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Lawmakers across Nebraska are celebrating a US Court of Appeals ruling involving anhydrous ammonia fertilizer. Federal regulators with OSHA had issued new requirements for storage of anhydrous ammonia which would impact smaller retailers like those many Nebraska farmers go to. The court threw out that move saying they did it without offering a public comment period. Senator Ben Sasse issued the following statement: “Nebraska farmers and ranchers didn’t elect any of the bureaucrats at OSHA. That’s why this ruling is an encouraging step to restore common sense and the separation of powers.”

Fewer than half of physicians are aware of the Medicare Access & CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA), and most of those who do know about it probably wish it would go away. Nevertheless, this law will determine how Medicare reimburses doctors, starting in 2019. ... CMS won’t release its final MACRA rule ... CMS recenty changed the timeline ...

Commercial fishing boat owners and groups are reacting to the executive action taken by President Obama that created a marine national preserve in the North Atlantic on Sept. 15. They say that banning commercial fishing there is unnecessary, since the fishing industry has already been working with government agencies on conservation measures.

Brace yourselves from now til Jan 2017! -> "To be sure, there are 1,500 proposed rules and regulations in the pipeline, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget. That includes over 700 dubbed “economically significant” in the key final stage, and Katz said those are the ones to watch." <- GOP Mostly Powerless in Stopping Obama 'Midnight' Regulations http://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/gop-mostly-powerless-stopping-obama-midnight-regulations John T. Bennett @John T. Bennett Posted Sep 19, 2016 3:33 PM Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Chairman Richard Shelby is watching banking and consumer finance regulations that come under his panel's purview. “We don’t know what...

In Medieval times, Kings and Queens interested in maintaining control over small, outlying geographical areas arranged a complex system of fiefdoms, vesting feudal lords with their imprimatur to tell the local serfs and vassals what to do, and granting them the “power” to extract taxes – a portion of which would be given to the royals. Despite Constitutional strictures created to insure the contrary, the United States federal government has followed pretty much the same template, albeit on a bureaucratic, rather than monarchical, level. Case in point, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which is showing once more that it is...

Surgeons are speaking out against a Medicare proposal that would require them to use new billing codes to track their work in 10-minute increments during global surgical "packages" that span 10 days and 90 days, reports Medscape Medical News. The "packages" include preoperative and postoperative care as well as the procedure itself.

A general economic principle is that any law or regulation that restricts market entry tends to impose the greatest burden on those who can be described as poor, latecomers, discriminated-against and politically weak. The president of the NAACP's St. Louis chapter, Adolphus Pruitt, has petitioned a circuit court judge to reject the St. Louis Metropolitan Taxicab Commission's conspiratorial call to issue a temporary restraining order that would force Uber to shut down. He says the order would negatively impact nearly 2,000 African-Americans who work as Uber partners in black neighborhoods that have long been ignored by taxis and other transportation...

Regulating crossbows would be expensive and hard to implement, crossbow retailer say Those convicted of violent crimes are often ordered by the court not to own guns or crossbows, but because there's no regulation of crossbows, retailers don't know who they shouldn't be selling to. That's why Solomon Friedman, an Ottawa-based firearms law expert, says vendors should be given access to a federal database that identifies those who have a firearms ban. Although last week's slayings have prompted public discussion about licensing crossbows, Friedman says that the focus should be on those who are already banned from using weapons. "Instead...

Amid the historic flooding many of the rescues in Acadiana, and across the state, are being credited to civilians. They call themselves the "Cajun Navy." The group started during Hurricane Katrina, when hundreds from Acadiana went to New Orleans with their boats to make rescues. "Between us all, we took out quite a bit of people," said Doug Bienvenue, a member of the group. Now the "Cajun Navy" is back, but the fleet is facing a few challenges. Bienvenue is an original member of the fleet, so when GoFundMe accounts and t-shirt sales started popping up throughout flood relief under...

Want to work in a field that has more than quadrupled in size since 1960? Consider being a regulator for the federal government. Even during the last recession, the regulatory agencies were hiring. In 2015, the U.S. government employed more than 277,000 regulators. To put that number in perspective, it’s 50,000 more workers than General Motors Co. employs throughout the entire world. We’ve all heard of the regulatory agencies that constitute the “fourth branch” of government. It has cost our economy over $100 billion during the Obama administration.

Throughout his two terms in the White House, Barack Obama has either exaggerated or covered up his failed record on the economy. Soon after taking office in the midst of a deep recession, he said the only way to grow our economy was to blow $1 trillion on government infrastructure projects across the country and fatten the budgets of a lengthy list of federal bureaucracies here in Washington. He raised taxes, created a sea of costly regulations on struggling businesses and employers, and made excuses when the economy continued to limp along year after year, by blaming the Bush administration,...

Acting CMS Administrator Andy Slavitt has a lot of explaining to do. And a lot of listening. In recent months, the agency issued draft rules carrying out what's intended to bring transformational change to the way Medicare pays physicians. It also rolled out a slew of experiments with payment and delivery reforms, including its first mandatory demonstration programs. In the process, Slavitt has become highly visible on social media and in person, and he has developed a reputation for unusual candor in conversations with healthcare leaders and clinicians. Slavitt spoke last week with Modern Healthcare managing editor Gregg Blesch. This...

...the dangers are mainly for 534,000 Massachusetts residents who draw their water from private wells, the report found. Unlike public water systems, wells are not subject to state and federal testing and treatment requirements... Environmental advocates said they worry whether the department is up to the job of regulating the water supply....“The DEP really needs to beef up its ground water monitoring.”

There was more of the same old, same old California news recently. Some 62 percent of state roads have been rated poor or mediocre. There were more predictions of huge cost overruns and yearly losses on high-speed rail -- before the first mile of track has been laid. One-third of Bay Area residents were polled as hoping to leave the area soon. Such pessimism is daily fare, and for good reason. The basket of California state taxes -- sales, income and gasoline -- rates among the highest in the U.S. Yet California roads and K-12 education rank near the bottom....

Republican candidate Donald Trump focused this weekend on his economic platform: Cut taxes and regulations across the board while also saving Social Security, Medicare, and other government safety-net programs. Trump’s platform is nearly invincible in the general election if he stresses it enough, polling shows. Trump’s plan will also have a transformational effect on how people view his party. But he still needs to make the accounting work to ensure that his Third Way platform is feasible.

When Joey Vanoni returned to the United States from Afghanistan in 2013, he went to work putting his dream of owning a pizza business into action. A Navy veteran and current reservist, Vanoni launched Pizza di Joey, his veteran owned and operated business, in August 2014, serving New York-style brick oven pizza out of a food truck in Maryland’s Anne Arundel and Baltimore Counties. Vanoni knows good pizza. He was born and raised in New Jersey and began making pizza at a pizzeria when he was in high school. The reservist has lived in many cities across the country, all...

The tide of red tape that threatens to drown U.S. consumers and businesses surged yet again in 2015, according to a Heritage Foundation study we released on Monday. More than $22 billion per year in new regulatory costs were imposed on Americans last year, pushing the total burden for the Obama years to exceed $100 billion annually.

Most bad policies harm the economy in one identifiable way. But the Labor Department’s new overtime rule, released on May 18, harms the economy and the American worker in three different ways. The new rule requires employers to pay white collar workers overtime if they earn less than $47,476 annually, instead of less than $23,660, the case at present. (Manual workers generally have to be paid overtime at all earnings levels.) The effect will be (1) to raise costs to employers, discouraging employment; (2) to prohibit flexible time for employees; and (3) to stunt American productivity and economic growth. Consider...

There’s a lot of pearl clutching on the political right this week, so much so you’d be hard-pressed to differentiate it from the constant pearl clutching on the left. Facebook, it is alleged, “censors” conservative news. But does it really? And does it matter? There are not many people in the United States younger than 50 who don’t have a Facebook account. Exactly none of them were forced to open one. When they did they accepted the fact that they were playing in someone else’s backyard. Facebook owes the government no justification as to how it conducts its business as...

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