The Obama administration is moving forward with new regulations that would require car manufacturers to have “fleet wide” gas mileage of 54.4 miles per gallon by 2025 (the “0.4” is a nice touch --- if you’re going to be arbitrary, best to be specifically arbitrary and give the impression you know what you’re doing). According to the National Highway and Transportation Safety Administration’s website, from 1983 to 2009, fines for not meeting CAFE standards totaled nearly $800 million across the industry. Functionally, the new requirements are a stealth tax on drivers (i.e., most Americans) as car manufacturers inevitably pass these costs on to consumers.
8:11 PM 07/16/2012
“If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”
12:04 PM 06/14/2012
A couple weeks ago, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced his plan to prohibit the city’s retail stores and restaurants from selling certain large-sized sugary drinks. No more giant Slurpees, no more large Cokes and no more 20-ounce Arizona Green Teas with ginseng and honey.
1:52 PM 05/21/2012
The NAACP’s principal objective is “to ensure the political, educational, social and economic equality of minority group citizens of [the] United States and eliminate race prejudice.” The group’s mission statement doesn’t mention its other traditional role: curating old grievances and stereotypes embalmed in the intimidating forces of political correctness, a role now familiar to the children at Meridian Ranch Elementary school in Colorado Springs.
3:53 PM 04/30/2012
Imagine that every man, woman and child in the United States lacked access to safe drinking water. Now imagine that British scientists had discovered vast underground reserves of potable water from the Rockies to the Appalachians, and a university researcher had announced a major breakthrough in nanotechnology that could convert wastewater into clean, drinkable H2O. With human suffering on that scale, we would drill for the water until the new technology came online, environmental consequences be damned, right? Or would the Environmental Protection Agency “crucify” water drillers, too?
10:56 PM 04/22/2012
George Orwell once said, “If there are certain pages of Mr. Bertrand Russell's book, Power, which seem rather empty, that is merely to say that we have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.” Orwell was right about the importance of restating the obvious, even if he expressed himself in an unnecessarily condescending way.
1:03 PM 04/13/2012
With the revelation that the Obama administration has donated $1.5 billion to the Muslim Brotherhood, we now have a better idea of why the president is campaigning so hard for the “Buffett Rule” and its additional $4.7 billion in annual revenue. Other terrorist-friendly organizations with political aspirations may require “investments” from the United States as well.
3:43 PM 03/28/2012
Back in February, Michelle Goldberg of The Daily Beast wondered if the debate on the HHS mandate was the GOP’s new “Terri Schiavo moment.” Only a warping of the facts by the left’s Outrage, Inc. could produce that analogy. But now a better question arises: Will President Obama’s response to the Trayvon Martin shooting become his “Terri Schiavo moment”?
