Tag Archives: regulation

Phony Scandals

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In President Barack Obama’s highly touted and little regarded speech on “economics” in Galesburg, IL, which even the NLMSM has been ignoring, Obama had a couple of things to say related to scandals in DC.

[W]ith this endless parade of distractions and political posturing and phony scandals, Washington has taken its eye off the ball.

And through his press secretary, Jay Carney, he said this by way of foreshadowing:

The president will go back to Galesburg, IL, today to deliver a speech about where we need to move…it shouldn’t be on the phony scandals that have consumed so much attention here….

Obama repeated himself the next day in Jacksonville, FL:

The point is, with an endless distraction…phony scandals and lord knows what, Washington keeps taking its eye off the ball.

Here are some real scandals, in no particular order:

  • Fast and Furious
  • Benghazi
  • Green Energy “loans” to cronies
  • IRS targeting of disfavored groups
  • IRS, White House stonewalling investigation of above
  • DoJ folding on Black Panther voter abuses
  • DoJ attacking free press
  • DoJ lying to a judge to get a search warrant against a reporter
  • Hacking into a reporter’s laptop
  • AG Eric Holder’s lying to Congress about “potential prosecution” of a journalist after having signed off on the above warrant
  • HHS Secretary Sebelius’ shakedown of  businesses her Department regulates for money to support proselytizing Obamacare

Phony scandals?  Name two, Mr Obama.

Bunny Huggers

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…or seal huggers.

Mark Hodgdon was scuba diving around 1:30 pm when he found a stranded baby seal covered in bite marks.

“As I got a little [bit] closer, he just swam closer to me and jumped right up on my shoulder,” said Hodgdon.

…implying that the baby seal’s distress might have been more exhaustion than serious injury.

However.

After Hodgdon and his fiancé (who was with him during this) got the seal to shore and called the New England Aquarium for assistance, when the Aquarium’s volunteer arrived, he refused to lift a finger to help the seal.

In fairness to the Aquarium, this is driven by our bunny hugger laws that make it a crime even to touch baby seals.

Touching the seal was a violation of the Federal Marine Mammal Protection Act, and the couple could face a $5,000 fine.  Aquarium officials say even though their intentions were good, if you see a seal you should not approach it.

No, instead,

Anyone who thinks a seal is in distress is asked to call the US Coast Guard or emergency officials and stay nearby so it can be found.

This, on the heels of the Kennedy brothers’ rescue of a leatherback turtle that was tangled in a buoy line.  Rescuing that member of an endangered species was a violation of the Endangered Species Act.

Remember: when the shark comes, and seconds count, the do-nothing authorities will be only hours away.  And expect you to pay the vig if you lift a finger to intervene in the interim.  It’s the law.

Dysfunction and the EPA

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Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt and the attorneys general of 11 other states sued the Environmental Protection Agency Tuesday, demanding that the agency turn over documents the states allege will show the agency cooperates with environmental groups as part of a “sue and settle” legal strategy to develop regulations.

And

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Oklahoma City, alleges that binding consent decrees between the EPA and environmental groups that have sued the agency over the years have led to new rules and regulations for states without allowing their attorneys general to defend their interests and those of its businesses and consumers.

Pruitt noted,

The EPA is picking winners and losers, exhibiting favoritism, at the expense of due process and transparency.  They are manipulating our legal system to achieve what they cannot through our representative democracy.  The outcomes of their actions affect every one of us by sticking states with the bill and unnecessarily raising utility rates by as much as 20%.

Then there’s this:

[Des Moines Water Works] General Manager Bill Stowe has said if…water goes over the EPA safe limit and Iowa policymakers fail to sign off on a plan to regulate farm runoff, Des Moines Water Works may file a lawsuit asking a federal court to force the EPA to establish standards limiting runoff and enforcement.

The environmental groups also are prepared to sue the EPA for unreasonable delay if the agency doesn’t push the state harder to begin cleaning up livestock operations.

Exactly.

Too Big to Fail

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As a matter of law, Dodd-Frank ended the notion that any firm is “too big to fail.”  Banking will always involve some-degree of risk-taking….  But now, if a financial firm fails, taxpayers will not have to bear the cost of that failure.

Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said that with a straight face at a New York financial conference earlier in the week.  Never mind that, under Dodd-Frank, not only is “too big”—systemic risk—defined by Government and not by our economy, “failure” is defined by Government and not by our economy, and the outcome of “failure”—what creditors will be allowed to recover, and by how much—will be defined by Government and not by our existing bankruptcy system.  That last, especially, means that, of course we taxpayers will be on the hook, especially to fill any gap between what Government-determined creditors will be allowed to recover and what the failed institution’s assets will support.

Lew also made a very Pelosi-esque demand in those same prepared remarks, when he got to the matter of Congressional dissatisfaction with Dodd-Frank.  While addressing the fact that three years after the law’s enactment, many (most?) implementing regulations, including highly critical ones (from the perspective of the law), have yet to be written, Lew admonished Congress not to meddle with the law.

[T]here will be time to see what is working and what is not [once regulators are finished with outstanding rules].

Treasury has to write the regulations so that we can see what is in the law…away from the fog of the controversy.

Hmm….

Government Favoritism

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…city government style.

The Washington, DC, Council of the District of Columbia has voted to impose a minimum wage of $12.50 on all retailers in the District that do $1 billion or more in annual corporate sales.  That’s corporate sales, not just the sales that occur within the District.

Oh, and unionized corporations are excused from the minimum wage hike; they still get to pay the original minimum wage of $8.25.

The law was sold as filling a need to pay a livable wage to the good citizens of DC.  But union shops are specifically excused from having to pay a livable wage?

How does any of that work, exactly?

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc, the target of this law, has three Walmart stores under construction in DC, with plans for building three more.  They’ve said the new wage requirement throws into a cocked hat their economic analysis of their expansion, and they’ve canceled the three new stores and are exploring how to stop construction on the other three.  In the face of such a blatantly uneven law, they’ve had no choice.

And DC won’t get the 1,800 jobs those six stores were going to bring to six blighted neighborhoods.