Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, April 2, 2014


Still suffering with this friggin' cold...
(*COUGHING*)


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3 comments:

William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/apr/2/supreme-court-strikes-down-limit-campaign-giving/

The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that wealthy donors shouldn’t be limited in how many candidates they can contribute to during an election...

* OBVIOUSLY...

...though the justices did leave in place the maximum donation that can be made to a single candidate.

* WHICH IS OF COURSE WRONG - A CLEAR VIOLATION OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., in the controlling opinion in the 5-4 ruling, said that while the government has an interest in preventing corruption of federal officeholders, individuals have political rights that include being able to give to as many candidates as they want, in order to show support.

* SO WHY NOT BE ABLE TO GIVE AS MUCH MONEY AS ONE WANTS TO? (RHETORICAL QUESTION..)

“Money in politics may at times seem repugnant to some, but so too does much of what the First Amendment vigorously protects,” the chief justice wrote. “If the First Amendment protects flag burning, funeral protests, and Nazi parades — despite the profound offense such spectacles cause — it surely protects political campaign speech despite popular opposition.”

* AND THUS MY POINT! BY WHAT RIGHT DO ROBERTS AND THE MAJORITY SET LIMITS ON THE "VOLUME" OF THE SPEECH? (THE AMOUNT DONATED?!) W

Under the current limit, a donor can’t give more than $123,200 to candidates, parties and political action committees. Of that, just $48,600 can go directly to candidates.

* BY... WHAT... CONSTITUTIONAL... LOGIC...?!?!

That means if someone wanted to give the maximum donation, he could only contribute to nine candidates.

Chief Justice Roberts said it made no sense that someone couldn’t give to a 10th candidate or more — and said the government didn’t offer a clear line on where corruption would come into play.

Justice Roberts‘ ruling was joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Samuel A. Alito Jr. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote an opinion joining in the judgment, though he would have gone further in undoing the limit on how much can be given to individual campaigns.

* SEE, FOLKS! IT'S LIKE I ALWAYS TELL YOU... THOMAS IS MY FAVORITE JUSTICE BECAUSE HE'S THE JUSTICE WHO MOST ABIDES BY THE CONSTITUTION AND ITS LOGIC!

* TO BE CONTINUED...

April 2, 2014 at 12:01 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

The court’s four liberal-leaning justices dissented, in an opinion written by Justice Stephen G. Breyer that blasted the majority ruling, calling it devastating to democracy.

* WE'RE NOT A DEMOCRACY - WE'RE A REPUBLIC.

* THE POINT IS, THOUGH... EIGHT OF THE NINE JUSTICES THINK IT'S JUST DANDY FOR THE GOVERNMENT TO TELL ME AND YOU HOW MUCH MONEY WE CAN DONATE TO INDIVIDUALS RUNNING FOR OFFICE. THEY DO SO WITH NO CONSTITUTIONAL LINKAGE THAT I CAN SEE. BAD PRECEDENT IS... er... BAD PRECEDENT.

The ruling comes four years after the justices decided that Citizens United case, a 5-4 ruling that opened the door for interest groups to spend unlimited money on issue ads, though they are still limited in their contributions to candidates themselves.

* SEE... FOLKS... WHAT LOGIC DOES THIS MAKE...?!?! (NONE!)

Wednesday’s ruling leaves intact the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision that first ruled that Congress could limit campaign finance donations.

* DOESN'T THAT TELL YOU ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW? MY LOGIC WAS THE CONSTITUTION UP UNTIL 1976! (FOLKS... THE CONSTITUTION DIDN'T CHANGE IN1976... BUT MORE OF OUR RIGHTS WERE TAKEN AWAY IN 1976!)

But Justice Thomas, in his opinion, said the cracks in that landmark decision are showing.

“I regret only that the plurality does not acknowledge that today’s decision, although purporting not to overrule Buckley, continues to chip away at its footings,” Justice Thomas write. “In sum, what remains of Buckley is a rule without a rationale."

* YEP!

[Thomas continued...] Contributions and expenditures are simply ‘two sides of the same First Amendment coin,’ and our efforts to distinguish the two have produced mere ‘word games’ rather than any cognizable principle of constitutional law.”

* YEP.

* AGAIN... FOLKS... SCALIA... EVEN ALITO... NEITHER HAS THE RESPECT FOR AMERICANS' CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS THAT THOMAS HAS.

April 2, 2014 at 12:02 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://dailycaller.com/2014/04/02/report-epa-tested-deadly-pollutants-on-humans-to-push-obama-admins-agenda/

The EPA has been conducting dangerous experiments on humans over the past few years in order to justify more onerous clean air regulations.

The agency conducted tests on people with health issues and the elderly, exposing them to high levels of potentially lethal pollutants without disclosing the risks of cancer and death according to a newly released government report.

* WOW...

These experiments exposed people, including those with asthma and heart problems, to dangerously high levels of toxic pollutants including diesel fumes reads a EPA inspector general report obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. The EPA also exposed people with health issues to levels of pollutants up to 50 times greater than the agency says is safe for humans.

The EPA conducted five experiments in 2010 and 2011 to look at the health effects of particulate matter, or PM, and diesel exhaust on humans. The IG’s report found that the EPA did get consent forms from 81 people in five studies. But the IG also found that “exposure risks were not always consistently represented.”

* SICK BASTARDS...

PM is a “mixture of harmful solid and liquid particles” that the EPA regulates. PM that is 2.5 microns or less is known as PM2.5, which is about “1/30th the thickness of a human hair.” These small particles can get into people’s respiratory system and can harm human health and even lead to death after just short-term exposure. The EPA set PM2.5 primary standards at 15 micrograms per cubic meter of air on an annual average basis, but the agency exposed test subjects to PM levels of 600 micrograms per cubic meter — 40 times what the EPA sets as an acceptable outdoor air standard. But in five of the studies, people were subject to levels higher than what they signed on for. The EPA IG found that one person was hit with “pollutant concentrations that reached 751 [micrograms per cubic meter], which exceeded the IRB-approved concentration target of 600 [micrograms per cubic meter].”

The EPA has been trying to justify setting stricter PM2.5 standards in its upcoming national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS). But the agency’s public statements on PM don’t square with its lax attitude about testing the air pollutant on humans.

“Maybe the biggest reason to slow down the new rule is that the EPA is talking out of both sides of their mouth,” Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter said last year. “On one side exposure to it is deadly, and on the other they say human exposure studies are not harmful.”

April 2, 2014 at 3:58 PM

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