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Obama II: In the "now they tell us" file, add a vast array of reports that have come out since the election showing just how weak the economy really is. Looks like the president will need a new scapegoat soon. Here's just a sampling of what we've learned since voters decided to give Obama four more years to "experiment" with the economy.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell has called for tolls to pay for the state's much-needed road construction, but another option is now on the table. State Sen. John Watkins (R-Powhatan) proposed a plan that would increase Virginia's gas tax from 17.5 cents a gallon to 31.5 cents a gallon. The 14-cent increase would eliminate the need to add more toll roads. In the proposed legislation, taxpayers in the three lowest state brackets would get a break on their income tax. Electric and hybrid vehicles would also have to undergo an annual assessment of $102 a year.

It may be time to take the tax hit and withdraw funds from private retirement accounts before they are forced into long term T-bonds. The Obama administration is reportedly quickly moving on plans to nationalize private 401k and IRA retirement accounts, and replace them with government sponsored annuities(aka Treasury bonds that the Treasury currently can’t sell to anyone but the Fed). National Seniors Council Director Robert Crone warns: “This whole issue is moving forward very quickly. Already there is a bill requiring all businesses to automatically enroll their employees in IRA plans in which part of every employee’s paycheck would...

The Obama administration on Friday rebuffed requests by Texas Gov. Rick Perry and the leaders of several other states to waive a federal renewable fuel mandate that requires ethanol to be blended into the nation's gasoline supply. In rejecting the waiver requests, the Environmental Protection Agency effectively disagreed with the states' concerns that the mandate was spiking corn demand and prices following a drought that devastated crops in the Midwest. The EPA concluded the Renewable Fuel Standard would not cause "severe economic harm" to states and regions. "We recognize that this year's drought has created hardship in some sectors of...

French officials angrily rejected a charge by The Economist on Friday that France was the "time-bomb at the heart of Europe", accusing the magazine of sensationalist journalism. The Economist's front cover showed seven loaves of "baguette" bread held together by a French tricolour with a lit fuse protruding from the centre. Its main article raised concerns that President Francois Hollande's economic reforms are not ambitious enough and so could jeopardise the future of the euro currency. "Unless Mr Hollande shows that he is genuinely committed to changing the path his country has been on for the past 30 years, France...

WASHINGTON (CBS DC) – A public health proposal suggests that tobacco smokers should be required to apply and pay for a “smoker’s license” in order to continue buying cigarettes. In this week’s PLOS Medicine medical journal, two leading tobacco control advocates debate the merits of the smoker’s license. Simon Chapman, a professor at the University of Sydney, proposes that users would have to apply and pay for a mandatory license in the form of a smartcard that would be shown when buying cigarettes.

Get set for the Obama administration’s post-election tsunami of business-killing, job-killing, economy-killing federal regulations. It’s already begun. Regulators R Us: Feds Crank Up Regulations — on Everything The New American 16 November 2012 Get set for the Obama administration’s post-election tsunami of business-killing, job-killing, economy-killing federal regulations. It’s already begun. Take a look at www.regulations.gov, the administration’s regulatory website. The home page informs us that in the last 90 days, the administration has posted 5,934 new regulations. Yes, our federal bureaucrats have been very diligent. The above-mentioned website informs us of their daily productivity of regulations over the past 90...

European Union officials are examining legal options to side-step a possible British veto on the bloc’s long-term budget, in a bid to weaken Prime Minister David Cameron's trump card in the talks, diplomats said. Britain is one of several net contributors including Germany and France demanding deep reductions to EU spending plans worth more than €1 trillion between 2014-2020, which they say are at stark odds with austerity-driven spending cuts at home. Under pressure from Euroskeptics in his own party to deliver a real terms cut, officials believe Cameron is the most likely to make good on a threat to...

EXCLUSIVE / The US is considering a funnel of substantive elements of the Doha Climate Summit away from the UN framework and into the Major Economies Forum (MEF), a platform of the world’s largest CO2 emitters, EurActiv has learned. Since 1992, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has provided an umbrella for talks to curb global greenhouse gas emissions, and on 26 November, will host the COP18 Climate Summit in Qatar. But it has been confirmed to EurActiv that Washington is increasingly looking to shift policy action to the MEF, whose members account for some 85% of...

How do you know when government is broken and rife with incompetence? A good indicator could be when Federally managed workers with the Federal Emergency Management Agency are lining up for food handed out by an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Occupy Sandy. Last week, FEMA shut down its New York centers set up to respond the devastation caused by superstorm Sandy because of… bad weather. This left a disaster aid void that was filled by independent volunteer groups, including Occupy Sandy. Many residents in the region reported feeling abandoned by the Federal helpers sent to aid them....

BMI Assistant Editor Julia Seymour appeared on "Your World" with Neil Cavuto to discuss the media's coverage of the Fiscal Cliff on November 15.  Seymour cited a BMI study which found that the three major networks blamed Congress 16 more times than they blamed President Obama for the approaching Fiscal Cliff. (Video below)BMI's Julia Seymour on "Your World" with Neil CavutoSeymour pointed out the double standard the media have when it comes to the Fiscal Cliff. She noted that the networks "badger republicans who don’t think that that’s good for the economy and they don’t consider it a valid principle...

A pair of foreign-owned solar companies that benefited from a combined $84 million in Energy Department tax credits have announced they will lay off employees. One of the companies, German-owned SolarWorld, was integral in the fight for tariffs against the importation of Chinese photovoltaic solar panels. The other, Chinese company SunTech, blamed those tariffs for its own layoffs. Both companies benefited from the Energy Department’s stimulus-funded Advanced Energy Manufacturing (48C) Tax Credit. The 48C credit is worth up to 30% of the cost of manufacturing qualifying green energy projects. SolarWorld received a credit worth $82 million, while SunTech’s was worth...

A new White House petition wants President Obama to nationalize the "Twinkie industry," saving the popular junk food from possible extinction. "We the undersigned, hereby request Barack Obama to immediately Nationalize the Twinkie industry and prevent our nation from losing her sweet creamy center," a petition on the White House "We the People" website requests ...

The U.S. is at war, a cyber war. And businesses and government are at risk, said Eric Rosenbach, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy in an interview with CNBC. "I read my intel brief every morning at 5:30 a.m. and it's never a very good news story at all," Rosenbach said. "There are a lot more attacks, and I hate to admit it but I fear that there will be some type of spectacular attack against the United States or one of our allies before there is comprehensive legislation and real appreciation to take this seriously." Just one...

AARHUS, Denmark — Carina Melchior is a 20-year-old Danish woman who was plunged in the middle of controversy by two close encounters with death — the first in car crash last year that put her in a coma; the second in a hospital, where doctors persuaded her parents to donate her organs and shut off her life support. But Carina recovered, and she now is at the center of a storm of questions about the criteria for brain death, over-aggressive transplant agencies and the commodification of the human body. What might have been played out quietly in an obscure Danish...

THE threat of the euro’s collapse has abated for the moment, but putting the single currency right will involve years of pain. The pressure for reform and budget cuts is fiercest in Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy, which all saw mass strikes and clashes with police this week (see article). But ahead looms a bigger problem that could dwarf any of these: France. The country has always been at the heart of the euro, as of the European Union. President François Mitterrand argued for the single currency because he hoped to bolster French influence in an EU that would otherwise...

I've wondered before about how this new, more "flexible" second-term Obama is going to approach climate change, energy policy, and environmental issues --- I remain unconvinced that "all of the above" was anything more than a rhetorical stalling tactic. I'm betting that we're going to see President Obama's more zealous nature re-reveal itself --- and the Keystone XL pipeline battle that the administration left unresolved before the election is likely to force the issue pretty quick here.Environmentalists (who long ago determined that the pipeline proposal warranted their especial fanatical attention) are planning demonstrations in DC next week to ask the...

First off, it’s not a “fiscal cliff.” What we’re slated to hit as of New Year’s Day, as the Wall Street Journal notes, is a tax cliff. Our fiscal cliff, which drops off into a far deeper canyon, is what looms because of our $16,000,000,000,000 debt and the runaway entitlement spending that fuels it — Medicare, Medicaid, (and now) Obamacare. In truth, the debt deal passed in the summer of 2011 — which the press now says we must scrap if we are to avoid the “fiscal cliff” — was designed to postpone our going over the (actual) fiscal cliff....

Japan's prime minister Friday dissolved the Lower House of the Diet (Parliament), compelling a national election. This comes as Japan teeters on a return to recession and amid increased tensions between Japan and its neighbors. Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has set parliamentary elections for December 16 - a move that comes despite the objection of many members of his own party. They fear what opinion polls overwhelmingly predict: the Democratic Party of Japan in power for the last three years is now in disarray and likely will lose the election. An opinion poll taken Wednesday, before Noda announced he would...

Wal-Mart Stores Inc is taking its first legal step to stop months of protests and rallies outside Walmart stores, targeting the union that it says is behind such actions. Wal-Mart filed an unfair labor practice charge against the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, or UFCW, asking the National Labor Relations Board to halt what the retailer says are unlawful attempts to disrupt its business. The move comes just a week before what is expected to be the largest organized action against the world's largest retailer, as a small group of Walmart workers prepare to strike on Black Friday,...