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The Food and Drug Administration is tearing into several Kind fruit and nut bars, blasting the company's claims they are healthy.Apparently there is a federal criterion for what is considered healthy, and Kind doesn't meet it, according to a recent FDA warning letter to the company.The agency singled out the labels for four Kind bars: almond and apricot, almond and coconut, peanut butter-dark chocolate and protein, and dark chocolate-cherry cashew and antioxidants.The agency took aim at several claims that the bars were "healthy," including that they were low in sodium and were a good source of fiber.

Today is tax day in America. As always, it features a lot of confusion with tax forms, some rushed trips to the post office and a whole lot of heartburn as taxpayers are reminded just how much they paid in taxes over the previous year. Despite the fact that every American constantly is affected by local, state and federal taxes, there is still a large number of Americans who don’t know about taxes. Here are seven things many every American should know about taxes. 1. Taxes Cost a Whole Lot Taxes on all levels consume over a quarter of gross...

Gov. Snyder recently sent a letter to Michigan House Speaker Kevin Cotter and Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof explaining some of the problems of occupational licensure. The governor summarizes some of the good work the Legislature has done, and outlines the principles he'll use in "determining whether to support any legislation providing for additional occupation regulation.” Below are these principles: There must be a substantial harm or danger to the public health, safety, or welfare as a result of unregulated practice, which will be abated through licensure. The practice of the occupation must require highly specialized education or training. The...

Florida Gov. Rick Scott is the latest state leader on a jobs-poaching trip to California. Scott will visit a jobs forum in Los Angeles on Monday, where he will discuss why California businesses should move their operations to Florida.

The Clean Air Act notably identifies states as being first among equals to the federal government when implementing environmental regulations. Indeed, the preamble of the Clean Air Act states that “air pollution…at its source is the primary responsibility of States and local governments.” Since state legislatures gaveled into session earlier this year, many have explored ways in which they may be able to mitigate some of the burdens of EPA’s proposed Clean Power Plan. After much discussion and debate, members of the Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force adopted the model Act Requiring Approval of State Plan to Implement EPA’s...

Long before Ted Cruz was a big-name senator and conservative rock star, wowing the crowd at Liberty University in the early days of his presidential bid, he was just another lawyer toiling away in virtual anonymity under George W. Bush. While Cruz’s time in the Senate is best known for fiery speeches and high-profile gestures like his 21-hour filibuster, in his earlier time in Washington he demonstrated a wonkish eye for detail and an eagerness to take on powerful industry groups that he saw as stifling competition. Though his efforts ultimately succeeded on a much smaller scale than he’d initially...

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...