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“The buck didn’t stop with The Big Guy, that’s where it started,” Rep. Clay Higgins says, referring to a bribery allegation against President Joe Biden....... The White House dismisses the revelation that a government whistleblower implicates President Joe Biden in a bribery scheme, calling the accusation no different than other investigations of the president’s family “going on five years.” But this allegation is quite different, noted one member of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee. “This is the first time there has been a direct link to President Biden and influence peddling,” Rep. Russell Fry, R-S.C., told The Daily Signal...

Social Cost of Carbon estimate jumps from $51 to $190 per metric ton, creating future impact for Americans' wallets and a new headache for the oil and gas industries. With the price of everything from gasoline to food soaring in America, nobody is surprised by inflated price tags these days. But even by Washington standards, an action taken earlier this month by the Environmental Protection Agency is creating sticker shock: a nearly fourfold increase in the government calculation of damages from carbon emissions. The so-called Social Cost of Carbon was first set in 2009 under then-President Barack Obama. Under Democrats...

White House officials described President Donald Trump’s Executive Order for “Reducing Government Regulations and Controlling Regulatory Cost” as Trump’s “one in, two out” plan: For every regulation promulgated by a federal agency, that agency must “identify” two existing regulations to be targeted for extinction.The order also sets a cap of $0 for the cost of new regulations, with the only exceptions being military and national security regulations. The president said when signing the order, “This will be the biggest such act that our country has ever seen. There will be regulation, there will be control, but it will be normalized control.”Budget...

With the rules on country-by-country reporting, the EU has created a framework where businesses in the extractive and logging industries have to publish their payments to governments relating to the exploitation of natural resources. This will assist populations of resource-rich countries to hold their governments accountable for these proceeds. In addition, a country-by-country reporting is also required from EU credit institutions (banks). This will ensure that trust in the financial sector is regained. On 12 April 2016, the Commission adopted a proposal for a Directive which imposes on EU and non-EU multinational groups the publication of a yearly report on...

A new week, a new month, a new sell-off. Crude prices are charging lower to start the week as a plethora of bearish indicators emerge to encourage crude lower. Hark, here are five things to consider in the oil market today.

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.

President Obama is nothing if not predictable. Required by law to release plans for new regulations twice a year, the administration has consistently done so just before major holidays, when few are paying attention. Thus, it was no surprise to see his fall 2015 regulatory agenda released last Friday, as many Americans focused on Thanksgiving week with family and friends. [...] ... The regulations span the full scope of American life, ranging from labeling requirements for pet food, new test procedures for battery chargers, mandated paid sick leave for contractors, and automatic speed limiters for trucks to a dozen new...

If you like your electricity, you can keep your electricity. The White House announced the release of his “Clean Power Plan” late yesterday, which plans to cut carbon emissions from power plants in the US by 30%. Obama promised in his own message that this would result in lower energy prices, which sounds very similar to the promises made with ObamaCare — that later turned out to be the Lies of the Year once implemented:

President Obama has overseen a dramatic expansion of the regulatory state that will outlast his time in the White House. The reach of the executive branch has advanced steadily on his watch, further solidifying the power of bureaucrats who churn out regulations that touch nearly every aspect of American life and business. Experts debate whether federal rulemaking has accelerated under Obama, but few dispute that Washington — for better or worse — is reaching deeper than ever before into the workings of society. “It would be difficult for anyone to pretend that this isn’t a high water mark in terms...

Monster Prediction From BofA: Another US Debt Downgrade Is Coming In Just A Few Weeks Joe Weisenthal | Oct. 22, 2011, 7:04 AM | 4,055 | 48 In an analyst note, Bofa/ML Ethan S. Harris drops a bit of a bombshell prediction: We expect a moderate slowdown in the beginning of next year, as two small policy shocks—another debt downgrade and fiscal tightening—hit the economy. The “not-so-super” Deficit Commission is very unlikely to come up with a credible deficit-reduction plan. The committee is more divided than the overall Congress. Since the fall-back plan is sharp cuts in discretionary spending, the...

(CNSNews.com) - President Barack Obama’s regulatory czar retreated from a 2003 academic report he wrote advocating that government assign a higher monetary value to the lives of young people than to senior citizens during testimony to Congress on Friday. Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Cass Sunstein testified in front of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations about the Obama administration’s plans for reviewing and reducing federal regulations. “I’m a lot older now than the author with my name was, and I’m not sure what I think about what that young man wrote,”...

Last August, the the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) graded itself on its enforcement of the Clean Air Act (CAA) in terms of economic benefit-cost analysis. Surprise not: EPA came up with an astounding $31 of clean air benefits for every dollar of cost. That, and Administrator Lisa Jackson can leap tall buildings in a single bound. Deja Vu: EPA’s 1997 Study Back in 1997, the EPA credited itself with providing $22.2 trillion in benefits at a cost of a half trillion dollars from enforcing the CAA from 1970 (when the EPA was established) through 1990 (when Congress amended...

In 2020, the Clean Air Act will prevent 230,000 premature deaths and result in $2 trillion in economic benefits, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported on Tuesday. The EPA report, required by law, assesses the costs and benefits of the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments, which overhauled the country’s premier air-pollution law and included restrictions on ozone and a range of toxic air pollutants. “The Clean Air Act’s decades-long track record of success has helped millions of Americans live healthier, safer and more productive lives,” EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said in a statement.

The victims of today's excessive government regulatory zeal face the same enemy confronted by the nation's Founders: unconstrained centralized power...

Just about the time you're tucking into your Thanksgiving leftovers, the Senate will get around to a final vote on the food safety bill. By Thursday night in the Capitol, it was all about negotiating with the lone hold-out, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK).Coburn had threatened to hold up the food safety bill to get a vote to ban spending on lawmaker's pet projects, a.k.a. an "earmarks" ban. And eventually, he got that assurance. [snip] The bill would give the Food and Drug Administration more authority to recall tainted foods and increase inspections, as well as put new produce safety requirements...

WASHINGTON — As President Barack Obama remakes his senior staff, he is also shaping a new approach for the second half of his term: advancing his agenda through executive actions he can take on his own, rather than pushing plans through an increasingly hostile Congress. A flurry of staff departures and promotions is playing out as the White House ends a nearly two-year period of intense legislative activity. Where the original staff was built to give Obama maximum clout in Congress, the new White House team won't need the same leverage with lawmakers. "It's fair to say that the next...

By STEPHEN POWER A proposed crackdown on smog by the Environmental Protection Agency is fueling resistance from businesses groups concerned about costs, Republicans who say it'll be a drag on the economy—and some heartland Democrats engaged in tough election battles this fall. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is proposing to redefine what constitutes unsafe levels of ground-level ozone, a primary ingredient in smog. Ms. Jackson wants to set the nation's air-quality standard for ozone at between 60 and 70 parts per billion, compared with 75 ppb currently. The EPA says that could save as many as 12,000 lives a year and...

(CNSNews.com) – The final version of President Barack Obama’s financial regulatory bill, hammered out in negotations between House and Senate Democrats, contains a provision that grants the federal government the power to subpoena any financial information it wants from any financial institution without showing probable cause that a crime has been committed.

Childhood Obesity Report Calls For Government Regulations to Limit Access to ‘Unhealthy’ Restaurant Chains Wednesday, September 02, 2009 By Penny Starr, Senior Staff Writer (CNSNews.com) - A newly released report by the Institute for Medicine and the National Research Council details strategies for local governments to combat what it calls an epidemic of childhood obesity, including enacting zoning and land-use regulations that would “restrict fast food establishments near school grounds and public playgrounds.” The report, “Local Government Actions to Prevent Childhood Obesity,” was compiled by the Committee on Childhood Obesity Prevention Actions for Local Governments, a committee of health care...

Note: The following text is a quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release April 23, 2009 Please find below the complete text of a Memorandum signed by President Obama on January 30th and published in the Federal Register on February 3, 2009. Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies SUBJECT: Regulatory Review For well over two decades, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has reviewed Federal regulations. The purposes of such review have been to ensure consistency with Presidential priorities,...