Free Republic

Following the horrific and incredibly destructive fires in southern California earlier this year, hundreds of residents of the Pacific Palisades neighborhood are opting to sell their homes rather than rebuild. For months now, various people have predicted that this would happen because the bureaucratic red tape in California is a nightmare to deal with, not to mention the exorbitant costs. It is absolutely awful that so many of these people find themselves in a position where they’re unable to rebuild homes they have lived in for years. This is all on the Democrat leaders of the city and the state....

The Supreme Court unanimously decided on Thursday to limit environmental reviews for major infrastructure projects in a case that will have sweeping impacts on President Donald Trump’s energy agenda. In a move that will restrict power of federal judges, Thursday’s decision reduces the scope of reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to focus solely on immediate impacts. Under NEPA, federal agencies are required to study any potentially significant environmental consequences of federal permits for infrastructure projects. “NEPA does not allow courts, ‘under the guise of judicial review’ of agency compliance with NEPA, to delay or block agency projects...

China is planning to restrict exports of a key mineral needed to make weapons while a U.S. company that could be reducing America’s reliance on foreign suppliers is languishing in red tape, energy experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation. The Chinese government announced on August 15 that it will restrict exports of antimony, a critical mineral that dominates the production of weapons globally and is essential for producing equipment like munitions, night vision goggles and bullets that are essential to national security, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Perpetua Resources, an American mining company, has...

Fifty-one Florida counties are under a state of emergency ahead of Hurricane Milton, which is now a major Category 5 storm barreling down on the West Coast of the state. “It became a hurricane very quickly,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said during a morning update at the State Emergency Operations Center. “And so not only is it a hurricane, it’s already a major hurricane, and it’s now a category four hurricane with maximum sustained winds at 150 miles per hour, it is expected to make landfall on the west coast of Florida sometime between Wednesday evening or perhaps even very early...

The formula shortage is finally bringing attention to the FDA’s labeling games that have angered many moms for years.Months after distressed moms have been vocally upset and concerned about the baby formula shortage, the media is finally starting to ask, how could this happen? The short answer is lockdown supply chains and the shutdown of one of the country’s largest formula plants in Michigan over an alleged bacterial outbreak. The long answer is that, unlike the problem of sky-rocketing lumber prices or your West Elm furniture stuck on cargo ships, this crisis is intertwined with an already highly regulated industry...

The White House on Tuesday announced it has restored key protections to a landmark environmental law governing the construction of pipelines, highways and other projects that President Donald Trump had swept away as part of an effort to cut red tape. The new rule will require federal agencies to scrutinize the climate impacts of major infrastructure projects under the National Environmental Policy Act. In 2020, Trump introduced major changes to the law’s implementation, saying the government would exempt many projects from review and speed up the approval process. His administration also said federal agencies would not consider “indirect” climate impacts....

“If you watch CBC, you’ll see our dear prime minister tell the Canadian public what the government of Canada won’t be able to do. This is just a total load of BS,” says Clayton, who has been working to get dozens of people in Afghanistan out before they are slaughtered by the Taliban.... “They can’t get to the airport,” says Clayton, who adds this person and their family sent him a video clip of the road to the airport, jammed with people on foot with gunfire ringing out.... “We’ve got a government that’s in the middle of an election that...

Campbell Mulholland's family have been left gutted at the "undignified" move as their beloved relative was returned to the morgue after his service.A man has been denied his last wishes of being buried in his family grave leaving his relatives heartbroken. The family of Campbell Mullholland was told by the council just 24 hours before his funeral that the 94-year-old had been refused entry because the grave was half-an-inch too small. Mr Mulholland wanted to be with his infant son and wife when the time came and died on February 2 expecting to be buried with them. Campbell's family members...

It was Jan. 22, a day after the first case of covid-19 was detected in the United States, and orders were pouring into Michael Bowen’s company outside Fort Worth, some from as far away as Hong Kong. Bowen’s medical supply company, Prestige Ameritech, could ramp up production to make an additional 1.7 million N95 masks a week. He viewed the shrinking domestic production of medical masks as a national security issue, though, and he wanted to give the federal government first dibs. “We still have four like-new N95 manufacturing lines,” Bowen wrote that day in an email to top administrators...

The USNS Comfort and the Javits Convention Center are still sitting mostly empty despite being set up in New York City to treat coronavirus patients while emergency rooms across the city overflow with patients. The 1,000-bed Comfort and 2,500-bed Javits Center were set up by the federal government and military to alleviate the strain on New York's hospitals at the height of the pandemic. But immediately, hospital executives expressed frustration and outrage at the red tape that was stopping them from actually contributing to the crisis. The first problem was that neither was willing to take COVID-19 patients. The Comfort...

Coronavirus is frightening. I'm working from home, practicing "social distancing." Experts say it'll help "flatten the curve" so fewer people will be infected simultaneously. Then hospitals won't be overwhelmed. But the infection rate grows. Doctors and hospitals may yet be overwhelmed. It didn't have to get to this point. Coronavirus deaths leveled off in South Korea. That's because people in Korea could easily find out if they had the disease. There are hundreds of testing locations -- even pop-up drive-thru testing centers. Because Koreans got tested, Korean doctors knew who needed to be isolated and who didn't. As a result,...

FDA late Monday updated its policy impacting private and public labs and commercial manufacturers to increase U.S. capacity for coronavirus diagnostic testing. ​​The guidance, originally issued Feb. 29, ​is meant to address the "urgent need" to expand the number and variety of COVID-19 diagnostic tests available.

In 2014, former Obama Defense Secretary Robert Gates famously attacked then-Vice President Joe Biden as “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” On Thursday, Biden made a major speech criticizing President Trump’s travel ban, warning that it will not stop the spread of the virus and that Trump is racist. That he rejects Trump’s isolationism. It is a constant theme that Biden has been taking, but he misses the point that Trump wants to slow the spread of the virus and help medical facilities deal with the inflow of cases.On January...

The U.S. Interstate Highway System is the backbone of American commerce and personal travel. Funded on a pay-as-you-go basis largely through federal excise taxes on motor fuel, today it accounts for 25% of total vehicle-miles traveled despite accounting for just 2.5% of total road network lane-miles. Yet, much of the Interstate system, construction of which began in the 1950s, is nearing the end of its functional life, along with the infrastructure of other surface transportation modes. Over the next two decades, trillions of dollars of investment will be needed to rehabilitate and in some cases rebuild this infrastructure, according to...

The Republican National Committee is having some fun today with Nancy Pelosi. The California Democrat is confident that Democrats will retake the House, and is looking to reoccupying the speaker’s office. Yet, before she can redecorate the office and dream about wielding the gavel again, she still has other obligations, like the opening of a new affordable housing complex. In the video, Pelosi is unable to cut the red tape. As the RNC noted, it’s life imitating art (via Washington Examiner): Back home in the San Francisco Bay area after doing some fundraising Thursday in Arizona for fellow Democrats, Pelosi...

Office of Management & Budget Director Mick Mulvaney gave an intricate and often eccentric explanation of redundancy and overlap in federal bureaucracy in a presentation that stunned the president and the press. "I call this the 'drain the swamp' cabinet meeting," Mulvaney said, adding that it has been about 100 years since the federal government was reorganized at this scale. He criticized the "Byzantine nature" by which the government regulates, creating headaches for business owners, employees and taxpayers. "If you have a cheese pizza, it's governed by the Food & Drug Administration. If you put a pepperoni on it, it's...

BLUEFIELD — Extending the King Coal Highway’s “bridge to nowhere” in Bluefield to the Airport Road area is still on track for next year. Del. Marty Gearheart, R-Mercer County, said the project remains on the Department of Highways six-year plan for a 2019 start. “Dirt should be moved next spring (2019),” he said. “It will be built when it is supposed to. It’s been part of the six-year plan and was not scheduled until next spring.” The bridge, which connects to Rt. 460 and then to Interstate 77, was finished almost 10 years ago but funding for the highway has...

In his first 11 months in office, President Donald Trump is keeping another of his campaign promises: reducing regulations so that the economy can breathe again. Speaking in the Roosevelt Room — an irony that may have been intended — Trump summarized brilliantly exactly how the greatest economic miracle in history got bogged down: Congress has abandoned much of its responsibility to legislate [see Article I, Section I of the U.S. Constitution: “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States”], and has instead given unelected regulators ... extraordinary power to control the lives...

President Donald Trump vowed Thursday to scale back the scope of federal regulations to the level it stood in 1960, suggesting that he could get there "fairly quickly" by pushing ahead with a deregulatory effort that has wiped dozens of rules off the books since he took office. "We're here today for one single reason: to cut the red tape of regulation," Trump said of his tenure, adding that "the never-ending growth of red tape in America has come to a sudden, screeching and beautiful halt" under his administration. **SNIP** The administration eliminated 67 regulations between the time Trump took...

The new implementation of EPA rules on heavy trucks has boosted the 10-year regulatory burden on America past $1 trillion, 75 percent of which have been imposed by the Obama administration. That amounts to a one-time charge of $3,080 per person, or an annual cost of $540 ... each year every person, regardless of age, in the nation is responsible for paying roughly $540 in regulatory costs. These burdens might take the form of higher prices, fewer jobs, or reduced wages," said AAF's Sam Batkins ... The staggering amount is likely to surge even higher as President Obama scrambles to...