The Obama administration’s attack on America’s energy sector is insane. They might as well tell us what to eat. Oh, wait, Michelle Obama is doing that. Or that the Islamic State is not Islamic. Oh, wait, Barack Obama said that.
When the Republican Party takes over majority control of Congress in January, it will face a number of battles that must be fought with the Obama administration ranging from its amnesty intentions to the repeal of ObamaCare, but high among the battles is the need to rein in the metastasizing power of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Call it the Gruberization of America’s energy and environmental policies.
Environment/Energy · Featured · Regulation
Republican lawmakers are pushing hard to corral President Obama’s rogue Environmental Protection Agency with stringent bills and a blunt warning against finalizing its most dangerous land grab ever, the pending redefinition of “Waters of the United States,” or WOTUS, which would seize power over almost any property that gets wet regardless of what it is or who owns it.
Apart from his halting, staccato, eight-to-ten-word phrase delivery when not reading off a TelePrompTer, President Barack Obama has two noticeable and telling verbal tics. The first is “folks”; the second is “just some guy.” The first is just an annoying and apparently insincere way of trying to show that, despite being President, he’s really, you know, just one of us. But the second is a tell-tale sign that he’s throwing somebody under the bus.
Environment/Energy · Featured · Legal Affairs · Regulation
With the coal industry overpowered, Obama’s rogue administration looks to have declared war on the rest of us.
After years of rising gasoline prices, people are puzzled by the recent drop that has the national average for a gallon of gas at $3.
The Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, National Audubon Society and others are blocking a sustainable future over Big Thorne’s “massive” 6,186 acres of old growth. (That’s about half the size of Washington’s Dulles International Airport.) But this time they’re not attacking a marginalized minority.
Featured · Legal Affairs · Politics
‘This is the single best piece of news for those favoring a nation based on laws, and not men (or women), I have heard in several years.’ — Richard Vedder
Featured · Health Care · Legal Affairs
It’s too soon for champagne, but perhaps a beer is in order. In a 2-1 decision in the case of Halbig v. Burwell, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has ruled that the Internal Revenue Service cannot interpret the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, as allowing subsidies for those Americans who purchase health insurance from the federal health insurance exchange known as Healthcare.gov. This is because the text of the law specifies that subsidies or tax credits are available for insurance purchased on state-created exchanges.
Featured · Government · Regulation · Taxes
The subject of tax inversion, in which American firms avail of lower tax rates in foreign countries by merging companies in those countries, has become very topical in the last couple weeks thanks to a decision by Abbvie, a drug company, to merger with Shire, an Ireland-based firm and move its headquarters overseas. One of at least 47 tax inversions in the last decade, the Abbvie-Shire deal is the largest such action yet, worth $54 billion. Perhaps unsurprisingly, President Obama and Democrats in Congress have become apoplectic with rage at the audacity of a business making a prudent decision to escape bloodsucking taxes.
Environment/Energy · Featured · Government · Regulation
Panel 8 of the 9th International Conference on Climate Change was on the subject of “Costs and Benefits of Renewable Energy.” The panel was focused on the subject of renewable energy, specifically the high cost and potentially devastating economic consequences produced by the federal government’s efforts to replace the current energy sources with renewables.
Featured · Government · Legal Affairs · Politics
It’s beginning to sink in with the intelligentsia: The flood of illegal aliens (yes, I said “illegal”) and particularly the tsunami of children traveling alone — parents risking their youngsters’ lives by sending them from Central America through gang-ravaged Mexico — threatens to turn the immigration debate into a major political liability for Democrats in November.
Government · Legal Affairs · Politics
Unanimous Supreme Court rulings are certainly noteworthy. When a case lines up every single Justice – appointed by Democrats and Republicans both – the decision must be unbelievably clear cut.[…]
Budgets/Taxes · Government · Health Care · Politics
Listening to President Obama respond on May 21 to the latest scandal regarding something about which he knew and did nothing—the mess at the Veterans Administration—was such a familiar event that[…]
Government · Health Care · Politics
The news that some forty veterans died whlle waiting to receive care from a Phoenix Veterans Affairs hospital—care that was denied because of bureaucratic chicanery—will seem small in comparison to[…]
Featured · Government · Internet/Telecom · Regulation
The Barack Obama Administration is back at it — yet another big government power grab is in the works. The Administration’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) again resurrecting Network Neutrality — an all-encompassing Internet usurpation twice unanimously killed by court as an illegal overreach.
Economics · Featured · Government · Politics
Shortly, Congress will be debating the fate of the U.S. Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im). Its authorization — last extended in 2012 — will expire on September 30 unless reauthorized. Ex-Im was first incorporated in 1934 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to finance trade with the Soviet Union. Under the Export-Import Bank Act of 1945, Congress established the bank as an independent agency. It provides loans and loan guarantees (as well as capital and credit insurance) to facilitate U.S. exports. Backed up by the full faith and credit of the U.S government, taxpayers are put on the hook.
Americans take electricity for granted. Electricity powers our lights, our computers, our offices, and our industries. But misguided environmental policies are eroding the reliability of our power system.
NEWS: The Heartlander
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