Category Archives: Regulation

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Liberals in Washington State Like Money more than a Carbon Tax

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from IBD:

Climate Alarmists Suffer Huge Blow As Liberal Washington State Votes Down Carbon Tax

Environmentalists were hoping to score a huge victory in Washington state with a statewide tax on CO2 emissions. Alas, even liberals in Washington don’t believe climate change is that big a threat.

Before the election, glowing stories in the press talked about Washington “taking up the fight” on climate change after President Donald Trump dropped out of the Paris climate deal. The state would make history. It would be a “bellwether,” and would start a trend across the country.

Carbon Tax

The initiative proposed a $15 tax on each ton of carbon emissions in the state starting in 2020, with the tax rate climbing each year. It would have cost families in the state nearly $1,000 a year by 2035. read more

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Liberal Commenter Insists the Left is NOT Out to Destroy Kavanaugh – Part Two

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by: Brent Smith at the Common Constitutionalist

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The following is part two of a very lengthy comment someone sent me to a recent World Net Daily article I wrote.

I will not recap part one, although you may review it here.

Once again, my responses to the commenter are indented.

Commenter: Kavanaugh’s conservative views on abortion are not the only reason why the Democrats oppose him. He is an opponent of gay rights and a corporate shill who supports corporate greed over the rights of individual Americans.

Actually I’ve heard Kavanaugh speak of the Bill of Rights – of which he is a supporter. You know the Bill of Rights, which rather nicely delineates the rights of all Americans equally. It is the left who in fact specifies that we need special rights for “special” people or groups.

And yes, he supports corporate greed, as you put it, because he believes, like our silly Founding Fathers, that government should have little authority to regulate business … to death. read more

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Drowning in Government Cheese

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from IBD:

A Mountain Of Surplus Cheese, Brought To You By The Federal Government

According to the federal government, almost 1.4 billion pounds of surplus cheese now sit in refrigerated warehouses around the country. Yet dairy production is climbing. What gives?

The amount of surplus cheese is growing fast — up 6% in just the past year.

According to news accounts, the reason is that dairy production is climbing, while dairy consumption is falling. Data from the Department of Agriculture show that between 2008 and 2017, milk production in the U.S. climbed 13%.

Over those same years, however, consumption has sagged — with per capita milk consumption down 14%, USDA data show. read more

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Should Government Break Up Tech Monopolies?

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from IBD:

Calls To Break Up Tech Giants Ignore History

Calls to break up tech giants like Amazon, Facebook and Google have been increasing. But while the sentiment is understandable, the free market is far more likely to tame these giants without any government intervention.

We can remember when everyone was promising that the internet would unleash competition by lowering barriers to entry and often by cutting out the middle man. But in some ways the opposite has happened, as three companies wound up controlling the lion’s share of online advertising and commerce.

That, in turn, has generated growing interest in breaking these companies up, or heavily regulating them as monopolies. read more

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Gun Safes and Trigger Locks Defeat the Purpose of Home Defense Weapons

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by: Brent Smith at the Common Constitutionalist

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Yesterday the HuffPo continued its assault (pardon the pun) on guns by pretending to be reasonable. Something new for the Huffington Post. But it wasn’t really reasonable. It was just a veiled attempt of the unreasonable to sound reasonable.

The article ,posted as a result of the Santa Fe school murders, is entitled, “Texans On Both Sides Of Gun Debate Agree On Safe Storage, But Not On How To Support It.”

They write that the 17 year old took “his father’s pump-action shotgun and .38 revolver, concealed them under a trench coat and walked into an art class before opening fire on students, teachers and a responding school resource officer.”

They added that, “…people from across the political spectrum have stressed the importance of securing firearms to keep minors and others from getting ahold of them without permission,” and that, “If you’re a parent and you own guns, lock your guns safely away,” Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a staunch pro-gun Republican, said at a press conference on Friday. “It’s a serious issue and one big step we can take.” read more

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The EPA is Only Useful When the Left Controls It

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by: Brent Smith at the Common Constitutionalist

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Let me state for the record that there should be no federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. If States wish to regulate themselves to death, let them.

Despite my misgivings that these types of federal regulations are unconstitutional, if CAFE Standards are to become law, they should, at the very least, have to be passed by Congress, where all laws must originate.

That being said, the last time Congress passed a law which included fuel efficiency standards was 2007 – more than a decade ago.

Congress first established CAFE standards in 1975. They set the average fuel economy of the new car fleet to 27.5 mpg by model year (MY) 1985. Then, under “conservative” George W. Bush, Congress passed and the president signed the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. Don’t you love the bogus names they give these egregious pieces of legislation?

Anyway, the new legislation raised the fuel economy standards of America’s cars, light trucks, and SUVs to a combined average of at least 35 miles per gallon by 2020—a 10 mpg increase over 2007 levels—and required standards to be met at maximum feasible levels through 2030. read more

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Say Goodbye to the Obama Era

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from IBD:

Trump Dismantles Another Obama ‘Achievement’ — Just One More To Go

This week, the Trump administration announced that it would revise President Obama’s draconian auto fuel economy mandates. That alone is big news. But it marks the near total reversal of Obama’s anti-growth domestic policies. That’s bigger news.

EPA head Scott Pruitt said Tuesday that the administration would rewrite Obama’s fuel economy standards starting with model year 2022. Obama’s plan was to mandate that all cars sold average 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, up from 38.3 mpg this year.

As we have repeatedly explained in this space, Obama’s fuel economy mandate was little more than a thinly disguised electric car mandate, since hitting that level would have required a substantial increase in plug-in sales. As it stands, there are only a handful of powered cars that can go more than 54 miles on a gallon of gas.

Pruitt said that, instead of trying to force consumers into more expensive cars that environmentalists like, the focus at the EPA will be “on making cars that people actually buy and that are efficient.” read more

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Government Should Not Regulate Social Media

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from IBD:

Facebook Privacy Scandal: Why Regulation Is Not The Answer

As Facebook’s privacy crisis grows, so too are calls for the government to regulate it, including from Republicans, the tech industry and Mark Zuckerberg himself. What could be wrong with that?

Utah Republican Rep. Chris Stewart, for example, told CNN that “I actually think it probably is” time to regulate Facebook (FB) and other social media companies because “these companies gather our private information and they monetize it.”

Speaking at a China Development Forum in Beijing, Apple (APPL) Chairman Tim Cook said, when asked about Facebook, “I think that this certain situation is so dire and has become so large that probably some well-crafted regulation is necessary.”

Zuckerberg himself says that “I’m not sure we shouldn’t be regulated,” adding that “I actually think the question is more ‘What is the right regulation?’ rather than ‘Yes or no, should it be regulated?’ ” read more

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You Must Comply…With Your Dentist

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from Michelle Malkin at Townhall:

The Snitches in Your Kids’ Dental Office

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth to have a despotic pediatric dentist.

Parents who decide, for whatever reason, that they don’t like their children’s oral care provider should be forewarned. Empowered by government “mandatory reporter” laws, dental offices are now using their authority to threaten families with child abuse charges if they don’t comply with the cavity police.

Mom Trey Hoyumpa shared a letter last week on Facebook from a dental office called Smiles 4 Keeps in Bartonsville, Pennsylvania. It informed her that if she did not make a dental appointment for “regular professional cleanings” for her child, she could be charged with “dental neglect.”
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Donald J “Smoot-Hawley” Trump – It’s Déjà Vu All Over Again

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by: Brent Smith at the Common Constitutionalist

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Here we are again – our government doing what they do best – picking winners and losers. President Trump has done a lot of good things for this nation thus far, but protectionist tariffs aren’t one of them.

The first protectionist tariff, the “Dallas” tariff, was enacted in 1816. It happened again in 1824, in 1828, the infamous “Tariff of Abominations,” in 1832 to fix the problem in 1828 (which it didn’t), and in 1842, the “Black” tariff.

All these were passed to benefit the Northern States at the expense of the South, and all were major contributing factors in the run-up to the Civil War. No, the Civil War was not just about slavery.

And then there was the infamous “Smoot-Hawley” tariff of 1930. It was named after its authors, Utah Senator Reed Smoot and Oregon Congressman Willis Hawley. The purpose was to support U.S. farmers who had been ravaged by the Dust Bowl.

By the time 1930 rolled around, practically every legislator had added protections to Smoot-Hawley for their states’ industries. The bill ended up with proposed tariffs on 20,000 individual imported goods. Does this sound eerily familiar to anyone? It’s why bills are thousands of pages long – to attempt to hide such things.

This time, instead of agriculture, our government has chosen the American Aluminum and Steel industries to be the temporary winners. Yay! read more