THE EPA AS DUST POLICE

You can't make this stuff up!

According to Reuters, EPA wants farmers to rein in the amount of dust floating in the air in the American countryside.

The EPA plans to issue the regulations in the fall of 2011. Details of those regulations and the method of enforcement remain unknown.

Read the rest here at Always On Watch.

THE BIRTH-CERTIFICATE DISTRACTION

Please see THIS (with thanks to Will). Brief excerpt:

While we were distracted by the president's birth certificate show-and-tell, his EPA releases its guidelines for expanding federal power under the Clean Water Act....

[...]

President Obama said the whole "birther" controversy was a distraction from other more important things. That's just the way he wanted it.

Read it all.

The Obama administration is certainly adept at one thing — using sleight of hand.

THE EPA CLASSIFIES MILK AS OIL

Absolute madness! You can't make up these surreal developments.

From this essay by Thomas Sowell:

...We all understand why the EPA was given the power to issue regulations to guard against oil spills, such as that of the Exxon Valdez in Alaska or the more recent BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But not everyone understands that any power given to any bureaucracy for any purpose can be stretched far beyond that purpose.

In a classic example of this process, the EPA has decided that, since milk contains oil, it has the authority to force farmers to comply with new regulations to file "emergency management" plans to show how they will cope with spilled milk, how farmers will train "first responders" and build "containment facilities" if there is a flood of spilled milk.

Since there is no free lunch, all of this is going to cost the farmers both money and time that could be going into farming-- and is likely to end up costing consumers higher prices for farm products.

It is going to cost the taxpayers money as well, since the EPA is going to have to hire people to inspect farms, inspect farmers' reports and prosecute farmers who don't jump through all the right hoops in the right order. All of this will be "creating jobs," even if the tax money removed from the private sector correspondingly reduces the jobs that can be created there.

Does anyone seriously believe that any farmer is going to spill enough milk to compare with the Exxon Valdez oil spill or the BP oil spill?

Do you envision people fleeing their homes, as a flood of milk comes pouring down the mountainside, threatening to wipe out the village below?

It doesn't matter. Once the words are in the law, it makes no difference what the realities are. The bureaucracy has every incentive to stretch the meaning of those words, in order to expand its empire....

WISDOM FROM C.S. LEWIS

From Eastern Right (emphases mine) come these wise words from the past:

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."

-- God in the Dock, 1948

Power grabbers, Nann who put themselves on the moral high road are always dangerous, insidiously so.

CHEFS TO REFORM SCHOOL LUNCHES

Are you kidding me? School lunches need chefs?

From the Washington Post:

More than 500 chefs gathered at the White House today to join Michelle Obama's newest effort to fight childhood obesity, Chefs Move To Schools.

The chefs, including national stars such as Rachael Ray, Tom Colicchio and Cat Cora, and an army of unknowns who work in restaurants, food banks and culinary schools, hailed from 37 states. Each has accepted a White House mission to adopt a school in his or her community and work with parents, teachers and cafeteria workers to educate children about food and nutrition. That might include developing healthful recipes for cafeterias, offering cooking lessons or helping a school to plant a garden.

"You are all at the heart of this initiative because if anyone understands nutrition and food, it's the folks sitting here in their whites today," Obama said, referring to the traditional chef uniform. "You know more about food than almost anyone – other than the grandmas – and you've got the visibility and the enthusiasm to match that knowledge."

[...]

"You'd never think of implementing a salad bar as guerrilla warfare. But that's what it is. Kid by kid. School by school," said [New York Public Schools Executive Chef Jorge] Collazo.

...Chefs said they were undeterred by the hard work ahead....

Whatever happened to "Too many cooks spoil the broth"?

From another WaPo puff piece on the same topic:

..."What we are feeding our children is an outrage. We should be marching with picket signs and pitchforks in revolution," said Cathal Armstrong of Restaurant Eve in Alexandria....

[...]

In the months since [the January 2010] meeting, the chefs have taken the first steps to make real the lofty goals of Michelle Obama's Let's Move! initiative, which aims to end childhood obesity within a generation. [Chefs] Gray and Mendelsohn began teaching cooking classes to hundreds of students and parents...

What? They can't open a cookbook on their own? Sheesh!

From cradle to grave is upon us!

Continuing now with an excerpt from the WaPo article:

At the very least, the combination of chefs and reality-style makeovers is smart marketing by the White House. But if the nearly 1,000 chefs who have signed on to the program catch the same fever as their Washington counterparts, the hope is that the program could spark a real "Food Revolution," Jamie Oliver-style. A thousand forks of light, if you will.

"A thousand forks of light"? Consciously or unconsciously trying to make a connection to this 1988 speech given by George H.W. Bush, I guess.

OUR HEALTH-CARE SYSTEM AND THE NANNY STATE

The essay below relates an aspect of my personal experience in dealing with our health-care system when Mr. AOW had a serious stroke last fall. He remained in medical-care facilities from September 15 to November 25.

No doubt about it, when Mr. AOW was released from the inpatient hospital stroke rehabilitation center on October 16, he was unable to be cared for at home. In addition to being completely paralyzed on the left side (limbs and trunk), his sense of balance was completely awry: he could fall forward, backward, or to either side at any given moment. His brain didn't know what direction up was! He also suffered from mental confusion. For example, he said, "I know I'm in the hospital here in Virginia, but I feel like I'm in California."

In fact, in spite of the ninety days of coverage supposedly provided by the health-insurance plan the hospital refused to keep Mr. AOW any longer than two weeks or to release him to home. Instead, the hospital and the nursing home teamed up to release him only to a skilled nursing facility, which costs a minimum of $350 per day.

At both the rehab hospital and the nursing home, both of which were in-network facilities of Mr. AOW's health-insurance plan, I was repeatedly advised to obtain Medicare and Medicaid. This mandate, in spite of the fact that Mr. AOW was not eligible for Medicare at the age of fifty-nine and has always had health insurance for, lo, three decades!

When I pointed out to the hospital and the nursing home that Mr. AOW and I had too many assets to qualify for either Medicare or Medicaid, I was advised to liquidate all those assets that Mr. AOW and I had spent a lifetime accumulating, go bankrupt once those assets were consumed by medical care, and become beneficiaries of the Nanny State. By the way, all assets were on the table, including retirement accounts (IRA's).

Looking back, I realize that both the hospital and the nursing home anticipated that Mr. AOW would always be a resident of the nursing home, never mind that he was admitted there for stroke therapy and not as a long-term resident.

After Mr. AOW made substantial progress after several weeks in the nursing home, the day arrived when I informed the health-insurance company and the nursing home that I would be bringing Mr. AOW home in a few weeks. The representative from the health-insurance company again advised me to seek out Medicaid coverage. Talk about having their needle stuck!

Once we established that Medicaid was not an option and that I was indeed determined to bring Mr. AOW home, I was threatened: "We'll have to report you to adult protective services."

So, how did I bring Mr. AOW home without getting arrested? I had in place the necessary paperwork: complete power of attorney and the advanced medical directive, both of which documents gave me conseiderable legal power. I also had on my side our family physician, who was willing to sign the release orders. This last is very important! Had I not placed Mr. AOW under the care of the family physician, the nursing-home physician could have refused to release Mr. AOW, thus forcing us into bankruptcy.

Also of help was a bit of name dropping, specifically, the name of my husband's personal attorney, famous as "the attorney of attorneys." Were he called in, he would own the nursing home by the time he was finished! At that point, the nursing home, recognizing the kind of legal proceedings they could be up against, agreed to starting the necessary paperwork for Mr. AOW's release from the nursing home. The one requirement: that Mr. AOW receive occasional visits from a registered nurse.

I have learned there is some truth in what some of my older relatives used to say: "Once I go into the hospital, I'll never come back home." Hospitals and nursing homes do have the power to hold patients and their families hostage.

Via the necessary legal documents and before illness strikes, arm yourself in advance so that you don't become a victim of the health-care system's trying to push you and your family under the care of the Nanny State. Believe me, the health-care system will try hard to push you in that direction!

And what would have happened under ObamaKare?

REPAYMENT OF TARP FUNDS IN THE DUMPER

According to this article in the Washington Times, the taxpayers are going to get the shaft when it comes to getting their money back -- never mind all the politicians' promises at the time the TARP funds were allocated.

But there's something else too:

AIG has missed three TARP dividend payments to Treasury as of Sept. 30. If the company misses a fourth payment Nov. 1, Treasury will have the right to elect directors to the AIG board.

More at this link.

TARP A HUGE SWINDLE OF AMERICAN TAXPAYERS

Surprise! Not!

From American Free Press:

‘TARP’ Turning Out to Be Largest Taxpayer Swindle in U.S. History

CONGRESS AND THE WHITE HOUSE have been busy lately patting themselves on the back for staving off financial armageddon by handing out taxpayer money to Wall Street like it was Halloween candy. But while they’re trumpeting the fact that some financial firms have returned a tiny portion of the trillions of dollars that were given to banks, reality is setting in that Americans will never see that money again and will be paying it off for many, many years to come.

[...]

So far, more than 600 potentially insolvent banks have been propped up by TARP. However, the program is set to expire at the end of this year, and doubts remain as to whether many lending institutions will be able to hold on without continued handouts from taxpayers....

[...]

...So now we know the truth about the TARP: It wasn’t enacted to protect the economy. It was created for the purpose of covering up the greatest theft of taxpayer dollars in the history of the United States.

Generations of Americans will be socked in the wallet.

We've got to vote out the Dems in 2010 and 2012!