Final Rules Disclosed for How Social Security Admin. Plans to Disarm Its Beneficiaries

Final rules on how the Social Security Administration (SSA) plans to prohibit its beneficiaries from owning firearms were published in early May, but it took several weeks for observers parsing the 41-page document to realize its implications for the Second and Fifth Amendments.
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You Need 300 Hours Of Training And A License To Shampoo Hair?

Occupational licensure is so damaging to the upward mobility of poor people and does so little to protect the public that even the Obama administration, with its reflexive pro-government inclinations, has criticized it.
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Federal Regulations Now Cost Almost $1.9 Trillion, Study Finds

Do we live in a democracy, or a regulatory dictatorship? It’s hard to tell sometimes, especially after reading the latest annual report on the regulatory state issued by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
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Study: GDP Would Be 25% Bigger If Government Regulations Had Been Capped In 1980

Red Tape: Economists scratch their heads when asked to explain the economy’s tepid growth over the past several years. A new study gives a possible answer: the growing, cumulative burden of federal regulations.
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Commentary: A chilling regulatory Climate

     Late last year a second major oil company was forced to abandon plans to drill in the Arctic Ocean off the coast of Alaska – and irresponsible, high-fiving anti-development activists, most of whom live thousands of miles away and will not be affected, could not be more thrilled.

     But for those who live close by, the ones who will be most affected, the news is devastating.
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Federal Rules Shutting Down Work Centers for the Disabled

Work centers for the disabled provide a useful service for businesses while allowing individuals with special needs to gain work skills and autonomy. But new federal regulations would make life difficult for these charitable operations, potentially causing some to close their doors.
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Millennial member of Congress says outdated regulations are crushing her generation

The dire economic situation of millennials was front and center on Capitol Hill Wednesday, and a committee chairman said the executive and legislative branches were worsening it. The political failure to tackle the national debt and unfunded liabilities of entitlement programs are going to set back the generation born between 1980 and 2000 even further, Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., said at the Joint Economic Committee hearing.


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Great news: the EPA’s new smog rules will only cost 40 times as much as they said

We recently discovered that EPA chief Gina McCarthy is coming for your air conditioners because she’s pretty worried about ozone. (We’ll leave aside for now the fact that the chemicals used in modern air conditioners don’t affect that particular issue.) It’s still on her mind and the agency already put forward some new rules to cut down on smog.


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EPA Ignores Science to Propose Most Expensive Regulation in History

Next month, the Obama administration may roll out the most expensive regulation in history, ignoring scientific data that cutting ozone rates will not improve public health.

In the name of fighting asthma, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requested permission to decrease the ozone standard — the amount of ozone allowed in the atmosphere — to a level some scientists say is physically impossible to achieve. One organization estimates the cost to implement these new rules will be $1.1 trillion. Even worse, data shows that as ozone levels in the U.S. have decreased, asthma cases have increased.

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How Tom Steyer, the White House, and a Scandal-Plagued Operative Paved the Way for EPA Regulations

The White House, statehouses, and nonprofits backed by the billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer worked behind the scenes to create a state-level advocacy network to support controversial new Environmental Protection Agency regulations, newly released emails reveal.

Involved in the strategy was a top aide to John Kitzhaber, the former Democratic governor of Oregon, according to emails obtained by the Energy and Environment Legal Institute. Kitzhaber resigned this year in the midst of a scandal involving his fiancée.


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Gov’t to creamery: Your milk is entirely too natural to not be labeled “imitation”

Sometimes government’s dishonesty, incompetence, wastefulness, and misguided nannyism combine to make a perfectly ridiculous story. Today’s comes to us from Florida, where the Ocheesee Creamery is being forced to dump gallons upon gallons of good, natural skim milk because the state is requiring the business to label its good, natural skim milk “imitation” because they haven’t added anything to it.
Paul and Mary Lou Wesselhoeft have been fighting this in federal court with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Affairs, which had formerly allowed them to sell their skim milk while calling it skim milk. No one seemed confused by this except the state government, which changed its requirements.


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The Economic Illiteracy Of Obama's Overtime Rule

Regulations: With the flick of his magic pen, President Obama will soon grant millions of workers overtime play. At least, that's the fantasy being peddled by the White House and regurgitated by a credulous press.


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Regulations to watch in 2015

With President Obama determined to leave his mark through regulations, administration officials are trying to finalize as many health and consumer safety protections as possible before his term runs out. Agencies such as the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Food and Drug Administration have a host of final rules on deck for what could be a burst of rulemaking in Obama’s final two years in office. Rules that agencies are expected to finalize in the next year include safety standards for ATVs and electronic reporting of workplace injuries. Here's a look at what the Obama administration has on tap.

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Supreme Court to Hear Challenge to Rules on Mercury From Power Plants

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to hear a major challenge to the limits set by the Obama administration on emissions of mercury and other toxic pollutants from coal-fired power plants.

 

It is the latest effort by industry groups to roll back regulations that would reduce emissions like mercury, soot, sulfur, smog and carbon dioxide.

 

Read more at the New York Times

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OMB: 13-year high for new and costly federal regulations

The number of complicated federal regulations with an economic impact of $100 million or more has hit a 13-year high for the “spring” season, according to the Office of Management and Budget.  The group that tracks regulations, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told Secrets that Obama has issued far more big dollar regs in his first six years than former President Bush: 376 for Obama to 287 for Bush.  “And,” said CEI's Clyde Wayne Crews Jr., “this is not even counting the ‘pen' and ‘phone' rulemaking happening off the books.”

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‘Twilight for Coal in the United States’: EPA Announces New Regs on ‘War on Poverty’ Anniversary

The Environmental Protection Agency moved forward with a proposed rule to require coal-fired power plants to install a technology aimed at reducing greenhouse gases that the Government Accountability Office found won’t be commercially viable for several years.  The EPA first proposed new caps on carbon dioxide emissions from fossil-fuel fired electricity generating units in April 2012 and received more than 2.5 million public comments on the rules. In the proposed rule filed with the Federal Register on Wednesday, the EPA said it is withdrawing the 2012 proposal and moving forward with new substitute rules.

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2013 Saw a ‘Tsunami of Regulatory Actions’ on Environment, Senate GOPs Charge

Senate Republicans maintain the Obama administration has kept the American public “in the dark” over detrimental regulations implemented to address global climate change.  A report issued by GOP lawmakers on the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee maintains the White House Climate Action Plan released earlier this year is “sweeping in breadth” and requires greater oversight than has thus far been provided, since it “has every area of the federal government working towards its goal of justifying a carbon-constrained economy.”

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GOP lawmakers accuse EPA of muzzling scientists on climate regulations

Republican leaders on the House Science Committee are accusing the Environmental Protection Agency of disregarding science in its push to impose carbon dioxide limits on power plants. ✧ Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, and 20 other Republican lawmakers sent a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy on Thursday, claiming the agency has "muzzled" members of its independent science advisory board.

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Heartland Blog: A Short Guide to Obamacare

By Matt Faharty - It’s not a national healthcare system. It’s not the free market. It isn’t what we’ve had for the last forty years. So what is Obamacare?

Maybe I am too late to write about this topic since the Affordable Care Act has already been passed and is in the process of implementation. Then again, the bill is infamously opaque, and I believe very few people, either in Washington, the media, or the general public understand what Obamacare is, or how it will make healthcare more affordable. A study in the Journal of Health Economics published this month claims that only 14% of Americans between ages 25 and 64 have a basic understanding of how insurance works, let alone how Obamacare will effect it. Nobody even seems to know how long the bill is with estimates ranging from 10,000 to 33,000 pages of mind-numbing bureaucratic documents.

According to Nancy Pelosi we should start to know what is in the bill at this point, so I will take a crack at it. Read more at Somewhat Reasonable, a Heartland.org blog ... Read More......

Uh Oh, Obamacare Math Sinks In for Small Businesses

Even as you finish with this year's taxes, if you're a small-business owner experts say it's time to look ahead to 2014, when the tax implications of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) begin to kick in.

"Just now, things are really sinking in that there is this employer responsibility," said Amanda Austin, of the National Federation of Independent Business.

Under ACA, often called Obamacare, employers with 50 or more full-time workers face a mandate to provide insurance. It's known formally as shared responsibility.

"You're going to need somebody to do a thorough review of the impact on your business," Austin said, because the new rules are complex.

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