Politics, ideology often trump duty and honor among public servants

Commentary by James Shott

Here in America, the land of the free, it ought to take actual wrongdoing for government to act against individuals and organizations. And when those in positions of authority in government are properly serving the people they work for, that is the way it is.

Alas, that is not always so. It seems to be getting more frequent to see misfeasance by public servants who, rather than seeking out criminal or civil misbehavior, now use their offices that they are paid to operate honorably for purposes outside their scope of responsibility. Apparently the punishment for abdicating one’s sworn duty to honorably do his/her job are insufficient to discourage bad behavior. Or maybe it is because people rarely are held accountable and punished for their misfeasance.

Perhaps the best-known recent episode of such public dis-service was the targeting for harassment of conservative organizations that had filed for non-profit status with the IRS, a function under the control of one Lois Lerner.

During a Congressional hearing investigating the affair, Lerner refused to answer questions, hiding behind the 5^Th Amendment’s protection from self-incrimination, later resigning her federal position and, having avoided criminal charges, lives peacefully on her government pension.

While Lerner used her IRS position against political adversaries, public servant misbehavior also creeps into the area of harassing ideological adversaries. The environmental left’s position that burning fossil fuels significantly harms the environment is based upon evidence so weak and heavily disputed that a substantial number of Americans – perhaps a majority – reject the idea. Unable to convince people through the strength of scientific evidence, the liberals then resort to using the power of government to force people into line.

This time the target is ExxonMobil and a dozen independent groups that are in the crosshairs of a state prosecutor because they do not accept the idea that fossil fuels significantly damage the environment, and have had the unmitigated gall to express their opinion publicly.

Earlier this month ExxonMobil released a copy of an April 19 subpoena filed by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey demanding forty years of communications regarding climate change from the company and the organizations. Exxon has filed a motion for injunction in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, accusing Healey of waging a politically motivated fishing expedition aimed at silencing oppositional opinion on climate change.

Did Exxon engage in legally actionable fraud as Healy claims? “Fossil fuel companies that deceived investors and consumers about the dangers of climate change should be, must be held accountable,” she said, referring to what she called the “troubling disconnect between what Exxon knew, what industry folks knew and what the company and industry chose to share with investors and with the American public.”

Healy’s statement suggests that someone can be held criminally liable for knowing the left’s argument about climate change, and failing to discard their own opinion in favor of that argument. Merely knowing that the environmental faction thinks fossil fuel use is harming the environment makes you legally obligated to adopt it, even if you do not agree and, more importantly, even if there is no actual proof that assumption is correct.

Healy and the fellow travelers on the left seem to believe that their opinion becomes truth, merely because they believe it, even if it has never been proven true or valid, and if you disagree you can face legal action. Free speech and the First Amendment apparently no longer apply where climate change is concerned.

Of this poorly thought through legal fiasco, Alex Epstein, whose Center for Industrial Progress is one of the dozen organizations targeted by Healy along with Exxon, had this to say: “What ExxonMobil is being prosecuted for is expressing an opinion about the evidence that the government disagrees with … There is a fundamental distinction in civilized society between fraud and opinion.”

In his excellent book The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, Epstein advances the position that fossil fuel use has provided millions and millions of people wonderful advantages in terms of higher living standards, increased life expectancy, decreased infant and child mortality than they would have had without fossil fuels, and he references the manic climate change narrative that produced repeated predictions of doom that did not materialize.

A fundamental truth in the United States is that one may hold and espouse any opinion he or she chooses, without regard to whether that opinion is true or false; it is not a crime to disagree, even if the subject is climate change.

This effort to force acceptance of the weak theory of fossil fuels damaging the environment is an initiative of “AGs United for Clean Power.” This perhaps signals a coming expanded effort to silence disagreement. But it has aroused the attention of 13 attorneys general, who signed a letter to their counterparts across the country that said: “We think this effort by our colleagues to police the global warming debate through the power of the subpoena is a grave mistake.”

Whether that letter will help redirect AGs tempted to the dark side or not is unknown. But it is a step in the right direction.

Cross-posted from Observations

Asset forfeiture provides huge monetary benefits for law enforcement

Commentary by James Shott

The Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act became law in 2000. Asset forfeiture is a tool that gives law enforcement the power to seize property and cash if they suspect it is connected to a crime, and is hailed by law enforcement groups as a vital tool for combating drug trafficking and money laundering.

The Institute for Justice reports that the Justice Department’s program furnished state and local law enforcement agencies some $4.7 billion in forfeiture proceeds from 2000 to 2013. What better way to help fund law enforcement than through the confiscation of property from criminals?

But the DOJ now plans to halt the program. Naturally, law enforcement wants this program to continue, and the possibility of the program being halted has raised concerns and prompted letters to President Barack Obama and Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

The National Sheriff’s Association, to cite just one of the law enforcement groups expressing concern, said the Justice Department’s decision will hinder law enforcement agencies’ ability to do their jobs. “While Congress and the president vacation in peace and tranquility, law enforcement knows all too well that the criminals, terrorists, and criminal aliens do not take a holiday,” the sheriff’s organization noted. “Those seeking to do us harm can rest easier knowing one less tool can be used against them.”

However, typical of governments at all levels, which are operated by humans and not angels, this program has been abused to illegally confiscate the private, legally possessed property of innocent Americans. Essentially, the message government sends out far too frequently is, “Any useful program that governments have at their disposal will eventually be misused, to the detriment of the people for whose benefit it was developed.”

If you need a recent example of government power misused by government employees, remember Lois Lerner and the IRS targeting and harassing certain conservative organizations seeking non-profit status. Other examples of misbehavior are not hard to find.

The asset forfeiture program also is abused. From the ACLU Website: “Police abuse of civil asset forfeiture laws has shaken our nation’s conscience. Civil forfeiture allows police to seize — and then keep or sell — any property they allege is involved in a crime. Owners need not ever be arrested or convicted of a crime for their cash, cars, or even real estate to be taken away permanently by the government.

“Forfeiture was originally presented as a way to cripple large-scale criminal enterprises by diverting their resources. But today, aided by deeply flawed federal and state laws, many police departments use forfeiture to benefit their bottom lines, making seizures motivated by profit rather than crime-fighting. For people whose property has been seized through civil asset forfeiture, legally regaining such property is notoriously difficult and expensive, with costs sometimes exceeding the value of the property. With the total value of property seized increasing every year, calls for reform are growing louder, and [the ACLU and others are] at the forefront of organizations seeking to rein in the practice.”

Adam and Jennifer Perry exemplify people who were victimized by this law and law enforcement officers willing to capitalize on it.

On October 25, 2012, the couple was stopped for speeding in Henry County, Mass. Police searched the couple’s vehicle and found a suitcase containing $107,520 in cash. Suspicious? Yes, but not a crime or necessarily evidence of a crime. And although no drugs or any other evidence of a crime were found, the police said they suspected the Perrys of criminal activity, and seized the cash and their vehicle.

During nine hours of questioning the Perrys insisted they had done nothing wrong and that the money was theirs legally, from various legal sources, and had evidence confirming that for some of the funds. Lacking any real evidence, the police had to release the couple. But they kept the money and the vehicle, even though no charges were filed, no trial was held, and no guilt was proved. Three years later, the Perrys are still fighting to get their property back.

If this legalized theft from innocent citizens isn’t bad enough, now a federal judge has demanded that the Perrys prove how they got the money, this after they had already given explanations to the police, who did not disprove those explanations. Question: If there was no evidence of a crime, and no charges filed, why should these citizens be compelled to prove where they got their own money?

A fundamental American legal principle is the presumption of innocence, that Americans are innocent until “proven” guilty, and that the onus is on the judicial system to prove guilt, not on citizens to prove they aren’t guilty.

On December 23, the Justice Department announced it will discontinue the asset forfeiture program, but the discontinuation is temporary.

The tyrannical treatment of the Perrys by Henry County, MA police and a federal judge epitomizes what “un-American” means. Before it can be reinstated, asset forfeiture laws must be amended to protect Americans from rogue actors in law enforcement who seek improved work conditions at the expense of law-abiding citizens. Stiff criminal penalties for abuse are essential. These people soil the reputations of the 99 percent who honorably serve the people.


Cross-posted from Observations

San Bernardino: nothing more than gun control opportunism for the left

Commentary by James Shott

Before the sound of gunfire in San Bernardino had faded away, the radical left wing, ever at the ready, had sprung into action. Members of the intolerant LACTOS (Liberals Against Conservative Terrorist’s Offensive Shootings) attempted to blame the GOP and right-wingers for the massacre in tweets: “Well, c'mon, GOP: Tell me how your prayers are with the victims and their families *this* time while you do nothing.‬” And, “No, I'm tired of praying. I want action. I want people to stop saying ‘MAH GUNS’ in response to death.‬”

Meanwhile, at the White House, five minutes after the shooting started, a clerk in the Rush To Judgment Department removed a sheet from a stack of pre-printed president’s statements calling for more gun control, while the folks in the WVNT (Workplace Violence, Not Terrorism) and CCCAP (Climate Change Causes All Problems) offices geared up for the coming propaganda drive.

From the BFIL (Blame First, Investigate Later) and the ITNRAS (It’s The NRA, Stupid) were these, first from Democrat presidential candidate Martin O'Malley: “@MartinOMalley‬ Horrifying news out of #SanBernardino‬. Enough is enough: it's time to stand up to the @NRA‬ and enact meaningful gun safety laws.” And: “Another day, another mass shooting in NRA's America.‬”

Those calling for more and stricter gun laws seem unable to grasp that people who want to commit the crime of killing innocents probably won’t obey gun laws, either.

Terrorism is designed to scare people into irrational actions or surrender, and the terrorists are winning against the American left, which is clearly terrified of guns. Some rationality is desperately needed.

From 2009 to 2013 the United States experienced 38 “rampage shooting incidents” (RSI) that claimed 227 lives, according to the Rampage Shooting Index. That works out to roughly one RSI every five months claiming more than 20 lives in each incident. These numbers rank the U.S. at the top of the list. In a not-so-close second place is Norway, with 77 RSI deaths, but only one RSI. Next is Germany with 25 deaths and three RSIs.

These numbers ought to scare the stuffing out of every American, not just the anti-gunners on the political left. Numbers, however, can be used to create many false images, and this is one example of that. The numbers cited previously do not include the elephant in the room: the population of those nations.

When America’s population of 315 million becomes part of the equation – the largest by far in the study – the U.S. drops all the way down to sixth place, behind Norway, Finland, Slovakia, Israel and Switzerland. Leading the way with 15 deaths per 1 million population is Norway, while Finland leads in the number of incidents with .37 per 1 million residents. The U.S. numbers are .72 deaths and .12 incidents per 1 million population, ranking sixth – not first – in both categories. Furthermore, the nations with worse numbers per 1 million people than the U.S. have “restrictive” firearm regulations, while the U.S. and Belgium (7th place) do not.

These numbers show that Norwegians are 20 times more likely to die in an RSI than Americans. Adding two years to the span of time cited above, Norway remains in first place, but the U.S. drops to eighth place, when national population is part of the equation.

And so another liberal false narrative falls flat on its face, but where guns are concerned, as with climate change, the left refuses to let inconvenient facts get in the way.

Some on the left are legitimately fearful about the supposed gun violence issue, while others are focused on gaining further control of the American people. This latter group includes Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and many, if not most, of the active politicians in the Democrat Party.

Brittany M. Hughes, reporting on the Media Research Center online in September, addressed the number of guns in America, noting that in 2009, it was estimated by the National Institute of Justice that there were approximately 310 million firearms in the country. Today, that number is likely higher.

“The number of firearm-related homicides in 2013 – the CDC’s most recent data – was 11,208,” she wrote, “(so about 309,988,792 guns were just milling about that year, not killing anybody).”

She continued: “That means about 0.000036 homicides were committed per gun in the United States in 2013,” less than four homicides per 100,000 firearms.

Some clear thinking on the use of firearms to discourage crimes came from the Cato Institute: “The rationale for [gun control] legislation is to reduce accidental shootings and the criminal use of guns against people. But if harm reduction is the goal, policymakers should pause to consider how many crimes … are thwarted by ordinary persons who were fortunate enough to have access to a gun.”

Bloomberg Business in 2012 analyzed the vastly contradictory claims about defensive gun use, estimating defensive actions occur tens of thousands of times a year, adding, “100,000 is not a wild gun-nut fantasy,” while suggesting higher numbers are more likely.

Common in mass shootings in the U.S. is that they occur in “gun-free zones” where guns are prohibited. It is the American left that prefers gun-free zones, not the American right.

Cross-posted from Observations

Americans believe that the country is headed in the wrong direction

    A year ago a poll by The Wall Street Journal and NBC found that 71 percent of Americans are pessimistic about the nation’s long-term prospects; we are on the wrong track, they believe, and they direct their blame at the elected leaders in Washington. Sixty percent think the country is in a state of decline.
    A couple of months later a Politico poll showed that half believe we are on the wrong track, while only about 20 percent thought we are on the right track. And 64 percent believe the country is “out of control.”
    This discontent runs so deep that 57 percent of those in the Journal/NBC poll said something upset them enough to carry a protest sign for one day, including 61 percent of Democrats and 54 percent of Republicans.
    Their national government has grown in size and cost. The 2010 Census lists federal civilian employment at 2.8 million, 2 percent of total employment, and one federal employee for every 117 people. In 2014, Cost of Government Day fell on July 6.  Working people had to work 186 days out of the year just to meet all costs imposed by government. In FY2014 the federal government spent $3.5 trillion, $484 billion more than it took in.
    The degree of power the federal government exercises over its citizens has grown to ridiculous levels. So extensive has government intrusiveness become that it now decides the kinds of light bulbs we can use and regulates the toilets we can buy, and is about to exert control over outdoor cooking grills and people who heat their homes by burning wood. It attempted to gain the power to come onto your property and take control of part or all of it if areas there collect a sufficient amount of rainwater.
    Government incompetence, long a subject of ridicule, is at an all-time high. Among recent failures:
** The bright idea to allow guns to flow to Mexican drug cartels, resulting in the death of Border Patrol Agent Bryan Terry.
** Failure to respond to requests for additional security led to the murder of our Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three more Americans in Benghazi.
** The IRS went to war against politically conservative organizations that had applied for tax-exempt status.
** The Veterans Administration’s disgraceful treatment of American military veterans is so awful that Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson suggested doing away with the agency and putting the Department of Defense in charge of veterans’ healthcare.
** President Barack Obama thinks that climate change is a greater threat and more important than crime-ridden inner cities, terrorism, or a nuclear Iran, and supports measures that will cost millions of dollars and thousands of jobs, all for a fraction of a percent improvement in the environment, if that.
    The business environment in the U.S. has become such that American companies find it more beneficial to move operations out of the country than to keep them here; all the while some in government condemn those businesses as “greedy” and “unpatriotic.”
    With the campaign season for the 2016 presidential election well underway, the Republican field of 17 candidates is led not by existing office holders in Congress or statehouses, but by three non-politicians who have never held elective office before: Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina. As of last Wednesday, the combined approval percentages for those three totaled 56 percent of all 17 candidates. This unusual circumstance has occurred despite the fact that several of the other candidates have achieved significant success as governors, which is a good indicator that they could effectively run the federal government. Others have been strong conservatives in Congress. This underscores the idea that people are disgusted with government and those who are involved in it at both the federal and state levels.
    Government grows in size, cost and power because those in government want it to, and those who put people in power have not elected people who want to constrain government growth. Yes, it is true that people who are elected because they advocated smaller, less expensive, more efficient government, and conservative values frequently fail to follow their campaign promises, as we see from observing the actions of the current Republican-controlled Congress.
    We should not count on the rising generation for much help to correct this situation. Pew Research in March of last year reported that this group votes heavily Democrat and supports an activist government.
    “As a general and logical matter, younger people’s dearth of life experiences and their quixotic idealism make them especially vulnerable to simplistic appeals and emotional manipulation for utopia’s grandiosity and social causes, which are proclaimed achievable only through top-down governmental designs and social engineering,” so writes author and legal scholar Mark Levin in his great new book Plunder and Deceit.
    He notes, “the relentless indoctrination and radicalization of younger people … from kindergarten through twelfth grade to higher education in colleges and universities” as why the rising generation does not have an appreciation for American traditions and values.
    Therefore, the challenging job of restoring America falls to their parents’ generation, who must elect people who truly value America’s traditions.

Going Rogue, Part XI: EPA will break the law to do what is right!

Commentary by James Shott

The Environmental Protection Agency, long behaving as a narrowly focused ideological organization instead of as a servant of the people, may finally have messed up sufficiently to bring itself down, or at the very least to have earned a significant degree of restriction to its slash-and-burn approach to fossil fuel energy production.

Causing misery to thousands of honest, hard-working people who have lost jobs and businesses, suffered downturns in their business and/or paid heavy fines because of the agency’s dogmatic focus on imposing unwarranted restrictions on behaviors the agency dislikes, the EPA has been caught in an incestuous relationship with organizations that advocate the same ideology as agency bureaucrats.

The work of the Environment & Energy Legal Institute (EELI) reveals that the EPA has secretly colluded with environmental activists to drive the Obama administration’s manic global warming agenda. The organization’s report reveals “records showing illegal activities by EPA staff, conspiring with certain environmental group lobbyists to draft EPA’s greenhouse gas rules behind the scenes and outside of public view.”

As reported by The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Michael Bastasch, who quoted Chris Horner, an EELI senior attorney, “These emails, which EPA forced us to litigate to obtain, prove beyond any doubt that EPA conducted its campaign to impose the global warming agenda unlawfully, making the rules themselves unlawful.” Mr. Horner says the EPA’s rules were made in collusion with environmental groups, including the radical Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), thereby excluding the public from the process, and are therefore unlawful.

EELI says the EPA wrote the Clean Power Plan and other agency rules with an “unalterably closed mind” centered on an anti-fossil fuel agenda. The EPA’s behavior and the NRDC’s perspective perfectly fit the dictionary definition of the ideologue: an impractical idealist, an often blindly partisan advocate or adherent of a particular ideology.

A 2014 EELI report focused on emails released through a Freedom of Information Act request that showed coordination between EPA employees and environmentalists that discussed the Keystone XL pipeline and clean coal technology. The EELI asserts that the records show “the influence on EPA by pressure groups, the same groups from which EPA obtained numerous senior officials,” and that these activists helped to craft the EPA’s Clean Power Plan (CPP) that regulates carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants.

The New York Times found similar connections last year: “Indisputable, however, is that the Natural Resources Defense Council was far ahead of the E.P.A. in drafting the architecture of the proposed regulation.”

Analyzing the EPA’s strategy, Mr. Horner commented: “The issue is solely whether Congress will stop EPA from unlawfully winning by losing, which is to say, using sham rulemaking to metastasize its desired harms before the typical timeline of litigation allows for intervention. The public needs to consider this illegality and cynical lawlessness when the President stands up with the EPA administrator … to lecture us all about how they’re just doing the right thing.”

Question: If the EPA and the Obama administration are doing the right thing, why did they feel compelled to break the law?

The EPA is expected to finalize the CPP this week, and may already have done so by now. According to comments from the White House, this new version of the plan is even stronger than last year’s proposal, which was objectionable enough to prompt several states to file suit opposing the rule, and to outrage some labor unions.

Even before this stronger version of the plan had been developed, United Mine Workers of America president Cecil Roberts said the CPP would result in tens of thousands of union members losing their jobs. Doing the right thing “will lead to long-term and irreversible job losses for thousands of coal miners, electrical workers, utility workers, boilermakers, railroad workers and others without achieving any significant reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions,” Mr. Roberts said in a statement. In addition to the thousands who have already lost their jobs, he estimates that the rule will cause 75,000 job losses in the coal sector by 2020, rising to 152,000 by 2035.

Apparently unconcerned with the thousands of American workers whose lives will be turned upside-down, an EPA spokesperson said, “The Clean Power Plan follows our clear legal authority under the Clean Air Act,” adding that, “The supreme court has decided multiple times that EPA has an obligation to regulate greenhouse gases,” without apparent concern for the repercussions.

The EPA, like all federal agencies, is duty-bound to enthusiastically adhere to only one ideology, and that is the one outlined by the U.S. Constitution.

The EPA, or any federal agency, may properly seek input from any individual or organization, but they may not take information or advice exclusively from one side without providing the opportunity for opposing points of view and data to be provided, and to objectively consider all points of view to arrive at a fair and sensible conclusion.

Out of control actions by agencies of the federal government are much too frequent, and repercussions for this inappropriate, intolerable and sometimes-illegal behavior are nearly non-existent. A number of people should be fired, and a few deserve to be indicted.

Don’t hold your breath!

Cross-posted from Observations

Choking off suffocating activities like “Operation Choke Point”

The federal government’s efforts to restrict the freedoms Americans have enjoyed for more than 200 years have gotten so preposterous recently that the most of these efforts leave people incredulously saying, “Seriously?”

To wit: The Environmental Protection Agency recently went after people who burn wood to heat their homes. Trying to destroy the coal and oil industries isn’t enough, now the EPA thinks wood – an inexpensive, renewable energy source – which is the mainstay of rural homes and of some of the nation’s poorest residents, is harmful, and the agency has banned the sale of 80 percent of wood-burning stoves.

And now the nation’s most out-of-control agency has charcoal grills in its crosshairs, and has funded a project at the University of California with $15,000 of taxpayer money to study the emissions from grease drippings when people indulge in that dangerous activity, outdoor cooking.

First it was toilets, because they used too much water; then inexpensive, safe incandescent light bulbs, which have been replaced with CFLs that contain mercury and emit ultraviolet radiation; and now wood stoves and potentially outdoor grilling. There are too many people on the payroll at the EPA with too much time on their hands.

These efforts are necessary, we are told, to keep the world from grinding to a halt because of … well, some horrible disaster related to climate change, or global warming, or whatever the alarmists are now calling their imagined cataclysm. 

Each time some new target becomes public we ask, “Can it get any worse?” Unfortunately, the answer always is, “Yes.”

The EPA is not the only arm of the government harming the good citizens they exist to serve. The Department of Justice has jumped blindly onto that bandwagon with a program even more intolerable than the EPA’s misadventures called Operation Choke Point, which looks way too much like something you would find in other less-free countries, or perhaps used by mob bosses in Chicago.

Operation Choke Point is a method of preventing perfectly legal businesses from being able to operate satisfactorily, not by pointing to a law these businesses have broken or a shady practice they have indulged in, or by going through legislative channels to have what they do declared illegal, as our concept of the rule of law demands, but by underhandedly strong-arming financial institutions with whom these business have accounts, and “convincing” them to not do business with these merchants any longer.

Businesses such as ammunition sales, escort services, on-line gambling, so-called “racist materials,” third party payment processors, payday lenders, and online lenders, have been targeted simply because someone in the DOJ or higher up in the administration doesn’t like them. Some are perhaps undesirable, but all are legal.

What happens is that the DOJ and bank regulators pressure banks and other third-party payment processors to cease providing or deny banking services to industries the government alleges pose a “reputation risk” to the bank or service provider.

Last May, Todd Zywicki wrote in The Washington Post the “initiative has been shrouded in secrecy, but now it is starting to come to light  … and since then it has been difficult to discover details about it … Without an ability to process payments, the businesses – especially online vendors — cannot survive.”

The irony is that while the DOJ and bank regulators are choking off financial services to perfectly legal industries, they are also encouraging banks to provide banking services to illegal marijuana sales.

When you have people in high offices that are more interested in serving some ideological god than they are in serving the American people, and when that ideological god demands the improper use of government force against legal activities, something must be done to stop it.

And last week, the U.S. Senate started down that road. The Senate Budget Committee approved an amendment to end Operation Choke Point, and according to The Daily Signal, Committee member Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, will offer an amendment this week to the Senate’s budget proposal to defund the DOJ program. 

Sen. Crapo last year commented that Operation Choke Point “has morphed into an attempt to shut down entire industries of law-abiding and legitimate merchants.” And he sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder expressing “strong concerns” about the program. Unsurprisingly, the Justice Department, declared that it has “no interest in pursuing or discouraging lawful conduct.”

And the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations will question FDIC officials about the agency’s involvement in Operation Choke Point, and hopes to find out who was involved, how high up it goes, and whether anyone has been held accountable. 

The answer to that last item will likely be “No.” It is virtually unheard of for federal employees to pay a price for their malfeasance. It is also likely we will not learn the any names associated with this outrageous offense.

Cutting funding for the EPA, the DOJ, and any/every other agency that over-reaches is an appropriate mechanism to redress the wrongs they commit against the American people. The government spends far too much money, and cutting spending where it is being used wrongly or unconstitutionally ought to be celebrated by every freedom loving American.

November surprise: Happy Thanksgiving from the Regulator-in-Chief

Fridays. That’s when the federal government finds it most advantageous to release ugly surprises. You’ve heard of the Friday document dump? The weekend is coming, most people are winding down from the work week, getting ready to relax for a couple of days, and they aren’t really paying attention to the news, and even the news folks are getting ready for the weekend, and are unprepared to respond to the release of a bunch of government documents.

This practice offers added value right before a holiday, when millions of people are not only readying for the weekend, but are preparing to travel to visit relatives or to host family and friends for the holiday, and therefore even fewer are paying attention to the news. So the Friday before Thanksgiving is when the Obama White House informed the nation, without fanfare, of 3,400 new regulations ready to go into effect next year.

Sam Batkins, the American Action Forum’s director of regulatory policy, told The Daily Signal, “The administration has been really aggressive on the regulatory front.” He added, “They drop [the Unified Agenda] on a Friday right before a holiday, and no one critical of their regulatory policies will have a chance to criticize it.”

The Unified Agenda is a document that serves as the administration’s roadmap for regulations it intends to finalize in coming months, and is usually released in the spring and fall.

The Regulatory Information Service Center of the U.S. General Services Administration, describes this document: “The Unified Agenda provides uniform reporting of data on regulatory and deregulatory activities under development throughout the Federal Government, covering approximately 60 departments, agencies, and commissions. Each edition of the Unified Agenda includes regulatory agendas from all Federal entities that currently have regulations under development or review.”

In 2012 the Obama administration issued 4,000 rules, so it’s good news that this year’s total is lower, although it is 100 rules larger than the 2013 Agenda.

Mr. Batkins notes that under the administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush the Unified Agenda was “a normal, boring list of regulations,” but he warns that the Obama administration’s release of the Agenda near a holiday portends a group of regulations that have strong political implications. This year’s edition contains 23 “economically significant” rules, which are those with an economic impact of at least $100 million, two more than last year.

The Obama administration has introduced rules costing the economy $16 billion a year, on average, according to James Gattuso, senior research fellow in regulatory policy at the Heritage Foundation.

The American Action Forum states that the $16 billion annual average costs imposed on the country by the Obama administration is “tantamount to having a $160 billion tax increase over 10 years.” The Daily Signal quotes Mr. Batkins as saying that $18 billion to $20 billion in new regulatory costs equals an approximate increase in the payroll tax of 1 percent. “Payroll tax going up 1 percent — that would get everyone interested. But $20 billion in regulatory costs is the equivalent of that,” he said.

An increase in the payroll tax affects only employers and employees, but regulatory costs affect nearly everyone. Mr. Batkins analyzed 36 economically significant regulations issued by the Obama administration and shows price increases for the individual consumer in the following categories:

•        Vehicles: $9,150
•        Household consumer products: $1,639
•        Mortgage: $362 annually
•        Energy: $135 annually
•        Health Care: $108 annually
•        Food: $14 annually

That $11,000 effect is the result of just 36 rules of the thousands put into effect each year, and that estimate of costs comes from the government. Other estimates suggest costs are actually even higher.

New regulations push costs higher, and when things cost more people buy less of them. When sales drop, fewer workers are needed to produce, transport and sell those items, and people lose their jobs.

A Heritage study shows that the Obama administration issued 157 major regulations during its first five years, while for the same period under President George W. Bush, only 62 major regulations were released. Those 157 new rules cost Americans nearly $73 billion. No doubt these additional heavy regulatory costs are responsible for some of the dire employment problems the nation suffers more than five years after the recession ended.

Attempting to recover from a recession by issuing punishing regulations has to have a slowing effect on the recovery from the recession, and that is exactly what we have witnessed since the recession ended in 2009.

Consequently, unemployment is still far too high. The most common measure places unemployment at 5.8 percent, which is above the normal 4-5 percent full employment figure. But the more accurate number counting those who can’t find work and have quit looking is 11.5 percent.

The October labor force participation rate is 62.8 percent, the lowest since about 1980, and lower than the 65.7 percent level when the recession ended in June of 2009.

Perhaps it’s that people don’t understand the negative effects rampant regulation has on them, and that enables them to believe a higher minimum wage for the least skilled and least experienced workers is a more critical problem than the costs of regulation.

The election of 2014 is over. What did we learn? Where do we go?

Last week’s mid-term election results surprised almost everyone in some way. Republicans won control of the US Senate, increased their majority in the House of Representatives by 13 seats, and won a number of other victories, as summarized here by The Washington Post:

• Net gain of 8 legislative chambers, increasing from 59 to 67 out of a total of 98 (Nebraska is technically unicameral, but it is dominated by Republicans as well).
• This sets a record for the modern era, breaking the one in 2012.
• Republicans now have total control of 24 states, controlling legislative chambers as well as the governor’s office.
• Republicans have supermajority status in 8 states.
• Control is split in 17 states (3 of whose governors flipped from Democrat to Republican).
• Republicans now have four lieutenant governorships due to defeating Democrat incumbents.
• Democrats have total control in 6 states.

Given the broad and deep defeat of Democrats across the nation it is apparent that the country disapproves of what liberal Democrats have been doing. Those who voted elected Republicans in big numbers, and those that didn’t vote made a strong statement of non-support for the radical policies of liberal Democrats.

A day after the election, President Barack Obama was defiant, showing no inkling that he understood that his policies and the direction he and his fellow liberals had set were to blame for what happened the previous day.

“What we’ve seen now for a number of cycles is that the American people just want to see work done here in Washington,” he said. “They’re frustrated by the gridlock. They’d like to see more cooperation, and I think all of us have a responsibility, me in particular, to try to make that happen.”

That sounds promising, but no more had he sounded the trumpet of cooperation than he committed to going around Congress with a plan to stop deportations and allow as many as 5 million illegal aliens to stay in the United States, at least temporarily. Given that he did nothing on immigration for the first six years of his tenure, except weaken border security, why is this so important now?

His position not only is a slap in the face of Congressional leaders, but also of the American people. Seventy-four percent of voters said in an exit poll by The Polling Company that President Obama should work with Congress rather than go around Congress on immigration.

The Polling Company results showed that "majorities of men (75 percent), women (74 percent), whites (79 percent), blacks (59 percent), and Hispanics (54 percent)," oppose an executive amnesty, and that opinion was shared by Republicans (92 percent) and Independents (80 percent), and even by a majority of Democrats (51 percent).

He is also on the wrong side of the Obamacare issue. The Real Clear Politics Average of polls conducted in October shows that nearly 52 percent of those polled are opposed to Obamacare, while only 38 percent favor it.

Nevertheless, "On healthcare, there are certainly some lines I'm going to draw," Mr. Obama said on Wednesday. "Repeal of the law I won't sign," and he will resist efforts to improve the bill, such as by getting rid of the individual mandate.

This election was certainly not a mandate for Congress and the president to work together to pass the same kinds of legislation that liberal Democrats favored before the election. The people want change.

The mission statement for the new Republican majority should be “First, do no harm.” That means no amnesty, and fix or repeal Obamacare, among other things.

The federal government is too big, too expensive, too intrusive; it is out of control and a danger to the freedom of the American people: Government must be reigned in. That is what the election meant.

Participants in a nationwide CBS News poll in late October were asked what was the most important issue that would affect their vote in the upcoming election. The stagnant economy topped the list at 38 percent.

To get the economy moving we have to cut tax rates across the board, both corporate and personal, which will put millions of dollars in the hands of people and businesses to spend as they see fit.

And then:

• Cut government spending. There’s more than enough waste in administrative agencies to “pay for” tax cuts.
• Repeal the tax on medical devices imposed by the Affordable Care Act that punishes companies developing needed technology.
• Approve the XL Pipeline, and both create jobs and help end dependence on foreign oil.
• Reign in the EPA, remove the shackles on domestic energy production. Defund it, if necessary.
• Secure the borders and stop the influx of illegals, drug cartels and other criminals from Mexico, and potential terrorists. Deport or jail the criminals among the illegals.
• Start restoring our military to its former strength, and try to reacquire those seasoned officers driven to retirement by the Obama administration.
• Restore selection of US Senators to state legislatures, as it was originally designed.

One investigative reporter’s intriguing trials and tribulations

Sharyl Attkisson is an award winning television journalist who until recently worked for CBS News. She received two Emmy nominations in 2010 and another in 2011 for investigating members of Congress and the government’s wasting of tax dollars. Her reporting of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) “Operation Fast and Furious” debacle won CBS News the Investigative Reporting Award from Accuracy in Media in 2012, and also won CBS Evening News the Radio and Television News Directors Association's National Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Video Investigative Reporting.

You may remember “Operation Fast and Furious,” although it received much less coverage than it deserved. That was the name attached to the ill advised, poorly conceived, and error-ridden misadventure devised by ATF, an effort to shut down the flow of U.S. guns to Mexican drug cartels. The idea was to allow guns to be put in the hands of Mexican drug traffickers for the purpose of tracking them to cartel members and arresting them.

Not only did ATF botch tracking the weapons, but people who were armed with two of those “Gun Walking” weapons and were illegal aliens that the ATF had not arrested, killed Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry on the U.S. side of the Mexican border. While it is certainly possible to dream up a more preposterous plan than this one, “Fast and Furious” richly deserves the Dubious Achievement Award.

While working for CBS News in 2013, according to huffingtonpost.com, Ms. Attkisson told a Philadelphia radio station that "[t]here has been an issue in my house and there has been an issue with my computers that's gone on for quite a long time that we're looking into.” The issues, she said, had been occurring for about two years. An investigation by CBS News confirmed that, indeed, an external third party had accessed her computer numerous times.

Further problems were outlined by Erik Wemple on washingtonpost.com: “By November 2012, writes Attkisson, disruptions on her home phone line were so frequent as to render it unusable: ‘I call home from my mobile phone and it rings on my end, but not at the house. Or it rings at home once but when my husband or daughter answers, they just hear a dial tone. At the same time, on my end, it keeps ringing and then connects somewhere, just not at my house. Sometimes, when my call connects to that mystery-place-that’s-not-my-house, I hear an electronic sounding buzz,’ reads one passage in [her new book]. She also alleges that her television set ‘spontaneously jitters, mutes, and freeze-frames.’ The home alarm, too, ‘sounds at a different time every night’ and when she checks with the alarm system, it indicates that there’s ‘trouble with the phone line.’”

Who had the motive and the means to do such things?

Could it have been a competitor network? Perhaps. But would a competitor have strong enough motivation to take on such a project? How about a foreign entity, like China? China has the wherewithal, but would it be interested in the subjects Ms. Attkinsson was investigating? Probably not.

How about the CIA, FBI, NSA, DOJ or other government department? Well, given that she was looking into misbehavior of members of Congress and the “Fast and Furious” mess, yes, both motive and wherewithal exist in administrative agencies. However, the Justice Department denied any involvement, so we can just follow the lead of the mainstream news media and put that suspicion to rest, can’t we?

Ms. Attkinsson did yeoman’s work investigating and reporting on the “Fast and Furious” government screw-up, but CBS’ interest ran out before the story was over, as did the government’s interest in explaining to the American people how such a thing happened.

You would probably use more than all your fingers and toes counting the prominent media outlets that share a grand lack of curiosity for epic blunders, bungles, fiascos and miscalculations by our government over the last few years, like the Benghazi security failure, the Solyndra financing boondoggle, the IRS targeting non-profit applicants, the NSA mass spying project, the failure to secure the southern border, and the Justice Department spying on reporters’ private communications.

Finally, however, after more than five years a few media outlets have started to notice and point out the administration’s many shortcomings, and to ask questions about these things.

Ms. Attkinsson left CBS News this year due to what she said is the network's liberal bias and lack of dedication to investigative reporting. She has written a book, Stonewalled: One Reporter's Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama's Washington, published by Harpers, and focusing on difficulties she has experienced in reporting on the Obama administration.

Sharyl Attkinsson epitomizes what the Fourth Estate is supposed to be: the people’s guardian against government misbehavior. A responsible and determined news media provides the public the information it needs to properly evaluate what its government and elected officials are doing, and as such is an indispensable tool for a free society. This function has been largely missing since January of 2009. Maybe if a Republican is elected president in 2016, the function will be revived.

So, the Republicans decreased funding for the CDC’s Ebola research

Commentary by James Shott

An ad produced and being run by the Agenda Project Action Fund says Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funding has been cut by $585 million since 2010 and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) saw its budget cut by $446 million. Interspersed along the way are brief visuals of various Republicans who at some time in their public life uttered the word “cut,” and have had that split-second of their life included in this ad: “cut,” “cut,” “cut,” “cut.”

And then the CDC director, Dr. Thomas Frieden, is shown saying that there are disease outbreaks that his agency is not able to act against “as effectively as we should be able to.” And finally disturbing images of Ebola sufferers appear, followed by the words “Republican cuts kill” just prior to advising people to “Vote.”

We can forgive Dr. Frieden for ending a sentence with a preposition, which is at worst a minor slip-up, but we cannot forgive the Agenda Project for flagrantly lying that Republicans – or anyone – cut funding for the CDC and the NIH, preventing them from developing a vaccine for Ebola.

For verification of that assertion we look to one of the most liberal of voices, The Washington Post. It gave the ad its gold seal: Four Pinocchios, which the Post categorizes as “Whoppers.”

The Post story explains “For NIH, since 2006, there has been relatively little change in the size of the budget, going from about $28.5 billion in 2006 to $30.14 billion in 2014. … (The agency also received a $10 billion windfall in 2009 from the stimulus law.)”

“As for the CDC,” the Post continues, “you will see a similar pattern. The numbers have bounced around $6.5 billion in recent years. (CDC receives both an appropriation from Congress and, since 2010, hundreds of millions of dollars from the Prevention and Public Health Fund established by the Affordable Care Act.) Before 2008, the agency received less than $6 billion a year. In fiscal year 2013, the White House proposed a cut in CDC’s funding, but Congress added about $700 million. In 2014, the administration again proposed reducing the budget, but Congress boosted it to $6.9 billion.” In case you aren’t aware, the House of Representatives is under control of Republicans, and has been since 2010.

However, even if the CDC and NIH budgets had been cut, every manager in the public sector is obligated to spend the available funds in the smartest and most beneficial way; put whatever funds you have where they are most needed, and if necessary seek authorization to do so.

How well did the managers of these agencies do with the billions of taxpayer dollars they have at their disposal? The NIH thought that studying the sex life of fruit flies at a cost of $1 million took precedence over Ebola. Likewise, spending $1.5 million studying why lesbians have a tendency to be overweight, while gay men don’t was more important than an Ebola vaccine. As was spending $688,000 to determine why people watch “Seinfeld” reruns and $355,000 on a study of how quickly husbands and wives calm down after an argument.

For its part, the CDC’s mission statement says in part, “Whether diseases start at home or abroad, are chronic or acute, curable or preventable, human error or deliberate attack, CDC fights disease and supports communities and citizens to do the same.” In support of that lofty goal, the CDC used some of its billions studying seat-belt use and infant car seats, built a second finely appointed visitor center in Atlanta to the tune of $106 million, spent $10 million more on furniture for the new building, and helped Hollywood devise medical plots to the tune of $1.7 million. And of the more than $3 billion CDC received from the Affordable Care Act to research dangerous diseases, it has spent only $180 million on that project, but not on Ebola.

And after asking Congress for extra funding in 1999 for a syphilis project, and receiving double the amount of funding it requested, the CDC responded by hiring porn stars and strippers to speak at public events, all the while the number of reported syphilis cases had doubled by 2005. Oh, and the CDC spent $25 million of our money on bonuses for employees over recent years.

Both agencies spent millions to study that mysterious bacterial infection, “gun violence.”

If you want to know why the CDC doesn’t have a vaccine for Ebola and why it hasn’t prepared the nation’s hospitals to handle people infected with the Ebola virus, you probably ought to look to the party whose backside the Agenda Project is trying so desperately to cover, the one that was elected to run the government efficiently. Incidentally, Republicans are not in charge of the CDC or the NIH.

With an important mid-term election two weeks away, the message at the end of this sleazy ad to vote should be heeded. However, voters should remember dishonest ads like this one that attempt to cover up the gross incompetence in administrative agencies, along with the other scandals that still exist, but that the mainstream media has kept below the radar.

Cross-posted from Observations

Illegal immigration problem is largely a federal government creation

As a result of inadequate security measures along the southern border, the Obama administration’s leniency toward illegal entry into the country, and the idea of amnesty for illegal immigrants, the long-standing border security problem is now at crisis level due to the recent tsunami of Central American young people arriving in the US.

These kids left their homes in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador because of horrible conditions in those countries, entered Mexico and traversed the length of the country in an arduous journey frequently highlighted by unspeakable abuse, and crossed the border into the US.

That so many thousands could accomplish this ought to be more than a casual curiosity. Don’t you wonder how these young people can get into Mexico and travel more than a thousand miles through the country to the US border without being arrested and imprisoned? This question is particularly curious considering what happened to the US Marine war veteran Andrew Tahmooressi, who merely made a wrong turn at a confusing intersection on the border, accidentally ended up in Mexico, was arrested and has been in a Mexican jail for nearly four months. How do thousands of these kids who willfully enter Mexico illegally avoid arrest when an innocent wrong turn and a few minutes in Mexico gets Sgt. Tahmooressi put in jail?

However they manage it, when they cross the Rio Grande, the youthful illegals follow instructions to the Border Patrol station and turn themselves in. "They know that once they get to the station, we are going to give them paperwork and we are going to set them free into the United States," said Chris Cabrera, a leader of the local chapter of the National Border Patrol Council, a labor union representing U.S. Border Patrol agents.

"Most of the time, they're getting released to relatives in the U.S.," he said. "There's nowhere to put them, so they're released on their own recognizance and have a pending court date. I'd say between 95 and 97 percent of adults or youths don't show up for court."

So, due to a “soft on deportation” government attitude that serves as an invitation to people in Central America, and a fatally flawed US border policy that allows illegal aliens to easily enter the country by the thousands, they illegally cross the border and shortly thereafter disappear into the ether.

This huge influx has secondary effects that are potentially much more problematic: their presence forces border agents to be transferred away from the border so they can handle the kid tsunami, making it even easier for others to come in, such as members of drug cartels, members of MS-13 gangs, human sex traffickers, and people from the Middle East, China and Russia. Who knows what horrors these people may intend to unleash on our country?

Despite this disgraceful reality, the whitehouse.gov website tells us: “… today border security is stronger than it has ever been."

We are also told that deportation of illegals is at record levels, but Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson admitted before the House Appropriations Committee that “a very large fraction” of deportations aren’t really deportations, but instead are “turn-backs” at the border. Categorizing “turn-backs” as “deportations” paints a rosy but inaccurate picture: actual deportations are down sharply.

Let’s be honest: With his pen and his phone Barack Obama takes care of the things he thinks are important, like trying to lessen the damage of the Affordable Care Act, even if doing so is not legal or constitutional. Everything else he tosses aside with simplistic denials, or third grade humor, like "Maybe they'll need a moat. Maybe they want alligators in the moat."

He could have fixed the porous southern border and stemmed the influx of illegal aliens entering the country, but instead his actions made the situation worse, because fixing this dangerous problem is not important to him.

Mr. Obama wants nearly $4 billion in “emergency spending” to take care of these youthful illegals, but the situation does not qualify for emergency spending. The border crisis isn’t “sudden, unforeseen and temporary,” as the law requires.

Even so, the plan as outlined puts precious little of the funds toward securing the border, and lacks details on how the program would work, and how the money will be spent.

This situation has to be remedied as soon as possible. Some laws must be changed so that illegals from Central America aren’t treated more liberally than those from Mexico and Canada. Then secure the border.

Building a wall on the border, like a fence around your property, helps you control who comes in; it is an act of sovereignty, of common sense. Support it with agents and observation methods, and a second fence, if needed.

Instead of inviting people to come here illegally with a message that they won’t be sent back, send a message that will discourage people from seeking to illegally enter the country.

Americans are compassionate people who truly desire to help those in need, but we cannot do so at our own peril, as is the case with promises of amnesty and reckless border policies.

More crazy stuff from the world of “You can’t make this stuff up!”

 Commentary by James Shott

Everyone says something dumb once in a while, some more than others, of course, but some people in prominent positions have a real knack for it, and others seem to think they can say whatever they want to, and people will believe them. Worse, though, is that for some of these people, like politicians, there are millions of folks who do believe what they say, no matter how weird it may be, how unlikely to happen it is, or how simply unbelievable it is.

In the most recent example, you may remember that IRS official Lois Lerner was called to testify by three Congressional committees looking into the abuse of IRS power in the intimidation of conservative applicants for 501(c)(3) status, and after making a lengthy statement declaring her innocence then availed herself of the 5th Amendment protections against self-incrimination, and then refused to answer any questions. She apparently forgot that as a hired government worker, she is accountable for her actions to the American people.

The committees had requested Ms. Lerner’s emails months ago, but, Shazam!, the IRS announced the other day that, darn the luck, those emails have just disappeared.

Adding considerable interest to this much-too-convenient occurrence is that Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen testified in March that Lois Lerner’s emails were archived.

Oh, well. Maybe the NSA or Edward Snowden has copies.

Just a couple of days earlier, Hillary Clinton, told the world that when hubby Bill finished his eight years as President of the United States they were broke and in debt.

That fails both the smell test and the laugh test. Is it possible? Yes, but doubtful.

The American taxpayers paid President Clinton $200,000 a year in wages, $1.6 million over his eight years in the White House. Presidents may have to pay for some of their normal expenses, like food, clothes, and such, but there are several expense accounts that enter into the picture, so it is difficult to imagine exhausting $1.6 million in only eight years with all the help presidents get through expense accounts.

On the other hand, given the liberal penchant for spending money they don’t have, it is entirely possible they really were broke and in debt, and if that is true, maybe we ought to remember that if Mrs. Clinton decides to seek the presidency.

Outlandish statements sometimes serve to cover up misdeeds of government employees and burnish the bona fides of politicos. Sometimes it’s difficult to make up things that are more ridiculous than what reality gives us, as we have just seen, while other times making stuff up is precisely what people do to mislead the public for some narrow political end, as the next example shows.

“Since the December 2012 shooting in Newtown, CT, there have been at least 74 school shootings in America.” So states the Website for “Everytown for Gun Safety,” which explains, “Everytown is a movement of Americans working together to end gun violence and build safer communities.”

If you are wondering why you haven’t heard about 74 more Sandy Hooks or Newtowns, it’s because there haven’t been 74 of them. In fact, CNN investigated these claims, and found that only 15 percent of them – 11 incidents – involved “a minor or adult actively shooting inside or near a school.”

Politifact “quotes a former member of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit as stating ‘[t]here is an ocean of difference’ between what average people consider a school shooting and various episodes in the Everytown accounting.”

Stipulated: Even one shooting in a school is one too many. But the dishonest use of data to try to scare people is intolerable.

Data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) shows that the annual number of school-associated violent deaths, and the annual number of homicides and suicides of students ages 5-18 at school, were lower during the 2010-2011 school year than at any time in the last 20 years. And, in fact, they had been reduced by almost half.

Five of the 74 incidents involved accidental non-fatal shootings; and two other incidents were apparent acts of self-defense. Again, any shooting at a school, other than in self-defense or to stop someone from hurting or killing people, is unacceptable. But that is a very different matter than when someone intentionally shoots and kills or wounds kids.

It appears the anti-gun fanatics will stop at nothing, even creating fairy tales to try to persuade people to their point of view. In doing so, however, they prove that their point of view is unworthy of public attention.

“Everytown” is the brainchild of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and unfortunately contains the same absurdities as Mr. Bloomberg’s other manias, like his war on sodas.

If making things illegal actually worked, we’d have no drug problems, robberies, murders or rapes. If limiting the right of law-abiding citizens to own weapons as powerful as those criminals possess made any sense, people would support it.

Does anything say, “Come on in” to a criminal more succinctly than posting a “No Guns Allowed” sign on the door?

Gun violence is the result of the desire to commit violence, not the gun.

Cross-posted from Observations

Potpourri: government porn, federal lands, freedom of speech, etc.

Commentary by James Shott

Here’s an example of what can happen when there are too many government employees with too much time on their hands.

A report says that an Environmental Protection Agency employee watches porn for up to 6 hours a day. He makes $120,000 a year, and still has his job.

Nothing epitomizes a government that is so big and inefficient that its left hand has no idea not just what the right hand is doing, but doesn’t even know what its own fingers are doing. Or, just doesn’t care.

When the number of employees in a department or agency exceeds the number of truly essential employees, bad things happen, as the EPA example shows.

Agencies like the EPA are regulators; they produce regulations. Too many regulations exist already, and those people are paid to create more. On second thought, maybe it’s less harmful if they watch porn.

An efficient government, the kind of government we expect, deserve and pay for, should have few enough employees that every one of them is busy 8 hours a day doing beneficial work, serving us to the best of their ability, and to our highest expectations.

One of the major reasons our government has grown so humongous and overbearing is because too many people don’t understand that government is limited in its scope by the supreme law of the land, the US Constitution, and haven’t been paying attention to what is happening, or haven’t protested it. Still others seem to like living under the federal boot or seek control over us.

Did you know that the federal government owns or controls nearly one-third of the land in the US? Do you imagine that the feds are making the most beneficial use of it?

Some of it is used for government installations, national parks and memorials and so forth, which is fine. But much of it either lies essentially unused, like the land where Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and his fellow ranchers freely grazed their cattle for decades before the federal government took over the land on the fraudulent premise that a tortoise that lived there was a “threatened” species.

More than a few cited Mr. Bundy as being a law breaker, so they thought it was just fine when the Bureau of Land Management sent 200 armed Rangers to the area because Mr. Bundy has refused to pay grazing fees for many years.

Mr. Bundy’s critics apparently believe that “if government says so, we must do it.” Had our forebears had this attitude, hundreds of singers at sporting events would be badly singing “God Save The Queen” instead of “The Star Spangled Banner.”

Other federal lands imprison vast stores of natural resources that would unleash new jobs and prompt energy independence.

When it was announced that former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had been invited to speak at the Rutgers University graduation and receive an honorary degree, some members of the faculty passed resolutions calling for her to be “disinvited.”  Students protested outside the office of the university president, some with signs calling her a “war criminal” because of her role in the Iraq War and the Bush administration’s use of waterboarding.

Showing she clearly has more class than those faculty members and students, Dr. Rice, withdrew her acceptance. “Commencement should be a time of joyous celebration for the graduates and their families,” she said. “Rutgers’ invitation to me to speak has become a distraction for the university community at this very special time.”

And so the tolerant and open-minded atmosphere of the university endures and the grand ideal of free and open debate of important, often conflicting ideas on campuses everywhere may continue for yet a while longer.

Then there is this: “I think that there are impulses in the government every day to second guess and look into the editorial decisions of conservative publishers,” warned Federal Election Commission Chairman Lee E. Goodman in an interview. “The right has begun to break the left’s media monopoly, particularly through new media outlets like the Internet, and I sense that some on the left are starting to rethink the breadth of the media exemption and Internet communications,” he added.

You have to admire the determination of the leftists to find a way to defeat contrary opinions when they cannot do so through the power of superior ideas and arguments. When they have control of government resources, they have no compunction about unleashing this power against their political enemies. “Well, we may not be right, but we will prevail.”

I’ve had an epiphany about Benghazi. I have adopted the Dem/lib philosophy: “Dude, that’s so yesterday.”

Since it happened on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s watch, and she is satisfied that all the questions have been answered, shouldn’t that be enough for anybody? What difference, at this point, does it make? Now I can focus on other liberal goals, like which of the 10 amendments in the Bill of Rights we should trash next.

Oh, have you heard that a new helicopter fleet to ferry the president for short distances is being considered, and that the Congressional Budget Office estimates it will only cost $20 billion?

Cross-posted from Observations