Until it was publicly-exposed, the Washington Post was selling its access to the White House to lobbyists. As Politico reported, “For $25,000 to $250,000, the Washington Post is offering lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to ‘those powerful few’ — Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and the paper’s own reporters and editors. The astonishing offer is detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he feels…

Read the full story

The eleventh in an occasional series that shines a bit of light on the regulatory state.

Today’s Regulation of the Day comes to us from the Consumer Product Safety Commission ($63.25 million 2008 budget, 401 employees).

CPSC’s latest rule latest proposal would require:

each manufacturer of a durable infant or toddler product to: Provide with each product a postagepaid consumer registration form; keep records of consumers who register such products with the manufacturer; and permanently place the manufacturer name and contact information, model name…

Read the full story

With every passing month, the United States falls further behind the global leaders in broadband Internet access thanks to a combination of market and policy failures…Our broadband problem is becoming a crisis.
- Free Press, 2006

Much ink has been spilled over the claim that the US is “falling behind” in broadband. Most of that rhetoric centers around a single statistic: the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) ranks the US 15th in the world in broadband connections per capita. The…

Read the full story

It is truly amazing to me that some people who call themselves “liberal,” “progressive,” and “tolerant,” are so irrationally afraid and intolerant of anyone who holds a differing viewpoint to the degree that they feel the need to lash out, discredit and attempt to purge them from the intellectual discussion of ideas. Recently, I was shocked to discover that such people were trying to accomplish this by employing methods I thought hadn’t survived beyond the Nuremberg trials.

I saw this spectacle…

Read the full story

Banks will now be pressured to make even more risky, low-income loans. Obama has sent to Congress his proposal to create a politically-correct Consumer Financial Protection Agency. “The agency would be in charge of enforcing the Community Reinvestment Act, a law that prods banks to make loans in low-income communities.”

Government pressure on banks to make low-income loans was a key reason for the mortgage meltdown and the financial crisis. Yet Obama’s disturbing proposal would empower the new agency to enforce the Community Reinvestment…

Read the full story

Honduras removed its bullying, autocratic President after he began behaving as a dictator, and its Congress replaced him with a less power-hungry member of his own political party. Now Obama is joining the Cuban dictator Castro and Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez in demanding the Honduran ruler’s return. This is simply outrageous.

As Investors Business Daily notes, Honduras had ample reason to remove its dangerous, out-of-control President, who had repeatedly violated his country’s constitution and laws:

“Honduras’ now ex-president, Mel Zelaya, last Thursday defied…

Read the full story

The tenth in an occasional series that shines a bit of light on the regulatory state.

Today’s Regulation of the Day comes to us from the U.S. House of Representatives (435 employees, $4 trillion budget).

The Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill that passed the House last week contains 397 new regulations, according to CEI Energy Policy Analyst William Yeatman and former CEI Warren Brookes Fellow Jeremy Lott. The legislation now heads off to the Senate.

It is worth noting that just minutes after the…

Read the full story

The Supreme Court has just ruled in favor of white and Hispanic firefighters, who were denied promotions when the City of New Haven threw out the exam they scored highest on, citing the fact that no black firefighter scored high enough. In Ricci v. DeStefano, the Court reversed a decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, including Judge Sonia Sotomayor, whom Obama has nominated to the Supreme Court.

The appeals court, in an unpublished ruling designed to avoid scrutiny, had held that the…

Read the full story

The ninth in an occasional series that shines a bit of light on the regulatory state.

Today’s Regulation of the Day comes to us from the Department of Transportation ($70.3 billion 2009 budget, 58,622 employees).

Before any regulation goes into effect, the proposal is released to the public for a comment period. Anyone who is interested can write the agency and say why they think the new rule is a good or a bad idea. CEI does this regularly, by the way (see…

Read the full story

Today, National Public Radio held a pep rally for the Waxman-Markey climate change bill, which narrowly passed the House last night, with Paul Krugman as head cheerleader. No critic of the bill was interviewed.

Krugman started out with a brief explanation of the bill. He acknowledged that it would bear some costs, and that some industries and parts of the country that rely on coal “are going to be hurt… somewhat.” He repeated the Democrat talking point that the Congressional Budget…

Read the full story

The alliance between organized labor and leftist environmentalists remains as strong as ever. As Carter Wood at Shopfloor.org notes, the Waxman-Markey climate change bill is a great example of this alliance.

From page 78 of the manager’s amendment, concerning state revolving loan funds for small- and medium-sized manufacturers.

(F) COMPLIANCE WITH WAGE RATE REQUIREMENTS.-Each recipient of a loan shall undertake and agree to incorporate or cause to be incorporated into all contracts for construction, alteration or repair, which are paid for in whole or…

Read the full story

Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package was purged of most investments in roads and bridges, and filled instead with welfare and social spending, out of political correctness, after feminist leaders complained that building and repairing roads and bridges would put unemployed blue-collar men to work, rather than women.

Christina Hoff Sommers points out that “of the 5.7 million jobs Americans lost between December 2007 and May 2009, nearly 80 percent had been held by men. . . .Men are bearing the brunt of the current…

Read the full story

The seventh in an occasional series that shines a bit of light on the regulatory state.

Today’s Regulation of the Day comes to us from the Department of Agriculture ($95 billion 2008 budget, 105,778 employees).

Our rice is in crisis. Inspection certificates currently contain some data in the grade line section that better belongs in the results section. Fortunately, the USDA is stepping in to right this horrible wrong.

Read all about it in pages 30,015-30-017 of the 2009 Federal Register.

…

Read the full story

The mortgage crisis was caused largely by the reckless government-sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and by federal affordable-housing mandates. But Obama’s proposed financial rules overhaul does absolutely nothing about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, admits Obama’s Treasury Secretary, tax cheat Timothy Geithner, even though he admits that “Fannie and Freddie were a core part of what went wrong in our system.” Worse, Obama’s plan is “largely the product of extensive conversations” with two lawmakers responsible for the corrupt status quo, Chris Dodd and Barney…

Read the full story

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is demanding to know why the “Obama Justice Department took the unusual action last month of dismissing a default judgment against the New Black Panther Party in connection with a case of voter intimidation on Election Day on November 4, 2008. Members of the NBPP were caught on film blocking access to the polls and physically and verbally intimidating voters, even going so far as to wield a nightstick in front of voters and poll…

Read the full story

Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package is now being used to force states to adopt racial quotas in government contracts, even if their state constitution or civil-rights laws forbid such quotas. Slate’s Mickey Kaus reports that “CalTrans, the huge state agency that spends billions in federal highway construction funds, ’sets a quota of having 6.75 percent of contracts go to women or members of a targeted group–African American, Asian-Pacific American, and Native American.’”

The stimulus package also repealed welfare reform, as Kaus and…

Read the full story

Obama’s health-care proposals will cost well over a trillion dollars, without providing universal coverage. They are so “eye-poppingly” expensive that even Congressional Democrats have been forced to scale them back. But the Congressional Budget Office has concluded that their bill “would cover just 16 million additional people at a cost of $1 trillion,” reports the Washington Post. That’s more than $60,000 for each additional person covered! Other estimates peg the cost at $1.6 trillion.

The Examiner notes that Obama’s own Council of…

Read the full story

Some politicians in North Carolina want Amazon.com to collect and pay North Carolina state sales taxes.

This is troubling. In our federal system, states can only tax entities within their borders. And Amazon’s Washington state headquarters are three time zones away from the Raleigh, NC, statehouse. What gives?

The logic goes that Amazon works with affiliates to advertise and link to products it sells. Some of these affiliates are in North Carolina. Therefore, Amazon has a physical presence in North Carolina, and can…

Read the full story

The sixth in an occasional series that shines a bit of light on the regulatory state.

Today’s Regulation of the Day comes to us from the Department of State ($35 billion 2007 budget, 30,266 employees).

The United States is fighting two wars and a recession. A multi-trillion dollar unfunded Medicare/Social Security liability looms over our heads like the sword of Damocles. This year alone will see a budget deficit of at least $1.8 trillion.

In related news, the State Department has renewed its membership…

Read the full story

The President has just announced proposals for a major overhaul of the financial system. The proposals would force banks to make even MORE risky loans to low-income people. Even liberal newspapers like the Village Voice have admitted that “affordable housing” mandates are a key reason for the housing crisis and the massive number of defaulting borrowers. But Obama will not accept this reality. Instead, he wants to create a new “Consumer Financial Protection Agency” to rigorously enforce regulations pressuring banks to make loans to low-income…

Read the full story