is best for them, not politics. But as a 25-year-old, she said she finds the mom focus a little condescending.
“I’d rather they talk to me rather than my mom, because I make my own decisions and pay my own bills,” she said.
The administration has already begun its outreach to mothers, with a series of events in conjunction with Mother’s Day in May. In addition to Cosmo, they have reached out to Elle and Ms. Magazine and forged a partnership with Text4baby, a text-messaging information service for pregnant women and new moms that has more than 500,000 subscribers.
Putting a face on the issue
An official said all the primary White House figures, including Obama, Vice President Biden and Michelle Obama, will eventually be out publicly urging the uninsured to sign up for coverage.
“What Michelle says will be important, because moms really love her,” Lake said.
Enroll America is planning targeted outreach to mothers, including a series of mom-oriented house parties this summer, President Anne Filipic said, adding that they view moms as a top messenger along with doctors. Health officials in Oregon are taking things one step further by targeting grandmothers.
A group poised to become more visible because of its activism around the health-care law is Moms Rising, a nonprofit group that formed in 2006. The group has a “wellness wonder team” of mothers who have pledged to learn about the law and spread the word about its benefits. It also plans to highlight the stories of women and mothers who have already benefited from the law.
“A lot of times, [moms’] stories relate to their children, and their children are their hearts,” said Lisa Doyle, 55, a Moms Rising member in Minnesota, explaining why she thinks mothers’ opinions are so powerful on this issue. “You go out there and you talk with your heart. All of a sudden, all this health-care talk has a face.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/2013/07/06/3d438a1a-de95-11e2-b2d4-ea6d8f477a01_story_1.html
Transparency: Obama’s video thank-you to librarians for helping push Obamacare will remain unseen by the public
There are three main types of protected privileges: Attorney-client; Doctor-patient; and President-librarian:
White House officials vetoed all public airing of a video of President Obama thanking the American Library Association Sunday for helping inform the public about Obamacare.
“We were specifically told by the White House to only show it [the video] once to conference attendees, and [the] White House said we aren’t able to send it out,” Jazzy Wright, Press Officer for ALA’s Washington, D.C. office, told the Washington Examiner.Snowden’s halfway around the world tossing out NSA tidbits like Tootsie Rolls at a 4th of July parade but at least the administration does have the ability to ensure that China and Russia (not to mention U.S. taxpayers) will never be able to see Obama’s top-secret address to librarians.
[...]
In the video, the chief executive thanked conference attendees “for helping enroll for health insurance as part of the Affordable Care Act,” according to the ALA’s blog.
http://michellemalkin.com/2013/07/06/transparency-obamacare/
Obama administration Voter ID hypocrisy
In light of the recent presidential pander-cation to Africa, it was timely to find the following link, from a simpatico, in my e-mail inbox: White House Pays $53 Million for Voter ID in Kenya While Opposing Same in USAt first, given the source link, I was suspicious that the article might be a hoax because the prime source for the article was not included. With some targeted searching, I traced the prime source for the Minuteman News article to a Whitehouse Fact Sheet, which confirmed the essence of the Minuteman News article. From FACT SHEET: U.S. Support for Strengthening Democratic Institutions, Rule of Law, and Human Rights in Sub-Saharan Africa:
In Kenya, the $53 million Yes Youth Can program empowers nearly one million Kenyan youth to use their voices for advocacy in national and local policy-making, while also creating economic opportunities. In advance of Kenya's March 2013 general elections, Yes Youth Can's "My ID My Life" campaign helped 500,000 youth obtain National identification cards, a prerequisite to voter registration, and carried out a successful nationwide campaign with Kenyan civic organizations to elicit peace pledges from all presidential aspirants.The Fact Sheet includes a second disbursement:
In Tanzania, the United States has dedicated $14 million to strengthening government accountability institutions and linking them with Tanzanian civil society watchdog groups and civic activists in a constructive partnership to further government transparency. The program focuses on improving access to information for Tanzanian citizens in four key development sectors: health, education, natural resource management, and food security.And a third, for which the monetary outlay is, as yet, unspecified:
The United States will soon launch a program in West Africa to build the capacity of civil society organizations to responsibly advocate on land tenure issues, including land rights, working closely with governments and the private sector to improve responsible natural resource utilization and the protection and advancement of human rights and economic development.Could anything be more hypocritical, when "progressives" are stonewalling and vilifying the states' attempts at simply implementing voter ID, let alone a National ID?
And, what of "creating economic opportunities," "strengthening government accountability," "responsible natural resource utilization," "human rights," and "economic development" right here, at home!?...
Progressives' apparent motto: "Better thee than me."...
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/07/obama_administration_voter_id_hypocrisy.html#ixzz2YTC9xSFt
Allegation: State Department Officer Traded Visas for Sexual Favors
The State Department seems to have a sexual exploitation problem on its hands. Three weeks ago we learned from a State Department whistleblower who works inside the Inspector General office that officials interfered with internal investigations into sexual misconduct. That misconduct included a US Ambassador soliciting sexual favors from prostitutes and minors.Now, we're learning a U.S. Embassy official has been removed for allegedly trading visas for sexual favors. Charles Johnson has more:
A State Department officer has been accused of selling visas for sex and money in what may have been a massive human trafficking operation, The Daily Caller has learned.Penalties for human trafficking are stiff in the United States and the State Department is supposed to sanction countries when their officials engage in sexual exploitation of trafficked victims.
The State Department acknowledged last week that one of its officials is the target of a probe over “allegations of improprieties relating to a Consular Officer formerly assigned to Georgetown, Guyana” without providing further details. Local media are also claiming the official, who was recently withdrawn from normal duties pending completion of an official investigation, associated with drug lords as part of his visa scam.
The scandal began when executives and tourists complained that their visa applications were being held up, and local media began reporting that a visa official was demanding bribes and sex in exchange for visas.
Human trafficking is a serious federal crime with penalties of up to imprisonment for life. Federal law defines “severe forms of trafficking in persons” as: “(A) sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age; or (B) the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.” [U.S.C. §7102(8)] In short, human trafficking is modern-day slavery.The State Department is clearly experiencing an epidemic of sexual exploitation in a culture of irresponsibility despite claiming to fight sex trafficking on its website.
"It ought to concern every person, because it is a debasement of our common humanity. It ought to concern every community, because it tears at our social fabric. It ought to concern every business, because it distorts markets. It ought to concern every nation, because it endangers public health and fuels violence and organized crime. I’m talking about the injustice, the outrage, of human trafficking, which must be called by its true name -- modern slavery."And as a reminder, the Department of Justice has been ignoring the sex trafficking of minors for years under Attorney General Eric Holder.
– President Barack Obama
Crimes involving minors are meant to trigger an immediate and swift response by the FBI. Instead, these cases were not pursued by the Bureau.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/07/08/state-department-officer-traded-visas-for-sexual-favors-n1635992
Shades of Watergate: Break-in at law offices representing State Department whistleblower
There was a break in over the weekend at the law firm that is representing a State Department whistleblower. The crime was caught on tape obtained by local Fox station KDFW.
Foreign Policy:
Would the State Department be that stupid? Look at Benghazi, our Israel policy, and half a dozen other idiocies and tell me that we don't have a lot of dummies working at Foggy Bottom.
Then there is the history of Hillary and Bill. Funny how Gennifer Flower's house was allegedly broken into just before she began to sing about her relationship with Bill Clinton. Other Clinton women also reported being followed and harassed. So it is not beyond imagining that the highest levels of the State Department might have known of this break in or perhaps even ordered it.
Foreign Policy:
The firm Schulman & Mathias represents Aurelia Fedenisn, a former investigator at the State Department's Office of the Inspector General. In recent weeks, she raised a slew of explosive allegations against the department and its contractors ranging from illicit drug use, soliciting sexual favors from minors and prostitutes and sexual harassment.
"It's a crazy, strange and suspicious situation," attorney Cary Schulman told The Cable. "It's clear to me that it was somebody looking for information and not money. My most high-profile case right now is the Aurelia Fedenisn case, and I can't think of any other case where someone would go to these great lengths to get our information."
According to the KDFW report, the firm was the only suite burglarized in the high-rise office building and an unlocked office adjacent was left untouched.
The State Department, which has repeatedly disputed Fedenisn's allegations, denied any involvement in the incident. "Any allegation that the Department of State authorized someone to break into Mr. Schulman's law firm is false and baseless," spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.
After assessing the surveillance footage, Schulman said he believed the motivations were likely political, but did not suspect department involvement. "It wasn't professional enough," he said. "It is possible that an Obama or Hillary supporter feels that I am unfairly going after them. And the timing of this is right after several weeks of very public media attention so it seems to me most likely that the information sought is related to that case. I don't know for sure and I want the police to do their work."
Fedenisn's case, in particular, has gained attention not just because of the substance of the allegations, but for her insistence that internal investigations into misconduct were "influenced, manipulated or simply called off" by senior State Department officials. The suppression of investigations was noted in an early draft of an Inspector General report she gave to CBS News, but softened in the final version.
Last month, her lawyers told The Cable that the department tried to intimidate her into silence. "They had law enforcement officers camp out in front of her house, harass her children and attempt to incriminate herself," claimed Schulman.Aside from the obvious political overtones that mirror the Watergate break in, Mr. Schulman's characterization of the burglary is also eerily similar to the way that the Watergate caper was described. That, too, was termed "amateur hour" as far as the abilities and experience of the criminals.
Would the State Department be that stupid? Look at Benghazi, our Israel policy, and half a dozen other idiocies and tell me that we don't have a lot of dummies working at Foggy Bottom.
Then there is the history of Hillary and Bill. Funny how Gennifer Flower's house was allegedly broken into just before she began to sing about her relationship with Bill Clinton. Other Clinton women also reported being followed and harassed. So it is not beyond imagining that the highest levels of the State Department might have known of this break in or perhaps even ordered it.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/07/shades_of_watergate_break-in_at_law_offices_representing_state_department_whistleblower.html#ixzz2YTEx7yvs
Never fear, good people: Carbon emissions aren’t the only item on the EPA’s agenda
Legally, the executive administration is required to release a unified regulatory agenda twice a year, in order to provide the American people with an advance and accurate picture of what will probably be costly and disruptive future regulations the government will be working to enact. Usually, the administration obliges with these road maps in April and then in October — but this is the Obama administration we’re talking about here, and they pretty much do what they want, when they want. After completely skipping the lawfully required spring regulatory agenda last year (election, cough), they finally did produce one agenda for 2012 — in December. The afternoon before everybody got out of town for Christmas.This time, the Obama administration has been so magnanimous as to actually put together a spring regulatory agenda — which they released on July 3rd, the day before the federal Fourth of July holiday. …Is anybody else sense a pattern here?
Anyhow, the Environmental Protection Agency is one of the worst offenders when it comes to handing down top-heavy, ideologically driven, economically costly regulations on the regular, and President Obama’s big climate-change address in June — about deploying his executive powers to allow the EPA to regulate carbon emissions in new and existing power plants — is only one of a number of brand-new measures with which the EPA will be busying itself. What will they think up next?
The new regulations, previewed in the administration’s spring regulatory roadmap released this week, cover everything from pollution runoff from military ships to landfill methane emissions, and in some cases will be issued long after called for under the law.
This September, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plans to propose rules for greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants, and next June will issue draft rules for existing facilities. …
The EPA is also looking to regulate the pollution discharges from military ships, including drainage from onboard photography labs, deck runoff from rain and seawater and foam used to fight fires onboard. …
Other rules planned to be proposed in coming months would regulate new refrigerants used in automobile air conditioners, update 29-year-old standards for grain elevators and renew an effort to change disposals of pharmaceuticals that are considered hazardous waste. …
Outside analysts and business groups have criticized the delay as a problematic habit that shields regulatory action from public scrutiny.Because, Most Transparent Admin… oh, forget it.
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/07/08/never-fear-good-people-carbon-emissions-arent-the-only-item-on-the-epas-agenda/
Meanwhile in Egypt:
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