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Ten Thousand Commandments is the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s annual survey of the federal regulatory state. Authored by CEI Vice President for Policy Clyde Wayne Crews, it shines a light on the large, growing, and hidden costs of America’s regulatory state. The scope of federal government spending and deficits is sobering, but federal regulations cost hundreds of billions – perhaps trillions – of dollars annually. Unfortunately, they get little attention in policy debates. Regulatory costs are difficult to quantify because, unlike taxes, they are unbudgeted and often indirect. Ten Thousand Commandments compiles scattered government and private data on the numbers and...

In the American liberal compass, the needle is always pointing to places like Denmark. Everything they most fervently hope for here has already happened there. So: Why does no one seem particularly interested in visiting Denmark? (“Honey, on our European trip, I want to see Tuscany, Paris, Berlin and . . . Jutland!”) Visitors say Danes are joyless to be around. Denmark suffers from high rates of alcoholism. In its use of antidepressants it ranks fourth in the world. (Its fellow Nordics the Icelanders are in front by a wide margin.) Some 5% of Danish men have had sex with...

Thinking about trying to sneak a JDM [Japanese Domestic Market] car into the United States? Better think twice, because according to the Clarion-Ledger, one man in Mississippi has found himself in hot water for smuggling a Nissan Silvia into the country...

Citigroup is one of three Wall Street banks attempting to keep hidden their practice of paying executives multimillion-dollar awards for entering government service. In letters delivered to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over the last month, Citi, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley seek exemption from a shareholder proposal, filed by the AFL-CIO labor coalition, which would force them to identify all executives eligible for these financial rewards, and the specific dollar amounts at stake. Critics argue these "golden parachutes" ensure more financial insiders in policy positions and favorable treatment toward Wall Street.''

I'm sure, as all good Americans, you too have been pouring over every little detail of the President's latest budget proposal. I’ve basically been doing nothing but that for 4 straight days. Unfortunately, given the current Congressional makeup of selfish bigoted haters Republicans, it has very little chance of becoming law like every other budget he's proposed. Even so, there's one thing that stands out: Climate Resilience Toolkits.. I did a little video to emphasize its most important points. It was originally over three hours long as I found it impossible to winnow the important points down to less than...

Not too long ago I engaged in a conversation with my spouse about how I learned, quite a long time ago, that a great many television sets--possibly all of them, that are not CRTs but are now the projection, HDs, flat-screen, 3D, curved-screen, Smart Screen, and all the others--have cameras installed in them that are being used to record everything we say and do. And, such information is disseminated to... Since I'm kinda down with a fair bit of pain today, this would be a good topic for me to research, to find out just what TVs have this feature...

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai released a statement on Obama’s Net Neutrality plan to regulate the internet and blasted Obama for not releasing the plan publicly. Last night, Chairman Wheeler provided his fellow Commissioners with President Obama’s 332-page plan to regulate the Internet. I am disappointed that the plan will not be released publicly. The FCC should be as open and transparent as the Internet itself and post the entire document on its website. Instead, it looks like the FCC will have to pass the President’s plan before the American people will be able to find out what’s really in it....

Lavrov: US escalated Ukraine crisis at every stage & blamed Russia At every stage of the Ukrainian crisis Washington has been taking steps that “only promoted further aggravation of the situation,” Russian FM Sergey Lavrov said at the Munich Security Conference. The West connives to justify Kiev’s military operation in eastern Ukraine, which involves the use of internationally prohibited munitions, such as cluster weapons, the head of the Russian delegation in Munich pointed out. “We cannot understand why in Afghanistan, Yemen and Mali the West is calling on the governments to hold talks with the opposition, in some cases even...

In the federal budget, just how big a hole would $22 billion be? As Michael Grunwald points out at Politico, that’s “larger than the annual budget for NASA, or that of the Interior Department and EPA combined[.]” And the shortfall is entirely due to the changes Barack Obama has made to student-loan programs — and could grow to ten times that amount over the next decade: In obscure data tables buried deep in its 2016 budget proposal, the Obama administration revealed this week that its student loan program had a $21.8 billion shortfall last year, apparently the largest ever...

During her confirmation hearings last week, Loretta Lynch, President Obama's choice to succeed Eric Holder as attorney general, called civil forfeiture, a form of legalized theft in which the government takes people's property without accusing them of a crime, "a wonderful tool." Lynch, currently the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, suggested that innocent owners need not worry about getting hammered by this tool, because forfeiture "is done pursuant to supervision by a court," and "the protections are there." In light of a forfeiture case that Lynch's office had abruptly dropped the previous week, her assurances rang...

The U.S. has gotten something of a free ride over the last 7 years as interest rates have hovered near zero. This has meant that the cost of servicing the debt – paying off some bonds and rolling others over – has been relatively low. This coming fiscal year, it's expected that the government will spend around $200 billion to keep the U.S. afloat. But the free ride is about to end. The Federal Reserve announced an end to their bond-buying program known as quantitative easing, and the resulting rise in interest rates will mean rising costs to service the...

Apparently anything Rand Paul says is “controversial” these days, and that was certainly the case during a recent interview he did on Closing Bell this week. The subject at hand was the exhausting topic of vaccinations, (which the media can’t get enough of) but during the discussion, the Kentucky Senator said something which deserves more attention, and not just regarding vaccinations. Why this is controversial I don’t know. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) doubled down on his position that most vaccines should be voluntary, suggesting Monday that mandated immunization is an example of government overreach.“The state doesn’t own your children,”...

LetÂ’s take a brief walk into financial reality for a moment.At the time of this writing, the United States governmentÂ’s official debt is nearly $18.1 trillion.Now, letÂ’s look at who the biggest owners of that debt are:1) Taxpayers of the United States.If youÂ’ve held a job in the Land of the Free, 15.3% of your salary has gone to fund Social Security and Medicare.Each of these programs holds massive trust funds that are supposed to pay out beneficiaries, both present and future.Conveniently, the trust funds are required by law to buy US government debt.And given that every single US taxpayer...

To Congress and prosecutors in the American states, We now know that at least one of the five members of the Taliban that president Obama recently swapped in exchange for deserting U.S. soldier Bowe Berghdal has already attempted to reconnect with his terrorist friends in the Taliban. Others who have been released from Guantanamo Bay in the past have done the same thing and returned to their previous terrorist activities. These men are considered heroes and revered by members of the Taliban, ISIS, and Al Qaeda. It is abundantly clear that this president fully intends to fulfill his pledge to...

Streaming video of the confirmation for Attoney General of Loretta Lynch (not the Coalminer's Daughter).

The new Republican Congress is weak and has almost no unity. What their message or agenda is changes almost daily. You would think though that Republicans could be counted on to defend the rights of the unborn. You would even like to think that Republicans could successfully present a case against infanticide. Unfortunately, the Republicans can’t even get behind a bill that would ban infanticide. House Republicans proposed a bill that would ban the abortion of babies over 20 weeks. Such a ban is popular among the general public. They even allowed for an exception for rape and incest, which...

It's not in the printed text, but the most revealing words in President Obama's seventh State of the Union address came near the end. After the scripted line, "I have no more campaigns to run," elicited Republican applause, Obama ad libbed, "I know, because I won both of them." Thus the last quarter of Obama's presidency resembles the first quarter, when he shut off discussion with House Republicans by saying, "I won." But his second winning percentage was lower than his first -- the only American president of which that can be said -- and the House now has a...

The federal government spent $432,000 to study gay sex apps.  I never knew that gay sex even required an app; I always thought two guys, a tub of vaseline, and a big bottle of tequila was all that was needed.  But apparently: The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has spent nearly a half a million dollars studying gay hookup apps such as Grindr. The government awarded $432,000 to Columbia University to interview gay men who use GPS dating apps and determine whether it increases their likelihood of engaging in risky sexual behavior. Gay sex between men, by definition, is...

More at Reaganite Republican...

Hey moms and dads, if you’re like me, before you had kids, you imagined yourself teaching them, raising them, and being responsible for them.  After generations of our parents and grandparents shedding their responsibility to the government in exchange for a selfish, me-centered life, we no longer have primary authority to raise our children as we see fit.  That authority now lies with the government. We’ve given away so much authority to the all-powerful state in the name of protecting children, that it’s a crap-shoot when kids who really need protection will get it.  And when the state gets it...