Sweet Repeal | Cato @ Liberty
-full short post-

Sweet Repeal

Posted by Jim Harper

Look at this legislative language. It’s the stuff of beauty:

(a) In general.—The following sections of the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 151 et seq.) are hereby repealed:

(1) Section 339 (47 U.S.C. 339).

(2) Section 340 (47 U.S.C. 340).

(3) Section 341 (47 U.S.C. 341).

(4) Section 342 (47 U.S.C. 342).

(5) Section 612 (47 U.S.C. 532).

(6) Section 614 (47 U.S.C. 534).

(7) Section 712 (47 U.S.C. 612).

And there’s more.

It’s from H.R. 3675, The Next Generation Television Marketplace Act, introduced by Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), and its Senate counterpart, S. 2008, from Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC).

Cato alum Adam Thierer’s recent Forbes column has the low-down:

There’s a common myth heard frequently in communications policy circles that America’s video marketplace was largely deregulated in the 1980s and ’90s, and that we now have a free market nirvana. Nothing could be further from the truth. When it comes to television programming, many layers of red tape still encumber this sector and prevent a truly free market in video programming from developing.

Adam goes on to discuss all the ways that players in this marketplace are working to maintain the advantages they see coming from regulation. It’s a gruesome pile-up of rent-seeking that the Scalise-DeMint bill is trying to clear up.

It sure is cool to see a bill that repeals existing regulations, for a change. Ten or fifteen thousand more like this would be a good start.

Jim Harper • March 23, 2012 @ 5:05 pm

REPEAL OBAMACARE! - Sebelius: Colleges Must Pay to Sterilize Teens

Sebelius: Colleges Must Pay to Sterilize Teens
by COLLEGE FIX STAFF on MARCH 21, 2012

HHS has a new mandate for colleges. Under Obama’s new health care regime, academic institutions must offer free sterilization to girls, including those as young as their teens.

All student health care plans covering female college students in the United States must include coverage for free voluntary sterilization surgery, the Department of Health and Human Services announced late Friday afternoon.

Women of college age who do not attend school will also get free sterilization coverage whether they are insured through an employer, their parents, or some form of government-subsidized plan…

These free “preventive services” include surgical sterilization procedures and all Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptives, including those that cause abortions.

Read more.

You know this is bad if it's in the NY Times - Companies Face Fines for Not Using Unavailable Biofuel

REPEAL the Environmental Protection Agency!

Companies Face Fines for Not Using Unavailable Biofuel - NYTimes.com

By MATTHEW L. WALD January 9, 2012

WASHINGTON — When the companies that supply motor fuel close the books on 2011, they will pay about $6.8 million in penalties to the Treasury because they failed to mix a special type of biofuel into their gasoline and diesel as required by law.

But there was none to be had. Outside a handful of laboratories and workshops, the ingredient, cellulosic biofuel, does not exist.

In 2012, the oil companies expect to pay even higher penalties for failing to blend in the fuel, which is made from wood chips or the inedible parts of plants like corncobs. Refiners were required to blend 6.6 million gallons into gasoline and diesel in 2011 and face a quota of 8.65 million gallons this year.

“It belies logic,” Charles T. Drevna, the president of theNational Petrochemicals and Refiners Association, said of the 2011 quota. And raising the quota for 2012 when there is no production makes even less sense, he said.

Penalizing the fuel suppliers demonstrates what happens when the federal government really, really wants something that technology is not ready to provide. In fact, while it may seem harsh that the Environmental Protection Agency is penalizing them for failing to do the impossible, the agency is being lenient by the standards of the law, the 2007Energy Independence and Security Act.

The law, aimed at reducing the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, its reliance on oil imported from hostile places and the export of dollars to pay for it, includes provisions to increase the efficiency of vehicles as well as incorporate renewable energy sources into gasoline and diesel.

It requires the use of three alternative fuels: car and truck fuel made from cellulose, diesel fuel made from biomass and fuel made from biological materials but with a 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gases. Only the cellulosic fuel is commercially unavailable. As for meeting the quotas in the other categories, the refiners will not close their books until February and are not sure what will happen.

-more at link-

REPEAL the TSA - Especially now that they are an ever expanding bureaucracy!

This is a bunch of worthless, over reaching and power hungry, no skill, security guards, who are now just growing like cancer!

GO AWAY!

TSA screenings aren't just for airports anymore - latimes.com

By Brian Bennett, Washington Bureau

December 20, 2011

Roving security teams increasingly visit train stations, subways and other mass transit sites to deter terrorism. Critics say it's largely political theater.

The Transportation Security Administration isn't just in airports anymore. TSA teams are increasingly conducting searches and screenings at train stations, subways, ferry terminals and other mass transit locations around the country.

"We are not the Airport Security Administration," said Ray Dineen, the air marshal in charge of the TSA office in Charlotte. "We take that transportation part seriously."

The TSA's 25 "viper" teams — for Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response — have run more than 9,300 unannounced checkpoints and other search operations in the last year. Department of Homeland Security officials have asked Congress for funding to add 12 more teams next year.

According to budget documents, the department spent $110 million in fiscal 2011 for "surface transportation security," including the TSA's viper program, and is asking for an additional $24 million next year. That compares with more than $5 billion for aviation security.

-read at link-

REPEAL the EPA - new Power Grab

They have no facts, act subjectively in their own interest for a bigger bureaucracy, These governmental thieves need elimination!

New Expansive EPA Power Grab | FrontPage Magazine

By Tait Trussell On December 23, 2011

The environmental Protection Agency has plans to exert vastly expanded power over businesses, communities, and ecosystems.

The agency intends extensively to change the way it analyzes problems and arrives at decisions, as described in a Dec. 19 FoxNews.com article. The new, enlarged decision-making process goes under the term “sustainable development.”

Sustainable Development, by no coincidence, is “the centerpiece of a global United Nations conference in Rio de Janeiro next June,” explains the new EPA article by George Russell, executive editor of Fox News.

Guiding EPA thinking is a huge study commissioned by the agency last year for $700,000. The study was conducted by the National Academies of Science. A variety of consultants from different fields took part in meetings to develop the broad but vague concept of sustainability.

In a recent meeting with members of the National Academy, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson talked of sustainability as a scientific concept that will “spread to other (federal) agencies.” She called it a “new opportunity” and “the next stage forward” for the EPA. The agency has already cost industries billions of dollars in its often capricious decisions.

In an executive order as early as 2009, President Obama called for establishing an integrated strategy towards sustainability in the federal government and to make reduction of greenhouse gas emissions a priority for federal agencies. The phobia of global warming was even stronger then.

The study by the National Academy of Science said it will “provide guidance to EPA on how it might implement its existing statutory authority to contribute more fully to a more sustainable-development trajectory for the United States.” In other words, said Russell, “how to use existing laws to new ends,” or squeezing the most from laws that EPA wields.

-read on at link-

Stryker to cut 5% of workforce | Detroit Free Press | freep.com

Repeal Obamacare!

Stryker to cut 5% of workforce | Detroit Free Press | freep.com

MANUFACTURING

Stryker, the Kalamazoo-based maker of artificial hips and knees, will cut 5% of its global workforce by the end of next year to reduce costs in the face of new fees on device makers required by the U.S. health care law.

The job cuts will reduce annual pretax operating costs by more than $100 million beginning in 2013, when the medical-device excise tax is scheduled to take effect, Stryker said Thursday in a statement. Stryker had more than 20,000 employees as of Dec. 31, according to Bloomberg News data.

Stryker expects to record $85 million to $95 million of the expense in the fourth quarter of 2011.

REPEAL TSA: Secret Report On TSA Pat Downs, Body Scanner Failures Will “Knock Your Socks Off” Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!

AND THE WHOLE LOT AT HOMELAND SECURITY!

» Congressman: Secret Report On TSA Pat Downs, Body Scanner Failures Will “Knock Your Socks Off” Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!

“Off the charts” failure rate “sort of like the record of the Marx Brothers”

Steve Watson
Infowars.com
October 25, 2011

The chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which oversees the TSA, has asserted that the release of a classified report on TSA security failures will renew calls for the replacement of the agency with private airport security personnel.

“The failure rate (for body scanning equipment) is classified but it would absolutely knock your socks off,” Florida Republican, Rep. John L. Mica told reporters during a briefing Monday.

Mica also asserted that recorded instances of pat downs failing to detect contraband are “off the charts.” This information is also currently still classified, but is due to be released within weeks as part of an upcoming committee report on the TSA’s first decade.

Mica suggested that the TSA’s performance report would read “sort of like the record of the Marx Brothers”.

The TSA has withheld results of its official security tests, despite repeated requests to release the information under the Freedom of Information Act.

-read on at link-