Filed under: Capitalism, Domestic Policy, Economy, Election 2012, Energy, Junk Science, Liberalism | Tags: Inadequate Investigation, Solyndra Bankruptcy, Squandering Taxpayer Money
And these voices are from some of the members of the media most in the tank for Obama. Experienced investors were even more dubious.
Filed under: Conservatism, Election 2012, Humor, Liberalism, Politics, Progressivism | Tags: campaign ad, Death Star, Obama
Making Obama campaign ads. (My previous attempt here). If you like them, take them, share them, tweet them — spread them to the four corners of the universe.
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Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Election 2012, Liberalism, Politics, Progressivism, Statism | Tags: Economic Damage, Kills Business and Jobs, Overregulation
American businessmen complain about government regulation. President Obama is quite sure that they are mistaken, but he is a progressive and regulating comes as naturally as breathing. “During Obama’s first three years, 105 major federal regulations added more than $46 billion per year in new costs for Americans. This is more than four times the number and more than five times the cost — of the major regulations issued by George W. Bush during his first three years,” according to a study by the Heritage Foundation.
In January 2011, President Obama announced —with much fanfare — a new get-tough policy on overregulation. He acknowledged that “rules have gotten out of balance” and have had a chilling effect on growth and jobs. He pledged a comprehensive review. But the flow of regulation continued with 32 new major regulations in 2011 that increased regulatory costs by almost $10 billion annually along with another $6.6 billion in one-time implementation costs. Mr. Obama cites removing the regulation that designated a spill of farm milk as a hazardous oil spill, as a major accomplishment. But that seems to be the only one.
Dodd-Frank and ObamaCare add hundreds of new regulations. Neither Congress nor the Administration keeps track of the total number and cost of regulation. During 2011 the administration completed a total of 3,611 rulemaking proceedings according to the GAO, of which 79 were classified as major — meaning that each had an expected economic impact of at least $100 million per year. Thirty-two of those put new limits or mandates on private sector activity. Only five major actions decreased regulatory burdens.
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In an environment where increased regulation is considered to be a public good, states and municipalities do their share of regulating. The Institute for Justice explains in the following video how licensing can restrict the entrance to many occupations. In many cases, it’s just bureaucratic busybodying, in others those already in an occupation hope to cut back on the competition by making it harder to work in their field. It’s quite a racket. And very hard on those who just want to establish a small business, but can’t afford the required licensing regulations.
There was quite a bit of publicity a while back about hair-braiding in the African-American community. It is really an art, and takes long practice, with beautiful results. Beauticians, however, took exception to people without a beautician’s license taking away what might have been some of their business. Beauty schools are expensive, take quite some time and don’t teach that kind of hair-braiding. They teach hair cutting and curling, coloring and tinting —that sort of thing, which the hair braiders don’t do. I don’t know how it turned out, nor in what states it was a problem, but I hope the hair braiders won.
In Washington state, Interior Designers have fought a battle to disqualify anyone from being called an Interior Designer, who hasn’t had the requisite schooling and passed certifying examinations. It has been on the ballot twice and lost both times, but they will keep trying to eliminate the competition.
Emergency Medical Technicians save lives with their training and skills. It seems absurd that licensing requirements for many simpler jobs should be so much more costly and involve more time..
It is not the nature of governments at any level to remove or repeal regulation. They’re there to make law, not get rid of old, unworkable or unwieldy regulation. It is going to take citizen involvement and a lot of pressure to help make it happen. The statist web of controlling regulations and requirements can eventually paralyze a society. That is what has happened to Europe. The free market that would save Europe is never tried because the vast web of governance is too entrenched to relinquish control.
Filed under: Capitalism, Domestic Policy, Economy, Election 2012, Liberalism, The United States | Tags: Fewer in Labor Force, Obama Campaign Spin, The Real Unemployment Rate
The news reports today that the payroll employment rate rose 115,000 in April, and the unemployment rate has changed little at 8.1%. That sounds good, but it isn’t true, or at least it does not represent reality, because of the way that the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports statistics.
The real unemployment rate is 11.6%. The 115.000 rise in employment was far below expectations. Remember that the size of the potential labor force is growing all the time as population increases and more people enter the labor force.
There are 88,419 000 people not in the labor force, an increase of 522,500 from last month’s labor force number of 87,897,000. And more people who are working are holding part-time jobs. Full-time jobs dropped from 114,478,000 from 115,290,000.
I sometimes wonder if the Left refuses to consider any suggestion from Republicans simply because it comes from Republicans. Obama keeps insisting that the economy is recovering, fut he has no answer for job growth.
“The president who used stimulus dollars to build electric cars in Finland and sought to be Brazil’s best oil customer now complains the GOP nominee built his career outsourcing jobs.” Investors exposes some of the baloney by the Obama campaign. The campaign has released an ad saying that “Mitt Romney shipped American jobs to places like Mexico and China” when he led the investment firm Bain Capital. An odd accusation since blocking the Keystone XL pipeline, as Obama has done, will cost the economy the 20,000 jobs that would quickly be added to the economy.
The campaign is not doing their homework though, Bain Capital and Mitt Romney saw the creation of tens of thousands of jobs by companies like Staples, Sports Authority and Domino’s Pizza. But they accused Romney of having a grandfather who was a polygamist too. It was his great-grandfather, when that was part of Mormon custom. And they ignored the fact that Obama’s father had multiple wives, as did his grandfather.
The mainstream media is increasingly willing to coordinate what they report with what the administration reports uncritically. It makes it hard to understand what is real and what is not.
Filed under: Election 2012, Humor, Liberalism, Politics, Progressivism | Tags: Democrats, Obama, Occupy, Pepper Spray, Police
[click to enlarge]
Say, those occupy kids aren’t particularly bright, are they?
Based on a political cartoon I saw, but cannot find again. Artist unknown. Take the pic, elephants, tweet it, facebook it, disperse it far and wide! Ridicule is a powerful weapon. (please link back )
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Filed under: Domestic Policy, Law, Liberalism, Politics | Tags: Arizona Law SB 1070, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, The Supreme Court
Arizona has had a major problem with illegal immigration, and the Obama administration’s reluctance to enforce immigration laws. So Arizona decided to enforce federal immigration laws themselves. They just wanted the Immigration laws on the books to be enforced.
The Arizona law requires law enforcement officers to check the immigration status of those they suspect are in the country illegally and check with federal officials to verify. They would also write new state penalties for illegal immigrants who try to apply for jobs.
The Obama administration sued, arguing that those provisions conflict with the federal government’s own role in setting immigration policy.The government argued that it’s fine when it’s on a limited basis, but having a state mandate for all of its law enforcement is essentially a method of trying to force the federal government to change its priorities. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli said the federal government has limited resources and should have the right to determine the extent of calls it gets about possible illegal immigrants. These decisions have to be made at the national level. (I love the argument about limited resources).
The justices took a dim view of the administration’s claim that it can stop Arizona from enforcing immigration laws. They told the government lawyers that the state appears to want to push federal officials, not conflict with them.
“It seems to me the federal government just doesn’t want to know who’s here illegally,” Chief Justice John Roberts said at one point.
Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), a critic of the Arizona law, said that if the court does uphold the state’s law, he will introduce legislation to overturn that decision and grant the federal government sole control on immigration matters. That legislation would also overturn a 2011 Supreme Court case that upheld a separate Arizona law that requires all businesses in the state to check employees’ legal status using E-Verify, the federal government’s electronic verification system.
Illegal immigration looks a little different in Washington D.C. where Hispanic votes are especially important to those who divide the electorate into voting groups; and in Arizona where illegal immigration is rife and the drug war just across the border is killing citizens.
The decision will come down in June.
Filed under: Domestic Policy, Law, Liberalism, National Security, Terrorism | Tags: Department of Homeland Security, End Run Around Congress, Obama Administration
In its quest to implement stealth amnesty, the Obama administration is working behind the scenes to stop the deportation of certain illegal immigrants by granting them “unlawful presence waivers.” Don’t you love the names liberals dream up to hide, confuse, and disguise what they are actually doing.
Their aim is always more Democrat voters at the polls. But they want to disguise that by something that demonstrates how nice Democrats are. Here is how it would work., according to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announcement posted in the Federal Register, the daily journal of the U.S. government. The agency will grant “unlawful presence waivers” to illegal aliens who can prove they have a relative who is a U.S. citizen.
According to the law, such aliens must return to their native country, and request a waiver of inadmissibility in an existing overseas immigrant visa process. In other words, they have to enter the U.S. legally as thousands of foreigners do on a yearly basis. Aside from the obvious security issues, changing the rules in this case is rewarding bad behavior. It makes no sense.
According to DHS, the system often causes U.S. citizens to be separated for extended periods from their immediate relations. They didn’t quite say “ripped from the arms of their loved ones.” The proposed changes, first announced in January, will significantly reduce the length of time U.S. Citizens are separated from their loved ones while required to remain outside the United States during the current visa processing system.
DHS also claims that relaxing this rule will “create efficiencies for both the government and most applicants.” What makes this more “efficient” is unknown.
This is obviously a part of the Obama Administration’s plan to go around Congress and accomplish what Congress would not pass, by regulation and rule changes. Obama has things he wants to accomplish and he does not see why he should be constrained by annoyances like the separation of powers, or an understanding that the three branches of government are equal branches.
The Department of Homeland Security only takes action against a “small portion” of foreigners who overstay their visa —like the 9/11 terrorists—em and allows hundreds of thousands to enter the U.S. without proper authorization from them under a provision that already relaxes scrutiny for 36 countries with whom we have special visa waiver agreements.
It’s as if nothing was learned from the 9/11 attacks nor from terrorist attacks in other countries. Most visitors comply with the rules, but an estimated 2% don’t, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). But that 2% translates into 364,000 travelers. Only half the countries that have visa waiver agreements with the U.S. are fully compliant. Last year a federal audit reveals that nearly half of the nation’s estimated 12 million illegal immigrants actually entered the U.S. legally but never left after their visa expired.
It is my impression that many liberals, secure in comfortable lives, do not take terrorism seriously. And once we got Osama bin Laden, wasn’t that the end of it? It is on the left that you find disarmament, gun control, peace studies, and efforts to slash military spending. In their Utopia, after redistribution of income when everybody is more equal, there won’t be any more wars and we don’t need all those armaments. If we just get rid of all our weapons, won’t everyone else follow our lead?
The Homeland Department has a lot to answer for, since they’re not doing Security any more.
Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Energy, Europe, Junk Science, Liberalism, Statism | Tags: Collapsing Solar Industry, European Carbon Market, Rising Energy Bills: Collapsing Solar
The carbon market in Europe — cap-and-trade — is in freefall. The prices of emissions allowances, which award the holder the right to emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, have fallen to a record low this week, down 11% from the beginning of the year, They now trade at less than one-fourth of their July 2008 value. Hopes that other nations would fall in line with the EU program have been dashed, and there is no global consensus.
Recession on the continent has cut back on emissions, and the prolonged economic slump casts doubt on whether the EU can continue to bolster prices on the carbon exchange. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Life on earth flourished for hundreds of millions of years at much higher levels than we have at present. We are currently near the bottom end of the scale, not the top. Greenhouses regularly keep their CO2 levels around 1000 ppm. Plants grow better at higher levels, and are more resistant to drought.
IPCC supporters have been frustrated at the lack of computer-predicted warming, though there has been some warming , perhaps about 0.8 degrees Celsius, since the end of the Little Ice Age in the early 1800s, but the timing of the warming suggests that a tangible amount of the warming comes from natural causes and has nothing to do with factories or SUVs.
Germany decided last year to slash the market prices it forces utilities to pay for renewable energy sources, and to cut the subsidies that have locked German taxpayers into €100 billion in handouts to the solar industry. The Germans, being a northern race, have had a long love affair with the sun, but there are limits. They have found that their heavily insulated houses are featuring more mold and mildew. Germany produces nearly half of the world supply of solar energy.
The green manufacturing that was supposed to be the planet’s salvation is just as susceptible to low-cost competition as other industries. Instead of creating a sustainable comparative advantage, German subsidies invited competition, and the rivalry that is now putting their solar industry out of business.
Italy is taking notice and are cutting back on ‘excessive” subsidies for solar and wind power. The Obama administration has shown no signs of such good sense, but we may have lucked out. Solar Trust last year received a conditional commitment for a $2.1 billion loan from the Department of Energy, but declared itself insolvent after its German parent Solar Millennium filed for bankruptcy in March, and Q-Cells, another German solar company filed for bankruptcy this week. Solarhybrid, and Solon went out of business earlier, and according to one analyst, more bankruptcies are on the horizon. Consumers can expect a $260 hike in their energy bills.
The administration’s recovery.gov website lists five pages of other solar projects, with current and future loans worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Even after the Solyndra debacle and all the other bankruptcies, Washington boosters still insist that these projects are the key to America’s economic and energy future. They just believe.
The belief in “renewable energy” is religious in nature, and not susceptible to contrary information. Solar and wind remain beautiful dreams with no more substance than a rainbow. And the dream of cheap, unlimited power from “natural” sources is like chasing the end of the rainbow looking for the pot of gold.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Election 2012, Liberalism, Politics, Progressivism, Statism | Tags: Associated Press, Demagoguery, President Barack Obama
Obama delivered a luncheon speech today to the Associated Press. It was so absolutely dreadful that you just have to laugh.
Obviously the White House is in full panic mode after the president’s perfectly awful week last week. It hadn’t occurred to them that it was possible that ObamaCare could possibly be struck down. Nobody expected Obama to be selling out the country in a whispered conversation caught by a hot mic. And the president’s budget request was shot down without even a single Democrat vote.
Obama has railed against the Supreme Court, reminding them that they must observe precedent and not go ruling against him. Now he’s taking on Paul Ryan’s Path to Prosperity. The nasty Republicans are threatening to “spend $4.6 trillion on lower tax rates.” This reveals the president’s mindset. Allowing people to keep more of their own hard-earned money is “spending.” Government taking more of the peoples’ hard-earned money to spend on current government enthusiasms is “investing.”
“Investments in clean energy technologies that are helping us reduce our dependence on foreign oil would be cut by nearly a fifth. ” Be still my beating heart! A fifth is not nearly enough. All our clean energy technologies are not reducing dependence on foreign oil one whit. Our “clean energy” technologies are wind and solar which make small amounts of electricity, Foreign oil gets refined into gasoline for transportation. There is no reason for us to be dependent on foreign oil. We have plenty of our own. Perennial lie.
Medicare and Social Security are both on a path to destruction. Both programs were devised in the expectation that rising birthrates would always supply the country with a larger crop of young workers to support the old folks when they reached the age for Social Security and Medicare. And the great increase in the number of babies following World War II made that seem like a good bet.
But the Baby Boom was followed by the baby bust. Now the 76 million Baby Boomers are reaching retirement age, and Medicare is already running in the red. The very first Boomers began retiring last year, and their numbers will increase dramatically every year until 2025. Boomers represent 26% of the American population.
Democrats’ approach is to pretend all is well and accuse the Republicans of “trying to end Social Security and Medicare as we know them.” It’s not easy to totally ignore 26% of the population, but Democrats are working on it. If we address the problems now, we can save the programs. As Paul Ryan says:
For four years the President has refused to honestly confront the most predictable economic crisis in our history. Instead, he has accelerated the nation toward this looming debt-fueled crisis with reckless budgets, always accompanied by partisan speeches that seek to divide the nation in order to distract from his legacy of broken promises. If he thinks there is no political price to pay for this total abdication of leadership, he is due for a rude awakening.
The president says early in his speech “So I believe deeply that the free market is the greatest force for economic progress in human history.” which he immediately modifies by saying that “through government, we should do together what we cannot do as well for ourselves.”He falls back on what seems to be his campaign theme: “Or are we better off when everyone gets a fair shot, and everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same rules.”
Consider that last statement. How does that work? How do you give everyone ‘a fair shot?’ Much as Obama wants to imply that government can guarantee that everyone be treated equally — it can’t be done. The Soviets claimed they were going to do that and ended up killing 25 million of their own people. How do you insure that everyone does their fair share, make all those slackards work harder? And everyone play by the same rules? You cannot say that on the one hand and then demand that the rich who pay most of the taxes pay even more. It’s a contradiction in terms. We have the most progressive tax system in the OECD. Pretty, persuasive propaganda, but complete nonsense.
Obama even hauls out the old canard about “trickle-down” economics — the name Democrats gave to Supply-Side economics, the successful program that gave the country nearly 30 years of prosperity. Or don’t you remember 20% interest rates? Obama said “In this country, broad-based prosperity has never trickled down from the success of a wealthy few.” I wonder if he ever had any class in economics.
When free people are able to keep more of their own money the result is prosperity. Government has never made anyone prosperous —except for those favored few who are rewarded by government “investment” in their programs, like the millions that have just happened to flow to Obama’s bundlers who have an interest in those renewable clean energy companies that Obama is “investing” taxpayer money in. I would urge you to buy John Steele Gordon’s An Empire of Wealth, a book that should be in everyone’s library. It is an economic history of American prosperity, and an exciting, rewarding read.
Here’s the transcript of the President’s worst speech ever. You really should read it to understand the depth of his demagoguery, and what we can expect in the upcoming campaign. Guy Benson takes on the speech and inserts a few uncomfortable facts that Mr. Obama would prefer to ignore.
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Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Global Warming, Liberalism, Progressivism, Science/Technology | Tags: Liberal Beliefs, Reproducing Data, Scientific fraud
A paper published on Friday in the American Sociological Review states that just over 34 percent of conservatives had confidence in science as an institution, in 2010, representing a long-term decline from 48 percent in 1974. In 1974, conservatives were more likely than liberals or moderates to express confidence in science.
Well, ho-hum. Climate Gate I, ClimateGate II, (conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating data, falsification of data), FakeGate (Peter Gleick uses false identity, fakes documents), retreat of Himalayan Glaciers, IPCC (at least 16 claims of impending doom in 2007 report were based on work done by GreenPeace activists, not peer-reviewed science), Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean sea level data (came from computer models by people who had never visited the sites in question), Kevin Trenberth,(plagiarism, politicization). And more and more.
Over at Ace of Spades, Arthur K points out a recent story
During a decade as head of global cancer research at Amgen, C. Glenn Begley identified 53 “landmark” publications – papers in top journals, from reputable labs- for his team to reproduce. Begley sought to double-check the findings before trying to build on them for drug development.
Result: 47 of the 53 could not be replicated.
And in the same article:
Scientists at Bayer did not have much more success. In a 2011 paper titled, “Believe it or not,” they analyzed in-house projects that built on “exciting published data” from basic science studies. “Often, key data could not be reproduced,” wrote Khusru Asadullah, vice president and head of target discovery at Bayer HealthCare in Berlin, and colleagues.
Of 47 cancer projects at Bayer during 2011, less than one-quarter could reproduce previously reported findings, despite the efforts of three or four scientists working full-time for up to a year. Bayer dropped the projects.
Bayer and Amgen found that the prestige of a journal was no guarantee a paper would be solid. “The scientific community assumes that the claims in a preclinical study can be taken at face value,” Begley and Lee Ellis of MD Anderson Cancer Center wrote in Nature. It assumes, too, that “the main message of the paper can be relied on … Unfortunately, this is not always the case.”
Conservatives, you see, have a long history of being anti-science. They opposed embryonic stem-cell research when it might have helped Christopher Reeve to walk again, just because of their stupid hang up about embryos — just a clump of cells. And they don’t believe in manmade global warming, when Al Gore’s movie told us all what a danger it is. There’s someone named Chris Mooney, who seems to be an English major who is a true believer in global warming,and writes regularly on how dumb Republicans are, and, unsurprisingly, has a new book out called The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Don’t Believe in Science. It may be entertaining.
It seems that Republicans get all their scientific information from something called “Conservapedia,” the right-wing counterpart to Wikipedia, which is anti-science and doubts Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. I never heard of it, but lefties seem to be the major contributors.
Liberals remain astonished that anyone could find anything unconstitutional in ObamaCare, and are looking for confirmation that we are indeed unusually stupid. This finding turns up regularly in one academic study after another. A favorite pastime in academe.
Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion addresses the differences between liberals and conservatives and their moral stereotypes. The authors surveyed two thousand people asking one-third to answer in their own voice, one-third to answer as “a typical liberal” and one-third to answer as “a typical conservative.”
The results were quite striking. Conservatives and moderates were adept at guessing how liberals would answer; but liberals, especially those who considered themselves as “very liberal” were very bad at guessing what conservatives would say about issues of care or fairness. For example, most thought that conservatives would disagree with statements like ‘One of the worst things a person could do is hurt a defenseless animal’ or ‘justice is the most important requirement for a society.’
Haidt, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, found that liberals and conservatives alike form their political beliefs according to three values: caring for the weak, fairness, and liberty. Yet conservatives also hold to three other values: loyalty, respect for authority, and sanctity. This accounts in part for the liberal failure to understand conservative viewpoints. Conservatives can understand the morality of liberals, but much of conservative morality is alien to their opponents. Haidt had been a liberal — but became a centrist after this study.
In an article entitled “Is the Tea Party Racist?“Dr. Timothy Dalrymple explains:
But the problem is not merely ignorance. Liberals are also alienated from core conservative values. Liberals are trained to believe that many of the traditional American ideals and values that conservatives inherit in their families and churches are cruel and intolerant, imperialistic, and implicitly racist, sexist, and classist. They are trained, for instance, not to be motivated by patriotism and American exceptionalism, but by an ideal of world citizenship and parity.
Liberals consistently misinterpret what motivates conservatives because they really cannot see the world from the conservative perspective. Liberals cannot imagine that Tea Partiers are really motivated by concern for their country, and by frustration with a White House hemorrhaging red ink and a government less concerned to represent the interests of the citizenry than to pay off the special interests that fund their campaigns.
“Liberals, Dr. Dalrymple says,” are unable to see a rational and noble motive at the center of the Tea Party movement, so they supply a darker and more convenient motive instead.” The problem is not that liberals dislike the principles promoted at Tea Party rallies: the problem is that liberals dislike the kind of people who go to Tea Party rallies.
So if you have been puzzled by the strange things liberals say, there you go.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Health Care, Liberalism, Progressivism, The United States | Tags: Feds Require Abortion Services, HHS Secretary Sebelius, Texas Refuses
The State of Texas has a program called Women’s Health Program (WHP) which provides family planning and women’s health examinations to low-income women who earn too much to qualify for regular Medicaid.
State legislators set funding priorities for the agencies that disburse federal funds. Texas adopted a rule last year to prevent any of the WHP funds from going to clinics that provide or refer for abortions — notably planned Parenthood franchises, which had received 40 percent of the program’s funding.
The problem is the same one that was raised in the Komen kerfuffle. Planned Parenthood was ostensibly being reimbursed for providing health services like mammograms and cancer screening, but Planned Parenthood does not do mammograms nor cancer screening, but just refers patients to someone who does.
In December, the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) informed the Texas Health and Human Services Commission that , in its opinion, Texas restrictions on the program were unlawful. CMS said Texas cannot restrict the distribution of its WHP funds because patients have the right to choose a Medicaid provider — and threatened to withdraw the funds entirely unless the restrictions were removed.
The battle is about Texas Right to Life and pro-life legislators efforts to defund the state’s abortion industry. Planned Parenthood believes they are entitled to government funding, and intend to lash out. The legislature’s rules and funding priorities have reduced the federal funding by 37% over the past year, resulting in the closure of twelve Planned Parenthood branches. The funding has merely been redirected, and thus has not restricted poor women’s access to necessary and preventive care.
The Obama administration has indicated that it would reduce its support for health care in Texas rather than let the state decide that the money shouldn’t go to supporting abortion providers. The administration has withdrawn $30 million worth of funding from the Texas Medicaid program. Kathleen Sebelius even traveled to Texas to announce the withdrawing of funds. The federal government favors abortion, and expects Texas to recognize that fact. Heavy hand of government.
Texas says they will fund the program themselves. Of the more than 1.000 certified WHP providers across the state, Texas law excludes fewer than 100 Planned Parenthood providers. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has issued an opinion declaring that federal law allows states to exclude abortion providers and their affiliated organizations from Medicaid. Texas considers Planned Parenthood a poor allocation of public funds.
Taxpayers are certainly not in agreement with the idea that they should fund, through the federal government, a major abortion provider. Some people find that morally repugnant. The federal government’s powers are limited. Why can’t Obama grasp that simple fact?
Filed under: Domestic Policy, Fun n Games, Law, Liberalism, Politics, Progressivism, Statism | Tags: Big Government Failure, Government Red Tape, Regulation
The heavy hand of Big Government has descended upon swimming pools. The Justice Department has deemed to regulate all pools in the mindless effort to be “fair” — this time to the disabled, to make sure they have access, even to those things to which they have no wish to have access. The DOJ says this will cost $ 1 billion over each of the next 15 years. Here’s Heritage’s brief description.
The new rules require (for the first time) that swimming pools, wading pools, and spas—some 300,000 of them—be made “accessible” for the disabled. But the folks who actually own the pools have no say in how to comply. On the contrary, the government dictates every detail (e.g., “A transfer space of 60 inches minimum by 60 inches minimum with a slope not steeper than 1:48 shall be provided at the base of the transfer platform surface and shall be centered along a 24 inch minimum side of the transfer platform.”)
These regulations were published on September 15, 2010, after a rulemaking that stretched six years. Shortly thereafter, manufacturers began furious production of the various components needed to retrofit pools. Hotels and the like were racing to meet the compliance deadline despite lacking clarity on key elements of the regulation.
The regulators clearly have no comprehension of the nature of swimming pools. Your typical municipal pool serves many purposes. Swim lessons for kids, and for all ages. Competition swimming for swim teams, competition diving. Lap swimming for swimmers who want exercise. Water exercise classes. Red Cross safety swimming lessons from beginner through life saving. Water ballet. All that before you get down to ordinary swimming which involves exercise, play, cooling off, teaching babies to swim.
The city where I live in the Pacific Northwest has a population of just over 122,000, lots of parks, nestled between two lakes. It has one indoor city swimming pool that serves multiple populations, including all of the above. It is usually crowded, busy, and heavily chlorinated. The times that you can use it depend on your particular need.
A number of years ago, a group of citizens who had disabled members requested facilities for the disabled. The building housing the pool was enlarged to accommodate another pool, and a special pool was built with gentle ramps. The pool is shallow, probably 4 feet in the deep part, with good hand rails. The water is kept at a warmer temperature than the active pool. Cost was high with the new building. redesigned facilities and redesigned parking lot.
The city also has a YMCA, a number of private swim clubs, and in recent years a proliferation of health clubs, many of which have pools for members. There is some pressure on the city to build another city pool, as the existing one is really too busy.
Even the pool specially built for the disabled serves many purposes: there’s a baby swim class for mothers and babies, and a water movement class, aside from whatever classes they have for the disabled. It is a nice pool, and well designed for its uses. The rules would require the city to retrofit the other pool, unused by the disabled.
The disabled can move more easily in warm water, and can move in ways that they cannot outside the pool. Regular use is therapeutic. What they do not need is to be in a crowded swimming pool with all sorts of swimmers and splashers. My grandmother was badly crippled with arthritis, but could swim (slowly with a gentle side stroke of sorts) in warm water and it was very beneficial.
Some 120 regulations taking effect in the past year require enhanced accommodations for disabled individuals at 65 different types of public and private facilities—encompassing 7 million privately owned sites and 80,000 units of state and local government—including stadiums; convention centers; auditoriums; airport terminals; public parking facilities; theaters and concert halls; jails; prisons; bowling alleys; fishing piers; amusement parks; hotels, motels, and spas; restaurants; stores; health care clinics; and office buildings (to name a few).
Pools were required to be in compliance by March 12, 2012. But the DOJ came up with another rule about how lifts were to be attached to pool decks that meant that many pools that had retrofitted had to do it over, so they got a 60 day extension.
There are hot spring pools throughout the Rocky Mountain West that are were open to the public. Retrofitting as the DOJ demands is probably more than they can afford.There are several books available listing hot springs in the West with pictures and facilities described. The vast majority will probably have to shut down. The vast majority have probably never had a disabled customer — because they are not “disabled accessible” or because there is no interest? I don’t know the answer to that.
I do know that the kind of facilities that truly serve the needs of a disabled person require more than a lift. They require a little intelligence from the rulemakers. and some understanding of the nature of swimming pools. One rule for all may be “fair” from the view of the rulemakers, and devastating to the people.
