Thinking of having a fall yard sale to clean out some of the clutter from your house? Be careful, or it could get you in trouble with the Feds, and cost you up to $15 million in fines. Its no joke: the Consumer Product Safety Commission has launched a new enforcement campaign, which it calls “Resale Round-up,” targeting the resale of potentially harmful children’s toys and other consumer products. Potential violators, the CPSC warns, include “thrift stores, consignment stores, charities, and individuals holding yard sales and flea markets.” Even e-bay …
Spain has spent nearly $30 billion on its green energy economy; each one of these green jobs cost the Spanish government on average $855,000, but the return on investment hasn’t been great. The country’s unemployment rate is not decreasing but rapidly increasing and is now at 19.3%, which is one of the highest in the developed world. In fact, the government’s heavy investments in the solar industry created a bubble than did more to harm to the solar industry than helping it: Though wind power remains the dominant alternative energy …
The Obama Administration made a bombshell revelation on the eve of the G-20 summit about Iran’s continued lying about its nuclear program. Anonymous “American officials” disclosed to the New York Times that U.S. intelligence agencies had uncovered another secret Iranian nuclear facility that Iran had failed to divulge to the International Atomic Energy Agency as required under its nuclear safeguard commitments. The secret facility reportedly is a uranium enrichment plant capable of housing 3,000 centrifuges that is built inside a mountain about 100 miles south of Tehran near the city …
In a stunning display of political cowardice, the Obama administration has decided not to seek specific congressional authorization for a prolonged detention statute for Guantanamo Bay detainees deemed too dangerous to set free. It’s the latest troubling flip flop by the president, an utter abdication of the lofty promises he made during his much-heralded National Archives Speech just this May. This decision not only weakens U.S. detention policy, it will regrettably serve as an invitation to the courts to expand their role in national-security affairs — an area that is …
At the United Nations, President Obama tried desperately to convince the international community we have entered a “new era,” one in which the United States was serious about tackling global warming. His allies in the U.S. Senate do not appear eager to address the issue, as they used parliamentary procedures to dodge tough climate-related votes on the Interior-Environment Appropriations bill. Dodge Number One Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) attempted to offer several climate-related amendments, including one that would have forced the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to conduct an investigation into alleged …
When “good” President of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and the “bad” President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez came to New York, both wooed the media. Newsweek declared Lula to be “the most popular politician on earth.” Chavez didn’t call Obama “the devil” and went mano a mano with Larry King. Lula’s Brazil is a continent of a country on the rise with a multi-party democracy; Chavez’s Venezuela sits on ocean of oil that fuels his one-party democracy. Both leaders aim for more clout on the global stage In the …
Paul Krugman blasted opponents of cap and trade and The Heritage Foundation in his New York Times column today, saying: So where do the apocalyptic warnings about the cost of climate-change policy come from? Are the opponents of cap-and-trade relying on different studies that reach fundamentally different conclusions? No, not really. It’s true that last spring the Heritage Foundation put out a report claiming that Waxman-Markey would lead to huge job losses, but the study seems to have been so obviously absurd that I’ve hardly seen anyone cite it. Krugman …
Hill Tube has a video up of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) talking about the obunlic option “trigger” at yesterday’s news conference. The video does not appear to be embeddable, but here is a rough transcript: A trigger is an excuse for not doing anything. But everybody’s open to listening to what people have to say. The point is made over and over again that for one reason or another the trigger was not effective in Medicare Part D. … I believe that the bill is the trigger. If anybody wants …
Although the United States does have a huge deficit problem we can’t afford not to fix, the Obama administration is focusing on the wrong aspect in trying to create a new federal health program. Congress needs to address spending for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — all programs that have existed for decades — that is primed to explode. Long-term excess costs for Social Security and Medicare alone: $43 trillion. When added to the national debt, that is about $184,000 for every man, woman and child in America. We should …
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Baucus’ (D-MT) health care reform proposal includes a number of reforms to reduce Medicare outlays. Medicare, as is now well established, is unsustainable in its current form. Projections of promised benefits far outstrip projections of program receipts, leaving the nation with an unfunded obligation of tens of trillions of dollars. While some of the specific Medicare reforms may be ill-advised, the willingness of the Chairman to propose such changes at this time is encouraging for the future of Medicare. The Ensign Amendment. Sen. Ensign (R-NV) succeeded …
