Free Republic

If you like your shower, you probably can’t keep it once the Obama administration bureaucrats are done. Nobody can altogether escape regulations, not even when bathing in the altogether. The Environmental Protection Agency denies wanting to compel us to shorten our showers, but that’s like President Obama denying you will lose your current doctor under Obamacare. EPA is funding research to create hotel guest monitoring systems so the front desk can track your shower time and water usage. It’s the scariest thing since Hitchcock staged the deadly shower scene in “Psycho.” The next step could be a water-use surcharge on...

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Friday unveiled the nation’s first major federal regulations on hydraulic fracturing, the controversial technique for oil and gas drilling that has led to a dramatic increase in American energy production but has also raised concerns about health and safety risks. The Interior Department began drafting the rules in Mr. Obama’s first term after breakthroughs in the technology, also known as fracking, led to a surge in the production of oil and gas. The fracking boom has put the United States on track to soon become the world’s largest oil and gas producer. But environmentalists...

Back in 1997, when Bill Clinton's EPA was pushing stricter air pollution rules, then-EPA administrator Carol Browner scoffed at complaints that the new rules would be so strict as to eventually ban backyard barbecues.

The White House’s new rules exempting an administrative office from being subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) have raised eyebrows among transparency advocates. The FOIA allows citizens to obtain government documents from federal agencies. In a Federal Register notice scheduled to publish on Tuesday morning, the action to exempt the Office of Administration is listed as a final rule, implying there will be no opportunity for public comment. The notice highlights that the Executive Office of the President, Office of Administration, is removing regulations from the Code of Federal Regulations related to the status of records created and...

Lies, lies, and nothing but lies. The lies end now. As reported moments ago, the White House is voiding a federal regulation that subjects its Office of Administration to the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA (incidentally the same act that discovered none of Hillary Clinton's "personal" government-business emails since they were not even stored on government property!) which as USA Today explains, makes "official a policy under Presidents Bush and Obama to reject requests for records to that office." And just like that the lie of Obama's transparency is over, and it couldn't come at a worse time for...

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/03/16/white-house-foia-regulations-deleted/24844253/

U.S. Steel announced Thursday that it will idle its Keetac taconite iron ore operations starting May 13, another victim of the huge glut of global iron ore and steel that's far outpacing demand. The company said up to 412 workers at the facility will be affected and that they are being notified. Some employees will be kept on to maintain the operations, so the exact number of layoffs hasn't yet been determined, the company said. Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel said the Keewatin, Minn., plant will be idled indefinitely "due to the company's current inventory levels and ongoing adjustment of its steelmaking...

MEET THE BRAINS BEHIND OBAMA'S PLAN TO REGULATE THE INTERNET In the Wall Street Journal's stunning expose of how political operatives at the White House overruled the FCC's own experts to pave the way for this week's upcoming vote to regulate the Internet, we learned that the key link between a small group of liberal tech executives and President Obama was David Karp, the president of Tumblr. Specifically, the Journal reported:

Obama Exploits the Ignorance of Young People to Seize Control of the Internet BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: On Thursday the FCC is gonna vote on net neutrality. I have some people sending me e-mail, asking me what it is. I'll sum it up as best I can for you, but what is going to happen Thursday is a direct result of Obama hijacking the effort -- essentially, let me just put it to you this way. Do you own a website, do you operate a website? If Obama gets his way, you're gonna have to get a license for it just...

Reform conservatives – “reformicons,” as columnist E.J. Dionne has labeled them – are out to change the Republican Party in a way that frees it from the the “nostalgia” of Ronald Reagan. The message of these young, “big” thinkers is simply that today’s GOP ought not be your daddy’s Republican Party. No. It must “evolve” into something else in these modern times, something far less as extreme as Reaganism.

At least one economist gets off campus frequently enough to see what the real economy looks like and, naturally, he’s a free market type. Perhaps he should take his colleagues on a field trip. “American businesses spend almost $2 trillion per year (or roughly another 10 percent of GDP [Gross Domestic Product]) complying with regulations, including the 79,311 pages of the 2013 Federal Register,” Nikolai G. Wenzel, a visiting assistant professor of economics at Florida Gulf Coast University, said at a Fund for American Studies conference last November. “Think for a moment that the Declaration of Independence adds up to...

A state-level bureaucrat is standing up to the the central government planners is a most unusual way. Arizona’s superintendent of public instruction, Diane Douglas, has informed all school districts in the Grand Canyon State that they have blanket authority to ignore all federal nutrition mandates regulating school fundraisers. "Forcing parents and other supporters of schools to only offer federally approved food and snacks at fundraisers is a perfect example of the overreach of government and intrusion into local control," Douglas said in a statement. "I have ordered effective immediately, that the ADE Health and Nutrition Services division grant exemptions for...

The federal government, taking pages from the playbooks of Communist nations like China, is preparing regulations that will have profound impacts on free speech online. If the regulations succeed via the Federal Elections Committee, any posts, videos or news stories posted in support or opposition of a candidate will be considered a political contribution. The FEC closely regulates contribution limits, meaning that blogs and Youtubers would have their free speech capped once their content value surpasses the spending limit. In other words, your posts, comments or videos supporting or opposing a candidate will be treated like donations or campaign independent...

It’s a cornerstone of our democratic republic: The right to choose those we want to represent us in government, and the right to choose which issues we support or oppose. But how much power do Americans really wield at the ballot box? Every two years we elect our representatives and a group of senators, and like clockwork, they return either to statehouses or to Washington, D.C., ostensibly to do the people’s bidding. The reality is, however, that so much of what emanates from the nation’s capital in terms of public policy has little to do with the passage of laws...

The FCC has attempted to regulate the internet twice in the past. On both occasions Federal courts ruled that the FCC didn’t have the authority to regulate the internet. That of course won’t stop the Obama administration from attempting to do just that via so-called net neutrality regulations. The FCC is considering a 332 page plan to regulate the internet. They’re expected to vote on it later this month. Only after the vote will they release to the public their plans to regulate the internet. The most open and transparent administration in history is set to regulate the internet without...

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...

If you’re like most Americans, you’re enjoying the fact that it costs a lot less to fill up your car’s gas tank these days. If you’re a fan of big government, you may feel a bit ambivalent, though. Why? Because one of the biggest drivers behind the drop in gas prices is the rise in directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) here at home. While the government is busy micromanaging the energy industry — trying to saddle it with more regulations while showering favors on so-called “green” companies — the free market is showing how to actually get things done....

Two New Jersey teens got a lesson in government regulations this week then they decided to go door to door offering snow shoveling services ahead of the Blizzard of 2015. The blizzard ended up being a bit underwhelming in N.J., but forecasts ahead of time predicted it would be a whopper. High school seniors Matt Molinari and Eric Schnepf, both 18, decided to go door to door Monday evening handing out flyers offering snow shoveling services for the next morning, NJ.com reported. Unfortunately they didn't know about their town's ordinance related to soliciting, which prohibits people from selling services door-to-door...

Better go out and buy a gas fireplace and stove soon before federal regulations make them more expensive. Federal officials are looking to regulate the energy usage of fake fireplaces as part of the Obama administration’s effort to fight global warming.The Energy Department has proposed new regulations that would mandate that “gas-fired hearth products” like decorative fireplaces and stoves be more energy efficient and produce fewer carbon dioxide emissions. DOE says its rule would save $165 over the lifespan of the average hearth and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 11.1 million metric tons through 2030.The major change DOE demands is...

Last week the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced major new regulations on the emissions of methane into the air from oil and gas production. It calls methane a “potent” pollutant and its new rules would require a 45 percent reduction by 2025 from 2012 levels. Most Americans support these new rules, according to polling from environmental groups. This isn’t surprising. Methane sounds like a dirty and dangerous pollutant and even deadly if leaked into water or the air. However, methane is just another term for the main component of natural gas. Drillers have a powerful motive to stop leakage on...