Heritage Foundation estimates that annual regulatory costs increased during Obama’s first four years by nearly $70 billion—with more regulations in store for term two.
And that’s just the 130, or so, so-called major regs. President Barack Obama’s EPA accounted for $45 billion all by themselves.
So much for Obama’s “commitment” to cut the red tape in Washington.
When a Progressive says so.
Former New Mexico Gov Bill Richardson said Sunday that Republican Sen Ted Cruz, whose father was a Cuban immigrant, should not be “defined as a Hispanic” because of his stance on immigration legislation.
Richardson justified his redefinition with this:
I don’t like his politics…. No, I don’t think he should be defined as a Hispanic[.]
Just like conservative blacks must be uppity Uncle Toms and conservative women must be sluts, so an Hispanic who holds views that are disapproved by Progressives must be drummed out and denied his heritage.
Why does the Left insist on being racist?
Because they think they can accrue political power with it, and they can get away with it.
[emphasis added] Israel launched its second airstrike in three days in the Syrian capital Sunday targeting a shipment of extremely accurate guided Iranian-made missiles intended for Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group, according to an intelligence official in the Middle East.
The attack, which signaled a sharp escalation of Israel’s involvement in Syria’s bloody civil war, was confirmed to the Associated Press hours after Syria’s state media reported that Israeli missiles struck a research center near Damascus, setting off explosions and causing casualties.
This also follows another strike against Syrian military targets conducted by Israel in January.
Israel’s public position—and it’s an entirely valid position in its own right—is that it will not allow such relatively upgraded weapons to move to Hezbollah control. Plainly, the Israeli government is emotionally up to the task, and the IAF is up to the task in personnel and equipment.
Is President Barack Obama, the anti-jobs outsourcer, outsourcing US responses vis-à-vis Syria?
…and not just on our freedom of expression.
Todd Starnes has the tale.
A Texas high school track team was disqualified from competing in the state championships because one of the runners made a gesture thanking God after he crossed the finish line.
Derrick Hayes, the anchor of the Columbus High School 4×100 relay team had just crossed the finish line when he raised his finger to the sky—thanking the Lord for winning the race that would send them to the state finals.
But a judge with the University Interscholastic League, the governing body for high school athletics in Texas, ruled that the gesture was a violation of the taunting rule….
The University Interscholastic League, which governs this tournament, defends its…behavior…with this statement, issued with an entirely straight face:
The meet official indicated the athlete crossed the finish line and gestured upward with his arm and finger and behaved disrespectfully toward meet officials, in their opinion. In the judgment of the official, this was a violation of NFHS track & field rule 4-6-1.
The rule in question says this in pertinent part:
[u]nsportsmanlike conduct is behavior that is unethical or dishonorable. It includes, but is not limited to, disrespectfully addressing an official, any flagrant behavior, intentional contact, taunting, criticizing or using profanity directed toward someone.
Thanking God is taunting and/or disrespectful, is it?
The only ones who could be taunted by such a thing or feel disrespected by it are those who spend their energy looking for excuses to be offended.
The Labor Department released its April jobs data last Friday. First, the good news: the labor force participation rate didn’t change from March—good news because it actually means more folks, in absolute terms, are participating, since the US’ population increased from March, and because while participation still is down from last January and remains near 30-year lows, it’s not dropping further. Also, 165,000 new non-farm jobs were added in April—no great shakes compared with what’s needed for actual economic growth, but it’s better than even the upwardly revised number for March. These combined to lower the unemployment rate a tick from March, to 7.5%.
Buried in the numbers, though, are some worrisome data [emphasis added].
[A] broader rate, known as the “U-6” for its data classification by the Labor Department, increased to 13.9% from 13.8% a month earlier.
…
In April, the rate ticked up as the number of workers who are part-time but want full-time work increased. That came even as the numbers of hours worked also dropped this month for all workers.
The primary reason the hours are dropping is illustrated by this.
…the decision by some employers to keep fewer full-time workers on the payroll or reduce the hours of near full-time workers to avoid having to provide health insurance.
It’s not limited to private enterprise:
Consider the city of Long Beach. It is limiting most of its 1,600 part-time employees to fewer than 27 hours a week, on average. City officials say that without cutting payroll hours, new health benefits would cost up to $2 million more next year, and that extra expense would trigger layoffs and cutbacks in city services.
And
Overall, an estimated 2.3 million workers nationwide, including 240,000 in California, are at risk of losing hours as employers adjust to the new math of workplace benefits, according to research by UC Berkeley. All this comes at a time when part-timers are being hired in greater numbers as US employers look to keep payrolls lean.
As the WSJ put it,
This raises the question about the kinds of jobs being created, and whether they can support a faster recovery.