Yep... Thursday, January 2, 2014... and Newsbites Are Back...!!!
Heck... and while I'm at it... let's bring back Newsbites theme songs!
Anyway, folks... you know the drill... newsbites will be found in the comments section...
READ AND LEARN...!!!
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* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/02/opinion/edward-snowden-whistle-blower.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=1&
Seven months ago, the world began to learn the vast scope of the National Security Agency’s reach into the lives of hundreds of millions of people in the United States and around the globe, as it collects information about their phone calls, their email messages, their friends and contacts, how they spend their days and where they spend their nights.
The public learned in great detail how the agency has exceeded its mandate and abused its authority...
* AND YET... WHERE ARE THE ARRESTS? WHERE ARE THE DISMISSALS?
...prompting outrage at kitchen tables...
* NOT SO MUCH...
(*SHRUG*)
...and at the desks of Congress, which may finally begin to limit these practices.
* OH, PLEASE... DO YOU SEE ANY OFFICIALS RESPONSIBLE BEING IMPEACHED? NO.
The revelations have already prompted two federal judges to accuse the NSA of violating the Constitution...
* WHICH IS RARELY RELEVANT IN THE AGE OF OBAMA...
(*SIGH*)
...although a third, unfortunately, found the dragnet surveillance to be legal.
A panel appointed by President Obama issued a powerful indictment of the agency’s invasions of privacy and called for a major overhaul of its operations.
* THE SAME PRESIDENT OBAMA WHO HAS BEEN PRESIDENT SINCE JANUARY 2009!
(*SNORT*)
All of this is entirely because of information provided to journalists by Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who stole a trove of highly classified documents after he became disillusioned with the agency’s voraciousness.
* AND HOW WAS HE ABLE TO STEAL THIS TREASURE TROVE OF HIGHLY CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS IN THE FIRST PLACE?! FOLKS... THE PEOPLE RUNNING INTERNAL SECURITY FOR THE NSA APPARENTLY SUCK AT THEIR JOB! YET... WHO GETS FIRED? ANYONE? ANYONE RESPONSIBLE?
(*SHRUG*)
Mr. Snowden is now living in Russia, on the run from American charges of espionage and theft...
* AGAIN, FOLKS... THINK OF JUST THE COMPETENCY FACTOR AT PLAY. (OR RATHER LACK THEREOF!)
Considering the enormous value of the information he has revealed, and the abuses he has exposed, Mr. Snowden deserves better than a life of permanent exile, fear and flight. He may have committed a crime to do so, but he has done his country a great service. It is time for the United States to offer Mr. Snowden a plea bargain or some form of clemency that would allow him to return home, face at least substantially reduced punishment in light of his role as a whistle-blower, and have the hope of a life advocating for greater privacy and far stronger oversight of the runaway intelligence community.
* I AGREE.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
In retrospect, Mr. Snowden was clearly justified in believing that the only way to blow the whistle on this kind of intelligence-gathering was to expose it to the public and let the resulting furor do the work his superiors would not. Beyond the mass collection of phone and Internet data, consider just a few of the violations he revealed or the legal actions he provoked:
■ The NSA broke federal privacy laws, or exceeded its authority thousands of times per year according to the agency’s own internal auditor.
■ The NSA systematically undermined the basic encryption systems of the Internet, making it impossible to know if sensitive banking or medical data is truly private, damaging businesses that depended on this trust.
■ Snowden's leaks revealed that James Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, lied to Congress when testifying in March that the N.S.A. was not collecting data on millions of Americans. (There has been no discussion of punishment for that lie.)
* THE MAN SHOULD BE IN JAIL. INSTEAD... HE'S STILL AT OBAMA'S SIDE. MY FRIENDS... THIS IS AMERIKA - NOT AMERICA.
■ The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court rebuked the NSA for repeatedly providing misleading information about its surveillance practices according to a ruling made public because of the Snowden documents. One of the practices violated the Constitution, according to the chief judge of the court.
* AND YET...
(*SHRUG*)
■ A federal district judge ruled earlier this month that the phone-records-collection program probably violates the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. He called the program “almost Orwellian” and said there was no evidence that it stopped any imminent act of terror.
* AMERIKA - THE AGE OF OBAMA.
The shrill brigade of his critics say Mr. Snowden has done profound damage to intelligence operations of the United States, but none has presented the slightest proof that his disclosures really hurt the nation’s security.
(*NOD*)
Many of the mass-collection programs Mr. Snowden exposed would work just as well if they were reduced in scope and brought under strict outside oversight, as the presidential panel recommended.
* AS THE PRESIDENTIAL PANEL RECOMMENDED... AFTER THE ABUSES WERE MADE PUBLIC!
(*SNORT*)
When someone reveals that government officials have routinely and deliberately broken the law, that person should not face life in prison at the hands of the same government. That’s why Rick Ledgett, who leads the NSA’s task force on the Snowden leaks, recently told CBS News that he would consider amnesty if Mr. Snowden would stop any additional leaks.
* I SAY BRING ON MORE LEAKS!
And it’s why President Obama should tell his aides to begin finding a way to end Mr. Snowden’s vilification and give him an incentive to return home.
* PRESIDENT OBAMA...
(*SIGH*)
* THE FOX GUARDING THE HEN HOUSE...
http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/local&id=9372756
Dozens of employees at a hospital in northeast Houston have had to make it through the holidays without getting paid for weeks.
* LET ME GUESS: OBAMA...???
The CEO of Saint Anthony's Hospital on Little York is blaming a new Medicare payment contractor for his payroll problems.
* YEP... OBAMA.
Nearly 150 employees, ranging from doctors to nurses and administrators, haven't been paid in nearly a month, and the CEO says it's not his fault. The hospital is strapped for cash not because it's not making money, but because Leday says a new Medicare payment "facilitator" named Novitas Solutions is taking too way long to pay out Medicare claims to the hospital.
Leday says [the hospital is] owed nearly $3 million in payments from Medicare and can't make payroll.
In a statement to Eyewitness News, Leday said: "I'm very remorseful and disappointed that we can't provide paychecks for those employees. It breaks my heart."
Leday said he hasn't collected a paycheck either in nearly a year. He said he's had to give gas and grocery money to his employees from his personal bank account. "It's been hard for everybody," Leday said. "This is a national issue that affects us locally. We are adapting to the new ways of doing business that have been created. We think we can be successful in 2013 and can take care of all of our employees through the transition."
* YES... THE... er... "NEW WAYS" OF DOING BUSINESS...
The Texas Medical Association says they are familiar with complaints like this one regarding the Medicare payment facilitator and a representative told us smaller community hospitals like this one are in similar situations.
We reached out to Novitas Solutions, but they have not issued a statement yet.
* OBAMA'S AMERIKA...
http://dailycaller.com/2014/01/01/its-official-obamacare-debuts-with-more-cancelled-plans-than-enrollments/
ObamaCare may have promised health insurance for the masses, but [as we ring in New Year's Day] it’s left more Americans without coverage than before the law was passed.
(*CLAP...CLAP...CLAP*)
More than 4.7 million Americans had their health insurance canceled as a result of any of the thousand-plus-page law’s new rules, the Associated Press reports...
* SEE: http://news.yahoo.com/policy-notifications-current-status-state-204701399.html
...but the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) confirmed Tuesday that between federal and state exchanges just 2 million Americans have signed up for ObamaCare coverage.
* SEE: http://dailycaller.com/2013/12/29/obama-administration-announces-net-loss-of-at-least-4-million-insurance-plans/
(RELATED: Obama administration announces net loss of at least 3 million insurance plans)
The Obama administration has yet to announce the final tally of full enrollments, which are only confirmed once customers have made their first payment, but Cato Institute health policy expert Michael Cannon warns that not all those who signed up will complete their purchases, potentially leaving the White House with an even lower bottom line.
* THREE-PARTER... (Part 1 of 3)
http://theweek.com/article/index/254564/the-hidden-costs-of-obamacare
ObamaCare has delivered another sucker punch to the middle class. This time it's sticker shock.
Now that most people can get past the tech problems of HealthCare.gov and actually see the real cost of insurance plans available, they are finding that "Affordable Care" is a big hit to the family budget.
(And when the family budget gets hit in the solar plexus, guess what happens to consumer spending and the economy?)
In California, policies for about 900,000 Californians are being canceled because of ObamaCare's mandates, and about two-thirds of these do not qualify for subsidies, according to The Chicago Tribune.
* ABOUT TWO-THIRDS DO NOT QUALIFY FOR SUBSIDIES... MEANING ONE THIRD DOES? FOLKS... WHO DO YOU SUPPOSE PAYS THE SUBSIDIES TO THESE ONE-THIRD...?!?!
The result: These folks will be paying higher premiums.
* UNLESS THEY DECIDE TO PAY THE (INITIALLY) LOW FINES INSTEAD AND GO WITHOUT INSURANCE COVERAGE. (AND THEN IF THEY GET SICK GO ON THE PUBLIC DOLE...)
In Alabama, premiums have doubled for some middle-class families, like that of Courtney Long, a stay-at-home mother of four. She told WHNT News, "It's devastating. I started crying."
* BILL CLINTON FEELS YOUR PAIN! (BTW... HE SAID HE'D LIKE A BLOW-JOB...)
"I mean, we have worked so hard to get out of credit card debt, get ahead on the car loan, transfer our mortgage to a 15- from a 30-year mortgage… and for what?”
(*SIGH*)
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 3)
In Tennessee, GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander issued an analysis of a White House report and found the following:
Today, a 27-year-old man in Memphis can buy a plan for as low as $41 a month. On the exchange, the lowest state average is $119 a month — a 190% increase.
(*CLAP...CLAP...CLAP*)
Today, a 27-year-old woman in Nashville can also buy a plan for as low as $58 a month. On the exchange, the lowest-priced plan in Nashville is $114 a month — a 97% increase. Even with a tax subsidy, that plan is $104 a month, almost twice what she could pay today.
* BTW... DOES IT MAKE SENSE TO ANYONE THAT THE WOMAN'S PLAN SHOULD COST LESS? APPLES TO APPLES? I MEAN... A HEALTHY MAN HAS A GP. A HEALTHY WOMAN HAS A GP AND A GYN. THINK OF ALL THE EXTRA MEDICAL SERVICES, TESTS, AND SCREENINGS YOUNG WOMEN REQUIRE COMPARED TO YOUNG MEN. (HEY... JUST THROWING IT OUT THERE... JUST ASKING YOU TO THINK ABOUT IT.) (IF SOMETHING DOESN'T MAKE SENSE... ISN'T THAT A PROBLEM...?)
Today, women in Nashville can choose from 30 insurance plans that cost less than the administration says insurance plans on the exchange will cost, even with the new tax subsidy.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
In Nashville, 105 insurance plans offered today will not be available in the exchange.
* HOW DO YOU LIKE OBAMA'S AMERIKA...?
In Washington state, ObamaCare will increase the underlying cost of individually purchased health insurance by 34% to 80% on average, according to Forbes.
* HEY... THANK GOD EVERYONE IN WASHINGTON STATE HAS MONEY TO BURN, RIGHT?!
The list goes on and on and includes Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, Georgia, and North Carolina.
But premiums are just the beginning. The deductibles are outrageous, too.
* CHANT IT WITH ME, FOLKS! O-BAM-A! O-BAM-A! O-BAM-A!
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)
A recent article in The New York Times tells the story of Doug and Ginger Chapman, ages 55 and 54, a middle-class couple "sitting on the health care cliff." Their annual income of around $100,000 a year makes them ineligible for a subsidy in New Hampshire (if they earned under $94,000, it would cut their costs by half). They have to replace their family insurance which includes the two of them and their two sons. The premium cost alone, not including any deductible, is $1,000 a month, or 12 percent of their income.
* MARY AND I EARN LESS AND PAY MORE!
The Times' analysis found the following: The cost of premiums for people who just miss qualifying for subsidies rises rapidly for people in their 50s and 60s. In some places, prices can quickly approach 20% of a person's income.
* MARY AND I ARE OVER 20% I BELIEVE.
Experts consider health insurance unaffordable once it exceeds 10% of annual income.
* AND YET... WE AFFORD IT. AND WE SUBSIDIZE OTHERS THROUGH OUR TAXES. HOW IS THIS FAIR...?
By that measure, a 50-year-old making $50,000 a year, or just above the qualifying limit for assistance, would find the cheapest available plan to be unaffordable in more than 170 counties around the country, ranging from Anchorage to Jackson, Miss. [The New York Times]
* IS THIS WHAT WAS PROMISED?
The other group that gets disproportionately hit is the young, according to Forbes. For a 40-year-old, the 2013 average deductible was $4,045, and the monthly cost increased 29% to $309. For a 64-year-old man, the monthly cost of a plan with a $3,494 deductible increased 64% to $806.
If even a fraction of the middle class and upper middle income earners divert some of their discretionary dollars to pay for health care, it will have a significant impact on consumer spending.
* DUH!
What will that mean for the economy? ... The top 20%of income earners account for about 40% of all spending in the U.S. When you increase the costs of health care and the new taxes associated with ObamaCare, you can hear the wallets closing.
* THREE-PARTER... (Part 1 of 3)
http://www.openmarket.org/2014/01/01/the-great-italian-auto-bailout-courtesy-of-u-s-taxpayers/
At the beginning of 2014, Detroit may be bankrupt, but they’re cheering the five-year-old U.S. auto bailout in Italy.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
That’s because after being the beneficiary of billions in U.S. taxpayer largesse, Fiat, the leading Italian auto company, is going to buy its final stake in Chrysler from that other big bailout recipient, the United Auto Workers (UAW).
* NICE...
“Chrysler’s Now Fully an Italian Auto Company,” reads the Time magazine online headline.
(*CLAP...CLAP...CLAP*)
But wait a minute! Wasn’t the bailout supposed to be about saving the American auto industry?
* NO. IT WAS SUPPOSED TO REDISTRIBUTE TAXPAYER MONEY TO DEMOCRAT-SUPPORTING UNIONS.
As Mark Beatty and wrote in The Daily Caller in November 2012, "The real outrage arising from the 2009 Chrysler bailout is not that its parent company, Fiat, is planning to build plants in China. It’s that the politicized bankruptcy process limited Chrysler’s growth potential by tying it to an Italian dinosaur in the midst of the European fiscal crisis. The Obama administration literally gave away ownership of one of the Big Three American auto manufacturers to an Italian car maker struggling with labor and productivity issues worse than those that drove Chrysler to near-liquidation."
* YEP...
* FOLKS... IN A SENSE THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION AND DEMOCRATIC PARTY (AS WELL AS THE REPUBLICAN PARTY... NO ONE'S DENYING THIS...) OPERATE AS CRIMINAL ENTERPRISES PLUNDERING THE TREASURY AT WILL WHENEVER THEY HAVE THE POWER TO DO SO.
As we noted in the piece, much of Chrysler’s profits from its overhauled line are going to prop up Fiat’s failing, money-losing Italian business rather than to expanding production and jobs in the U.S.
* RE-READ THE ABOVE IS NECESSARY...
Moody’s had downgraded Fiat’s credit rating to “junk” even before the Obama administration arranged for it to acquire a Chrysler stake, and in Autumn 2012, Moody’s gave Fiat another downgrade that the Financial Times described as even “further into ‘junk’ territory.” Around this time, Barron’s put it like this in a headline, “This time, Chrysler could bail out Fiat.” Actually, the Barron’s headline is slightly misleading in one respect — Fiat didn’t contribute much of anything to the Chrysler’s bailout. In the 2009 deal overseen by the Obama administration’s auto task force, Fiat paid no money to acquire its initial 20% stake in Chrysler — only contributing some of its intellectual property, instead. Fiat would later pay $2.2 billion to raise its stake in the company to 58.5%.
* NICE, HUH...?
Continuing the bailout shell game, Fiat will now pay fellow bailout recipient UAW $4.4 billion for its stake in Chrysler. All the while, the U.S. government has pitched in more than $12 billion in taxpayer infusions.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
In “saving” the American auto industry, Obama gave an American company away.
* YEP...
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 3)
And Obama gave it away at the expense of...secured creditors, which were given a much smaller stake in the new company than they would have been given under traditional bankruptcy proceedings.
* YEP...
American manufacturing workers also lost out on the deal; many are now hostages to the woes of Fiat and the Italian economy.
(*BITING MY LOWER LIP*)
According to Barron’s, “Chrysler’s resurgence has been so strong that it now provides a lifeline for Turin’s Fiat, which faces serious challenges in Western Europe.” Fiat and Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne told Barron’s: “The Fiat Group has a future because of Chrysler.” Similarly, Bloomberg reported that, “without Chrysler, the Italian automaker would have posted a first-quarter net loss” in 2012.
In late 2012, Chrysler reported that its third-quarter profit surged 80% to $381 million. It’s likely that the bulk of that profit will...be plowed into Fiat’s operations in Italy.
Chrysler being tied to Fiat’s European woes makes it less and less likely that much of the profit will be reinvested in the U.S. In June 2012, The Wall Street Journal painted a devastating picture of Fiat’s bloated workforce at its Turin headquarters. “Too many inefficient plants, coupled with a plunge in consumer demand, have left not only Fiat, but other car makers … bleeding cash.” Yet Fiat, which employs 63,000 Italian workers, “says it has no plans to cut jobs.” Instead, due to antiquated Italian labor laws (that Big Labor champions in the U.S.), it “furloughs” workers when it idles plants and pays them two-thirds of their salaries.
(*CLAP...CLAP...CLAP*)
[I]ronically, Fiat’s Marchionne has made Chrysler profitable again not by producing more of Fiat’s mini-cars, as the Obama administration urged it to do, but rather by doubling down on Chrysler’s most “environmentally incorrect” light trucks and sport-utility vehicles, such as the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango. In reporting Chrysler’s profit surge, Bloomberg noted that these earnings were “boosted by demand” for Jeep Grand Cherokees, while Fiat has “delayed new models such as the Punto hatchback.” Marchionne deserves some credit. By refusing to follow General Motors’ lead to march in lockstep with the Obama administration’s wishes, he did not turn Chrysler into another “Government Motors,” making its own version of Chevy Volts that nobody wants.
But making more Jeeps and Dodge Durangos is — to use a motoring cliché — sort of like reinventing the wheel. Some other competent CEO could have figured that one out.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)
Because of the dysfunction of its Italian operations, Fiat must squeeze all it can out of its new Chrysler cash cow — bequeathed to it by U.S. taxpayers at the Obama administration’s behest. That may mean lowering costs on profitable vehicles like Jeeps by moving operations to lower-cost nations such as China (though Chrysler insists that it will only do so for vehicles sold in China). Whatever the case, Fiat will be reluctant to put many more American workers on its payroll with so many mouths to feed in its native Italy.
* ONE WOULD THINK...
Had Chrysler gone through a traditional court-approved bankruptcy before it received any government money (as Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney advocated in a 2008 New York Times op-ed), its investors and workers would have had the opportunity to ask questions about Fiat’s financial viability.
* THE LAST THING THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION WANTED... WHICH IS WHY IT DIDN'T HAPPEN...
Both Romney and Obama backed some form of government guarantees for American auto companies. Government aid to a specific business is something free market advocates can never support. But Chrysler’s politicized bankruptcy took away a more fundamental guarantee — the rule of law — and many American workers will suffer as a result.
* AGAIN... KEY POINT... "THE RULE OF LAW." IT NO LONGER EXISTS. AMERIKA IS NOW RULED BY TOP-DOWN PERSONAL DECREES.
* FOLKS... YOU CAN ARGUE IT "STARTED" WITH BUSH... OR CLINTON... OR REAGAN... OR ONE OF THE ROOSEVELTS... OR ABE LINCOLN IF YOU CARE TO... BUT NO HONEST PERSON CAN DENY THE ACCELERATION OF "THE ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS" AS GOVERNMENT "NORM" UNDER OBAMA. IN LESS THAN SIX YEARS OBAMA HAS SUCCEEDED IN FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGING AMERICA... INTO AMERIKA.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/mike-ciandella/2014/01/02/frozen-out-98-stories-ignore-ice-bound-ship-was-global-warming-missi
A group of climate change scientists...
* MEMBERS OF THE CHURCH OF GLOBAL WARMING...
...were rescued by helicopter Jan. 2, after being stranded in the ice since Christmas morning.
But the majority of the broadcast networks’ reports about the ice-locked climate researchers never mentioned climate change.
Forty out of 41 stories (97.5%) on the network morning and evening news shows since Dec. 25 failed to mention climate change had anything to do with the expedition. In fact, rather than point out the mission was to find evidence of climate change, the networks often referred to the stranded people as “passengers,” “trackers” and even “tourists,” without a word about climate change or global warming.
(*SNORT*)
"Outside, blizzard conditions packing an abnormal amount of ice in to the area for this time of the year, summer in the Antarctic," ABC News Correspondent Gio Benitez reported on “Good Morning America” Dec. 31.
* UH-HUH...
[A] statement from the Australasian Antarctic Expedition said, “Sea ice is disappearing due to climate change, but here ice is building up.”
There was only one news story out of 41 that mentioned climate change. That was CBS “This Morning” Dec. 30. “Despite being frozen at a standstill, the team’s research on climate change and Antarctic wildlife is moving forward,” CBS News Correspondent Don Dahler said. That night, all three evening news programs still failed to make any mention of the group’s climate change research.
TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303799404579284611071783686?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
Watching Team Obama habitually assert that it can rewrite the Affordable Care Act on the fly, one wonders whether anyone in the executive branch still believes in following the law.
* OBAMA AND HIS CRONIES HAVE NEVER BELIEVED IN FOLLOWING THE LAW. AND THEY'VE GOTTEN AWAY WITH THEIR CONSTANT LAWBREAKING. OBAMA'S AMERIKA IS NOT A NATION UNDER THE RULE OF LAW. IT'S NOT!
Don't look to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for reassurance.
Since the 1970s, annual federal appropriations bills have explicitly prohibited the federal workplace overseer from descending on small family farms. Specifically, OSHA does not have jurisdiction over "farming operations" with 10 or fewer employees.
But OSHA officials have found a novel way to circumvent this statutory restraint. The regulators have simply claimed the authority to rewrite the definition of farming.
(*SIGH*)
A remarkable 2011 memo from OSHA's enforcement chief to regional administrators at first acknowledges that the law prevents the agency from regulating small farms engaged in growing and harvesting crops and any "related activities." But then the memo proceeds to instruct employees on how to re-categorize small farms as commercial grain handlers. So OSHA inspectors have recently begun to descend on family farms, claiming the authority to regulate their grain storage bins.
This has inspired the normally mild-mannered Sen. Mike Johanns (R., Neb.) to take to the Senate floor recently to condemn OSHA's "absolutely incredible" and "absurd" position, which he called "a blatant overreach in violation of the law."
* FOLKS... EVEN IF JOHANNS IS SUCCESSFUL IN GETTING OSHA TO STOP VIOLATING THE LAW... THE OFFICIALS WHO ORIGINALLY AUTHORIZED THE BREAKING OF THE LAW WILL NOT BE PUNISHED.
Mr. Johanns grew up on a farm and pointed out that "every farm has grain storage." That's because it's not practical and at times nearly impossible to sell all of a crop the moment it is harvested. Without grain storage, farmers would be forced to immediately unload everything they grow and therefore have to accept lower prices.
Mr. Johanns said that a small Nebraska farm with only one non-family employee was recently visited by OSHA inspectors and fined more than $130,000 even though "OSHA made no claim that anyone had been hurt."
* FINED FOR WHAT? FINED $130,000 FOR WHAT...?!
Although he didn't name names, Mr. Johanns was almost certainly referring to Niobrara Farms. Attorneys for this family operation recently wrote to Nebraska lawmakers and reported that OSHA has issued citations "for such things as failing to have a written plan to control fugitive grain dust" in grain storage bins.
* FOLKS... WHAT'S BEING DESCRIBED HERE IS THE DESTRUCTION OF OUR NATION...
* FOLKS... ONE DAY IF YOU DARE... TAKE THE ENTIRE DAY AND JUST POUR THROUGH NEWSBITES FROM THE START OF THIS BLOG THROUGH THE PRESENT. IF THAT DOESN'T PUT WHAT'S HAPPENED IN CONTEXT NOTHING WILL.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
OSHA says the case is still being litigated and can't comment in detail, but it maintains that the grain storage was "geographically separate" from the farm. It's not clear why this would give a small farmer any less protection under the law. But in any case James Luers, attorney for Niobrara Farms, says that the storage bins are within a quarter mile of where the crops are grown.
The man who runs OSHA is Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health David Michaels. He tells us that the agency takes the Congressional exemption for small farms "very seriously" and that he's happy to work with Mr. Johanns. But when pressed to affirm that grain storage located on a small farm remains exempt under the law, Mr. Michaels declined to do so. "It's more complicated," he said in a telephone interview. "We'd have to look at the case."
Perhaps someone should have looked at OSHA's case against Ohio's Haerr Grain Farms before issuing citations. This is another case without even an allegation that anyone has been harmed. According to co-owner Scott Haerr, the father-son partnership has one full-time employee and the grain storage occurs at the same location as the farm — not that farmers shouldn't be free to store their property wherever they want.
Mr. Haerr says two OSHA inspectors showed up at harvest time this year without warning. When he asked why they were there, he says he was told, "We don't bother family farms." Mr. Haerr responded that his operation was a family farm, to which one inspector responded, "Well, you have an employee."
To review, OSHA inspectors are specifically barred under the law from setting foot on farms with 10 or fewer employees. But the act of creating a job in agriculture apparently now makes one eligible for an extra-legal federal investigation. Is this the Obama economic plan for 2014? In a later meeting with an OSHA official, Mr. Haerr's attorney asked where OSHA's jurisdiction ended on a farm like his. Mr. Haerr says there was no clear answer, other than an assurance that the agency would not regulate anything inside his house.
* FOLKS... WE'RE LOSING OUR COUNTRY... I KNOW MANY OF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE IT... BUT WE ARE...
This week the Haerrs formally contested OSHA's claims, and they feared that like the Niobrara Farms owners they would have to make their case before an administrative law judge at the Department of Labor. But Mr. Haerr tells us that late Monday he got a call from OSHA saying the agency was withdrawing all citations against the farm. That was about two hours after we had contacted OSHA asking for comment on the case.
Mr. Johanns has already persuaded a bipartisan Senate coalition of 42 colleagues to urge Labor Secretary Thomas Perez to instruct OSHA to cease all actions based on its bogus interpretation of the statute. We'd say all 100 Senators should agree on the proposition that federal agencies should follow the law.
* BUT THIS IS OBAMA'S AMERIKA. THEY WON'T.
http://blogs.wsj.com/peggynoonan/2013/12/17/incompetence/
Everyone is doing thoughtful year-end pieces on President Obama. Writers and reporters agree he’s had his worst year ever. I infer from most of their essays an unstated but broadly held sense of foreboding: There’s no particular reason to believe next year will be better, and in fact signs and indications point to continued trouble.
I would add that in recent weeks I have begun to worry about the basic competency of the administration, its ability to perform the most fundamental duties of executive management.
* SHE'S "BEGUN" TO WORRY...
(*SNORT*)
One reason I worry is that I frequently speak with people who interact with the White House, and when I say, “That place just doesn’t seem to work,” they don’t defend it, they offer off-the-record examples of how poorly the government is run.
My worries came home with a certain freshness after the Mandela memorial, where the United States Secret Service allowed the president of the United States to stand for 19 minutes next to the famous sign-language interpreter who, it was quickly revealed, was not only a fraud but a schizophrenic con man who is now said to have been involved in two deaths.
(*ANOTHER SNORT*)
They had three and a half years to make sure ObamaCare will work, three years to get it right top to bottom, to rejigger parts of the law that they finally judged wouldn’t work, to make the buying of a policy easy on the website. And they not only couldn’t do that, which itself constitutes an astounding and historic management failure, they make it clear they were taken aback by their failure. They didn’t know it was coming! Or some knew and for some reason couldn’t do anything.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
And it’s all going to continue.
ObamaCare will never be over. It’s going to poison the rest of the administration. It’s the story that won’t go away because it will continue to produce disorder. Wait, for instance, until small businesses realize it will be cheaper to throw their people off their coverage and take the fines than it will be to reinsure them under the new regime.
I’m worried, finally, that lines of traditionally assumed competence are being dropped. ... I have to say, I’ve never worried about this with any previous administration, ever.
Most of the Obama people just don’t have a background in executing. They have a background in "communicating," not doing.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303932504579258270386981200?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion
Wildfires destroyed an estimated 6,500 square miles of U.S. forest lands in 2013, an area larger than the state of Connecticut.
One reason fires blaze through so much land is poor wildfire management from the U.S. Forest Service.
Washington has known about the mismanagement of the Forest Service — whose 35,000 employees are responsible for approximately 10% of land in the U.S. — for years. In 1998, for example, the Government Accountability Office reported that "catastrophic wildfires threaten resources and communities" throughout the West. Much of the problem, it concluded, was the fact that "the Forest Service's decision making process is broken." Fifteen years later, it still is.
* FIFTEEN YEARS LATER... IT STILL IS.
(*SIGH*)
During the 1990s, the Forest Service's old philosophy of "multiple use management" of forests was succeeded by a new outlook of "ecosystem management." This placed ecological goals above more utilitarian considerations, resulting in a radical curtailing of timber harvesting, forest thinning and other more aggressive actions that would have helped to address the continuing fire problem.
Desperate for improvement, in 2009 Congress enacted the Federal Land Assistance, Management and Enhancement Act, or Flame, which required the secretaries of agriculture and interior to develop a "National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy." Typical of the glacial pace of federal bureaucracy, the report is still not final, more than three years after its statutory deadline.
* MORE THAN THREE YEARS AFTER ITS STATUTORY DEADLINE.
What's needed is a new management model for the national forests, the type public-education reformers have been experimenting with for more than two decades. Charter schools are one of the few reform initiatives supported by both parties. That's because charter schools work. This is the model that the U.S. Forest Service needs.
Certain federal forest lands, while still "owned" by the federal government, would be managed independently as charter forests. A decentralized charter forest would operate under the control of a local board of directors, which might include local government officials, economists, environmentalists, and recreational and commercial users of forest resources.
* SOUNDS A BIT UTOPIAN...
The charter forest also would be exempt from current requirements for public land-use planning and the writing of environmental impact statements. These requirements long ago ceased to perform their ostensible function of improving public land decision making. They have instead become open invitations for litigation — effectively transferring much of the management control over national forests to litigants and federal judges.
(*THUMBS UP*)
Charter forests would operate under federal oversight, including broad land-use goals and performance standards relating to the maintenance of environmental quality.
* MEANINGLESS GOOBLY-GOOP. ENGLISH PLEASE! (TO RETURN TO THE START OF THE ARTICLE, FEDERAL CONTROL IS AT THE HEART OF THE PROBLEM. WHY WOULD FEDERAL "OVERSIGHT" BE A PANACEA...?
In a 2013 survey, two million federal workers were asked about the quality of leadership, the level of morale, and other management conditions in their agencies. The responses ranked the Forest Service as worse than 260 out of 300 similar federal agencies.
Given this — and the long record of past failure — aren't charter forests worth a try?
http://www.myfoxny.com/Story/24337826/snow-storm-tristate
The National Weather Service (NWS) in New York issued winter storm warnings...
* IN THE WINTER...
* IN NEW YORK...
...for the tristate area for Thursday at 6 p.m. through Friday at 1 p.m. A blizzard warning is in effect for Long Island because blowing snow could cause white-out conditions.
* SNOW. BLOWING SNOW. IN THE WINTER. IN NEW YORK.
Significant snow, sleet, or ice is expected to accumulate...
* IN NEW YORK... ON A JANUARY NIGHT IN NEW YORK...
N.Y. Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared a statewide state of emergency and encouraged drivers to utilize mass transit as because of closures of major highways across the state including. The New York State Thruway I-87 south of Albany, Interstate 84, and the Long Island Expressway in Nassau and Suffolk counties will be closed at midnight and will reopen at 5 a.m. Friday only if conditions permit.
* FOLKS... THIS IS INSANITY. CLOSING MAJOR HIGHWAYS? BECAUSE IT'S SNOWING... IN NEW YORK... IN JANUARY...??? DO YOU SUPPOSE THE RUSSIANS CLOSE DOWN MOSCOW AND ST. PETERSBURG WHEN IT SNOWS? HAVE WE LOST ALL PERSPECTIVE IN THIS COUNTRY...?!?!
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