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 are hereby repealed: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-

Repeal the DOE! Education Entropy - Biden’s Fourth-Grade Economics - Team Obama flunks economic stimulus

The saddest man in the world I ever knew was a school administrator. He understood the waste and economics of it.

Biden’s Fourth-Grade Economics - Mark Steyn - National Review Online

by Mark Steyn 10-22-11 - excerpts-

How to justify unaffordable and inefficient stimulus

Joe Biden ... talk to schoolchildren. Last week, it was the fourth grade at Alexander B. Goode Elementary School in York, Pa., that found itself on the receiving end of the vice president’s wisdom:
Here in this school, your school, you’ve had a lot of teachers who used to work here, but because there’s no money for them in the city, they’re not working. And so what happens is, when that occurs, each of the teachers that stays have more kids to teach. And they don’t get to spend as much time with you as they did when your classes were smaller. We think the federal government in Washington, D.C., should say to the cities and states, look, we’re going to give you some money so that you can hire back all those people. And the way we’re going to do it, we’re going to ask people who have a lot of money to pay just a little bit more in taxes.

Who knew it was that easy?...

So how come the Brokest Jurisdiction in History is able to “give you some money” to hire back those teachers that had to be laid off?

No problem, says the vice president. We’re going to “ask” people who have “a lot of money” to “pay just a little bit more” in taxes. ...

Since 1970, public-school employment has increased ten times faster than public-school enrollment. In 2008, the United States spent more per student on K–12 education than any other developed nation except Switzerland — and at least the Swiss have something to show for it. In 2008, York City School District spent $12,691 per pupil — or about a third more than the Swiss. Slovakia’s total per-student cost is less than York City’s current per-student deficit — and the Slovak kids beat the United States at mathematics, which may explain why their budget arithmetic still has a passing acquaintanceship with reality. As in so many other areas of American life, the problem is not the lack of money but the fact that so much of the money is utterly wasted.

So the president spent last week touring around in his weaponized Canadian bus telling Americans that Republicans were blocking plans to “put teachers back in the classroom.” Well, where are they now? Not every schoolmarm is down at the Occupy Wall Street drum circle, is she? No, indeed. And in that respect York City is a most instructive example: Five years ago (the most recent breakdown I have), the district had 440 teachers but 295 administrative and support staff. If you’re thinking that sounds a little out of whack, that just shows what a dummy you are: For every three teachers we “put back in the classroom,” we need to hire two bureaucrats to put back in the bureaucracy to fill in the paperwork to access the federal funds to put teachers back in the classroom. One day it will be three educrats for every two teachers, and the system will operate even more effectively. ...

-read it all at the above link-

Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is the author of After America: Get Ready for Armageddon.

Repeal the Dept. of Homeland Security - It is fake make work and dangerous to our freedoms

What is next, Obama Youth telling the People's State Police that their parents were acting suspicious and criticizing the administration, mass roundups and interrogations, no warrants?

This is serious stuff!

Tennessee Becomes First State To Fight Terrorism Statewide - NewsChannel5.com | Nashville News, Weather & Sports

10-20-11

PORTLAND, Tenn. – You're probably used to seeing TSA's signature blue uniforms at the airport, but now agents are hitting the interstates to fight terrorism with Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR).

[Do they really have to keep coming up with stupid names and acronyms?]

"Where is a terrorist more apt to be found? Not these days on an airplane more likely on the interstate," said Tennessee Department of Safety & Homeland Security Commissioner Bill Gibbons.

Tuesday Tennessee was first to deploy VIPR simultaneously at five weigh stations and two bus stations across the state.

Agents are recruiting truck drivers, like Rudy Gonzales, into the First Observer Highway Security Program to say something if they see something.

"Not only truck drivers, but cars, everybody should be aware of what's going on, on the road," said Gonzales.

It's all meant to urge every driver to call authorities if they see something suspicious.

Repeal the DOE! Arrogance and Corruption rules here

DOE Pushing On With $5 Billion In Solar Energy Loans - CNBC

9-29-11

The DOE has made seven conditional commitments for additional funding by the time the loan guarantee legally expires on Sept. 30. So far, it has made 23 loans totaling $11.2 billion, said a spokesman.

"We are committed to ensuring that every deal closed before Sept. 30 is fully vetted and will not close any deal that has not received full due diligence by September 30,” said Damien LaVera, a department spokesman.

“We are not rushing to complete deals, we are using the full amount of time Congress allocated for the program so we can ensure that we fully complete all due diligence and make informed decisions based on the most recent data.”

LaVera declined to specify how many companies would get the new loans, or name them, citing potential market impact.

REPEAL THE Department of Illegal Labor

Here is why, from John Derbyshire from Radio Derb - Sept. 2, 2011

Department of Illegal Labor.

The big event of the coming week is Labor Day, a day of relaxation and celebration for American workers and their families.

Our federal government has a Department of Labor, headed up by a Secretary of Labor. That position is currently held by 53-year-old Hilda Solis of California. What better person to check in on this Labor Day weekend? So, what has Ms. Solis been up to by way of safeguarding the interests of American workers?

Let's see … Oh, here's a news story from Monday this week. Quote:

U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis today signed "partnership" agreements with ambassadors from a group of Latin American nations aiming to protect what she described as the labor rights of both legal and illegal migrants working in the United States.

Say what? "Both legal and illegal migrants"? What about actual, you know, Americans? Ah, screw them. They're probably just a bunch of old white racists anyway.

O-kay; but what are these labor rights Secretary Solis is so zealously defending? Let the lady speak for herself.

[Solis clip] No matter how you got here or how long you plan to stay, you have certain rights. You have the right to be safe and in a healthy workplace and the right to a legal wage. We gather here today to strengthen our shared commitment to protect the labor rights of migrant workers in the United States. Unfortunately, due to language barriers and immigration status, migrant workers can be those that are most vulnerably abused.

Some of us, Madame Secretary, might say that American workers are being abused when government turns a blind eye to unscrupulous employers, with the connivance of paid-off politicians, bringing in cheap foreign workers, legal and illegal, to undercut American wages. But go on, please.

[Solis clip] We're committed to ending that abuse and in a few moments we'll sign new partnerships between the Department of Labor and the embassies of Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, and El Salvador. These are pledges between our governments to work together to educate migrant workers about their labor rights and prevent abuses in the workplace. During the past year, we've signed similar agreements with the embassies — and I'm very proud of this — the embassies of Mexico, Nicaragua, and Guatemala.

Certainly labor conditions in the U.S.A. are the proper business of the U.S. Secretary of Labor; but why are they any business of the ambassadors from Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Guatemala? I can't see … [Klaxon] Sorry, hold on a minute, I set off the PC alarm there somehow. [Aside] What'd I do?… Oh right. [Full voice] I should of course have said Co'tah Reeca, Nee-ha-rah-wah, and Gwah-thay-mah-lah. Deepest apologies, más profundos disculpas.

Bottom line here: All these corrupt junkyard countries to our south export their surplus peasants to the U.S.A. Joe Taxpayer here gets stuck with the cost of their medical care, food stamps, and kids' education. Meanwhile remittances flow south to prop up the junk economies of the junkyard countries. And our Secretary of Labor is, quote, "very proud" of her contribution to this shameless racket.

Anyone know the Spanish for "impeachment"? Perhaps they don't have that concept down in Nee-ha-rah-wah.

A Billion per Mile - and that is just to Grant Street

The American Spectator : A Billion per Mile

By Ralph R. Reiland on 8.30.11

President Obama's constant refrain about the government's unprecedented levels of red ink points to "millionaires and billionaires" as the problem, not the massive amounts of waste, fraud, and inefficiency in government operations.

Remember when a million per mile seemed like a crazy price for a new road? Now it's a billion per mile for a transportation project and the politicians are just fine with it, even if the project is totally unnecessary, even if we're already broke.

To make it allegedly easier for people in San Francisco to get in and out of Chinatown in a hurry, a new 1.7 mile subway line is in the works.

The original projected cost was $647 million. Now it's $1.6 billion, and growing.

There's already bus and light-rail service that covers the same route -- plus roads for cars if you're still the un-green and independent type who enjoys riding alone and listening to the radio and maybe even downing a good hoagie while driving between points A and B.

The 1.7 mile subway line "misses connections with 25 of the 30 light-rail and bus lines that it crosses, and there's no direct connection to the 104-mile Bay Area Transit line or to the ferry," stated the Wall Street Journal in a recent editorial.

There's also the problem of going eight stories underground to get to the new super-short subway -- not a good underground place to be during an earthquake, or during a terrorist attack.

-read on at above link-

Obama's Gestapo, KGB and Stasi all together - Ten Job-Destroying Regulations

These are just the 10 big ones for now, there are thousands of regulations enacted that add up to the death of our freedom and happiness. Who won the cold war after all?

Ten Job-Destroying Regulations - Andrew Stiles - National Review Online

AUGUST 30, 2011

The GOP takes aim at the Obama administration’s worst moves.

When Congress returns from recess next week, the political conversation is going to be all about jobs. As President Obama prepares to outline his “very specific” jobs proposal in a speech, House Republicans are readying a plan of their own. A key element to the GOP jobs agenda will be identifying and eliminating federal regulations that are needlessly burdening business owners and in many cases preventing them from hiring new employees. To that end, House committee chairmen have put together a list of “the 10 most harmful job-destroying regulations,” and plan to take action over the coming weeks and months to repeal or forestall these restrictive measures.

The following ten federal regulations — some of them pending, some of them already in effect — are, according to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.), “reflective of the types of costly bureaucratic handcuffs that Washington has forced upon business people who want to create jobs.”

NLRB’S BOEING COMPLAINT

MACT AND CSAPR UTILITY STANDARDS

BOILER MACT RULES

CEMENT MACT REQUIREMENTS

‘COAL ASH’ REGULATIONS

GRANDFATHERED HEALTH PLANS

EPA OZONE RULE

PA FARM-DUST REGULATIONS

EPA GREENHOUSE-GAS REQUIREMENTS

NLRB ‘AMBUSH’ ELECTIONS RULE

[read on at above link]

REPEAL THE EPA & Interior Dept. - Environmental Enforcement Leaves Musicians in Fear | Postmodern Times - WSJ.com

Do you ever get the feeling that that the government is just a bunch as assholes looking for something to justify their own existence!

Guitar Frets: Environmental Enforcement Leaves Musicians in Fear | Postmodern Times - WSJ.com

Federal agents swooped in on Gibson Guitar Wednesday, raiding factories and offices in Memphis and Nashville, seizing several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. The Feds are keeping mum, but in a statement yesterday Gibson's chairman and CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz, defended his company's manufacturing policies, accusing the Justice Department of bullying the company. "The wood the government seized Wednesday is from a Forest Stewardship Council certified supplier," he said, suggesting the Feds are using the aggressive enforcement of overly broad laws to make the company cry uncle.

It isn't the first time that agents of the Fish and Wildlife Service have come knocking at the storied maker of such iconic instruments as the Les Paul electric guitar, the J-160E acoustic-electric John Lennon played, and essential jazz-boxes such as Charlie Christian's ES-150. In 2009 the Feds seized several guitars and pallets of wood from a Gibson factory, and both sides have been wrangling over the goods in a case with the delightful name "United States of America v. Ebony Wood in Various Forms."

The question in the first raid seemed to be whether Gibson had been buying illegally harvested hardwoods from protected forests, such as the Madagascar ebony that makes for such lovely fretboards. And if Gibson did knowingly import illegally harvested ebony from Madagascar, that wouldn't be a negligible offense. Peter Lowry, ebony and rosewood expert at the Missouri Botanical Garden, calls the Madagascar wood trade the "equivalent of Africa's blood diamonds." But with the new raid, the government seems to be questioning whether some wood sourced from India met every regulatory jot and tittle.

It isn't just Gibson that is sweating. Musicians who play vintage guitars and other instruments made of environmentally protected materials are worried the authorities may be coming for them next.

REPEAL the EPA - Ozone Air Quality Standards: EPA’s Assault on Jobs and the Economy

Ozone Air Quality Standards: EPA’s Assault on Jobs and the Economy

By Andrew Grossman August 1, 2011

The U.S. economy won a temporary reprieve with the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) announcement last week that new ozone standards, which had been slated for this summer, will be delayed. The EPA’s “reconsideration” of the ozone standards it set in 2008 and issuance of more stringent standards violate all three of the fundamental values EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson pledged to honor: “science-based policies and programs, adherence to the rule of law, and overwhelming transparency.”[1]

This enormously expensive regulation is unsupported by scientific evidence, violates the Clean Air Act (CAA), and appears timed to evade ongoing judicial review of the rulemaking process. Even the EPA’s estimate that the new rule will impose up to $90 billion in compliance costs annually[2] severely understates the impact on economic development and jobs in communities where attainment of the new standards will be impossible. Congress should make the EPA’s temporary postponement of its new ozone standards a permanent one....

YOU WORTHLESS STUPID ARROGANT BUREAUCRATS!

Unprecedented Expense

The Obama EPA continues to outdo itself, proposing a series of CAA rules each more expensive than the last. Its new ozone standards would be among the most expensive yet, with the agency estimating costs of $19 billion to $90 billion annually, depending on stringency.

Why are the costs so high? Because, as the EPA acknowledges, the technology needed to comply does not exist. Spending on “known controls” would amount to only $3.3–4.5 billion, while the remainder would go to “other, currently unknown technologies that would be needed to attain the proposed primary standards.”[5] Given that uncertainty, the costs may be higher, or it may prove more cost-effective to simply shutter industrial capacity.

[go to above link]

Time to REPEAL the Whole Dept. of Homeland Security - TSA worker stole watches, debit card from LAX bags

TSA worker stole watches, debit card from LAX bags, officials say - latimes.com

L.A. Now July 22, 2011

short post-

A Transportation Security Administration officer has been indicted on five charges in the theft of four watches and a pre-paid debit card from luggage at Los Angeles International Airport, officials announced Friday.

A federal grand jury indicted Paul Yashou, 38, of Torrance, on two felony and three misdemeanor theft counts Friday afternoon.

Yashou is alleged to have stolen the items from luggage going through security at LAX’s Terminal 1, the U.S. District Attorney’s Office said. According to the indictment, one of the watches was valued at about $15,000, another at $5,000 and two at $1,000. The pre-paid debit card was valued at $1,000.

Authorities arrested Yashou on June 23 at his home after an investigation revealed the $15,000 watch had been sold to a jewelry store that had tried to sell the item on EBay. The owner of the watch noticed it was listed on the website, prompting the investigation.

Yashou faces the felony counts for the $15,000 and $5,000 watches. Each felony count carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in federal prison. The three misdemeanor counts each carry a maximum of one year in prison.

Yashou is due back in U.S. District Court on Aug. 3 for his arraignment.

REPEAL the TSA: Agent Caught With Passenger's iPad in His Pants; poss. Took $50,000 in Other Goods, Cops Say

TSA Agent Caught With Passenger's iPad in His Pants; Allegedly Took $50,000 in Other Goods, Cops Say - Broward/Palm Beach News - The Daily Pulp

By Matthew Hendley 7-7-11Thu., Jul. 7 2011 [full short post go to link]

While most Transportation Security Administration employees are busy groping people or taking naked pictures of them, the cops say one of those employees was putting fliers' electronics down his pants.

The Broward Sheriff's Office says 30-year-old Nelson Santiago stole around $50,000 worth of electronics over the past six months from Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport's Terminal 1.

Santiago -- a TSA officer since 2009 -- was caught earlier this week by a Continental Airlines employee taking an iPad out of someone's luggage and stuffing it into his pants, the cops say.

After being arrested Monday on two counts of grand theft, police say Santiago admitted to stealing computers, GPS devices, video cameras, and other electronic merchandise from luggage he was supposed to be screening.

The cops say Santiago would immediately take pictures of his new goods and upload the photos online to sell the stuff.

Santiago would typically sell the stolen goods to people before his shift was even over, police say.

BSO detectives estimate that Santiago's haul totaled $50,000 over the past six months.

The cops are looking for people whose stuff has been stolen, although they say the chances of getting the stuff back are slim.

Santiago was released from jail on bond, although police say more charges against him are pending.

According to police, Santiago no longer works with the TSA. [That's a surprise!]

REPEAL THE DAMN THING - DON'T DO YOUR USUAL WIMP OUT! Republicans Flicker On Light Bulb Ban Repeal

You can always expect the rank and file Country Club Republicans to be wimpy. They just love to be lead around by their collective nose by the hard case greenie-cons, commie Democrats. The Socialist Dems can't stand not insinuating themselves into every crevice of your life! This gets a Felix Ungar salute!! ♘

Articles: Republicans Flicker On Light Bulb Ban Repeal

June 20, 2011 By Geoffrey P. Hunt

The Republican House is flinching on passing the simplest and most symbolic piece of legislation this term: repeal of the incandescent light bulb phase out. Amidst great fanfare and promises to restore limited government, the new majority is proving it isn't much different than the old majority.

The incandescent phase out required under the so-called Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 starts with banning regular 100 watt light bulbs on Jan 1, 2012. 75 watters will be banned a year later. 60 watters fade in 2014.

Some of us still cling to a quaint notion that federal legislation ought to pass constitutional muster while fixing a problem serious enough to fix and do so while providing more benefits than the costs to implement. The light bulb ban fails to achieve all three:

1) it is unconstitutional (see my previous screed on this aspect);

2) is a solution without a problem; and

3) bears costs far in excess of any benefits.

The light bulb ban was inspired by environmental and energy conservation zealots spooked by the global warming lobby. And those economic rent-seeking players in the lighting industry who could benefit from legislated self-interest, were happy to join as co-conspirators. Those companies who were less enthused about the light bulb ban found resisting futile, in the end happy enough to delay the effective dates to allow for more orderly close down of factories and job eliminations.

So, what have learned since 2007? For starters, the global warming agenda has collapsed, polluted with data manipulation scandals. And where the data haven't been tainted by hyper-partisans, independent measurements are proving that global warming predictions are as useful as pre-season college football polls.

read on at link

REPEAL the ATF, it's as rotten as the 'Fast and Furious' and other failed entrapment schemes

ATF acting director may resign over Fast and Furious program - CNN.com

6-20-11

Washington (CNN) -- Kenneth Melson, acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, is expected to resign under pressure, perhaps in the next day or two, in the wake of the controversy over Operation Fast and Furious, two senior federal law enforcement sources said Monday.

In the operation, straw buyers were allowed to purchase illegally large numbers of weapons, some of which ended up in the hands of cartels in Mexico.

[more at link]

Repeal the EPA - Supreme Court Rejects Environmentalists' Suit Demanding Power Plant Emissions Cuts - FoxNews.com

Supreme Court Rejects Environmentalists' Suit Demanding Power Plant Emissions Cuts - FoxNews.com