Friday, July 2nd, 2010 at 12:23 pm
Two weeks of links to catch up!
Closing Guantanamo; big priority during the campaign, not so much now. (Well, especially since even Democrats don’t even want to do it.)
The Obama administration turned down using Dutch oil skimmers because they couldn’t meet our stringent government environmental regulations on how pure the decontaminated water was that they dumped back into the Gulf of Mexico, right on-sight of the spill. Instead, we transport the oily water to facilities and decontaminate it there. Huge efficiency drop during a major catastrophe because, ironically, of environmental regulations. Read the whole article for more things we turned down that could have averted a lot of this problem.
Our own Treasury Secretary is ignorant of economic history. Timothy Geithner said this at the latest G-20 summit: “One of the mistakes made in the 1930s was that countries pulled back their recovery efforts too soon, prolonging the Great Depression.” However, precisely the opposite happened. Recovery efforts failed, lasted too long, and that’s what prolonged the Great Depression. NewsBusters has the charts.
School vouchers improve graduation rates. Now we have a government study to prove what common sense already told us.
Sharia Law in the UK: Dogs barred from buses so as not to offend Muslims.
Democrats have decided that there will be no budget this year. Hey, at least (this time) they’re being honest about it. I guess they’ll just spend until it doesn’t feel good anymore. Or until they’re voted out. Whichever comes first.
In Venezuela’s socialist paradise, the government’s Food Ministry rounds up 120 tons of rice because it might be sold above regulated prices. At the same time, 80,000 tons of food was found rotting in government warehouses. Government efficiency at its finest.
Another example of bait-and-switch in the passage of ObamaCare. Obama rejected the idea that the individual mandate was a tax increase, but in defending it from state lawsuits, the administration does classify it as a tax increase. This way, the mandate falls under a law that forbids the states from interfering in tax collections. In addition, “an early draft of an administration regulation estimates … a majority of workers—51 percent—will be in plans subject to new federal requirements….”
If your 11-year-old asks a particular Massachusetts school for a condom, they’ll get it, no questions asked. Also, parents objections will not be taken into consideration. Actually, there’s no real age limit on the policy; any kid can get one. Only in Massachusetts. For now.
And finally, all that hard work pays off, but not the way you thought it would. (From Chuck Asay. Click for a larger version.)