Regulatory Calendar: Administration Releases 2013 Regulatory Plan

Time to get this?

Possible Costs: $123.2 billion

Possible Paperwork Burden: 13.6 million hours

American Action Forum  "On the Friday afternoon before Christmas, the administration released its delayed 2012 “Unified Agenda” of federal regulations.  Rather than publish a spring and fall agenda, the custom every year since 1996, the White House opted for a late afternoon drop during the holidays."The timing is perhaps less important than the contents of the new report.  According to initial projections, the agenda contains $123.2 billion in possible regulatory costs for 2013 and at least 13 million paperwork burden hours.
"What’s more, some entries lacked data typically included in the regulatory plan, and outlined in the Regulatory Flexibility Act.  For example, new import security filings state $0 in capital and annual costs in the 2012 agenda.  However, the 2011 agenda clearly stated costs could reach $7 billion annually.  It’s not clear how widespread these omissions are in the 2012 agenda.
"Listed below are 40 notable regulations (out of 2,387 active actions) on the horizon for 2013, organized by agency, and then chronologically by scheduled release date." "
Read them here

Video; Top government regulations Santa will break

Obama supporters shocked, angry at new tax increases

     Washington Times

Sometimes, watching a Democrat learn something is wonderful, like seeing the family dog finally sit and stay at your command

"Shocker. Democrats who supported the president’s re-election just had NO idea that his steadfast pledge to raise taxes meant that he was really going to raise taxes. They thought he planned to just hit those filthy “1 percenters,” you know, the ones who earned fortunes through their inventiveness and hard work. They thought the free ride would continue forever.

"So this week, as taxes went up for millions of Americans — which Republicans predicted throughout the campaign would happen — it was fun to watch the agoggery of the left."

Democrat Underground Blames Bush for Obama Payroll Tax Hike
"And somebody went to Democrat Underground, somebody got the idea to go there and just troll and look around, and one of the first posts in Democrat Underground last night was this: "What happened that my Social Security withholding's in my paycheck just went up? My paycheck just went down by an amount that I don't feel comfortable with. I guarantee this decrease is gonna hurt me more than the increase in income taxes will hurt those making over 400 grand. What happened?" "

David Gregory's Slobbering Obama Interview

Townhall  "Might Gregory have asked Obama how he can continue to put an unrealistically positive spin on such persistently dismal numbers? If this were a Republican president, do you think Gregory wouldn't have pointed out that the only reason these numbers appear to be slightly improving is that more people have actually given up looking for work altogether?"
....
"Obama said, "I negotiated with Speaker Boehner in good faith and moved more than halfway in order to achieve a grand bargain."



redstate.com

"What if Gregory had pressed Obama: "Mr. President, how do you define 'halfway'? Isn't it true that you've repeatedly rejected Boehner's offers as DOA and that he's been bidding against himself and infuriating congressional conservatives? What movement have you made, and how reasonable is it for you to be sabotaging the entire negotiating process with divisive class warfare rhetoric by obsessing on 'fairness' instead of addressing the issues that really matter -- the deficit and debt? But since you keep talking about fairness, is it fair that the bottom half of income earners pay no income tax at all and that the top 10 percent pay an extraordinarily disproportionate amount? How can you possibly say they're not paying their fair share?" "  David Limbaugh. You

A David Gregory/ Obama fan tweeted:

@davidgregory great interview! I thought Potus made it clear he had the Rs in a corner and either way he expected to come out the winner.

David Gregory’s Obama Interview: Where Was The Passion He Displayed Questioning NRA?
"CNN’s Howard Kurtz noticed a marked difference in the Meet the Press host’s approach compared to last week, when he interviewed NRA head Wayne LaPierre."

Gregory certainly tried to impress his liberal friends by bullying President Bush
"RUSH: Let's go to the president's press conference. The first question I want to play for you is from David Gregory, who I have a new nickname for: Brave Dave. Here is the question from David Gregory. It's about Iraq, that happened mere moments ago at a Rose Garden press conference. "GREGORY: Mr. President, after the -- mistakes that have been made in this war, when you do as you did yesterday, when you raised two-year-old intelligence talking about the threat posed by Al-Qaeda, it's met with increasing skepticism. The majority in the public, growing number of Republicans appear not to trust you any longer to be able to carry out this policy successfully. Can you explain why you believe you're still a credible messenger on the war?"

And how's this for disrespect and, well, Gregory showing off for his friends on the left?

 

Al Gore, friend of the petro-state

National Post (Canada)  "To whom did the Lord of the Upper Atmosphere sell? Why to al Jazeera — which is to say, effectively to the ruler of Qatar, a wealthy country that has nothing else to sustain it but the sale of its huge petroleum resources.

"Qatar is about oil, oil and more oil. It is a global warmer’s hell."

....

"One other, not-to-be-missed note: Mr. Gore was very quick to make sure the sale took place before the New Year — the better to spare him, who is now one of the world’s superrich, his friend Barack Obama’s tax hike on those dreadful one-percenters".

Even academia's favorite source - Pravda - says GW is bunk. Uh oh...they were wrong about socialism for seven decades. Let's hope they have this one right for a change.

 

 Global warming causes Al Gore to sell Current TV to oil-backed Al Jazeera

Speaking of Al Gore, have you heard that eco-friendly bulbs could cause skin cancer ?

 

White House weighs broad gun-control agenda in wake of Newtown shootings

WaPo;  "The White House is weighing a far broader and more comprehensive approach to curbing the nation’s gun violence than simply reinstating an expired ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition, according to multiple people involved in the administration’s discussions.
A working group led by Vice President Biden is seriously considering measures backed by key law enforcement leaders that would require universal background checks for firearm buyers, track the movement and sale of weapons through a national database, strengthen mental health checks, and stiffen penalties for carrying guns near schools or giving them to minors, the sources said.
"To sell such changes, the White House is developing strategies to work around the National Rifle Association that one source said could include rallying support from Wal-Mart and other gun retailers for measures that would benefit their businesses. White House aides have also been in regular contact with advisers to New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I), an outspoken gun-control advocate who could emerge as a powerful surrogate for the Obama administration’s agenda".
And this would have prevented the last few massacres how? I'm sorry, I do wish something like this would end the mass murders, but I'm afraid this cartoon realistically depicts the end result:

http://conservativenewjersey.com/the-real-crime-in-gun-control

 

From March, 2011; The Real Crime in Gun Control   "It has happened before in our beloved nation, but then again, how can we do anything as they take the guns away from the citizenry – whether by fees or ersatz psycho testimonies. And they still cannot control the hardware or behavior that allows the criminal elements of our nation to run amuck…killing and stealing at will."

Krauthammer; Return of the real Obama

Charles Krauthammer  ...."“Why,” asked The Post on the eve of the final fiscal-cliff agreement, “is the nation’s leader not embracing and then explaining the balanced reforms the nation needs?”

"Because he has no interest in them. He’s a visionary, not an accountant. Sure, he’ll pretend to care about deficits, especially while running for reelection. But now that he’s past the post, he’s free to be himself — a committed big-government social democrat. "
....
"Now he’s won. The old Obama is back. He must not be underestimated. He has deftly leveraged his class-war-themed election victory (a) to secure a source of funding (albeit still small) for the bloated welfare state, (b) to carry out an admirably candid bit of income redistribution and (c) to fracture the one remaining institutional obstacle to the rest of his ideological agenda.  (Emphasis added)
"Not bad for two months’ work."

He could not have done it by himself, it took the work of a compliant media and millions of useful idiots.

Sick of fiscal-cliff news?

http://www.newsday.com/opinion/walt-handelsman-1.812005

The Wisdom of Thomas Sowell

Hat tip to JP Curnutt; Madras,Oregon 

Taxes and Politics   "Someone once said that taxes are the price we pay for civilization. That may have been true when he said it, but today taxes are mostly the price we pay so that politicians can play Santa Claus and get reelected.

"That's not the worst of it. We may think of taxes as just a source of government revenue. But tax rates are a big political statement on the left, whether they bring in any revenue or not.

 

The truth is, tax cuts don't increase deficit  ..."Obama is a master of the plausible lie, which will never be exposed by the mainstream media — nor, apparently, by the Republicans.

"A key lie that has been repeated over and over, largely unanswered, is that President Bush's "tax cuts for the rich" cost the government so much lost tax revenue that this added to the budget deficit — so that the government cannot afford to allow the cost of letting the Bush tax rates continue for "the rich." "

 By the conservative-phobic Pat Oliphant, but he does have a point here.

Reprise: Happy New Year?  "Yet this is not just about Mitt Romney. He is only the latest in a long series of presidential candidates backed by a Republican establishment that seems convinced that ad hoc "moderation" is where it's at -- no matter how many of their ad hoc moderates get beaten by even vulnerable, unknown or discredited Democrats."

...."Some people may take solace from the fact that there are some articulate Republicans like Marco Rubio who may come forward in 2016. But with Iran going nuclear and North Korea developing missiles that can hit California, it may be too late by then."

Fallout from that map of gun owners

Ex-Burglars Say Newspaper’s Gun Map Would’ve Made the Job Easier, Safer  "The information published online by the Journal-News, a daily paper serving the New York suburbs of Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties, could be highly useful to thieves in two ways, former burglars told FoxNews.com. Crooks looking to avoid getting shot now know which targets are soft and those who need weapons know where they can steal them.
....
" “That was the most asinine article I’ve ever seen,” said Walter T. Shaw, 65, a former burglar and jewel thief who the FBI blames for more than 3,000 break-ins that netted some $70 million in the 1960s and 1970s. “Having a list of who has a gun is like gold - why rob that house when you can hit the one next door, where there are no guns?  Read more:

New York Newspaper's Gun Permit Map Already Having Negative Repercussions "Inmates are taunting corrections officers" at an area jail; one of the counties' sheriffs says that it's "hurting law enforcement as a whole"; a Rockland County Democratic legislator who currently doesn't own a gun says "he now fears for his safety" and will get one; and a divorced woman who says her ex-husband tried to strangle her is worried that "now he can find me." Here is the Newsday article cited in this post: Journal News gun permit map endangers officers, officials say.  Excerpts:

Inmates at the Rockland County jail are taunting corrections officers by saying they know the guards' home addresses -- information they got from the list published by Westchester-based newspaper, Rockland County Sheriff Louis Falco said.

Another:

"I never owned a gun but now I have no choice," Wieder said. "I have been exposed as someone that has no gun. And I'll do anything, anything to protect my family."

Another:

...."When I saw the list, I had an immediate flood of emotions that I cannot even describe to you," said Swift. "I originally obtained a gun permit because I had previously been married to a man who attempted to strangle me . . . The first emotion I felt was, 'Oh my gosh, he can find me.'"

Unless you are one of the low-information voters, you know that newspaper has hired armed guards.

GOP's Camp: Obama's 'spending problem is getting worse, not better'

  Investors.com

"Many of our Democrat colleagues just don't seem to get it. Throughout the fiscal cliff discussions, the President and the Democrats who control Washington repeatedly refused to take any meaningful steps to make Washington live within its means.
"That position is irresponsible and fails to acknowledge what every family in America already knows — when you have no more money in your account and your credit cards are maxed out, then the spending must stop."  Read More At IBD:

 Obama administration delivers delayed regulatory agenda, could cost billions
"Dozens of federal agencies, from the Energy Department to the Department of Homeland Security, have the authority to issue regulations without any congressional involvement.
Simply put, Dupree says, "The regulators are very powerful." Their reach extends into every corner of U.S. business operations and private property."  Read more:

Remember when John McCain told us not to fear an Obama presidency?  OK, John, now what do we do? Republican candidates who are afraid to call this president to account in the bluntest of terms have helped create the downfall of this nation.

What You Could Buy with the Average Tax Increase  "And $136.25 monthly?  What does that buy or help offset?  How about groceries?  Read this from Daily Finance (and weep)...."

In case you hadn't heard, Obama is blaming all this on President Bush and low-information voters are buying it!

5 Reasons You Would Never Want To Be a Superhero in the Real World

PJ Media  " Who'd have ever thought flying and benching 8000 pounds would be a drag?"
"No wonder every kid grows up wanting to be a superhero. The comic books make it sound awesome: your life is exciting, you’re important, you’re famous, and being a hero is part of the description of what you do on a regular basis! It’s like being a celebrity-astronaut-Seal who can lift a car over his head. Who wouldn’t want to do that? Well, maybe YOU wouldn’t once you realized that in practice, it would be about as much fun as being Mark Sanchez’s quarterback coach."

1) It Would Be Impossible to Hide Your Secret Identity.

"Most comics only make a cursory attempt to explain how superheroes could hide their identity. Superman just wore glasses. Glasses on, Clark Kent. Glasses off, “Hello, Superman!” Batman wore a mask and disguised his voice, but he was obviously an incredibly wealthy, athletic man with access to advanced technology who lived near Gotham."....

2) You’d Be Buried Under an Avalanche of Lawsuits.  

"..... “Yes, your honor, he did save me from Dr. Hitler’s giant robot Nazi, but in the process, I hurt my back. I’m not going to be able to work for six months. How am I supposed to make a living?” "

.... Ellipses mean there's a lot more where all this came from, so go to the link to see it all.

4) The Government Would Turn Your Life Into a Nightmare.

The first time some five year old got hurt in a battle between you and “Moocor the Dinsosaur-Cow from Space Wyoming,” there would be a dozen bills introduced in Congress to curtail your activities. The IRS would wonder if you’ve paid your taxes on your rocket cycle. The Environmental Protection Agency would demand that you submit to a 10-year study of the environmental impact of your laser eyes. Keep in mind that we’re talking about people who want to regulate the size of the sodas you’re allowed to drink. You think they’re just going to roll with it when you throw a city bus at a space Dinosaur-Cow that’s eating the Planet Hollywood sign?
 

For Low-Information voters out there: Breaking down the President's budget gimmicks

From the American Action Forum

Also this: Analyzing the Clinton-Obama ‘Arithmetic’

Douglas J. "Doug" Holtz-Eakin is an American economist, former professor, former Director of the Congressional Budget Office and former chief economic policy adviser to U.S. Senator John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. In early 2010, Holtz-Eakin became president of American Action Forum, a conservative think tank focused on fiscal and public policy issues. Since joining American Action Forum, Holtz-Eakin has appeared on Fox News to argue against a 2010 health care bill as well as writing a similarly-worded Op-Ed for the New York Times. But, best of all, his name is hyphenated and that's good enough for me.