Bureaucracy of the Year?

March 21, 2025 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

I’ve given “Bureaucrat of the Year” awards on several occasions. And I even have a “Bureaucrat Hall of Fame” for government employees who go above and beyond normal standards of sloth and avarice. 

 

But what happens when every single employee in a government agency arguably deserves the award? That could apply to some of my least favorite bureaucracies.

• Department of Energy
• Department of Agriculture
• Department of Transportation
• Department of Housing and Urban Development
• Department of Education

But I’m not writing today about any of those massive departments because they actually accomplish things. Mostly bad things, of course, but the bureaucrats arguably spend some time working.

Instead, let’s recognize a bureaucracy that seems to do nothing and accomplish nothing.

Here are some excerpts from a Daily Wire report by Luke Rosiak.

 

One of the seven small federal agencies that President Donald Trump ordered downsized or eliminated on Friday was rife with corruption, with its employees hiring friends and relatives, commissioning paintings of themselves, and using government credit cards to indulge in constant luxuries.

The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) occupied a nine-story office tower on D.C.’s K Street for only 60 employees… Its managers had luxury suites with full bathrooms…

FMCS recorded its director as being on a years-long business trip to D.C. so he could have all of his meals and living expenses covered by taxpayers, simply for showing up to the office. FMCS is a 230-employee agency that exists to serve as a voluntary mediator between unions and businesses. ..........there is no oversight at all…

One thing I could not discover is why the agency actually existed, other than to provide luxurious lifestyles for its employees. Endless junkets to resort destinations, which employees openly used to facilitate personal vacations.

Taxpayers wound up paying for lots of personal goodies for senior bureaucrats.

Top FMCS official George Cohen used a “recreation and reception fund” to order champagne and $200 coasters for his office, and to purchase artwork painted by his wife. The tiny agency commissioned paintings of its top employees…

One employee leased a BMW; another (IT director James Donnen) billed the government for his wife’s cell phone, cable TV at both his home and his vacation home, and even his subscription to USA Today.

Employee Dan W. Funkhouser used his FMCS card to rent a storage unit near his home in rural Virginia, two hours from the office he supposedly worked at, which was used to store personal possessions such as a photo album of his dog, Buster.

Funkhouser also spent $18,000 at a jewelry store near his house… It had an in-house gym for employees, and purchased a $1,000 TV for the gym, a $3,867 ice-maker, and a $560 stereo.

For what it’s worth, other agencies and department surely have similar examples of wasteful and self-serving outlays.

What makes the FMCS unique is that it does nothing else. It exists solely for the benefit of employees (though I should add that it would be an improvement if many other bureaucracies in Washington took the same approach).

I’ll close by acknowledging that I have no idea if Trump can eliminate the FMCS bureaucracy by executive order. But kudos to him – and to DOGE – for making an effort to save a few pennies.

Hopefully that will create some momentum to address the massive programs that actually threaten the country’s future.

P.S. My all-time favorite example of anti-bureaucrat satire is this video, though this top-10 list from David Letterman is a close second.

•  More Here:  Think USAID was bad? You ain't seen nothin' yet. - March 23, 2025 by Mike McDaniel -  Have you heard of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS)? If not, that’s unsurprising. It is a 230-employee agency that supposedly mediates disputes between unions and businesses, but that mediation is “voluntary.” Its headquarters is a nine-story building on K Street in DC, which houses—wait for it—60 employees. Where are the other 270? It’s yet another agency that thought it was independent. It wasn't. Most FMCS employees “worked” from home. I put “worked” in quotes because if you thought the USAID or other federal agencies thus far exposed by DOGE were corrupt, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet........ 

The Federal War Against Your Lifestyle

June 06, 2023/ Francis Menton  @ Manhattan Contrarian

Just a week ago I had a post featuring some recent federal bureaucratic assaults against the well-being and prosperity of the population. The title was “Bureaucrats Completely Incapable Of Making Reasonable Trade-Offs.” The post featured two new rules from different corners of the federal bureaucracy, both announced on May 5: one from EPA effectively mandating electric automobiles by about 2032, and the other from the Department of Energy once again lowering the amounts of energy and water that dishwashers are allowed to use.

I stated in that post that these two new rules were just examples of a much broader federal war against our comfortable and convenient lifestyles. But to get a feel for the big picture, you need a more comprehensive list of the things the feds are trying to restrict and/or eliminate from your life. Now Noah Rothman comes along in the current issue of National Review with a much longer list, in a piece titled “The War on Things That Work.” (Although National Review has a paywall, you should get a free article or two per month, if you want to read the whole piece.)

One thing that Rothman’s list makes clear is that, although the regulations are principally rationalized as part of the fight against “climate change,” there are many respects in which the new restrictions have nothing whatsoever to do with the “climate” issue, even if you believe that greenhouse gases like CO2 are some kind of existential threat to humanity. For example, several of the restrictions in question relate to use of water, rather than energy. Other restrictions relate to the use of energy in the form of electricity, which in other contexts (like automobiles) the climate warriors call “zero emissions.” In the real world electricity is not “zero emissions” at all (because most of it comes from fossil fuels), but the climate warriors claim to believe that it is (because they think fossil fuels can be easily eliminated from the generation process), and if so, reducing the electricity use of various gadgets and appliances is also not a “climate” issue at all.

To underscore the point that most of these regulations have little to nothing to do with the climate issue, Rothman leads off his article with the well-known quote from one-time Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti:

“The interesting thing about the Green New Deal is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all.” It was, in fact, “a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”

So here, gathered from Rothman’s piece, is the list he has put together of some of the “things that work” that the government has currently gone to war against, or is considering going to war against: all appliances using natural gas (furnaces, stoves, hot water heaters, clothes dryers); hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants for air conditioners; dishwashers; lawn mowers and leaf blowers powered by gasoline or other fossil fuels; washing machines; incandescent light bulbs; and plastic bags and straws.

Consider some history of a few of these things:

Gas stoves.

The idea of banning gas stoves had largely proceeded at the local level until early this year. (The first U.S. municipality to ban new gas stoves was Berkeley, CA, in 2019. In April 2023 the federal Ninth Circuit threw out Berkeley’s ban on the grounds that it is pre-empted by federal law. Meanwhile New York has its own ban, put in place earlier this year as part of the state budget and taking effect in 2026.)

But the feds could not resist getting into the act. In January 2023, Richard Trumka, one of the commissioners of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, floated the idea of banning gas stoves on the ground that they are a “hidden hazard” because they cause indoor air pollution. (This despite decades of indoor burning of natural gas without any noted health effects.). That remark caused immediate pushback, including from Senators Cruz and Manchin, who proposed legislation to stop any such regulation. Chuck Schumer got into the act, issuing a statement on February 3 saying “you have to laugh at the ‘gas stove ban’ narrative being cooked up by the MAGA GOP.” Sure, Chuck. It took all the way to March 2, 2023 for the CPSC to follow up with a Request for Information, seeking public input on the supposed “chronic hazards associated with gas stoves.” The correct answer is “none,” but you can be sure that the CPSC is being flooded with input from environmental activists demanding that gas stoves be banned. As of now, they say that they have no plans on the table to ban gas stoves; but if you think that that isn’t coming, you are ridiculously naive.

Hydrofluorocarbons refrigerants in air conditioners.

EPA issued its proposed rule on this subject on December 9, 2022. According to the press release, the rule will “Advance Transition to Safer, More Efficient Heating and Cooling Technologies,” and will also save consumers “billions in costs.” Perhaps you are wondering, if the proposed replacement(s) for hydrofluorocarbons are really “safer,” “more efficient,” and will also save consumers big money, how could we be so stupid not to already have adopted these things? Rothman:

Put simply, the rule increases the cost of refrigerants, and those costs are passed on to the consumer. Even the anticipation of that increase has already made it more expensive to install new climate-control units.

Incandescent light bulbs.

Incandescent bulbs are much cheaper to buy than the newer and trendier LED bulbs, but they cost more to operate, and burn out more frequently. That’s a trade-off that different consumers might make differently. It turns out that there is a clear preference among low-income consumers for the incandescent bulbs, undoubtedly because of the cheaper up-front cost. Rothman:

[The] clear preferences of consumers, particularly low-income Americans [is for incandescent bulbs]. In 2018, University of Michigan researchers found that high-efficiency LED light bulbs “are more expensive and less available in high-poverty urban areas than in more affluent locations” and that the cost to upgrade “was twice as high in the highest-poverty areas.”

But the federal regulators are the place where elite preferences get imposed on everyone else, whether they can afford it or not. Rothman provides the following history of the light bulb regulations:

In 2007, George W. Bush signed a law designed to gradually phase out inefficient incandescent light bulbs. Barack Obama accelerated the phase-out by tightening efficiency standards via regulatory mechanisms. In 2019, however, the Trump administration rolled those requirements back, giving incandescent bulbs a new lease on life. But in 2022, Joe Biden’s Department of Energy reimposed Obama-era lumens-per-watt standards designed to finally bury the filament bulb.

Under the current regulations from the Department of Energy, the last date on which sale of incandescent bulbs will be permitted in in August 2023.

CPSC, EPA, Department of Energy. It’s the same thing for all of them: that indescribable thrill of exercising the vast federal power and showing who’s boss and making everybody’s life just a little bit worse by imposing your version of virtue by force. After all, you didn’t go to Washington and dedicate your life and career to writing regulations only to say that everything is already just fine as is. You need to prove that you are a big shot. You need to do something big. Maybe you could impose a lockdown. Failing that, banning some appliances that are cheap and work great would be one hell of a day’s work.

America Out Loud

Clay Clark Sounds the Alarm on AI, Universal Income, and the Great Reset - by Rob and Andrew | May 3, 2023  - After Dark with Hosts Rob & Andrew – Entrepreneur and public speaker Clay Clark recently shared with the hosts of “After Dark” that AI is being pushed by our government and those with influence to replace humans. With this push comes massive unemployment. After all, who will need humans to do jobs that robots with AI will do? If people can’t work, they cannot produce an income…

Military Whistleblowers Expose Mask Mandates Based on Lies - by Truth For Health Team  May 3, 2023 -How were the mask mandates used to control people and destroy freedom? What are the dangers and health threats of wearing masks all day at work? What can you do to stand against the mask tyranny employers impose on people? How do you, as one individual, help with specific steps that help advocate for everyone affected by these unlawful mask mandates? All these and more are discussed with our military experts in today’s Whistleblower Report. Then CBRN expert Major Mike Gary reveals the Mask Induce Exhaustion Syndrome (MIES) as one contributing factor to what is called “Long-Covid.” TOver 2, 168 studies now confirm long duration use of face masks creates a wide variety of serious adverse effects damaging health, including low oxygen concentration, excess carbon dioxide build-up and daytime sleepiness, and difficulty thinking. OSHA regulation states any time Oxygen drops below 19.5% is considered Immediately Dangerous to Health and Life (IDLH). Major Gary explains readings with an oxygen detector and the space between the mask and face would exceed the OSHA IDLH threshold and worsen with prolonged mask wearing.........

Ottawa Shows What Happens When Cities Bow to Climate Alarmism - by Tom Harris  May 3, 2023 - Canada’s capital city, Ottawa, is on the verge of a self-induced crisis. This predicament is being brought on by an obsession with “stopping climate change,” prioritizing it over real-world environmental, health, economic, and energy supply concerns. The forecast cost of achieving the City’s net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 target is astonishing: for this city of mere million souls, our municipal government wants to spend $57.4 billion over the three decades between 2020 and 2050, with a present value of $31.8 billion, to supposedly “lead the world” in the ridiculous climate war.

And this is just the estimated direct cost. The actual cost, including spinoffs, to the Ottawa economy and residents will be significantly higher. And one cannot even begin to place a dollar value on eliminating people’s choices about how they wish to live. The fact that China, by far the world’s largest emitter (twice that of the U.S.), has no intention of following the Western world, let alone Ottawa, as it self-flagellates in an attempt to achieve this impossible goal, seems not to concern climate alarmists on the city council.

The magnitude of the “renewable” energy projects that the City says it will engage in to meet its net-zero target are equally astonishing: 36 square kilometers of rooftop solar will be required, a 161,485% increase over today’s levels, 710 industrial wind turbines, each taller than the Statue of Liberty, and 122 large shipping containers of lithium batteries for power storage.............

A Stalinist System of Vote Cheating Threatens America’s Liberty - by Dr. Joel S. Holmes | May 3, 2023 - Understanding the psychology behind a song from the Soviet Union could help in political efforts to salvage Liberty. Understanding this song is key to winning elections. And I am not talking about the Star Spangled Banner or Battle Hymn of The Republic. No, it’s a children’s song from the Soviet Union: “I Want To Be Like Stalin.”  The Soviet Union had a habit of copying Western organizations and then putting them to use with their own totalitarian twist. For example, the Cub Scouts and Boy or Girl Scouts of the West became the Soviet “Pioneers.” Each child had a nice red-neck scarf supplied by the state and was indoctrinated into a totalitarian mindset, such as many universities in the United States do today............

Keep in mind the rule for election victory stated by the hero of the Soviet children, Stalin: “Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.” This is important enough to repeat in a paraphrase: “It’s not who votes, but who counts the votes that matter.”  Fast forward to today, and this brings us to the army of ghost election participants of the Democrat Party. There are two types of Democrat election ghosts. And until and unless these Stalinist political armies are disbursed by political means in accordance with election laws and regulations, winning the presidency and other elections, becomes difficult for Republicans.

DeSantis, Trump, Biden & Kennedy – Will Michelle Obama Be the Plot Twist?  - by Beth Hnat, RN | May 3, 2023 - For those of us who know the truth about the 2020 Presidential election, it might be hard to start talking about 2024 without having closure and correction. It might even be hard for some of us to talk about voting at all, I know it is for me. When you look back at 2020 and the midterms of 2022, blatant corruption takes center stage, and all trust is lost in the process and the system. A system that is, by design, in place to keep us divided and feed us an illusion of choice. Since I don’t think the two-party system is going away anytime soon, and most people still think their vote matters, I wanted to dive in and start discussing a few candidates we know will be running in 2024. To keep thighs even, I’ll look at two well-known Republican candidates and two from the Democratic side..........

The Biden Crime Family Will Undermine Joe’s 2024 Election Campaign - by George McClellan | May 3, 2023 -Wow, Joe Biden just announced his intent to re-up for another four years. In his lackluster three-minute video, I must say that I’ve seen healthier faces lying in a coffin. I suspect it took two or three weeks to complete that three-minute gem. But why now? I suspect that the heat is being turned up, especially when a top-ranked IRS investigative supervisor has had enough of delay, lying, and coverup on Hunter Biden to come forward with his evidence sure to convict the Biden Crime Family of multiple RICO violations. With that said, I remind readers that the government of Joe Biden is a contemptible affront to all Americans, especially those who started life in the 30s and 40s and experienced the loss of fathers, sons, brothers, and uncles to a fascist enemy we didn’t understand but feared because of their lack of respect for human life, their willingness to enslave their enemies and their propensity to destroy everything they touched. Today is the perfect day to initiate impeachment proceedings on Joe Biden, Alejandro Mayorkas, and Antony Blinken and start the reversal ball rolling. Let Democrats feel the expense of defending themselves, this time not from spurious charges but from facts..........

The Dirty Truth About Biden’s Economic Policies & the Pending Recession by Wallace Garneau | May 3, 2023 - There are three things – and only three things – that cause recessions: natural disasters, bad government policies, and/or rapid and unexpected changes in the value of money. Note that I did not list free market failures. The free market does have a boom and bust cycle, but different industries are at different points in that cycle all the time, so unless an economy is overly dependent upon a specific industry, the free market cannot cause more than a local recession. Natural disasters tend to be somewhat local too, so though a tsunami may have caused a recession in Japan, it would be almost impossible for a natural disaster alone to throw a nation as geographically big as the United States into recession – though certainly, it can throw local areas into recession...............

The Bidens Have a Friend in Fox News; Tucker Didn’t - by Mary Fanning | May 2, 2023 - The same government that attempts to sell the false narrative that 2020 was the most secure election in our history, that Hunter Biden’s laptop that had emails documenting Chinese payments going to Joe Biden was “Russian disinformation,” and that J6 was an “insurrection,” is working assiduously to provoke World War III with Russia — in order to cover up their many crimes. The Communist Democrats are destroying America. They are destroying her BORDERS — destroying her common LANGUAGE — and destroying her CULTURE while using CENSORSHIP to keep those who object or expose their lies — muzzled. Censorship By Firing........

Fox News Experiences a Seismic Blowback; Tucker Carlson Is Fox’s Loss! by Daniel Baranowski | May 3, 2023 The Frankly Daniel Show with Daniel Baranowski – Tucker was running as fast as he could toward the light and the truth as he saw it, knowing the day of his firing would come. Dishearteningly, too many anchors at Fox News, Newsmax, and other conservative-leaning networks snipe at the bully dragon of Progressivism. But they never attempt a head-on battle with the dragon driving toward the totalitarian dominion over Americans…..........Adrift after six years of a steady diet of edgy, contrarian, and argumentative topics, Tucker’s audience has no appetite for milquetoast commentary. The more informative and controversial the issue is, the better this audience responded. Tucker said out loud nightly what most of his audience was thinking but would not dare express these thoughts and feelings among so-called polite company. They did not have to; Tucker validated their suspicions and worries on air every night at 8:00 P.M.................

Has the Fear of Nuclear War Tainted the Benefits of Clean Nuclear Energy?,  by Dr. Marilyn M. Singleton  May 2, 2023 -When I was in grammar school, we practiced every Monday at noon, hiding under our desks in case an atomic bomb was dropped. Looking back, being in a navy town and the school near a navy base that likely would take a direct hit, the desk was pretty useless. I’m glad I was in Catholic school, and we had plenty of prayers and a fast track to heaven. By the time I started high school, there was the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, where the USSR deployed nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba. Then there was the threat of terrorists’ “dirty bombs” after 9-11. Now the saber-rattling over Ukraine has put nuclear war worries at the forefront.Thousands of nuclear weapons, 20 to 30 times more powerful than those used on Japan, reside all around the world. Russia and the U.S. each have between 5,000 and 6,000 nuclear weapons, while China has 350, France has 290, the U.K. has 225, and India and Pakistan each have around 160...............

 PODCASTS

Quantum, China & US Strategy With Kevin Kane - by Edward Haugland | May 3, 2023- The National Security Hour with Edward Haugland – What is quantum computing, and why should Americans care? What are the implications for America and the world’s security if China wins the quantum computing race? What should the U.S. strategy do to advance quantum computing and ensure the resilience and security of our republic?

Helping the Millions Injured by the Poisonous Shots - by Dr. Jordan Vaughn and Dr. Stewart Tankersley May 3, 2023 -Alabama passed a law last week that honored Sen. Dan Roberts’ wife, Anne, who died from COVID after a month in the ICU. The bill that should have never been necessary ⏤ gives patients and their families protections from the medical-industrial-complexes, abuses, and basic imprisonment of their patients. This past weekend Dr. Vaughn spoke at the 2nd FLCCC science conference, which was another huge success. The evidence that was presented needs to be understood and distributed widely in order to help the millions (? billions) of those injured (many killed) by these poisonous shots........

“A Fraction of a Second on the Nuclear Clock” by Greg Boulden | May 3, 2023 - The Biden Administration is marching us toward war. The country is sending billions to Ukraine while the UK is running the front of the operation. Republicans and Democrats do not seem to be united in an anti-war movement. Enter an Independent candidate and voice, Diane Sare.  Today we speak about the bank bailouts, the corruption of government from billionaires, and the potential for a military-industrial complex with an appetite for destruction....

Government Rewriting the Rules - by Paul Engel  May 3, 2023 -Most of us try to rewrite the rules from time to time. We claim driving 5-10 mph over the speed limit is lawful. We claim deductions on our taxes that we know are sketchy at best. And I encounter people almost every day who try to rewrite what the Constitution says to get their way.  But what happens when those we hire to represent us, who take an oath to support the Constitution, try to get around the rules?  There are plenty of examples of those in government rewriting the rules and only a few of those trying to stop them. They have become so common some people have started calling these attempts war. War on freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and even the Constitution itself. In this battle, for who creates the rules and who follows them, which side will win? Will the United States continue to be the experiment in self-government that George Washington called us, or are we devolving into the very subjects of aristocracy that our Founding Fathers fought against?

 

 

 

Biden Energy Policies: Incoherent, Incompetent, Intolerable

They raise energy prices, hurt living standards, and impair our future as a law-abiding nation

Paul Driessen                                                                                 

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in West Virginia v. EPA is truly a landmark ruling. It decisively rejected the Environmental Protection Agency’s attempt to use vague, “previously little-used” language in the Clean Air Act to shutter America’s remaining coal-fired power plants and force the nation to switch to pseudo-renewable energy, in the name of ending the “manmade climate crisis.”

But the decision goes much further. The Court made it clear that federal agencies may not impose “major federal actions,” decide “major questions” or implement “transformative expansions” of their regulatory authority without specific statutory authority clearly conferred by Congress.

In other words, federal agencies do not have the power or right to take unilateral actions that effectively transform or undermine major sections of America’s energy, economic or agricultural systems, its industries or its living standards, unless Congress has given them explicit authority to do so.

Such enormously “transformational powers” belong to the American people, acting through legislators they elect to represent them – not to bureaucrats who are not elected and cannot easily be removed from office or otherwise disciplined and held accountable. The intolerable regulatory overreach exhibited by EPA (and too many other federal agencies) violates our Constitution, its “separation of powers” doctrine, and any rational understanding of “legislative intent.”

Many Americans believe West Virginia v. EPA represents a great victory over the regulatory “Deep State.” However, the Court’s ruling will mean little if the Biden Administration refuses to acknowledge the decision and continues doing as it pleases, perhaps reflecting the “progressive” view that the Court has gone “rogue.”

To cite just one example, consider what’s happening with regard to pipeline policy – yet another choke point the Administration is utilizing to force America to terminate fossil fuel use.

Richard Glick, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s radically left chairman, claims the ruling doesn’t apply to him. He insists that several federal district courts – two tiers below the Supreme Court – previously held that the EPA could regulate coal into oblivion. Therefore, he claims, the energy-killing regulations he wants to impose on pipelines can remain in place, or even be made more onerous, unless the Supreme Court specifically overrules him and FERC on that specific matter.

Under this “novel” interpretation, federal agencies can ignore or defy the Supreme Court on any regulations they want to implement – even regulations with major national implications, even rules that could leave people freezing jobless in the dark and perhaps dying from hypothermia – unless and until the Supremes render a decision specifically against those agencies and rules.

Or perhaps even until the Court has mustered its own army or sent an FBI or IRS SWAT team to kick in agency doors and enforce its decisions.

Chairman Glick wants FERC to revive its proposed rule requiring pipeline companies to account for all greenhouse gas emissions from construction or operation of their pipelines – even if it means many states and cities could find themselves without natural gas to electrify, heat and air condition homes, operate restaurants, hospitals and schools, power factories, or provide backup electricity during emergencies.

Major regions of America depend on pipelines carrying natural gas to generate electricity or provide direct fuel for furnaces, water heaters, ovens, ranges and backup generators. They already face threats of gas shortages and electricity blackouts during winter months and when weather conditions don’t cooperate with government-mandated wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicle charging stations.

Pipeline companies say they would have to abandon many markets if the FERC rule is imposed, because it is hugely expensive, impossible to follow and likely to bankrupt them.

When Democrat and Republican members of Congress learned about the proposed rule, they urged FERC to rescind it. The Commission ultimately did suspend further consideration of the measure, but Mr. Glick’s recent remarks suggest he may try to unilaterally lift the suspension.

Perhaps his position is so at odds with the Supreme Court because the White House told him to disregard the ruling. President Biden repeatedly said on the campaign trail and since his inauguration that he is little concerned about high energy prices. He promised to end fossil fuel use in the USA and intends to do so, regardless of any impacts that might have on families, jobs and global geopolitical realities.

President Biden promptly canceled the Keystone Pipeline, increased regulations, suspended federal permitting processes, designated large areas as “national monuments” to restrict exploration and production, and directed all federal agencies to base all decisions on theoretical effects on Earth’s climate.

Those actions clearly signaled that he was willing to sacrifice our nation’s hard-won energy independence and once-strong economy on the altar of extreme green ideologies.

When food and gasoline prices more than doubled and inflation shot to a 40-year high, his approval ratings sank to lows never endured by any American president, Mr. Biden was reduced to begging Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Iran to produce more oil. Perhaps he thinks their fossil fuels don’t emit “carbon.”

With a deciding vote by Vice President Kamala Harris, Congress passed the fraudulently named Inflation Reduction Act, which slaps $370-billion in taxes on middle class families to pay for electric vehicle, solar panel and wind turbine tax credits – and further enrich Democrat allies.

The wealthy will buy expensive electric cars that will be charged with pricey, intermittent, weather-dependent wind and solar power. Middle classes will see their jobs and living standards plunge further.

Meanwhile, China, India, a hundred other developing countries and a newly refocused Europe are all burning more fossil fuels, to improve and safeguard people’s living standards and lives – and provide the “renewable” energy materials and technologies the United States cannot or will not produce itself.  

The United States could totally eliminate coal, oil and natural gas – and it wouldn’t improve Earth’s climate or weather one iota, even if greenhouse gas emissions actually drive climate change, including the Ice Ages, Roman and Medieval Warm Periods, Little Ice Age, Mayan drought and Dust Bowl.

Even more interesting, incoherent, incompetent and intolerable, White House and FERC actions to base all federal decisions on computer-conjured effects on Earth’s global climate obstinately and deliberately ignore the widespread harmful effects of Biden Administration fossil-fuel-eradication policies.

Those policies pay little or no attention to slave and child labor, wildlife habitat destruction, toxic air and water pollution, or even carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions from the vast overseas mining, materials processing and manufacturing operations required to make the countless wind turbines, solar panels, electric vehicles and backup batteries needed to replace the fossil fuels Mr. Biden detests.

Moreover, the fact that Mr. Glick’s boss has an anti-fossil-fuel agenda does not mean FERC’s chairman can ignore and defy America’s highest court. He swore to respect our Constitution and the separation of powers enshrined in it. He has no right or authority to advance the ideological whims of political officeholders, even a President.

Chairman Glick’s past comments show he already understands this. If he pushes his pipeline rule now on climate grounds, it will spell trouble – for American families, and for our Constitution, judicial system, regulatory state, respect for the rule of law, and survival as a united nation.

We can only hope he ultimately musters the courage, common sense and recognition of his oath of office to do what is constitutional, as opposed to what’s momentarily convenient, albeit incomprehensible.

Keep this destructive Biden agenda in mind when you head to the polls November 8.

Paul Driessen is a lawyer, senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org), and author of books and articles on energy, environmental, legal and human rights issues.

 

Panic at the Top

August 14, 2022 By Clarice Feldman  August 14, 2022

If the absurd raid on Mar-a-Largo has not persuaded you yet that the Deep State and their cohorts are terrified of their loss of political and cultural dominance, I urge you to read this thoughtful piece by former CIA analyst Martin Gurri. He traces how with the panic over the Wuhan virus, the elites managed a level of control over both the population and the information about the disease and how to treat it.

It’s a wonderful, thoughtful essay and a summary cannot do it full justice, but if you are afraid that we cannot get out of the elite choke hold on our culture and political life, it may give you some comfort. He is optimistic as few are that the elites are rightfully panicked that their cultural supremacy is in its last stages: 

Since conservatives and Republicans are politically strong but culturally nonexistent, they will flex their political muscle to try to right the imbalance. Virginia and Florida have banned the teaching of certain progressive doctrines in public schools. When Disney, Florida’s largest employer, vocally condemned these laws, the company was punished with the removal of local privileges. Should Republicans win Congress and the White House, I would expect American politics to experience a cultural Armageddon. [snip][R]aw political power can make the cost of cultural monopoly -- and of idle posturing, Disney-style -- unpleasantly high.

A second threat to elite culture is the defection of the victim class. The cult of identity generates an insatiable demand for victim groups, which, by necessity, must become ever smaller and more marginal not only to the mainstream but also to traditional minorities. Even as the elites solidified their grip on culture, the focus of their performative outrage was drifting from civil rights and pocketbook issues to more esoteric questions of sexuality and climate justice. The new causes simply don’t resonate with Hispanics or blacks, whose socioeconomic interests lie in other directions. [snip] Progressivism is essentially a protection racket. If the elites ever lose the undisputed right to shout “Racism!” at the producers of culture, the latter will begin to fracture like the rest of the country and to look to the marketplace, rather than ideology, for inspiration.

The last countercurrent may be the most potent of all: the internal churning and dispersal of populations spurred by the pandemic and the availability of remote work. [snip] Such sweeping tides of humanity have always exemplified the central tenet of the American creed: that we are not captives to fate. Each wave of immigrants will begin a strange new story. To tell it, the culture, too, must be reborn and reinvented -- and the mold of progressive dogmatism will be shattered in the process.

To give one example Gurri has not, look to Florida’s legislation respecting state-financed higher education. It has incensed the predictably left-wing Miami Herald but it demonstrates the powers of local governments under our federal system...........To Read More....

Another Reason to Purge the Federal Bureaucracy

By Rich Kozlovich

On July 27, 2022 Joe Miller published this piece,  22 AGs sue USDA to stop withholding school lunches over gender, sexual orientation rules, saying: 

Schools ordering food for the beginning of the fall semester could be facing uncertainty over whether they’ll receive federal assistance that’s the center of a legal battle for being tied to sex discrimination rules. Twenty-two attorneys general are suing the Biden administration to prevent any loss of federal nutrition assistance for failing to obey the funding catch tying the money to other issues. 

In May, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced any state, local agency, program operator or sponsor receiving its funding must “investigate allegations of discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation.” The USDA also required all organizations to update discrimination policies and signage to include prohibitions against discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.

There is so much wrong with this it boggles the mind.  First, why and when did the federal government start supplying lunches to school children?  1946, under the  Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act, with the goal of providing:

"low-cost or free school lunch meals to qualified students through subsidies to schools."

That was the emotional tag to make it palatable to the public.  Whenever there's a program that claims in statement or context, "it's for the children", you had better start looking deeper.  There's always more involved:

The program was established as a way to prop up food prices by absorbing farm surpluses, while at the same time providing food to school age children.  It was named after Richard Russell, Jr., signed into law by President Harry S. Truman in 1946, and entered the federal government into schools' dietary programs on June 4, 1946.

So, while there were many good intentioned people involved, in reality this was a way to justify the federal government's hand outs to agriculture that started with the Roosevelt administration and has continued right up to now, and that figure is massive.  In 2020 it amounted to 20 billion dollars.  

Also, why is the USDA getting involved in this social issue?  How is this an agricultural issue?  The federal government confiscates trillions of dollars every year and returns huge amounts of that money to the states to fund various programs.  That is unless the state has the audacity to ignore these ideological commands from the bureaucrats, stripping them of the funds they have every right to receive.  

These commands are rules being implemented by these agencies don't have the Constitutional authority to impose, as the Supreme Court ruled on  "West Virginia v. EPA that put and end to the EPA's self invented authority to impose rules on emissions, and that mentality is true of every agency of the federal government.  

I have no problem with subsidized lunches being served at schools, but that should exclusively be a state responsibility, and the state should decide if, how much, when, and what will be served by the people of the state that funds it, instead of  Michelle Obama, whether she was right or wrong on her choices isn't the issue.  The issue is where that authority belongs.

As for the arguments the states may not be able to afford it:  That's a load of horsepucky.  If you look at state budgets you will see waste and misspent funds to the tune of millions of dollars, and Ohio is guilty of that.  

It's time to purge these agencies and eliminate the Department of Education, which has been a incredibly expensive failure and a disturbing intrusion in the lives of American  families.  All this is nothing more than a way for the leftists infesting the agencies of the federal government, through incremental steps, impose a socialist tyranny on America.  

Solution?  Repeal the 16th and 17the Amendments. 

Why Do Doctors Go Along with COVID Panic Porn and CDC Prescriptions?

By Ted Noel, MD

I recently had a conversation with a reasonably well-informed writer who simply missed the real reasons why most practicing physicians go along with the Fauci Fraud.  As a public service, I will attempt to fill in a few gaps.  But first, I must define the fraud.

There are two basic legs to the fraud. 

First is the idea that the Centers for Disease Control is in any way concerned with a mission related to its name.  The failure of the CDC to endorse any treatment that did not emanate from its exalted halls should give us our first glint of clarity.  There are literally millions of physicians around the world, and the great bulk of them truly wish to treat their patients well.  Among those are thousands of researchers, a number far in excess of those at the CDC, the NIH, and other alphabet soup government agencies.  The very idea that outside researchers are incapable of discovering anything useful without the help of the bureaucrats in D.C. is hubris of the highest order.  And it prevents the CDC, the FDA, or any other such agency from considering the idea that maybe, just possibly, there might be intelligent life down here.  Mount Olympus cannot be threatened.

The second leg of the fraud is less visible to the naked eye but much more powerful.  If I wrote this before I retired, I would be called before the Board of my group and told in no uncertain terms to shut up.  I might even be assessed a financial penalty with several zeroes after the one.  That's a serious impairment of my pursuit of happiness.  The reason for my group's dislike is more than the fact that I might be an irritant.  They may actually agree with what I have to say.  But they simply cannot afford for me to say it.  That's right: as a practicing physician in a group, my freedom of speech can become very expensive...to the group.

My group cared for patients of all descriptions, with roughly half of them on Medicare and another batch on Medicaid.  Both programs are ultimately managed by the feds, one of the most humorless groups on the planet.  They write a whole bunch of rules on how you have to document everything you do.  If you didn't document it correctly, it didn't happen, and you won't get paid.  But that's not the half of it.

Suppose you have one of those patients brought in by the ambulance from under the bridge.  His only clothes are the ones he's wearing, and he doesn't have two nickels to rub together.  It's more than obvious that this surgery for bowel obstruction will be a charity case.  Before Medicare, you'd simply write it off as your good neighbor duty.  Now you don't get a choice.  CMMS (the actual administrative agency) requires you to send a bill.  Twice.  Or maybe three times.  Whatever it takes to turn the bill into bad debt.  Then you have to send it to a collection agency.  Your only alternative is for your group to bring it up in its Board meeting and declare it a write-off that gets noted in the minutes..........But what does that have to do with ivermectin?  I'm glad you asked............ 

The financial risks may be extreme.  It takes a spine of steel to stand up to the authoritarian orthodoxy................To Read More....